The Role of SharePoint Online in Microsoft 365

SharePoint Online is a critical piece of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Its document management service is consumed by many apps like Teams, Yammer, and Planner. OneDrive for Business, the personal side of SharePoint Online, also contributes to SharePoint’s success with components like the synchronization client. Without SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 would be a very different offering and a worse platform to work with.

Microsoft Extends Problematic Information Barriers Solution to All Education Tenants

Information barriers seem like a good idea. Implement policy-driven controls over who can communicate within a Microsoft 365 tenant. Microsoft is making the solution available to education tenants. In reality, they should spend some the engineering effort required to improve the current sad state of the information barriers solution. No GUI, horrible management, PowerShell with impenetrable errors, and a lack of visibility into how the solution works.

How to Find and Use Office 365 and Microsoft 365 Icons

The Microsoft Fasttrack portal includes a branding toolkit full of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 app icons which are very useful for internal communications. That’s an important point. While you might like to use the icons in external communications, like blog posts or presentations given at conferences, Microsoft doesn’t license their use for those purposes. But will Microsoft come after you if you slip a SharePoint or Teams logo into your next presentation. Probably not, as long as you use the icons tastefully.

Microsoft Makes Endpoint Data Loss Prevention Generally Available

Microsoft has made Endpoint DLP generally available. Leveraging Windows 10 workstations and the Edge browser, Endpoint DLP sends signals for evaluation to detect possible violations. The solution requires Microsoft 365 licenses and only supports Windows, so it’s not for every tenant. But those who have Microsoft 365 licenses will find this an attractive solution.

Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance Centers Now Generally Available

The Microsoft 365 Security and Microsoft 365 Compliance Centers are now generally available. The new consoles will eventually replace the Office 365 Security and Compliance Center (SCC) but some work is needed to fill out their functionality and make the switchover possible. In the meantime, the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook writing team will stay focused on the SCC. And when the time’s right, we’ll switchover.

Microsoft 365 Licensing, Yammer and Teams, Office DPIA, and Exchange

Office 365 changes all the time, which is good because it keeps the Office 365 for IT Pros writing team busy and happy. Discussions this week included Microsoft’s response to a Dutch DPIA, the effect large Teams have on Yammer, how Exchange Online validated a fix to a security problem, and graphics to help understand the components of the Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 plans.

Network performance and connectivity evaluation with Network Testing Companion

Microsoft has released a nifty Network Testing Companion to help Office 365 admins validate that their network can support the deployment of Teams and Skype for Business Online.

Org-Wide settings in the Teams & Skype Admin Center

Microsoft designed the Teams & Skype Admin Center to make it easy to manage settings for both platforms. In the case of the organization wide settings, the latest updates in the Teams & Skype Admin Center provide the following features: Manage External access, Guest access, Teams settings and Teams upgrade options for the organization. This …

How to Export Microsoft 365 Roadmap to a CSV File

The new Microsoft 365 roadmap features the ability to download items (filtered or the entire roadmap) to a CSV file. You can then open the file with Excel or pour its contents into Power BI to analyze the roadmap to your heart’s content. That seems like a good thing.

New Search Experiences Coming to Office 365

In the same way Microsoft is introducing a new modern search experience in modern SharePoint Online (SPO) sites, the same strategy is being applied to search in Office 365. In this article we take a look at the modern search features you can find in Office 365. This article was published on Petri.com on September 27, 2018. …

The unified Microsoft 365 Roadmap is here

As expected, Microsoft has announced the unified Microsoft 365 Roadmap that includes all the technologies that are part of Microsoft 365: Office 365, Enterprise Mobility + Security and Windows 10. The new roadmap comes also with a new web site and a new URL (Note: the Old Office 365 Roadmap Url is still live, but …