Everything You Need to Know About Office 365 – August Edition

Next month, Microsoft will be hosting their Ignite conference and while it may be split into two events, I am still expecting a significant amount of news to come out of the virtual conference. You can learn more about the duo-Ignite, here.

Kicking things off this month is a bad idea that Microsoft has with the expansion of self-service licensing. The company is expanding the Power Platform license model to Visio and Project which means IT Pros need to be aware of what capabilities this enables for your users.

When it comes to supporting your environment, keep in mind that Exchange 2016 will end mainstream support on October 13th.

This month also marks the release of a new license for Teams; you can now pay $12 a month for an Advanced Communications add-on license. What do you get for that additional fee? Tony has a breakdown of the capabilities included but at a high level, it includes larger live events, compliance recording integration, and custom branded meeting lobbies. And if you are curious about how to best configure your lobbies, Steve has an overview of that process.

Speaking of Teams, Breakout Rooms will be arriving (hopefully) later this year and support for IE 11 is ending in November. For those using Teams on older Android devices, here is how you can identify those phones as Android 4.4 will no longer be supported in the near future.

One of the items that Microsoft has been pushing this summer is the updated list and task functionality. The new List app for Teams can be a helpful addition to your workflow, especially when you add these lists into Teams channels.

Microsoft is also rolling out a new feature for Word that you may find interesting. You can now take audio files, upload them using Word (on the web) and have it transcribed for you at no additional cost as long as you have an active Microsoft 365 subscription.

That’s the highlights for this month but with Ignite fast approaching, be on the lookout for a packed September.