Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Ever wonder how to set naming policies for Office 365 Groups?

I found this off of Twitter one day and it was so well-thought out, I thought I’d share.

You and I both know handing over the reigns and enabling self-service Office 365 Group creation is scary, especially when it comes to Microsoft Teams Deployment.

An Office 365 groups naming policy may be worth considering if you’re looking to manage users and groups at scale but is it a good fit for your environment?

I’ve been pondering what these policies look like in action and how they vary per organization, so I’ve done some research. Let’s look into the possibilities and impacts of enforcing a naming policy when deciding if it fits into your Office 365 ecosystem.

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Read more here:

• Office 365 Group Naming Policy: Deciding if it’s Right For You
  https://www.jamielaporte.com/home/2019/9/17/considerations-a-quick-overview-on-office-365-groups-naming-policies-for-2019

[Note: The above isn’t about a Microsoft written post.  It’s just something I found from interesting written by Jamie LaPorte, an independent Office 365 expert who’s written a lot of good stuff including, “How Can I Reduce My Email with Teams” and “That Team Should Be a Yammer Group”]

We are very excited to announce a Microsoft 365 ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ (AMA) for Microsoft 365!

The AMA will take place on Tuesday, April 21st, 2020 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT in the Microsoft 365 AMA Space in the Microsoft 365 Community. Add the event to your calendar and view in your time zone here.

An AMA is a live online event similar to a “YamJam” on Yammer or an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of the product engineering team who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback.

• DATE/TIME:
  Tuesday, April 21st, 2020 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
• ADD TO CALENDAR:
  http://aka.ms/Microsoft365AMA
• LOCATION:
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-ama/bd-p/microsoft365ama

We’re excited to introduce Microsoft Threat Experts, an additional layer of expertise and optics that Microsoft customers can utilize to augment security operations capabilities as part of Microsoft 365. This new managed threat hunting service in Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection provides proactive hunting, prioritization, and additional context and insights that further empower security operations centers (SOCs) to identify and respond to threats quickly and accurately.

Microsoft Threat Experts enables SOCs to jump-start threat investigations by providing context-rich intelligence. This release of the service includes 2 capabilities:

1. Targeted attack notifications: Alerts that are tailored to organizations provide as much information as can be quickly delivered to bring attention to critical threats in their network, including the timeline, scope of breach, and the methods of intrusion.
2. Experts on demand: When a threat exceeds the SOC’s capability to investigate, or when more actionable information is needed, security experts provide technical consultation on relevant detections and adversaries. In cases where a full incident response becomes necessary, seamless transition to Microsoft incident response (IR) services is available.

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Read more about the service here:

• RELEASE: Experts on demand is generally available
  https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2019/10/28/experts-on-demand-your-direct-line-to-microsoft-security-insight-guidance-and-expertise/
• RELEASE: Microsoft Threat Experts reaches General Availability
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-defender-atp/microsoft-threat-experts-reaches-general-availability/ba-p/502493
• ANNOUNCMENT: Announcing Microsoft Threat Experts
  https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2019/02/28/announcing-microsoft-threat-experts/
• DOCS: Microsoft Threat Experts
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/microsoft-defender-atp/microsoft-threat-experts

Millions of users in enterprises today start their day with Microsoft Teams, live their day in Teams and wrap their day with Teams! Teams is where people come together to plan, collaborate, share, discuss, decide and take action on things that matter to their businesses and productivity. Teams as the collaboration hub also plays a central role in enterprises today among strategy and planning group members who keep a close eye on all facets of the business including competition.

Read about how Microsoft Teams and PowerAutomate when put together allows strategy teams in an organization keep a close eye on competition’s stock prices – a leading metric of how Wall Street perceives their progress!

• Watch your competition’s stock prices: Citizen Productivity using Microsoft Teams + Power Automate
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/watch-your-competition-s-stock-prices-citizen-productivity-using/ba-p/1180004

Beginning today, Microsoft has launched the public preview of a new support service for customers to help them successfully deliver live events using Teams, Stream or Yammer.

The new service provides virtual support for anyone interested in becoming more familiar with setting up and running a live even – including support before, during and after the event for hosts and presenters.

While the program is in preview, these services are available at NO COST to customers. Visit the resource page to learn more and get started with live events in Stream!

• RELEASE: Microsoft 365 Live Events Assistance Program
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-stream-blog/microsoft-365-live-events-assistance-program-now-available/ba-p/1185006

This is a Windows Virtual Desktop full set up tutorial – every prerequisite step, PowerShell cmdlet, permissioning, and FSLogix reg key.

• Step 1: Prepare: https://youtu.be/yAKmuZpwVyg 
• Step 2: Deploy: https://youtu.be/Xhu7CltjS8w
• Step 3: Optimize: https://youtu.be/I8gcl8Zvcps

This is the first video in our series on Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) Solution on Microsoft Azure.

