In-Place Archiving for Office 365 offers vast amounts of storage for our customers. Our innovative In-Place approach coupled with a seamless archiving experience has significant adoption in the marketplace with several million archive mailboxes being used actively in Office 365 today. While our existing archiving solution serves most scenarios, some of our customers are subject to industry-specific regulatory requirements about record keeping. For example, financial institutions such as banks and broker-dealer organizations are subject to Rule 17a-4 issued by the Securities and Exchange Commissions (SEC) regarding electronic data storage. Rule 17a-4 has specific requirements pertaining to length, format, quality, availability, accountability and many other aspects of record retention. Whether the archiving solution can support Rule 17a-4 requirements is often a key consideration for SEC-regulated customers in technology adoption. To help these customers better understand how the Exchange Online Archiving (EOA) service can be leveraged to meet their regulatory obligations, we are pleased to release our Exchange Online Archiving white paper specifically in relation to Rule 17a-4 requirements. The white paper provides an in-depth analysis of Exchange Online features and functionalities against each of the requirements under Rule 17a-4 and demonstrates to regulated customers how EOA can enable them to meet these requirements. You can download the white paper today. The post Office 365 Exchange Online Archiving now meets SEC Rule 17a-4 requirements appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team. Today we are taking another step forward in bringing a great Office experience to everyone across a range of devices and platforms. As we announced in September, we have optimized Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote apps for the iPad Pro. Starting today, these Office apps are now available and take full advantage of new multitasking features, so you can be productive on your iPad Pro right away. Here are some highlights of the new Office capabilities that really stand out with multitasking features on the iPad Pro. Split View Need to use two apps at once? No problem with Split View. You can now have two active Office apps on the screen at the same time. For example, you can analyze your business results in Excel and update the corresponding chart in PowerPoint, so you can see your data and presentation side by side. Alternatively, you can review an email attachment and make the required changes to a related Word document right away. The changes are automatically updated in the attachment, so you’re ready to send in a single tap. Slide Over Need to open a second app? Easy. Keep the first app open and use Slide Over to open a second one. You can easily review your email and add an important list to a OneNote notebook or create a sales presentation and quickly send an email to your team reminding them of the upcoming client pitch meeting. We’re excited to have these updated apps available when the iPad Pro hits store shelves this week. Stay tuned for more new features coming soon. Get the Office apps today If you have an iPad Pro and are looking to complete your on-the-go productivity solution, start by getting Office 365 today! While viewing is free, you will need a qualifying Office 365 subscription to create and edit documents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on larger devices like the iPad Pro or Surface, consistent with our existing Office business model. With your Office 365 subscription, you can get fully installed Office applications across all of your devices (up to five PCs or Macs), utilize premium features in the Office mobile apps, access your documents from anywhere with 1 TB of OneDrive storage and always have the latest updates. The OneNote and Outlook apps are free to use on the iPad Pro. Install Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and OneDrive today on your iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad mini or iPhone. Microsoft Word Microsoft Excel Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft OneNote Microsoft Outlook Microsoft OneDrive We hope you enjoy these updated apps for iPad Pro and look forward to hearing your feedback! —Kirk Koenigsbauer The post Microsoft Office apps are ready for the iPad Pro appeared first on Office Blogs.

Air Canada has spent billions of dollars modernizing its fleet, upgrading airport lounges and enhancing the customer experience. This includes offering the latest digital services for customers, such as mobile travel apps, online reservations and check-in and flight status verification. The smart use of technology is instrumental in achieving the company’s goals, including giving its 27,000 employees the latest IT tools to create a new culture of employee collaboration. "Office 365 collaboration tools help our teams work together," says Allen Chang, manager of IT Innovation and Technology at Air Canada. "We can bring together pilots, catering, maintenance, airport teams, flight attendants, management and more. The faster we can communicate, the more efficient we are across our entire worldwide operation. It directly impacts customer satisfaction and helps to improve our on-time performance metrics." The story of Office 365 at Air Canada reflects the company’s outlook for the 21st century. "Our aim is to be a global champion to connect people around the world," says Sue Kingsley, director, Employee Communications at Air Canada. "We wanted to create an environment for our employees that was more like our vision of Air Canada—innovative, modern, and creative." So today, there is a team of Air Canada employees using Office 365 to collaborate, to share information and to streamline processes, all with the same goal: deliver the best travel experience for customers worldwide. "Our operational teams take advantage of SharePoint to aggregate information into one view instead of having to access multiple systems," says Chang. "We are also seeing an increase in automation projects that take advantage of SharePoint workflows. We’re in the process of automating our paper-driven forms processes and making them web- and mobile-enabled." The Maintenance group works hard to reduce aircraft time on the ground. Now it shares documents with vendors and partners through a SharePoint Online site to collaborate and quickly make decisions to achieve that goal. Flight attendants, ground crews, baggage handlers and pilots share best practices, ask questions and problem solve on-the-fly by accessing Yammer on their mobile phones. Yammer has also turned into a great forum for management and employee dialog. "It brings the worlds of our operations staff and management together," says Chang. "Management gets better insight into the challenges and successes of our staff. Yammer posts can be as varied as sharing excitement about a new aircraft, making restaurant recommendations for cities all over the world or congratulating a team that handled a medical emergency." Mechanics are using Skype for Business video conferencing from phones and tablets to transmit images of aircraft maintenance back to the office for verification and advice. Pilots will be adding video conferencing to their iPads for use during Wi-Fi connected flights for another mode of ground communications. This modern, connected and creative workplace environment is the new way of working at Air Canada. It’s a way of working that not only improves productivity but facilitates innovation. "We really value innovation, and we see Office 365 as a way to enable the business to innovate," says Chang. "We can introduce a tool like SharePoint Online and set up the basics, and pretty soon the business is forcing us to go to the next level and really transform their processes. And look at Delve. Adding new tools through Office 365 with so much potential is incredible." But, like everything the airline does, safety comes first. "We have to encourage innovation, but on the other hand I still need to protect the security and safety of the airline," says Robert Eardley, senior director, Transformation Solutions, IT at Air Canada. As the only international network carrier in North America to receive a four-star rating from Skytrax, today, Air Canada has yet another tool to maintain its leadership in the industry. "We connect Canada to the world and in order to do that we have to connect with our employees," concludes Kingsley. "And that’s really what Office 365 has done for us." For more on the connected world of Air Canada, read the full case study. The post Air Canada—flying high with a connected, global workforce appeared first on Office Blogs.

This week we’re pleased to announce a new set of features for "Get & Transform" in Excel 2016 and the Power Query add-in for Excel 2013/2010. This update is packed with lots of new features that have been requested by many customers. We expect that you will find this update extremely useful. How can I get this update? For Excel 2016: Install the latest Click-to-Run update for Excel 2016. For Excel 2013/2010: Download and install the Power Query add-in for Excel 2013 and Excel 2010. Data connectivity Updates to data connectivity include: Support for SharePoint Lists from non-English sites. Enhanced support for the Exchange connector. Automatic column type detection when importing .XLS files via the Excel Workbook connector. A new "Select Related Tables" option when connecting to database sources. Enhanced Active Directory connector credentials. An improved function invocation experience. A new option to delete all entries in the Data Source Settings dialog. An option to "Enable Relationship Import during Refresh operations." You can continue reading below for more details about each feature. Support for SharePoint Lists from non-English sites The SharePoint Lists connector (under "Other Sources") allows users to import data from lists in their SharePoint sites. However, there used to be a limitation that only sites where the Site Language was set to English would work with our connector. We improved the connector in this release to remove this restriction, so now users can get data from any SharePoint List in any site (SharePoint 2013 or newer) regardless of the site language. Note that SharePoint 2010 sites continue to work but still expose the same language limitation, as this is a change available only in newer versions of the SharePoint API. Enhanced support for the Exchange connector We have improved the Exchange connector to allow connections to multiple mailboxes. Users can provide the email address to connect to as part of the Source dialog and then specify credentials for that source (which may or may not match the email address to connect to). This way, users can easily combine data from multiple Exchange mailboxes into a single report. Automatic column type detection when importing .XLS files via the Excel Workbook connector The Excel Workbook connector now performs automatic column type detection when importing .XLS files. Before, this type detection was done only when importing .XLSX files. Select Related Tables option when connecting to database sources Users often will import multiple tables when connecting to a database. Before this update, users had to manually select all tables that they wanted to import, which often required an understanding of the underlying database schema so they would pick all tables that are related. With this update, we’re adding a new button called Select Related Tables to the Navigator dialog. When users click this button, all tables that have a direct relationship to one or more of the already selected tables are automatically selected. Enhanced Active Directory connector credentials The Credentials dialog for Active Directory now allows users to select alternate Windows credentials. Improved function invocation experience The experience for invoking functions loaded from a data source has been improved in this update. For instance, users are now prompted for parameters when loading one or more functions from a data source (such as a database), when they click the Load or Edit button in the Navigator dialog. New option to delete all entries in the Data Source Settings dialog Users can now easily delete all stored Data Source Settings by clicking the new Delete All button. Option to "Enable Relationship Import during Refresh operations" Excel automatically creates relationships between tables when loading them—if these relationships exist in the data source (such as a database). In addition to creating the relationships during load, Excel might create or delete relationships between tables while refreshing them if the relationships changed in the source. This used to be the default (and only) behavior before this update. With this update, we added an option under "Current Workbook—Data Load" to control whether to update relationship on refresh or not. The default behavior has been switched to not detect relationships on refresh, but still create them as part of the initial load. Data Transformations and Query Editor improvements Improvements for Data Transformations and the Query Editor include the ability to: Copy to clipboard (available for cells/columns/tables). Filter date columns by earliest/latest date (dynamic filter). Extract min/max date/time value from a column. Replace values with a provision for specifying special characters. "Detect Column Types" with an option to trigger type detection on demand. "Refresh All Previews" to refresh all Query Editor previews with a single click. Several performance improvements have also been included: Choose Columns dialog—Faster user experience for dealing with wide tables. Auto-filter and Expand/Aggregate popups—Faster for large number of values/fields. In addition to these features, this update for "Get & Transform" in Excel 2016 includes all features released in the previous two Power Query updates. You can find more details in the following previous blog posts: Power Query August update and Power Query September update. You can read this blog post for information about "Get & Transform" (Power Query integration) in Excel 2016. Power Query for Excel is available with Office 2013 or Office 2010 Professional Plus with Software Assurance. Download the add-in and learn more about getting started. You can receive update notifications in Power Query when there is a new version available. These notifications will show up in your PC’s system tray when you launch Excel. You can also check for updates by clicking the Update button on the Power Query ribbon tab. That’s all for this month. As mentioned previously, we’re making lots of incremental improvements to "Get & Transform" in Excel 2016 and the Power Query add-in for Excel 2013/2010. We hope that you find these features better with every new monthly update. Please continue sending us feedback using our "Send a Smile/Frown" feature or by voting for what you’d like to see next. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Learn about all the powerful analytics and visualization features in Excel and take your analysis further by sharing and collaborating on business insights with colleagues using Power BI. Learn more about Power Query See all analytics and visualization features in Excel Get your Office 365 subscription Try Power BI Follow us on Facebook and Twitter The post 30 feature updates to "Get & Transform" in Excel 2016 and Power Query add-in appeared first on Office Blogs.

