Cloud Productivity, Collaboration, Document Collaboration, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Modern Workplace, Office 365, SharePoint Online, Tips & Tricks Mar 29, 2023

Make your Office templates available to all users

Most companies and organizations have a good ambition that everyone should use the company’s standardized Office templates. The templates must follow the correct graphic profile and have the correct outline. Unfortunately, few companies and organizations succeed in this.

Wrong file types

A common misunderstanding is that an Office template is a “Reusable Office file” with the file extension .docx .xlsx or .pptx that you copy and change. Nothing could be more wrong.

“Real” Office templates have the following file extensions:

Word = .dotx
Excel = .xltx
PowerPoint = .potx

Stored in the wrong place

Sometimes the templates are on a file server, hopefully, the templates are at least stored somewhere on the company’s Microsoft 365 tenant (sometimes in a document library in SharePoint, sometimes they are even in a Team or spread across several Teams and channels.)

Sometimes you might even have your Office templates stored in an external solution that users have to log into and download the templates from. This often means that you miss when a new version has arrived and you continue, blissfully unaware, to work with your locally stored downloaded outdated templates.

Wrong Access rights

An interesting detail is that when you store these “Reusable Office files” (that are not valid template formats), in an area where most users have editor rights, it is guaranteed that sooner or later someone has been inside and changed one or more of these files.

A good way to avoid these problems is to create “real” Office templates and store them in an area where only a few people have editor rights while all employees have read rights.

But is there an easy way to make these templates available to all users directly from Word, Excel and PowerPoint? The answer is a resounding YES! Keep reading to find out how.

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Cloud Productivity, Document Collaboration, Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Loop, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Modern Workplace Mar 23, 2023Mar 23, 2023

Microsoft Loop is here but what is it?

Yesterday, March 22, 2023, Microsoft announced that the Loop app is available in public preview. Launches are always fun and spark a lot of curiosity, but what exactly is the Microsoft Loop? Well in short it is as follows:

Microsoft Loop is a new productivity tool designed to help users organize their work and collaborate with others more effectively. One can say that it is a “cloud-based platform” that allows users to create, share, and collaborate on various types of content, including documents, notes, tasks, and more. It offers an intuitive and flexible workspace where users can organize their content into different sections, such as meetings, projects, and teams.

There are three key parts of Microsoft Loop:

Components
Workspaces
Pages

One of the key features of Microsoft Loop is its integration with other Microsoft applications, such as Teams, Outlook, and OneNote. This integration allows users to easily access and share their content across different platforms, making it easier to collaborate with colleagues and work more efficiently.

In addition, Loop also offers a range of customizable templates that can be used to create various types of content, such as agendas, meeting notes, and project plans. These templates can be customized to fit specific needs and workflows, making it easier for users to get started and stay organized.

Short summary

Microsoft Loop is a powerful productivity tool that offers a range of features designed to help users work more efficiently and collaborate more effectively with others. Whether you’re working on a project with a team or managing your own workload, Loop can help you stay organized, focused, and productive, and I guess that’s something that we all aspire to be. Therefore, this may be of interest to most of us.

As usual, the internet is flooded when news like this launches, so below I’ve compiled some useful and overview articles that can give you the information you need to get started:

Microsoft Loop – Think, plan, and create together like never before

New Microsoft Loop app is built for modern co-creation

The SharePoint storage platform supports the Loop app – Components, pages, and workspaces

Learn how to enable the Microsoft Loop app, now in Public Preview

Artificial Intelligence, Change, Cloud Productivity, Cognitive Services, Machine Learning, Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Autopilot, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Modern Workplace, Viva Engage Mar 17, 2023

Today I allow myself to be impressed. Welcome Microsoft 365 Copilot

I am very sparing when it comes to the use of superlatives but this time I allow myself to use the word revolutionary! I’m not the easily impressed type either. In fact, I am almost never impressed by anyone or anything but Microsoft 365 Copilot really impresses me! We will hear- and see a lot more of this in the future.

Microsoft 365 Copilot will change the way we work using:

Copilot in Word
Copilot in Excel
Copilot in PowerPoint
Copilot in Outlook
Copilot in Teams
Copilot in Viva Engage

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Cloud Productivity, Collaboration, Document Collaboration, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Modern Workplace, Tips & Tricks, User Adoption Mar 17, 2023Mar 17, 2023

Make yourself seen and heard in Microsoft Teams

You may wonder why it takes so long to hear back from your colleagues. Sometimes it is perhaps so bad that you don’t get an answer at all?

