A bit behind schedule per se but here are the recent updates I saw as important for IT Professionals in April.
You can download and view the slides here:
Tag: Video
Overview of Office 365 Security
I’ve just completed a roadshow focusing on the security options in Office 365. I certainly cover what is in all plans but I do focus on what is available, and should be implemented, in the advanced plans such as E3 and E5. I also cover how the security in Office 365 can be enhanced using things such as Azure AD Premium, Intune, Azure Rights Management, Enterprise Mobility Suite and more.
The presentation was given to SMB resellers so it also contains some insights from me on how IT resellers can generate revenue for their business while providing greater levels of security for their customers.
Here are the slides:
or via:
I’ve also added the session to my free:
at the CIAOPS Academy
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.
The impact of Stuxnet
I’ve always had a fascination for the change cyber security is bringing and how little people appreciate the challenges and dangers it provides. One of these major changes of late has been the Stuxnet program and how it now seems evident that we are at the of a new age of cyber warfare.
If you have any interest in cyber security or the changing face of the digital world that we live in I’d highly recommend you take a look at the above documentary:
Zero Days – Stuxnet and the Iran Nuclear Program
It provides a really good in depth examination of what Stuxnet is and how it has impacted us far beyond its original mandate.
I’d also commend to you the book:
which also covers a lot of the same material.
Ultimately, I still firmly believe that technology will doom us all as I see more and more of our lives being placed in critical but effectively insecure systems all being tied together. This growing interdependency means a failure of one part of the system potentially leads to a catastrophic failure of the complete system.
Yes, technology is amazing and yes technology can help us solve many problems, but when these solution create additional vulnerabilities is the cure worse than the cause? All I can say is make sure you have your contingencies in place and always be sceptical of technology. Trust but verify as they say.
The ramifications of Stuxnet go far beyond the job it was designed to do Seeing the movie and reading the book will help you understand that Pandora’s box has now been opened.
Beyond the license
One of the major limitations I find with many who have an Office 365 Suite is that they are only using it for email, and basic email at that! This means they are failing to make use of get services like OneDrive for Business, SharePoint, Yammer and more!
In many cases this is because they are no aware of the products and services that are available to them as part of their Office 365 package. A while back I did a webinar with Greg Plum from plumuc.com where we focused on helping attendees understand the value that the Office 365 suite contained that they were most likely not taking advantage of.
We recorded that webinar and I’ve now posted it up on my Youtube channel as you can see above. The slides are also available at:
Hopefully, this webinar gives you a better idea of many of these ‘undiscovered’ Office 365 features and how they can be used to solve business problems. If you have Office 365 I’d urge you to take a deeper dive into the product and understand everything that you are paying for. Once you’ve done that you may be surprised at how many of the features within Office 365 can be used to make your business and users more productive. Investing a little bit of time up front to gain the knowledge pays big dividends down the track.
Administering SharePoint
For those who are not familiar with SharePoint Online it can be a very daunting product to wrap your head around. This is even more so when it comes to administering SharePoint Online.
So with that in mind I have created the above video to give you an overview and some guidance when it comes to administering SharePoint Online that is part of Office 365.
Hopefully after watching the video you’ll be more comfortable with managing and configuring SharePoint Online which will allow you to more easily unleash SharePoint Online’s benefits in your business.
Introduction to Azure
I have blogged and done plenty of presentations about different Azure services (i.e. Azure SMB File Shares recently), but when I looked through my list of YouTube videos I didn’t have a basic video that provided just an general overview of what Azure is.
So I took some content from a recorded webinar and packaged it up to the video you’ll see above and at:
It runs for about ten minutes and hopefully provides a good resource for those who are still trying to understand what Azure is all about.
From there, I’d suggest you take a look at my online training academy which has a few courses on Azure but probably the most relevant one is:
which has about 19 lessons that are aimed at giving you basic information about some of the most relevant features of Azure for IT Professionals.
You can also search all my blog posts on Azure using the Azure tag. The results of that are:
which you can use now or any time in the future as I aim to continue to tag each article which deals with Azure.
If you are still struggling with Azure, don’t hesitate to contact me with your questions and I’ll do my best to help shed some light on what at times, I understand, can be somewhat confusing. If you’d also like to see me write or present about something in Azure just let me know and I’d be happy to make it happen. All you gotta do is ask.
Questions about Office 2016 via Office 365
Here are some common questions that I see out there about Office 2016 via Office 365.
Q. Am I required to upgrade from Office 2013 on my desktop to Office 2016 if my Office 2013 was installed from Office 365?
Yes, however you have 12 months to complete that transition. That means you must upgrade your Office 365 Office 2013 to Office 2016 by the 22nd of September 2016. After that date any existing Office 365 Office 2013 installation will reverted to “reduced functionality mode”, basically read only.
Q. Will existing Office 2013 installations from Office 365 automatically be upgraded without user interaction?
No. Users will not have their version of Office 2013 on the desktop automatically upgraded to Office 2016 without their input. Typically, they will need to upgrade from the portal or via an administration installation using the Office 2016 Deployment toolkit.
However, according to the Office 2016 Q and A:
If your admin does not manage your installations and updates an automatic upgrade will occur for Office 2013 users. When your automatic upgrade is ready for you to install, you’ll receive a notification that appears on the menu bar in one of your Office applications (for example, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote). When this notification appears follow the steps to update to the current version of Office.
