Office 365 scenario-based training

Office 365 scenario-based training provides inspirational tutorials to show you how you and your team can transform the way you work. 

Below are the five core scenarios covered in the Training,

• Get it done from anywhere
• Content collaboration
• Run more effective meetings
• Email and calendar on the go
• Work like a network

Access the Training here: Office 365 scenario-based training

Be sure to access Office 365 Training Center for more learning resources.

Access here: Office 365 Training Center

Update:

Another add-on to the Learning Resources in the Office 365 Training Center

View here: New Office training courses from LinkedIn Learning

Update:

More LinkedIn Learning Office training courses now available

Stay tuned for more updates...

Manage Yammer user licenses in Office 365

Microsoft team recently announced the availability of Yammer in Office 365 and with this announcement managing Yammer is moved to Office 365 Admin center.

Some Organizations are not using Yammer in their Enterprise and this change of Yammer being available in Office 365 is something that caused an alarm with these customers and now you can manage Yammer License assignment at ease using portal and PowerShell as needed and also block users from accessing Yammer directly with their Office 365 identities without Yammer license in Office 365  Admin Portal.

More on this is covered in the below Support Article,

Manage Yammer user licenses in Office 365

Be sure to review your Organization requirement for Yammer and configure things accordingly, read the FAQ section for more updates.

Additionally, Read the below support article to mange Yammer domains,

Manage Yammer domains across their lifecycle in Office 365

Read the FAQ below,

Frequently asked questions (Yammer activation guide)

Update:

Introducing Yammer external groups

*Few more Essential articles,

Control external messaging in a Yammer network with Exchange Transport Rules

Create and manage external groups in Yammer

Network migration: Consolidate multiple Yammer networks

Key announcements for Office 365 this Month

Microsoft team announced various key enhancements to the service this month and below is a quick reference of 5 of them from Office blogs.

• Microsoft team announced new advanced security management capabilities for Office 365 that will improve IT visibility and control.This includes Office 365 advanced security alerts, Office 365 cloud app discovery and Office 365 app permissions. Also now Microsoft team is Extending Customer Lockbox to SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.

New security management and transparency capabilities coming to Office 365

• Office 365 Groups received a lot of new enhancements in a row including Dynamic Membership(preview), File Quota management and few more as outlined in the below Office Blogs post, be sure to watch the Microsoft Mechanics video for visual experience.

Updates to Office 365 Groups

• Auditing and reporting enhancements to meet the Organizational compliance requirements and also new file size limits for files uploaded to SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. Be sure to read the new changes to the address used to send notification email messages from SharePoint Online and update your user on the same.

Auditing, reporting and storage improvements for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business

• A new updated people profile experience under delve is on the way

Updated people profile experience coming soon to Office 365

• The first Office 365 Deferred Channel build (previously known as Current Branch for Business) is now available for Microsoft Office 365 for Windows (including Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Business, Project Pro for Office 365 and Visio Pro for Office 365). Make use of this to control the flow of changes to your environment.

Deferred Channel build now available for the Office 365 Client apps

There are a few more announcements other than the above ones, be sure to read Office Blogs and stay updated.

Exchange Hybrid News for the Month

Microsoft Exchange team has made an significant announcement for Hybrid customers that, The Office 365 Hybrid Configuration wizard has been updated to support Exchange 2010. Most of the Hybrid customers with Exchange 2010 and still evaluating their migration path to either 2013/2016 based hybrid, this new announcement provides an opportunity to experience the new wizard during Hybrid changes in the environment.

You can download the new wizard or wait till the next Update Roll-up as Microsoft team is updating the Exchange Management Console in Exchange 2010 SP3 RU13 with the new HCW.

More on this experience is available in detail in the below EHLO blog post

Read here: Office 365 Hybrid Configuration wizard for Exchange 2010

Importance Notice:

Microsoft team made one more critical announcement about Certificate expiration for Exchange 2013 Hybrid customers.

Make sure to make the changes before 15th April 2016 deadline to ensure that your Hybrid Mailflow is not affected by the change.

Review the blog post here for more information: Important notice about certificate expiration for Exchange 2013 Hybrid customers

Plan for the manual change at the earliest if you cannot update the environment with the latest CU to stay safe with the changes.

Another Critical Notice to all Exchange Customers:

Make sure you don't install the .NET Framework 4.6.1 in your environment, as its not supported by Exchange.

Read the blog post to understand more inline with Exchange Supportability Matrix and steps to block the installation of the update and roll back if its already deployed.

Read here: On .NET Framework 4.6.1 and Exchange compatibility

* If you have On premises Lync/Skype for Business server then this above scenario applies for them too along with Exchange.

