Author Archives: Tony Redmond

Teams Introduces Tagging for Targeted Communications

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Managing the tags assigned to team members
Managing the tags assigned to team members

Teams is all about communication, but now you can have “targeted communications,” which is a long-winded way to describe tags. A tag is a shortcut method to address a set of team members. You can have default tags defined at the organization level or use tags specific to individual teams. Either way, tags are a useful way to identify the specific people you want to address in a conversation.

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Microsoft Imposes Restrictions on Office 365 Services to Ease Demand

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Office 365 Service Advisories
Office 365 Service Advisories

Microsoft has imposed further restrictions on some Office 365 services to release CPU cycles and other resources to allow end users to work. The major impact is felt by SharePoint Online, OneNote, and Stream, and consequently by Teams because it uses all of the above. We can expect restrictions to last until Microsoft manages to deploy additional resources in its Office 365 datacenters.

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Using Office 365 Sensitivity Labels with Teams, Groups, and Sites

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The assigned Sensitivity Label controls group settings
The assigned Sensitivity Label controls group settings

Office 365 Sensitivity Labels can now be applied to “containers” – Teams, Office 365 Groups, and SharePoint sites. Sensitivity labels replace the old text-only classifications that have been available since 2016. The labels don’t affect the contents of the containers, but they can control some container settings, like whether a team allows guest access or if it’s open to any tenant user to join. It’s yet another development in the label and protection story for Office 365.

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Office 365 Suffers Temporary Scaling Problems

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A growth in demand for Office 365 services caused some issues for users of Teams, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. The growth in Teams demand is understandable in light of the upswing in home working and online education caused by the COVID-19 virus. We’ll all have to be a little patient as Microsoft makes adjustments to keep services running.

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CVE-2020-0688 Puts Focus on Exchange On-Premises Vulnerabilities

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The revelations that Exchange Server has had a vulnerability in the Exchange Control Panel since Exchange 2010 shocked some. Microsoft has patched CVE-2020-0688, but the problem gives on-premises administrators something to think about as they look to the long-term future of their email service. Staying on-premises is an option, but going to the cloud might be more secure.

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SharePoint Online Embraces Office 365 Sensitivity Labels

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Working with a protected document using Word Online
Working with a protected document using Word Online

SharePoint Online is embracing Office 365 Sensitivity Labels to allow protected documents to be processed by indexing and available to content searches. The Office Online apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) also support the application of sensitivity labels. The only disappointment is that the SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business browser interfaces don’t allow labels to be applied to documents.

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On-Premises Exchange Not Going Away Just Yet

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A Microsoft employee commented that Exchange 2019 is the last on-premises version and will bring the era of Exchange to a close after 25 or so years. Perhaps that’s the case, and certainly there’s been a huge transition of email workload to Exchange Online. But is an opinion expressed by a single Microsoft employee enough to tell us what will happen over the next few years?

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Economic Impact Study Says Outlook Mobile is Good. How Surprising!

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Outlook Mobile
Outlook Mobile

A Forrester Research study sponsored by Microsoft concludes that the deployment of Outlook Mobile brings big benefits for organizations. Given the funding source, that outcome is hardly surprising. But like with all similar reports, the important thing is to view the findings through the lens of your organization to understand the good points and discard the marketing messages. In a nutshell, all your need to understand is that Outlook mobile is the best mobile email client for Exchange Online.

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Looking into the Future With the Fluid Framework Preview

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Working with a fluid document
Working with a fluid document

Microsoft has made a preview of the Fluid Foundation available for Office 365 users to try out. The preview demonstrates how components can work together to share information quickly. It is very focused on SharePoint Online at present, but Microsoft plans to make intelligent fluid components available in Teams, OWA, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Office apps. The preview raises some questions, but that’s the nature of the beast.

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Understanding SharePoint Online Versioning

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AutoSave features in Word
AutoSave features in Word

SharePoint Online document libraries keep 500 versions of files by default. The minimum recommended by Microsoft is 100. But why are so many versions kept? The reason is that it leads to better recoverability and underpins features like AutoSave and co-authoring. You might be tempted to reduce the number of versions, but why? I can’t come up with a good answer.

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