Document conversations deprecated

It was disappointing to learn today that Microsoft has decided to deprecate the document conversations feature linking SharePoint Online and Yammer.

Just over a year ago I wrote how this new features had been enabled:

Yammer integration has arrived

and how excited I was to see social being integrated into traditional file storage. But according to this blog post from Microsoft:

https://blogs.office.com/2015/07/16/document-collaboration-in-yammer-just-got-better-with-office-online/

at the bottom amongst the questions is this.

Previously, we announced the release of document conversations, which embeds Yammer conversations inside files stored in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online. However, we’ve seen very low engagement with this feature in its current implementation. Today’s announced Office Online integration brings document collaboration into Yammer. We believe giving teams the ability to work on files in the context of their existing Yammer groups and conversations provides a more engaging and relevant experience. As such, with this latest release of document collaboration using Office Online inside Yammer, we are rolling back the current implementation of the document conversation feature, but will continue to explore other ways for users to start new Yammer conversations from files.

Interestingly, these new features they speak of seem to only apply to:

First, the document preview and edit experience for files uploaded into Yammer are now powered by Office Online.

To my mind that is creating another silo in which information will reside as Yammer documents are different from SharePoint Online documents. Unfortunately, as I understand it, Yammer documents don’t have the same functionality as SharePoint document when it comes to things like workflows, check in / check out, approvals, etc. at this point in time.

It seemed to me that the old way of having documents hosted in a single location like SharePoint and then having Yammer conversations around these document made a lot more sense. The new changes seem to me to be encouraging people to continue to put files in different locations and in turn cause more confusion and frustration about where the ‘single point of truth’ actually lies.

However, I do see something very positive when I read further through the blog post from Microsoft:

The recently announced Yammer integration with Delve and the Office 365 Video Portal, which enables users to have inline Yammer conversations and share content to Yammer, will also remain available.

Unfortunately, this is buried at the end of the post. What in essence it says is that you should be using document conversations from Delve and not from SharePoint Online. This makes a lot of sense as Microsoft is pushing Delve as the single pane of glass across all your information repositories. I’ll be doing a post about the growing importance of Delve soon, so stay tuned.

I have championed the fact that Office 365 users need to start making Delve the central part of their Office 365 experience for two reasons. Firstly, it makes your more productive and secondly this is the direction Microsoft is moving with Office 365.

If anything, this change in document conversations indicates that poorly utilise features will be deprecated (which Microsoft will do more rapidly since it can monitor the metrics so much easier) and secondly that Delve is becoming the most important piece of Office 365!

Auto managed SharePoint storage

When you look at your site collections in SharePoint Online you’ll probably see something like this:

In the first two columns after the site collection you’ll find the Storage used and Storage limit like so:

This means the Storage limit has to be managed manually which can be a hassle as site collection usage grows.

You can however go into the SharePoint admin settings and change the storage from Manual to Automatic as shown above.

Once switched to Automatic you won’t see the Storage Limit or Percent Used columns any more as seen above. Required storage will now pull automatically from your total available SharePoint Online pooled storage for all of the site collections you have. Your sites will therefore use only exactly what they need from the total pool available up to the limit of 1TB per site collection or what is available in overall pooled storage for your tenant.

New SharePoint Online tenants will now be set to Automatic by default for storage management, while existing tenants will remain set to Manual. Unless you have a requirement to set limits per site collection, best practice is probably to change the setting to Automatic and avoid the hassle of having to tweak the storage settings for your SharePoint Online site collections. Set once and forget sounds good to me.

Office 365 Saturday–Sydney

I have been lucky enough to be selected to speak at the Office 365 Saturday event in Sydney this weekend, the 13th June. My session is on the ‘Business of Yammer’ but I am also looking forward to a full day of Office 365 topics presented by some very knowledgeable people in the SharePoint and Office 365 space.

One of the sessions I am really keen to see is the one on PowerBI. So if you are interesting in attending you can register at:

http://www.o365saturdayaustralia.com/Pages/Sydney.aspx

O365 Saturday Sydney kicks off registrations at 8:30am on 13th June at Cliftons – 13/60 Margaret Street, Sydney NSW, 2000.

The whole day is free and great opportunity to do some networking and get those burning Office 365 questions answered. If you are planning on attending let me know and we can perhaps catch up.

I hope to see you there.

