Tag: Microsoft 365

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miss when a new version has arrived and you continue, blissfully unaware, to work with your locally stored downloaded outdated templates.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.

Continue reading →

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

Continue reading →

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.

Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Governance, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Governance, Prepare for Change, Tips & Tricks Oct 2, 2018Oct 2, 2018

Simplify your work by using filtered views in the new Microsoft 365 Roadmap to focus on the updates of your core area

Are you one of the “chosen ones” with responsibility to keep track of changes in one or more services in Office 365? Congratulations, then your job has just become a little easier. With the new “Microsoft 365 Roadmap” it is now much easier to create filtered views that show the updates that are relevant to you.

As you may have read in my previous posts regarding “Office 365 Governance“, I use Microsoft Teams to get an overview of updates as well as structuring governance plans. I have a Team where each service has its own channel. In the channel of each service, I have (among other things) a tab that shows the “Office 365 roadmap” in a view that I have filtered to show updates only for the current service.

Now, when the new “Microsoft 365 Roadmap” was launched, of course, my previous home-made filtered views were broken. Sometimes this type of change causes some degree of irritation but this time it was only positive. The filtration capabilities of the Microsoft 365 Roadmap are much better than they were in the Office 365 Roadmap.

So now I’m sitting here, sipping a cup of coffee, creating new filtered views and updating my tabs. Below is an example of how easy you can create a filtered view that shows the updates for the service “Microsoft Teams” and how you embed the filtered view in a tab of a channel in your “Office 365 Governance Team”.

Open the Microsoft 365 Roadmap

Filter on the service “Microsoft Teams” and status “In development” and “Rolling out”.

Copy the url of the view

Open Your Office 365 Governance Team, go to the channel of the service and edit the url of the Roadmap tab.

The filtered view in the roadmap tab is now only displaying updates for the current service and you do not have to view the updates of the services that you are not responsible for. This saves you from unnecessary noise that could otherwise steal your focus from your core area.

Now, repeat this exercise and update the “Roadmap tabs” for the channels of the other services.

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 Sep 20, 2018

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.

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.

Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Services, Machine Learning, Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Governance, Microsoft Flow, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Governance, OneDrive for Business, Prepare for Change, SharePoint Online Aug 29, 2018

Good morning, your future is already here!

Do you think that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning is far in the future, and that it does not apply to you?

Imagine technology that:

can recognize objects.
can recognize faces and facial expressions / feelings
can create auto captions in video.
can decide where images were taken.
can extract text, keywords in pictures and make this searchable.
is so clever that it, based on content, keywords, places, feelings and other features, automatically can
- organize the information for you and further make it searchable.
- trigger notifications or initiate business processes.
- provide you with suggestions for information that may be of interest to you based on what you work or have worked with.
- protect the information based upon your compliance and governance rules.

I repeat myself:

Good morning, your future is already here!

In this article “Microsoft 365 is the smartest place to store your content“, you can read and learn more about how AI and machine learning is used in Microsoft 365 today, and what new features you will have the pleasure of taking part ahead.

Hope you look forward to take part of the future as much as I do. 🙂