Welcome to the Office 365 update for February 2018. In the next few minutes I'll give you
a quick rundown of the latest updates to the service, with goal of helping you get the most
out of your investment. We cover things rather quickly, so please refer to the Office 365
Guy Blog where we post the transcript and resources guide. Last October, I covered the growing
support for 3D models in PowerPoint. In that segment, I showed you how 3D graphics become
even more dynamic when combined with PowerPoint's Morph transition.
Simply duplicate your slide, reposition your 3D model, select the Morph transition, and PowerPoint
creates a smooth, cinematic transition between slides. Good news: 3D support in PowerPoint
just got even better. Office 365 subscribers can now add animation effects to 3D objects on
a single slide. Now, there are animation effects specific to 3D images. Simply click on your
3D model, and an Animation Ribbon displays the options. There are also effect options specific
to each 3D animation. Once applied, they can be managed and sequenced in the Animation Pane
just like traditional PowerPoint animations. Back in December 2016, I covered scalable vector
graphics: Now you can insert and edit scalable vector graphics and images in your Office documents.
We've even added a built-in library of professional, high-quality icons to get you started.
Since these graphics are vector-based, they look great at any size without becoming, to use
a scientific term, pixelated. Once added, you can apply styles, change the line color, change
the fill color, and add other effects. Vector graphics became even more flexible in mid-January.
Now, after adding a graphic, Office 365 subscribers will see a new "Convert to Shape" option
in the Graphics Tools Format Ribbon. This enables you to transform SVG pictures and icons
into Office shapes so you can change individual elements within the graphic, like their color,
size, and texture. Remember, vector graphics aren't limited to PowerPoint. You can also use
them in Word, Excel, and Outlook emails. For more information, go to the What's new in Office
365 page on the Office Support site I link to in the transcript.
Introduced at Microsoft's Ignite event in Orlando last September, the Outlook Cheat Sheets,
available in PDF format, have been a big hit. They show you how to quickly accomplish useful
tasks in Outlook Mail and Calendar across platforms. There are specific Cheat Sheets for Outlook
on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Outlook on the Web. In addition, the Microsoft Office International
team has translated these Cheat Sheets into 36 languages. If you want to ensure that you're
getting the most out of Outlook on the devices you use, download the Outlook Cheat Sheet of
your choice from Support.Office.com. Feature parity across Office for Windows and Office for
Mac benefits everyone, but it isn't always a reality for various reasons.
One feature on the Mac that recently caught up with its Windows counterpart is support for
tables in Outlook for Mac. Now, everything that you can do with tables in the Mac version
of Microsoft Word, you can now do in Outlook on Mac. Simply insert a table in a new email,
and you'll see two new tabs in the compose window ribbon: Table Design and Layout.
Commands in these two tabs will allow you to tailor the table just the way you want to.
In addition to tables, there are a few small updates to the user interface of Outlook on Mac,
that I've been enjoying. In the past, you could only resize the text of an entire email in the Reading
Pane. But with this update, you can set the default text size universally. Simply go to Outlook,
Preferences, and Fonts. You now have a slider to change the text display size. In addition,
Outlook on Mac now supports swiping gestures on your trackpad to triage your In Box.
A two-finger swipe to the right or the left when the mouse is over an email in the item list,
will give you the option to either delete the message or archive it.
If you're a Mac enthusiast or a user like me who works on both platforms, I'm sure you will
welcome these improvements. On January 10th, the SharePoint team announced the ability to
create and use custom SharePoint site designs. These custom design sites serve as templates
for other sites in the organization. This enhancement enables IT and content managers to create
and deploy 'modern' SharePoint sites in a repeatable way that is compliant with your
organizations guidelines and preferences, and supports your organization's brand.
You can create a tenant-wide gallery of SharePoint site designs.
Each new site can be assigned the right set of themes and designs by the right people.
You can also assign who can pick and use specific designs when they're ready to create a new
site. I provide a link to additional details in the Office 365 Guy blog. Note that this feature
is currently rolling out to Targeted Release Office 365 customers.
