Shared channels in Microsoft Teams are not exactly new, but at the same time relatively recent. Consistently amongst organisations and IT Pros the resounding commentary I’ve heard is that they are too confusing and have been disabled.

The problem is that shared channels are a mix of experiences borrowed from private channels and guest access, with extra layers of control wrapped around them.

My biggest frustration with the approach of disabling shared channels, is that I wished people did the same for private channels and guest access in the first place. Not because I think features should be disabled, but more so because I believe any feature before being made available to end-users should come with (in no particular order of importance):

• Governance to ensure the organisation remains compliant.
• Support to ensure that users don’t get lost and can get help if they need it.
• Training to ensure that they actually understand the why/which/what/when/who/how of the particular feature.

Unfortunately, this isn’t reality, and both organisations and users chastise each other or Microsoft for not doing things properly. Sometimes it’s not their actual faults, sometimes it actually is.

But anyway, back to shared channels.

More than meets the eye

Before shared channels was released, I shared a quiz asking what people knew about the features and restrictions. The features I asked about were merely to do with basic functionality of shared channels — not even factoring in users from external tenants.

In total there were 11 questions with a total of 20 points available. Out of 260 responses, the average score was only 10.6 — with many people responding to me on social media that the quiz was too hard. And most of the respondents were IT professionals — not even end-users, so imagine how much more challenging it can be for them.

(You can view the results here.)

Two different experiences

With shared channels in Microsoft Teams, there are effectively two different experiences that eventuate for users.

The first, is shared channels for internal use. This, is relatively innocuous and serves as another choice of whether to use an existing Team, a new Team, a private channel, a group chat, etc.

The second, is external access — where you can share channels with a user in another organisation, a Team in another organisation, and vice versa. This is where things become not just a little bit more challenging, but A LOT more challenging — if you want to do things somewhat properly that is.

Two different stories

Here’s the first challenge with shared channels. By default in Microsoft Teams, shared channels are enabled for all users, including the ability for internal users to invite external users as well as for them to join shared channels in other organisations.

The problem is that the exact opposite is configured as a default in Azure Active Directory under cross-tenant access settings.

What this results in, is a user attempting to perform a function that the application says is allowed, only to find out upon performing the action that it’s not allowed — and unfortunately with relatively vague reasons in the error message.

What a user sees

What a user thinks

Going down the rabbit hole

The problem is that this is just the start of our experience.

The relationship

The reasons why a user may not be able to invite an external user to a channel include:

• Both organisations set to block by default (Azure AD)
• Host organisation set to block by default (Azure AD)
• Host organisation set to block inbound (Azure AD)
• External organisation set to block by default (Azure AD)
• External organisation set to block outbound (Azure AD)
• Inviter not allowed to invite external users (Teams)
• Inviter not allowed to invite external users (Azure AD)
• External user not allowed to join external channels (Teams)
• External user not allowed to join external channels (Azure AD)

The problem is that it could be any permutation of these, and then there’s the added layer of being able to control the various aspects at a more granular level — by security group or individual user.

For example, you could have a policy in Teams that allows members of a particular security group to invite external users but have not set up the cross-tenant relationship in Azure AD.

Or you could have done all your bits correctly, but the other organisation hasn’t done theirs correctly.

The challenge is that before end-users can collaborate in a shared channel, the IT teams need to collaborate on setting up their relationship between organisations first.

The level of trust

And in order for external users to be able to actually upload files into a shared channel (separate from conversations), you need to enable trust settings between organisations.

Here’s the thing with trust settings… what if the external organisation has weak MFA or compliance policies?

What if they *shudder* allow SMS verification codes?

What if they allow jailbroken devices to be marked as compliant?

Getting personal

And if you want to get granular about controlling who from another organisation is allowed to come into your tenant shared channels, you can restrict this to specific users and groups:

But while that seems straightforward, wait until you get to the next screen:

When I think of an end-user trying to obtain this information from another end-user, and even having to use the term “object ID”, this is what I imagine:

Some months ago I was creating guidance for an organisation who wanted to start using shared channels, and when trying to come up with some documentation that could be provided to end users, and this is how I felt trying to explain it all:

In the end, I built a Power App to simplify the experience.

Teams Shared Channel Navigator

Yes, you read that right — it was easier for me to build an app than it was to explain the various outcomes and scenarios. Because working with shared channels, when done properly, is nothing short of a butterfly effect.

Not only did I build an app, but I also built associated workflows, AND found and worked out how to work with an undocumented/unsupported Microsoft API.

What it does

Instead of trying to explain the myriad of potential reasons why working with a shared channel may not be possible, this app simply shows the end user what they individually can or can’t do, and what is possible for the organisation.

How it works

When initially loading the app, it runs a workflow which calls an undocumented (and unsupported) Microsoft Teams API which lets us see what channel policies exist, and are assigned to the user.

(Initially I wanted to use an Azure Runbook with a PowerShell script to do it the supported way, but unfortunately the cmdlets require do not work with a combination of managed identities / service principals / application permissions — so there was no way to get the data in a secured manner.)

After a few seconds when the policies have been retrieved, the “Please wait…” text switches over to a clickable “Continue” button.

On the next screen, the application shows what the user can do based on the Microsoft Teams policies retrieved in the prior step. This is a crucial step, because not every user may have the ability to join shared channels in other organisations, or invite external people into internally hosted shared channels.

If both of those options are unavailable to the user, the text at the bottom is not visible and the “Search for an organisation” button does not appear.

If the user is able to perform either function and presses the “Search for an organisation” button, they are taken to the next screen which gives them to the option to see if a cross-tenant relationship has been established.

IMPORTANT: We can only check for our side of the process. If our side is set up correctly but the other side is not, we do not have the ability to check for that.

The user can enter either an email address of someone they wish to invite, or just the domain name of the organisation.

This calls a Microsoft Graph API endpoint which both checks to see if the partner organisation relationship has been established on our side, as well as the organisation name (as configured in their Azure Active Directory / Microsoft 365 tenant).

Based on the result it may return a negative and explain that a relationship has not been configured.

Or, if a relationship has been configured, it will identify the nature of the relationship is (ie. inbound or outbound).

If the relationship with the partner supports outbound access (i.e. the ability for users in our tenant to access channels in their tenant), the app then displays whether the user performing the search has the ability to access shared channels in the partner tenant.

This is an important step as the outbound relationship may be set to “All Users”, or may be restricted to specific individual users or security groups.

(In the below example I’ve decided to be a bit silly and show an animated GIF of Oprah Winfrey, however if the user does not have permission, it would return a “Computer says no” animated GIF from Little Britain.)

