Kurt Shintaku's Blog

[This is a repost from a blog article I wrote in 2012 about Microsoft Lync.  People are still doing it, except now it’s being done through Microsoft Teams. Please stop. I beg you. 🙂]

Cardinal rule for presenting slides in Microsoft Teams:

1. Never “share your screen” to do a PowerPoint presentation.
2. Upload your PowerPoint into Microsoft Teams when delivering presentations to remote audiences using “PowerPoint Live”.

HOW TO UPLOAD YOUR POWERPOINT INTO MICROSOFT TEAMS
All one needs to do is click the “OPEN SHARE TRAY” button (or CTRL-SHIFT-E)within Microsoft Teams and select the PowerPoint Presentation you need to share – or browse your drive for it.  This will allow you to upload the deck into the Teams session & automatically convert it into an HTML5 presentation, complete with full animations, transitions, etc.

Share Tray in Microsoft Teams

Please note that this process may take a few minutes to complete depending on the size of the presentation but the results are excellent and a little forethought/ preparation before presenting should not be a big deal.

WHY IS SCREEN SHARING POWERPOINT SO BAD?
Sharing one’s desktop to deliver a PowerPoint presentation may look okay to you as a presenter, but from the stand point of an attendee (especially those with highly questionable bandwidth or weak QoS at their Internet gateway) pixel-level desktop sharing can take forever to do screen updates when using POWERPNT.EXE, especially at typical 1280×1024 resolutions & 24-bit color depth.

It can also pixelate the screen creating compression artifacts and sections of the screen sometimes will not update until a key frame is sent. This can take a while under low bandwidth situations.

In a phrase, it can be downright painful to view a screen shared PowerPoint presentation & it’s inconsiderate to your audience.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF UPLOADING THE .PPTX FILE?
When you load the presentation into Teams using “PowerPoint Live”, there are several major benefits for attendees viewing the slides in this manner versus ‘screensharing’ POWERPNT.EXE:

1. IMMEDIATE SLIDE CHANGES
   All slide changes are immediate, eliminating the annoying pauses & frame rate issues that occur during screensharing while the screen refreshes on a pixel-by-pixel level.  For attendees with crappy bandwidth, a single 1280x1024x64k slide change can take close to a minute.  Meanwhile, the presenter is likely yammering away, while the slide hasn’t even appeared on his attendees screens & has no idea how bad the experience is on their end.
2. SMOOTH TRANSITIONS & ANIMATIONS
   All animation & transitions are supported and appear smoothly, whereas pixel-sharing can make animations at 1280x1024x64k run at less than a frame per second when delivered over a 64kbps connection, which can happen when the attendee is viewing the presentation with bad Internet access.  When the file is uploaded to the Teams session, the presentation is automatically scaled to the attendee’s local desktop resolution, so the presenter’s desktop resolution isn’t relevant.  (During desktop sharing for things like application demos, smart presenters normally shuttle down their resolution/color depth beforehand to minimize network I/O to the attendees)
3. VIDEO SHARING WITH NO LAG
   If you “Insert videos” into your PowerPoint deck – either from an MP4 file from your local storage or from an online video from YouTube, Vimeo, or Stream – when presented using PowerPoint Live, your audience’s viewing experience will be smooth, lagless & in sync with your playback during your presentation.  More interestingly, Teams (or the online video service being used) will automatically deliver the best video resolution quality to each participant based on their unique bandwidth.
4. CLIENT-SIDE SLIDE CACHING
   The attendee’s Teams client will pre-cache the entire PowerPoint presentation on the attendee’s machine locally and display the first presentable slide immediately, making bandwidth usage irrelevant after the initial slides of the deck are cached.  This allows presenter slide changes to occur immediately on the attendee’s screens & also provide…
5. SLIDE LOOKAHEAD/LOOKBACK
   If an attendee wants to look back at a previous slide, they have the ability to do so unless the presenter specifically restricts them from doing so.  This gives them freedom to review the content on their own & better understand the presenter’s point.
   (BTW Presenters need to get over the fear of “attendees looking ahead” and “not being focused”. If folks want to look ahead, that’s great – they’re curious.  If they don’t like what they see, why should they linger & waste their time?  If they refer back to previous slides, it gives them an opportunity to review & better understand you content.  Stop treating your audience like “captives” to control.)
6. POWERPOINT DECK DOWNLOAD
   Once uploaded to Teams, it’s stored in the following directory in your OneDrive for Business:
   C:\Users\<username>\OneDrive – Microsoft\Microsoft Teams Chat Files
   