If your organization is looking for a more efficient, productive, and secure approach to desktop virtualization, this series will walk you through the full solution. WVD offers a fully managed desktop virtualization solution in the cloud and it works with all your apps and devices as you can expect. Including full-featured native client support for Windows Mac iOS and Android as well as new HTML5 support so you can access remote desktops and apps for almost any modern browser.

Watch the full video to find out why and how to implement desktop virtualization at your organization. Keep watching this playlist (http://aka.ms/wvdplaylist) or continue on to the next demo in the series at http://www.aka.ms/wvdprereqs Download PowerShell and JSON files highlighted in this series at http://aka.ms/MechWVDScriptSamples

Watch the WVDseries here:

• TUTORIAL: Windows Virtual Desktop Essentials
  http://aka.ms/WVDplaylist

[I totally stole this from Panu Saukko and I’m so sorry.]

But he’s totally right.  The new Microsoft Bitlocker Administration & Monitoring (MBAM) settings available in Microsoft Endpoint Manager Configuration Manager (MEMCM) TP2002 are CRAZY. 

The number of controls have skyrocketted in number.  This is a great time to investigate managing Bitlocker Enterprise wide with Config Manager!

Improvements to BitLocker management

The BitLocker management policy now includes additional settings, including policies for fixed and removable drives:

• Global policy settings on the Setup page:

  • Prevent memory overwrite on restart
  • Validate smart card certificate usage rule compliance
  • Organization unique identifiers

• OS drive settings:

  • Allow enhanced PINS for startup
  • Operating system drive password policy
  • Reset platform validation data after BitLocker recovery
  • Pre-boot recovery message and URL
  • Encryption policy enforcement settings

• Fixed drive settings:

  • Fixed data drive encryption
  • Deny write access to fixed drives not protected by BitLocker
  • Allow access to BitLocker fixed data drives from earlier versions of Windows
  • Fixed data drive password policy
  • Encryption policy enforcement settings

• Removable drive settings:

  • Removable drive data encryption
  • Deny write access to removable drives not protected by BitLocker
  • Allow access to BitLocker protected removable drives not protected by BitLocker
  • Removable drive password policy

• Client management settings:

• User exemption policy
• Customer experience improvement program

For more information on these settings, see the MBAM documentation.

Read the following for docs on TP2002:

• Features in Configuration Manager technical preview version 2002
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/configmgr/core/get-started/2020/technical-preview-2002

Conversations & chat data in the United Arab Emirates can not be stored in the UAE for data residency compliance purposes.

Microsoft Teams will provide data residency for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) starting November 1, 2019. This means that all new Microsoft Teams customers in the UAE will have data for conversations and chat stored at rest in the UAE. New customers are the Office 365 tenants that are provisioned after the date of launch stated above or customers who have not yet used the Teams service prior to the date of launch.

Teams data residency in the UAE, as well as our other Office 365 data residency commitments in the data-centers located in the UAE, help regulated organizations – such as banking, public sector, government, and healthcare, – onboard to Teams and Office 365 while complying with their data residency requirements.

Where your Teams data is stored

Your Teams data is stored differently depending on the content type. Please watch the Ignite Breakout session on Microsoft Teams architecture for an in-depth discussion.

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Read more at the announcement page here:

• https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/microsoft-teams-launches-united-arab-emirates-data-residency/ba-p/980330

Have you ever said to yourself, "I wish I had a handy infographic to help remember some of the useful Windows key keyboard shortcuts"?

Download the attached image above.

Review keyboard shortcuts here:
http://aka.ms/WindowsShortcuts

Join this webinar to learn how to use Azure Arc Preview to manage all your resources in a hybrid environment. Seamlessly govern and manage on-premises and cloud resources including Linux and Windows virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and databases within in Azure. Watch a product demo and ask questions through a live Q&A.

You’ll learn how to:

• Centrally manage role-based access control, security policies and implement unique Azure threat detection capabilities.
• Adopt DevOps techniques such as infrastructure as code.
• Automate database tasks at scale such as automated patching and upgrades, and access up-to-date data innovation with Azure SQL Database and Azure Database for PostgreSQL Hyperscale.

Register here:

• WEBINAR: Extend Azure Management Anywhere with Azure Arc
  https://info.microsoft.com/ww-on-demand-azure-webinar-series-extend-azure-management-anywhere-with-azure-arc.html?lcid=en-us

For more details:

• Introducing Azure Arc Preview
  Extend Azure management and services anywhere with Azure Arc Preview.
  Explore Azure Arc Preview
• Azure Arc Preview for virtual machines
  Seamlessly govern and manage on-premises and cloud-based Linux and Windows virtual machines.
  Try now >