Need to Know podcast–Episode 66

I’m joined in this episode by Office 365 MVP Darrell Webster to discuss enterprise social in Office 365, specifically Yammer.

Darrell let’s us know what Yammer is and how it can be used inside a business. We also cover off what are some major challenges facing Yammer adoptions in businesses large and small, including some strategies on how to overcome these.

If you are yet to come to grips with Yammer then this is a great place to start learning from one of the experts.

You can listen to the episode at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-66-darrell-webster/

or subscribe to this and all episodes in 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

Of course, I’d love to hear what you think of this episode or any others. Also, if you are interested in being a guest on the show to discuss business or technical topics also feel free to contact me (director@ciaops.com).

Office 365 and Vegemite

Once, you couldn’t have combined these products but today Microsoft has announced that Office 365 and CRM will be hosted out of Australia at the end of March 2015. Here’s the official announcement:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/news/locallyhostedO365andCRM.aspx

This removes another hurdle that has previously prevented many businesses and resellers from going Office 365. Being hosted from local data centers in Sydney and Melbourne means the performance should be significantly better as we have already seen with the Australian Azure data centers.

Apart from speed, another reason for not going Office 365 has been questions around data sovereignty but in today’s interconnected world this has becoming less and less of an issue because we all rely on emails which are unencrypted with guarantee of delivery right? However, for some, having their data hosted within their own country is now a reality with Office 365.

I believe the adoption rates here in Australia off Office 365 will significantly jump for the above two reasons let alone all the other benefits this announcement brings. There now really aren’t a lot of reasons why a business, especially a small business, shouldn’t be considering utilising some aspect of Office 365. The move will also put pressure on local IT resellers to look more seriously at re-tooling their business model to be more focused on Office 365 as demand for the products rises.

It is great to welcome Office 365 data centers to Australia and I look forward to all the benefits and opportunities they provide.

Need to Know podcast–Episode 65

Tas is back again for this episode to dive into everything Office 365. We especially look at some of the features of the advanced SharePoint Online plans and how these can benefit your business no matter how big or small. We also cover off a swag of Office 365 news and updates.

You can listen to the episode at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-65-tas-gray/

or subscribe to this and all episodes in 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

Episode notes:

Office 365 service description

Discover SharePoint

CIAOPS YouTube channel

CIAOPS Getting Started templates

Delve for the desktop?

Here’s an idea. What about Delve for the desktop to replace the current OneDrive for Business sync tool?

Delve uses the Officegraph technology to analyse ‘signals’ from your Office 365 interactions. Things such as browsing SharePoint sites, viewing documents, editing documents, sending documents, sending emails, etc are all combined and surfaced via the Delve tab in Office 365 in a layout much like Flipboard. The most popular items are displayed at the top of your Delve feed.

However, what if the Delve and Officegraph technology was used to determined what should be synced to your desktop automatically? I reckon that the stuff you work on most regularly, which will appear in Delve, is typically going to be the stuff you want to sync to your desktop. Wouldn’t be nice if that information could automatically be synced for you?

Imagine a world where you don’t continually need to either select what you want to sync or sync everything ‘just in case’. Imagine a world where the algorithm automatically looks at your interactions with files and people determining what should be synced to your desktop. Then, as you interact with things less they stop being synced to be replaced by more current items.

What about some sort of slider that you could set to determine the level of currency to sync? If you slide it to the left only the most current information is synced, while if you slide it to the left stuff that maybe less relevant is also synced. However, the bottom line is that Delve watches what you do and only syncs the stuff you use.

What do you reckon? Am I onto something here? Love to hear what you think and maybe what else could be included in a Delve desktop client.

Disable sound notification in Office 365

if you want to control the notification you receive when you are in the Office 365 portal here’s how you do it.

Firstly, login to your Office 365 portal in a browser.

In the top right corner select the COG and then select and the Office 365 settings from the menu that appears.

Then select Notification from the menu that appears on the left.

Simply switch the notification you don;t want off on the right hand side.

Now you can make all those annoying notifications go away so you can be more productive!

Disabling Delve

Delve is a fantastic product that provides a huge amount of value to a business an employees by allow relevant information to be surfaced to them without having to go and look for it. However, there maybe the case where a user doesn’t want Delve collecting ‘signals’ of their interactions. In this case here is how it can be turned off.

Firstly, login to the Office 365 portal as the user.

In the top left of the screen select the App Launcher button (the one with the nine smaller boxes inside). This will display all the applications the user has access to as you can see above.

From this, select Delve.

You should now see the Delve home page for that user.

Select the COG in the top right corner and then Delve settings from the menu that appears.

You should then be presented with an option, like the above, that allows you to disable Delve. Don’t forget to select OK to save any selection.

However, if an Office 365 administrator wants to disable Delve for every user in one location you would do the following:

In the bottom left locate Admin menu option and select the SharePoint option that appears below it.

This will take you to the SharePoint admin center.

At the bottom of the menu on the left locate the settings option and select that.