I'll let you know when this SharePoint enhancement rolls out to all customers in a future
video. What's Targeted Release you ask? I put a link on the blog with more info. There are
additional enhancements to SharePoint editing capabilities available Targeted Release Office
365 customers. If you're not a Targeted Release participant, consider this a sneak preview
and rest assured these features will be released to the full production environment soon.
These new SharePoint editing enhancements include the ability create a new page starting with
an existing one. When you click on New, you'll have the option to either create a blank page
or start with a copy of the page you're currently on. This will save you time and energy recreating
elements that you've already designed. One of the most requested SharePoint features is being
fulfilled with support for rich text editing. When you add a Text web part, the embedded rich
text editor gives you greater control for how your text appears.
You can adjust the size, bold, underline and spacing. In addition, you can easily add an image
to a SharePoint page or news article, and when you do, you can further edit it by cropping
or zooming to customize it for your layout. You can also pull in online, royalty-free images,
powered by Bing, that are tagged with the Creative Common license.
There are additional details in the SharePoint blog. And again, I'll keep you posted on when
these enhancements are available beyond Targeted Release Office 365 customers.
Power BI empowers everyone to get deep insights from their data and make better business decisions,
while PowerApps enables everyone to build and use business apps which connect to your data.
Doesn't it sound like these two solutions should play well together? Well, good news: they do!
I am happy to announce the availability of the PowerApps Custom Visual for Power BI (now
in preview) which enables you to use these two products even better together.
After adding the PowerApps custom visual to PowerBI, you'll be able to pass context aware
data to your PowerApps application. The app will update in real time as you make changes to
your PowerBI report. This integration enables users to derive business insights and take actions
right within their Power BI reports and dashboards. No need to switch tabs to open the separate
apps, or copy and paste data from one window to another. For the details and to participate
in this preview, follow the link I provide in the transcript.
Microsoft has received a lot of feedback from our customers on how to make Secure Score better.
Many Office 365 Admins requested the ability of comparing their score against the average
score of all Office 365 tenants. However, is it really fair to compare the score of an organization
that has 70 seats against an organization that has 70,000 seats? The Secure Score team came
up with a solution. They grouped tenants into seven tiers based on the number of Office 365
active seats. Now, your organization's Secure Score will be compared to an average seat size
score, helping to ensure that the comparison between the scores is relevant.
Coming soon, Microsoft will be introducing an industry average score in Secure Score.
This will show how your score compares to other organizations that have designated the same
industry. Stay tuned for details. I'll provide an update on this enhancement to Secure Score
as soon as it's released. Compliance requirements can be complex to interpret, difficult to
track, and labor-intensive to implement. And with new regulations and changes coming constantly,
keeping up can be difficult and expensive. Microsoft's Compliance Manager, now available in
public preview, enables you to manager your compliance from one place.
It enables you to perform a risk assessment of your organization's compliance with regulations
and standards, such as GDPR, ISO 27001 and ISO 27018. Compliance Manager helps connect data
protection solutions with the regulatory requirements that matter to you, as well as enabling
you to evaluate Microsoft's cloud services (such as Office 365) with detailed audit information.
To simplify your compliance workflow, Compliance Manager also enables you to assign, track,
record compliance-related activities, and produce detailed reports that can help you be more
prepared for audit activities. For all the details, read the Security and Compliance blog
post I link to in the transcript, which contains a video demo showcasing the Compliance Manager's
new capabilities. Before signing off, I want to give you a quick update on two current security
threats that you've probably been hearing about in the news: Meltdown and Spectre.
They are a newly discovered class of vulnerabilities based on a common chip architecture that,
when originally designed, was created to speed up computers. Microsoft is well aware of these
threats and has released several updates to help mitigate these vulnerabilities.
We strongly encourage the installation of these updates to all computing devices from phones
and tablets to on-premises datacenter servers. Rest assured, Microsoft has also deployed these updates
to secure our cloud services, including Office 365. Check out the information in the transcript
and resource guide to learn more. That's it for the February update. Remember to send your
feedback or success stories to Office365UpdateSeries@microsoft.com
I'm Jim Naroski, thanks for watching, and I'll see you again soon!