Category: Office 365 Other

Bookings, Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Governance, Microsoft Flow, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Governance, Office 365 Other, OneDrive for Business, Planner, PowerApps, Prepare for Change, SharePoint Online, StaffHub, Yammer

The unwanted effects of postponing things to tomorrow

It is September 2018. Every morning, I dedicate 15 minutes to update me on Office 365 Roadmap. Today i find that 67 updates are currently being rolled out and 234 that are in development.Roadmap

My thoughts go away (once again) to all companies “out there” and the crew and individuals who have some form of responsibility for Office 365, either in its entirety or for any of its services. How about you?

  • Do you have full control of all updates?
  • Do you have a plan for how to apply these updates?
  • Do you know how to inform your colleagues about new functionality?
  • Can you ensure that user adoption is carried out in the most effective way and with the desired effect?

If you answer yes to these questions then you are  quite unique. Too many companies let updates and news launch without being in control of the positive and negative effects it brings.

“Whether you are a fast runner or good at hiding, you will not be able to escape the reality. The longer you wait, the harder it will hit you.”

I’m not a strong supporter of scaring people into action but unless you and your company have a very strong focus on Governance and User Adoption, you will not be able to take advantage of the full potential of your platform. The risk is rather that ignorance and poor planning cause disorder, misunderstandings and security problems. In plain text, this means that you will not achieve the profits and goals you wish

How can you get started?

A good (and compulsory) first step that creates great value is to define service owners/Change agents. A service owner shall be responsible for his/her service and keeping up to date on the Office 365 Roadmap and to follow related blogs (a good source of information is the Microsoft Tech Community.

Next step, when the service officers are appointed and have got their routines in place, is to establish a Change-/Governance Team and provide it with a tool that supports their needs.

When should you start?

It’s only a day left until tomorrow. Procrastination is not an option (It is not often that it is). Put this on the agenda today and start planning now. If you do not have the time or resources, there is always someone who can help you. It is better to use the time on planning than on putting out fires later.

 

Microsoft Flow, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Other, OneDrive for Business, Planner, Problem Solving, SharePoint Online, Tips & Tricks, Yammer

If you experience that one or more Office 365 services are slow

Do you mount old tires on your new car?
Are you buying new shoes and moving over the soles of your old ones?
Then you are also likely to run Office 365 with your old, traditional network settings

If you experience that one or more Office 365 services are slow, you may want to analyze your settings and make some corrections.
I recommend reading Tony Redmond’s article “Network Principles for Office 365 Connectivity” where he is describing a common problem. Perhaps you can easily do something about it

Microsoft 365, Microsoft Office, Office 365 Other, Prepare for Change

Integrated PDF services to Office 365

Good progress is taking place within integrations between Adobe Sign and Office 365 products. Some of the goodies:

  • Rich previews of PDF documents right within OneDrive and your SharePoint sites.
  • Select several files and pull into one PDF with just a couple of clicks within SharePoint document libraries.
  • Available in the ribbon for online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Read the full article here: “Updates to Adobe Document Cloud bring integrated PDF services to Office 365”

Adobe-Office-365-2

(Image from www.microsoft.com)

Office 365 Governance, Office 365 Other, OneDrive for Business, Prepare for Change, SharePoint Online

Keep up with the latest news within Office 365

Do you find it hard to keep up to date on all the news that is continuously launched in Office 365? Of course you are already following the “Office 365 Roadmap” but in addition to that, I recommend “New in Office 365” which is a good and educational source of information when you want to get to the most basic and relevant news in Office 365.

Here are the Office 365 update for June 2018. If You have not seen it yet, you should do it now. This time it is a great sum up of Training Services, Outlook, OneDrive and SharePoint, Windows Title Bar and Security (focused on GDPR this time).

TitleBar

Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Governance, Office 365 Other, OneDrive for Business, Planner, Prepare for Change, SharePoint Online, Yammer

What about Governance

Can an organization ensure continuous, profitable and sustainable development without clear and well-functioning IT Governance for associated services?
Today we have access to a giant toolbox with a wide variety of newest and coolest solutions. At this time of digitization and continuous development, at an ever increasing rate, it is easy to be dazzled by the excellence of technology.

When we make this technology/services available for the organization’s users, it becomes easy for them to learn and embrace the technology. This in turn leads to a rapid growth of information and the way it is used, handled and shared varies. This quickly leads to losing the overview and basic control of the services for which You are responsible.

One thing that everyone talks about, but few know, is IT Governance. My experience is that there are many definitions of what this is and how it should be handled. Have You got a plan for how to handle this for your organization’s different services? That is a minimum to establish good basic IT Governance.