Author: directorcia

Another channel already has that name

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Another item to watch out for currently with Microsoft Teams is when you delete a channel and try and re-create it again with the same name. When you attempt this you get the error above.

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That seems to be the case even if you delete the channel prior, as shown above.

A search reveals that a few people have experienced this and the reason seems to be basically that the deleted channel remains ‘somewhere’ in Office 365 for compliance reasons.

A link to a discussion on this can be found at:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams/Can-t-create-channel-as-it-says-channel-already-exists/td-p/52926

There is also a Uservoice item that you can go and vote up to get this changed.

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/17009224-recreate-deleted-channel

It does say in there that Microsoft are planning to fix this issue but no other word as yet to when. The best solution is probably allow you to create a new channel with the same name but prompt to warn you that you are overwriting compliance information and then give you the option to continue with the overwrite or not.

So, be careful when you delete a Microsoft Team’s channel as you can’t simply recreate it with the same name. A better option would appear to be to edit the Team and change what’s there.

Enabling the Office 365 Adoption Power BI Content Pack

I’m a big one for driving Office 365 adoption through the complete suit of applications. I have spoken previously about developing adoption strategies:

Driving Office 365 adoption

Stop making your users feel stupid

Ownership is the key to adoption

Office 365 adoption spreadsheet

SharePoint Online migration – Start up is key

Rule of three

A very important part of any strategy is being able to measure the results of your adoption tactics. Microsoft has just made that measurement a whole lot easier with the release of the Power BI Adoption content pack for Office 365. Here’s how you enable it for your tenant.

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You’ll need to login to the Office 365 Admin center and locate the Service settings. The easiest way to do this is to use the Search functionality.

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You’ll then need to locate the Reports section as highlighted above.

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In here turn on the option to Make data available to Office 365 Adoption content pack for Power BI.

This initiates the data collection. This may take between 2 and 48 hours depending on the size of the tenant.

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When the data collection has initialised you will find an additional tile in your Admin reporting area as shown above. The tile will contain your Tenant ID which you’ll need to record for the next stage.

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Next navigate to Power BI and select the Get Data option in the lower left of the screen.

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At the Get Data screen select Services.

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Locate the Office 365 Adoption Preview as shown above and select it.

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At the next screen, select the Get It Now button on the left.

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You’ll now need to enter the Tennant Id you recorded above. The other ways you can get your Office 365 Tennant Id are covered here:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Find-your-Office-365-tenant-ID-6891b561-a52d-4ade-9f39-b492285e2c9b

Choose oAuth2 as authentication method

You’ll then need to Sign in.

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In a moment or two you should then be able to access the adoption dashboard as shown above. Now you have all the functionality of Power BI at your finger tips, directly linked to Office 365 usage data. This makes measuring Office 365 adoption much easier.

The Office 365 content pack is still in preview at this point in time but will update going forward.

Office 365 and Azure codex available to patrons

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The majority of my learnings end up in OneNote. As you would expect I have OneNote notebooks for just about everything including Office 365 and Azure.

Having them in OneNote means they are searchable, available on every device and I can quickly add information no matter where I am. To my mind, they are pretty much the perfect as a portable personal knowledge base.

I have now taken all my accumulated Azure and Office 365 knowledge and made them available as continually sync’ed OneNote notebooks for CIAOPS Patrons. That’s right, all you need to do to gain access to this material is sign up to be a CIAOPS Patrons for which you’ll get access to both the Office 365 and Azure notebooks (plus I few more I’m planning on releasing) as well as access to my private Facebook community to discuss everything Microsoft cloud as well as a range of discounts (starting at 25%) to my online courses and publications.

The great thing about these OneNote notebooks is that they are dynamic, in that I’ll continue to add information to them over time, posting all the stuff I’m already posted into the Facebook group, but organising it for people to locate quicker when they need to. Best of all, as long as you stay a CIAOPS Patron you’ll get access to this included for as little as US$10 per month. That’s a pretty small price to pay for the notebooks let alone everything else that comes along with being a CIAOPS Patron.

Become a CIAOPS Patron today and enjoy the benefits! You can sign up to be a CIAOPS Patron here:

https://www.ciaopsacademy.com/p/patron/

Introduction to Microsoft Flow

Microsoft Flow is way to automate your business processes. It is way that you can connect to both cloud and on premises services and trigger actions and results.

The above presentation is one that I recent provided to the SharePoint Users Group in Sydney that I re-recorded to make available publically.

If you want the slides they can be found here:

https://docs.com/d/embed/D25190739-0716-1916-3610-001758080412%7eMd4186d87-61d5-259a-4d26-00a8bd86cfff

 

https://doc.co/6DSLKk

Overview of Office 365 Security

I’ve just completed a roadshow focusing on the security options in Office 365. I certainly cover what is in all plans but I do focus on what is available, and should be implemented, in the advanced plans such as E3 and E5. I also cover how the security in Office 365 can be enhanced using things such as Azure AD Premium, Intune, Azure Rights Management, Enterprise Mobility Suite and more.

The presentation was given to SMB resellers so it also contains some insights from me on how IT resellers can generate revenue for their business while providing greater levels of security for their customers.

Here are the slides:

https://docs.com/d/embed/D25190796-8769-7753-8680-001215495959%7eMd4186d87-61d5-259a-4d26-00a8bd86cfff

or via:

https://doc.co/juEHXA

I’ve also added the session to my free:

Cloud Lecture Series

at the CIAOPS Academy

Need to Know podcast–Episode 153

Marc and I report on our impressions of the recent Microsoft Build conference. There are quite a few things that caught our eye that we thought we’d like to share with our audience. Everything from CosmosDB to OneDrive on Demand and a few things in between. Get the latest information about all the important stuff for IT Pros from Build along with our thoughts on why they are things that you should be paying attention to.

Take a listen and let us know what you think –feedback@needtoknow.cloud

You can listen to this episode directly at:

https://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-153-microsoft-build-2017/

 

Subscribe via iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send us any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show.

Resources

@marckean

@directorcia

Azure news from Marc

Build Keynotes

OneDrive on demand

Windows Timeline

Cloud powered clipboard

iTunes comes to the Windows Store

Video remix

Channel 9 Xbox preview app

This episode brought to you by: https://cpem.io/tJ01Hzu2k.js

I made my own bot!

After watching the following Microsoft Mechanics video:

and being inspired by the information coming from Microsoft Build 2017 I decided to create my own Office 365 Q and A bot which you can see below.

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It is actually live on the Internet right now but I’m going to do more detailed post on how easily I brought all this together when I’ve refined it just a tad more. Once that happens I’ll let you know where you can go to give it a spin and let me know what you think.

Sure, the bot currently has limitations but remember this is just the starting point! I can tell you that it only took me about 30 minutes to get it up and running. I’m keen to see where I can take this concept of an automated bot to answer your Office 365 questions but based on the knowledge based I’ve accumulated over the years. I see a lot of potential here if I can just tweak a few things to make it easy to import the information I have on hand currently.

Hopefully, if I open it up publically it can learn from user inputs and become even better at understanding the question. Again, early days, but I see this sort of things have a lot of application in a lot of businesses. That’s why I’m playing with this now. The future is here.

More soon on the new Need to Know bot from CIAOPS designed to answer your Office 365 questions.