[m365weekly] #16

☁️What’s on my mind

Happy New Year and all best in 2021! Thank you for your continued support.

You’re reading M365 weekly #16 and I’m determined to continue bringing you a curated selection of the best links I discover every week.

What do you think will mark this year the most in Microsoft 365 universe? Drop me a line or two of your thinking.

I’m betting on the continued fast-paced development of the Teams workspace. Another thing we could all benefit from is Microsoft’s announcement that they are developing their own ARM processor for servers. I’m sure that will give another boost to M365 in the next few years. Let not forget … the cloud is just someone else’s server.

Have a nice week.
Matic Z.

💻 Productivity & Modern Workplace

Real-World Examples of Power Automate. Here you have it. Examples used in practice.

How to create a calendar in Microsoft 365. How-to article with good screenshots.

How to schedule an email in Microsoft 365. You can do it in Outlook or Outlook Web App. And you can “un-send” the message. Nice to know for the cases where you’re fingers are ahead of your head.

Using YouTube with Microsoft Flow. Not a fresh article but worth trying to play around.

Now Available: Improved Embed Video Experience & Webcam-only Recording. With this new feature in Microsoft Stream you can record webcam-only videos.

Microsoft extends temporary limit increases for Team live events until June 2021.

☁️Sysadmin Stuff

Dataverse is not a database. Dataverse is a new name for Common Data Service (CDS). It can be used for simple structured data storage for use in Power Apps. But it’s not MS SQL instance. It’s much more.

Learn how to exclude files and extensions from syncing to OneDrive. Not everything needs to be synced to OneDrive. Learn how to make some order.

Move Fast: How to Perform Microsoft 365 Migration Remotely With SkyKick. I did my share of manual or semi-automatic migrations in the past (anywhere from a few users to up to 50 users). Considering all the possible pains and hiccups during such migrations I have to say it was not worth it. Now I use one of the specialized services that do migrations in a breeze. It’s easy and it’s cheap but, like any M365 migration, it’s time-consuming. SkyKick was one of the first migration services and is still among the best.

Conditional Access demystified: My recommended default set of policies. Great in-depth technical article from covering “A to Z” of Conditional Access. Why use it and how to configure it properly.

☁️Security & Data Governance

Microsoft Illustrates the Breadth and Depth of the SolardWinds hack. This hack will go into history as the most largest and most eye-opening up to date.

The New Microsoft Office 365 Security Checklist & Guide Part 1. A short document you can use as a checklist when configuring Microsft 365 tenants.

No Way To Stop Gathering Data Used by Productivity Score. Productivity Score data gathering cannot be stopped. We’ll have to live with it. But is it so bad?

Find bad guy’s inside your company with Microsoft 365 Insider Risk Management. Microsoft 365 E5 has this feature already available. If your on other plans you can buy add-in. Minimize whistleblower and other insider threat risks.

💻 Upcoming Webinars

January 13, 2021. Microsoft 365 UK User Group (M365UK). Community meetup.

January 14, 2021. We’re moving to Microsoft 365, now what? Meetup.

💻 Slightly Off-Topic

Virtual Conferences Are Broken. Let’s Fix Them. Let’s make them a little bit more tolerable.

Microsoft is designing its own ARM chips for datacenter servers. I’m not sure everybody can grasp the significance of this news. This is huge! Even for users of personal computers. What will run the notebooks in 5 years? I bet my computer in 5 years will have an ARM processor in it.

A Brief History of Collaboration and Governance.

☁️On a Less Serious Note

Cloud computing meme.

☁️ Last but not least …

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