Disabling Windows Phone 8.1 screen wake up

One of things that I found enabled when I updated my Windows Phone to 8.1 was the screen ‘wake up’ feature. Basically, this allows you to double tap the screen and it will come to life.

Great idea, but for me it seemed that I was always turning the phone on accidentally. That is no good for optimising the power usage of the device, so after persevering with it for a while I decided that I would prefer to have it off and save the power. If I need the phone, it is easy enough to turn on with my ham-fists.

So here’s how to disable the ‘Wake up’ screen feature as it is buried a few layers down.

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From the initial screen navigate to Settings. In my case I have pinned that to the top right of my phone start screen.

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Scroll down the option Settings.

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Towards the bottom you will find Touch. Select this.

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Then set the Wake Up option at the top to Off.

With this set my phone is back to having me turn it on to use which is what I want because I want to maximise the power available to my phone throughout the day.

We have reached the bottom

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We all knew it was coming but this announcement from Microsoft:

Moving forward, all Office 365 customers will get unlimited OneDrive storage at no additional cost.

proves that we have finished the race to the bottom when it comes to storage.

What it means is that all Office 365 customers, home and business, will soon have unlimited storage capacity in their OneDrive. Here’s what the article says specifically about OneDrive for Business:

For OneDrive for Business customers, unlimited storage will be listed on the Office 365 roadmap in the coming days and we will begin updating the First Release customers in 2015, aligned with our promise to provide ample notification for significant service changes.

So we’ll have to wait a few months until we see it in Office 365 for Business but it will be worth the wait. My only question is whether the same unlimited storage will also apply for Team Sites as well as OneDrive for Business? Sure hope it does, but time will tell.

For providers who already don’t offer unlimited free storage there probably won’t be much option but to match this or risk being uncompetitive in the market.

Storage is only the first in a long time of resources that will ultimately end up being free thanks to the commoditisation of the cloud. Roll on I say.

You can read the full blog post from Microsoft here:

https://blog.onedrive.com/office-365-onedrive-unlimited-storage/

Image courtesy of audfriday13 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Office 365 getting a new app launcher

The Office 365 navigation experience continues to evolve and simplify. Take a look at the above new features coming to a tenant near you soon.

If you want to be the first kid on the block to get these features ensure you have enabled the first release option in your Office 365 tenant as I detailed in an earlier blog post.

Enabling Office 365 first release

This new navigation experience is first going to make things much easier for users and also make Office 365 even more consistent with things like Windows on the desktop. Can’t wait to see it on my tenant!

Here’s the blog post from Microsoft:

http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/16/organize-office-365-new-app-launcher-2/

Enabling profile picture editing in SharePoint Online

In a recent post I showed how you can update a users SharePoint Online profile as an administrator from the web console.

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A sticking point you may come across is shown above. When you go to edit the users picture it says:

Only user can change this photo

And the only option available is to remove the photo, you can’t upload a new one. This can be a pain if you are an administrator and want to set up people’s photos before hand.

Here’s the way to enable this

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Scroll through the profile until you locate the field:

Picture Exchange Sync State

change this field to 0 (or delete the value that is there) and then Save the profile.

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Now, when you return to the profile you should find the ability to upload a new photo for that user.

Changing a SharePoint Online users profile

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One of the first things I encourage all SharePoint Online users to is go in and edit their profile and update the information contained in there. They can do that by clicking on the user image in the top right and then selecting the About Me menu item that appears.

However, what happens if a business wants to enter this information ahead of time from one central location? Here’s how to do just that.

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Sign into the Office 365 web portal as an administrator.

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In the top right of the portal select Admin, then SharePoint from the menu that appears.

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In the SharePoint admin center select user profiles from the menu on the left.

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On the right hand side select Manage User Profiles from under the People section at the top of the page.

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Search for the user profile you wish to edit (here, Lewis Collins) by entering the search text in the Find profiles box and press the Find button.

The user should then be listed below.

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If you now click on the account name a menu will be displayed. Select the item Edit My Profile.

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You should now be able to go into every item for that user and make any changes required.

Remember to Save your changes when complete.

Melbourne Meetup

I’ll be in Melbourne at the end of next week speaking at a conference. That event is fully booked but if you are interested in catching up with me and other over dinner I’m arranging a get together at:

Date : Thursday, October 23rd, 2014
Time : From 6:30 PM
Venue: Cafe Republic, 158-160 Toorak Rd, South Yarra VIC 3141

If you are interested in attending please let me know (director@ciaops.com) so we can ensure there is room at the venue.

I look forward to seeing everyone there next week.