[m365weekly] #48

☁️What’s on my mind

Last week I made a typo. I published #47 but in fact, the subject line had #37 in it. I hope I didn’t confuse you or your email rules.

At least some positive thing that comes with covid is that Microsoft global events are virtual and, for now, free. Microsoft Ignite will be happening later in November and you can register here.

Have a great week.
Matic Z.

FEATURED STORY: BREAKOUT ROOMS IN TEAMS

A few days ago, I attended a virtual international conference. What pleasantly surprised me was the fact that the organizers had very nicely arranged for the live translation of the speakers in 10 languages. Yes, I know, Teams cannot do that. Anyway, the conference took place in Zoom.

I don’t follow the development of Zoom closely, but I think that the basis of the translation channels is the breakout rooms technology, which was first introduced by Zoom and later adopted by Microsoft Teams.

But it is also true that breakout rooms in Teams are getting better and better. I still miss that participants could choose their own breakout room. This option would also give a big boost to conference organizers with multiple lecture tracks.

Now in public preview: Pre-meeting room creation and participant assignment in breakout rooms. Community review of new things coming to breakout rooms.

Use breakout rooms in Teams meetings. Official Microsoft Teams breakout rooms documentation.

💻 Productivity & Modern Workplace

How to display the currently playing Spotify track as your Teams status message. Who would want to do that? Probably nobody as it is practically useless. But on the other hand, you can learn a lot about Power Automate. I suggest you try.

How to use Presenter Mode in Microsoft Teams. Have you noticed new presenter modes? Great video!

Why Teams Shows a P at the Upper Right of the User Photo. What’s that P on my Teams profile picture? Not everyone has it and it was making me nervous, so I had to find some explanation.

Microsoft Teams will soon allow supervisors to delete others’ messages. Not everything is suitable to stay “on record”. Somebody shared NSFW things and you will have the means to redact that out.

Camera on / camera off: Engagement and psychological safety within internal comms. Do you turn on cam when in a virtual meeting? Is “camera on” the default policy at your work? I prefer turning it off.

Co-authoring on Microsoft Information Protection encrypted documents is now generally available. Not much to add. Good news for those who use Information Protections in Microsoft 365.

Outlook Web App OWA Instead Of Outlook Desktop App 4 Months Experience. Months long experiment of using a browser and Outlook Web App instead of Outlook desktop application. How did it turn out?


☁️Sysadmin Stuff

Basic Authentication for All Exchange Online Tenants Stops in October 2022. After months of postponing the end date, Microsoft finally set the cut-off date to October 2022. Yup, you read it right, 1 more year to prepare.

Setting staff calendar sharing internally, at scale. Utilize Power Automate to achieve this. Not everybody will be pleased, probably.

Multi-tenant management for Microsoft 365, and other things. Managing the plethora of tenants is a potentially dangerous task. I remember adding around 500 Microsoft 365 academic licenses to my own tenant by mistake because I was not using incognito/private mode in the browser. I did it from then on. What tools you can use to manage multiple tenants?


☁️Security & Data Governance

Cloud PC Monthly Patching Process Using Intune. Patching Windows 365 the right way.

Global Admin and access to all mailboxes. Hmmm, is there a legit reason why would anyone want such access? Sysadmins are sometimes faced with an order of a C-level boss to make this happen. Interesting Reddit thread on this subject.

How To Setup Passwordless Login For Microsoft Accounts. I live for the day when no one will need a password again. The future begins today with passwordless login for personal Microsoft accounts.


😂 On a Less Serious Note


☁️ Last but not least …

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