SharePoint Online Backups

I get lots of questions about how/if data is backed up with SharePoint Online. Remember, that SharePoint Online is composed of two items , Team Sites and OneDrive for Business. Both of these are SharePoint, OneDrive for Business is simply a very limited set of standard Team Site features, but it is STILL IS SharePoint.

As I say over and over and over again, SharePoint is a collaboration system not just a file share. It is very different from a traditional network share. Thus, the way that data is stored is very different to start out with.

Firstly, all of SharePoint’s data is stored in a database. Calendars, contacts, lists AND flies are all stored inside a database because they are objects. This means that when you upload a file to SharePoint Online it is wrapped inside an object that contains additional information not just the file. This information could be meta data, workflows, previous versions and more.

When a user deletes something from SharePoint Online it will generally be sent to their recycle bin. They can recover it from here themselves currently for a period of 93 days.

If in that 93 days the file is deleted from the users recycle bin it is moved to an administrator recycle bin for the remainder of those 93 days.

Points to remember with the recycle bin:

– Deleted items can be recovered up to 93 days after deletion

– Items in the users recycle bin count against the storage quote for that site. Items in the administrators recycle bin don’t count against the storage quota for the site.

– The administrator recycle bin can only be accessed by a Site Collection Administrator.

For more information about various recycle bins and how to recover see:

Manage the Recycle Bin of a SharePoint Online site collection

Document Libraries, i.e. where files are stored in SharePoint, have version history enabled by default and set to save 500 versions of a file. Each time a file is changed and save a new copy is retained. This versioning can be edited and disabled if required and also counts against your storage site quota.

For more on versioning see:

How does versioning work in a list or library?

Apart from that SharePoint Online

– Is backed up every 12 hours and kept for 14 days

– The only recovery option is a full site collection restore

– To perform a site collection restore you must contact technical support

– The restore location is the same as the source, so you will loose all data that is currently hosted there.

Further details are contained in this blog post:

Restore options in SharePoint Online

If none of these options are adequate then there are third party backup providers like:

Leaphq

and

CloudFinder

and others that can provide an alternate method of backing up SharePoint data.

With all SharePoint Online backup option, you need to understand that some allow recovery of any items (i.e. appointment, list item, contact, file etc) while some just allow recovery of files.

In my experience, with document library versioning now enabled by default and presence of a recycle bin, there is generally no need for a third party tool, however they are available if your needs are not adequately covered by the tolls built into SharePoint.

Revised bootcamp notes publication now available

As I detailed a while back I have now updated my Bootcamp products offering to include:

1. Latest version of my Office 365 bootcamp notes. This OneNote notebook is something I use everyday to capture information about Office 365. It is my reference ‘bible’ covering everything from Exchange to Sharepoint, Delve to Single Sign on as well as troubleshooting, best practices and a range of PowerShell scripts and third party solutions that work with Office 365.

2. Latest version of my Azure bootcamp notes. This OneNote notebook contains my daily brain dump about Azure. It contains links, information, tutorials and more. Again, this is something I use everyday and update constantly.

3. Exam cram notes for the Office 365 70-347 and 70-346 exam. It contains information and links to help you pass the exam. It also has a number of practice exam questions to give you an idea of what might be covered in an exam.

4. Five (5) supporting Office 365 checklists and templates that you can use for your Office 365 implementation. These documents are in various Office formats (Word, Excel, etc).

There are two ways to get access to this material:

1. You can join my Cloud Business Blueprint community via:

http://www.cloudbusinessblueprint.com/members-sign-up/

where you’ll get immediate access to the latest versions plus heaps of other unique on demand training, cheat sheets, re-brandable content, articles AND access to the members forums to converse with other cloud resellers.

2. You can purchase the existing Office 365 bootcamp notes via;

http://www.e-junkie.com/ciaops/product/488325.php

for AU $148. This purchase will also entitle you to a 12 monthly subscription for updates to these products (generally updated monthly).

Also, given that the 74-325 Office for SMB exam has been superseded I have made the OneNote exam cram notes I created for this available for free download with all my other free material at:

http://www.ciaops.com/downloads

If nothing else, those bootcamp notes are going to provide a centralised and searchable way to locate just about anything to do with Office 365 and Azure. This will save you inordinate amounts of time and easily pay for your outlay. You’ll also get free updates for to all of these for 12 months once you purchase. Like I said, I use these notebooks EVERY DAY.