Summary

While shared channels do make it considerably easier for organisations to collaborate with each other, it’s the initial step of establishing that collaboration which can be somewhat challenging.

This solution allows users to perform some self-service discovery before contacting service desk teams to simply say “it doesn’t work” and have to begin the troubleshooting process from there.

This can reduce both the amount of frustration and time spent by all parties to get to the desired outcome of establishing collaboration between organisations and people.

And if you’re after the code, check my GitHub repository (https://github.com/loryanstrant/) as I’ll be explaining the back-end components and uploading the solution soon.

Originally published at Loryan Strant, Microsoft 365 MVP.

Attempting to explain Teams shared channels to end users was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A key requirement of working with shared channels in a secure manner, is to restrict access in either direction by either user or group.

This can only be done by using the object ID of the user or group from Azure Active Directory.

However, expecting an end-user to ask another end-user in another organisation what their user / object ID is, in order to provide that to their/your IT team… let’s turn the chair around and be real here: it’s not practical.

However, if we want to try making it possible at all, I’ve built an app to help with that.

It’s a simple app, it uses the Office365.Users connector to pull the user ID out from their Microsoft 365 / Azure Active Directory profile.

Feel free to download it from my GitHub repo, distribute, customise, whatever!

Originally published at Loryan Strant, Microsoft 365 MVP.

Helping users access external shared channels in Microsoft Teams was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the core principles I live my life by is to be informed, to know something fully before I make a decision.

Maybe it’s because I’m Autistic, maybe it’s just common sense, maybe it’s how I was raised, whatever — let’s not get philosophical here.

Virtually every organisation I’ve spoken to has said they’ve disabled shared channels in Microsoft Teams until they know more about it, and some have actually engaged me to help them with a framework for using it.

There are a number of challenges with shared channels, and that comes from the fact it’s trying to provide more granularity than guest access currently does, while at the same time trying to be flexible and easy to use — and we know you generally can’t have all of these together.

For those that have chosen to allow access to external channels and users, how do they know where their people are — and who is inside their tenant?

While there is some reporting in the Teams Admin Center (TAC), we have to dig into each Team, then each shared channel, and only then we can we find the external users and where they came from.

Thankfully we have a few endpoints in Microsoft Graph we can use to build some of our own reporting, using Power Automate to call the Graph endpoints and Power BI to visualise the data.

You can store the data in SharePoint Lists, Dataverse tables, or whatever you like.

There are a few aspects to capture in order to get a full picture:

• Organisations that have been configured in for cross-tenant access in Azure AD
• Shared channels attached to Teams
• Internal users accessing shared channels in other organisations
• Users from other organisations accessing shared channels in your tenant
• Identifying what internal shared channels the external users are in

DISCLAIMER: Some of these calls are using beta endpoints and are technically not supported — so use at your own peril/pleasure.

Pre-requisites

Before we can create any workflows that call Graph, you will need an Azure AD App Registration with the following permissions:

• Channel.ReadBasic.All
• ChannelMember.Read.All
• CrossTenantInformation.ReadBasic.All
• CrossTenantUserProfileSharing.Read.All
• Directory.Read.All
• Policy.Read.All

You’ll also need to already have (or build) a listing of:

• Users — ID & display name
• Teams — ID & display name

Key workflows

In all of my workflows, I use a variable called “GraphPath” and sometimes “GraphPathSuffix” to help make the design of them more scalable and repeatable, so where applicable I will include those variables.

List organisations configured for cross-tenant access

Here we will use two key requests:

• tenantRelationships/findTenantInformationByTenantId
• policies/crossTenantAccessPolicy/partners

First, let’s list all the partners we have defined in Azure AD:

As this only returns the tenant ID, we need to run a second call against each of them to capture their organisation name and primary domain:

The data we’ll record looks like this:

And in Power BI our output looks like this:

Listing shared channels in your tenant

Ideally you already have a list of Teams in your tenant stored somewhere, if you don’t — you’ll need it for this next step.

Here we will use one key request:

• teams/{team-id}/channels

The two parameters we’re using for our call are:

We’re then going to use both of these together with the Group ID of the Teams to see what shared channels exist:

For each channel we find, we’ll store these values:

Using a relationship between the “tenantid” value in this table and the same value in the table from the previous step we can start to build this out:

Where the values are blank in the “Remote Tenant” column, this is because the tenant is not external (i.e. the channel is hosted in our tenant).

List internal users accessing shared channels in other organisations

Here we will use two key requests:

• directory/outboundSharedUserProfiles
• directory/outboundSharedUserProfiles/{userId}/tenants

Let’s set our Graph query elements:

The first step is to simply find who in our tenant is accessing external tenants, with the only result being their ID:

For each of those users, we now need to extrapolate and find the related tenants:

Then for each tenant returned, we only need to store the user ID and external tenant ID:

Again, using a relationship between the “tenantid” value in this table and the same value in the table from the previous step we can start to build this out:

List users from other organisations accessing shared channels in your tenant

Here we will use two key requests:

• directory/inboundSharedUserProfiles

To see who from other organisations is inside of our tenant, our query is this:

And our action is simple:

Then for each result we find, we need to store the external user’s ID, display name, and home tenant ID:

Again, using a relationship between the “homeTenantId” value in this table and the same value in the table from the previous step we can start to build this out:

Connecting the dots

List which external users are in which shared channels

As we already have a list of shared channels stored in a table somewhere (in my case, it’s in Dataverse), we can now run a query against them.

Using this, we can now go beyond just having a listing of knowing which external users in are in shared channels, but knowing which users are in which channels themselves.

In my query to list those channels, I’ve used the existing “TenantID” variable I declared in my workflow to use with the Azure AD App Registration, so this will filter only channels that are in our tenant:

For each channel we want to list the members:

We again use our tenant ID to filter out any members who are internal, and I’ve also put a condition in place to only proceed if the resulting list has anything in it by using length(body(‘Filter_array_-_only_include_external_users’)):

For any users that do exist, we now record them in our table:

Over in Power BI we’ll establish a relationship between the Channel ID of the shared channels table and the Channel ID from this table (along with some filtering to remove channels where the “User IDs” column is empty), as well as the User ID from this table and the previous listing to get the following result:

Now, if you’re wondering why the list of external users is smaller in this list than in the previous list, it’s because there are effectively two components of the external users that exist:

• Their inbound user profile
• Their membership in a channel

Through the course of creating this solution, what I’ve discovered is that if you invite an external user to a shared channel, but they don’t accept the invitation — they will not show up as members of the channel.