   Since it’s already in your OneDrive for Business, it’s simple to share the deck with your audience so they can download the .PPTX for their offline use, which is a common request from attendees.

Find all the new Microsoft Teams updates, events, and resources here!

We just released our MIP and Compliance deployment acceleration guide.

This guide will help you understand, plan and accelerate your information protection and compliance deployment. Doc is available for download here. (31 pgs)

Link to blog: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-privacy-and-compliance/microsoft-information-protection-and-compliance-deployment/ba-p/1403493#M1504

Nuff said.

The following represents 4 articles that highlight the limitations of the Power Platform in the US Government Cloud (GCC). 

Many of these Power Platform for US Govt issues are roadmapped for incorporation into GCC however no timeline is publicly available beyond what is posted to the Power Platform US Government page.

These articles are updated as features are made available.

• Power Apps US Government feature limitations
  Some of the features available in the commercial version of Power Apps are not available to Power Apps US Government customers. The Power Apps team is actively working on making the following features available to US Government customers and will update this article when these features become available:
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/powerapps-us-government#power-apps-us-government-feature-limitations
• Power Automate US Government feature limitations
  Some of the features available in the commercial version of Flow are not available in Flow US Government customers. The Flow team is actively working on making these features available to US Government customers and will update this article when these features become available.
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/us-govt#power-automate-us-government-feature-limitations
• Power BI for US government customers  
  This article is for US government customers who are deploying Power BI as part of an Office 365 Government plan. Government plans are designed for the unique needs of organizations that must meet US compliance and security standards. The Power BI service that’s designed for US government customers differs from the commercial version of the Power BI service. These feature differences and capabilities are described in the following sections.
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/admin/service-govus-overview
• Power Virtual Agents – Not available in US Government
  Power Virtual Agents does not currently support US Government Cloud plans.
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-virtual-agents/fundamentals-what-is-power-virtual-agents

If you create a new team within Microsoft Teams, you’ll find that the icon/photo representing the new Team is simply a square with the group’s initials in it:

My team in the photo above is called “Tips” .  The team icon/photo is just a purple square with the initial, “T” in it.  Let’s change that!)

Here’s how to change the icon/photo in a Microsoft Team:

1. Click on a channel within the Team.  Doesn’t matter which.
2. Click on the ellipsis (The 3 dots like “…”) next to the team name.
3. Click on “Manage Team”.
   
4. HOVER over the Team icon and a tiny gray circle with a pen/pencil inside of it. 
   
   

See the gray circle in the icon/photo above?  This circle only appears when you hover your mouse pointer over the purple icon/photo.  Yeah… I know. Just go with it.

5. Click on the circle. A new dialog will appear that you’ve probably never seen before.
   
6. Click on “Upload picture”.  An “Open File” dialog box will appear allowing you to select a photo for your Teams icon.

   Note: The icon should be a SQUARE. Teams will automatically scale the photo you use but it needs to be a square if you want the entire image to be represented, otherwise, if the photo is a rectangle, Teams will cut off the sides or tops of your photo.
   

7. Click “Save”.

Your logo should now be in the icon/photo for the Team. 

Hope this helps!