If you want some testimonials about these bootcamps and information provided visit:

http://www.ciaops.com/bootcamp/

Please support this material so I can continue creating more.

Need to know podcast–Episode 83

In this episode I’m joined by a real SharePoint and Office 365 rockstar (who also happens to be an MVP) – Benjamin Niaulin.

Benjamin shares his insights and experiences from the recent Microsoft Ignite Conference. We then deep dive into the new Office 365 Groups and how important they are becoming to the service overall. Finally, I couldn’t let Benjamin escape with out providing some guidance around SharePoint migrations.

A huge amount of value in this episode from a doyen of the community, so don’t miss it. You can listen to the episode at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-83-benjamin-niaulin/

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 me any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show. I’m also on the hunt for some co-presenters so if you are interested on being a regular part of the show please contact me.

Resources

Microsoft Ignite on demand – http://channel9.msdn.com/events/Ignite/2015/

Blogging comes to Delve – https://blog.ciaops.com/2015/05/blogging-comes-to-delve.html

New OneDrive Sync client – https://blog.ciaops.com/2015/05/more-onedrive-information-from-ignite.html

Mobile device management – https://blog.ciaops.com/2015/05/mobile-device-management-has.html

Offline Azure backup – https://blog.ciaops.com/2015/05/offline-azure-backup.html

Sharegate – http://en.share-gate.com/

Sharegate blog – http://en.share-gate.com/blog/

Benjamin Niaulin – https://twitter.com/bniaulin

Webinar on Office 365 Groups – http://en.share-gate.com/blog/groups-for-office-365-webinar

Benjamin’s wrap up of Microsoft Ignite – http://en.share-gate.com/blog/ignite-collaboration-in-a-modern-workplace-transformed

Blogging comes to Delve

The more I see of Delve in Office 365 the more excited I become. Why? Firstly, Delve is HUGE point of differentiation between Microsoft and its competition. Secondly, it provides powerful yet simple insights for average users into the vast array of information sources they have in Office 365. Delve quickly integrates information from SharePoint, OneDrive, Email, Yammer and more in a single pane of glass and prioritises that based on your interactions. It also allows you to not only view your Delve but the Delve of others in your team to see what they are up to.

Delve is also become the central location for information about you in Office 365. It contains your profile information, who you are and what you do in the business. One of the options that you can now incorporate in your Delve profile, as you can see above is a blog. This new Delve blog features replaces the old one from SharePoint and provide a much easier way of creating and sharing your thoughts.

When you select the Start Writing link, Office 365 will take a minute or two to set up your blogging platform. From what I can see it creates this a dedicated SharePoint Site Collection at:

https://tenantname.sharepoint.com/portals/hub/loginname

In a short order of time your blogging platform is read and you can create your first post. The editing platform is currently very simple (which is great) and very, very reminiscent of the new Office product, Sway (also coming to Office 365 soon). The easier it is, the more likely people will use it. All editing is now done directly in the browser (or the mobile app).

You basically create a title and add a banner. Then you type some text for the body as well as featuring a document from SharePoint that is embedded in your post if desired. This potentially allows you to use more detailed formatting if you need. This is great since if you wanted to be really visual you’d include a PowerPoint or potentially a Sway when it come to Office 365.

You then Publish the post when you are ready and there you have your first blog article.

Posts will now show up in your Delve activity feed, as seen above, that will also be made available to others in your team via the magic of the Officegraph technology that is powering Delve.

One of the big advantages of Delve is that you will be able to blog on the go using the mobile Delve app. As yet I can’t see how to do that just yet, but I know it is coming. So you can be out on the road, snap some pictures, write some text and get that up onto Delve to share with your team. Magic!

To my way of thinking Delve is becoming such an important part of Office 365 because it offers a gateway to unlock the vast treasure trove of information and value that a business creates around all Office 365 services. Having all of that surfaced quickly and automatically for users based on its relevance to them is a huge boost to productivity and collaboration that has never before been available. Combine that with the ability to consume and create content on a mobile device demonstrates to me that Microsoft really does get the concepts of the new way of working, that is social and mobile.

My questions to you however are, do you get it? Are you using Delve for increased productivity? If not why? Delve is the key that unlocks all the power that the complete Office 365 product brings to a business and it is only going to improve. Embrace the new way of working today with Delve.