It’s for this reason we need to maintain both lists of data (which could be addressed through better Power BI reporting skills than what I possess) — to understand where external users are in your tenant, and where they aren’t. This is the same as what we must do for Azure AD B2B guest users who may exist as an object in your directory, but not actually be a member of a M365 Group or Team (for any number of reasons, such as the Team no longer existing, they were removed by an owner, etc.).

Summary

As I started this blog post saying, it’s important to know what we are working with before we make decisions, as well as to provide troubleshooting and support in scenarios where things aren’t working the way we expect.

While a lot of what I’ve shown is possible in PowerShell, my preference is to do this using Power Automate, HTTP calls to Microsoft Graph, store the data in Dataverse tables, and report them with Power BI as it provides me with a solution that can continually operate without human intervention, as well as storing and displaying the data in a way that stakeholders and decision makers can access easily.

You may have reached this point and be wondering where the code for all this is, as I often publish the components on GitHub. As some of this was worked out during the course of writing this blog post, the workflows are not exactly in the most effective structure they could be.

Once I’ve cleaned them up, I’ll publish them on GitHub and update this blog post. For now, I’ve hopefully provided enough information for you to start building out your own reports.

Originally published at Loryan Strant, Microsoft 365 MVP.

Reporting on Teams shared channels & users was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In March 2023, Microsoft announced Microsoft 365 Copilot. Copilot will leverage the power of large language models alongside your Microsoft Graph data to reinvent productivity.

Copilot will be integrated into the Microsoft 365 apps we use every day (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Viva Engage, etc.). You’ll be able to use natural language commands to prompt Copilot (e.g., draft a 2-page proposal in Word based on the contents of this Excel spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentation). You’ll then be able to work with Copilot to refine the text, change its voice, make it more concise, etc.

Microsoft is testing Copilot in a small private preview with 20 customers today. Microsoft says they’ll be expanding the pilot, with more release details to come in the Microsoft Roadmap. Expect Copilot to be a key part of Microsoft’s announcements at upcoming conferences. It’s going to be a huge year!

MVP discussion about Copilot

Mike Maadarani, Antonio Maio, and I discuss Copilot on Episode 95 of the Microsoft 365 Voice. Key topics covered:

• How AI (Artificial Intelligence) will continue to change the way we work
• Examples of the productivity enhancements Copilot will bring to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook
• Ways in which we believe Copilot can help us manage our Teams meetings (e.g., summarizing meeting topics discussed, catching users up to speed on topics discussed if they arrive late, etc.)
• How Copilot can prompt leaders with suggested verbiage for Viva Engage posts
• A quick overview of the newly announced Microsoft Security Copilot
• Use of AI “for good” with ethical controls

Links to Microsoft Copilot articles: Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot-A whole new way to work, Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot — your copilot for work, Administration of Microsoft 365 in the new era of AI

Have a Microsoft 365 question? Submit it online! Your question may be featured in a future podcast episode.

Originally published at http://blog.splibrarian.com on April 3, 2023.

A discussion about Microsoft 365 Copilot was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of my favorite productivity tips!

If you’ve spent any amount of time collaborating on a document with people on a single artifact, the multiple ways in which you can co-edit files has been a massive leap forward in technology. I started my career as a technical writer and then a business analyst, and throughout my career spent countless hours chasing people for their input, and then had to merge, stare-and-compare, and edit. One of the more frustrating aspects of collaboration is that people duplicate content: people make an edit, then send their edited version as an email attachment rather than edit the shared version provided in SharePoint, OneDrive, or another cloud platform.

Please stop doing this! Turn revision marks on in your document, upload your file to one of your many cloud options, and send a link instead of an attachment!

Did you know that you can set your own default send option in your Outlook client? That’s right. Practice safe collaboration, people, and make this change today! This productivity tip is not in any way a new feature, but I find myself regularly telling people about it, so I thought I would share again here. This tip comes from the Microsoft support archives, and was one that I shared in the July 2019 Productivity Tips webinar, which you can watch in its entirety or download the slides, or jump to this exact tip in the video by clicking here.

Check out this productivity tip over on TekkiGurus.com

Originally published at buckleyPLANET.

Sending Attachments as Links in Outlook was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In this episode, the #M365AMA panel discusses the following community question:

“I have a company that currently does not have 2fa enabled. What will be the least disruptive way to enable it for them? One of my concerns is that a lot of folks may not remember their passwords. If I enable the 2fa will they be able to use all of their apps or will they be forced to sign in after 2fa is enabled. Would the easiest thing be to send a company wide email with the link to the 2fa page for them to register and just deal with any forgotten passwords at that point? Thanks for any tips!”

Check out the discussion here:

Participating in this discussion were:

• Christian Buckley @buckleyplanet
• Norm Young @stormin_30
• Mike Nelson @mikenelsonIO
• Kirsty McGrath @kirstymcgrath13

Some relevant notes/links shared by the team:

• Tutorial: Secure user sign-in events with Azure AD Multi-Factor Authentication [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/authentication/tutorial-enable-azure-mfa]
• From Microsoft Security, also check out “How to implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)” [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2020/01/15/how-to-implement-multi-factor-authentication/]
• A nice overview of best practices by Paul Moore at Delinea [https://delinea.com/blog/mfa-best-practices]

What is the least disruptive way to enforce MFA? #M365AMA was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Microsoft recently announced the ability for people within organizations to share pronouns within their Microsoft 365 profile. This is an exciting change, enabling organizations to create greater opportunities for inclusion.

We highlighted the new capabilities in Episode 93 of the Microsoft 365 Voice:

It’s great to see Microsoft supporting everyone in our community. Pronouns matter. Letting people choose their pronouns and having these pronouns reflected in Microsoft 365 are an important part of respecting everyone’s individuality.

The feature is disabled by default. IT administrators must enable pronouns before users will have the option to provide pronouns in their M365 profile cards. IT administrators should plan for this configuration change to take several hours to fully propagate in their tenant before the pronouns are available for editing.

Employees can choose whether to provide pronouns. Employees aren’t required to add pronouns to their profile cards. Employees that choose to add pronouns will have the pronouns appear on their M365 contact cards.

Microsoft has said more functionality is coming later this year. Stay tuned to the Microsoft 365 roadmap for further news.

Organizations that enable pronouns need to share the news. Consider how you’ll alert your employees that they can now provide their pronouns. Consider using Viva Connections or Viva Engage to spread the news. We provide several ideas during the episode on how to share this news across your organization.

Links to Microsoft articles: Creating the conditions for inclusion: Introducing Pronouns in Microsoft 365, https://aka.ms/M365PronounsUser, https://aka.ms/M365PronounsAdmin

Have a Microsoft 365 question? Submit it online! Your question may be featured in a future podcast episode.

