After a false start in 2020, Microsoft is coming back with version 2 of the Teams Advanced Communications add-on. The documentation lists four new capabilities. You'll have to make your mind up whether these features are worth whatever Microsoft asks for in terms of add-on pricing. We probably won't have that information until the preview phase of the features terminates at the end of 2021. I can't wait!
In the show this week - Microsoft price increases, Ignite is back later this year, we bid IE11 farewell, cover the latest Teams new features and - discuss Exchange vulnerabilities you need to patch and protect yourself against.
After a decade of no price increases for Office 365 licenses, Microsoft plans to introduce new pricing effective March 1, 2022. The uplifts range from $3 to $4 extra per user per month. This doesn't sound much, but an extra $36 per user per year for Office 365 E3 quickly mounts up. And when you look at the overall installed base, some eyewatering numbers are involved. While we might complain about increases, I still think Office 365 and Microsoft 365 are reasonable value.
From August 17, 2021, Microsoft 365 apps no longer support IE11 (the Teams browser client dropped support last year). IE11 fans need to move to a new browser. Microsoft would prefer if you choose the Edge browser, but anything but IE11 should do a better job in the future.
Microsoft has recently made major strides to improve the capability and resiliency of multi-factor authentication in Azure AD; however, this article highlights the four practical ways in which you can take advantage of MFA in your Microsoft 365 estate, and just turn the darn thing on already!
TEC 2021, The Experts Conference, takes place as a virtual event on September 1-2. In this article, Tony selects his favorite sessions from the event agenda. This isn't to say that the other sessions are no good. Everyone's got their own favorite topics and there are many other TEC 2021 sessions covering other topics which will make others very happy.
Microsoft insists that encrypted SharePoint and OneDrive for Business files found by eDiscovery searches can only be decrypted by Advanced eDiscovery, which requires Office 365 E5 licenses. This seems unfair, especially as Office 365 E3 tenants can create and use sensitivity labels to protect Office documents stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. An example of not very joined up thinking when it comes to software licensing?
There are many ways in which you can improve the security of your Exchange Online environment. In this article, Sean McAvinue details the most important steps that admins can immediately implement to align Exchange Online tenants with a good security baseline and posture.
The recent 10th anniversary of the launch of Office 365 brought some questions about the demarcation between Office 365 and Microsoft 365. For instance, do I have an Office 365 tenant or is it a Microsoft 365 tenant? Is a feature part of Microsoft 365 or does it belong to Office 365? And why does Microsoft insist on calling its desktop Office apps Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise? Welcome to the bizarre world of branding, and that’s before throwing Windows 365 into the mix.
In this week's Practical 365 podcast, Steve and Paul get down into the detail of Windows 365 - will it be a hit or a miss? And we discuss the new version of SharePoint Server that is arriving - plus we talk through the licensing for Viva. Is it worth it?
The Office 365 Service Communications API allows tenant access to service update message data, just like you see in the Microsoft 365 admin center. This article explores how to use the API to fetch service messages and report them in different formats, including HTML and even as a Word document.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (Previously Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection) is a suite of tools/policies that provides powerful protection for your Office 365 environment. This article explores the various tools available at the different licensing levels and shows how Preset Policies and Configuration Analyzer can help you quickly align with the guidance provided, allowing you to focus on the settings that matter the most in your environment.
