Opinion

The Duo has a place in this world if you are looking for a modern-PDA and a device that embodies Microsoft 365 in a physical form, but it is far from a smartphone that is for everyone.

Big Files and Differential Sync Some excitement was generated, at least inside Microsoft, for the January 12 announcement that SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business now support uploads of files sized up to 250 GB. This is an increase from the previous 100 GB maximum announced in July 2020. The new capability is designed to… Read More

Last October, I wrote about One Outlook, Microsoft’s vision for the future of its family of email clients. The basis of the story was a collection of three technologies deemed critical for the long-term development of Outlook: OWA Powered Experiences (OPX), Microsoft synchronization technology, and the augmentation loop. Mary-Jo Foley’s recent story about the Monarch… Read More

Last November, Microsoft experienced a great deal of criticism from privacy campaigners following the introduction of the Productivity Score feature. The resulting hubbub evolved into a PR issue which caused Microsoft to abandon display of individual user details, even if the data is easily available and widely used elsewhere inside Microsoft 365. In a nutshell,… Read More

Removing Puzzlement Last month I reported my puzzlement about Microsoft’s announcement of priority accounts. I couldn’t figure out what value these accounts brought to the table, especially as they were targeted solely at tenants with more than 10,000 accounts with more than 50 active Exchange Online users. My report was based on details in a… Read More

On this episode of the Enterprise Dish, another month of big updates for Teams and SharePoint but also the perfect time to look at what could be coming down the pipeline for Microsoft 365.

As more employees work from home, Windows Update for Business provides a simpler way to update Windows endpoints with the latest patches.

Microsoft Graph and Audit Log Too Important to Lose Thinking about the fuss and bother which erupted over Microsoft Productivity Score, I concluded that the people concerned about management oversight of user activity within Microsoft 365 had very little knowledge about the topic. They looked at the pretty graphs and tables of user data and… Read More

Intrusive Usage Data Exposed in Microsoft 365 Admin Center Over the past few week or so, a bunch of news reports have emerged about the new Microsoft 365 Productivity Score feature (Figure 1), which was announced at the Ignite 2019 conference before achieving general availability in October 2020. In the Microsoft blog, CVP Brad Anderson… Read More

Refreshing the Substrate Last year, I wrote about the Office 365 substrate, a little understood but critical component of how Microsoft is developing their cloud services. That article followed a talk by Microsoft Fellow Jeffrey Snover at the Ignite 2019 conference. Now boasting the title of CTO for Modern Workforce Transformation, Snover recently explored the… Read More

On this edition of the Enterprise Dish, Teams has become the collaboration hub for Microsoft 365 but it doesn't include email...but should it? Dux and Brad dive into this topic as well as relevant news in the Microsoft 365 universe too. Links talked about: Diffusion of Innovation and Ulysses Relief Efforts in the Philippines 

SMS and Voice MFA Methods in Microsoft’s Crosshairs On November 10 Alex Weinert, the Director of Identity Security at Microsoft, posted It's Time to Hang Up on Phone Transports for Authentication. The article argues that it’s time to consider dumping the SMS and voice methods for multi-factor authentication (MFA) in favor of passwordless strong authentication… Read More

Because it’s Friday the 13th, this edition of Short Takes looks at the Xbox Series X|S launch, the .NET 5.0 launch, a new Microsoft employee who created Python, a former Microsoft employee who stole $10 million from the company, and so much more.

  In late October, Microsoft released a compliance assessment report written by Cohasset Associates to compare Microsoft 365 services against the requirements of U.S. financial regulations. The report covers SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Teams, Exchange Online, and Skype for Business Online, but excludes Stream, OneNote, and Planner because these apps do not support retention… Read More

No Data Compromised but Bad Day for Teams Retention Alarm bells went off on Thursday, October 29 when administrators in several tenants noticed that retention policies created to process Teams chat messages were apparently applied to Exchange mailboxes. Microsoft subsequently issued incident EX225368 “Admins may see Microsoft Teams retention policies unexpectedly update to Exchange Online… Read More