Originally published at http://blog.splibrarian.com on March 11, 2023.

Introducing Pronouns in Microsoft 365 was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The POWER of Microsoft Lists and Power BI — Daniel Glenn

My second visit with Adam at Guy in a Cube highlights the benefits of using data from a Microsoft List in Power BI. Many organizations have data in their SharePoint and Microsoft Lists. I show how you can visualize that data using Power BI — in more than one way! Microsoft Lists and Power BI: collaboration power!

In this video we talked about how you can use the Power BI integration feature in lists to visualize them. Power BI will use AI to create a report that you can then save right back to the list. Then others that access the list can use the report!

Adam pointed out that the list in my demonstration was using some fancy formatting, so I of course gave a shoutout to my friend and fellow Microsoft MVP Chris Kent.

I then showed a recently announced feature which allows you to bring a Microsoft List in as a dataset in Power BI from the list itself. Amazing!

Check out the video below and let me know your thoughts.

Originally published at https://danielglenn.com on March 9, 2023.

The POWER of Microsoft Lists and Power BI — Daniel Glenn was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The MAGIC of Microsoft Teams + Power BI — Guy in a Cube

I recently had the pleasure of working with Guy in a Cube on a video highlighting the benefits of using Power BI in Microsoft Teams. It was fun to break-in — I mean be invited into — Patrick’s cube to record this video with Adam. 🙂 Be on the lookout for another video we recorded around Microsoft Lists!

In the video we talked about how you can use Power BI via an app inside of Microsoft Teams to view reports and work with your visuals. I also showed how you can add a Power BI workspace app in a Microsoft Teams channel as a tab. These Power BI apps are created from a workspace, and you have the capability of picking and choosing the functionality you want to include in the app from the workspace. As Adam pointed out, this is the preferred method of sharing reports in an enterprise scenario.

I highlighted just a couple ways that you can work around collaboration in Power BI. I’m really looking forward to how Microsoft takes collaboration to the next level in the coming months!

Check out the video below and let me know your thoughts.

Originally published at https://danielglenn.com on March 7, 2023.

The MAGIC of Microsoft Teams + Power BI — Daniel Glenn was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

March is Women’s History Month, a time to reflect on, appreciate, and celebrate the contributions women have made to change and improve our lives. As a female technologist, I’m passionate about encouraging and mentoring our #WomenInTech every day. Our female technology leaders face unique challenges. We’re often outnumbered by our male counterparts and can face an uphill journey to prove ourselves. But we bring strengths to the tech workplace: communication and critical-thinking skills, diverse life perspectives, and distinctive ways of solving traditional technology challenges.

This month we’re thrilled to welcome Edith Young to Episode 92 of the Microsoft 365 Voice. Edith is an IT leader with extensive experience in the Microsoft space. She also serves as a mentor and board member for TeamWomen, an organization dedicated to helping women and girls rise together.

We had a great discussion with Edith on the importance of leadership and mentoring. Key topics discussed include:

• Be OK being uncomfortable. How to lean into discomfort when you’re starting a new role, stretching to take on a new project, etc.
• Find your truth-tellers. Build relationships with those that will give you an unvarnished perspective on your performance, your personal brand, etc.
• Build partnerships. Identify the key individuals, leaders, and teams to invest in building strategic partnerships with.
• Look for leadership inspiration. Join a mentorship circle, take a leadership class, read books on leadership to gain new perspective and ideas.
• Lean into new opportunities (especially the scary ones). When an unexpected opportunity to stretch and grow comes your way, lean into it.

A big thank you to Edith for joining us. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did!

Have a Microsoft 365 question? Submit it online! Your question may be featured in a future podcast episode.

Originally published at http://blog.splibrarian.com on March 9, 2023.

In celebration of Women’s History Month was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We got an early Valentine’s Day gift this year-Yammer is getting a new name!

The change began last year when the Yammer Communities app in Microsoft Teams became Viva Engage. Now Microsoft is making it official. Over the coming year, all of Yammer will become Viva Engage and the Yammer brand will be retired.

Help spread the word that #YammerIsEngaged

It’s time! 💙❤️

Originally published at http://blog.splibrarian.com on February 14, 2023.

Yammer is evolving to Viva Engage was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At Rapid Circle, we utilise a framework known as the Enterprise Operating System (EOS), and to help achieve this we use a tool called Bloom Growth (formerly known as Traction Tools).

I won’t get into the specifics of how it works, but one of the things that comes out of our weekly “L10” team meetings is tasks get allocated to people. (This isn’t rocket science, and is possible with many other systems, but Bloom Growth is what we and many organisations use.)

The Challenge

The only issue with tasks being created in Bloom Growth is that they stay in Bloom Growth. If you want to update them or mark them as complete — you need to log into Bloom Growth to do that. Additionally, the only way you’re reminded of the tasks is a daily email — which for many people gets lost in their sea of other reminder emails.

Effective users of the Microsoft 365 platform will use To Do for managing their tasks as it does a great job of individual task lists, shared task lists, and synchronising tasks with Planner.

So how do we connect the two together?

The Solution — v1

As soon as I started using Bloom Growth and was assigned a task, I immediately looked for any form of integration to be able to bring the tasks to where I work — in Microsoft 365. Unfortunately nothing existed that I could find.

A quick search online yielded a positive result — a Bloom Growth v1 API swagger.

The initial solution I built was for myself only using two workflows.

Flow #1

1. Triggered based on a daily schedule
2. Connects to Bloom Growth with my account
3. Checks for any open tasks under my account
4. Checks to make sure the tasks don’t already exist in To Do
5. Creates tasks in a specific To Do task list with the Bloom Growth ID appended to the task title (required for Flow #2)

Flow #2

1. Triggered when a task in the specific To Do list was updated, using a trigger condition to only run for completed tasks
2. Connects to Bloom Growth with my account
3. Looks for a task in Bloom Growth that matches the ID in the task title
4. Marks the task as complete in Bloom Growth

While a few of my colleagues made copies of these workflows for themselves, I heard some of the managers lamenting that their staff were not completing tasks on time for the reasons mentioned above. And while I could go with the approach of walking people through setting it up, ultimately it’s a lot of separate solutions, running under each employee — which can be challenging to support.

Enter…

The Solution v2

While discussing this with one of my colleagues who was using a copy of my two flows, we wondered if there was a way we could do this at scale.

At the time, the Graph documentation for Microsoft To Do did not reflect that application permissions were supported for the endpoints, but I thought I’d try it anyway… and it worked.

So, without further ado, here is how to synchronise tasks from Bloom Growth with Microsoft To Do for large amounts of staff.

