Only on more webinar before we greet 2017! A big turn out this month and some good questions around the Power BI Office 365 content pack and Teams Sites was had and recorded. I also did a quick overview of the new Microsoft Teams and how to enable it in your Office 365 tenant.

The slides are now available for free download at:

If you are not a CIAOPS patron you want to view or download a full copy of the video from the session you can do so here:

http://ciaops-academy.teachable.com/p/november-2016-need-to-know-webinar1

you can also now get access to all webinars via:

http://ciaops-academy.teachable.com/courses/need-to-know-webinars

for a nominal fee.

I’ll be posting information about the December which at this stage looks like being around the 15th of December. As yet I haven’t settled on a topic, so if you have a suggestion of what you’d like to see a deep dive on when it comes to Office 365 please don’t hesitate to contact me (director@ciaops.com).

CIAOPS Need to Know Webinar–November 2016

The November Need to Know webinar is now open for registrations. This is a free event that I put on once a month where you can come and hear about the latest Office 365 news as well as ask any question you want about Office 365. I’ll also be doing a focus session around building a basic intranet using SharePoint Online.

You can register now via:

November Webinar Registration

The details are:

CIAOPS Need to Know Webinar – November 2016
Thursday 17th of November 2016
11am – 12pm Sydney Time

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

As for content, well, there is still plenty of news and updates flowing from from the recent Microsoft Ignite Conference. For the focus session I’m going to give you a head start and some best practices around creating an intranet using SharePoint Online. You’ll learn how to structure, build and create something that you can use for your business today to be more productive. Best of all, it will be exactly what your business needs since you created it!

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

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.

My Office 365 Groups are now SharePoint sites

There are a lot of changes rolling out to SharePoint Online and one of the major ones is around Office 365 Groups.

Office 365 Groups used to be simply a shared mailbox and a shared OneDrive For Business (basically a single Document Library). Groups have now become more about identity management in Office 365 than a separate service.

If I now navigate to my OneDrive for Business I see a list of Office 365 Groups at the bottom of the menu on the left.

if I navigate to one of these you’ll see I end up in a Document Library as shown above. However, if you now look more closely, you’ll see that is in fact now a complete SharePoint site.

If I now navigate to the Home page you’ll see that I get the modern SharePoint interface with Quicklinks and Activity on the front page.

Here I can create more apps (like Document Libraries) for the site.

If I go to Site Contents, I see the familiar SharePoint overview of all the items that existing with a SharePoint Team Site.

Interestingly, when I go to Site Settings for the Team Site I basically only see two items as shown above.

You’ll also notice that the URL of this new location is:

http://.sharepoint.com/sites/

This indicates that the Group is now a stand alone Site Collection. However, when I look inside my SharePoint Admin Center I don’t see this Site Collection listed.

A few observations here.

I can create new apps within the new Group Team Site but I can’t appear to create any subsites.

When I go to the Site Settings for the new Group Team Site you’ll see that the theme changes and I lose the Pages option from my menu on the left.

The Settings for a Document Library appears identical to what is available in a standard Team Site although there are less options.

The above shows all the options available from a standard Team Site Document Library as a comparison.

You can still share individual files like you can in standard Team Site but there isn’t anywhere to share or set permissions in the new Group site.

You’ll notice there is no full site “share” (upper) as there is in a standard Team Site (lower).

So in summary, Office 365 Groups have now had their data storage locations upgraded to a ‘basic’ SharePoint Team Site. This new Group site is it’s own Site Collection were permissions are managed by the Group rather than in the SharePoint site. This Group site also doesn’t have the full functionality of a standard Team Site.

The main question I have at this point is where the new Groups sites storage comes from? It seems that it doesn’t come from the standard SharePoint Team Site pool, as the site isn’t even listed there. Does that mean the storage is independent of that available for standard Team Sites? If so I wonder what the limit of storage is? I wonder if it is like OneDrive for Business and effectively unlimited for Enterprise plans? My guess? I’d say each Group site has a limit of 25TB. Is it possible that each Group could have 25TB of space available to it? Not sure.

From what I understand, Office 365 Groups have now become more a container of users that will be utilised across all the Office 365 services, from Yammer to Exchange and so on. Each Office 365 Group will get a cut down version of a full SharePoint Team Site, in an independent Site Collection. I also believe an Office 365 Group will get its own Yammer location.

So the change here is that you need to start thinking about an Office 365 Group as a location that holds a collection of users. These users have access to a number of Office 365 services (such as the basic Team Site) as part of being members of this Office 365 Group. This new Office 365 Group can also be given access to other Office 365 services, much like any security group.

It is clear from all the information I’ve been watching from Microsoft Ignite, that Office 365 Groups are still an intermediate step when it comes to collaboration, between an individual’s OneDrive for Business and a fully blown ‘standard’ SharePoint Team Site. That makes sense, as it keep things simple for users who just want to start collaborating. If you are a member of an Office 365 Group you get a basic independent location to share files, folders and information as well as share information.

Where the complexity arises is where is the best place for people to store stuff? Their OneDrive for Business? A Group site? A Team Site? Yammer? etc? They are spoilt for choice but does require somewhat of an understanding of what each location can and can’t do. Maybe that’s why some yearn for the good ol’ of simple an F: drive to store stuff in?

I need to go away and continue to work through the content from Microsoft Ignite, especially the deep dive sessions so I can determine exactly how all this fits together and what Microsoft’s plans are going forward. Now that I actually have these abilities in my tenant it will be easier and I’ll report back what I find. Until then, enjoy the new functionality office 365 Groups provides. Also remember, that many changes are still rolling out, and will continue to do so for some time yet!

Automatically download all the Microsoft Ignite 2016 content

I’m still working my way through all the content from the recent Microsoft Ignite 2016, however what I really wanted was all the PowerPoints from each presentation in one place as files and searchable. I also heard from many who wanted that as well as all the videos from the sessions downloaded locally.

Luckily, Michel de Rooij has created a PowerShell script to do this automatically for you. You’ll find it here:

Ignite 2016 Slidedeck and Video downloader

Simply download and run the script to get the videos and presentations from each session downloaded directly to your local machine. If you are like me and only want the PowerPoint’s then run the following command:

.\ignite2016downloader.ps1 –novideos

That will automatically create a local directory called \ignite2016 and commence downloading the specified content there. You see exactly this taking place from the screen shot above.

Now, downloading the content is one thing but making effective use of so much material is another, but I have a solution for that as well. What I did after getting all the content was to then to upload it into a SharePoint Online Document Library so that it is quickly searchable and I can easily see a preview of each file. Not only that, I can also use my own custom metadata to tag information by technology allowing me to group similar sessions together, keep track of what I’ve already reviewed and so on. Watch out for an upcoming post on how I’ve done this.

Remember, data on its own is useless. With SharePoint Online, I’ve transformed data into information and in the process made myself more effective. Achievement unlocked!

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.

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.