It’s been a big month for OneNote with updates across our web app to mobile devices to desktop. We’re excited to announce that we added a lot of great capabilities including some of our top education and OneNote Online requests—the ability to add audio and file attachments to your notes! Audio recording Listen up. Whether you’re preserving a lecture for posterity or practicing your accent, a recording is the natural way to capture it. With the addition of audio recording to the web, iPhone and iPad, you’ll always have the right tool for the job at hand. To start recording on the web, click Insert and then Record Audio. Once you’re finished recording, click Stop. You can play the file by selecting it and then clicking the Play icon that appears. Audio recording on iOS is great for teachers and students alike. Students can easily practice pronunciations for a foreign language class or capture their latest guitar solo in music class. Teachers can give quick audio feedback to students—directly in their Class Notebook. We’re excited about our first version of audio recording for iOS, but have plenty of additional features we plan to add. Please share your feedback to help shape the next version. *Note: Audio recording in OneNote Online is currently supported in Edge, Chrome and Firefox. Insert file attachments into OneNote Online Now imagine this: you’re a student using OneNote Online in class to take notes. Once the lesson is done, the teacher sends out the PowerPoint slides for that day. Wouldn’t it be great if you could store those slides directly alongside your class notes? Or if you’re a teacher, have you ever wanted to build lesson plans and insert files directly onto the page? Well, wait no longer. You can now add any file to a page using file attachment. Students, simply click Insert, File Attachment and then select the file you wish to attach to the page. Now when it’s time to study for the quiz, you have all the materials in one place or if you’re the teacher you can write the quiz! We’re continuing to add and improve features in OneNote Online, so stay tuned for more updates like this one in the months to come. As always, we encourage you to provide feedback by voting and adding ideas on the OneNote Online feedback site. Embedded Video in OneNote 2016 for Windows desktop OneNote’s canvas has always been a great tool to share thoughts or express an idea. Today we’re excited to announce a brand new capability to the OneNote 2016 desktop canvas, embedded Online Video! This has been a top request from our customers. With the new Online Video button, you can now insert your favorite YouTube, Vimeo and Office Mix content directly on the OneNote canvas and take your notes right next to it. To insert a video, from OneNote 2016, click Insert, then click the new Online Video button. Inside the dialog, paste the address to your YouTube, Vimeo or Office Mix video and then click OK. The video will then be inserted onto the canvas—it’s that easy! Embedded YouTube video. Embedded Office Mix video. We’re working to add more video sources soon, so stay tuned! Also, tell us on the OneNote feedback site what types of video you’d like to be able to embed. Embedded video will be available for Office 365 Home and Personal subscribers or from www.onenote.com in the coming weeks. We will bring embedded video to OneNote Online, Windows 10, Mac, iOS and Android over the coming months. OneNote badge for Android Need to get your thoughts down even faster? Big multi-tasker? There’s a badge for that: introducing OneNote badge for Android. The new badge can float anywhere on your screen, even above other apps. Now you can easily browse the web and write down your quick thoughts or copy/paste without having to move between apps, helping you to stay focused. Launch the badge by pulling down the notification tray and tapping the OneNote badge notification. Then, when you’re done, simply pull the badge to the bottom of your screen to dismiss it. Notes are saved to your Quick Notes section by default, but if you prefer to stay fully organized, don’t worry, you can also choose the notebook and section that you want your notes to go into. In addition, you’ll be able to select the notebook and section of your choice when you share content with OneNote using Add to OneNote. As soon as you share content with OneNote, the badge will have a small lightning icon. We are rolling out OneNote badge in phases on Android and it may take up to two-three weeks for all of you to get badge. OneNote for iOS Touch the OneNote app. Now touch it again, but with Force. OneNote for iPhone 6S/6S+ now supports Force Touch (a feature that senses the level of force exerted) to let you quickly create a new note or pop into Recent Notes. In addition, OneNote is now optimized for the iPad Pro to take advantage of the new screen resolution and other major capabilities. Phew, that was a lot of stuff. We always want to hear your feedback so make comments below or follow these links. Get OneNote: iOS | Android | Windows Suggestions: OneNote UserVoice Help: Answers.Microsoft.com —Ryan McMinn, product manager for the OneNote team The post OneNote in November—Embed video, record audio, insert files and more appeared first on Office Blogs.

In this episode, Jeremy Thake talks to Paolo Pialorsi on the new Office 365 developer PNP Partner Pack. http://officeblogspodcastswest.blob.core.windows.net/podcasts/EP71_PNPPartnerPack.mp3 Download the podcast. Weekly updates Social Share makes it easy to distribute slides and decks to more people through social networks Getting started with yo office for web dev n00bs Simplifying Office 365 Unified API calls with Postman and OAuth 2 Update 4 on Office 365 unified API Office 365 Developer Patterns and Practices—November 2015 release Show notes github.com/OfficeDev/PnP-Partner-Pack Introduction to the PNP Partner Pack blog post Introduction to the PNP Partner Pack slide deck Introduction to the PNP Partner Pack video Got questions or comments about the show? Join the O365 Dev Podcast on the Office 365 Technical Network. The podcast RSS is available iTunes or search for it on "Office 365 Developer Podcast" or add directly with the RSS http://feeds.feedburner.com/Office365DeveloperPodcast. About Paolo Pialorsi Paolo is the founder of PiaSys (www.pialorsi.com), a company focused on Microsoft SharePoint and .NET development. He’s a consultant, trainer, book author and speaker at the best international conferences about Microsoft technologies. He writes articles for IT magazines, authored several books for Microsoft Press (the latest is "Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Developer Reference") and posts regularly on his technical blog (www.sharepoint-reference.com/Blog/). You can follow Paolo on Twitter (@PaoloPia).   Paolo passed more than 40 Microsoft certification exams and achieved the following certifications: Microsoft Certified Solutions Master on SharePoint, MCP, MCT, MCSD.NET, MCSE, MCSA, MCAD, MCTS on several Microsoft technologies and IBM Certified Developer on XML technologies. About the hosts Jeremy is a technical product manager at Microsoft responsible for the Visual Studio Developer story for Office 365 development. Previously he worked at AvePoint Inc., a large ISV, as the chief architect shipping two apps to the Office Store. He has been heavily involved in the SharePoint community since 2006 and was awarded the SharePoint MVP award four years in a row before retiring the title to move to Microsoft. You can find Jeremy blogging at www.jeremythake.com and tweeting at @jthake.   Richard is a software engineer in Microsoft’s Developer Experience (DX) group, where he helps developers and software vendors maximize their use of Microsoft cloud services in Office 365 and Azure. Richard has spent a good portion of the last decade architecting Office-centric solutions, many that span Microsoft’s diverse technology portfolio. He is a passionate technology evangelist and frequent speaker are worldwide conferences, trainings and events. Richard is highly active in the Office 365 community, popular blogger at www.richdizz.com and can be found on Twitter at @richdizz. Richard is born, raised and based in Dallas, TX, but works on a worldwide team based in Redmond. Richard is an avid builder of things (BoT), musician and lightning-fast runner. Useful links Office 365 Developer Center Blog Twitter Facebook StackOverflow http://aka.ms/AskSharePointDev http://aka.ms/AskOfficeDev http://aka.ms/AskOffice365Dev Yammer Office 365 Technical Network O365 Dev Podcast O365 Dev Apps Model O365 Dev Tools O365 Dev APIs O365 Dev Migration to App Model O365 Dev Links UserVoice The post Episode 071 on the PNP Partner Pack with Paolo Pialorsi—Office 365 Developer Podcast appeared first on Office Blogs.

