New Poly Trio C60 announced

Poly (the name for the Plantronics acquisition of Polycom  last year) have just announced their new Trio C60 – the companies next generation ‘built for Teams’ conference phone that many poly fans have been waiting for.

I’m usually fortunate to get to test out a fair bit of kit from our strategic technology partners however as this is so new (with availability expected sometime in May this year), this write up is based on the info shared and announced by Poly.

For me a good test of what puts one collaboration device (in this case the new Poly Trio C60) ahead of another is about 4 things

  • How simple it is to use
  • The build quality and design
  • High Quality Audio (and Video)
  • Clever Connectivity Options

Introducing the Poly Trio C60

Firstly, I’ve not yet got my hands on a new Trio just yet, it certainly seems to ticks all the boxes and it’s (well pending)

certified for Teams (as well as others).



Simple and intuitive to use
Built on (and improving on) the great success of the previous generation of Trio and finally certified (well, will be) for Microsoft Teams (as well as Zoom and a variety of the other leading open SIP and UC&C services) it will be easy to use since it will follow the standards defined by Microsoft for Teams powered collaboration devices.  In addition the Trio C60 also includes:

  • Active proximity sensors to wake up the device  from about 3 meters away
  • Volume controls mounted on each side of the device for ease of access.

Build Quality and Design
OK so while I haven’t seen one in the flesh, the new Trio looks like the high quality premium device you’d expect from Poly.

Poly say this is designed to stand on its own as a high-quality Teams conference phone, or, it can be used to control other endpoints like the Poly Studio X Series collaboration bar or G7500 camera

It’s powered by a new Quad-core processor and runs Android 9 which Poly say will deliver  up to 4x better performance than its predecessors

High quality audio
The Trio C60 will have superb HD audio sound quality as Poly devices have always been known for this, and their patented Noiseblock filters out background noise.

Theres also optional wired expansion microphones allowing you to ‘daisy chain’ up to three devices for larger spaces



Clever Connectivity options
Poly have listed a host of connectivity options as you would expect including
  • Optional wired expansion microphones allowing you to ‘daisy chain’ up to three devices for larger spaces.
  • Will support (later this year) DECT wireless expansion mics
  • Is wireless enabled, supporting 2.4-5GHz WIFI with multiple-in multiple-out (MIMO)
  • Has Bluetooth 5.0 support
  • 1xUSB A and 1x USB C port

Summary

The attractive price point (circa £1,000), high quality and familiar design with easy to use features (and being fully Teams certified) will no doubt offer a high quality user experience for all participants.

The Teams device space is extremely competitive at the moment with new devices from Crestron, Yealink, Logitech and Poly.

I’ll update this (or add a new one) once I get my hands on one to test out and hopefully compare it to some of the other vendors such as the Yealink CP960.


You can see more at Polys’ website which I’ve included here. https://www.polycom.com/voice-conferencing-solutions/conference-phones/trio/trio-c60.html

New Teams Meeting Experience rolling out to SurfaceHub

We heard a couple months back that big changes are coming to both SurfaceHub 1 and 2S as the SurfaceHub and Microsoft Teams product groups work to continuously improve the meeting and collaboration experiences on Surface Hub.

Starting last week, updates are rolling out to the Microsoft Teams app on Surface Hub which will brings fixes and quality improvements based on the customer feedback. The most important bits are still to come though with this update preparing the hub for new features that will start rolling out later next quarter.

The update will be delivered seemlessly via Windows Update (assuming its enabled) taking the Microsoft Teams app to version 0.2020.84.4301.

The update also sees the SurfaceHub receive a new driver update to complement the Microsoft Teams experience with an improved Microsoft Teams meeting join experience after the update is completed.

Like I said most of the visual updates which we expect to include things like proximity join, improved management, allowing SurfaceHub to join a Teams meeting as a secondary or companion decide etc are coming later this year.

Ensuring the best online meeting experience when working from home during COVID-19

With COVID-19 now dominating our lives and forcing most of us to work from home with lock-downs now in place across most major metropolitan cities around the globe, we (through Cisilion where I work), have been helping our customers either get started with, or rapidly increase their use and adoption of Microsoft Teams to ensure they can stay connected, work collaborately, co-author documents and most importantly get face-time with the people they work with

The focus of this blog is around meetings since I’m sure like me online meetings is something you are doing lot of now we are confined to our homes..

So whether you are brand new to Teams or an experienced Teams Champion, this blog shares my own experiences and tips on how to have the best online meetings in Teams.


1. Use Teams to stay connected with anyone, not just those in your organisation

As the “Hub for Teamwork”, you can use Microsoft Teams to host online meetings with up to 250 people, just like you would a normal in-person meeting.  For external guests, just invite them in the same way you would normally in Outlook or Teams.  It doesn’t matter if your external attendees don’t have Teams either – they can simply click on the link (no need to download a plugin or install Teams) enter their name, and join the meeting from their web-browser or mobile phone.

Teams Guest Join Browser


Note: Teams also features Teams Live events which allow for broadcast style town-hall type presentations with Q&A, Sentiment analysis and on-demand play back for up to 10,000 (which has today been extended to 100,000 participants).

2. Built in dial-in conferencing keeps everyone connected

For users that cant get on-line or have poor internet for example, or those that just “prefer” to “dial” into a meeting, the Teams meeting invite (assuming the meeting organiser has a Audio conferencing License assigned) also includes audio-only dial-in instructions. Users can simply click on the dial-in number from their mobile phone and their phone should automatically launch the dial-pad, dial the number, and even enter the conference bridge ID. 

Teams Dial-in Conferencing

Of course, for the best experience I’d suggest everyone joins the full Teams experience – especially if you are planning to share content. 

