Office

It is nice to have an Azure Active Directory Expiration Policy for Office 365 Groups, but it’s not so good that the policy functions exclusively based on age. Another problem is that administrators have no way of knowing when groups will expire. So we take out PowerShell, write a script, and hey presto, we have a report. We still need to solve the problem of creating a policy that functions based on activity rather than age, but that’s another day’s work.

PowerShell is a critical skill for Office 365 tenant administrators. A knowledge of PowerShell allows you to fix things that Microsoft leaves undone in apps like Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Teams. Sure, black holes exist for PowerShell (like Planner) and it is slow to process thousands of objects, but there’s nothing like a little script for getting things done.

The Office Customization Tool for Click-To-Run is a web-based Tool created by Microsoft to simplify the generation of configuration files required to centrally deploy custom Office installations in any kind of organization. The tool, currently in preview, is very simple to use and it allows us to create such configuration files in minutes.

Companies that move to Office 365 have to decide what mobile email client to use. A native client that uses Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) or Outlook? In the past, the best choice was probably something like the iOS mail app. Now, Outlook is the focus of Microsoft’s mobile efforts and it’s where all the new functionality appears. EAS is still valuable, just less so than it was before.

Microsoft’s Teams is off to a strong start but the company needs to be aggressive with feature deployment and not become complacent upon its success.

Office 365 now includes out-of-the-box email encryption, which might just mean that the era of using S/MIME and PGP might be coming to a close, at least inside Office 365. The new functionality scores highly on ease of use and integration, but the lack of support in the current Outlook desktop clients means that adoption will be slow.

Since Office 365 appeared in 2011, Microsoft’s collaboration story has varied according to whatever technology is available. Originally based on Exchange and SharePoint, it’s gone through Yammer, Office 365 Groups, and now Teams. You’d be forgiven for being confused by the frequent changes in the strategy du jour. And now we have inner and outer loops to consider, at least according to Microsoft’s favorite collaboration slide. Here’s my take.

Microsoft upgraded their EOP anti-spoofing capabilities inside Office 365, which is good, but they didn’t tell anyone. The first users knew was when they started to receive messages stamped with “the sender failed our fraud detection checks” – something that is never assuring. This only applies to ATP customers, but it’s not the first time Microsoft has failed to communicate important news.

Exchange Online has two new PowerShell cmdlets to help administrators recover deleted email on behalf of users. You can now search for deleted items and recover found items without having to sign into a user’s mailbox, something that will be popular with both administrators and users alike. The joy of helping users find email they deleted and can’t find themselves…

Even though Teams only turned one this week, the company has begun testing a PWA version of the platform with a small group of users.