Need to Know podcast–Episode 124

Marc and I are join by another Mark in this episode (just in case things weren’t confusing enough on this podcast already!). Mark O’Shea joins us to talk about Microsoft Intune and where it fits into today’s IT landscape. Mark shares with us what Microsoft Intune is, how it can be purchased and what role it plays for IT Pros.

You’ll also get our latest Microsoft cloud news at the top of the show to keep you up to date with everything happening in the Microsoft Cloud-verse.

You can listen to this episode directly at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-124-mark-oshea/

or on Soundcloud here:

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

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

Mark O’Shea – @Intunedin

Marc Kean – @marckean

Robert Crane – @directorcia

Marc’s Azure news

New CIAOPS VPN online course

Azure VPN performance

New OneDrive for Business client coming for all

Copy from OneDrive for Business to Team Sites now available

Integration of Flow and PowerApps into Team Sites

If This Then That

Zapier

New OneDrive for Business admin console rolling out

InTunedin

Microsoft Intune

Microsoft Intune features

Microsoft Intune pricing

Microsoft EMS

OneDrive copy to Team Sites arrives

If you select a file in your OneDrive for Business and then select the Copy option you’ll find some new abilities.

You’ll now see that you get the ability to copy to a SharePoint Online Team Site. You can read more details about this ability at:

Copy files and folders from OneDrive for Business to a SharePoint Site

Note – Scripting must be turned off for personal sites If scripting is turned on for personal sites in your organization, the Copy command is restricted to copying within your OneDrive.

At this point in time the functionality is only available with Copy and not the Move command. Also, at this point in time the ability is not available in Team Sites.

Thus, for the time being, you can now Copy (but not Move) via a browser, files and folders from OneDrive for Business to a Team Site (but not the reverse). Hopefully, the other abilities such as Move and inside Team Sites also is not far away.

Providing admin access to OneDrive for Business

When a new Office 365 user is created they normally get provisioned with their own OneDrive for Business location. This is basically a dedicated SharePoint Site Collection per user into which they can upload and share their own private documents.

Each user is the only Site Collection administrator for their own OneDrive for Business location. This means, by default, even a global administrator doesn’t have access to a users OneDrive for Business location.

Of course, in a business, there can be the need for others to have admin access to a users OneDrive for Business, typically for compliance or even once the user has left the organisation. There are a number of ways of granting this access.

All of these methods will require you to have SharePoint administration rights in your tenant and then navigate to the SharePoint admin center.

Probably the easiest way to gain access to any existing user OneDrive for Business is simply to assign the appropriate administration user Secondary Site Collection rights to the site:

http://<tenant name>-my.sharePoint.com

You do that by firstly selecting the appropriate site in your list from the available Site Collections like so:

Once you place a check mark to the left of the OneDrive for Business Site Collections you will see a number of buttons become available to you on the Ribbon Menu across the top.

Select the Owners button.

Then select the Manage Administrators from the menu that appears.

As with any SharePoint Site Collection, you’ll see both the Primary Site Collection Administrator as well as any Secondary Site Collection Administrators. Remember, you can only have one Primary but many Secondary Site Collections administrators. So add the desired user in as a Secondary Site Collection Administrator field and then select OK.

The permissions for all the user OneDrive for Business sites will now update and when complete the added user will be able to access all users OneDrive for Business locations (typically by navigating directly to that URL).

Another way to achieve the same result, but for new or deleted users, is to navigate to the user profiles area from the menu on the left hand side of the SharePoint admin center.

This will take you to the following screen:

Here select Setup My Sites from the My Site Settings group at the bottom of the page.

Scroll down the list of options until you find My Site Cleanup

Here you can again effectively enter a Secondary Site Collection Administrator but for OneDrive for Business Site Collections where the user has been deleted.

If you continue to scroll down you will find a section called My Site Secondary Admin.

Here you can again effectively enable an automatic Secondary Site Collection Administrator to be allocated to a OneDrive for Business location when a new user is created.

Although really a double up from the first option shown is also worthwhile doing as a backup to ensure you cater for all new and any deleted users

The final way is of course to use PowerShell to enable permissions on users OneDrive for Business but I’ll leave that for a future article.

Beware that by adding additional Site Collection Administrators to a users OneDrive for Business users may see these additional admins as already having access as shown above when they go to share documents. It is recommended that you communicate this to your users in advance so they are aware of their compliance requirements.

So, in summary, remember that by default only the user has access to their OneDrive for Business location. You can easily assign rights for other users to access a users OneDrive for Business information using the methods outlined above. Once these rights have been assigned you can navigate to these locations using the URL for each users individual OneDrive for Business location.

OneDrive for Business admin console rolling out

Microsoft has commenced the roll out of a dedicated OneDrive for Business administration console as you can see above. You can read more details about this here:

New OneDrive Admin Center Preview

To access the new console you’ll need to have set your Office 365 tenant to first release and then visit:

http://admin.onedrive.com

As you can see from the screen shots here the console is currently divided into a number of menu options.

The Sharing option allows you control who outside your tenant can receive shared files.

I like the option here that allows an administrator to set options such as how long anonymous links remain.

The Sync option controls the sync client.

The Storage allows you to manage the default storage allocated to each user along with the retention time of deleted user’s OneDrive information.

The Device Access tab allows you to control access based on network location as well as controlling OneDrive policies on the mobile devices.