Add-on bytes:

Along with the above critical updates few more enhancements are made to the Exchange world,

Exchange Server Deployment Assistant updated with the new Exchange 2016 based deployment scenarios including Hybrid deployment with Exchange 2010 co-existence.

Review here: Exchange Server Deployment Assistant Updated with New Exchange 2016 Scenarios

The most awaited availability of Exchange 2013 and 2016 Exmon tool.

Access here: Exchange 2013 and 2016 Exmon tool is now available

Another great news for Exchange customers using Public folders.

Check here : Exchange Public Folder Mailbox Limit Increased from 100 to 1,000


New update to Cross Premise Mailbox Permissions in Exchange Hybrid.

Cross Premise Mailbox permission (Full Access)  between an Exchange On premise mailbox to Exchange Online Mailbox and vice versa is now supported. There are few pre-requisite like Outlook Client version and no Auto Mapping support.

This is limited only to Full Mailbox permission and use of “Send-As”, “Receive-As”, or “Send on behalf” of mailbox permissions are not supported and follow the same guidance of Hybrid.

More on this is updated in the TechNet article below:

Exchange hybrid deployment considerations

OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client

OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client first release deployment has begun in few of the Organizations, there are still some caveats exist with the new client and you should be aware of this limitations and start your deployment.

This article is written to provide you with reference articles provided by Microsoft on this new sync client, I followed the instructions provided in the articles and tested the new sync client, it works well along with your personal OneDrive client and the old OneDrive for Business Sync client.

Below are the articles,

Introduction to the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client - Get an overview of what the Next Generation Sync Client is all about.

Deploying the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client in an enterprise environment - Learn how administrators can deploy the Next Generation Sync Client for Windows to users in their enterprise environment.

Transition from the existing OneDrive for Business sync client - Learn how Windows users can transition from the existing OneDrive for Business sync client to the Next Generation Sync Client.

Administrative settings for the new OneDrive Sync Client (OneDrive.exe) -Learn how administrators can control and manage the Next Generation Sync Client for their users through Group Policy.

Which OneDrive sync client am I using? - Learn how to easily tell which OneDrive sync client you are using.

OneDrive Next Generation Sync Client Release Notes -Knowledge base article with release notes, limits, and restrictions (such as invalid characters in file names).

You can share your feedback in Office 365 UserVoice and also get your queries answered in the upcoming OneDrive for Business YamJam this Tuesday 9-10 AM PST in Office 365 Network.

Update:

Accessibility updates in OneDrive for Business on the web - Microsoft Mechanics

Stay tuned for more updates...

Microsoft Office 365 Mapping of Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Control Matrix

Microsoft team commitment towards Security in the cloud is increasing day by day and transparency towards how your data is secure in Microsoft Cloud is show cased to customers through various channels, recently they published the Office 365 Customer Security Considerations Workbook and to add to the collection now they have released a detailed overview of how Office 365 controls map to the security, privacy, compliance and risk management controls defined in the Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Control Matrix (CSA CCM).

Download here: Microsoft Office 365 Mapping of Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Control Matrix 3.0.1

Review Official Blog post for more details: How to assess security, compliance and privacy capabilities in Office 365

Also access your Service Trust portal and review the published documents for better understanding of Microsoft Security with Office 365.

Yammer is coming...

Microsoft team recently made an announcement,that they are activating Yammer for every eligible Office 365 tenant both new and existing without requiring additional action on the part of admins.

Yammer is used by many Organizations and available as a part of Enterprise Licensing, this new announcement includes new way of accessing Yammer from Office 365 Services and also the new innovations included in Yammer are explained clearly under "Seamless availability in Office 365" section in the below Office Blogs post.

Read here: Get ready for Yammer!

Be sure to read the Blog post and FAQ section for more details, Also review the below Integration article to get ready for the change.

Review here: Yammer integration with Office 365

Stay tuned for more updates...

Rapid Deployment Guide for Azure Rights Management

Microsoft Azure Rights Management Services makes your Office 365 environment secure by providing IRM and Message Encryption capabilities, If your are preparing for Azure RMS adoption, then this below deployment guide is essential. You can learn more from Microsoft Virtual Academy course on Azure RMS.

Download here: Rapid Deployment Guide for Azure Rights Management

Review the Details section for more information.

Add-on bytes:

Get to know the comparison between Azure RMS with ADRMS here: Comparing Azure Rights Management and AD RMS

Microsoft FasTrack for SMBs

Microsoft team made a significant announcement this week by making Microsoft FasTrack available for SMBs and Enterprise customers with 50 to 149 seats, earlier this was set to 150 seats and above, this new announcement enlighten many SMBs, who are planning to move to Office 365. This move from Microsoft is essential to increase the adoption rate of Office 365 and provide quality service for all customers.

