All the Latest News in the World’s Only Constantly Updated Book About Office 365
The Office 365 for IT Pros eBook team is delighted to announce the availability of the October 2021 update. Subscribers for the EPUB/PDF version can download the updated files from Gumroad.com. We have updated the Kindle file on Amazon, but if you bought the book there, you’ll have to ask Amazon support to make the file available. See our FAQ for more details about how to access updates.
September Changes
Demonstrating once again that Microsoft 365 changes constantly, September was a busy time for Office 365 for IT Pros. Apart from doing a ton of work to review and check text to improve flow and remove obsolete material in several chapters, we dealt with a steady flow of changes announced by Microsoft. Some of the changes were big and required a substantial alteration in a chapter. Many others were at the detail level and required changes to only a few words or sentences. Tracking down where to apply and update and what to say in an update often takes as long for a small change as it does for a big one, especially in a book covering so many workloads.
Taking Exchange Online as an example, we learned that Microsoft plans to block basic authentication for a range of email connectivity protocols from October 1, 2022 (SMTP AUTH is an exception), and that Microsoft will impose a new 1.5 TB limit on auto-expanding archive mailboxes on November 1, 2021. Throw in the retirement notice for the old Exchange admin center and a hotly-disputed report by a security researcher into a purported problem with Autodiscover, and there was plenty to think about.
Teams is in a state of perpetual evolution, or so it seems. A new Whiteboard app is available for Teams (along with Android and browser clients). Teams desktop clients running in preview mode now sport a P beside the user photo. You can now send quoted replies in Teams chat (but not channel messages). Customization for together mode background scenes is generally available. Fixing a real annoyance, Teams now updates the underlying folder in SharePoint when a channel is renamed. We also investigated the artifacts gathered for Teams webinars (like attendee lists) and documented how Teams makes these objects available for eDiscovery. Another search capability now available is looking for spoken words in Teams meetings. This isn’t yet available for eDiscovery, but you can look for words with SharePoint search now.
Change Log
A complete change log covering all chapters in Office 365 for IT Pros is available online.
Thanks to our subscribers for their ongoing support for the Office 365 for IT Pros project. We couldn’t continue to track and document changes across all apps without this support.
Please download the new files at your earliest convenience. We wouldn’t like you to manage tenants based on obsolete information! We updated the companion book in September, and those updated files are also available for downloading.