☁️What’s on my mind
I have delayed this issue of the newsletter on purpose. Why? So that I can be one of the first to publish the story about a new Microsoft service that should be available from 1 December, which is today.
Microsoft looked closely at their numbers and found that quite a lot of people are logging into Business Teams calls anonymously or with free personal accounts. And they looked at the competition and when they added up 1 and 1, they realized that there was a place in the market for a standalone service bundle. Zoom is probably not one of the most excited ones today.
Well, as of today, Microsoft is offering a Teams Essentials bundle that combines what many business users have wanted for quite some time. We should not neglect the fact that Microsoft is also forcibly discontinuing the Teams Exploratory program in December, which Microsoft released to the public as a kind of anti-corona measure, and which many companies have been using for free in the last year.
Have a great week.
Matic Z.
FEATURED STORY: MICROSOFT TEAMS ESSENTIALS
Microsoft is today launching a “new” service called Teams Essentials, aimed at those who don’t use other Microsoft 365 services. You won’t need to have existing services on Microsoft 365 to use it, but it will work with any email address. Yes, you will be able to use ANY email address.
As I have been informed, Teams Essential also contains a sort of mini Exchange Online package, which means that the calendar will also work. This is what users of the free version of Teams have missed the most.
You can see some of the other features of the new service in the table above.
💻 Productivity & Modern Workplace
6 Things You Need to Know About Microsoft Teams Connect (Shared Channels). With Teams Connect, a collaboration between companies is much easier than it used to be. See how businesses will be able to collaborate in the future.
How to Assign the Co-Organizer Role to Microsoft Teams Meetings. A very practical guide on how to designate someone as a co-organizer of a meeting.
Things are getting Meshy: What does Microsoft Mesh mean for the future of meetings. Would you like to leave your camera off for once because you don’t have your hair done before your first call in the morning? Soon you’ll be able to get up just 5 minutes before the call and send your animated avatar to the meeting. A nice podcast episode to listen to. (By the way … how many of us are wondering if such a future makes any sense at all?)
Installing and Using the Microsoft Lists Desktop App. Lists is a relatively new service within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, but it seems to have gained enough traction that Microsoft has made it available via a dedicated app.
How to organize content on a SharePoint page using collapsible sections. SharePoint is an excellent content management system and Microsoft is also rapidly developing it with additional capabilities. Content organization is important and one of the latest changes allows you to present your content in a more innovative way.
Microsoft Teams Meeting Guide – Q4 2021. A short but nicely done guide to Teams features that you can share with your less skilled colleagues. A free link to the PDF is in the article.
☁️Sysadmin Stuff
10 suggestions to improve your next PowerShell script. Tips and tricks for newbies and experienced users.
How to Work in Multiple Office 365 Tenants Using Browser Profiles. If you work with more than one tenant in Microsoft 365, you’ll be familiar with the painful problems that come from having a multitude of credentials that you need to do your work. How do you navigate between identities using different web browsers and profiles?
How to Create a DLP Policy to Stop External Sharing of Teams Meeting Recordings. Teams meeting recordings can contain a lot of confidential information. It’s a quick and easy task to create a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy to stop people from sharing these files externally,
Checking Microsoft 365 Email Forwarding using PowerShell. One of the first actions intruders take when compromising a user’s account is to set up email forwarding. It is good security practice to regularly check if any unexpected forwarding has occurred in your organization. Powershell can greatly help with this.
How to enable Teams business users to chat with Teams personal accounts? Personal Teams accounts have always been a nightmare for system administrators. Well, now users in your organization can chat with users of personal accounts.
☁️Security & Data Governance
Improve MFA Effectiveness in Your Microsoft 365 Tenant in 30 Minutes. Two new exciting security features will make your business safer. Turn them on.
Microsoft Failed to Correctly Fix a Zero-Day and Now Every Version of Windows Is at Risk: Report. One of the things you have to pay attention to so that there are no unnecessary surprises.
Practical Steps to Defend Cloud Infrastructures from On-Premises Infection. Organizations moving to the cloud from on-premise infrastructures should pay attention to security weaknesses that could be introduced from on-premise accounts.
What is Microsoft Information Protection and How Does it Work? Microsoft has a fairly comprehensive set of services for securing organizations and governing their data. Even analyst firms acknowledge that it is the market leader in this area. To find out more about one of the more important services in the Microsoft ecosystem, read on.
☁️Noteworthy (long)reads
Microsoft is integrating Office more deeply with its Edge browse. To be honest, I have never liked or used Microst’s web browsers. But given the Edge browser’s Chromium codebase, I may soon change my mind. Edge is actually becoming very useful, especially for those of us who work with Microsoft 365 in one way or another.
😂 On a Less Serious Note
☁️ Last but not least …
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