If your Office 365 for business admin manages your Office installations your admin will need to manage your updates to Office 2016.
This is along the lines of the Windows 10 upgrade process. Notification will be received that an Office update is available but users will need to follow the steps in the notification to upgrade.
Q. Can you downgrade from Office 2016 to Office 2013 with Office 365?
No. Only Volume Licensing of Office directly has downgrade rights. Office 365 purchased via Open does not provide downgrade rights for Office.
Q. Can I obtain Office 2016 from Office 365 from DVD media or downloading an ISO?
No. Office 2016 from Office is deployed using ‘Click-to-run’ technology that delivers software directly from the Internet. An administrator can use the Office 2016 Deployment toolkit to create deployment repositories on a network if required.
Q. Can I install Office 2016 from Office 365 in a Remote Desktop environment (i.e. on a Terminal Server)?
Yes, provided you have Office from Office 365 under an E (Enterprise) SKU. If you do then you use the Office 2016 Deployment toolkit to do that. For more information about Office in an RDS environment see my previous post:
Installing Office 365 pro Plus on an RDS server – updated
Q. When can I get access to Office 2016 software from Office 365?
The ability to install the latest software is being rolled out across Office 365 tenants in a staged manner. If you wish to ensure have access to the latest Office 365 abilities ensure you have Office 365 First Release enabled. You will then find Office 2016 preview available to first release tenants.
To find out when your tenant will receive Office 2016 from Office 365 review:
How do I update Office to Office 2016 using Office 365 for Business?
The table before from the Office 2016 wiki details when the upgrades are available depending on your version of Office 2016
|
Office 365 plans or versions |
Upgrade timeline |
Default Update branch |
More Information about how to upgrade |
|
Office 365 Business plans (Small Business Premium, Business, Business Premium) |
Available now for new installations. Automatic upgrades will occur in Q4 of 2016. |
See How do I update Office to Office 2016 using Office 365 for business? |
|
|
Office 365 ProPlus SKU(Enterprise, Midsize, Education) |
Planned for the first quarter of 2016. |
Where can I find information about updating Office 365 ProPlus to the Office 2016 version? *ProPlus can be configured to use Current Branch if desired. See the Configure the update branch to be used by Office 365 ProPlus section from here. |
|
|
Available now. |
|||
|
Office 365 Home, Personal, or University. |
How do I get my Office 365 upgrade to Office 2016? |
For more information about the different update branches or how to deploy a specific branch see Overview of update branches for Office 365 ProPlus.
Thus, if you are on an Enterprise SKU of Office 365 you will not typically see Office 2016 being rolled out until early 2016 according to the above table because these SKUs are automatically on the Current Branch for Business update regime. You can however, shift Enterprise licenses to the Current branch update regime so that they will receive an update to Office 2016 before the end of the year. If you want it earlier than that you will need to be on first release.
To configure the update branch for an Office 365 ProPlus installation, you can use the latest version of the Office Deployment Tool or the latest version of the Group Policy Administrative Templates files (ADMX/ADML) for Office 2016.
Q. How will Office 2016 fro Office 365 updates be handled going forward?
Office 2016 from Office 365 will move to a similar update methodology approach that Windows 10 has adopted. This means that updates (security and features) will be pushed out on a regular basis via a number of different update ‘branch’ offerings. Different SKUs will be on different ‘branches’ as detailed in the above table. To better understand how Office 2016 updates are going to function review:
Overview of update branches for Office 365 ProPlus
and this video from Microsoft:
Q. What other information is available about Office 2016 from Office 365?
Prepare to update Office 2016 Pro Plus to the Office 2016 version
Q. Can I have both Office 2013 and Office 2016 from Office 365 on the same machine?
No.
Q. Are any Office 2013 applications removed during the installation of Office 2016 that are not upgraded?
Yes. If you have InfoPath from Office 2013 ProPlus installed it will be removed during the upgrade. It will however still be available for download from the software section of the Office 365 portal.
SharePoint Designer 2013 will also be removed during the Office 2016 upgrade process. It again can be installed from the software page in the office 365 portal.
Versions of Visio Pro 2013 and Project Pro 2013 will also be removed from the computer during an upgrade. You won’t be able to reinstall them after the Office 2016 installation. You will need to install the 2016 versions of Visio Pro for Office 365 and Project Pro for Office 365 on a computer with the Office 2016 version of Office. This removal only happens when you manually update to Office 2016. It is recommended that you wait for the automatic update to update all office applications on the desktop, including Visio and Project.
See – “We need to remove some older apps” error for more information about existing apps being removed during the Office 2016 upgrade.
Q. Do users have be local administrators to install Office 2016 from Office 365?
Yes. Per:
Deploy Click to Run for Office 365 products
Users must be local administrators on their computers to install Click-to-Run for Office 365 products.
If users in your organization are not local administrators on their computers, you can use one of the following methods to install Click-to-Run for Office 365 products for users:
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Have an administrator log on to the user’s computer and install Click-to-Run for Office 365 products.
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Use a software distribution product, such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager.
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Use Group Policy computer startup scripts.
CIAOPS 