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Talking Teams with Rish Tandon
Microsoft Teams

Talking Teams with Rish Tandon

Tony Redmond sat down (virtually) with Rish Tandon, Corporate VP for Microsoft Teams Development, to discuss how Teams has evolved over the last few years. The conversation was wide-ranging and covered many topics, including the operationalization of Teams to create a service capable of running at massive scale, client performance, compliance, backups, people, the effect of Teams on other Microsoft 365 workloads, and more.

May 24, 2021
Prepopulating Outlook Contacts with the Graph API 55 Comments
Microsoft Graph

Prepopulating Outlook Contacts with the Graph API

When contacts are added to an organizations Global Address List (GAL), they do not always populate in the users personal device contacts depending on what app, device, etc. is being used. This becomes problematic when users working from outside the office are unable to contact the IT Service Desk, HR, or other internal services. To solve the problem, this article introduces a PowerShell script that will read a set of standard contacts from a CSV file and write them as personal contacts to user mailboxes. Mobile devices can then synchronize these contacts along with others created by the user.

May 20, 2021
Microsoft Extends Teams Retention Policies to All Licensed Office 365 Accounts

Microsoft Extends Teams Retention Policies to All Licensed Office 365 Accounts

Microsoft announced a bunch of changes for Microsoft 365 records management on May 19. The most interesting changes are allowing all licenses Office 365 accounts to use Teams retention policies and the advent of adaptive scopes for retention policies, both of which should be useful for many tenants. The announcement also covers multi-stage disposition reviews. If you know what that means, you'll be excited. If not, you won't.

May 20, 2021
Microsoft Updates Outlook to use Advanced Settings for Sensitivity Labels 24 Comments
Sensitivity Labels

Microsoft Updates Outlook to use Advanced Settings for Sensitivity Labels

Updates to Outlook clients (desktop, mobile, and OWA) respect the advanced settings in label policy which previously needed the deployment of the unified labeling client. Many organizations want to use mandatory labeling, but have been frustrated because of the lack of support in the Office applications. Now support is available, so it's time to label that email!

May 19, 2021
How Advanced eDiscovery Finds and Displays Microsoft Teams Conversations

How Advanced eDiscovery Finds and Displays Microsoft Teams Conversations

When it comes to eDiscovery and which solution is right for your organization, “you get what you pay for.” Microsoft 365 services are no different – you’re either willing to pay for them or you aren’t. Some organizations will not need or want to pay for Advanced eDiscovery, while others will find it an essential purchase. Regardless of which camp your organization resides in, Microsoft provides customers with the flexibility to choose between two eDiscovery tools best suited for your needs.

May 18, 2021
Modern Compliance for SharePoint Site and Information Architecture
SharePoint

Modern Compliance for SharePoint Site and Information Architecture

SharePoint site and information architecture has been around long enough to be an established practice and area of expertise in the SharePoint world. What’s new about it, however, is its elevated role in Microsoft 365 compliance. Architectural decisions made in a tenant can have lasting, follow-on effects which information architects need to be aware of. This post highlights some key points about how these decisions can affect managing compliance at scale by providing structure and governance to SharePoint.

May 17, 2021
Microsoft Updates Viva Insights App with Wellbeing Features

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 6 Comments

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