Wow, can you believe it! I made it two weeks in a row and making weekly updates and there is actually stuff to talk about as well. Who would have thought that was possible.
Office is getting a Make-Over
If you are using Office 2016 and you are in the Office Insiders Fast ring you will notice that EVERYTHING looks different! If you are using a Corporate Account for Office 365 you can head over here to learn how to get yourself into the Insider Ring. If you are using consumer, it’s a drop down.
I remember way back in Office 2007 when they introduced the ribbon. At the time I was working at a school district and was responsible for training the nearly 2000 staff members on how it worked and it was a MAJOR deal. Although not as major, this is going to be another change to customers so I hope the training departments are ready. Here is a screenshot from Outlook 2016 for example:
That is certainly a “simplified” version of the ribbon. Word, Excel and PowerPoint don’t have the simplified ribbon but I’m sure they are next. After using it for a few days, I like it!
Syncing Security Groups with Team Membership
If you missed it, Teams Team leader Dan Stevenson posted a super-interesting article on how to synchronize the membership between security group and Office 365 groups. It pains me that this is still a thing and I’m sure someday they will be one in the same.
“Meet Now” with Microsoft Teams
Microsoft posted a great article about the completion of several key meeting capability in the Skype for Business to Teams Roadmap. They focus on the pre-meeting, during meeting, post-meeting experience, federated meetings and more.
Funny, the only thing that isn’t in article is to announce that Teams has a “Meet Now” feature like Skype for Business. I really need to be able to create an ad-hoc meeting, and invite anyone from any team to it and go. Well, maybe in the next “Meet Now” article will detail that.
Click the URL, join a team
Teams picks up one of the most requested and feared features. You can now send out links to a specific team and when people click on it they join (or go into a pending state to join). I look forward to all of the SfB IM’s with Teams Team URL’s in it.
Magic Quadrant is coming for you!
Everyone loves a good Magic Quadrant. Well, no shock but Microsoft made the Meetings Magic Quadrant and not only that it’s a three way race between Zoom, Cisco and Microsoft. I’m a bit shocked by how high Zoom is but maybe their super-simple-few-features Meeting experience is what people are looking for. Something that just works. I’ll be honest, first time I heard the name Zoom I thought it was a new car from Mazda.
Skype for Business is Dead?
Well, according to an e-mail I received from AVST it is. “With Microsoft saying ‘goodbye’ to Unified Messaging … and the news that Skype for Business Server 2019 will be its final release”. I wonder, is it possible to say a product is on it’s final version and yet continue to update it with new features every few months *cough* Windows 10 *cough* to meet the needs of the market. I wonder.