No matter what industry you’re in, you’ve probably experienced at least a few video conference calls. While these calls require slightly more equipment than audio conferencing, they fill a need for face-to-face time that can’t quite be met without in-person gatherings. In fact, the popularity of video conferencing has exploded in recent years and that is for a number of reasons. First, video conferencing saves time and money. According to a study by PGi, companies that regularly use video conferencing find a 30 percent dip in the cost of travel overall, which includes hotel, airfare, gas, taxi, car rentals and food stipends. In addition, video conferencing can lead to higher efficiency and productivity—it holds attention longer than a regular call (35 minutes compared with 23 minutes, according to PGi). Another perk of video conferencing is that it brings a sense of oneness among scattered employees who telecommute or work in different cities. Sometimes, you just need a face-to-face meeting. But video conferencing comes with its challenges too. Have you ever participated in a call that was so poorly organized, or had so many technology flubs, that it felt like a waste of time? Most people probably have. That’s why it’s important to do all you can to avoid the following video conferencing nightmares—whether you’re the host or a participant. Background noise. A great benefit of video conferencing is that it allows you to work from anywhere—even your home. But remember, your goal is still to be as professional as possible. That means you should eliminate any extraneous noises, including dog barks and kid cries. Close yourself in a quiet room with no distractions. If you know you’ll have an important call, send the kids to grandma’s and crate the dogs in another room. Unmuted distractions. Don’t be "that person" who forgets to mute himself or herself when talking to others in the room, answering another phone call or—gulp—ordering a cup of coffee. If you need to step away from the call, mute yourself no matter the reason. Muted conversations. On the other hand, don’t forget to unmute yourself when it’s your turn to speak. Who knows how many countless minutes and hours have been lost in our lives thanks to accidental muting! Spotty connection. There’s nothing more annoying than being kicked off a video call. Not only do you miss parts of the meeting, but you waste time and energy trying to get back on. Be sure to have a solid Internet connection from wherever you’re working, and know how to restart it should it go out. Also, have a backup source for connecting if possible; for example, if there’s an app for your video conferencing program, install it on your smart phone and know how to use it if need be. Static or interference. It’s not cool when someone misses every other word you say (or vice versa). Sometimes technology is just a beast and there’s no way to prevent it. But one way to lessen the likelihood of static or interference is for all participants to mute their phones unless they’re speaking. Unknown speaker. When there are multiple people on the line, it can be difficult to remember who is who. Even if the program you are using identifies you, state your name and department before saying anything important. This will help those you don’t know well get oriented before you say a word. Echo central. Sometimes there’s an unexplainable echo on a video call. If this occurs, try to narrow it down to a specific person or ask everyone to redial in. If that does not solve the issue, be prepared with another bridge or line for people to join. In addition to these video conferencing nightmares, here are a few tips for best practices when preparing for a video call: If you’re organizing a meeting, be sure it’s actually necessary. Almost all of us have hung up from a call and thought, "Well, that could have been accomplished with an email!" Help participants stay on task with a clear and detailed agenda. Be sure to leave time at the end for questions. Be comfortable with the video conferencing technology before the meeting begins. Don’t wait until five minutes before a call starts to try signing in for the first time. If you’re the meeting host, run a test beforehand. Ask another employee to join your practice meeting so you can get the hang of granting screen sharing access, muting and unmuting participants, and more. Use plenty of lighting. It doesn’t matter where you’re at during the meeting—the office, your home, etc.—be sure there’s adequate lighting so others can see your face. Don’t allow yourself to be backlit or your face could appear dark. Instead, be sure the light is coming from in front of you or from the side. Make sure the background is not distracting. It’s not very professional to have a pile of laundry or your kids’ toys scattered behind you. Instead, go for simple and plain. Dress appropriately. You’re still a professional, so unless it’s an audio conference, pay attention to your hair, makeup and clothing. Specifically, wear muted, neutral or pastel colors—no stripes, polka dots, plaids or anything else that could be distracting on screen. Keep your webcam at eye level or a bit higher. Weird angles are also distracting. Consider purchasing (or asking your company to purchase) a good microphone, especially if you make a lot of video calls. An external USB microphone is a great pick. Stay focused on the call. Remember, people can see you—so don’t try to multitask during your video conference. Look into the camera. Too many people stare at their own image on the screen instead, but that makes it appear (to everyone else) as if you’re looking downward. You won’t come across as professional and forthright as you want to be. Remember, video conferencing is just like any technology in that there are many benefits as well as challenges. Fortunately, many of these challenges can be avoided with a little knowledge, troubleshooting and patience. So get ready and dive in to your next online video conference with ease. Lights, camera, action! —The Office team The post Video conferencing nightmares and how to avoid them appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team. Office 2016 hit the market just two months ago and over the coming weeks we’re rolling out the next wave of monthly innovations for Office 365 subscribers. This month, PowerPoint leads the way with game changing tools that make it simple to build designer grade layouts and transitions. With this month’s feature update, we’re also introducing Office Insider, an ongoing preview program available to Office 365 subscribers. Taking presentations to the next level PowerPoint Designer and Morph are new intelligent tools that work for you by automating the creation of slides and presentations, helping everyone get more out of Office. With a cloud-powered recommendation engine and smart animation technology, these new PowerPoint capabilities help anyone create polished slides and captivating motion effects with just a few quick steps. Introducing PowerPoint Designer PowerPoint Designer allows anyone to create high quality professional slides within seconds. Just drop an image into your presentation and Designer provides you with several design ideas. Select your favorite and you’re done! This allows you to spend less time figuring out how to produce high quality designs and more time preparing for that key moment—your presentation. This all works thanks to a powerful combination of automated design and smart image analysis. PowerPoint Designer was built in collaboration with professional graphic designers, who helped develop over 12,000 creative blueprints. Designer applies cloud intelligence to analyze and identify the most compelling portion of your images to determine which blueprints work best with your content. For example, if the visual contains a natural scene, Designer can zoom, crop and frame it. But if the image contains a chart, it focuses in on the relevant region to ensure the important data is highlighted. Designer then selects from the 12,000+ blueprints to provide multiple layout options to help you make the most of your image. The end result is a high quality and customized presentation—in seconds. This first release of Designer will do amazing things, but it’s going to get even better with time. In the coming months, we will expand Designer to work with additional slide types. Create cinematic motion with Morph Morph creates cinematic motion by seamlessly animating between your slides. Morph doesn’t just animate regular text or images, it can animate 3-D shapes or be applied at a word or even character level, including text wrapping. Simply duplicate slides you want morphed together, move the objects based on how you want them to animate and click the Morph button under Transitions. You’ll be amazed with the quality of animations you create with just one click. Exclusively available to Office 365 subscribers, PowerPoint Designer and Morph are premium authoring and editing features. PowerPoint Designer and Morph are available first in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows desktop and Windows Mobile, but expect to see these same features rolling out to other platforms in the coming months. Join the new Office Insider community Today, we’re also launching Office Insider, a new program that allows Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal and Office 365 University subscribers to opt in to pre-release builds of Office 2016 for Windows. As an Insider, you get first-hand access to the latest innovations, putting you on the inside track for all things Office. And when you become an Office Insider, you are joining a community of like-minded power users. With your partnership, we can ensure a high quality Office experience for millions of Office users worldwide. Sign up and learn more by visiting the Office Insider page. If you are a commercial Office 365 subscriber and would like to get early access to new features, you can opt in to Office 365 First Release. Mac customers, stay tuned for more shortly on Office Insider for Mac. Get started These PowerPoint innovations are just the highlights of new Office 365 exclusive value we are delivering this month. You’ll see new capabilities and improved usability across Office 2016 for Windows, including personal finance templates in Excel, new sharing options across Word, PowerPoint and Excel, and online video embedding in OneNote. Learn more about the November update here. This month’s updates will be available to Office Insider participants in the coming week. Then, over the following weeks, the update will roll out to consumer and commercial Office 365 subscribers. To get started: Buy Office 365 to get the 2016 apps and these exciting new enhancements. Already an Office 365 Home, Personal or University subscriber? Opt in to Office Insider and get access to Designer, Morph and updates across Office 2016 when they become available. Visit office.com/insider to learn more. Thanks for your continued feedback and support. —Kirk Koenigsbauer The post The evolution of PowerPoint—introducing Designer and Morph appeared first on Office Blogs.

Providing our customers with world-class productivity tools sometimes requires both innovation and acquisition, a combination of all the features and capabilities our best minds can develop and those we choose to add through the strategic purchase of technology that others have created. Microsoft recently announced two new business deals that demonstrate the value of using thoughtfully acquired technology to help build, improve or enhance superior products. The first is the announcement last week that Microsoft has acquired Mobile Data Labs, an innovator of intelligent productivity solutions for mobile professionals, including the MileIQ app that automatically calculates business miles and makes it easier for users to file accurate tax deductions. With the new insights available from Office 365 and the Office Graph, the Mobile Data Labs team will continue to build outstanding mobile productivity solutions as part of the Microsoft family. The second is the announcement, made just a few days ago, that Microsoft has signed an agreement to acquire Secure Islands, an Israeli company that is an innovator in advanced information protection solutions. The Secure Islands acquisition accelerates our ability to help customers secure their business data no matter where it is stored—across on-premises systems, Microsoft cloud services like Azure and Office 365, third-party services and any Windows, iOS or Android device. In addition to these advances, Microsoft made three announcements this week that are especially important to our European customers and partners. First, in late 2016, Microsoft will begin delivering commercial cloud services from UK-based data centers and will offer our UK customers local data residency. Second, Microsoft announced completion of the latest expansion of its data centers in Ireland and the Netherlands, which serve as cloud-computing hubs for European customers. And third Microsoft announced a first of its kind innovation from a global hyper-scale cloud provider, in that access to customer data stored in these new datacenters will be under the control of T-Systems, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, an independent German company acting as a data trustee. Microsoft will not be able to access this data without the permission of customers or the data trustee, and if permission is granted by the data trustee, will only do so under its supervision. These new cloud offerings and expanded facilities will provide customers with more choice and increased opportunities to innovate more quickly, enabling new growth for local economies. Meanwhile, we will continue to work on new ways to improve and enhance Office 365 and our other cloud services. Below is a round-up of some key news items from the last couple of weeks. Enjoy! Microsoft’s Satya Nadella: 6 tips for better productivity using Office 365 and Windows 10—Speaking at the Future Decoded conference in London, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella share six of his favorite Office 365 and Windows 10 productivity tips. 10 Microsoft Office 2016 features you’ll love—Get the lowdown on some of the best features of Microsoft Office 2016, from real-time co-authoring to simplified document sharing. University getting ready to adopt new email system—Learn why Western Michigan University chose Office 365 for its students, faculty and alumni. As far as pre-Black Friday deals go, Microsoft nailed this one—Find out more about Microsoft’s latest Work & Play holiday bundle, which includes Office 365, Xbox Live Gold, Skype Wi-Fi + Unlimited World, Microsoft Assure and a $60 gift card—all for $150. How to Successfully Migrate to Office 365—Discover how small and medium-sized businesses can improve productivity and efficiency by migrating to Office 365. The post Office 365 news roundup appeared first on Office Blogs.