 

3. Video,  Video, Video :  This makes a real difference when we can’t do physical face-to-face.

Since you can’t meet people in person anymore due to COVID-19 lock-downs or when just working from home / remotely anyway, meeting online with video makes a a huge difference and I strongly advise to make all calls video by default.  Encourage everyone in your Teams meeting to turn on their video. If your device supports it, I also suggest turning on background blur to keep the focus on you instead of what’s behind you (especially if your home office is a “make shift” space). 

4. Share Share Share – screen, apps or presentation.

When in a Teams call or meeting, you can share/present content in Teams. You are in control at all times as to what others can see. You can decide whether you wish to share

  • Your entire desktop (or screen)
  • A specific window/application
  • Upload a PowerPoint presentation directly into Teams – so attendees can review/mark-up and event advance slides
  • Start / Open a digital whiteboard for real-time collaboration like you would on a normal pen and ink board in a meeting room – more this next.
Sharing in Teams

If you or someone else is sharing their desktop or an application, any one else can “request” that the presenter gives control – you can also take it back at any time!

If you are sharing content that has audio/video within it, you can also choose to have the system audio shared/included.

5. Whiteboard the hell out of your meetings

I love a whiteboard me! When I’m in a face-to-face meeting, I cant help but draw and scribble on a whiteboard and usually find other meeting attendees love to draw and annotate on a board when planning a project or approach to something.

This is where Office 365 and Teams come to life – Microsoft Whiteboard, as well as being available on the web and via a App on Windows and iOS, is also integrated and available in every Teams meeting, enabling meeting attendees to join in with their pen and touch (our mouse and keyboard) and collaborate / contribute in real time with digital ink.

These Whiteboard sessions are saved as part of every meeting and available for future use and reference and can even be opened outside of the meeting directly in the Whiteboard app – which provides a host of additional features too.

6. Make the meeting on demand too – Record it live!

Teams can also (if enabled by your admins) record your meetings for you. Instead of relying on a summary email only or “I’ll update you later” conversation – you can simply record your Teams meeting.

The recording captures everything, video, screen share, presentations, whiteboard, everything and unlike Skype for Business (RIP), the meeting is stored in Office 365 Cloud with a link provided within the meeting chat / or Teams space.

What’s more, attendees of the meeting can also search the meeting (yes it transcribes the audio to text) and jump to the point in time of the meeting where a particular phrase or topic was talked about.

7. Live Captions helps with Accessibility

While today only available in English, every call and meeting in Teams support real-time live captioning allowing participants to read subtitles. 

This is a game changing feature for any attendees who may be hard of hearing,  or have different levels of language proficiency. More languages are rolling out shortly we are told.

8. Finally – Secure and Control your meetings

Making sure only the people you intend to join your meeting can join, participate and see content is key – after all you wouldn’t let a random person into your office and into your in-person meetings unless they were invited.

Teams provides meeting organisers with options to allow them to define the roles and permissions for attendees of their meetings. These can also be set and controlled in part by IT admins at a organisation level if needed.

Meeting organisers can choose to (or not to):

  • Enable the meeting lobby feature (its on by default), which lets the organiser define when and who is admitted into the meeting  – this can include automatically people from your organisation but not guests, allowing or not allowing PSTN dial-in users to automatically join etc.
  • Designating who can present, mute attendees, and start/stop recordings.

Privacy is a right within Teams and is always secure

Teams does not disclose things like IP addresses or computer names or any other information that could identify the machine or user to anyone not specifically invited and all recorded content is under the control and access by the organiser / presenters.

Finally – if your organisation uses technology like Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to protect sensitive or GDRP type data, then these polices also flow into Teams, meaning confidential or sensitive data not allowed to be shared outside your business still cant – even in Teams! – this is not covered in depth here by the way!

Stay safe, stay in doors and work smart!

Thats it from me – hope you find this useful. Look forward to hearing how you are getting on during COVID-19 lock down.

Thanks

Rob

Microsoft says their Cloud Usage has jumped 775% due to COVID-19

Microsoft’s Azure Cloud and Office 365\Teams collaboration services have seen a significant, in fact colossal, spike in usage over the past week as companies globally continue to deal with an increase in remote workers due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak and lock downs that are being put in place to help control the infection rate and curb the impact on the world’s health services like our incredible NHS.

Microsoft said yesterday that in the last week it has seen a 775% increase in the use of its cloud services in regions where enforced social distancing and lock downs have been put in place such as here in the UK, most of Europe and many States in the US.

Microsoft Teams is seeing more than 900 million meeting and calling minutes per day.

Microsoft had  previously stated just last week that they was prioritising traffic for critical front line and public services such as NHS as well as also tuning and reprioritising services to cope with this unprecedented demand. This includes prior temporary limits on free offers (outside key workers and NHS for example) to prioritise capacity for existing customers and the downgrading of video in Teams for example to help manage traffic. Microsoft has said that these limits are typically being isolated to regions/locations that are seeing the most demand and that customers impacted can use alternative regions to get around some of the performance hits while they even out and scale out their services to handle the new demands.

Last week, Microsoft has some issues with adding new services to Azure in some regions, including the UK which caused them to “drop below the typical 99.99% success rates.”. This was caused by the huge surge in new Azure Virtual Desktop services being spun up as organisations looked to quickly enable remote desktop to facilitate homeworking after the UK mandated work from home as part of the UK Covid19 lock down measures.

COVID-19 sees huge demand and growth

Microsoft said last week that Teams has “seen a very significant spike” in usage and counted more than 44 million daily users. This week new numbers have revealed that last week they also saw more than 900 million meeting and calling minutes per day.

