Lowering your Azure VM costs

Microsoft have announced a new ‘Hybrid Use Benefit’ method to potentially reduce the cost of VMs in Azure by allowing you the right to use some of your on-premises licensing in Azure VM’s.

The above video give you more information as does this page:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/hybrid-use-benefit/

As you can see, the saving can be up to 40%! That’s pretty significant if you qualify.

Another tool that Microsoft has just announced to help you migrate to Azure is the:

Free cloud migration assessment

This assessment can help you:

Identify all the servers across your datacenter environment
Analyse your workload configuration
Estimate the initial cost benefits of moving to Microsoft Azure
View and export the results into a customized report

However, if you are just getting started with Azure check out this on demand webinar:

Getting Started with Microsoft Azure

External access for Microsoft Teams slated for June

Microsoft Teams is significantly changing the way businesses think about collaboration as I have detailed previously:

The modern way of collaboration using Microsoft Teams

but we still need to keep in mind that it is all still relatively new.

One of the most requested enhancements, as you can see from the above post on Uservoice is to allow external access to Microsoft Teams.

Good news is the reply posted by Microsoft shown above. They have committed to a date for this feature addition and that date should be in June! Pretty quick eh?

It will be amazing to think of all the collaboration opportunities that will open up once Microsoft Teams is available to third parties. This is going to make the product bigger and more successful than it already is.

My advice? If you haven’t started looking at Teams you really should be.

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 148

Marc goes solo for this episode as he covers the recent Experts Live in Melbourne. He speaks with a bunch of guests all about the sessions that happened during the conference and their thoughts about the technology being discussed.

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-148-experts-live/

or via Soundcloud here:

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

Conference wrap up from Marc

This episode brought to you buy:

https://cpem.io/tJ01Hzu2k.js

Getting an early look

With things changing so fast these days it is important to keep ahead of the curve, especially if your job is to manage IT for an organisation. Office 365 makes this process pretty simple.

If you want to get access to the latest desktop software firstly login to your Office 365 tenant as an administrator. Then navigate to the Admin center as shown above. In the top right of the dashboard you should see a section Office software.

Inside the Office software section you will find an option, Software download settings, which you should select.

This will now show you a number of software options as shown above.

If you scroll down a bit you should find the option about when to get the latest features. Here you can select Current or Deferred channel as shown above. To get the latest software select Every month (Current channel) and save the changes.

You’ll then need to head back to the Admin center and do a search for First Release which is in the Organization profile area as shown above. Ensure that you enable the appropriate users for First Release and save any changes. For more information on First Release see:

Set up the Standard or First Release options in Office 365

First Release users should now see, when they install the desktop software and look in File | Account as shown above, that they are now on the Office Insider program.

For more information see these links:

Be an Office Insider

How Office 365 commercial customers can get early access to new Office 2016 features

Overview of update channels for Office 365 ProPlus

Version and build numbers of update channel releases for Office 365 clients

Office 365 client update channel releases

CIAOPS Need to know Webinar–April 2017

Time for our April webinar! This month’s free webinar will feature the usual cloud updates and news along with open Q & A but also a look at Microsoft Staffhub that is now part of Office 365 and allows you to do basic rostering. I’ll show you the product and how it integrates into the Office 365 ecosystem.

You can register now for free at:

April Webinar Registration

The details are:

CIAOPS Need to Know Webinar – April 2017
Thursday 20th of April 2017
11am – 12am Sydney Time

All sessions are recorded and posted to the CIAOPS Academy.

There of course will also be open Q and A so make sure you bring your questions for me and I’ll do my best to answer them.

The CIAOPS Need to Know Webinars are free to attend but if you want to receive the recording of the session you need to sign up as a CIAOPS patron (for only USD$10 per month) which you can do here:

https://www.patreon.com/ciaops

or purchase them individually at:

http://www.ciaopsacademy.com/

Also feel free at any stage to email me directly via director@ciaops.com with your webinar topic suggestions.

I’d also appreciate you sharing information about this webinar with anyone you feel may benefit from the session.

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 147

We speak with a few Microsoft Community Regional Directors whom we caught up with at a recent MVP event in Sydney. On this show you’ll hear from Troy Hunt, Adam Coogan and Greg Low and their thoughts about what’s been happening at Microsoft over the past 12 months. Some great insights from some of the leaders in Microsoft technologies today. You’ll also get a behind the scenes peek about this podcast as Marc and I speak about the presentation we gave to MVPs about this very podcast and how it all happens.

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-147-mvp-community-event/

or on Soundcloud here:

Resources

This show is brought to you by:

https://cpem.io/tJ01Hzu2k.js

The power of uservoice

No software product is perfect. There are always features that can be added. There are always improvements that should be included. The problem has always been, how to make the developers aware of these? From the developers side, the problem has been, ok, we could add this feature but really, how many people will actually use it? Enter Uservoice.

Microsoft uses this system to allow for feedback and suggestions on their products, especially Office 365. You simply do a search for ‘uservoice’ and the product you are interested in, say ‘teams’. Thus, searching for ‘uservoice teams” will take you here:

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public

Here you can view all the suggestions people have made about improving the product. You can also vote on which improvements you’d personally like to see. The more votes a specific feature gets the more resources Microsoft can devote to make it a reality.

Uservoice provides a really great for both users and vendors to understand what features and improvements are the most critical for a product.

Case in point. I recent wrote a post about some of the administration challenges around Microsoft Teams:

Compliance challenges of Microsoft Teams

but what I also did was go onto the Uservoice for Microsoft Teams and log a suggestion as you can see above. I then let others know and asked them to go and vote up this suggestion.

As you can see, that suggestion has been seen and responded to by Microsoft and we will hopefully see the ability to restore a deleted Microsoft Team very shortly. The system works!

Too many times I hear people complaining about products. I then ask them whether they have taken the time to let the supplier know. Most never do. So how’s the product ever going to improve if you don’t take the time to provide feedback? Thanks to Uservoice this is now really, really simple way to provide feedback for all Office 365 products.

I’d therefore encourage you to take a look at Uservoice for Office 365 products (just search for the Uservoice for each product) and vote up suggestions you’d like to see as well as make you own suggestions. You can help make a better product by providing feedback and as you can see, Microsoft is listening.

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 146

We try some different things in this podcast. Firstly, our normal news segment we do from a local cafe. This means you’ll get the full experience of outside dining plus all the latest Office 365 and Azure news. Our content piece this week is from a live presentation I gave to a number of resellers on how different the world is today from what many believe.

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-146-al-fresco/

or on Soundcloud here: