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Welcome to the Office 365 update for August of 2018. In the next few minutes I'll be giving
you a quick rundown of the latest Office 365 updates, with the goal of helping you get the
most out of the service. First, I want to thank all the viewers who took the time to participate
in last month's survey. Your responses helped me better understand who you are and what you
like most about this video series. My team and I are looking closely at the survey results,
especially your comments, and will be looking for ways to make this video series even more
valuable to you. Now on to the updates. In the January Update video, I covered the Microsoft
Whiteboard Preview app, a freeform digital canvas where people, ideas, and content can come
together for creative collaboration. On July 12th the Office team announced the Whiteboard
app had moved out of preview and is now generally available on Windows 10.
Whiteboard provides an infinite canvas where imagination has room to grow.
You can easily draw, write, and add images and virtual sticky notes to organize your ideas.
Designed for pen, touch, and keyboard, Whiteboard enables you to share your ideas naturally,
in whichever form you prefer. Teammates can huddle around a large touchscreen in the same
room or work together on their own devices from around the world.
With the Whiteboard app, your brainstorming sessions are saved automatically to the cloud,
so you can pick up where you left off, whenever and wherever inspiration strikes.
And because the canvas expands along with your creations, you never have to worry about running
out of space. To start using Whiteboard on your Windows 10 device, download the app for free
at the Microsoft Store and log in with your Microsoft account or your Office 365 account.
And be sure to visit the blog article I link to in the transcript and resources guide for
more information on availability on iOS and the web. The OneDrive Activity Center is your
go-to place to see the status of the OneDrive desktop client or to customize your sync experience.
In mid-July, the OneDrive team started rolling out a new, updated OneDrive Activity Center
to improve clarity and ease of use. One feature that I particularly like is the new option
for conserving battery life on Windows devices. The OneDrive desktop client will now automatically
pause sync whenever a device switches to "battery saver" mode.
Of course, you'll have the option to 'Sync anyway', which will un-pause the sync client.
If you allow sync to remain paused, OneDrive will auto-resume the sync once it detects that
the device is no longer in "battery saver" mode. Many improvements to the sync client, like
this one, came from users like you, and the OneDrive team wants to hear your feedback.
Once you have the updated sync client, you'll find a new "Send feedback" link in the OneDrive
preferences menu. In addition to providing feedback on what you like and don't like, you can
click on "I have a suggestion" and you'll be taken directly to the OneDrive UserVoice site
where you can submit a new idea or upvote an existing one. MyAnalytics is a personalized set
of metrics that helps you find opportunities to build better habits and take control of your
time. And who doesn't want to do that? It gives you insights into how you spend your time
and provides tips that help you work smarter. A new feature called MyAnalytics Nudges offers
friendly, data-driven collaboration tips as you work in Office 365.
For example, much of my work, including researching topics for this video series, requires
focused and undivided attention. As I receive new meeting invitations on my already busy calendar,
a MyAnalytics Nudge gives me a gentle reminder to set aside time for focused work before accepting
the meeting invitation. I can see available time blocks on my calendar and reserve them for
focused work without ever leaving my inbox. Additional MyAnalytics Nudges help you collaborate
more effectively in other ways, such as: Running more effective meetings, reducing your after-hours
impact on your coworkers, and staying on top of your unread email and to-do items.
MyAnalytics is included with Office 365 Enterprise E5 and is also available as an add-on with
select plans. These new MyAnalytics nudges are currently available in preview for customers
using both Workplace Analytics and MyAnalytics. The Nudges will be rolling out in stages over
the summer to enterprise customers using Outlook for the Web.
What is Workplace Analytics, you ask? We'll be covering that in just a few minutes.
I know many of you work outside of an office environment, without direct access to a desktop
or laptop computer. Most salespeople, machine operators, and field technicians, rely on their
phones to stay connected to headquarters. Microsoft Kaizala is a new mobile app you might
start hearing about. It addresses the needs of these workers. It makes it easy to communicate
and get work done out in the field, all on your iPhone or Android device.