Windows Virtual Desktop has also seen a 300% increase in the last week with hundreds of thousands of new Desktops being added globally.

Other collaboration platforms like Cisco’s Webex and Zoom have seen similar surges in network traffic tied to the COVID-19 outbreak.

It’s not just Microsoft though…

Microsoft of course isn’t the only Web conferencing provider seeing such growth. Other collaboration platforms including Cisco Webex and Zoom have seen similar surges in network traffic tied to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Cisco has also reported large growth and demand and said Webex traffic from China had increased by more than 2,000% since the outbreak began and that more than 30% of its enterprise customers have reached out for help getting their employees set up to work from home.

Since the start of the outbreak, Microsoft, Zoom and Cisco have made their platforms available for free to most businesses affected by COVID-19 and are having to work relentlessly to expand the capacity of their services to ensure as few disruptions as possible…. All have had growing pains and as the lock downs continue globally, it probably won’t be the last time!

Continue reading “Microsoft says their Cloud Usage has jumped 775% due to COVID-19”

Protect yourself from COVID-19 themed “PHISHING” attacks

Microsoft sent out warnings last week about an rise in phishing attacks and scare mongering related to the coronavirus outbreak with many cybercriminals playing on people’s fear in order to steal personal data.

Criminal groups have various ways to attack vulnerable people, including malware, but Microsoft have emphasised that “91 percent of all cyberattacks start with email” and almost all are aimed at tricking their targets into handing over their credentials.

Microsoft has a robust set of security and protections servives designed to detect and block malicious emails, links and attachments with Outlook.com, Office 365, Office 365 ATP, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Defender all working in together to protect. These services leverage advanced machine learning, heuristics, and anomaly analysers to detect malicious behaviours in email to try to prevent these landing in user mailboxes and to protect them should they get through and users click on the links.

Unfortunately technology alone will never be 100% foolproof, therefore it’s important for users and for IT to ensure the latest security updates are deployed, services are enabled (a staggering number of organisations have services like Office Advanced Threat Protection for example but don’t use it) and use advanced anti-malware and Endpoint Protection service, such as Microsoft Defender.

MFA is Critical to Identity Protection

If you don’t use multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all of your personal and business Office 365 (and other mail products like Gmail etc.), I’d strongly suggest you enable it and use Microsoft’s Authenticator to protect you.

Combined with Password Self Reset and Risk Based Conditional access MFA can detect and prevent over 99% of phishing attacks by preventing user identities since logins are protected by an additional login authentication step (just like you need to access your online banking).

Education is still key

It’s still important for users to be vigalenr and to educate themselves around what to look for..

Bad spelling and grammar, suspicious links and attachments and emails that look to good to be true, should always raise your suspicions… Even with the extensive protection, if you are suspicious about an email, never click on links or open any attachments, especially those with weird file extensions such as pdf.exe” or “txt.hta”

Cybercriminals (especially now) use urgency and scare as an attack vector. Microsoft warn users about the current trends which should always trigger an alarm:

  • Threats. These types of emails cause a sense of panic or pressure to get you to respond quickly. For example, it may include a statement like “You must respond by end of day.” Or saying that you might face financial penalties if you don’t respond.
  • Spoofing. Spoofing emails appear to be connected to legitimate websites or from your boss, or medical insurer, but take you to phony (often legitiame) scam sites or display legitimate-looking pop-up windows. Always check the website and the Url.
  • Altered web addresses. A form of spoofing where web addresses that closely resemble the names of well-known companies, but are slightly altered; for example, “www.micorsoft.com” or “www.mircosoft.com”.
  • Incorrect spelling or salutation of your name.
  • Mismatches. The link text and the URL are different from one another; or the sender’s name, signature, and URL are different.

What do I do if I get a suspicious link?

If you think you have encounter a suspicious email or website, speak to your IT team. Microsoft also recommends using the built-in tools in Outlook on the Web, on the desktop Outlook app and in the Outlook Mobile app to report suspicious messages.

If you’re using Microsoft Edge, you can also report suspicious sites by clicking the More (…) icon > Send feedback > Report Unsafe site.

Final word

While bad actors are attempting to capitalize on the COVID-19 crisis, they are using the same tactics they always do. You should be especially vigilant now to take steps to protect yourself,” the company said today. You can learn more about Microsoft’s recommendations on their Security blog.

Host of new features announced as Microsoft Teams Turns 3

I talked yesterday about about the tremedous growth of Teams (partly due to the impact covid-19 is having with increased working from home) but today as Teams Turns 3 a wealth of new features have been announced to the public which focus on two key themes.

  1. Building the very best online meeting experience; and
  2. Bringing technological solutions to traditionally underserved professionals, including firstline and healthcare workers

Here are all the new features coming soon to Microsoft Teams that have been announced today:

  1. Real-time noise suppression during calls, which should help you better understand what your others are saying especially when people are out and about or have poor signal
  2. Raising your hand… When you are in large meetings, a new raise hand feature will let others know you have something to say.
  3. Pop out chats: a features missed by many from Skype for Business, the ability to pop out chats into a separate window is also coming soon after being in private preview for a few months
  4. Offline use :Microsoft Teams is finally getting offline and low-bandwidth support, making the app still useful without an Internet connection
  5. First-line workers using RealWear head-mounted devices will soon be able to get information and communicate hands-free due to new Teams integration.
  6. New collaboration bar devices certified with Teams, such as the Yealink VC210 collaboration bar for meetings.

Covid19: The way people work IS changing as Teams daily usage passes 44 million

Microsoft has announced that the daily users of Teams now sits as 44 million (up some 37‰ since last week and have also highlighted a number of global businesses with over 100,000 users on Teams including Accenture, Continental AG, Ernst & Young, Pfizer and SAP which demonstrates the true global scale of Office 365 and Teams.

