Tony Redmond

Microsoft has launched a new external sharing policy for groups that allows tenants to set allow and block lists for domains. The new policy is due for use with Teams, Planner, and other applications that need to block external users from specific domains. It’s a set along the path to getting full external access for Office 365 apps.

Microsoft Teams now includes the ability to control whether team owners or members can remove items from conversations. It’s a useful feature. All of us have probably regretted something said electronically!

Surprisingly, Microsoft has never included a central method to manage user autosignatures within the cloud or on-premises versions of Exchange. Which means that you must let users manage their signatures, build your own tools, or deploy a commercial solution.

No one likes looking at a stream of audit events flowing by, especially when an Office 365 tenant generates so many events. Alert policies allow tenants to define patterns of activity that indicate suspicious or harmful behavior. There’s goodness here, as long as you have Office 365 E5 subscriptions.

The Microsoft Graph is a common programmatic interface to Office 365 and other data, including Azure Active Directory. The Graph Explorer is an excellent guide to help programmers understand what is possible with the Microsoft Graph and how to interact with the various endpoints.

Microsoft Workplace Analytics is not a “Fitbit for the enterprise” that you can deploy off-the-shelf to get instantly usable information. Expect to invest considerable time or spend some consulting dollars to make sense of organization dynamics, office politics, and internal friction. All the stuff that makes working in large companies so worthwhile!

Microsoft told us some months ago that they would block the creation of new eDiscovery cases in Exchange and SharePoint. A course reversal has happened because of the humble discovery mailbox, which Exchange uses as a target for eDiscovery results. The block has lifted for Exchange but remains for SharePoint. It will eventually happen for Exchange but Office 365-wide functionality is better than workload-specific features.

Microsoft makes it easy for companies to use Office 365 and has been very successful in moving customers to the cloud. But when you get to the cloud and find that your company is involved in a corporate merger, acquisition, or split, things are not so easy because the tools to do the work don’t exist. Some glimmer of hope exists as ISVs have started to take interest in the space.

Recent developments show that a fully-populated Azure Active Directory is considered by Microsoft to be a core part of the overall Office 365 “experience.” Yet many tenants have partly-populated directories. Is that a problem? Or might it be a future problem?

Gartner’s recent SWOT analysis of Office 365 contains some interesting thoughts and observations. I do not agree with them all because I think some of their thinking is a little dated, but it is always interesting to read what Gartner is whispering into the ears of their customers.

The news that Teams won’t support external access when they planned is not a shock. But what is needed is a common external access mechanism that can work for all of the Office 365 applications. Let’s not reinvent the wheel!

Microsoft has launched Stream, their new video streaming, sharing, and management service for consumers and business. You can use Stream now, but not yet if you have used Office 365 Video in the past. Microsoft has some work to do to make that transition flawless.