Files for Monthly Update #94 for the Most Comprehensive Office 365 Book Available for Download

The Office 365 for IT Pros team is delighted to announce the availability of monthly update #94. The files for the April 2023 update are now available from Gumroad.com and Amazon Kindle. Details of the changes made to individual chapters are available in our change log.  We’d appreciate if subscribers download and use the updated content because a lot has changed over the last few months and it would be a pity to refer to old information after it has been updated. You can always access the latest files through your Gumroad account or by using the link in your original receipt. See our FAQ for more information.

Major Microsoft Announcements in March

March 2023 featured several major Microsoft announcements that will affect Microsoft 365 operations over the coming years. The most important announcements are:

• Microsoft 365 Copilot: We don’t expect to see this in production until much later in the year, perhaps after the Ignite conference. No details are available about licensing. The Security Copilot announcement might also affect how Microsoft 365 organizations work in the future. There’s a lot of hype around artificial intelligence and machine learning at present, and we plan to take a pragmatic approach to assessing how the technology works when exposed to the rigors of day-to-day operations.
• The Loop app: Now in public preview, but Microsoft must resolve important issues like compliance and eDiscovery before general availability. Loop components are already available in OWA, Teams, Outlook desktop, and the Office web apps. The biggest issue we have with Loop technology is that it’s very inward-focused and currently doesn’t support collaboration with external people.
• The Teams 2.1 desktop client is now available in public preview. Many features work in the public preview but some major chunks of functionality are missing (like breakout rooms).
• The plan to block email from unsupported on-premises Exchange servers. Starting initially with Exchange 2007 servers in hybrid organizations, this plan will evolve to bring all Exchange on-premises servers into scope. Our recommendation is that hybrid organizations should eliminate unsupported Exchange servers from their roster as soon as possible.

We mention these changes in the current edition of the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. However, there’s not much that we can say at this point about the operational and practical aspects of these technologies as they’re either incomplete or unavailable. We will keep a close eye on what happens and incorporate the information into future Office 365 for IT Pros updates as time goes by.

Other Changes

Alongside these important topics, day-to-day change continued unabated. Among the changes are:

• New licensing rules for Microsoft Teams Rooms devices come into effect on July 1, 2023.
• The Microsoft Entra admin center is replacing the Azure AD admin center.
• Authenticator lite is available in Outlook mobile clients to avoid the need to deploy the Microsoft Authenticator app when implementing multi-factor authentication.
• Detail about just what the Syntex-SharePoint Advanced management license covers is becoming available, like the block file download policy.
• Spatial audio is available in Teams meetings. You can also use green screen backdrops for Teams meetings – and mesh avatars are now in public preview (but don ‘t work with the Teams 2.1 client).
• The Microsoft 365 user profile card supports pronouns in apps like Teams and OWA.

We can only predict that a similar batch of changes will appear in April.

On to the 2024 Edition

The Office 365 for IT Pros eBook first appeared in 2015. We even had a print version then, something that’s impossible now given the volume and type of change that happens monthly. The size of the book is also a challenge for on-demand print runs, most of which are designed to cater for much smaller books (like novels). We moved to annual editions in 2016 and the current version is the ninth in the series.

We’ve started work on the tenth (2024) edition. If all goes well, we will deliver the new edition on July 1, 2023. We issue new editions on July 1 because it aligns with the start of the Microsoft fiscal year. We hope that our subscribers will stay with us for another year when the 2024 edition is available. Meanwhile, on to update #95 as we continue to improve the 2023 edition.

93^rd Monthly Update Released for the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook

The Office 365 for IT Pros writing team is thrilled to announce the availability of the 93^rd monthly update for the eBook. Subscribers for the EPUB/PDF version can download the updated files from Gumroad.com while Kindle users can request the updates from Amazon. See our FAQ for more information about fetching updated files for the book.

Many Changes in February 2023

This past month was hectic in terms of the number and types of changes that emerged across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Our change log captures where changes occurred in book chapters. Some of the changes deserve highlighting. Here’s my take:

Microsoft announced the rebranding of Yammer as Viva Engage. The core functionality of Yammer won’t change as it comes under the Viva brand. Book publishers hate product rebranding because of the effect it has on text and graphics. The February edition (92) of Office 365 for IT Pros included more than 250 mentions of Yammer in the text. This update reduces that number significantly. In some cases, we need to wait for Microsoft’s rebranding to be complete.

As part of the Viva Engage rebranding, Microsoft introduced a new Viva Engage Core service plan as part of some licenses. The thought behind the new service plan was good in that it made sure that users who depend on Yammer-sourced services like the Q&A app in Teams could continue working. However, the new plan caused a lot of hassle for tenants where Yammer wasn’t used because suddenly Yammer was available to users. In any case, it was a good opportunity to test the license management cmdlets in the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK as we head towards the deprecation of the license management cmdlets in the Azure AD and MSOL modules at the end of March 2023.

Speaking of the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK, several foibles (some would call them bugs) exist that you should be aware of when converting scripts from the old Azure AD and MSOL modules. Or read chapter 23 of Office 365 for IT Pros and use the advice presented there. If you write code for Azure Automation runbooks, remember that Microsoft will pause out Run As accounts in September 2023.

A new Syntex advanced management license is on its way to control access to security and management features for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. The license is currently in preview, so you can test features like setting a default sensitivity label for SharePoint document libraries or blocking file downloads from sites. Microsoft hasn’t said how much they plan to charge for Syntex advanced management.

In the world of Exchange Online, we learned that Microsoft restricts the creation of inbound connectors for new tenants. Apparently, this is because of some security concerns. The connectors are created but remain in a disabled state until approval is gained from Microsoft Support.

More positively, the new and improved recall message feature is rolling out. Unlike the previous version, the server processes message recall requests and promises a recall success rate of 90% against the 40% attained by the old code. Message recall only works within a tenant, but it’s nice to have something that has a high chance of working, even when recipients have read a message or filed it out of the inbox.

This month, we took a look at Mesh Avatars in Teams. Not everyone will like the idea of an avatar taking their place during Teams meetings (only visually). On the other hand, if you’re not looking your best, maybe an avatar is the right thing to use.

The Teams Premium license is now generally available even if some of its features are still not fully baked. This month, we looked at the premium meeting templates feature and how templates could be used to manage different types of meetings within large organizations. Also in relation to Teams premium, if you use the trial licenses to check out the premium features, make sure that you remove those licenses after the 30-day trial is over. It’s less confusing that way.

So Much Change All The Time

The list above is only a snapshot of what happened during February 2023. The volume and kind of change underlines the value of a living book. It’s tough to keep text updated but after 93 monthly updates we’re in a kind of a rhythm. At least, I think we are.

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