Transforming the way government agencies communicate

Microsoft Teams is the collaboration and communication hub that helps government agencies achieve joint missions in new and exciting ways. Designed for working both internally and with the public, Microsoft Teams was built with IT in mind, and provides management capabilities for shared workspaces, meetings, calls, and apps, all in one place and with simple administration.

We invite you to join us for a webcast featuring Microsoft experts who have supported US Government agencies, and who will share actionable best practices for deploying Microsoft Teams within your own organization.

You will come away from this webcast with:

• Understanding of the life cycle of Teams/Office 365 groups, from initial naming to archiving
• Critical information about compliance, retention, and security
• Guidance on how to upgrade smoothly from Skype to Teams, for both chat and voice

All this and more government-specific information about Teams await you. It’s time to accomplish larger and more complex workforce missions, through simplified collaboration and communication.

Featuring the Teams Government folks:

• Dave Jennings
  Senior Technical Program Manager
  Microsoft Teams
  (Government requirements)
• Rima Reyes
  Senior Program Manager
  Microsoft Teams
  (Federal Government)
• Morne Pretorius
  Senior Customer Program Manager
  (State & Local Government, Public Sector)

Register here for the on-demand recording:

• HOWTO: Deploy Microsoft Teams in government agencies (On-demand)
  https://resources.office.com/en-us-landing-ondemand-LearnhowtodeployMicrosoftTeamsingovernmentagencies.html

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Microsoft Bookings is an online and mobile app for businesses who provide services to customers on an appointment basis.

Unfortunately, everything you read about Microsoft Bookings says that it’s “available to use by default for Office 365 Education A3, Office 365 A5, and Office 365 Business Premium subscriptions.”

Q: Did you know it’s coming to Office 365 Enterprise subscriptions as well?

Beginning May 12, 2020, Microsoft Bookings will be available as on by default to Office 365 Enterprise E3 and Office 365 Enterprise E5 customers.

If you purchased Office 365 Enterprise E3/Office 365 Enterprise E5 through a Microsoft Enterprise agreement or through volume licensing, you have to get the Microsoft Bookings add-on through the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC). Once you get the free add-on, you you can assign licenses to users in your organization. Work with your channel partner or reseller to place a zero dollar purchase order for the add-on. Once you’ve purchased the add-on in Volume Licensing Service Center, follow these steps to get licenses and assign to your users in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

(Note: Microsoft 365 GCC tenants will have Bookings available in the future, however, as expected with all services published to Government Community Cloud, availability is pending Federal approval.)

Read more about this feature here:

• SUPPORT: Get the free Microsoft Bookings add-on for Enterprise subscriptions:
  (Primary documentation page)
  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-access-to-microsoft-bookings-5382dc07-aaa5-45c9-8767-502333b214ce
• SUPPORT: Set Up Bookings
  https://support.office.com/en-us/article/set-up-microsoft-bookings-e38ba99c-c8d4-4e41-b0da-cf81d20a3f8b?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
• SUPPORT: Publish your business calendar online with Microsoft Bookings
  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/publish-your-business-calendar-online-with-microsoft-bookings-47403d64-a067-4754-9ae9-00157244c27d

We are very excited to announce an ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ (AMA) event for “Microsoft 365 Apps”!

<ks> “Microsoft 365 Apps” is the new name for “Office 365 ProPlus”.  Yeah, I know.

The AMA will take place on Wednesday, May 27th, 2020 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT in the Microsoft 365 Apps AMA space in the Microsoft 365 Community. Add the event to your calendar with this link.

• Date/Time:
  May 27th, 2020
  9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT
• Location: (ONLINE)
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-apps-ama/bd-p/Microsoft365AppsAMA
• Add to Calendar:
  https://www.myeventurl.com/Events/Details/90
• Announcement:
  EVENT: Microsoft 365 Apps “Ask Microsoft Anything” (AMA) – May 27th, 2020
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-apps-ama/announcing-the-microsoft-365-apps-ama/m-p/1381184