Using the Office Deployment Toolkit

One of the most common questions I see around Office 365 is how to deploy Office applications to desktop using a single download or from a central network repository. To this you’ll need to use the Office Deployment Toolkit.

The first step is in this process is to download the appropriate version. The 2016 version is available here:

Office 2016 Deployment Tool

If you want to use this tool to deploy software across a local network the suggestion is that you download and install the tool on a suitable machine with enough disk space and that is available and connected to all machines on the network.

Once you have downloaded and installed the tool you should see just two files as shown above. It is also a good idea to share the location of the Office Deployment Toolkit across your network so connected machines can run the setup.exe program remotely to actually install the software.

The next step then is to create a network share into which the downloaded Office desktop software will be located on this machine.

In that directory you will find a file called configuration.xml. If you open this file you will see something like:

This contains information about the version of the Office software that will be downloaded and deployed. What you see here is only a very basic version of what the possible options are for the configuration file. You find the full list of options and parameters for this configuration file here:

Configuration options for the Office Deployment tool

However, I would suggest that an easier way to generate the appropriate configuration file for your environment is to visit:

http://officedev.github.io/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-Scripts/XmlEditor.html

This web based tool allows you to enter in all the parameters you require and then for the configuration file to be built out for you automatically on the right. You can then simply copy and paste, email or download the result.

Take this and use it to overwrite the default configuration file provided.

You then need to go to the command prompt and navigate to the directory into which you downloaded the Office Deployment Toolkit. You then need to run the command:

setup.exe /download configuration.xml

This will then download the specified Office software to the location on your machine as specified in the configuration.xml file.

It is important to note here that you are downloading a full version of the Office desktop software every time, not just updates. You can rerun the command at any point with updated configuration parameters if required.

Once the command has completed, if you view the location where the files have been downloaded you should see something similar to that shown above.

You’ll also notice that I have different versions of Office software available thanks to also selecting to make first release versions of the software available.

With the Office software now downloaded to a shared network location, from a connected workstation you can map to the network location for the Office Deployment toolkit setup files and run the command:

setup.exe /configure configuration.xml

You should then see the Office software installation process commence.

The installation will use the parameters you have previously defined in the configuration.xml file.

The configuration.xml file also controls how updates are handled. Use the element to set attributes. For example:

If you wish to install Office software from Office 365 onto a Remote Desktop Server (RDS or Terminal Server) environment you MUST use the Office Deployment Toolkit to do this. You will also need to specify the following in the configuration.xml file:

Of course, you also need the appropriate version of Office 365. This is E3 or better. Business Premium suites are NOT licensed to have Office software installed in a RDS environment.

There are plenty of options available to you in configuration.xml to manage deployments, updates and removals so be sure to take a look at all the options. However, I recommend you use:

http://officedev.github.io/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-Scripts/XmlEditor.html

to actually create the configuration.xml file you need.

Using the Office Deployment Toolkit is a quick and easy way to deploy and control Office software from Office 365 from a central network repository. It not only saves you bandwidth but also time.

CIAOPS Need to Know Webinar–October 2016

And now for something completely different! For the October Need to Know webinar I’m going to try ditching the previous webinar tool and go with good ol’ Skype for Business from Office 365. You can register now via:

October Webinar Registration

I’m also going to try a different time to see whether that works for more people. The details are:

CIAOPS Need to Know Webinar – October 2016
Thursday 20th of October 2016
3pm – 4pm Sydney Time

I will of course record the session and make it available via the CIAOPS Academy.

As for content, well there is a HUGE amount of news from the recent Microsoft Ignite Conference and I’ll be covering the main announcements but for the webinar deep dive session I’m going to look at how to develop a successful SharePoint/OneDrive for Business adoption strategy. You’ll learn real world strategies you can implement to help drive your Office 365 collaboration environment and get people doing more than just uploading files.

There of course will also be open Q and A so make sure you bring your questions for me.

So, I’d encourage you to register and stick with me through some of the bumps as I iron out and automate the new registration process using Skype for Business.

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 at 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.

SharePoint details pane

If you visit somewhere in SharePoint Online and select an item (here a document in a Document Library), as shown above, you can press the little ‘i’ in the top right hand side of the screen, as shown, to reveal the details pane.

What you might not appreciate is that you can also simply press the letter ‘i’ on your keyboard to achieve the same result.

Once the details pane has been exposed you’ll typically see a preview of that file along with all the information about that item as shown above.

If you scroll down a little in the details pane you’ll also find a list of recent activity of this specific item as shown.