Office 365 provides rich set of features that meets today's business requirements and gives you ability to enhance your productivity, get you prepare for your future goals, on the other hand the service itself is getting enhanced rapidly with rich set of new additions that you can leverage and take your business experience to the next level.

Review the Official Announcement here: New offers make it easier for small and midsized businesses to move to Office 365

Additionally, Access the related post here: Office Blog: The Evolution of Microsoft FastTrack - The Customer Success Service

Microsoft Azure Stack is now here !

Microsoft's latest cloud innovation "Microsoft Azure Stack" is the hot topic today, Azure Stack is a new hybrid cloud platform product that enables organizations to deliver Azure services from their own datacenter in a way that is consistent with Azure.

Review here for more details: Microsoft Azure Stack

Access the webcast here to know more: Introducing Microsoft Azure Stack

Technical Preview documentation is available here: Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview documentation

Office Mechanics Video here: An early look at Azure Stack and what it means for IT, with Jeffrey Snover

Add-on Read : Microsoft Azure Stack TP1 Single Server POC Deployment Guide

Update:

Get to know the latest Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 and start your POC today

Update:

Microsoft has announced the launch of general availability of its Azure Stack during Microsoft Inspire event 2017.

Review this Blog post know more: Microsoft Azure Stack is ready to order now

Also read the latest blog post here: Azure Stack is an On-Prem Hybrid Cloud Extension of Azure

Access the Microsoft Inspire 2017 video sessions related to Azure Stack here: Inspire 2017 Windows Server And Hybrid Cloud Session Recordings

Update:

After the General Availability of  Azure Stack, Microsoft team announced a new job Role for Managing and Operating Azure Stack called Azure Stack Operator, This is the role who will manage the physical infrastructure of Azure Stack environments. Unlike Azure, where the operators of the cloud environment are Microsoft employees, in Azure Stack, organizations will need to have people with the right skills to run and operate their cloud environment

You can learn more about the Role here: Operating Azure Stack

Microsoft team already started to update Azure Learning and Career path with the inclusion of Azure Stack and working to enable Multiple learning resources for this new role.

• 5-day in-classroom training course – “Configuring and Operating a Hybrid Cloud with Microsoft Azure Stack”. This course is currently scheduled to be published in September 2017.

• Also plan to release a set of free online courses in the next few months:

• Azure Stack Fundamentals
• Azure Stack Planning, Deployment and Configuration
• Azure Stack Operations

Access here to know more: Why your team needs an Azure Stack Operator

More updates will be available during Microsoft Ignite 2017.

Update: 

Learn how to Integrate Azure Stack into your datacenter

Update:

Access Microsoft Ignite 2017 sessions related to Azure Stack now available on demand.

Access Microsoft Ignite 2018 Sessions related to Azure Stack now available on demand for the latest updates.

Update:

New blog series on Azure Stack IaaS is now available

Access the Part one blog post here: Azure Stack IaaS – part one

Stay tuned for more updates...

Azure IaaS technical decks

Want to know more on Microsoft Azure IaaS Offering, download the presentation decks that provide an introduction to Azure IaaS offerings.

The files included are

1. Overview of Azure IaaS offerings
2. A deep dive of azure IaaS offerings
3. intro To Azure Storage - A presentation providing an overview of Azure Storage services like Blob, table, queue storage, premium storage, File storage and other storage capabilities
4. Intro to Azure ExpressRoute - A presentation providing an overview of Azure Expressroute and its networking capabilities

Download here: Azure IaaS technical decks

Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics

To meet Information Security needs for today's Agile world, Every Organization should adapt new technologies that can safeguard their environment from the latest Cyber-Security attacks threats which is evolving along with the latest innovations. Earlier these threats used to occur only from External sources and now its not the case, even it can occur Internal to your Organization, which is quite shocking to most of us and also its hard to identify this with our traditional tools, we require to perform some strong analytics that can show these potential threats that are hidden over a period of time for our action to keep our environment secure. 

Technology enhancements in today's IT world has evolved beyond our traditional approach in the field of analytics and now we have strong Machine Learning capabilities built in to products that can monitor and deliver analytical reports through which we can easily determine our target and take appropriate course of action, this lays the foundation for proactive monitoring of various other threats and facilitates us to build one more layer of security.

Microsoft team is working hard to ensure that every Organization, who adopt their technology is secure whether they are in hosted On premises or in Cloud or a mixture of both in a Hybrid scenario Microsoft Advance Threat Analytics is one such essential Tool that makes this possible,

Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) provides a simple and fast way to understand what is happening within your network by identifying suspicious user and device activity with built-in intelligence and providing clear and relevant threat information on a simple attack timeline.


Review here : Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA)

Read the Data Sheet and take a quick preview of the Demo video to get to know about the product, you can take a trail and see how this works and decide your purchase.

