New Outlook on the web features

Microsoft recently announced some updates to Outlook on the web. You can read about all of them here:

New features coming to Outlook on the web

But I thought I’d highlight a new feature that I have found pretty handy, and it is called Sweep.

So when you visit your mail in the Office 365 portal you should find a new toolbar across the top as shown above. In there you see an option called Sweep.

To use Sweep simply select a message from your inbox and then select the Sweep option from the menu. This should display a dialog box as shown above.

In this case I select the second option, Delete all messages from the inbox folder and any future messages.

Then select the Sweep button to complete the process.

You should then receive a confirmation like shown above. if you select the View rules button.

You’ll then be shown the rule that was just created from your actions. At the bottom you’ll also see any automated Sweep rules that have been created to keep your inbox tidy between visits.

Sweep is just one of the ways the Microsoft has improved your ability to manage your emails with the updated functionality in Outlook on the web. For more details on all the new features make sure you read the blog post:

New features coming to Outlook on the web

Beyond the License webinar

Office 365 has many, many great features but it seems too often the case that the only thing people use is email, and just basic email at that! How is that making things more productive?

After conversations with conferencing specialist Greg Plum from PlumUC, we have decided to put on a webinar designed to show you all the really cool bits of Office 365 you can implement to turn your plain Jane Office 365 into a turbo charged rocket of business efficiency!

You can register right now at:

http://bit.ly/O365-BTL

for the event (which is 1PM Eastern US time on the 1st of September 2015). Everyone who registers will receive a copy of the recording, so you can get a good nights’ sleep if you need to, as well as other special bonuses. There’ll also be plenty of great information and I’m please to announce a special guest. All the way from his homeland of Bainbridge Island we will be bringing you the one, the only, Mr Harry Brelsford of SMBNation to share his thoughts on all this cloud stuff and where the money is in Office 365.

This event will be content and technical heavy, presented by people who know the product, how to use the product to be more efficient and what add ons you should be incorporating to make Office 365 even better.

So don’t delay, sign up now and reserve your place as they are limited.

I hope to see you at the event.

Inserting a Yammer feed into SharePoint Online

All Office 365 Suites include Yammer. I have detailed the benefits of utilising Yammer in a business here:

The Business of Yammer

However, one of the point of confusion for many people is when do you use Yammer and when do you use SharePoint? My guidance is that you in fact use both. Although Yammer can be used to store documents, you shouldn’t. Instead you use SharePoint to hold all the documents with all the benefits it provides and then you use Yammer to have conversations around the documents.

I have detailed how you can have Yammer conversations around SharePoint documents here:

Delve should be the centre of your Office 365 universe

Yet another way to improve the integration between Yammer and SharePoint Online is to embed a Yammer group into a SharePoint Team Site.

I’ve detailed the process in the above video but here is also the written process.

In this case, I’m going to replace the default SharePoint newsfeed you see on the page above with a Yammer group feed.

The first thing to note is that you can’t use this process to embed the ‘All Company’ or home feed from Yammer, you can only do this with a Yammer group.

Thus, in the above example I navigate to my Yammer group (called Learning Office 365) as shown above.

In the lower right hand corner of the Yammer group (you may need to scroll to the bottom of the page) you should find the section Access Options as shown above. In this area you will find a link Embed This Feed in Your Site which you need to select.

Doing so will immediately open a new dialog that contains a snippet of code. Copy this using Ctrl-C.

Now return to your SharePoint Team Site and the page into which you wish to embed Yammer. Edit the page by typically selecting the Edit icon in the upper right corner as shown above.

This will place the page into edit mode as seen above. You should be able to see the page regions and any existing web parts.

To delete the Newsfeed web part simply select the down arrow in the top right corner of the web part to reveal the above menu. From this menu select Delete.

Ensure that the cursor is in the correct location on the page where you want the Yammer feed to appear. Then select the Insert tab at the top of the page. From the Ribbon Menu that appears select the Web Part button.