Kaizala gives field workers access to the tools they need to stay informed and work efficiently.
The app makes it easy to get announcements from the main office, send feedback via polls or
surveys, and chat with others workers either one-on-one or in groups.
Kaizala makes it easy to see where everyone is to coordinate work effectively.
Its unique location-awareness feature makes it easy to request location information from others,
send your geo-tagged location, or take and send a picture with the location auto-tagged.
The Kaizala team built the app on three core pillars: The first is communication.
It makes it easy to connect with large groups of people both inside and outside an organization.
The second pillar is work management. Kaizala simplifies the coordination of tasks for common
work scenarios, and provides insights through advanced reporting.
The final pillar is security & manageability. Kaizala adheres to rigorous standards for security,
privacy, and compliance. It also enables admins to easily manage users and control access
to sensitive data. For additional information, click on the link to the Microsoft Kaizala
page in the transcript and resources document. It contains case studies on how companies are
using Kaizala to connect their people and grow their business.
It also has links to download the Kaizala app for iPhone and Android.
Back in January, the Power BI team made it easier for you to collaborate with your teammates
and partners by announcing report sharing in the Power BI Service.
Last month, they super charged this experience by enabling you to share reports with filters
and slicers applied! Up until now, you'd have to take a screenshot or explain the steps you
took to configure the report to a filtered, custom view. Now, all you have to do is make sure
the "Share with current filters and slicers" checkbox is selected in the Share pane, and the
people will see the report with your filters and slicers applied.
Power BI reports are shared via an email that contains a URL to the report.
If your recipients bookmark this URL, the linked report will retain the filters and slicers
so the report will continue to display just as you intended. Note that the feature is currently
disabled for reports with custom visuals, but the Power BI is working hard to extend this
new capability to all reports, including those with custom visuals.
On July 12th, Microsoft announced that live event capabilities will be coming to Microsoft
Stream, Microsoft Teams, and Yammer. With this development, customers will be able to schedule,
produce, and deliver live events more effectively for a variety of scenarios such as companywide
events, leadership updates and more. Live events enhance communities of any kind, by bringing
people together around important moments or topics. While communities in Yammer foster two-way
conversations, and Microsoft Teams enables team collaboration, live events enable you to effectively
communicate news and updates to everyone across the organization, on any device.
Seamless integration across Office 365 means that you can use Microsoft Stream to deliver
highly produced, studio-quality events that can be viewed in Microsoft Stream, Microsoft Teams,
or Yammer, to reach the broadest audience possible. As part of Microsoft's commitment to empower
people and organizations with artificial intelligence, commonly referred to as AI, a new set
of intelligent features will soon be available in Microsoft Stream, including: Speaker timelines
that use facial detection to identify who is talking, so you can easily jump to a particular
speaker in the recording; speech-to-text and closed captions that capture the event in a readable
form and make the content more accessible for everyone; and transcript search and timecodes
that let you quickly find moments that matter in a video. There's an in-depth overview of
these new Stream features embedded in the July 12th Office 365 Blog post, which includes a
great overview for admins that covers controls for governing who can upload content and create
new channels, and also how Microsoft Stream supports GDPR compliance.
What MyAnalytics does for the individual, Workplace Analytics does for the organization.
It identifies collaboration patterns that impact productivity, workforce effectiveness, and
team engagement across the organization. On July 12th, Microsoft unveiled Workplace Analytics
solutions for teamwork. New team-focused dashboards in Workplace Analytics help enable you
to: Uncover collaboration challenges such as meeting overload or high after-hours workload;
inspiring teams to change through productivity insights and customized action plans; and measuring
and improving on a team's action plan by assessing and tracking progress against goals over
time. Microsoft Workplace Analytics is available as an add-on to any Office 365 enterprise
plan. You can learn more about Workplace Analytics, including how it safeguards your data,
in the links provided in the transcript and resources guide. That's it for this month. Remember,
you can download the transcript and resources document that accompanies this video
at aka.ms/o365update-blog.
I'm Jim Naroski, thanks for watching, and I'll see you again soon!
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