Also, be sure to watch Microsoft Ignite Session on ATA to know more on this topic

View here: How to protect your corporate from advanced attacks – unveiling Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics

Update:

Access the new Microsoft Virtual Academy Course below to know more on ATP

Access here: Enterprise Mobility Suite: Beyond "Bring Your Own Device"

Update:

Access the Best Practices for Securing Advanced Threat Analytics guidance from Microsoft to understand, how you can protect ATA as a system and the pros & cons related to certain choices which must be made when deploying ATA.

Access here: Best Practices for Securing Advanced Threat Analytics

Update:

Microsoft team recently announced the public release of Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) v 1.7! This is a key release for ATA with several exciting features and improvements.

Access here to know more: Introducing Advanced Threat Analytics v 1.7!

Update:

New Office Mechanics video : Introducing Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics for your Datacenter

Update:

Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) v 1.8 is now available : What's new in ATA version 1.8

Microsoft team announced the general availability of Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) v1.8 : Introducing Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics v1.8!

Update: 

To safeguard your users from Ransonware attacks and other cybersecurity threats see how two products that are a part of the Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) suite – Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS) and Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) – can help to protect users both in the cloud and on-premises through robust detection systems.

View here: Ransomware detection with Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics and Cloud App Security

Stay tuned for more updates...

New capabilities of Exchange Online Protection and Advanced Threat Protection

Exchange Online Protection is getting enhanced to meet today's security needs at a rapid rate. Email threats are one of the pain points for any Organization, building a strong E-mail Security system is essential if you want your Organization users to be safe from a wide range of Cyber attacks occur everyday, that will target up to your Leadership team and create serious Information Security issue within your Organization.

Exchange Online Protection was available as a part of Office 365 and Standalone and most of the Organizations already transitioned to EOP and utilizing various key benefits from the service to keep their E-mail environment safe, though this is a great news at one instance, new type of threats started to arise everyday from every corner of the world and to address this, new proactive security enhancements are needed and Advanced Threat Protection is one of the key add-on for EOP.

You can use ATP as as an add-on service in your existing subscription and also its bundled with the latest E5 Subscription.

I am writing this post to refer you to the latest innovations added to EOP and ATP published recently.

Below are the key updates released,

• Dynamic Delivery of Safe Attachments
• Zero-hour Auto Purge
• Safety Tips in Outlook on the web
• Protection against insider spoofing
• Phish reporting
• Filtering common malicious attachment types

Watch the Office Mechanics Video to view these features in action.

Access the Office Blogs post to know more: Leading the way in the fight against dangerous email threats

Update: 

Access the new Office Blogs post on ATP : Stay secure with Advanced Threat Protection in Office 365

Update: 

Access New ATP updates here: Evolving Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection with URL Detonation and Dynamic Delivery

Update:

Access new updates here: Announcing the release of Threat Intelligence and Advanced Data Governance, plus significant updates to Advanced Threat Protection

Update:

Access the new Blog post here to see how ATP prevents Zero day attack : Zero-day threat protection with Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

Stay tuned for more updates...

Microsoft Cloud IT Architecture Resources

Microsoft Cloud IT Architecture resources are available and these architecture tools and posters give you information about Microsoft cloud services and platforms, including Office 365, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, private cloud datacenter, and hybrid on-premises and cloud solutions.

Below are the key resources available,

Microsoft’s Enterprise Cloud Roadmap

Microsoft Cloud for Enterprise Architects Series

You can access the Complete Resources here: Microsoft cloud IT architecture resources

IT decision makers and architects can use these resources to determine the ideal solutions for their workloads and to make decisions about core infrastructure components such as identity and security.

Stay Updated:

You can access Microsoft Cloud Platforms Roadmap to stay updated about latest happenings in Microsoft Cloud world here:  Cloud Platform Roadmap

Additionally access Cloud Platform News Bytes Blog for periodic updates

Update:

Office 365 Roadmap is Individually available and widely used and now it has been moved to Office 365 FastTrack website.

Access here: Office 365 Roadmap

Announcing Microsoft Envision!!!

New Year has just begun and Microsoft team is all set to make new innovations and changes starting this year and as one of the major significant change now Microsoft Envision a  new flagship event for business leaders and decision makers replaces Microsoft Convergence as the premier event for business leaders and Microsoft Dynamics technical content will move to Microsoft Ignite.

This change is officially announced this week and the event will take place April 4-6, 2016 in New Orleans, LA.

You can register here: https://www.microsoft.com/en/Envision

Access the below Official Microsoft Blog post for more details : Introducing Microsoft Envision, our new event for business leaders

Update:

Access the Microsoft Envision Conference Session Videos On demand here: Microsoft Envision