The role of IT has never been more critical, nor more challenging. IT is tasked with enabling workers to be productive on any device from any location while securing devices and data amidst a landscape of increasingly targeted and sophisticated threats to enterprise security. Over the last year, we’ve introduced several new security and compliance capabilities to Office 365, including Advanced Threat Protection, Customer Lockbox and Advanced eDiscovery, which integrates Equivio. Together, these new security and compliance capabilities expand upon the market-leading, built-in security capabilities in Office 365. Today we’re pleased to announce that Customer Lockbox and Advanced eDiscovery will be available for customers to purchase starting December 1, 2015. Intelligent security and compliance Just as we have engineered Office 365 as an intelligent platform that can deliver valuable insights through experiences like Delve, we are also taking an intelligence-oriented approach to enhancing security, privacy and transparency for customers around their data in Office 365. The threat landscape is rapidly evolving, with new, more sophisticated attacks being launched every day. Meanwhile, the volume of data organizations need to manage is growing exponentially. By engineering Office 365 security capabilities as intelligent systems that apply machine learning and data analytics to get smarter and stronger, we’re helping customers stay one step ahead. For example, Advanced Threat Protection extends the built-in security capabilities of Office 365, protecting against unknown malware and viruses by applying behavioral analysis to identify attachments and links in email that have a higher probability of being compromised. In addition, the learnings we derive from running a global commercial cloud email service at scale, and the insights Advanced Threat Protection surfaces regarding zero day attacks, help us improve the built-in security capabilities we deliver to all Office 365 commercial customers. In addition to fending off attacks from outside the organization, companies must also address the challenges of storing and organizing vast and increasing quantities of data so they can be responsive to a litigation, investigation or regulatory eDiscovery requests. This can be a daunting and expensive endeavor. Legal costs for the biggest U.S. banks alone totaled $30 billion in 2014. That’s why we’re pleased to bring Advanced eDiscovery to Office 365. Office 365 Advanced eDiscovery integrates Equivio machine learning, predictive coding and text analytics capabilities, to reduce the costs and challenges that come along with sorting through large quantities of data for eDiscovery purposes. In today’s data environment, the eDiscovery process for any given case could involve sorting through millions of emails, text messages, instant messages and documents to find the small number of files that are most relevant. Office 365 Advanced eDiscovery reduces the volume of data by eliminating duplicate files, reconstructing email threads and identifying key themes and data relationships. Finally, it enables users to train the system to intelligently explore and analyze large, unstructured data sets and quickly zero in on what is relevant. Raising the bar on data transparency in the cloud Providing industry-leading security and compliance capabilities in Office 365 is a top priority for us. We know customers want also want visibility into what is happening with their data in the cloud, and we believe you deserve such transparency. That’s why we’re launching Customer Lockbox, which offers customers full control over access to their data in Office 365 by giving them ultimate approval rights in the very rare instances when a Microsoft engineer must request access to the service, such as when troubleshooting a customer issue with mailbox or document contents. Today, all access control activities in the Office 365 service are logged and audited, and use of Customer Lockbox ensures that a Microsoft engineer cannot access a customer’s content to conduct a service operation without the customer’s explicit approval. Protecting your data and keeping people productive In building and delivering Office 365 as a global service, we are committed to earning your trust by delivering the highest level of data security, privacy and compliance assurances, while ensuring people can be productive and collaborate with each other across their devices, from any location. You shouldn’t have to choose between top notch security and great productivity experiences. Starting December 1, Customer Lockbox and Advanced eDiscovery will be available for purchase as add-on services to all Office 365 enterprise plans. Advanced Threat Protection is already available as an add-on. In addition, these three capabilities will be included in the new Office 365 E5 plan, also generally available starting December 1. For more information about our trust principles and how we manage security, privacy and compliance, please visit the Office 365 Trust Center at trust.office365.com and watch the demonstrations below. The post Office 365 innovations in enterprise security and compliance appeared first on Office Blogs.

As a company, we are focused on reimagining the way the world should work. In an age of information abundance, we understand that people are seeking integrated experiences that help them break out of knowledge silos, "work like a network" and connect information from multiple touchpoints in meaningful ways. Office extensibility has always been about ubiquitous connectivity, enabling new experiences on mobile devices, and empowering developers to create powerful and personalized cloud services that can transform the productivity landscape. Today, at the Connect() conference in New York, the Office Extensibility and Azure Active Directory teams took a major step forward with the general availability  of the Microsoft Graph (formerly "Office 365 Unified API" as previewed at //build earlier this year). The Microsoft Graph Keeping the end user experience at the center, the Microsoft Graph unlocks new productivity scenarios by: Enabling corporate IT to rapidly build solutions for employees. Enabling developers to build inline social experiences. Empowering partners to customize their Office experience and extend their apps with Office 365 data. The Microsoft Graph, located at graph.microsoft.com, allows applications to access digital work and digital life data across the intelligent Microsoft cloud. This represents three big advantages for developers not available before: Unified Microsoft API endpoint for accessing the capabilities of the Microsoft cloud. Unified access to data living in the Microsoft cloud. Unified access to intelligence and insights coming from the Microsoft cloud. In other words, the Microsoft Graph surfaces intelligent insights by bringing together smart machine learning algorithms with a wealth of data and user behavior—all with just a single authorization token. Unified Microsoft API endpoint for accessing the capabilities of the Microsoft cloud The Microsoft Graph today exposes APIs, data and intelligence across Office 365 and Azure AD. We are building toward a near future where multiple graphs and all APIs throughout Microsoft contribute to, and are accessible through, a single unified gateway to the power of the Microsoft cloud. Any developer capable of making an HTTP request can call the API, from any platform, and once-siloed Office 365 services can now be directly navigated via Microsoft Graph. For developers, what used to be 50+ lines of code are now cut to five. We’re also releasing SDKs to make the Microsoft Graph as useful to developers as possible. We’re starting with .Net, iOS and Android and then expanding to other platforms like Node.js, Python, Java and Ruby. Code samples for a variety of platforms are available on GitHub. Unified access to rich data living in the Microsoft cloud You can also think of the Microsoft Graph as the gateway for developers to access the rich data living in the Microsoft cloud. The opportunities for developers to shape the way the world works are endless. Within the Office 365 surface area alone, consider the amount of data we have with: More than 18 million consumer Office 365 subscribers. 60 million commercial Office 365 monthly active users. More than half a billion people managing their documents and photos in OneDrive. Over 200 million downloads of Office mobile (WXP, Outlook, OneNote on iOS and Android mobile devices). Unified access to intelligence and insight coming from the Microsoft cloud The Microsoft Graph is the consistent endpoint for developers to access intelligent insights that Microsoft builds in the cloud. And because the Microsoft Graph has access to your activities (e.g. documents, calendars, meetings), it can be used to address a ton of critical work and productivity questions, such as: Who does the user work closely with? What documents and topics are important to my colleagues right now? What matters the most to my boss? With the Microsoft Graph, developers are empowered to build smart, people-centric applications that can easily interact with data from all touchpoints of modern work. Our innovative partners, such as Do.com, Skyhigh networks, officeatwork, Smartsheet, TechnologyOne and CloudLock have already started using the Microsoft Graph to transform their respective industries. You can read their interesting use cases here. Microsoft Graph—what’s available today? Below are details of what’s generally available and what’s on preview, via the Microsoft Graph at graph.microsoft.com: General availability (ready for production)—Users, Files, Messages, Groups, Events, Contacts (personal), Mail, Calendar, Devices and other directory objects and docs. Preview (available to explore)—Notifications, SDKs, People, Organizational contacts, Office Graph, Planner, OneNote, Converged Auth. flow support, OneDrive Files and Outlook. Developers can get started immediately and build Microsoft Graph-based solutions for free using an Office 365 developer tenant. Access to the Office 365 APIs and data through the Microsoft Graph is included in the customer’s Office 365 license. This includes all the APIs that are available with the general release today. Access to intelligence is paid—with some intelligence features explicitly included in the Office 365 license and some licensed separately. Over time, we plan on adding additional capabilities to the Microsoft Graph that may be licensed separately. Get started today Right now is an incredibly exciting time with a huge opportunity for developers to reach the 1.2 billion Office users worldwide, while helping shape the future of work. Our goal is to make it possible for developers to tap into the power and data across Office and Microsoft to build transformative experiences that enhance productivity and deliver greater impact for users. As part of the announcements and release today, we have many more Office extensibility features. Go check them out here. Start coding—Visit graph.microsoft.com to get all the documentation, code samples, SDKs, graph explorer and much more. Sign up—Visit office.com and click the Sign Up button to join a vibrant and growing community of developers building solutions for Office 365. More on Office Dev—Visit office.com/getting-started to get started with Office development. Looking ahead We are working hard with groups across Microsoft to bring more services into the Microsoft Graph and deepen the functionality available there so that you can access all of the data your applications and services need from a single, connected API. Expect to see a bunch more progress over the next several months, and keep an eye on dev.office.com/blogs for updates. —Rob Lefferts, general manager of the Office Extensibility team The post Today at Connect()—introducing the Microsoft Graph appeared first on Office Blogs.

"Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs."  —Bill Gates SharePoint Server 2016 has been developed applying these principles—listening to our customers’ feedback and understanding their needs. Today marks an important milestone in the development of SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2. In conjunction with today’s SharePoint release, we’re also making available Project Server 2016 Beta 2. In this post, I’ll summarize the updates we’ve made in SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 since the IT Preview. Given where we are in the product cycle, these updates are primarily final touches on existing features, responses to IT Preview customer feedback and improvements to performance and hybrid scenarios. As we continue to drive toward the release of SharePoint Server 2016, we’ll continue to add new capabilities and features. What’s new in Beta 2 since IT Preview? SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 builds upon the infrastructure strengths delivered in IT Preview and introduces new hybrid experiences that enable our customers to take advantage of the possibilities of the cloud. Profile synchronization with Microsoft Identity Manager SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 adds new support and solutions for using Microsoft Identity Manager 2016 to enable rich, bi-directional synchronization and common identity scenarios. Microsoft Identity Manager 2016 simplifies the identity lifecycle management with automated workflows, business rules and easy integration with heterogeneous platforms across the datacenter and cloud to include SharePoint Server 2016. Data Loss Prevention Enhanced support for new Data Loss Prevention capabilities is included in SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2. Extensible Hybrid App Launcher SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 adds support to extend the App Launcher to deliver a common access experience across applications and solutions in Office 365 and SharePoint Server 2016. Learn about the Extensible App Launcher and more at the new hybrid resource center. Profile Redirection SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 builds on the strength of next generation hybrid investments enabling the mastering of profiles on-premises or in the cloud. Profile Redirection enables the extension of profiles to Delve About Me and additional Office 365 experiences for select users within an organization. In addition to these changes, since the IT Preview, Project Server 2016 Beta 2 has introduced CSOM improvements for scale and performance and reduced the gap between object model and the PSI. Learn more about what’s new in SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 here. For more information on deploying SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 and additional product resources see our deployment guide. Try it out and share your feedback You can download SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 today via the Microsoft Download Center and share feedback directly with our engineering teams through the SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview Forum. We also welcome feature requests and feedback via the SharePoint Server Suggestion Box on UserVoice, @SharePoint on Twitter and in the comments below. We’re eager to hear your feedback and use it as we continue to drive towards our final release in 2016. —Bill Baer, senior technical product manager for the SharePoint team @williambaer Frequently asked questions Q. Can I install SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 in production environments? A. It is not recommended to install SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 in production environments. Q. Can I upgrade SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 to RTM when released? A. SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 cannot be upgraded to RTM. Q. Can I upgrade from SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview to Beta 2? A. You will not be able from SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview to Beta 2. The post Announcing SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 and Project Server 2016 Beta 2 appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today’s post was written by Angus Florance, senior product marketing manager for the Yammer team. A year ago, we announced that you could use your Office 365 credentials to sign in to Yammer. Today we’re excited to share with you a new feature that supports enforcing Office 365 identity in Yammer. By enforcing Office 365 identity in Yammer and configuring federated identity in Office 365, admins can achieve single sign-on (SSO) capabilities for all services in Office 365, which includes Yammer. This further enables administrators to seamlessly manage Yammer from Office 365. The Enforce Office 365 identity in Yammer checkbox on the Security Settings page. Important changes to Yammer SSO and directory synchronization As Yammer becomes more tightly integrated within Office 365, we are eliminating the need for administrators to learn and maintain separate tools for Yammer. As part of this effort, we are removing the Yammer SSO and directory synchronization (DSync) tools, starting December 1, 2016. These legacy tools were created when Yammer was a standalone service. Now, customers can use the familiar Office 365 tools to set up SSO (Office 365 sign-in with federated identity) and directory synchronization (Azure AD Connect). Note that administrators can configure the Office 365 tool for sign-in themselves, rather than having to contact the Yammer support team, as with Yammer SSO. We encourage all Yammer customers using the Yammer SSO and DSync legacy tools to enforce Office 365 identity, set up Office 365 federated identity, and configure Azure AD Connect going forward. You have 12 months to make these changes. For more information on how to make these changes, please review this article. Resources Enforce Office 365 identity in Yammer Deprecating Yammer DSync and SSO Join Our YamJam If you’d like to learn more about Yammer’s latest integrations with Office 365, join our YamJam. On December 9, 2015, the Office 365 Network will host a YamJam from 9:00-10:00 a.m. PST to discuss Yammer’s new product direction. Members of the product engineering team will be on hand to answer your questions. For those unfamiliar with a YamJam, it is similar to a "TweetJam" on Twitter or an "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) on Reddit, except it takes place on Yammer. It provides the opportunity for the community to ask questions and have a discussion with a panel of internal Microsoft experts on a particular topic. Here’s how to participate: Request access to the Office 365 Network. All requests will be approved as quickly as possible. Join the Enterprise Social Service Update group. You can find it by using the Browse Groups function or through the search bar. Sign in at 9:00 a.m. PST on December 9, 2015 to ask questions, follow the discussions and connect with Microsoft team members. The post Enforcing Office 365 identity in Yammer now available appeared first on Office Blogs.

