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Microsoft Updates Viva Insights App with Wellbeing Features

A new version of the Microsoft Viva Insights app for Teams includes some of the promised wellbeing functionality designed to help stressed users get through the work day more easily. You can praise co-workers, learn to breathe and relax, note your current state of wellness, and take a virtual commute to wrap up the working day. Some people will love the app, others will wonder what the fuss is all about. It's a very personal thing, which I guess is the nature of Viva Insights.

May 14, 2021
New-DistributionGroup: A PowerShell Cmdlet Which Gets No Respect 9 Comments
Powershell New-DistributionGroup

New-DistributionGroup: A PowerShell Cmdlet Which Gets No Respect

The New-DistributionGroup cmdlet has been in Exchange since 2006. It creates a new distribution list that is easily populated with a few commands. Although Microsoft might like everyone to use the new-fangled Microsoft 365 Groups, the fact remains that distribution lists are very useful. So much so that many millions are still in active use. In this article, we explore how to create new standard and dynamic distribution lists with PowerShell.

May 12, 2021

Achieving Passwordless Authentication in Azure AD

In the second iteration of a two-part series about FIDO2 and passwordless authentication, we walk you through how to facilitate your passwordless deployment for Azure AD identities. Once passwordless authentication is achieved, users can authenticate up to 3x faster and helpdesks should receive fewer requests for password resets, saving your organization time and money.

May 11, 2021
Three Ways to Improve Meetings in Teams (Which You Can’t Have) And One Which Might Maybe Help a Little (Which You Can) 2 Comments
Microsoft Teams Rooms

Three Ways to Improve Meetings in Teams (Which You Can’t Have) And One Which Might Maybe Help a Little (Which You Can)

Having Teams meeting fatigue? Could the meeting have been an email instead? In his latest blog Paul Robichaux explores some tongue-in-cheek options for better regulation of Teams meetings, while also proposing a realistic solution to efficiently manage your time, your Teams meetings, and your sanity.

May 10, 2021

Microsoft’s Plan to Create EU Data Boundary for Cloud Services by the End of 2022

Microsoft posted details of its EU Data Boundary plan on May 6 to cover the storage and processing of personal and commercial data used by Microsoft cloud services. The plan is due to be achieved by the end of 2022 and Microsoft says that they have considered the engineering and technical challenges. A quick look at a European Office 365 tenant reveals that many services run in the U.S., so there's lots of work to do.

May 6, 2021
How to Use PowerShell to Remove OneDrive Files Found by a Content Search One comment
How to Use PowerShell to Remove OneDrive Files Found by a Content Search

How to Use PowerShell to Remove OneDrive Files Found by a Content Search

Ever wondered how to perform selective deletion of OneDrive documents found in Content Searches? While you can remove email using a content search action, Office 365 doesn’t include a method to cleanup OneDrive documents found by content searches. This article demonstrates how to use PowerShell to view the set of files, and then select files to remove.

May 5, 2021

How to Monitor Changes to Sensitivity Labels Used for Container Management

Sensitivity labels are an effective way to manage containers like Teams, Microsoft 365 Groups, and SharePoint sites. Microsoft doesn't provide any way to track changes made to labels assigned to containers, which means that a group owner can downgrade the policy assigned through a label. This article explains a method to detect when label changes occur for containers and how to revert those changes if necessary.

May 4, 2021

The Practical 365 Update: S2, Ep 17 – Microsoft 365 news plus Microsoft chat about Office Apps Admin & Mike Weaver joins to talk tenant migrations

In a bumper episode with the most important Microsoft 365 news we're joined by not one, but two guests - Amesh Mansukhani, Office Deployment Insiders lead at Microsoft - who is talking about the way Microsoft are integrating and improving capabilities for managing Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (or Office), and Practical 365's Mike Weaver to chat about the latest and greatest in tenant migrations - and gives some advice on what to and what not to do.

April 30, 2021

Microsoft Replaces Office Graph Controls with Microsoft Graph Privacy Controls

The Office Graph powers Microsoft 365 applications like Delve. Six years after Delve's introduction, its privacy controls are being replaced by Microsoft Graph tenant settings from May 15, 2021. The changeover is important if your Office 365 tenant includes some people who have excluded themselves from document insights. You should take action to replace the old Office Delve controls with the Microsoft Graph privacy controls.

April 28, 2021