This solution utilises 3 workflows:

• Create a “L10 Tasks” folder for users
• Check for tasks assigned to them, add them to To Do
• Check for completed tasks in To Do, mark them as complete in Bloom Growth

Solution Requirements

There are 3 requirements we need for this to work:

Requirement #1: Bloom Growth access

For this solution to work, we need an account with administrator-level access in Bloom Growth, so that it can see the tasks of every single member.

Requirement #2: Azure AD App Registration

In order to be able to read/write everyone’s task lists, we need an Azure AD App Registration with the following permissions:

Create a client secret, and that’s it!

Requirement #3: Table to store user-specific information

For my solution, I used a SharePoint list out of convenience. However, you could use a Dataverse table or something else if you like.

All we need to store in this list is:

• User Principal Name (UPN)
• Bloom Growth ID
• Task list ID

Workflows

Workflow #1: Create the “L10 Tasks” list in To Do

This workflow runs on a regular basis and performs the following functions:

1. Get members of a security group (so we only apply this to valid users)
2. Find their Bloom Growth user ID
3. Create the task list in To Do
4. Record the details in a table

Of course we need some basic error checking to handle if they already have an existing task list, and secondly whether they actually exist in Bloom Growth.

Sure the workflow is not necessarily as elegant as it could be, but it only takes about 2–3 minutes to run for about 80 users, so I don’t feel the need to optimise it at this point.

Workflow #2: Check for new tasks in Bloom Growth and create them in To Do

This workflow is timed to run after the first workflow, and performs the following functions:

1. Get the users to run the sync against
2. For each user, find tasks assigned to them in Bloom Growth
3. Check if those tasks already exist in the “L10 Tasks” list (using the Bloom Growth task ID as a reference)
4. If not found, create the task in To Do with the Bloom Growth task ID in the title (used by the previous step, and the next workflow)

Again, this workflow could be more elegant, but it also only takes a whopping 2–3 minutes to run for the 80 users.

Workflow 3: Check for completed tasks in To Do and update their status in Bloom Growth

The first part is the same as Workflow 2, but what it does within the Apply to each is different.

Within the scope we retrieve the Bloom Growth ID of the task from title of the To Do task:

Then we check if the task is still open in Bloom Growth or not (as someone may have already marked it as complete directly in the web portal, and we don’t want to get an error):

The Final Result

Here’s what my tasks look like in Bloom Growth:

And in To Do:

So let’s mark one of these tasks as complete in To Do:

And presto:

You can download the full solution from my PowerThings repository on GitHub.

Appendix — Graph endpoints used

This blog post is already long, so I’ve put the breakouts of the To Do specific API calls down here.

Originally published at Loryan Strant, Microsoft 365 MVP.

Synchronising tasks at scale between Bloom Growth and Microsoft To Do was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When I started this blog in early 2004, one of my original goals was to track the various social networking platforms and the various collaboration tools that were beginning to infiltrate the enterprise. I was gathering this information as part of a planned doctoral program to study the social informatics around collaboration technologies to better understand their impact on the modern workplace. While I set aside my doctoral ambitions long ago, I remain fascinated by the growth and evolution of collaboration technology.

The first social networking platform was called “Six Degrees” and was created in 1997 by Andrew Weinreich. The website was named after the “six degrees of separation” concept, which suggests that any two people on Earth are six or fewer acquaintance links apart. Six Degrees allowed users to create profiles, invite friends, and browse other users’ profiles. The website was shut down in 2001, but it laid the foundation for the social networking platforms that followed, such as Friendster, MySpace, Ryze, and Facebook.

The Role of Social Networking in the Modern Workplace

Social networking plays an important role in modern organizational collaboration by providing a platform for employees to connect and communicate with each other in real-time. Social networking tools can help organizations to break down silos and promote cross-functional collaboration, which is critical for driving innovation, improving decision-making, and achieving business goals. Tools such as instant messaging, video conferencing, and collaborative workspaces — which have been added as native features within most enterprise applications — make it easier for employees to share information, exchange ideas, and work together on projects in real-time. This can increase productivity and efficiency, reduce duplication of effort, and improve the quality of work.

Social networking tools can also foster a sense of community and improve employee engagement by providing a platform for employees to connect and interact with each other beyond their immediate work teams. This can help to build relationships and create a more positive work culture, enabling employees to work together more effectively and efficiently while also fostering a sense of community and engagement within the organization.

Here are some ways social networking has influenced the modern workplace:

• Communication and collaboration. Social networking platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Workplace by Facebook have made communication and collaboration easier and more efficient. They allow employees to communicate in real-time, share files, and collaborate on projects from anywhere in the world.
• Recruitment and hiring. Social networking platforms such as LinkedIn have made it easier for recruiters to find and attract candidates. These platforms allow recruiters to search for candidates based on their skills and experience and to connect with them directly.
• Marketing and advertising. Social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have become important tools for marketing and advertising. Companies can use these platforms to reach a large audience, engage with customers, and build their brand.
• Knowledge sharing and learning. Social networking platforms can be used for knowledge sharing and learning. Employees can share information and best practices with each other, and companies can use social networking platforms to deliver training and development programs.
• Employee engagement. Social networking can also be used to improve employee engagement. By using platforms like Workplace by Facebook or Yammer, companies can create a community where employees can connect with each other, share ideas, and provide feedback.

Without a doubt social networking has had a significant impact on the modern workplace, enabling more efficient communication, improved collaboration, and increased employee engagement. But where do we go from here?

The Future of Social Networking

It is difficult to predict the future of social networking with certainty, but the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and capabilities seems to be ushering in a new era of automation and collaboration. We’re already beginning to see some potential trends and developments that could shape the future of social networking:

• Increased focus on privacy. There has been growing concern about privacy and data security on social networking platforms. In the future, we may see social networking platforms implementing stronger privacy protections and giving users more control over their data.
• More use of augmented reality and virtual reality. Social networking platforms may increasingly incorporate augmented reality and virtual reality technologies, allowing users to interact with each other in new ways and creating more immersive social experiences.
• Greater integration with artificial intelligence. Social networking platforms may increasingly incorporate artificial intelligence technologies to personalize users’ experiences and provide more targeted advertising.
• Expansion into niche markets. As social networking platforms become more specialized and focus on specific communities, we may see the emergence of new social networking platforms that cater to specific niches.
• New forms of social networking. We may see the emergence of new forms of social networking that are based on emerging technologies such as blockchain or decentralized networks.

Of course, these ideas just scrape the surface of possibilities. The future of social networking is likely to be shaped by a combination of new technologies, evolving user needs, and changing regulatory and societal trends.

How Will AI Impact Social?