At the bottom you’ll also find the option to control how long data is retained when a device is offline.

The final tab allows you to control the Compliance of OneDrive for Business.

This new admin center for OneDrive for Business is still in preview but we expect to see more and more options become available with the eventual integration into the existing Office 365 admin center.

If you have Office 365 first release enabled, go and take a look!

Using Azure to test OneDrive for Business Sync

In a recent blog I detailed how you could automatically download all the content from the recent Microsoft Ignite 2016 conference. In that post I also said that the ultimate destination for that content, in my case, was going to be SharePoint Online.

There are number of different ways that you could get all these files into SharePoint Online but I thought that this would be a great opportunity to test the new Preview OneDrive for Business Sync client that now works with SharePoint Online document libraries. You can read more about this release here:

Getting started syncing SharePoint sites with the new OneDrive sync client – preview

I will caution you before you go charging in and setting this up. This is still currently PREVIEW software! That means it is not yet complete. I will also caution you that it is not simply a process of installing a download. The release of the completed sync client is due in November 2016, which isn’t really that far away. So, unless your job is to play with software, I’d wait until the released product is available real soon.

Luckily, part of my job IS to play with software and let people know what it’s all about. So what I thought I’d do to test out this new OneDrive for Business sync client is to use it to upload all the material I captured from Microsoft Ignite.

Now there’s another aspect to way I approach these tasks these days and that is to use Azure as my primary tool. So, to actually download the Microsoft Ignite content, as detailed previously, I actually did this using an Azure virtual machine? Why? Firstly, it is nice to have a clean machine with plenty of disks space. I can also adjust the power and storage of the machine to suit my needs and only pay for what I need. I can also leave the machine running in the Microsoft data center and access it from anywhere. However, in this case, the major reason is simply better bandwidth.

The downloading process of the Ignite 2016 content ran about ten times faster in Azure versus downloading locally. This likewise also means that uploads to SharePoint Online will run ten or more time faster. Given that time is money, that’s why I prefer to use Azure even for mundane stuff like this.

Now the Ignite 2016 PowerPoint slides alone come to over 10GB of data. So once the I had downloaded all that to my Azure Azure VM, I installed the new OneDrive for Business sync client and sync’ed the existing destination Team Site Document Library. The sync tool then downloaded the existing contents to my Azure VM without issue (about 3GB of data). I then created a new directory in my local sync area and then dumped the 10GB+ of data into that location.

I watched as the sync client merrily start chewing away on all these new files. I check the status (as you can now do on the new client by simply click on the System Tray icon) and saw the files uploaded to the SharePoint Document Library.

Even though this was an azure VM, 10GB+ of data is still not going to happen instantaneously. I checked back with the process regularly. I did see the sync client crash once (remember, it’s still in preview) and restart but apart from that, in a short period of time all that data was now not only in a SharePoint Document Library but also synced to the Azure VM.

I then checked the properties of what I had stored locally in my sync folder and you see from the above that it was all there.

So there you have it. I successfully sync 12GB+ of data to a SharePoint Online Document Library using the new preview OneDrive for Business sync client. YEAH!

Even though you’ve seen this success, remember my earlier warning about this currently being demo software. It won’t be long before the completed production version is available to all and I’ll report on that when it happens. However, the big takeaway should be that new OneDrive for Business sync tool is looking pretty good and I am very confident about not only its reliability but also features upon release.

If you have been frustrated with previous versions of the sync tool, I’d suggest now is perhaps a good time to start looking at it again as I believe it is going to become a very powerful feature of the Office 365 suite that is going to challenge many existing incumbent third party software products that competes with the OneDrive for Business sync tool currently.

In summary, I am very confident that the new OneDrive for Business sync will be a major reason TO shift to Office 365.

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.

Office 365 Collaboration, Skype and Backup

Office 365 Collaboration—Robert Crane Docs.com

https://docs.com/d/embed/D25192961-2267-4946-0970-001023757425%7eMd4186d87-61d5-259a-4d26-00a8bd86cfff

The opportunities with Skype for Business—Robert Crane Docs.com

https://docs.com/d/embed/D25192961-2098-0759-5380-001420694364%7eMd4186d87-61d5-259a-4d26-00a8bd86cfff

Office 365 Backup options—Robert Crane Docs.com

https://docs.com/d/embed/D25192961-1989-0156-9410-001012602264%7eMd4186d87-61d5-259a-4d26-00a8bd86cfff

Here are some recent presentations I gave around Office 365:

Collaboration

Skype for Business

and

Backup

In essence they all point to the opportunity Office 365 provides IT resellers to go out and build services on stuff other than email migrations.

In short, if you are not adding value then your days are numbers. And simply moving data from one location to another and doing nothing else is not adding value!

Sharing Documents with Internal users using OneDrive for Business

A very common thing people want to is share document from their own OneDrive for Business with others. You can break this down into sharing with two different audiences, internal and external.

Internal users are users inside the same Office 365 tenant. While external users are those outside the users Office 365 tenant. The above video shows you how to share documents from a user’s OneDrive for Business with internal users. Look out for another video coming soon that details the process of sharing with external users.

This tutorial shows you how to share files with other users in your Office 365 tenant. You’ll see how to share a file, respond to an invite and co-author a document. You’ll also see how to quickly locate files that others have given you access to from their own OneDrive.