M365 Weekly Newsletter
Issue #118
☁️What’s on my mind
Having more or less only used the Teams v2 (new) app last few weeks, I discovered quite by accident that the avatar editor had appeared in the old one.
I was hoping that Microsoft would give up this delusion. But apparently, they are moving on.
I opened the avatar editor to see what kind of avatar I could create.
After a few agonizing minutes, I closed the whole thing, because it was intolerably slow. I suppose it is possible that at that very moment, my computer was working much slower than usual.
What experience do you have with avatar in Teams?
I only think of using it if I resign, in which case I will show up on the call with the director with an avatar, bald, and with an earring in my ear.
Have a really nice rest of the week,
Matic Z.
☁️Productivity & Modern Workplace
Get the most of the LEFT, RIGHT and MID FUNCTIONS. Looking to boost your productivity and efficiency in Excel? Left, Right, and Mid functions are invaluable! In this video tutorial, you’ll learn how to use these functions to extract specific substrings from text strings, saving you time and effort.
Best Practices of Sharing Links in SharePoint Online. Sharing links in SharePoint Online is critical in enhancing collaboration and productivity, but it is equally important to ensure that the content remains secure. You can easily make a mess and completely open your data to anyone who has a link. Learn about the four types of sharing links in Microsoft 365, and how to plan the use of company links, secure links, and anonymous links. Discover the best practices and audit events that you can use to ensure the safety of your organization’s content.
How to manage your Social Media Marketing with Microsoft 365. What if you could build yourself a social media marketing automation app that was exactly what you wanted it to be? This video will guide you step by step to build just such an app.
How to Create Video Clips in Microsoft Teams Chat. Make your chat conversations more dynamic and engaging. Discover the newest way to communicate in Teams chat – through short video clips. Learn how to create and share one-minute video clips with your colleagues in this tutorial.
☁️Sysadmin Stuff
How to Restore a Deleted Mailbox in Office 365. If you accidentally deleted a user’s mailbox in Microsoft 365 just don’t panic. With the soft delete function, you can easily restore it within 30 days. Learn how to do it both in the Admin Center or PowerShell
How to Create Office 365 (Exchange Online) Migration Endpoint Using New Exchange Admin Center (EAC). I asked ChatGPT to write me a joke. The result tells much about Microsoft’s ability to constantly make changes: Why did the Microsoft employee bring a pillow to work? Because they knew constant change was the only constant in the Microsoft world and they needed to be ready for a quick nap between updates. Yes, new admin centers can be a real PITA. When you’re migrating to the cloud you need to know where to make Migration Endpoint in the new Exchange admin center.
Efficiently Target Your Devices and Users with Intune Filters. Intune filters is a feature of Microsoft Intune that allows administrators to filter and target specific groups of devices or users based on relevant criteria. This helps to manage devices and users in a more efficient and effective way by applying policies and configurations only to those that need them.
Building your Microsoft 365 PowerShell toolbox. PowerShell is a vital tool for Microsoft 365 Admins, and having a basic competence with PowerShell cmdlets is essential for bulk processing of tasks, creating reports, and exposing data. In this article, key tools and concepts are outlined to help tenant admins build a ‘toolbox’ for PowerShell, including installing and updating modules, scoping module installations, using the right editor, and creating reusable functions.
☁️Security & Data Governance
Practical Protection: Baby Steps Towards Zero Trust. The zero trust model extends the lack of trust by saying that devices and users must be separately authenticated and access to resources should rarely be granted based on a previous access grant. Microsoft 365 already provides the basic building blocks to implement zero trust, such as single strong source of user identity, user authentication, machine authentication, additional context, authorization policies to access an application, and access control policies within an application. It is the responsibility of the user to take advantage of these tools to ensure security and trust.
Using Untitled Goose to Investigate Compromises. CISA’s Untitled Goose tool is a useful addition to the Microsoft 365 security practitioner’s toolkit. It is designed to help security practitioners sift through security logs in Microsoft 365, Azure Active Directory, and Azure Cloud to find potential malicious activity. The tool requires several prerequisites and configuration steps before it can be used, but once set up it provides an invaluable source of information for incident responders.
E-Mail – MTA-STS – Mail Transfer Agent Strict Transport Security. MTA-STS is a security protocol that helps protect against man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, which can compromise email security and privacy. By requiring TLS encryption and enforcing a strict security policy, MTA-STS helps prevent attackers from intercepting and reading email messages, as well as altering or injecting malicious content into those messages. MTA-STS is relatively easy to implement and configure, so domain owners should consider implementing it to ensure their emails are secure and private.
☁️Noteworthy (long)reads
Attempting to explain Teams shared channels to end users. Shared channels in Microsoft Teams can be confusing and have been disabled by many organizations. The challenge is that the user experience for shared channels is a mix of experiences borrowed from private channels and guest access, with extra layers of control wrapped around them. It’s not just an issue of features needing to be enabled, but also governance, support, and training being in place before they are made available to end-users.
AWS vs. Azure Pricing: A 2023 Guide. So, which one is more cost-effective?
Exchange Online licensing explained. Understanding Exchange Online licensing can be tricky, but with the introduction of concurrent Exchange Online license assignments, Microsoft 365 admins can now assign more than one license pack to the same Azure Active Directory (AAD) user. There are 3 license plans strictly for Exchange – Exchange Online Kiosk, Exchange Online (Plan 1), and Exchange Online (Plan 2) – and each comes with its own features and limits.
☁️Classifieds
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☁️On a Less Serious Note
☁️ Last but not least …
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