With Microsoft’s integration of OpenAI and ChatGPT into Bing and (soon) the Office productivity suite, the impact of AI on social networking and collaboration is a hot topic. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already playing a significant role in social, and it is likely to become even more important in the future. Some potential roles that AI could play in social networking include the following:

• Personalization. AI can be used to personalize users’ social networking experiences by analyzing their interests, preferences, and behavior. This can help social networking platforms to provide more relevant content and advertising to users.
• Content moderation. AI can be used to automatically detect and remove inappropriate content such as hate speech, harassment, and fake news. This can help to improve the quality of content on social networking platforms and create a safer environment for users.
• Chatbots. AI-powered chatbots can be used to provide customer support, answer questions, and engage with users on social networking platforms. This can help to improve user engagement and satisfaction.
• Analytics. AI can be used to analyze social networking data to identify trends, patterns, and insights. This can help companies to better understand their customers and make more informed decisions.
• Image and video analysis. AI can be used to automatically tag and categorize images and videos on social networking platforms. This can help users to find relevant content more easily and can help social networking platforms to provide more targeted advertising.

Overall, AI has the potential to transform the way we use social networking by making it more personalized, engaging, and efficient. However, it is important to ensure that AI is used in an ethical and transparent way to protect users’ privacy and prevent the spread of misinformation….but that’s a BIG topic that I’ll have to cover in a future post….

From Six Degrees to ChatGPT was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Microsoft has in preview a new free version of Microsoft Teams, which is replacing the previous version of Teams Free. The new “Communities in Teams” feature is the ultimate online collaborative space for your group’s activities. It provides members with a centralized hub to connect and share, extending across teams or departments more broadly than other features in the platform do. Community owners get special tools like managing membership and setting up community-specific channels, providing them complete control over how their groups use this invaluable resource.

My goal with this post is not to cover every aspect of this new release — just some of the essentials to help you get started, and to understand the key differences with the paid version.

How do I get started?

If you’re interested in testing out the new free version of Teams, check out ‘Getting started with Communities (beta) in Teams for desktop.’ You will need to sign up using a non-work email (Hotmail, Gmail, etc) as it is separate from your work profile. Once installed, you’ll be able to move between your work and community profiles in Teams by clicking on your profile on the top right of the Teams window, just as you would with moving between any other guest network or domain for which you have access.

You’ll notice that the free version opens in a separate app window, and has a different icon in the taskbar below (Teams logo in a white circle).

Why do I need another version of Teams?

The main difference between Communities in Teams and the version of Microsoft Teams that you use at work is that it is specifically designed to facilitate online communities with a shared interest or purpose. While other features, such as channels and private chats, are geared towards collaboration within a specific team or project, Communities in Teams provides a centralized space for community members to connect, share information, and collaborate on initiatives that span multiple teams or departments.

A brief walkthrough of Communities in Teams

Once you have Communities in Teams installed and open the program, you’ll notice that it has a streamlined UX. There are no teams and channels in this free version — just your activities feed, ongoing chats, the ‘Meet (Now)’ option, and your calendar of scheduled or recurring meetings. That’s it. In fact, when you start using the free version, when you re-enter the UX, the default view is not the welcome screen below, but the calendar.

The chat and meet options work the same as the paid version — or you can click on one of the selections in the main screen to invite people to collaborate, start chatting, or meet now. Clicking on the ‘Meet Now’ button asks you for a meeting name, and then either starts the meeting, or provides you with a link to share, which you can send via chat or email.

Starting a chat is really simple. Type in an email, and an invitation is automatically sent. Just as with the paid version of Teams, chats can be one-on-one or with a group, and the can be one-off chats or ongoing (persistent) conversations.

On the receiving end of your invite, the person receives an invitation via email (with download details if the email is not associated with a free or paid Teams account) or through Teams chat, as I did with the below example. Because my email is already associated with a paid Teams account, the invite appears in my activity feed and I can accept or reject the invite to chat.

Of course, you can also copy the link and send through normal email — which may be better when reaching out to a group of people who know you (and trust you) through your email address. As you8 can see here, another option is to sync your contacts with your mobile device.

One other nice feature is the ability to share a link to the free version of Teams via QR code.

Sharing Is Caring

Some of you may be asking: Why is it important to provide user groups and other communities with a place to share content and ideas?

Providing user groups and other communities with a place to share content and ideas is important for several reasons:

1. Collaboration: A community space allows individuals with similar interests or goals to collaborate and work together more effectively. It provides a centralized platform for sharing ideas, discussing issues, and collaborating on projects or initiatives.
2. Knowledge sharing: A community space enables members to share their knowledge and expertise with one another. This can lead to the development of new skills, best practices, and innovative solutions.
3. Networking: Communities provide a platform for individuals to connect and build relationships with others who share similar interests or work in the same industry. This can lead to new business opportunities, partnerships, and career advancement.
4. Community building: A community space can help to build a sense of belonging and shared purpose among its members. It provides a platform for members to support one another, share experiences, and celebrate successes.

Overall, providing user groups and other communities with a place to share content and ideas can lead to increased collaboration, knowledge sharing, networking, and community building, all of which can have a positive impact on individuals and organizations alike.

What is Communities in Teams? was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Viva Engage — The artist formerly known as Yammer

Today the Microsoft product team announced a much anticipated and predicted change for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Viva — Yammer is evolving to Viva Engage.

I can’t deny a twinge of sadness that it is time to farewell Yammer as a brand. I’ve been a Yammer user, community manager and advocate since the OG pre-Microsoft days. But for me, this is yet another positive step-change for collaboration, internal communication and community within the Microsoft 365 stack.

Unpacking the announcement

Pretty straight forward really. Key messages from the announcement:

• Yammer will brand to Viva Engage
• It will happen over a period of 12 months
• New features and capabilities are coming
• Existing customers continue under existing licencing
• Native mode upgrade is required to benefit

See the full announcement here for all the details: Yammer is evolving to Viva Engage | Yammer Blog

New features — yes please

For Viva suite and Viva Topics customers there are several new features which will enhance existing networks and perhaps be the hero feature for a new network:

• Storyline Announcements for leaders
• Leadership Corner for employees
• Ask Me Anything Events
• #Campaigns
• Advanced Analytics
• Answers in Viva

Practical considerations

I enjoy a shiny new features as much as the next digital workplace nerd, but what does this mean in real terms. What advice would I give to practitioners deciding how to approach this change? The same (or at least similar) advice that I would give about introducing any new product or feature.

Take it back to basics

• What problem are you trying to solve?
• Who is going to drive an champion the change?
• What processes and governance do you need to ensure ongoing success?
• Where does Viva Engage sit in your overall digital workplace and employee experience strategy?
• How will you prioritise and resources to support the change, and beyond?

