March 2017

The SharePoint Conference is back – almost

Microsoft today blogged about an awesome news. Microsoft will be hosting a SharePoint Virtual Summit, a free global online event, on May 16 2017.

Last year Microsoft had Future of SharePoint virtual event which was viewed by over 50,000 users and hence this year Microsoft is bringing it back.

At this year’s SharePoint Virtual Summit you’ll learn how to create a connected workplace in Office 365 with OneDrive and SharePoint and integrated with Yammer, Microsoft Teams, Windows, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jeff Teper will unveil the latest product innovations and roadmap. You’ll also hear from industry-leading customers on how they are leveraging these technologies as part of their digital transformation. Jeff will be joined by Microsoft corporate vice presidents James Phillips and Chuck Friedman to discuss how Office 365, connected with Windows and Azure, is reinventing productivity for you, your teams and your organization.

Make sure you register and secure your spot.

https://resources.office.com/ww-landing-sharepoint-virtual-summit-2017

Test drive Microsoft’s new collaboration tool – Microsoft Teams

I am just cross posting this for anyone who reads my blog regularly.

Microsoft is currently offering hands-on live sessions where you will have the opportunity to test drive Windows 10, Office 365 and my favourite collaboration tool Microsoft Teams. During this small-group sessions you will apply these tools to your own business scenarios and experience how they work for you.

Each 90-minute session starts with an online business roundtable discussing your biggest business challenges with a trained facilitator and then transitions into a live environment in the cloud. You will receive a link to connect your own device to a remote desktop loaded with Microsoft’s latest technology, so you can experience first-hand how Microsoft tools can solve your challenges.

This is pretty exciting since this is first time Microsoft offering this. Each session is limited to 12 participants.

You can read more about this at:

https://blogs.office.com/2017/03/15/test-drive-our-hottest-new-collaboration-tool-microsoft-teams/

U.S. customers: Register here
Outside the U.S.: Register here

Microsoft Teams is now generally available

Today is one of the awesome day as Microsoft announced that Microsoft Teams – the chat based workspace in Office 365 – is not GA in 181 markets and in 19 languages. This Office 365 based application is pretty awesome and it was very well received by over 50,000 organizations when Microsoft announced the preview in Novermber last year.

One of thing I really like about Microsoft Team is the speed at which they worked on many user feedback in last four months or so.

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public

For anyone that is new to Microsoft Teams I will just provide very high level overview here.

Microsoft Teams provides a modern conversations experience, with threaded, persistent chat to keep everyone engaged. We’ve rolled out many new communication features since preview, including audio calling from mobile devices, plus video on Android, which is coming soon to iOS and Windows Phone. And we’ve addressed numerous customer requests, adding the ability to email a channel, including attachments, send messages with markdown-based formatting, and receive notifications about all posts in a channel.

You should check out the official announcements and discussion below.

https://blogs.office.com/2017/03/14/microsoft-teams-rolls-out-to-office-365-customers-worldwide/

I am very confident that moving forward, Microsoft Teams will be providing new features and good developer platform.

New Office 365 profile experience

This is pretty exciting news. Microsoft announced that they will be rolling out an extended profile card experience across Office 365 to enhance the way you collaborate with colleagues and external contacts. There are several big improvements on top of the current user profile experience that we get on O365.

Some of the key improvements are

1) Quickly look up documents that have been shared with you, independent of how they were sent.

2) The new Organization view shows a complete picture of the highlighted user’s position in the company, including their direct reports and co-workers.

3) New profile card is integrated everywhere you see a person’s name on Office 365 without interrupting your productivity.

You can read details about this new change in the following blog post.

https://blogs.office.com/2017/03/10/introducing-the-new-office-365-profile-experience/