This will open a window directly below as shown above. In the Categories section at the left select Media and Content. That should display a number of different items in the Parts section to the right. In the parts section locate and select Script Editor.

Select the Add button on the right to complete the insertion process.

You should now see a Script Editor web part in the location where your cursor was on the page. Go to the top right of this web part and select the down arrow to reveal the above menu. From the menu select the Edit Web Part option.

That will display a standard web part editing pane on the right of the screen but it will also display the EDIT SNIPPET option in the web part as shown above which you need to select.

This will now open a new dialog like that shown above. Simply select the box and paste the code you have previously copied using Ctrl-V.

Immediately after pasting the code the dialog will expand and appear like the above. Simply select the Insert button to save the changes.

With the page edits complete, return to the top right of the page and select the Save icon to return to normal page mode.

Once the page refreshes, you should now see the Yammer feed for the group embedded in the SharePoint Team Site as shown above.

You should also see that the conversation is exactly the same as it appears in Yammer.

If anyone now posts an update in the embedded feed, as shown above, it will appear both in SharePoint

and Yammer as you can see above.

Thus, embedding Yammer groups directly into SharePoint Online Team Site means users only have one location to visit to collaborate on a topic. They can of course still interact directly with Yammer if they choose but having the option makes it more likely that will become better engaged with both Yammer and SharePoint Online.

Enabling Enterprise Yammer in Office 365

A while back I did a post that detailed how to enable Enterprise Yammer in Office 365 which you can find here:

Enabling Enterprise Yammer in Office 365

Since I had to do this again on one of my tenants I thought I’d capture the whole process again in the video tutorial you see above.

Creating custom default templates in SharePoint Online

Many people think that the only way to get documents into SharePoint Online is to upload them. Not so. You can actually create a new document directly in the Document Library.

The most common way to do this is to select the New button just under the library name as shown above.

This will then display a menu like you see above that allows you to create a range of Office documents as well as a new folder.

If you select any of these, you will simply be taken to a new blank Office document as you see above.

Another method of creating a new document is to open the Ribbon Menu by selecting the Files tab at the top of the page and then selecting the arrow under the New Document button at the left as shown above.

You will then typically see a single option New Document as shown above.

If you select this you will be prompted to open you desktop Office application and when you do you will see a blank document again as shown above.

If you instead want to have your own document templates displayed in a Document Library you can do that a number of ways.

If you simply want to edit the New Document template that you see from the Files tab you need to use SharePoint to edit this.

You will firstly need to select the Library tab in the top left (just to the right of the Files tab just shown). On the very right hand side of the Ribbon Menu that is now displayed locate and select the Library Settings icon.

Select the Advanced settings option under the General Settings column.

The second field now display shows you the template URL.

You will also see an option to Edit Template, which will launch the Office program on your desktop and allows to make any changes desired.

If you try and change the URL of the template to some other location in SharePoint you’ll be greeted with the above message basically telling you that this is not possible. So all you can really do here is edit the existing template.

There is however a further option that provides much more flexibility and that is using Content Types.

You firstly need to create the Office document you want to use as templates. Best practice is to save these in dedicated Office template formats.

Next you need to go to the SharePoint Online Site Collection you want these new templates added to and select the Cog in the top right corner and then Site Settings from the menu that appears.

Select the Site content types option from under the Web Designer Galleries section.

You should then see all the default Site Content Types list as shown above. For more information on Content Types in SharePoint see:

Introduction to Content Types

Select the New option at the top of the page.

Best practice is to create a new content type for each document template you want to use. It is also good practice to create a new Content Type Group to make it easier to identify the custom items that have been added.

Because Content Types are hierarchical you should select the option for Document Content Type as the parent content type to inherit from. You should select Document as the Parent content type in the field below.

As suggested you should also create new Content Type Group for new items you add.

When all these items are complete select OK.

You should then see a summary of the new Content Type as shown above. Select the Advanced settings option.

