[m365weekly] #5: Users build Power Apps, not admins.

☁️What’s on my mind

I have a friend who’s working in a financial department in one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Years ago, she was quite baffled with their IT helpdesk.

She said: “Matt, I’m really really disappointed with our IT guys.“

Trying to be a shoulder to cry on, I asked her: “What seems to be the problem?“

“They know nothing about IT!!!” she explained her pain.

I was quick to reply and was prepared to stand on the defense lines for my colleagues:
“Come on, I seriously doubt that. What happened?“

“I asked them if they could help me with a formula in Excel, and they didn’t know what to do either.“

“Listen, Lucy, you’re aware that I’m sysadmin too, aren’t you? I know how to install Excel, do some basic stuff in there like summing up cells, some basic conditional formatting, etc. But when it comes to your advanced financial formulas and how they work, I am just as ignorant as your colleagues.“

She looks at me with her beautiful wide-open eyes and asks me in disbelief:
“But … what do you work with from 9 to 5, then?” as if Excel was the only tool that exists in the world of IT. 🙂

I remember this story whenever I meet users that have built their own PowerBI reports or even Power Apps for specific tasks. It is good to have in mind that many times the users that have problems most probably know how to solve them, too. Now they have tools to build their own software on-the-go.

I think we are only at the beginning of the era of no- or low-code solutions that will allow end-users in offices to build their own apps and their own fully automatized procedures for their daily tasks.

The fact is that PowerBi and Power Apps combined with Power Automate service is a very potent combination. Productivity on steroids, so to speak. Who needs sysadmins anymore?

Would you agree? Send me your thoughts simply by replying to this newsletter. I reply to all emails. Really.

Have a great day,
Matt

P.S.: If you find this newsletter useful or helpful you are kindly invited to buy me a coffee and support the effort. Thanks.

☁️Productivity & Modern Workplace

40 Microsoft Teams tips and tricks: from novice to expert. This is a must-read.

New Teams Meeting experience is a tenant setting, not an application setting. To clarify: if you work on different tenants you have to set “new experience” for each tenant when logging in.

And another Teams news. Launch of breakout rooms was postponed into November. No link or comment needed. 🙁

Get more done with Outlook on the web. Outlook Web App now integrates with more and more of other M365 services. You can answer to a Teams thread from Outlook Web App (OWA). And that is among other things like intelligent attachment suggestions and text predictions. Another article covering the mobile Outlook web experience.

How different mobile devices work with Office 365 – comparison. Did you know there’s no OneNote support for BlackBerry and Nokia Symbian? Probably not because you’re using Android or iPhone. 🙂 Detailed comparison of what Microsoft 365 services and tasks are supported on different mobile devices.

💻 Upcoming Webinars

October 22, 2020 – Power Platform Community Conference.

October 29, 2020 – CIAOPS need to know webinar. They promise they will challenge your way of thinking about collaboration.

October 29, 2020 – Petri.com: On tenant migrations. Mergers, auisitions, divestures all most likely result in some kind of tenant migrations.

☁️Sysadmin Stuff

OneDrive for Business retention: Questions from the Field. Retention policies can be quite hard to understand and it’s normal that questions arise. Three scenarios explained.

Like living on the bleeding edge? Join Microsoft Insider program and be among the first to explore new Microsoft 365 features. A word of caution: don’t try this in a production environment.

A “post mortem” of last Microsoft 365 outages.

How to limit OneDrive Upload Bandwith. In few clicks.

☁️Security & Data Governance

How to set up passwordless login. Passwords are so 20th century. They are the second weakest link in the chain of security measures. The first is, of course, a human. If passwords are easy to remember that means they are weak and if they are strong and complex they are hard to manage. Can we go without them? Yes, of course. And it’s safe, too.

Managing Third-Party App Permissions in the Teams Admin Center. 3rd party apps are constantly added to Teams and that brings a security concerns. The article is a brief overview of your options when managing 3rd party permissions.

Trickbot disrupted. Microsoft did a great job fighting the bad guys. It’s nice to see Microsoft’s security technology at work.

What’s happening with employees’ wellbeing 6 months into the pandemic. Microsoft’s study. They have all the data to make a good analysis. Findings in short: more burnout, fewer boundaries.

Microsoft 365 Groups are confusing. No sh** 🙂 . Okay, this article explains M365 Groups in detail. Author did really great job.

Please don’t “hello” me! Why HELLO in Teams is not polite. Questioning our usual practices when interacting with others online. A must read.

💻 Podcasts

Microsoft Cloud Show. If you’re into listening podcasts this one is a gold mine. In this episode they about recent outage when Outlook was down for hours.

☁️On a Less Serious Note

Not far from truth.
Click on a picture – it’s a link to Twitter video.

☁️ Last but not least …

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