It’s a snap to share presentations with your social network using Social Share—a Microsoft Garage project. Share snapshots of slides or even the entire presentation as a photo album or video. Check out the demo: This add-in for PowerPoint makes it easy to connect with Facebook and Twitter right from your Office pane. People in your social network can comment, and the comments are pulled back into the document. Social Share also enables your friends and colleagues who may not have Office subscriptions to contribute or review the document. Read the story behind Social Share here. Ready to share? The post Share slides with your social network appeared first on Office Blogs.

When it comes to ensuring data is stored and protected in accordance with compliance standards, organizations can no longer afford to think about email alone. They must now account for new communications mediums including social media, instant messaging and other collaboration platforms. Governance and regulatory policies have already been updated to reflect the growing influence of these new mediums. Today we are pleased to announce that the Preview for archiving third-party data in Office 365 is now available. Announced earlier this year, the third-party archiving capability extends the rich, unlimited archiving capabilities we already provide for email, documents in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business, and Skype for Business meetings and conversations. The Preview is available worldwide to all Office 365 commercial customers. To participate, you simply need to reach out to one of our partners listed below, indicating that you would like Office 365 to be your archiving destination for all third-party data. The 17a-4’s DataParser is a cost-effective middleware solution with a modular design to collect many different forms of regulated content for compliance with SEC rules and eDiscovery requirements. The DataParser collects data feeds, instant messaging, database content, document management platforms and trading systems for ingestion into Office365 to create a single point of compliance management, discovery and supervisory procedures. The Actiance platform provides real-time policy enforcement, content monitoring and capture of 70+ leading social media, unified communications, collaboration and IM channels. The company services small- to large-sized businesses across all industries and counts among its customers all of the top-10 U.S., top 5 Canadian, top 8 European and top 3 Asian banks. ArchiveSocial provides 100 percent authentic capture of social media for compliance with regulations such as SEC, FINRA and FOIA. It maintains social media records in pure native format and accurately replays social media conversations and other dynamic content. ArchiveSocial is the trusted solution for hundreds of organizations in regulated industries and the public sector, including the City of Austin, the State of North Carolina and the U.S. Department of Justice. The Daegis AXS-One Archive is a secure, highly scalable archiving solution for managing the preservation, collection, review and disposal of structured and unstructured data—including email, IM, social media, voice, file system, SharePoint and reports. With full support for Microsoft Office 365 content, the AXS-One Archive shines a light on dark data, simplifying and reducing the cost of information governance and eDiscovery while lowering risks related to Enterprise data. Globanet’s social media and message capture platform—Globanet Merge1™— extends archiving, eDiscovery and compliance to data sources including email, IM, social media, financial and mobile text communications. The product is a dynamic, user-friendly and affordable way to merge all company data streams into a single database. Verba offers the first complete Collaboration Recording solution available today—only Verba provides collaboration compliance, quality management and speech analytics with integrated IM, voice, video call and desktop screen recording in an easy-to-use and cost effective software solution.  Regulated industries the world over have turned to Verba for a one-stop shop for their collaboration recording and compliance needs. We continue to invite more data capture partners to integrate with Office 365. If you’re a partner who is interested integrating, please email O365ArchivingPartners@microsoft.com to learn more and participate in this program. Technical documentation for this is also available here. —The Office 365 Archiving team The post Archiving third-party data in Office 365 now available in Preview appeared first on Office Blogs.

For almost any company, whether large or small, project management is necessary for getting—and remaining—organized. There are multiple project management tools available to help your business manage resources, project and control costs, communicate effectively with multiple team members, and track progress on any given project. While some of these tools can be installed as software on individual network computers, a great many of them are web-based—in other words, they’re available in the cloud. Benefits of project management tools in the cloud You may be one of those people who shudders at the phrase "cloud computing," but take a moment to consider what it really means. While on-premises project management tools have their place, cloud-based software comes with a plethora of benefits, including the following: Lower upfront cost. When you use on-premises project management software, you have to pay for a number of items, including software license investments, server hardware, IT staff for support, lengthy deployments and more. Alternately, a cloud-based solution typically only requires a monthly or annual fee. More secure than ever. Despite what many business executives have believed in the past, the cloud offers just as much security as on-premises solutions—the company simply does not control the physical servers. As a recent article in Forbes suggests, "cloud computing is no longer an oxymoron." Accessible from anywhere. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can access your project management software in the cloud. Because access is achieved through a web browser, it’s also possible to allow team members to view, edit and manage documents via devices other than computers. Connected team. Even when workers are separated by miles, they can feel part of a cohesive unit with a cloud-based solution. Because everyone receives to-the-minute updates, no one relevant to the project is accidentally left out of the conversation. Furthermore, conversations can be conducted in the project space (instead of via email) and stored for future reference. Increased productivity. Thanks to a centralized location where all project summaries, tasks, documents, newsfeeds and calendars are kept, cloud-based project management solutions can save time. And when time is saved, productivity can increase. In addition, a centralized location allows team members to access project documents in real time wherever they are located. Real-time communication. One of the biggest benefits of using project management software in the cloud is the ability to give quick feedback on information as soon as it’s uploaded to the project workspace. This can also increase productivity because it lowers the instances of work that needs to be redone. Up-to-date, data-driven decisions. As a business looking to become—and stay—profitable, it’s important to base decisions on more than just a whim. Thanks to the fact cloud-based software is instantaneously updated, you have the necessary information at your fingertips. In addition, most tools will have built-in reports to bring you the insights you need to make business-related decisions. Simplified IT. When you use on-premises project management software, you are typically responsible for server maintenance, which requires the attention of internal IT personnel. Cloud-based software, on the other hand, is maintained for you by the service provider (or another resource)—saving you the time and hassle of dealing with any updates or bugs, and allowing you to focus on running your projects smoothly. Instant updates. Unlike on-premises software, which requires you to download updates whenever a new version is released, cloud-based tools are updated automatically. There’s no need to pay to upgrade your entire application suite or wait for your IT team to have the time available to implement the updates. Steps for finding the best cloud-based project management solution for you Unfortunately, getting started with a new project management solution isn’t as simple as understanding the difference between on-premises and web-based, cloud choices. Selecting the best solution for your company requires several steps—but the end result is worth the effort you put forth. Follow these steps to decide on a qualified service provider. Step 1: Conduct a needs analysis. This won’t come as a shock to you, but every company is different—with different sizes, different goals and different needs. That means it’s up to your company to decide exactly which solution fits you best. Be sure those who actually will use the product have a voice in the discussion. Consider factors like whether your projects only involve internal employees or external clients as well, or what kinds of reports you will need to run. Once you know your needs, it’s easier to evaluate service providers based on the features they offer. Step 2: Research, research, research. When searching for a service provider, be on the lookout for those that offer the following features: Enterprise-grade reliability Ability to add teams and projects quickly Reporting features that give quick insights about your portfolio A familiar environment or at least one that’s easy to navigate and use Ability to see and act on tasks in one location Scheduling capabilities that allow you to plan and manage tasks effectively Summary dashboards for data-driven decisions 24/7 IT support Continuous data backup, disaster recovery and globally redundant data centers Scalable solution that grows with your business Step 3: Take a test drive. In the same way you’d test drive a vehicle before purchasing it, you should try out a project management solution before implementation. Test drives allow you to get a closer look at a tool’s features and imagine how the tool would work in a situation similar to yours. Step 4: Consider timeline and process for implementation. If you’ve decided to go with an online-based tool for project management, it doesn’t matter if it matches up well with your current applications—this only applies to on-premises solutions. But you will need to consider when you will have the manpower and budget to make the switch, and then coordinate with your chosen service provider to make it happen. Step 5: Implement and train. You’ve finally implemented a new project management software solution. Congratulations! But unfortunately, your work isn’t complete. It’s important to make sure your employees have the training they need to use the new tool effectively. Set up multiple sessions so everyone can work one into their schedule. In addition, create practice projects so everyone has a chance to explore and become familiar with the tool’s features before they have to use it in the real world. Project management in the cloud is the wave of the future. Find a tool that works for you—and don’t be left behind. For more information about moving to the cloud check out our eBook: Myths About Moving to the Cloud. The post The future of planning—online project planning in the cloud appeared first on Office Blogs.