Microsoft has said that the user count last Wednesday was 32 million, but 12 million have since been added due mainly of course to the impact of travel restrictions brought about globally by COVID-19.

In a statement, reported by CNBC, Microsoft VP Jared Spataro said that the COVID-19 outbreak will be “a turning point for the way people will work and learn, Our customers have certainly turned to Teams during this challenging time, and we’ve seen usage spikes in markets most impacted by COVID-19,”.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO has that “As organisations around the world are changing the way they work in response to this situation, we’re going to learn a tremendous amount to transform how we work together”

We are seeing this ourselves at Cisilion where I work as many of our customers are acceleraring their Teams deployment and migrations away from traditional voice solutions, enabling voice in Teams to achieve a truly Unified and integrated experience across Office 365.

When the world finally emerges from the grips of COVID-19, I truly beleive there is going to be fundamental change in how organisations work and transcend some of these geographic boundaries and how they truly empower people to work anywhere.

Anyway., hope you are staying healthy and well.

Thank for reading as always..

Microsoft has made Teams free for the entire NHS

As part of a huge tech aid programme in response to COVID-19, Microsoft has made Microsoft Team available to the entire 1.5m NHS workers for free which was announced in a tweet by Simon Eccles, Chief Clinical Information Officer for Health and Care.

Teams free for NHS

NHSX is a UK Government body that has responsibility for setting national policy and developing best practice for the National Health Service (NHS) IT and technology services.

This will allow all NHS organisations that use run NHSmail (a customised and hosted Exchange email service run by Accenture) will now have access to Microsoft Teams, (they will need to configure it or work with a partner or Microsoft Fast Track local administration and configuration). NHS Digital have also said that they will support the implementation of Microsoft Teams locally via its NHSmail support site.

Those NHS organisations that don’t run NHSmail will need to contact Microsoft directly to get access to Microsoft Teams but this will be a simple process.

More infornation on this can be found below.

Microsoft Teams to be rolled out across NHS in response to coronavirus

Who’s the Gartner Leaders in Analytics and BI?

It appears there’s nothing stopping Microsoft run at being the clear leaders across its cloud and data services.

Just announced, and for the 13th consecutive year, #Microsoft has been positioned as leader in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms.

For the 2nd year running Microsoft is positioned furthest to the right for completeness of vision and furthest up in the ability to execute within the leaders’ Quadrant. Beating Salesforce, IBM Tableau, Oracle and SAP to the top right spot buy more than just a bit! #PowerBI #microsoft365

Gartner Quadrant for Analytics and BI

Microsoft and Gartner put this leading position down to the following:

Many of the strengths of Power BI come directly from our customer feedback such as:

  • Power BI insights and Office 365 productivity. Power BI looks and feels exactly like the rest of the familiar Office application making every user instantly productive.
  • Find answers fast with industry-leading AI. Power BI incorporates many of the latest advances in Microsoft AI to help non-data scientists prepare data, build machine learning models, and find insights quickly from both structured and unstructured data, including text and images.
  • Meet the most demanding enterprise needs. Power BI works together with Azure Synapse Analytics to enable fast, interactive analysis across petabytes of data.
  • Comprehensive data protection. Power BI is the only BI product that claims to be able to secures customer data through Microsoft Information Protection and Microsoft Cloud App Security, even when data is exported out of Power BI.
  • Turning insights into action. Users can go straight from data to insights and insights to action with the Microsoft Power Platform, combining Power BI with Power Apps and Power Automate to easily build business applications.
PowerBI dashboard

Click here to get the full Gartner Report

Do you use PowerBI?

My top 5 new things in Microsoft Teams for Feb 2020

1. Cross collaboration with Outlook and Teams

Whilst Teams is one of the most effective and fluid ways for indivials and teams to communicate, not all conversations are suited in teams. This month (though you have to look for it) there is new 2-way integration between Outlook and Teams to make it easier shift conversations from one medium to another. Users can now:

1. Move an email conversation from Outlook (along with attachments) into a Teams chat or channel conversation by clicking on the ‘’Share to Teams’’ in Outlook.

Outlook to Teams

2. Share a conversation from Teams to an Outlook email by clicking on the more options (‘’…’’) icon in a conversation.

2. Updated @tags in Chats and Channels

Microsoft have made it easier toget connected to right people with “targeted communication”. For example, if you need to send a message to say, all of sales or all managers, it’s now possible to quickly message everyone assigned to a specific tag at the same time by simply @mentioning the tag name in a post. By using tags, team “owners” can now organise users based on a common “tag” , relevant to a role, project, or location etc.

Tagging in channels

3. New File Experience.

The Teams file experience is “powered by SharePoint” and as well as looking a little more modern, includes the ability to sync files to your computer, see rich previews across over 320 file types, create views, see document life-cycle signals, review on-hover file cards, pin files to the top, take actions like check in and check out, and loads more.. In fact everything you can do in SharePoint, because, well.. the Teams file store is SharePoint anyway.

New File Experience

I wasn’t a huge fan of this at first as I quite liked the simplistic view in teams but if you work with files and lot (and have a lot in your teams and channels) then after a few days you’ll wonder how you manged without it! That said.. Be nice if you could tune it a bit to suite.

4. New Live Captions in Meetings

This has actually been in preview for a couple of months so if you, like me have been using it, you may not have realised that it’s now in ‘General availability state’.

Basically, you can use live captions to give subtitles to your Microsoft Teams meetings. Let’s think for a minute.. This is really powerful and great for accessibility but also if you are in a meeting where noisy surroundings (coffee shop, loud office, airport etc) where you may struggle to hear all of what is going on..