If you have no items in the library selected, you will see an aggregate of all the activity in that area (i.e. for every item in that Document Library), as shown above for the Document Library ‘Documents’.

What you also might not appreciate is that you can re-size the details pane by dragging the left hand side border.

The great thing is that when you visit another location in SharePoint and again view the details pane, it will display with the same dimensions as you just set.

And when you return to the original location and view the details pane it will have these new dimensions. Thus, your setting remains ‘sticky’ throughout SharePoint.

These features are available with the modern SharePoint interface but you can always switch back to the ‘classic’ interface at any point in time, for a list or library or whole Team Site if you want. However, I’d encourage you to explore the added functionality the modern SharePoint interface provides. I think that once you start using it, you’ll really like it!

Resizing SharePoint column widths

One of the new features the modern SharePoint interface now provides is the ability to adjust the width of columns. As you would in a spreadsheet, locate the boundary of a column, click, drag and re-size to the desire width.

You can from the above, that I have re-sized the initial column width of the above Document Library.

Unfortunately, from what I can see, that changed column width doesn’t remain if you navigate away from the page. Thus, if you go somewhere else in your Team Site and then return to the original location the column widths are back to the way they were initially.

Hopefully Microsoft will soon add the ability for ‘re-sized’ columns widths to ‘stick’ after any change. However, having the ability to easily adjust column width in SharePoint is great additional functionality that has been missing for a long while.

Windows Explorer and modern SharePoint interface

One of abilities that I thought Microsoft had removed from the new or ‘modern’ SharePoint interface was the ability to open a document library using the Windows Explorer file manager. Turns out that feature is still available as you can see from the above image.

You’ll find View in File Explorer option in the top right of a Document Library under the All Documents option. However, as with the previous Open in Explorer option, it is only available if you are using Internet Explorer. The reason it doesn’t appear in other browsers is because it uses an Active X control.

When you select the option a new tab will open in a browser and you’ll see the ‘classic’ interface.

A few moments later the Document Library will open in Windows Explorer as you can see above. You can now drag and drop files directly into the library using Windows Explorer as you could previously.

So the ‘trick’ to opening a Document Library with Windows Explorer using the new SharePoint interface is to once again use Internet Explorer and then select View in File Explorer from the All Documents option in the top right of the library.

Anonymise Office 365 report information

Office 365 has recently added a huge number of detailed reports you can access from the Office 365 Admin portal. You not only get graphical information over time but you also get detailed user information as you can see above from an email activity report.

However, let’s say that you want to see the trend of this information without the specific user details. That is, we want to see the information but we don’t want to see which individual user this applies to. Can we anonymise the reports?

With Office 365 you sure can. Here’s how.

Go to the Settings option in your Office 365 Admin console.

Select Services & add-ins from the menu that appears as shown above.

Scroll down the screen until you locate the Reports option and select that.

Turn On the option to anonymise the data at the top of the screen and then select Save.

You’ll see the message confirming this change and also letting you know that it may take a few minutes for the anonymised data to flow through to the admin reports.

Select Close to continue.

After a short while, if you again look at the details of the Office 365 reports you’ll see that users now appear as simply a random string. Now someone can view the reports without resorting to finger pointing!

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 115

Newly crowned Microsoft MVP and I speak with MVP Grant Paisley about Power BI. Grant shares with us his insight into this Microsoft tool that can be used to analyse just about any sorts of data to give you a visual dashboard of information quickly and easily We also cover the latest updates from the Microsoft Ignite conference and all the changes that are happening in the Microsoft cloud.

You can listen to this episode directly at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/need-to-know-podcast-episode-115/

or 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

also now on Soundcloud at:

https://soundcloud.com/marcy-marc-2/episode-115-grant-paisley

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

@angrykoala– Grant Paisley

@marckean – Marc Kean

@directorcia – Robert Crane

Angry Koala

Microsoft Power BI

Corey Sanders at Ignite

Bulk Ignite session downloader 1

Bulk Ignite session downloader 2

Microsoft Ignite

Microsoft Ignite on demand

Microsoft Ignite YouTube channel

Introducing the Office 365 launcher

Microsoft Staff Hub for deskless workers

New OneDrive Preview sync client

OneDrive announcements

Answering common questions with Office 365 Part 3

This is the third article in a series of typical customers questions around Office 365. These questions were part of presentation I did with two other resellers at the Australian Microsoft Partner Conference in 2016. You’ll find the first part of the series here:

Answering common questions with Office 365 Part 1

Answering common questions with Office 365 Part 2

The question for this article is:

My team has to manage a lot of documents for a lot of clients and we have trouble working effectively with this information when you also combine it with data from email and other sources. How can Office 365 be used to allow my business to be more effective with the information we are producing?