Earlier this year, we introduced a new mobile app called Outlook Groups that lets you engage with your team on your mobile device. Available for Windows Phone, iOS and Android, the Outlook Groups app enables you to have conversations, view and edit files stored in SharePoint, access a shared OneNote notebook, @mention colleagues and groups and even discover other relevant groups. Download the Outlook Groups app and learn more in this article about how to get the most out of the experience. Since the launch of Outlook Groups, we’ve received great feedback from our customers. Today we’re happy to announce several new features in the app as well as support for several languages in addition to English. The new features include the ability to: Create new Office 365 Groups. Add and remove members and owners of existing groups. View a person’s profile card—including contact information, where they fit within the organization and their list of Group memberships. Creating an Office 365 Group via app. Group conversations in the localized Spanish Outlook Groups mobile app. In addition, Outlook Groups now supports the following languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Russian, Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional, with more coming soon. Going forward we will continue to improve the experience, such as calendaring in Outlook Groups. Please keep your input coming as we continue to improve the Outlook Groups app. —Christophe Fiessinger, senior product manager for the Office 365 team, @cfiessinger Frequently asked questions Q. What is the minimum requirement for installing Outlook Groups on my phone? A. Outlook Groups requires an Office 365 work or school account. We’ve listed the minimum requirements across Windows Phone, iOS and Android here, as well as mobile app frequently asked questions. Q. When will Delve and Yammer integrate with the Office 365 Groups service? A. By the end of 2015, we’ll introduce Office 365 Groups insights and discovery in Delve. We are targeting the Office 365 Groups and Yammer integration to be available during the first half of 2016, as mentioned in this post last May. For more information on our roadmap, please visit Office 365 Roadmap and the Office Blogs. Q. Why didn’t we call the mobile app "Office 365 Groups?" A. Office 365 Groups is a cross-suite service enabling individuals to easily create public or private groups. Individual apps such as Outlook Groups will take advantage of the Office 365 Groups service and deliver new team collaboration experiences. The post Outlook Groups now supports 11 new languages and more! appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today’s post was written by Paul Andrew, technical product manager for Identity Management on the Office 365 team. We have made a lot of improvements to the Office 365 modern authentication public preview program recently and to represent these we’ve renamed it from the Office 2013 modern authentication public preview to the Office 365 modern authentication public preview. Here’s a summary of the updates: Modern authentication in the Office 2013 Windows client and in the Office 2016 Windows client are complete and at GA. All users of Office 365 modern authentication can now get production support through regular Microsoft support channels. Use of Office 365 modern authentication is now on by default for Office 2016. No form is required for using modern authentication with SharePoint Online or Exchange Online. However, a Microsoft connect form is still used for requesting enablement of modern authentication against Skype for Business Online. An updated table of client software compatibility is now available. What is modern authentication? Modern authentication brings Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL)-based sign-in to Office client apps across platforms. This enables sign-in features such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), SAML-based third-party Identity Providers with Office client applications, smart card and certificate-based authentication, and it removes the need for Outlook to use the basic authentication protocol. The chart below shows the availability of modern authentication across Office applications. Office client application Windows Mac OS X Windows Phone iOS Android Office clients Available now for Office 2013 and Office 2016. Office 2016 Mac Preview supports ADAL including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. OneNote was released with ADAL in 2014. Coming soon. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are available now. For Android phones: Word, Excel and PowerPoint are available now. For Android tablets: Word, Excel and PowerPoint are coming soon. Skype for Business (formerly Lync) Included in Office client. TBD Coming soon. Coming soon. Coming soon. Outlook Included in Office client. Outlook uses ADAL for licensing but not yet for mailbox access. Coming soon. Available now. Available now. OneDrive for Business Included in Office client. OneDrive for Business Sync is TBD. Available now for Windows Phone 8.1. OneDrive for Business is available now. OneDrive for Business is available now. Legacy clients There are no plans for Office 2010 or Office 2007 to support ADAL-based authentication. There are no plans for Office for Mac 2011 to support ADAL-based authentication. There are no plans for Office on Windows Phone 7 to support ADAL-based authentication. There are no plans to enable older Outlook iOS clients. There are no plans to enable older Outlook Android clients. Getting started with modern authentication To use Office 365 modern authentication follow these steps: If you are using Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), then first review the caveats with modern authentication published here. Use PowerShell to enable your Exchange Online service for modern authentication as described here. SharePoint Online is already enabled. Enable any Office 2013 users to use modern authentication as described here. Office 2016 and most other Office client software is already enabled as shown in the table below. Details about setting up Office clients is described here. If needed, use the Microsoft Connect form here to request for your Skype for Business Online service to be enabled for modern authentication. Also note that to use modern authentication with Office 2013 you will need the March 2015 update patch described here. For Office 365 administrators, we have documentation on enabling MFA here. For Office 365 users, we have documentation on using MFA here. Frequently asked questions Q. When will Office 365 modern authentication be made generally available and enabled by default? Also, when will the limitations described above be completed? A. We have production support for these features today. It is enabled by default on Office 2016 clients and other clients as described in the article. We are still working on updates to enable this by default for Exchange Online and Skype for Business Online. These updates are planned to be released when testing has determined that they are at the quality and usability level that we require. We are not able to provide a specific release date. Q. I applied to the preview program; do I need to do anything else to use Office 365 modern authentication? A. If you applied before November 17, 2015, refer to this article to verify that your tenant was enabled. On or after November 17, 2015, use instructions from the article to enable your tenant. Q. What if I was previously accepted into the TAP, private preview or public preview for modern authentication? A. No action is needed from you. You can verify your tenant state by using the instructions here. Q. How do Office 2013 and Office 2016 use modern authentication? A. Read aka.ms/ModernAuthClients for more details. Q. I applied to have my Skype for Business Online service enabled on the public preview; how will I know when my tenant will be enabled and how long will this take? A. We expect to turn around requests in four weeks. We are not able to respond to requests that contain invalid data. If you have not heard back after four or more weeks, contact your Microsoft account manager or contact the public preview program owners at adalprev@microsoft.com. Q. Does Office 365 modern authentication require any specific Office 365 SKUs? A. No. Any Office 365 SKU can use modern authentication. Q. What is required for to use a third-party identity provider with ADAL-based authentication? A. The third-party identity provider should be tested and qualified for use with ADAL with the Azure Active Directory federation compatibility list. There is an updated test tool for testing ADAL with identity providers available at testconnectivity.microsoft.com. Select Install Now towards the bottom of the page. Once the Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer Tool is downloaded and running, select the test called: I can’t set up federation with Office 365, Azure or other services that use Azure Active Directory. Q. What Office 2013 Windows clients are included in the update? A. Word 2013, Excel 2013, PowerPoint 2013, Lync 2013, Outlook 2013, Publisher 2013, Visio 2013, Access 2013, Project 2013 and OneDrive for Business Sync Client. Q. What is ADAL? A. ADAL is the Active Directory Authentication Library that is used in Office 365 modern authentication. Details about ADAL are available here. Q. Can I use modern authentication with PowerShell? A. Azure AD PowerShell has support for modern authentication in public preview as described on the Active Directory Team Blog. SharePoint Online Management Shell has support for modern authentication available from here. The post Updated Office 365 modern authentication public preview appeared first on Office Blogs.

In this episode, Jeremy Thake talks to Chris O’Brien about SharePoint development. http://officeblogspodcastswest.blob.core.windows.net/podcasts/EP72_ChrisOBrien.mp3 Download the podcast. Weekly updates Outlook REST API changes to beta endpoint—Part IV The evolution of PowerPoint—introducing Designer and Morph Office Dev PnP Web Cast - JavaScript development patterns with SharePoint Office 365 Developer Patterns and Practices (PnP)-November 2015 release Announcing gulp-spsync—a Gulp plugin that syncs local files with a SharePoint site How to debug Office Add-in In Office clients without Visual Studio Debugging Office Add-ins Searching documents across multiple Office 365 groups with REST API Use a Shared folder as an Office Add-in catalog Building a good authentication flow in an Office Add-in Dissecting and validating the Exchange Identity token Got questions or comments about the show? Join the O365 Dev Podcast on the Office 365 Technical Network. The podcast RSS is available iTunes or search for it on "Office 365 Developer Podcast" or add directly with the RSS http://feeds.feedburner.com/Office365DeveloperPodcast. About Chris O’Brien Chris has over 14 years’ experience working with complex projects on Microsoft technologies. He has spent a lot of time leading SharePoint delivery teams and projects, and have extensive experience as a developer and continue to do hands-on coding. He works hard to contribute to the technical communities he works in and regularly speaks at conferences and publishes articles. In the past, he has worked for Microsoft as a SharePoint field engineer.  About the hosts Jeremy is a technical product manager at Microsoft responsible for the Visual Studio Developer story for Office 365 development. Previously he worked at AvePoint Inc., a large ISV, as the chief architect shipping two apps to the Office Store. He has been heavily involved in the SharePoint community since 2006 and was awarded the SharePoint MVP award four years in a row before retiring the title to move to Microsoft. You can find Jeremy blogging at www.jeremythake.com and tweeting at @jthake.   Richard is a software engineer in Microsoft’s Developer Experience (DX) group, where he helps developers and software vendors maximize their use of Microsoft cloud services in Office 365 and Azure. Richard has spent a good portion of the last decade architecting Office-centric solutions, many that span Microsoft’s diverse technology portfolio. He is a passionate technology evangelist and frequent speaker are worldwide conferences, trainings and events. Richard is highly active in the Office 365 community, popular blogger at www.richdizz.com and can be found on Twitter at @richdizz. Richard is born, raised and based in Dallas, TX, but works on a worldwide team based in Redmond. Richard is an avid builder of things (BoT), musician and lightning-fast runner. Useful links Office 365 Developer Center Office 365 main blog dev.office.com blog Twitter Facebook FlipBoard Slack channel StackOverflow http://aka.ms/AskSharePointDev http://aka.ms/AskOfficeDev http://aka.ms/AskOffice365Dev Yammer Office 365 Technical Network O365 Dev Podcast O365 Dev Apps Model O365 Dev Tools O365 Dev APIs O365 Dev Migration to App Model O365 Dev Links UserVoice The post Episode 072 on SharePoint dev with Chris O’Brien—Office 365 Developer Podcast appeared first on Office Blogs.