With live captions you can turn on live subtitles during your Teams meetings so you never miss what somebody is trying to say as you can read what people are saying in real time. English only at this time with more language support coming soon we are told.

Live captions in Teams

5. New Security and Compliance Features

2 new features were added to a team this month too which bring some of the wider Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance features natively into Teams

  1. Legal Hold for Teams Private Channels
  2. Communication Compliance which helps HR and admin detect capture and take remediation actions should inappropriate communications be used in teams that could impact well being or lead to abuse or bullying.

That’s it for now… Look forward to seeing what’s new in March!

Why (I think) you need a Yealink CP700 Teams Certified Portable Speaker (Phone)

I spend much of time with customers (new and existing) talking about and helping them envisage and recognise the business and worker benefits of adopting a true Modern Workplace.

Modern workplace isn’t really a thing as such. It’s a way of working that supports working where ever and however you need; whether that’s being in the office, your virtual office (anywhere with Internet), customer and partner sites and of course working from home.

The Modern workplace for me consists of a toolkit… For me that’s a Microsoft Surface Device, (I’m currently using a SurfaceProX), MicrosoftTeams and of course my Office Apps and services. It’s also includes my trustworthy Plantronics/Poly 6200 headset and my “carry with me” portable speakerphone the Yealink CP700.

Every agile worker needs a Speaker Phone

Mobility and productivity is always important when I am out and about since I still need to communicate and collaborate in the same way no matter where I am working. MicrosoftTeams makes this really easy but when I’m in a Teams call with a customer who, does have Teams or a decent meeting room/video conferencing solution I find my self using Teams from my Surface.. This is where a portable speakerphone is key.

Late in 2019, Yealink released its CP700 portable speakerphone which since getting hands on one has been simply brilliant. I’m fortunate to get to test out a fair bit of kit from our technology partners and for me a good test of what puts one audio device (in this case a speakerphone/ ahead of another is about 4 things

  • How simple it is to use
  • The build quality and design
  • High Quality Audio (pick up and receive)
  • Clever Connectivity Options

So how did the Yealink CP700 do in my experience?

Introducing the Yealink CP700?

The Yealink CP700 ticks all these boxes and it’s certified for both Teams and Skype for Business.

Yealink CP700

Simple and intuitive to use
The CP700 has Multiple buttons with LED indicators which provide easy-to-understand guidance with no training needed. Since it’s a Teams certified device (meaning it’s not just a USB speakerphone) it has deep integration with Microsoft Teams and even has dedicated Teams button, making it even easier to achieve Teams collaboration with a single touch (whether you are using on your smart phone or connected to your laptop/tablet

Build Quality and Design
This looks and feels like a premium high quality device and it is! It support USB (C) and Bluetooth connectivity (to multiple devices), is extremely light (just 220g) has gently lit LEDs which seem to be ambiant light aware and has a great little pop out stand to allow you to angle the speaker as needed. There’s also a muti colour led ring around the centre of the device for connectivity status and things like volume (a bit like Amazon’s alexa).

Yealink CP700 (Teams)

The CP700 is ideal for on-the-go use but also works really well as for semi-perminant set up in a hone office or break out space for example. The included protective protective pouch comes in handy too.

High quality audio
The CP700 HD audio sound quality is incredible with a perfect balance of bass, mid and treble for clear and natural sound.

It includes omnidirectional microphone and full-duplex allows meeting participants to be heard and involved in the meeting. Feedback from colleagues at the remote end is always really great compared to using your laptop speaker and mic and most say better then when I use a headset.


Clever Connectivity options
The Yealink CP700 is able to pair with not 2 but with 3 Bluetooth-enabled devices simultaneously. This means that calls from two different devices can be merged into one, by connecting the CP700 through Bluetooth on one device, and with USB-C connection on another device.

Summary

If you work remotely or ever need to run or join Teams call from home, customer offices or in break outs/hotels etc, the Yealink CP700 is a must. Yes there’s others from other vendors but this is one of the best I’ve used to date. (Feb 2020)

The attractive price point, high quality and fashionable design with easy to use features offer a high quality user experience for all participants.

You can see more at their website which I’ve included here. https://www.yealink.com/product/speakerphone-cp700-ms-teams

What Microsoft announced at the 2020 RSA Conference.

The annual RSA Conference brings together 50,000 cybersecurity professionals to connect with peers from around the world to uncover new and better ways to keep the digital world safe. Most of the leading Security vendors are there as you expect. As is becoming the annual norm, Microsoft used this opportunity to being more exciting announcements around its ever expanding offerings and capabilities in security.

Inside Risk Management

Insider Risk Management which has been in preview for a couple of months is now widely available.

The world we work in today with Internet everywhere, multiple devices being carried by employees and a work from anywhere culture means corporate data is likely to be stored or accessed on laptops, tablets phones, and even watches. Where blocking access is not an option, IT need ways to identify, take action on, and prevent insider risks to keep their busienss data safe.

New Insider Risk Management in Microsoft365

Insider Risk Management (part of Microsoft 365) helps tackle this challenge by gathering signals from across Microsoft 365 and other third-party systems, and then leverages the Intelligent Security Graph Insider Risk and machine learning to identify anomalies in user behavior and flag high-risk activities – enabling businesses to more effectively protect and govern their data.

Communication Compliance

Communication Compliance, which extends the existing complaince services within Microsoft 365 can be tuned to leverage machine learning to quickly identify and take action on code of conduct policy violations within all company communications channels. This has also just been generally released.