There are so many ways that this question can be answered with Office 365. Consider the following as simply an overview of what is possible.

The most important thing to appreciate about Office 365 is that all the information you put in there is searchable. The results from any search are ‘security trimmed’. That means you only see results that you have access to view.

For most users Delve provides a single pane of glass across nearly all of your Office 365 services.

How can I find people and information in Office Delve?

I have written articles about the importance of Delve but this one probably sums up things best:

Delve should be the centre of your Office 365 universe

Delve is available across all Office 365 suites and if you haven’t as yet looked at it then start here:

Introducing Office Delve

What is Office Delve?

How does Office Delve know what is relevant to me?

Also importantly, you can get Delve on your mobile devices:

Introducing Office Delve Mobile Apps

as well as you Windows 10 desktop:

Delve on Windows 10 app

Most Office 365 users also get a personal location called OneDrive for Business in which they can store all their documents.

What is OneDrive for Business?

They will get around 1TB of space into which they can store and share their personal files. This means they can move information stored on their local desktop, PC, USB drives, etc into a secure location that only they have access to and that they can share from with others, inside and outside the organisation if they want. It is important to note that OneDrive for Business is not designed as a file server replacement, it is designed for personal use. SharePoint Team Sites and Office 365 Groups are more the locations for information that needs to be shared with a teams of people.

There are many other products that do personal file sharing but here’s an overview of why OneDrive for Business is a superior technology.

Why OneDrive for Business

Given that Office 365 is much more than just emails and file storage I’d recommend you review my article:

Where to put data in Office 365?

to give you a better idea of what all the options are.

Now I mentioned Office 365 Groups as another location in which you can save your information. Office 365 Groups is great if you simply need an email distribution and single place to store common files. For a better idea of what Office 365 Groups are all about have a look at:

Office 365 groups: A quick tour of new user and admin experiences

If you then needs to add tasks to your collaboration you should have a look at Office 365 Planner:

Get started quickly with Microsoft Planner

However, if your needs exceed the functionality of both Office 365 Groups and Planner then it is time to consider SharePoint Team Sites for a fully blown ‘intranet’ style experience.

What is SharePoint

Getting started with SharePoint

Remember, that everything you put into a SharePoint Team Site is searchable, including the text inside documents. Team Sites allow you to create a hierarchical structure much like a file server but add in collaboration features like calendars, wikis, lists, etc.

You can get more functionality by using ‘metadata’ to tag your information to make it easier for your users to filter and sort.

Create managed metadata column

Set up metadata navigation for a list or library

The great thing is that you can customise your metadata to exactly suit your needs.

Another service available to Enterprise Office 365 Plans is a private video portal called Office 365 Video. In here you can place and share videos with your team. This is a great place for training resources as well as recordings from Skype for Business.

Meet Office 365 video

Manage your Office 365 video portal

You can also embed these videos directly into your SharePoint Team Site quickly and easily.

Another member of the Microsoft Cloud family is CRM. This allows you to manage contacts, sales, etc. but will soon also allow you to manage your financials thanks to the recently announced Dynamics 365.

Dynamics 365

Turning business process into business advantage for organizations everywhere

The big advantage these additional Microsoft Cloud products provide is the fact that access is governed by the same login users have for Office 365. This provides greater integration and management that few other services can match.

Another location that your team can collaborate together is in Yammer. Yammer provides an enterprise social network to share information publically which has so many benefits to the business. I’ve outlined many of these here:

The Business of Yammer

Don’t forget also that many Office 365 suites provide your users with the latest Office desktop software on their PC’s, Macs and mobile devices. They get at least 5 installation on each platform to ensure that everyone has the same version of the software. As an Office 365 subscriber you receive continuing free upgrades to this software automatically so you don’t need to worry whether everyone has the ‘latest’. They will.

Finally, Office 365 is also going to provide you the ability to automate your business process and information via a number of different tools such as:

Microsoft Flow

Microsoft Powerapps

SharePoint Workflows

In summary, Office 365 gives a lot of ways to manage and work more effectively with your information. It also provides you with the opportunity to improve the way you work today, become more effective and save time. It really is a single platform dedicated to better information management, accessed via a single login that is always constantly evolving and improving. In short, Office 365 is more than email and file storage, it is a full suite of productivity services to help your business better manage your information.

Watch out for the answers to more common questions with Office 365 coming soon.