Tony Redmond

Licensing the range of Microsoft 365 compliance and security features is a task taken on by the bravest. Or so they say. Another way of putting it is that people just don’t understand what licenses are needed for the different compliance, data governance, and security features. A new Microsoft 365 Compliance plan and three sub-licenses might make it easier, even if they’re more expensive. After reading the PDF to explain what licenses are needed, maybe you’ll know what you need to buy.

Microsoft will remove the Search-Mailbox cmdlet from Exchange Online on July 1, but that doesn’t mean you can’t purge bad messages from user mailboxes. Office 365 content searches and content search actions can hard- or soft-delete messages. Some limitations exist, but not enough to be worried. And we include a PowerShell script to show how to get the job done.

Slack has revealed its add-on for Teams calling to dispel the mystery (at least in my mind) for how they would create a calling integration without Microsoft’s help. As it turns out, Slack has taken some work they already had and the fact that Teams has URIs for meetings and combined them together to get their integration done. Very smart|

The Slack CEO says that the company is working on a calling integration with Teams. Slack hasn’t released any technical information, which leads to a certain amount of speculation as to how such an integration might happen. Slack’s previous attempts to integrate with Office 365 applications haven’t been too successful, but perhaps a federated hook-up like the one between Skype consumer and Teams might work.

Although Teams has seen a spike in usage due to more people working at home, the view of participants in Teams video meetings is not as good as competitors such as Zoom. Basically, the 2 x 2 view used by Teams isn’t as visually attractive or useful as the gallery views supported by other video conferencing systems. Microsoft says they have elevated the priority of the work necessary to increase the number of participants in the meeting window. They don’t say when this will happen.

Microsoft announced that Teams now supports a maximum of 10,000 users in the membership of an individual team. The new limit is rolling out to Office 365 tenants in April and should be available worldwide in May. The need for increased membership is likely driven by large enterprise deployments of Teams who find the previous 5,000 limit just too small for their discussions.

Teams is all about communication, but now you can have “targeted communications,” which is a long-winded way to describe tags. A tag is a shortcut method to address a set of team members. You can have default tags defined at the organization level or use tags specific to individual teams. Either way, tags are a useful way to identify the specific people you want to address in a conversation.

Microsoft has imposed further restrictions on some Office 365 services to release CPU cycles and other resources to allow end users to work. The major impact is felt by SharePoint Online, OneNote, and Stream, and consequently by Teams because it uses all of the above. We can expect restrictions to last until Microsoft manages to deploy additional resources in its Office 365 datacenters.

Office 365 Sensitivity Labels can now be applied to “containers” – Teams, Office 365 Groups, and SharePoint sites. Sensitivity labels replace the old text-only classifications that have been available since 2016. The labels don’t affect the contents of the containers, but they can control some container settings, like whether a team allows guest access or if it’s open to any tenant user to join. It’s yet another development in the label and protection story for Office 365.

A growth in demand for Office 365 services caused some issues for users of Teams, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. The growth in Teams demand is understandable in light of the upswing in home working and online education caused by the COVID-19 virus. We’ll all have to be a little patient as Microsoft makes adjustments to keep services running.

The revelations that Exchange Server has had a vulnerability in the Exchange Control Panel since Exchange 2010 shocked some. Microsoft has patched CVE-2020-0688, but the problem gives on-premises administrators something to think about as they look to the long-term future of their email service. Staying on-premises is an option, but going to the cloud might be more secure.

SharePoint Online is embracing Office 365 Sensitivity Labels to allow protected documents to be processed by indexing and available to content searches. The Office Online apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) also support the application of sensitivity labels. The only disappointment is that the SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business browser interfaces don’t allow labels to be applied to documents.