Microsoft Threat Protection

Over the past year Microsoft has been busy consolidating and harmonising all the various theat protection services and standardising the signalling, risk profile and events. In a world where multiple vendor solutions are no longer the recommended approach to provide end to end security, Microsoft Threat Protection helps simply whilst strengthening protection for the enterprise.


Traditionally, Security and IT have an endless list of alerts coming in from multiple monitoring systems and across their network, cloud, data centre and devices , making it almost impossible to link those at speed, recognise an attack, prioritise, and act quickly on the most critical threats or risks.

The unification of Microsoft’s Threat Protection services means that security/IT teams can now get a correlated, incident-level view of threats rather than having to manage and investigate multiple individual alerts from multiple systems.

The key capabilities in Microsoft Threat Protection include:

  • Investigating threats, automatically (or semi automatically) responding to them, and restoring affected assets to a secured state automatically, while simplifying hunting across the landscape for other signs of attack.
  • Self-healing compromised user identities, endpoints, and mailboxes, allowing security and IT teams to spend more time focussing on projects and policies by using AI and ML to automate remediation.
  • Sharing critical threat insights in real time to help stop the progression of an attack.
  • Azure Sentinel enhancements which are covered below.

Updates to Azure Sentinal

Microsoft Azure Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) solution which allows business of any size to keep pace with the exponential growth in security data, improve security outcomes, and reduce hardware and operational costs.

New enhancements have been announced this week at RSA in San Francisco designed to deliver instant value and increased efficiency for security operations teams. These include

  • New community rewards (bounty program) for contributions to develop dashboards, orchestration, playbooks etc
  • New developer guides and APIs along with GitHub code and data collections
  • Ability to import AWS CloudTrail logs at no cost until June 2020
  • New security campaign views which gives security teams an all-encompassing view of email attack campaigns targeted at their organisation
  • New connectors for easier data collection from a wider range of security appliances and services

Security Campaign Views

Campaign views and compromise detection and response has also been made generally available following a short preview.

This feature gives security teams an all-encompassing view of email attack campaigns targeted at their organisation, along with making it easy to spot vulnerable users or configuration issues that enabled the attack or breach to succeed in the first place.

Early detection and response to compromised users is critical to ensuring that attacks are detected and actioned/remiated as early as possible so that the impact of a breach is minimised.

New Security Awareness Training

Through a partnership with Terranova, a market leader in computer-based training, Microsoft will be including Terranova’s entire phishing-related training set for free for organisations that use or are licensed for Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection Plan 2 (including in Microsoft 365 E5).

This security awareness training, coupled with Microsoft security solutions and risk analytics, will enable and extend Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection to provide a complete solution, encompassing customised user learning paths that enable IT and your compliance teams to create governance around organisational risk and maintain a stronger security posture.

Exchange Online unlimited archiving… What you need to know.

I talk to a lot of customers about Exchange Online and about the need and desire to use 3rd party add on services like backup, DLP threat protection and archiving.

Many don’t realise or are not up to date on the continuous updates and improvements to Exchange Online in particular and it’s unlimited archive feature is just one of the services that could help you save costs and simplify your management. That’s not to say there is never a need for 3rd party complementary services (there is sometimes a use case), but I wanted to highlight the power and extent of this archive feature.

What is “unlimited archiving”

Exchange Online Archiving is an enterprise-class service that assists these organizations with their archiving, compliance, regulatory, and e-discovery challenges while simplifying their on-premises infrastructure, thereby saving costs and easing the IT management overhead. (source:Microsoft)

In Exchange Online, Microsoft provides archive mailboxes which provide users with additional mailbox storage space. Once a user’s archive mailbox is enabled (it’s not on by default), up to 100 GB of additional storage is made available automatically.

Previously, whilst this feature did exist, it was quite hidden away and the only way to active it was to contact Microsoft and request additional storage space for an archive mailbox. This is no longer required and the process is fully automated (if enabled).

This “unlimited archiving” feature called auto-expanding archiving, provides additional storage in archive mailboxes once the storage quota in the primary archive mailbox is reached. Exchange Online then automatically increases the size of the archive, meaning users won’t run out of mailbox storage space and Exchange Admins don’t need to traukt through storage alterts, respond to help desk requests or contact Microsoft to request additional storage for archive mailboxes.

How auto-expanding archiving works


Once enabled, Exchange Online periodically checks the size of the users archive mailbox. When an archive mailbox gets close to its storage limit, it automatically creates additional storage space for the archive. Should this space also run out (now that’s a lot of mail), more space is automatically added to the user’s mail archive meaning now additional management the archive is needed. Here’s how it works.

Image from docs.microsoft.com
  1. Archiving is enabled for a user mailbox or a shared mailbox. An archive mailbox with 100 GB of storage space is created, and the warning quota for the archive mailbox is set to 90 GB.
  2. Exchange Online admin enables auto-expanding archiving for the mailbox.
  3. When the archive mailbox (including the Recoverable Items folder) reaches 90 GB, it’s converted to an auto-expanding archive, and extra storage space is added to the archive.

What gets moved to the archive storage space?

The process is fully automatic. In order to make efficient use of auto-expanding archive storage, folders may get moved as part of the archive move.

What items and folders are moved is determined by Exchange Online whenever additional storage is added to the archive. Sometimes when a folder is moved, one or more subfolders are automatically created and items from the original folder are distributed to these folders to facilitate the moving process.

When viewing the archive portion of the folder list in Outlook or Outlook Online, these subfolders are displayed under the original folder.

The naming convention used to name these subfolders is <folder name>_yyyy (Created on mmm dd, yyyy h_mm), where:

  • yyyy is the year the messages in the folder were received.
  • mmm dd, yyyy h_m is the date and time that the subfolder was created by Office 365, based on the user’s time zone and regional settings in Outlook.

