[m365weekly] #4: Do you really need M365 backup?

☁️What’s on my mind

Recently I had an interesting debate with my friend who is a freelance Microsoft 365 wizard and MVP. His largest client has 60k+ employees so I guess he knows his stuff.

When discussing Microsoft 365 backup solutions his words were: “One thing that really did well when I was implementing M365 solutions on the client-side was to look at what the big companies are doing.”

In his opinion, the best practices from the big MS365 tenants really matter when you are deciding on your own backup strategy. Big companies don’t back up their M365 tenants. They rely on the technology of the cloud and the logic of data retention policies configured within those clouds.

So you have to have a bit (or a lot) of knowledge and you have to know what you’re doing when completely skipping the backup. But if you’re not 100% sure you have a plethora of cheap, less cheap, and even free backup solutions to safely backup your data.

What are some of the names on the Market? Veeam, Code Two, Cloudally, Acronis, SkyKick, Datto, Synology (this last one is free if you are the owner of their NAS device).

Have a great day,
Matt

P.S.: What is your take on M365 backup? Do you think it’s necessary to have a backup of all data that you have in a cloud?


☁️Productivity & Modern Workplace

Make Outlook all-day appointments to stand out in Outlook. A little hack that makes all the difference.

Prevent attendees from unmuting in Teams Meetings. It can be a pain in the proverbial backside when people forget to mute themselves when joining calls in Teams. Or even worse … when someone like a spoiled kid tries to ruin your lecture and you can’t prevent them to unmute again. Microsoft is rolling out a new feature that will allow you to prevent users to unmute. You will not have the right to unmute them, of course, because that would be unethical, but you’ll have the right to prevent them to unmute and vice versa, you’ll have the right to allow them to unmute. Coming to theatres in October this year. 😉

Description 
Prevent attendees from unmuting in Teams 
Meetings 
Status 
In 
development 
Products 
Microsoft Teams 
Education 
General 
Availability 
Release 
October 
CY2020

Microsoft is offering free audio conferencing for 1 year. Nice and interesting promo for early adopters.

New offline presence status allows Microsoft Teams users to be invisible. Sometimes you just have to hide from your boss and colleagues. Now you can become invisible.

It all seems that a completely revamped Outlook is coming. Soon? Outlook will get an outlook refreshment. That’s the plan. And it will look and feel the same across all the devices you use. Which is cool. For now, it’s called One Outlook.

💻 Upcoming Webinars

October 13. – 15. Global Microsoft 365 Deloper Bootcamp. Signup it is free with lots of free hands-on training.

October 13. Digital Excellence & Digital Adoption: Microsoft 365 Best Practices.

October 13. PowerApps for kids online meetup. Enroll them (and yourself) and let them build their first PowerApp.

October 22. Power Platform Community Conference.

☁️Sysadmin Stuff

There is a way to share your Teams recordings with everyone. It needs a bit of work but it can be done.

Get notified when Microsoft 365 services are down. You can automate a few things and the notifications will make your sleep a lot less easy.

☁️Security & Data Governance

Microsoft adds consent phishing protection to Microsoft 365. Do-no-goods are always one step ahead and security professionals one step behind. At least they follow and implement new security features. Microsoft added some advanced phishing protection securing users from falling for consent phishing attacks.

Modern Device Management with Microsoft 365 Business Premium. A 6-part series.

Yes, you don’t need to be a pro programmer to make your own game using PowerApps.

💻 Noticed On Youtube

Working with external users in a compliant way. This guy is from Germany and he knows what he’s talking about. GDPR and other compliances are very serious topics in Europe. You can find hand-outs here.

Case study: how she used SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps, and Forms to build a speaker database. Watch to brainstorm some ideas on what to do with all the services that are included in your Microsoft 365 plans.

💻 Slightly Off-Topic

Microsoft is letting some employees work from home … for good. It seems that they have weighted all cons and pros and here we go. Is this the new COVID and post-COVID era reality? How do you think the world will change?

☁️On a Less Serious Note


☁️ Last but not least …

Here are a few things you can do if you enjoyed reading this newsletter: