Microsoft 365 Business Premium customers will benefit from the provision of Azure Active Directory P1 Premium licenses. All good, but what about the Office 365 E3 tenants who pay the same monthly fee? Many enterprise tenants could use the features licensed by Azure Active Directory Premium P1, but they’ll have to pay $6/user/month to get the same benefit.
Teams allows you to use a set of images selected by Microsoft as the background for meetings. It’s a nice feature, even if it lacks the ability to upload and use a custom image of your own. This capability was promised, but it looks as if Microsoft knows they need to some work on admin framework before they allow people to upload their own images.
Covid-19 dealt a blow to Microsoft’s plans to remove basic authentication from 5 connection protocols for Exchange Online and forced them to postpone the removal from October 13, 2020 to sometime in the second quarter of 2021. The news is disappointing because basic authentication is a weakness exploited by many hackers. But you can’t plan for a pandemic and Office 365 tenants need more time to be ready for the deprecation.
In a moment of levity to lift the current situation, we discuss the wide range of themes offered by Office 365 to users. People can choose from 49 different themes to customize the online apps. You can go crazy with something like Super Sparkle Happy, display your love of cats, or choose a simple color. Once chosen, you should see the same theme across all the Office online apps. Except Teams, which does its own thing.
Despite many hints that Teams will soon be able to use custom backgrounds in meetings, Microsoft hasn’t shipped the feature yet. Some users are trying out software like Snap Camera, and the experience is highlighting some issues that companies might face if employees use custom filters without guidance.
We’re going to tape an episode of the Office 365 Exposed podcast at 20:00 UTC on April 2 and everyone can join the Teams meeting we’re using to tape the podcast. There’s lots to talk about, including Microsoft’s decision to make Ignite 2019 virtual.
The April 2020 update for the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook is now available. Subscribers can download the updated files from Gumroad.com (EPUB/PDF) or Amazon (Kindle). 17 of the 24 content chapters are changed in this update.
Teams makes it easy to schedule meetings for people to attend online. You can create meetings with Outlook or the Teams calendar app. Notifications go to those invited, but you can’t really invite a channel from a team. If you add a channel to a meeting, that’s where the online gathering takes place. So who gets notified then?
The swelling interest in Teams has driven interest in online meetings. The recording generated from Teams meetings end up in Stream, but how much storage is consumed by these recordings? Stream will tell you an overall figure, but you won’t know how much storage is consumed by individual videos or who’s taking up all the space.
Microsoft Forms is a great way to build questionaires and other forms for Office 365 (and other) users to answer. Now you can insert media into questions by adding images or videos. When used effectively, the media delivers additional information to help respondents understand the full context of questions before they answer.