What about Compliance and Data Governance?

eDiscovery: if your organisation uses Office 365 eDiscovery, such as Content Search or In-Place eDiscovery, the additional storage areas in an auto-expanded archive are also searched.

Retention: When a mailbox is placed “on hold” by using tools such as Litigation Hold in Exchange Online or if an Office 365 eDiscovery case holds and retention policies in the security and compliance center, content located in an auto-expanded archive is also placed on hold.

Messaging records management (MRM): If you use MRM deletion policies in Exchange Online to permanently delete expired mailbox items, expired items located in the auto-expanded archive will also be deleted.

PST Import service: You can use the Office 365 Import service to import PST files to a user’s auto-expanded archivenof up to 100 GB of data.

Common Questions

Can I access my archive at anytime or does need IT input? You can access any folder in thearchive mailbox, including ones that were moved to the auto-expanded storage area.

What about search? Can I search items in the archive? Yep.. But the search process is a little different. You can search for items that were moved these additional storage area but only by searching the folder itself. If the archive folder contains subfolders, you have to search each subfolder separately. This is due to performance and speed since the archive folders are stored on lower tier disks within Exchange Online (well it is an archive).

Can I delete items from the mail archive? Yes, You can delete items in a subfolder that points to an auto-expanded storage area, but the folder itself cannot be deleted manually.

Interested to hear how other Exchange Online Archiving compares and if you see the need for 3rd parties still…?

You can now Share a Teams chat to…..Outlook

What? Sharing from Teams to Outlook?

Yes – you read that correctly.  At Ignite in November 2019, Microsoft announced a new set of features to provide tighter integration between Microsoft Teams and Outlook aimed to:
  1. Help ensure conversations that are meant for Teams can be easily “moved” to Teams and

  2. To ensure that users/groups that aren’t yet using Teams can still be included in conversations by allowing chats/discussions to be “shared” to Outlook.

Teams to Outlook

 
 

The Outlook-WebApp window will open up and you can add any comments, customise the email and of course add the recipients to the email message. You can add/do all the other things you’d expect in an email message (it is an email message) and can even apply sensitivity information if configured.

When you are happy with your email, just click send!

What the recipient sees

The recipient (yes I did email myself for this example), sees the email and the Teams conversation thread in their email box. From here, they can click on “Go To Teams” to join and carry on the conversation within Teams or can of course, respond to the email directly in email. 

When and Why should I use this?

I have been asked this three times today since making people aware of this nice (or not feature), but this wouldn’t have been added to Teams unless there is a need and demand for it.

As far as I see it, there will always be a time/situation when you need to share some information that is within Teams to people who are not in your Team site – or of course there will be those users that may well be in the Team but still live their life in email and simple “don’t use teams”

This feature makes this really easy to do without the need to try to copy and past or take screen shots of your Teams Chat.  

Be careful..

Whilst a useful feature, please be careful….as this can lead to chats moving outside your Teams chat and breaking the very heritage of that concept of chat….. 

Another…. since this feature makes it really easy to share information that is within Team to an email thread and therefore potentially to people outside of this Team or chat.

Therefore, IMO it is important to make sure that sensitivity labels and DLP are enabled to help ensure your business can still protect sensitive information and prevent chats meant from Teams from being shared in the right way.

Oddly….

At the time of writing, there seems to be no way of “replying directly into a Team” from the email message other than a link to “Go to Teams“. As Microsoft add more context based replies to Outlook, this might be a feature that lights up.

I also cant see a way to turn this feature off? 

Major software updates coming for SurfaceHub 1 and 2 but Hub 2X upgrade is cancelled for now.

Microsoft has announced that they are no longer planning to release the Surface Hub 2X processor upgrade cartridge originally planed for released this year that would have allowed existing SurfaceHub2S owners to upgrade the processor and Graphics Processing Unit through a special cartridge upgrade that would enable a host of new cool features including advanced tiling, multi device tiling and fluid device rotation, essentially turning the Surface Hub 2S into what they called the SurfaceHubX

For the record, Microsoft has said they will still be developing the promised tiling and rotation features which “might not require an upgrade for Surface Hub 2S customers, or they might not require a paid compute cartridge swap,”. “We don’t have plans to release a compute cartridge in 2020, because the best way to release those capabilities — tiling and rotation – may not require us to take that path.” Microsoft have said in a leaked partner webinar.

Is not all doom and gloom though as there is actually some long awaited good news still coming for all existing SurfaceHub owners.

Huge software coming instead for SurfaceHub 1 and 2S

Microsoft are planning to release a “major software update” for Surface Hub 1 and Surface Hub 2 customers which will be based on the first 2020 release of Windows 10. This will include much needed deployment, and manageability features as well as new features for users. Microsoft have said they will be releasing this update free of charge for all Surface Hub v1 and Surface Hub 2S devices, whereas the (un unnouced) price-tag 2X processor cartridge upgrade would have only been available for Surface Hub 2S devices.

No Windows 10X OS upgrade though yet

While this update will be based on the latest Windows 10 release, it will not get (for the time being at least) Microsoft’s upcoming modern Windows Core OS platform that will power new Windows 10X devices like the upcoming Surface Neo and other manufacturer mid form and fold devices.

Microsoft’s plans to release both Surface Hub 2S display monitor for other devices to connect to is still planned for 2020, though as is the release of a new 85″ Hub 2S

Reaching out to Microsoft for an update yesterday we have been told that “The top two priorities for Hub in 2020 are deploying the 85” device and rolling out an OS update that includes many top features customers have been requesting since Surface Hub 2S launched, including improving IT integration, deployment and management capabilities at no cost for all version 1 Hubs and Hub 2S devices. We’ll have more to share in the coming months

That’s it for now.. . What are your thoughts? Do you use Hub1? What updates do you hope for the most?