Be purpose driven, not product driven.

Simple to write, takes work in practice.

• Existing thriving networks: Take the opportunity to embrace new features and give your healthy network a boost with the new brand approach.
• Existing unloved networks: Dust off that strategy, talk to your people, if there is a need to connect, communicate and collaborate a rebrand could be a nice catalyst for change
• No current network: Step back and look at what your people need and then decide if Viva Engage is the right solution.

Community Management, Governance and Leadership are (still) key

Viva Engage offers more than the Yammer of long ago, but it is still at it’s core a community and collaboration tool. If you build it, they might come, but if you want them to stay there needs to be purpose, nurturing, rules and the strong presence of leadership.

Fortunately recent releases and improvements have made it easier to do a great job of this. If you’re having conversations about Viva Engage in your organisation you definitely want your Change Management team along side you, clear governance, capable Community Managers and strong Leaders who are equipped to leverage the power of Viva Engage.

Yammer is not dead — it’s evolved

I feel pretty confident that I can retire my ‘Yammer is not dead’ slide, and perhaps I don’t need the Yammer Time Gif any more. But Yammer being dead or alive was never the point. The point is that it did, and Viva Engage does, provide an incredibly useful toolset that has a track record of delivering value for organisations who need to connect their people.

References and perspectives

I’m keeping an eye out for resources from Microsoft and perspectives from people in the community. Here are a few I’ve already come across in the hours since the announcement.

Yammer is evolving to Viva Engage — Microsoft Community Hub

New Leadership, Analytics, and Knowledge Experiences for Viva Engage are now rolling out — Microsoft Community Hub

Viva Engage features for leaders — Dan Holme

New features for leaders, communicators and employees in Microsoft Viva Engage | LinkedIn

Yammer Service to be rebranded Viva Engage across all platforms — Kevin Crossman

Viva Engage has the answer — The Intrazone Podcast

Originally published at https://rebeccajlj.com on February 14, 2023.

Viva Engage — The artist formerly known as Yammer was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As our kids get older, they’ve started to develop an interest in having a wearable — and as parents, we’re happy to support this as it allows us to help have conversations around healthy behaviours, especially as the desire for screen time also increases.

Over the holidays, we all got kitted out with a variety of Fitbit wearables (not the fancy ones, just simple displays) — however I was left with a challenge, how can I get this data into Home Assistant so it can be displayed on our family dashboard?

Unfortunately, the native Fitbit integration only supports a single account, which wouldn’t work for us. While I found some methods to get the data into Fitbit using various hacks, I didn’t want to be doing too much customisation of my Home Assistant sensors in case a breaking change made it stop working.

I had seen various Power Automate solutions getting data from Fitbit with custom connectors, but unfortunately it would require a premium connector as I’d need to make calls to 4 separate Fitbit developer accounts.

I am lucky enough however to receive an Azure credit every month, and because Azure Logic Apps are similar to Power Automate — I was able to use the same approach to make it work. However, the solution ends up costing about 50c per week to run.

The solution

What I opted for, was to create a REST sensor in Home Assistant that would trigger an Azure Logic App workflow every 30 minutes to retrieve the data.

The workflow queries each person’s Fitbit developer account, retrieves the data I want (minutes and steps) and packages it up in an array.

The result is displayed in a Home Assistant dashboard like so:

(Don’t judge us, this screenshot was taken early in the morning.)

Getting access to your Fitbit data

I won’t go into the detail here, as this video contains everything you need to know for the process: Jon Does Flow: Fitbit Custom Connector for Power Automate — YouTube

In my scenario, I created 4 separate Azure logic apps custom connectors to perform the data retrieval.

The swagger of these connectors is as follows:

You can access the file from here.

Combining all accounts into a single set of data

The workflow is not the most elegant, but it works. Here is how it looks:

The scope for each person:

The response back to Home Assistant:

The full workflow can be downloaded from as an exported template.

Make note of where I have put in placeholder text such as <FITBIT ID> and <AZURE SUBSCRIPTION ID> and replace them with your own IDs.

Getting Home Assistant to retrieve the data

Over in Home Assistant we need to define the REST sensor. In this sensor we’ll need to include the URL from the Azure Logic App trigger, the frequency of updates (in seconds), as well as the JSON attributes being returned by the workflow:

The text of this sensor is available here.

Getting Home Assistant to separate the data

Unfortunately, when the data is returned from the Azure Logic App to Home Assistant, it will be a single blob with cascading arrays.

As I wanted to visualise these in a dashboard for each person, I needed to create separate sensors with their particular information as attributes. I used the following template structure for each person:

The text of this template is available here. Repeat as many times as you have defined in the workflow.

Displaying the data in Home Assistant

Finally, to make this present nicely I opted for the dual gauge custom card.

I also chose to display our photos and names in vertical stacks for a bit of personalisation but have omitted the code from here.

The text for these cards is available here.

And there you have it!

I also added the “last updated” data so we could see how current the displays where.

All the code for this solution is available from my GitHub repo.

Originally published at Loryan Strant, Microsoft 365 MVP.

Displaying multiple Fitbit accounts in Home Assistant using Azure Logic Apps was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In this episode, the #M365AMA panel discusses the following community question:

“We are new to Teams; using our old system we had a way to communicate active shooter and other emergancy via a broadcast page. Is there a way to communicate a “911” type situation with in teams that would command attention? (Teams is installed in a manufacturing facility)”

Check out the discussion here:

Participating in this discussion were:

• Christian Buckley @buckleyplanet
• Norm Young @stormin_30
• Kirsty McGrath @kirstymcgrath13
• Hal Hostetler @tvwizard

Some relevant notes/links shared by the team:

• Mark a message as important or urgent in Teams [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/mark-a-message-as-important-or-urgent-in-teams-ea99d5b6-1317-4550-8d75-86ff14cd4462]
• Cross-post a channel conversation in Teams [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/cross-post-a-channel-conversation-in-teams-9c1252a3-67ef-498e-a7c1-dd7147b3d295]
• Not exactly the solution asked for, but for those leveraging Teams telephony features, you might be interested: Manage emergency calling policies in Microsoft Teams [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-emergency-calling-policies]

Can Teams send emergency broadcast messages? #M365AMA was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Microsoft Loop components in Word Online and Microsoft Whiteboard — Modern Work Mentor

Loop components are our places of portable productivity. We create components and add different Loop blocks to suit our collaborative purposes. Then we share them in Teams chats, meetings, and Outlook email. Now we have two more Microsoft apps that support Loop components and expand our options — Word Online and Whiteboard.

