Author: Tony Redmond

Latest Articles

Microsoft Relaunches Teams Pro Service Plan to Office 365 and Microsoft 365 Tenants 12 Comments
Microsoft Relaunches Teams Pro Service Plan to Office 365 and Microsoft 365 Tenants

Microsoft Relaunches Teams Pro Service Plan to Office 365 and Microsoft 365 Tenants

Microsoft has clarified that the Teams Pro service plan is being added to Office 365 enterprise and Microsoft 365 business standard and premium licenses. Tenant admins don't have to do anything to add the new service plan as Microsoft will do this for them. Teams Pro adds the ability to differentiate product features across different types of user licenses. Teams Pro does not replace the Teams Advanced Communications add-on, but it needs an overhaul too.

April 6, 2021
Using Viva Topics to Highlight Knowledge in Microsoft 365 Apps 4 Comments

Using Viva Topics to Highlight Knowledge in Microsoft 365 Apps

In the second part of a two-part series, after going through the work to generate Viva Topics, it's time to expose the topic cards to apps. In this article, we explore how apps use topic cards, including the Office online apps and Microsoft 365 apps for enterprise. We also consider the experience of users within a tenant who don't have a license for Viva Topics. Finally, we ask the big question if Viva Topics is worth the $5/month fee per user asked for by Microsoft.

April 1, 2021
Building a Knowledge Network with Viva Topics

Building a Knowledge Network with Viva Topics

Viva Topics is the foundation of Microsoft's knowledge network. Substantial effort is needed to build the set of topics found in SharePoint Online content before apps can surface topic cards to users. This article is the first of a two-part series. In it, we chronicle the process of how the AI used by Viva Topics suggests topics and how knowledge managers refine and publish the topics to make them available to end users.

March 31, 2021
SharePoint Hits 20: Memories and Reflections

SharePoint Hits 20: Memories and Reflections

Twenty years after the release of SharePoint Portal Server 2001, SharePoint now powers document management in Microsoft 365. The event will be commemorated at a 20th anniversary SharePoint Saturday on March 27, 2021. All are welcome to celebrate this notable achievement for a fine product and a great user community.

March 26, 2021
Microsoft Delivers Live Transcription with Speaker Attribution for Teams (Finally) One comment

Microsoft Delivers Live Transcription with Speaker Attribution for Teams (Finally)

Teams offers meeting organizers the ability to create an automatic transcript of conversations in meetings. For now, the feature is limited to the Teams desktop client and only for US English. The AI-based processing works well if people speak clearly and have good microphones, but even if a few bloopers exist in a transcript, it can be downloaded and fixed up in Word to create a permanent record. Overall, this is a very interesting and worthwhile feature to add to Teams meetings.

March 24, 2021
How to Define Custom Sensitive Information Types for Use in DLP Policies 23 Comments

How to Define Custom Sensitive Information Types for Use in DLP Policies

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a feature of Office 365 E3 and E5 plans. Most DLP policies focus on matching sensitive information types created by Microsoft, like credit card numbers, but it is relatively easy to create a custom sensitive information type for use in DLP policies to detect information specific to your organization. In this example, we create a sensitive information type for Azure AD passwords and explore its use in Teams DLP policies.

March 15, 2021
Attack on Exchange Servers Gives Impetus to Move Email to the Cloud 31 Comments

Attack on Exchange Servers Gives Impetus to Move Email to the Cloud

The Hafnium attack on thousands of on-premises Exchange servers is a wake-up call for their administrators and the organizations using the email service. Ten years ago, it was a reasonable decision to stay on-premises. Five years ago, you could argue the same case and companies with bad network connectivity to the internet or specific security requirements were happy to stay on-premises. Now? In a world of increasing threat, staying on-premises looks a lot more risky. For most, it's time to move to the cloud.

March 8, 2021
Microsoft Walks Away from UserVoice 10 Comments

Microsoft Walks Away from UserVoice

Microsoft is closing down the UserVoice sites created to allow customers submit ideas and feedback about products. Some sites are already closed and others will close in the near future. There's no news about what the replacement platform will be or if Microsoft will be able to migrate existing content from UserVoice.

March 5, 2021
How to Co-author Office Documents Protected by Sensitivity Labels 24 Comments

How to Co-author Office Documents Protected by Sensitivity Labels

Microsoft has released a preview of co-authoring for protected (encrypted) Office documents using the desktop apps. While it might seem straightforward to enable co-authoring (and the online apps have been able to do this for over a year), making it work for the Office desktop apps requires a complex mix of Office, SharePoint Online, the OneDrive sync client, and sensitivity labels. Once everything lines up, it works beautifully, even if you can't take a screenshot to prove that it works.

March 4, 2021