In the Document Template area at the top of the page you can select the file to be used. Best practice would be to locate this in another Document Library that everyone has read access to so you can change it easily. However, in this case we’ll select to upload the template files we previously created.

Once these options have been selected, update the Content Type by selecting the OK button.

Repeat the same process for every template file you want to use. The only different with subsequent files is that you will add them to the new Content Type Group you created with the first template.

If you now look at the list of content types in your Site Collection and use the Show Group filter option on the left to only display the new Content Type Group you created, you should see the Content Types you just created (here one for Word, Excel and PowerPoint).

You now need to go to each Document Library in your Site Collection where you would like these new templates to be available and then select Library Settings.

You then need to select Advanced Settings again.

At the top of the page you need to select Yes to Allow management of content types and save this change.

Now in the Settings for the Document Library you should see an additional section called Content Types as shown above. In there you will find one existing Content Type on which this library is based.

Select the option Add from existing content types.

Select the new Content Type Group name you created at the top of the page. This should filter the total list of Content Types down to the new ones you just created (this is ability to filter is why creating new Content Type Groups is best practice).

Add the new Content Types from the box on the left to the right and save the changes by clicking OK.

Back in the Setting for the library you should see that you Content Types are now listed as shown above.

Now select the link Change new button order and default content type.

Best practice is generally not to delete the default Content Type but just hide it.

Save your settings when complete.

If you now select the New button in the library you should only see the your template files and the New Folder option.

Likewise, if you also select the arrow under the New Document button you will again only see your new file templates.

If you then select one of these options, you’ll be prompted to download the Office document, which will open in the desktop version of the application and allow you to create a new document based from this template.

If you wish to remove the option New Folder in the list, return to the Advanced Settings in Library Settings and locate the Folders item and set this to No.

If you again return to the library and select the New button you will see that the New Folder item no longer appears.

Site Content Types are the best way to customise injecting your own default documents into libraries in SharePoint. They take a bit longer to set up but once they are they are easy to use anywhere within the site.

They also provide the bonus of when you update the actual file used as the template it will give you the option to update everywhere where that template is being used throughout your Site Collection. Content Types have a lot more functionality but that is for a future post.

Hopefully this show you firstly how to create your own custom library templates but also how powerful SharePoint is when it comes to managing content.

PowerBI comes to Office 365

When I sent into my Office 365 today I found a new icon! PowerBI has arrived (Yellow icon, second row, first item).

When I look at the licenses for my tenant I see unlimited PowerBI licenses as you can see above.

If you want to know what PowerBI is and why I am so excited about it, read my previous post:

Switching on to PowerBI

and watch out for more PowerBI articles here.

Virtual 70-346 exam cram starting this week

Due to demand for certification from members of Cloud Business Blueprint I will conducting a 70-346 exam cram course conducted over a period of 8 weeks commencing this Thursday the 30th of July. The course is free to members of the Cloud Business Blueprint but I am making a few places available to anyone else who wants to sign up and become certified.

To sign up visit:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ciaops/product/506419.php

where for only $199 inc GST you can sign up for the 8 week course (1 x 1 hour lesson a week).

Subscribers to this product will receive:
– Link to attend live tutorial sessions each week
– Recording of each tutorial session to download and review
– Set of OneNote 70-346 course notes
– CIAOPS Office 365 bootcamp notebook
– Review questions to complete each week
– Training Certified Office 365 administrator and Office 365 MVP

Agenda:
1. Introduction and overview
2. Provision Office 365
3. Plans and implement networking and security in Office 365
4. Manage cloud identities
5. Implement and manage identities using DIRSYNC
6. Implement and manage federated identities for SSO
7. Monitor and troubleshoot O365 availability and usage
8. Review and exam prep

The aim is to help as many people as possible become 70-346 certified on their way to becoming a Microsoft Certified Office 365 administrator.

There are limited numbers for the course so if you are interested, don’t delay, sign up today.