Insert a Loop component in Word Online to coordinate the creation of a document. List tasks. Outline a brief for each task, including references and mention the person assigned to the task. Capture ideas and vote on them. Then share the Loop component in an email, Teams chat or meeting, to invite more people to contribute.

Paste a Loop component in Microsoft Whiteboard to widen your collaborative toolset. Use sticky notes and sketches as spatial tools to expand on your ideas listed in the Loop component. When you have finished with the whiteboard session, update the Loop with a summary and prioritise the list of ideas.

These are just a few ways you can use Loop in Word Online and Whiteboard. I’m certain that collaborative teams will come up with more creative ways to suit their needs.

Loop in Word Online

How does it work?

Loop components can be found on the Insert tab of a Word Online document. You can start with a checklist or task list. Then add other Loop blocks as needed.

After selecting a component to start with, the Loop component first checks that it can share the component. A new Loop needs to be able to be shared with “People in your organisation” and “Edit” permissions. This gives the best opportunity for easy collaboration as the Loop and document are shared. IT Administrators need to have set their default sharing link permission to these settings.

Today (Feb 2023), Loop components are only supported in Word documents saved in OneDrive. Though later we expect support for documents stored in SharePoint and Teams.

As you add more blocks and content to your Loop, it will grow to the length of the page. This creates more space to work in the Loop. If the Loop content grows beyond that, a scroll bar will appear to read and navigate the Loop component. The component will not span pages. I think that’s a good thing.

You can insert more than one Loop component in a document. You might want to assign different sections of a document to different groups of people. Inserting another Loop component will support separate ideas, tasks, notes and research. There might be a need for segregating the content and keeping contributions separate from one another. This scenario needs more thinking through, but I’m sure you see the potential.

Permissions and document lifecycle

With the right sharing permissions in place, the Loop component saves the Loop file in the OneDrive of the person who inserted the Loop. That could be the author of the Word doc. Or it could be a team member that the Word doc is shared with. This could get messy with the Loop file and Word doc stored in different places. But good document lifecycle practise should mean that a Word doc doesn’t live in a OneDrive for long. Create the document in OneDrive and share it with a few collaborators. Insert a Loop to coordinate the document creation. Work on the document till it’s ready to share with a team and publish in your org. Then copy the document to your team or communications site and remove the Loop component. You don’t need the Loop in the published doc, or when you share it with a client. Loop has served it’s purpose in the creation and coordination process.

Loop in Microsoft Whiteboard

How does it work?

Whiteboard doesn’t yet have a way to insert a new Loop component. To use Loop in Whiteboard, copy a link to an existing Loop and paste it anywhere on the board. You don’t need to use a text box. The Loop component will appear under your mouse cursor when you paste.

The height of the Loop component is limited so there is less room to work in the Loop. But the corners of the component can be dragged in and out to change the relative size of the content. As more content is added to the Loop, a scrollbar will appear to navigate the length of the Loop.

If you use the Whiteboard pen to annotate over the Loop, remember that the component can scroll or move. Annotations that point to content in the Loop may lose their meaning if the content moves.

Like other objects in a Whiteboard, the Loop component can be shifted around, brought to the front of overlapping objects and sent to the back. You can lock the Loop so it’s position and size don’t change, and still edit the Loop content.

If you are copying a link for a Loop and have the option to choose permissions, make sure they are inclusive of the people with whom you are sharing the Whiteboard.

Loop, Whiteboard and Teams meetings

One benefit of using a Loop component with a Microsoft Whiteboard is it can be used in a Teams meeting. The Whiteboard provides more width to work inside the Loop component, rather than in the meeting chat.

Today, Loops are only available to people within your organisation. When a Loop is shared in a Whiteboard and meeting with guests, they won’t be able to access the Loop. This is expected to change in the future when external sharing of Loops is supported. So avoid using Loop components during meetings with guests. But after the meeting, your team might insert a Loop to summarise the Whiteboard and discuss it internally.

See where Loops are Shared

A new Loop feature was also revealed in Loop components for Whiteboard. A drop down menu beside the Loop logo now shows other locations where the Loop has been shared. Chats and Outlook email are listed in this example. This only shows locations that the user viewing the Loop has access to. Clicking a listed location will navigate to that chat in Teams or email in Outlook.

Why would I use Loop components in Word Online?

A Loop component can be used to manage tasks, capture ideas, vote on decisions, and more — within the document. We can use different applications to do this today, with richer capabilities. But using the Loop component within the document keeps us focused, preventing us from being distracted by other tasks and items in the other tools.

The very same Loop can be used in a Teams meeting, a whiteboard and included in an email to team members.

It can also be shared with people who don’t have access to the document. It can support separating their contributions from the document while embedding them in the document. Team members who have access to the document can copy the contributions out of the Loop and add them to the document. This can be helpful for authoring sensitive documents where the whole document should not be revealed till it’s ready for the right audience.

There are more uses to discover as the features roll out. This is an exciting time to be experimenting with a new way of working.

Originally published at https://modernworkmentor.com on February 11, 2023.

Microsoft Loop components in Word Online and Microsoft Whiteboard — Modern Work Mentor was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re thrilled to welcome Stephen Rose to Episode 90 of the Microsoft 365 Voice. Stephen is a Senior Marketing Manager for Teams and is the host of Inside Microsoft Teams ( aka.ms/InsideMSTeams).

Topics covered in this episode:

An introduction to Teams Premium. Microsoft is bundling 400+ advanced features and artificial intelligence capabilities into Teams Premium. Organizations can purchase Teams Premium for specific users that need features like live meeting translations, intelligent recap, personalized timeline markers, etc.

The power of AI. Many of the Microsoft products we use every day have artificial intelligence. My personal favorite is subtitles in Microsoft PowerPoint. Turn on subtitles before you go into presentation mode, and you’ll see a live transcription of your meeting/presentation. You can transcribe from and to a myriad of languages — and it’s all powered by AI.

The importance of adoption. As Stephen shares, many of our organizations have gone through a profound transformation in the last 3.5 years. Our work here isn’t done. We need to ensure our information workers know and understand the Microsoft Teams capabilities they have — and how these features can help drive strong business outcomes. We also have to build awareness of when a Teams message is better suited than an email (particularly for different types of workers who respond differently to emails than IMs and texts).

Making Teams easier to use. Microsoft is continuing to invest in simplifying the Teams meeting experience, from streamlined content sharing to advanced features like PowerPoint Live.

A big thank you to Stephen for joining us. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did!

Have a Microsoft 365 question? Submit it online! Your question may be featured in a future podcast episode.

Originally published at http://blog.splibrarian.com on February 6, 2023.

A conversation with Stephen Rose was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.