In the world of work, email is a mainstay. It allows us all to communicate at lightning-fast speeds—without having to pick up the phone. It gives us the power to thoughtfully consider projects, questions, answers, opinions, requests and feedback, all of which opens the door to better communication. And it gives us the ability to see the progression of conversations without digging through a mountain of individual messages. However, most people aren’t taking full advantage of what their email systems offer. Sure, they know how to send messages, set tasks, make notes, block their calendars and schedule reminders, but there are also some pretty great features (and hacks) that you may not know about that could just transform the way you use business email. Let’s take a look: Future delivery/delayed delivery: Whether you have news that you don’t want to share immediately or a project that’s ready for delivery but you don’t want to submit it too early, future/delayed delivery allows you to create and distribute messages on your schedule. Message grouping: For heavy email users, the ability to group messages into conversations related to specific topics can help you keep track of emails, stay up to date on developments and work more efficiently. Conditional formatting: Like message grouping, conditional formatting can help you organize conversations and stay on top of a certain topic. However, instead of grouping all messages into a batch that you can browse at a glance, conditional formatting simply displays messages matching selected criteria in the font and/or color of your choice. Rules: Providing you with yet another organizational option, the rules feature allows you to create and manage settings that empower your email system to automatically process messages in a certain way. Some systems can check for and include sender, recipient, email size, date and more. This way, you’ll never miss a message from your boss or your most important client; messages with large attachments can be singled out, etc. Email to text: For those times when you need an immediate response, or need to contact someone who may not have access to his or her email account, a text message may be the best way to get in touch. Some business email providers offer this feature, others don’t. If yours does, it can help you relay urgent messages quickly. Just be careful to reserve use of this feature for those who prefer it or for truly critical situations—because it can be disruptive to receive a barrage of non-urgent text messages while in a meeting, on vacation, etc. Desktop alerts: Whether you need to reduce distractions for a day or indefinitely, by disabling desktop alerts you can eliminate pop-up notifications about new messages and focus on whatever the task at hand may be. Conversely, if you’re waiting for an important email that you can’t afford to miss by a moment, you can easily turn on desktop alerts for a few hours or turn them on and leave them on for good. Email templates: If you’re a PR exec, public information officer, customer service representative, work in sales or are in any position that requires you to field requests for information about a program, service, product or topic, email templates can help you make quick work of your responses. After creating your template, all you’ll have to do is locate the template, personalize it as necessary and hit send. Not only will it help you save time, but increase your productivity. Plus, by not having to repeat yourself over and again, it might just improve your job satisfaction. Save messages as files: If you want to save certain emails in the same file as project work, contracts or other documents, you can simply drag your message from your email window to your file folder. Or, you can click Save As and choose to save a message in a specific location. This way, you can refer back to messages without digging through your inbox and/or archive. Multi-action shortcuts: If your email system supports shortcuts, it may also support multi-action shortcuts, which gives you the ability to combine several shortcuts into one quick action. For instance, if you want to mark a group of emails as read and simultaneously move them to a specific folder, or even mark messages as read, flag them as important and forward them to your team, you can do that with multi-action shortcuts. Some email systems that support multi-action shortcuts also allow you to create your own shortcuts, so you can customize your actions and make quick work of managing your inbox. Automated cleanup: Some email systems include an automated cleanup function that can help you save space and keep your inbox tidy. When a conversation (message and response) occurs over email, some email systems can analyze the contents of that conversation and determine if a message is completely contained within each thread. If it is, then the previous message will be automatically deleted—so you’ll have access to both the original message and all comments within a single email conversation, but your inbox won’t be clogged by redundant emails. Of course, if someone keeps clogging up your inbox with messages you don’t need or want, you can generally block their messages by using your "junk" or "spam" filters. But if you don’t want to permanently prevent someone from contacting you via email, you can simply select to send certain conversations directly to your trash by clicking the Ignore button. Delegate access: Finally, if you’re going on sabbatical, an extended vacation or parental leave and you don’t want to either check messages daily or weekly—or come back to a mountain of email—you may be able to give someone else permission to manage your inbox. Simply look at your account settings. If you see a Delegate Access button—or something similar—you can choose to give access to a coworker who can step in and respond to messages in your absence. Of course, you’ll still have the ability to check messages and respond as appropriate, but this feature can help you keep things in check while you’re away. Email continues to be an important tool in the business world, and your mastery of these tools will only enhance your value in the workplace. Hopefully, we have shared one or more features that you will introduce into your business arsenal, leading to increased productivity. Related content: IDC Analyst Report: How the Hosted Exchange Server is Redefining SMB Cloud IT Adoption Sync, send, and receive: Why cloud-based email and storage make sense for your business whitepaper The post 11 features to get the most out of your business email appeared first on Office Blogs.

This month’s Office 365 Dev Digest was written by Jeremy Thake, technical product manager for the Office 365 Dev team. Welcome to the ninth edition of Dev Digest, designed to help you—the Office 365 developer—keep up to date with what’s new in Office 365 development. This week has been an exciting week, with the Microsoft Graph being announced as generally available. It’s a great time for developers to start exploring our production ready APIs and also to start experimenting with the new APIs that have been introduced into Preview. There is a ton of great content published on the Connect(); Channel 9 site that can be consumed in video format too. I have attended some hackathon events this month that produced some exciting results. Check out the submissions from the European SharePoint Conference in Stockholm, the AngularConnect conference in London and DevIntersections in Amsterdam. I encourage you all to engage with us on the Office 365 Technical Network with your questions. Dev documentation The Microsoft Content Publishing team works hard producing documentation to help developers learn our platform. Here are the key new and updated articles for this month: Microsoft Graph Microsoft Graph API site Office Add-ins Office Add-in requirement sets Best practices for developing Office Add-ins Add license checks to Office and SharePoint Add-ins Office and SharePoint Add-in license XML schema structure Validation policies for apps and add-ins submitted to the Office Store (version 1.9) Office 365 APIs New: Outlook People REST API reference OneNote development Tutorial: Create a OneNote app OneNote authentication and permissions Branding guidelines for OneNote API developers Develop with the OneNote API Get OneNote content and structure with the OneNote API Open the OneNote clients Create OneNote pages Update OneNote pages Add images and files to OneNote pages Input and output HTML for OneNote pages OneNote API error and warning codes Use the OneNote save dialog on your web pages Updates to: Resource reference for the Mail, Calendar and Contacts REST APIs Outlook Mail REST API reference Outlook Contacts REST API reference Outlook Calendar REST API reference New OneDrive SDKs are available for: iOS C#/.NET Python For more documentation check out Office developer documentation. Code samples Our team is continually on the lookout for new code samples to help you jump-start your own projects. Here is a list of the most recent new and updated samples from Microsoft as well as the dev community. Repo Report—Repo Report is an Outlook add-in made with Angular that scans your emails for GitHub repository links and displays information about the ones it finds. OneDriveAPIBrowser—A Windows Forms app that allows you to browse your OneDrive files and metadata. This sample uses the OneDrive SDK for C#. Most recent Office 365 Dev podcasts Since joining Microsoft last year, I have been running around campus interviewing people about various dev topics. If you would like to hear me interview someone on a particular topic, please submit your suggestions in the Yammer group, and I’ll go hunt the relevant people down to interview. Here are the most recent podcast interviews: Episode 068 on the Angular Connect event Episode 069 with Bradly Green on AngularJS Episode 070 at the MVP Summit Episode 071 on the PNP Partner Pack with Paolo Pialorsi Episode 072 on SharePoint dev with Chris O’Brien For more podcasts check out dev.office.com/podcasts. Patterns and practices The Microsoft Patterns and Practices team is working hard to release samples to show the power of SharePoint Add-ins, and we have started to grow the program to other topics as well. Don’t forget to join the monthly community calls to hear the updates from them directly with demos on latest released samples and solutions. Here are the latest updates from the team: PnP November 2015 monthly release notes at dev.office.com. PnP November 2015 community call recording at Channel 9. New weekly PnP webcast series released with following recordings now available: Introduction to Office Dev PnP Partner Pack Introduction to Office Dev PnP Provisioning engine Introduction to Office Dev PnP PowerShell Remote timer job framework Numerous updates and new articles to PnP section in MSDN at OfficeDevPnPMSDN. For more on patterns and practices, check out dev.office.com/patterns-and-practices. All questions related on released materials and guidance can be added to our Yammer group at OfficeDevPnPYammer. Dev community blog posts The Office 365 dev community has been busy this month. It is exciting to see the effort people put into their posts in their spare time to share with the community. Check out these articles from the Microsoft field, MVPs and more: Social Share makes it easy to distribute slides and decks to more people through social networks Getting started with yo office for web dev n00bs Simplifying Office 365 Unified API calls with Postman and OAuth 2 Update 4 on Office 365 unified API Office 365 Developer Patterns and Practices—November 2015 release Office Add-in with Knockout.js Outlook REST API changes to beta endpoint: Part II Update 2 on the Office 365 unified API Add-in command sample App registration tool Retrieving posts from blogs available in Delve with Office 365 REST API com/OfficeDev/SayMyName-Mail-Add-in com/thm1118/Provider-Host-App-java-Sharepoint-OnPremise-HighTrust $ yo office v0.4 released Implementing admin consent in multi-tenant Office 365 applications using implicit OAuth flow Versioning SharePoint Add-ins in your VSO Scripted build Office 365 Dev Patterns and Practices graphics presentation Two practical things about the new Group Files API Office Dev Show—Episode 17: Grace Hopper Celebration Office Dev Show—Episode 16: Getting Started with Android Studio Display Events from an Outlook Calendar in SharePoint using Office 365 APIs The new Office—October feature update Office Store First, some news: the Store is revamping its merchandizing algorithm to improve relevance and accuracy of top results—and is planning to roll out features that better spotlight our top-ranked solutions and Office App Award winners. Stay tuned for more info on this in the next month or so. Next, pay a visit to betterwith.office.com to see the latest version of our customer evidence videos. We have just published our first in a series of education-focused videos with a look at how a Florida aeronautics school uses Poll Everywhere in the classroom. Meanwhile, developers have published a raft of top-quality new add-ins and web apps in the Store—nearly two dozen in the last month have won top or near-top ratings from the Store Validation team for performance, business value, ease of use and other metrics. Some of our longtime partners, like Smartsheet, DocuSign, PayPal, Salesforce, iGlobe and Sensei, published updates that also won top marks. Some of the top new entries include: Smart Connect for Oracle Sales Cloud By InvisibleSolutions This free Outlook add-in instantly connects Exchange and Office 365 with the Oracle Sales Cloud. SPZip Lib By ItsZap Inc. SPZip Lib is a paid SharePoint Add-in utility (with a free trial) that allows users to download files or folders from SharePoint as a ZIP file. It’s offered in several languages and is one of a half-dozen Store add-ins by this developer. BeyondCore Analyst for Office By BeyondCore (with a second add-in for Outlook) This ISV has produced two top add-ins that help users with one-click statistical analysis and validation with explanatory text right within the body of the Office document. This version works with Word, Excel and PowerPoint; a second version works with Outlook. BeyondCore is used by 23 members of the Fortune 500 and has been mentioned in the Gartner Magic Quadrant reports. Other highly regarded new offerings include: Goodpoint CSV Uploader—A SharePoint Add-in that enables users to export CSV files into SharePoint lists. Sharefile Connector for Office 365—Enables users to access and edit SharePoint and OneDrive for Business accounts from Sharefile, enabling greater organizational flexibility on where to store files. Sage Live Reporter—The latest addition to the Sage accounting-system family of add-ins that enables users to do financial reporting within Excel, based on objects in their Sage Live application. Annotate by NomisClature, which enables users of Word and Excel to annotate sections of their documents with text, images, videos, lists and links. Jedox Social Analytics for Excel—Lets users analyze data from Twitter with the help of the Jedox GPU Accelerator. Includes geographic analysis and provides analysis of what people are saying about your brand or company. Officelink—A Word and Excel add-in that enables authorized access to report data and layout objects from the IDL-Report-Catalog, a service from Germany’s IDL Beratung. Upcoming events There are plenty of events on the horizon. Don’t miss out on these great events with Office 365 content. Our team looks forward to meeting you all, so don’t be shy—come say hello at the Office 365 booth! December 1-3, 2015 AnDevCon 2015: Office 365 Developer Hackathon Santa Clara, California February 21-24, 2016 SPTechCon: The SharePoint Technology Conference Austin, Texas For more events, check out dev.office.com/events. Until next month, please join our community discussions at www.yammer.com/itpronetwork and follow us at @OfficeDev on Twitter and on Facebook. Also, be sure to follow along with us on our daily developer mission: Jeremy Thake (@jthake), Sonya Koptyev (@SonyaKoptyev), Richard DiZerega (@richdizz), Vesa Juvonen (@vesajuvonen) and Jim Epes (@j_epes). —Jeremy Thake The post Office 365—monthly Dev Digest for November appeared first on Office Blogs.