Microsoft FY20Q2 results exceed Wall Street estimates.

Highlight; Revenues of $36.9 billion for the quarter, with profit at $11.6 billion, up 38% year-over-year.

FY20 Q2 results summary

As always theres lots to read into these and some of the number lows and highs are always due to time of year and aligned with commercial, public sector and consumer buying cycles. Here are the main highlights as I’ve digested them.

  • Commercial cloud business (Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics) and other cloud services reached $12.5 billion in Q2, up 39% year over year.
  • Azure revenue itself grew 62%, but Microsoft doesn’t report revenue figures specific to Azure.
  • Productivity and Business Processes” which includes Office products for businesses and customers, LinkedIn revenue and Dynamics products and cloud services, increased 17% to $11.8 billion with Dynamics 365 up 43%
  • 9.5% increase in the number of Office 365 consumer subscribers, which is now at 35.6 million customers
  • Enterprise Mobility and Security was up to 120 million seats, a 36% increase year-over-year.
  • More Personal Computing,” including Windows, search, Xbox and Surface, was $13.2 billion, up 2% from this time last year with Xbox dragging these numbers down 11% percent compared to the same quarter last year.

Microsoft’s new Teams tv advert showcases how to do “modern meetings”

Microsoft has unveiled its first official TV advert for #MicrosoftTeams which aired this weekend. The slick 30-second ad aired during Sunday’s NFL playoff in the US, and will also be shown here in the UK as well as France, and Germany next month.

Called “The Power of Teams,” the advert opens with old skool boring business meetings, flip charts, aging spider speaker phones, and slidedecks printed on paper. The advert then quickly progresses to show how modern meeting experiences within Teams can transform the workplace.

Microsoft defines Teams as “the hub for Teamwork and #Microsoft365“ and claims to define the way forward for the Modern Workplace and to support the needs of today’s modern and agile workforce which now spans across 5 generations.

Watch the future of modern meetings

What is “Chromium” Edge? Microsoft’s new modern browser built on Chrome

After what is almost a year-long journey of testing and feedback from the #edgeinsider community, Microsoft’s new Chromium Edge browser has taken off its’ beta badge and you can now download and use the final release version which is available from today!

MICROSOFT Edge

How do I get it?

  1. Browse to Microsoft’s Website from your current browser
  2. Click the blue Download for Windows 10 button and download the new Edge web browser as a .exe file
  3. Run the installer and let it install the new Chromium powered Edge… It will take few minutes to install.
  4. Once done, set up the browser to your liking and take it for a test spin..
  5. Remove your old Google Chrome!! Once your concinved of course!

If you’ve been using the old version of Edge, you will hopefully notice that it has been removed from your Windows 10 PC. New Edge replaces and “hides” the old Edge but you can still get to it should you wish too… You won’t want to!

What is new with Chromium Edge?

Errm.. EVERYTHING.

There is so much new in this version of Edge and its a total rewrite built based on the open platform that is Chromium of which Microsoft and Google are of course major contributors…. (feel like I should queue the “everything is awesome” music from Lego Movie!

What is immediately noticeable (in my view) is the speed and performance increase over old Edge and infact Google Chrome.. Support for a huge number of extensions also sets this apart…

Since Edge is jot standalone, it’s updated regularly… At least every 6 weeks. There are also beta, dev and canary builds you can try which update more frequently if you want to try and feedback on new things as part of the #edgeinsider community. I’ve been running the canary build for about a year since it was first announced..

In a way, I do wish they had changed the name as I don’t think Edge has a good rep as a name and people will immediately think its rubbish…

FactIt isn’t.. It is really great IMO anyway!

Love to hear your feedback as would #edgeinsider if you are twitter.

New Scheduling Experience coming to Microsoft Teams

Microsoft are about to roll out (early Feb 2020) changes that replace the existing scheduling form with a new form that retains all existing scheduling functionality but makes it more aligned to the Outlook experience. The core changes include:

  • Improved view of available time
  • Allows changing event information from the scheduling assistant tab
  • Includes an option for required and optional attendees.
  • Includes search within the location picker field.

New Teams scheduling form can be seen below.

New MicrosoftTeams Scheduling Form




As well as the changes above, there’s a number of additional features including:

  • All day events option – a new toggle like in outlook that converts meetings to an all-day event.Availability status – provides simple people and location search which provides a visual (red) indicator to indicate non-availability on people or resources.
  • Cancellation with message – provides ability to provide and edit a message when cancelling an event if desired (again similar to what Outlook offers today).
  • Tabs in edit/view mode – these tabs provide easy access to things like chat, meeting notes, files, scheduling assistant, and of course the meeting whiteboard.
  • Time zone picker – which now finally allows meeting organisers to select the time zone they wish to use for the meeting.

That’s it… The new update is rolling out in the next few weeks so look out for it.

Microsoft Teams and Outlook get tighter integration to ease adoption to Teams

#MicrosoftTeams and #Outlook integration was announced and Ignite last month and is getting ready to start rolling out this January.

This will include three features designed to help users more easily shift conversations in email (that are really better suited to chat) move / shift the conversation to #MicrosoftTeams.

This will include.

1. Sharing an email message directly to Teams (without having to get the Team email address from the Team site first) which allows the  sharing of a copy of an email and any attachments from Outlook to a channel or chat within Team


2. Share a conversation via email allowing a copy of a Teams channel or chat conversation via email directly from the Teams client.


3. Reply to Teams missed activity email directly within Outlook clients, as well as seeing the latest missed messages.

#modernworkplace #microsoft365 #office365 #adoption