[m365weekly] #21

☁️What’s on my mind

Last Thursday I took some time to check my Twitter feed as usual. But it was not a usual feed at all. Everybody was tweeting about something called Microsoft Viva. What was all that fuss about? Viva is a new “employee experience” platform launched into Microsoft 365 universe.

Will it have some considerable impact on users’ well-being? I’m not sure. In fact, I’m doubtful it will. Why? Because Microsoft was sugar-coating its purpose with typical corporate-speak and was trying to sell us some vague promises.

See for yourself. What can you make out of this (quote from MS site): “Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform, helping you create a work environment that puts people first, driving better business results.” What does that even mean?

What is your take on Viva? Press reply and send me a few words.

Have a nice week.
Matic Z.

💻 Productivity & Modern Workplace

Most notable resources of last week covering Microsoft Viva. I hope they will help you understand what Viva is all about and what can bring to your organization.

Understanding the Good and Bad of Teams Meeting Notes. Teams meeting notes are a form of the Teams wiki with much the strengths and weaknesses of the wiki. Good enough for small meetings but limited

Teams Enables More Granular Control Over Meeting Chat. New control over Teams meetings allows meeting organizers to choose if participants can chat before, after, during, or not at all.

Teams Spell Check Issue. Sometimes it happens that spell checker in Teams gets corrupted. Here’s a quick fix for this issue.

Where do I share my files (OneDrive, SharePoint, or Microsoft Teams)? Picking the right place to share documents can get you into dilemma. How do you know which product to use to share your content? Is sharing in Teams the same as sharing in SharePoint?

My Day Today — my Power App for your calendar, tasks, and Pomodoro timer. Interesting productivity oriented Power App you can download from Github and use it in your ogranization.

☁️Sysadmin Stuff

Microsoft 365 troubleshooting: Diagnostic tools at your fingertips. If it’s in the cloud it doesn’t mean it’s flawless. How to troubleshoot? Read on. (You will need a free account on the site to view the article.)

The most important tool in Microsoft 365 that you can adopt in 2021. Now when enterprise devices are scattered across the country due to working-from-home mode, managing devices is even more important than it was before Covid pandemic. The author of this article suggest that you should really consider learning about Microsoft Endpoint Manager (or Intune for small businesses).

Skype for Business Online retires in six months – what you need to know. In a nutshell: the only option is for you to switch to Microsoft Teams which is superior to Skype for Business Online in every possible way. For some organizations the migration will be (and is) very complex task. Find out why.

☁️Security & Data Governance

The new Microsoft Edge browser will warn you if your password has been leaked online. Good and helpfull feature which is already known to Chrome users. Another related feature is that Edge now includes also a password generator. Slowly but steadily Edge is becoming feature rich and worthy of consideration for my default browser.

💻 Upcoming Webinars

February, 24, 2021: Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance User Group meetup. Free online event.

February 27, 2021: Scottish summit. Free online event.

March 2-4, 2021: Microsoft Ignite 2021. Free online event.

Why do Microsoft 365 adoption projects fail? Writing a cliché like failing-to-prepare-is-preparing-to-fail would be very shallow. The reasons adoption fails are much more profound. The world is changing rapidly but we still want to do things in old ways … Excellent article.

☁️ Last but not least …

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