Today’s post was written by Juliet Wei, senior product marketing manager for the Yammer team. Yammer’s mission is to enable open team collaboration, and we recognize that sharing goes hand in hand with the right levels of privacy, security and compliance. With more than 85 percent of the Fortune 500 using Yammer to collaborate, our goal is to provide customers with industry-leading privacy and security commitments. Today I’m thrilled to announce that Yammer has achieved a major compliance milestone to enhance its commitment to the protection of personal data for European customers. Effective immediately, all customers can obtain a Data Processing Agreement with the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses for data processors, known commonly as the "EU Model Clauses (EUMC)." This provides customers with an alternative to transfer personal data from the European Union to the United States. Additionally, the standard HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (HIPAA BAA) for Microsoft enterprise online services is now available for Yammer customers. Organizations want a collaboration platform that gives them the right levels of privacy, security, and compliance. The EUMC and use of the standard HIPAA BAA for Microsoft enterprise online services are part of Yammer’s ongoing investments to deliver the protection customers need to collaborate with confidence. —Juliet Wei Frequently asked questions Q. What privacy and security commitments does Yammer offer today? A. As with all Microsoft Cloud enterprise services, Yammer offers strong privacy and security commitments. Yammer runs in Microsoft managed datacenters in the U.S. and provides the following: Data Processing Agreement with the EU Model Clauses, HIPAA BAA, ISO 27001 certification and compliance with Section 508, the amendment to the Workforce Rehabilitation Act of 1973 for web accessibility. Q. Do I need to take any action to receive the protection of EU Model Clauses and HIPAA BAA? A. The Updated Microsoft Online Services Terms, which will include the EU Model Clauses and the standard HIPAA BAA for Microsoft enterprise online services for all of Yammer’s existing and new customers, will be available on January 1, 2016. To obtain the EU Model Clauses or the standard HIPAA BAA for Microsoft enterprise online services immediately, please contact your account manager for an amendment.   The post EU Model Clauses and HIPAA BAA update now available for all Yammer customers appeared first on Office Blogs.

Office 365 provides customers with a continuous stream of innovative features that provide significant productivity improvements while keeping information highly secure. We are working on resources and tools to help you leverage Office 365 information security features and controls, so you can manage security in your Office 365 tenant. The Office 365 Service Trust Portal (STP), launched earlier this year, is an example of a feature that provides deep insights into how Office 365 services are operated and independently audited. Now we are pleased to present the customer security considerations (CSC) workbook that can be used to facilitate a quick review and implementation of the security controls available in Office 365. The CSC workbook is designed to provide you with information on key security and compliance features to consider when adopting, deploying and managing Office 365. The CSC workbook, which currently is implemented as a Microsoft Excel workbook, is in preview. Your feedback will allow us to improve the CSC workbook for your business needs, and we hope to receive your feedback. Over time, the number of pivots will increase and additional compliance scenarios will be incorporated. The CSC workbook contains two security-based pivots on the same set of features and information. One pivot is the Office 365 Customer Control Considerations section. Information in this section is organized into five scenarios listing the features that can be used to manage information security risks: Data Resiliency—Considerations for protecting and recovering information from potential data corruption. Access Control—Things to consider around managing identity and access control using Office 365 and Azure features. Data Leakage—Considerations around using encryption and controlling forwarding. Security and Compliance Investigations—Considerations for conducting compliance searches and forensics investigations, as well as logging and hold actions in Office 365. Incident Response and Recovery—Things to consider around security incident response and recovery. In addition to these five scenarios, an all-up list of considerations is provided. The second pivot is the Office 365 Risk Assessment Scenarios section. Information in this section is organized by risks/threats and how you will implement various controls to manage these risks: Malicious Customer Administrator Former Employee Credential Theft Malware Trusted Device Compromised Attacker Foothold Microsoft Operator We hope that the CSC workbook provides you with quick information on how to help secure your Office 365 service with features/configurations that you manage. Based on the usage of this tool and your valuable feedback, we hope to expand the scope of considerations as appropriate and make it even more user friendly in the future. To get the CSC workbook, sign in to the STP and download the "Office 365 Customer Security Considerations Preview" and "Office 365 Customer Security Considerations Preview Reference Guide" from the Trust Documents area. If you have not yet signed up for access to the STP, you can find instructions for doing so here. For questions and feedback about the CSC, please contact us at cxprad@microsoft.com. We look forward to hearing from you! —Jon Nordstrom, senior solutions architect, Office 365 customer experience; and Om Vaiti, senior program manager, Office 365 Trust Engineering The post Announcing Office 365 customer security considerations preview appeared first on Office Blogs.

In this episode, Jeremy Thake and Richard DiZerega talk to Sonya Koptyev on Connect(); 2015 announcements. http://officeblogspodcastswest.blob.core.windows.net/podcasts/EP73_Connect.mp3 Download the podcast. Weekly updates Synchronize your Outlook and Redmine experience with Ahau Software news.microsoft.com/futurevisions/ Office Dev PnP webcast—Branding SharePoint using add-in model techniques Dun & Bradstreet helps Azuqua qualify customer leads with its Excel add-in Microsoft Graph turns Office into new collaboration resource Office 365 Connectors for Groups walkthrough Where am I? Detecting the Office host in Office Add-ins Single sign-on (SSO) for Outlook add-ins with ease Announcing SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2 and Project Server 2016 Beta 2 Creating all day events with the Microsoft Graph on Office 365 Enhancing your Office 365 Groups using custom Connectors and Cards for Groups Show notes Connect(); 2015 Today at Connect()—introducing the Microsoft Graph Connect() 2015 Office Extensibility News Got questions or comments about the show? Join the O365 Dev Podcast on the Office 365 Technical Network. The podcast RSS is available iTunes or search for it on "Office 365 Developer Podcast" or add directly with the RSS http://feeds.feedburner.com/Office365DeveloperPodcast. About Sonya Koptyev Sonya Koptyev is a senior product marketing manager responsible for the Apps for Office developer platform. Sonya is a seven year veteran at Microsoft and has worked in a variety of roles throughout the company, including a senior consultant and professional development manager with Microsoft Consulting Services. About the hosts Jeremy is a technical product manager at Microsoft responsible for the Visual Studio Developer story for Office 365 development. Previously he worked at AvePoint Inc., a large ISV, as the chief architect shipping two apps to the Office Store. He has been heavily involved in the SharePoint community since 2006 and was awarded the SharePoint MVP award four years in a row before retiring the title to move to Microsoft. You can find Jeremy blogging at www.jeremythake.com and tweeting at @jthake.   Richard is a software engineer in Microsoft’s Developer Experience (DX) group, where he helps developers and software vendors maximize their use of Microsoft cloud services in Office 365 and Azure. Richard has spent a good portion of the last decade architecting Office-centric solutions, many that span Microsoft’s diverse technology portfolio. He is a passionate technology evangelist and frequent speaker are worldwide conferences, trainings and events. Richard is highly active in the Office 365 community, popular blogger at www.richdizz.com and can be found on Twitter at @richdizz. Richard is born, raised and based in Dallas, TX, but works on a worldwide team based in Redmond. Richard is an avid builder of things (BoT), musician and lightning-fast runner   Useful links Office 365 Developer Center Office 365 main blog dev.office.com blog Twitter Facebook FlipBoard Slack channel StackOverflow http://aka.ms/AskSharePointDev http://aka.ms/AskOfficeDev http://aka.ms/AskOffice365Dev Yammer Office 365 Technical Network O365 Dev Podcast O365 Dev Apps Model O365 Dev Tools O365 Dev APIs O365 Dev Migration to App Model O365 Dev Links UserVoice The post Episode 073 with Sonya Koptyev on Connect(); 2015 announcements—Office 365 Developer Podcast appeared first on Office Blogs.