It is a fact that Some people are better at following along, listening and being interested and following what is happening, while others do not react until you tap them on the shoulder. Sometimes the reason may be that it is you yourself who does not work in a way that makes you sufficiently visible. In this case I’m thinking of what it’s like when you communicate in Microsoft Teams.

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Automation, Cloud Productivity, Digitalisation, Microsoft 365, Modern Workplace, No-Code, Power Automate, Tips & Tricks, Viva Engage, Yammer Mar 8, 2023

Simple Power Automate flow to post a friendly reminder in a Yammer Community

There are many of us who, as a natural part of our work, have the mandatory task of filling in time reports for each completed work week. In the best of worlds, of course you and all your colleagues always have a clear conscience when it comes to this.

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Automation, Cloud Productivity, IT Governance, Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Governance, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Teams Apps, Power Automate, SharePoint Online, Tips & Tricks Mar 6, 2023

A simple solution for requesting new Team apps

Many organizations and companies choose to block Teams apps that do not come directly from Microsoft, but they approve all team apps from Microsoft and these are thus possible for users to add to Teams.

A challenge with this approach to success is that users do not know how to go about asking for permission to access and use any of the apps that are blocked. Often, IT also does not have routines or solutions to handle this smoothly. In other words, it becomes a source of confusion and inertia in the organization.

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Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Governance, Microsoft Teams, Migration, Migration Tools, Planner, ShareGate, SharePoint Online, Tips & Tricks Mar 6, 2023Mar 6, 2023

Moving team channels is easy (when you know how to do it)

After using a system, solution or tool for a longer period of time, it usually either becomes a bit messy and/or you come up with other structures that you would rather have used. Just think back to how often you moved and reorganized folders back in the day when you were working against file servers. Then it was relatively easy to change the order of the folders in the structure you had built, but that was probably also the only advantage of working with folders on a file server. Enough about that. Today, we work in a more modern way and with tools that give us significantly more dimensions and possibilities.

Most of us who work a lot with Microsoft Teams are sometimes asked how to move a channel. The most common answer from me when I get this question is the counter question: “Do you need to move all posts as well or is it enough to move the files?”.

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Data Residency, Microsoft 365, Modern Workplace, Security & Compliance, Tips & Tricks, Viva Engage, Yammer Feb 3, 2023

A tribute to Yammer (and some thoughtful security considerations)

My opinion on Yammer for intra-company networking

Yammer/Viva Engage is an incredibly useful tool for formal and informal internal networks in an organization.

Yammer is where

You can call out into the forest and quickly get an answer.
You can share both good and less good experiences with the aim of strengthening your colleagues.
The transparency of an organization really shines through.
The shy ones who otherwise do not dare to stand up and express themselves have a forum in which they can feel included and comfortable.
Leaders can inform by using posts and announcements and all employees are involved and given the opportunity to comment.

If you’ve read this far in this text, you’ve already understood that I’m a big fan of Yammer. I have always been a big supporter of transparency and knowledge-/experience sharing. The best way for me to learn something is to “Work out loud”. Yammer is the tool that gives me exactly what I need.

The best way for me to learn something is to “Work out loud”

But where is my information stored?

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Cloud Productivity, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Modern Workplace Jan 17, 2023Jan 17, 2023

Best news in a long time! The wiki in Microsoft Teams is (finally) retiring

The wiki in Microsoft Teams has never been very useful. I have used it a few times but only to realize that it is not sufficient. I have instead used the Teams associated OneNote as a good replacement.

Now is the time to celebrate!

On January 11th, I received the following good news from the Microsoft 365 Message Center.

*Image source: MC496248 in Microsoft 365 Message Center*

But what should you use instead?

Do as I have done (and still do). Use your Teams OneNote instead! You can read more about how to use OneNote in Teams here: Add a OneNote notebook to Teams.

Automation, Christmas, Cloud Productivity, Collaboration, Festive Tech Calendar, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Community, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Teams, Modern Workplace, Planner Dec 15, 2022Nov 14, 2022

How Santa uses Microsoft Teams to plan for Christmas

Background

It’s already October and Christmas is fast approaching. Santa begins to feel sick to his stomach from the annual stress this entails. Considering how big his belly has now become, you can imagine the discomfort he is experiencing.

As far back as Santa can remember, he has used paper and pen to keep all his chores in order. The goblins must know where to go. The reindeers must be prepared and in good shape for all travel. Santa himself must get his clothes in order. That’s right, the Christmas gifts too. After all, he must get hold of all the Christmas presents that he will later distribute to the children.