In the middle of the page that appears is the option to disable Delve for all users as shown above.

Ensure you scroll down to the bottom of the page and select OK to save any changes you make.

So there you have it. Any user can disable Delve if they wanted and an Office 365 administrator could do it for all users. But really, why would you? Once you use Delve you will see how much benefits it provides and how more relevant information it surfaces for people.

SharePoint Permission tool

One of the biggest challenges people have when working with SharePoint is permissions. As the growth of SharePoint Online continues with Office 365 the management of SharePoint securities becomes even more important. This is because SharePoint Online makes sharing with people inside AND outside your organisation easy.

Any administrator of SharePoint will tell you that getting a good grasp of the overall permissions across all SharePoint sites, sub sites and document libraries is a major challenge. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of tools that allow you to easily catalogue these permissions. The tools that are available are generally aimed at the enterprise and come with an enterprise price tag.

That’s why I was excited to test the new SharePoint Online Permission tool from Australian Within Reach Software. I’ve known David Perks the principal at Within Reach Software for many years and applauded the opportunity he has grabbed around developing software for SharePoint Online.

Full disclosure here, I was provided with a free eval copy of the SharePoint Online Permission tool to play with, having lamented many times to David about the lack of something to perform this task.

You can find out more about the package at:

http://www.withinreach.com.au/Pages/SharePoint%20Services/SharePoint-Online-Permission-Tool.aspx

The first step after you purchase the product is to install it in your SharePoint Online app catalogue. Here is how you do that:

Once it is installed you can then add it any site as you would any other SharePoint Online app.

Once you select the app it will then take a few moments to catalogue your SharePoint Online set up and return with the following page:

You can alter the options to report by certain Site Collection and Site as well as filter by user. In this case I simply elect to show the report.

That creates a display like you see above. You’ll note that it has hyperlinks to the relevant Site Collection, Site and List or Library to allow quick navigation. It provides a really great break down of all the securities in place. This makes it simple as an administrator to review and change these if necessary.

Where I think the product really shines is when you change the output to be to an downloadable Excel file. Using the power of tables in Excel you can easily slice and dice the information to display the results any way you need. This also makes it easy to build in depth models to ensure your permissions are correct.

I think what David and team have created here is fantastic and something that is sorely needed for admins. I also think that for an annual subscription of only AU$295 it is very cost effective when you compare it to other solutions out there. I’d like to see the web output become as powerful as that from Excel and perhaps the option to dig into users OneDrive for Business in future versions but I know both of these options are quite challenging, yet I am sure David and the team are working hard on adding additional functionality.

So, if you need a tool to report on your SharePoint Online permissions (and who doesn’t) then you can’t go past this cost effective solution from With Reach Software. I would suggest that by purchasing this product you are supporting a great Australian software business that is really taking advantage of the opportunity products like SharePoint Online offer. In order for business like Within Reach to continue to create handy solutions like this, they need your support. So please support them with your purchasing or letting others know, as I have done here.

Creating/Updating your About Me user profile in Office 365

One of the first things I think all users should be doing when they get access to Office 365 is update their About Me page to share information about themselves, their experience and skills with everyone in their organisation. The above video show you how to do exactly that but here also are the steps.

Firstly, login to the Office 365 portal. You should see screen similar to that above.

In the top right hand corner of the window select the people icon as shown above.

This will display a menu as shown above. From this menu select About me.

You will now see your profile page as shown above. If you haven’t updated this as yet it will look very bland.

Select the edit your profile hyperlink in the top right.

You can now edit any of the fields displayed. You will note that on the right hand side you’ll see the groups that can view that information. On this first screen that typically means Everyone.

To change your profile picture select the Change your photo hyperlink down the page.

From the window that appears browse to an image on your local system that you wish to use using the Browse button.

Once the image has been uploaded press the Save button.

Don’t forget to work you way across the menu options at the top and complete all the information you can. You navigate to these areas simply by clicking on the option.

As you do, don’t forget to note the selection on the right to determine who can see the information you are entering. On subsequent screens, like that shown above, it is possible to alter these.

If applicable, you are also able to select an assistant from existing Office 365 users. You can simply type their name or use the button to search your company’s Office 365 address book.

In the Details option you should ensure you have the latest information about your skills, experience and past projects. If existing items already exist, you will be prompted to select from those the system already knows about. You can of course create new ones and these will then be added to the global skills database,

The Details option is not the last screen. Select the ellipse (i.e. the three dots) to view more.

The Newsfeed Settings section allows you to control how often your receive alerts from social updates.

For most people the Language and Region options will be set by your organisation but you can change them if desired, however for most cases they should be left in their defaults.

Once all your changes are complete, always remember to scroll down to the bottom of the screen and select Save all and close.

You’ll be prompted that not all the changes will be updated immediately. Select OK to continue.

You should find soon that all the information you entered is updated and available to other employees as you can see above.

Remember to return to your profile regularly and ensure that it is always current. This will help other in your organisation find you and your skills.

For further information on About Me profiles in Office 365 see:

View and Edit your profile