[m365weekly] #97

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Issue #97

☁️What’s on my mind

It’s now more than a month since the new Microsoft Cloud Partner Program came into effect. Are you a Microsoft partner who has managed to meet the metrics for Solutions Partner designations?

Would you be willing to jump on a quick call and share with me some of your observations and experiences?

Just reply to this mail and I’ll send you a meeting request. I would really appreciate it.

Have a really great day.
Matic Z.

[FEATURED STORY] Just-in-case way into Microsoft 365 tenant

I first heard the term break glass account this year without realizing that I had used a similar principle in the past when maintaining on-premises systems.

It is important to have some kind of self-resort mechanism in place that allows you to access the tenant even if Microsoft’s MFA fails or if, by chance, all global admins are unreachable.

This of course necessarily means that such a user will not be part of multi-factor authentication or conditional access policies. This is why it is important to follow good practices when creating such an account.

Break Glass Account, Your Office 365 Login Guide During Emergency Situations. The Guys at AdminDroid did great work detailing how to approach the creation of break-glass accounts.

Want to grab the attention of exceptional talents for your job opening?

All you need to do is to fill out the form and follow the instructions. I’ll publish your job posting in the next issue.

☁️Productivity & Modern Workplace

How to make Microsoft Teams files always open in the desktop app. I had no idea that opening files in online editors every single time, made me so nervous. Now life is much easier. Files now open in my desktop apps.

Microsoft Education. This is a must-see Youtube channel for all teachers and educators using Microsoft technologies at work.

Use Outlook Reactions to Respond to Emails. All versions of Outlook available in Office 365 can use Outlook reactions to respond to emails instead of sending traditional message replies. Now let’s wait and see how will users adopt this.

How to share Forms into Teams and Outlook with a few clicks. A nice new feature in Forms allows you to share your forms and quizzes among your users.


☁️Sysadmin Stuff

Top Ten PowerShell tips for Microsoft 365 Management: Part One. PowerShell tips to help Microsoft 365 administrators automate daily management tasks.

Inbuilt Reports on Azure MFA Registration and Reset Events. Check out the newly released reports on MFA Registration Details & Reset Events to ensure compliance in the organization.

Four Ways to Send Email – PowerShell and the Microsoft Graph. For those wanting to eliminate the SMTP AUTH protocol, Microsoft has three ways to send emails using Graph APIs.


☁️Security & Data Governance

Microsoft 365 Security Hardening for Reduced Attack Surface. A list of Microsoft 365 security hardening guidelines that will help you counter today’s rising cyber threats and eliminate the risks.

11 Ways to Avoid Getting Hooked by Phishing Attacks. Concerned about being the target of phishing attacks? Here are 11 tried and tested ways to help you avoid getting hooked.


☁️Noteworthy (long)reads

Workers around the world are asking, ‘Why the office?’ In the company where I work, we have taken the pandemic very seriously. We have been working in hybrid mode since March 2020. The exception has been with the strict lockdowns in the whole country. I am in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And I have to say that I like it and I would feel pretty miserable if I had to work from the office every day … as I would be very miserable if I had to work fully remotely.

A Simple DMARC Configuration or Phishing Resistant MFA would have prevented the Dropbox Breach! How did the Dropbox breach happen? Is it really that simple that a DMARC record would have prevented a lot of things? I read somewhere that less than half of the Fortune 100 companies have a DMARC policy set to p=quarantine or p=reject. Where are the rest of them? Still implementing SPFs?

Microsoft Teams performance improves with framework upgrade. Yes, Teams could be faster and more responsive to the user’s actions. Thank God the development team is still very focused on fixing the performance of the app. But I still find every now and then that the Teams app takes a few seconds to breathe. Not to mention that it doesn’t always show the pictures in the conversation.


DATES TO KEEP IN MIND

April 11, 2023 – Exchange Server 2013 – End of support.

April 11, 2023 – Microsoft Office 2013 – End of support. You might experience performance or reliability issues if you continue to use Office 2013 with Microsoft 365 services because it will no longer be a supported client to connect to M365.

November 15-16, 2023 – Microsoft Ignite 2023


☁️Classifieds

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☁️On a Less Serious Note

funny but true none the less

☁️ Last but not least …

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