Kurt Shintaku's Blog

New features now available for Forms!

With Forms, Microsoft strives to deliver the best user experience for form designers, respondents, and collaborators. We believe that a key element in creating the best user experience is starting with an intuitive design. We are excited to share two recent advancements in Forms’ design: Multilingual Support, and Office Suite Header.

Read more here:

• https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Forms-Blog/What-s-New-in-August-September-in-Microsoft-Forms/ba-p/880116

From Microsoft’s Global Digital Safety Advocate:

Teens around the world say parents share (or “sharent”) too much about them on social media – so much so that it’s become a concern for more than four in 10.

Forty-two percent of teenagers in 25 countries[1] say they have a problem with their parents posting about them on social media. Of that sum, 11% say it’s a big problem; 14% say it’s of medium concern, and 17% consider it a small issue – all according to preliminary results of a new Microsoft study about the state of digital civility today. In addition, two-thirds (66%) of teens say they’ve fallen victim to at least one online risk at some point, with the same percentage worried that a similar negative online experience will happen to them again.

..

Read the study’s details at the link below:

• NEWS: Teens say parents share too much about them online – Microsoft study
  https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2019/10/09/teens-say-parents-share-too-much-about-them-online-microsoft-study/

With the Modern Workplace needing to support working anywhere, anytime and on any device, the organization may face new challenges. Common issues can be summarized and grouped into three core areas.

First, Security and Access Control, second, Device and Data Management and third, Compliance. Each area has its challenges and issues, which means that for an organization to support a digital workplace, needs to be mitigated and understood.

Learn how to transform your business and remain secure and compliant in a rapidly evolving world…

Download the whitepaper at:

• WHITEPAPER: A Security Pro’s Guide to Digital Transformation (.PDF, 31pgs)
  https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2080127.

(Found at https://resources.techcommunity.microsoft.com/security-compliance-and-administration/)

[I’m writing this because Office Remote mysteriously & silently disappeared from the Google Play Store back in 2018.  I’m currently pinging Darren Edge internally who’s the Director responsible for Office Remote in the early part of the decade to find out what happened. 

I suspect that the effort to keep it maintained per Microsoft engineering & development guidelines didn’t warrant keeping it listed… so yes, that’s a bummer.  But 1.2.0.0 of the Android “Office Remote” client remains available as a downloadable .APK from 3rd parties but it does mean you have to sideload it so caveat installer.]

Office Remote turns your phone into a smart remote that interacts with Microsoft Office on your PC. The app lets you control Word, Excel, and PowerPoint from across the room, so you can walk around freely during presentations. It also shows you your speaker notes and the presentation timer to help you present more effectively.

New PowerPoint Features in v1.1.3.0:

We added a large thumbnail of the slide that is currently presented, as well as a smaller preview of your next slide. We managed to do this without impacting your notes.

You now get an instant laser pointer by simply touching this new thumbnail with your finger.

Play and pause your embedded videos from Office Remote.

With Office Remote, you can start your PowerPoint presentation, advance the slides, see your speaker notes, and control an on-screen laser pointer with a touch of your finger —all from your phone. You can also navigate between Excel worksheets and graphs, and control data slicers from the palm of your hand. And you can scroll through a Word document or quickly jump to specific sections or comments.

Office Remote has the following features:

PowerPoint:

• Jump to the next, previous, and last slide
• View slide thumbnails and jump to a slide
• View speaker notes on phone
• View presentation timer and slide numbers
• Laser pointer using touch on your phone

Excel:

• Change worksheets by swiping
• Use Slicers, PivotTable, and Filters
• Jump to any named object in your workbook
• Move up or down the worksheet
• Change the zoom level

Word:

• Jump to headings
• Jump to comments
• Screen up/down
• Line up/down
• Change the zoom level

App requirements:

• Microsoft Office 2013. This app does not work with Office 2013 RT or earlier versions of Office.
• Bluetooth on your PC – The desktop add-in for Office Remote must be installed on your PC 

Installation:
There are two components:

• Microsoft Office Remote PC Setup for Windows/PC Desktop client
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41149
• Microsoft Office Remote Mobile Client for Android
  In order to download the Android client you need to go to a 3rd party download site since the Google Play Store no longer carries it.  There are many “mirrors” of the original .APK downloadable install package but to take advantage of it, you need to enable APK installation/sideloading on your Android phone)

  Here’s one example:
  https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/microsoft-corporation/office-remote/office-remote-1-2-0-0-release/microsoft-office-remote-1-2-0-0-android-apk-download/download/

—————

A word on downloading .APK files from external sources
Downloading APKs outside of a trusted store like this is inherently risky.  There are ways that you can scan .APKs for threats and viruses, but you can never really be sure. 

If you want to pursue downloading the APK from a 3rd party source, read the following to understand how to scan APKs for threats:
https://www.maketecheasier.com/scan-apk-files-for-virus/

I’ve personally scanned the APKMirror.com file using Metadefender & VirusTotal but you should probably do the same for any APK you plan to sideload.

According to Forrester, IT experts experienced 40% fewer security breaches* by shifting to Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus. Now is the time to shift your organization. Learn how:

• RESOURCES: Shift to Microsoft 365
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/modern-desktop/enterprise?wt.mc_id=AID729583_QSG_SCL_309261&ocid=AID729583_QSG_SCL_309261&utm_source=Direct

Review the following checklist to ensure you’ve got everything covered in your deployment of Windows 10 & Office 365 ProPlus: 

• DOWNLOAD: Windows 10 and  Office 365 ProPlus  large-scale deployment checklist
  https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE2Og1O

* Source: Forrester Report – “Total Economic Impact of the Modern Desktop with Microsoft 365” – July 2018    
https://anytimeoffice.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/The_Total_Economic-Impact-Of-The-Modern-Desktop-With-Microsoft-365-And-AnytimeOffice.pdf     

We’ve released some highly anticipated solutions that make Office running in a virtual environment better… and faster!

Microsoft 365 is designed to help organizations digitally transform workplace collaboration. Many customers that I work with use virtualization, and they’re always looking for ways to cut costs and improve the user experience. To help, we acquired FSLogix last November, and today I’m pleased to announce four new capabilities to further improve the user experience in virtualized environments:

• FSLogix technology, which improves the performance of Office 365 ProPlus in multi-user virtual environments, is now available at no additional cost for Microsoft 365 customers.
• Windows Server 2019 will add support for OneDrive Files On-Demand in the coming months.
• Office 365 ProPlus, our flagship Office experience, will be supported on Windows Server 2019.
• And we’ve added new capabilities to Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams in Office 365 ProPlus to improve the user experience in a virtualized environment.

Get the same reliable experience with Office apps in any environment with FSLogix

The FSLogix container technology is now fully integrated with Office apps in virtual environments. This technology improves the speed and reliability of virtualized Office apps to feel like the experience of using Office apps on a dedicated machine. The FSLogix containers work in virtualized environments, including those provided by Microsoft, Citrix, and VMWare. This technology is now included at no extra charge if you are licensed for any of the following Microsoft solutions:

• Microsoft 365 E3/E5/A3/A5/Student Use Benefits/F1/Business
• Windows 10 Enterprise E3/E5
• Windows 10 Education A3/A5
• Windows 10 VDA per user
• Remote Desktop Services (RDS) Client Access License (CAL) and Subscriber Access License (SAL)

Learn more about FSLogix.

Read the entire announcement here:

• BLOG: Improving the Office app experience in virtual environments https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/07/01/improving-office-app-experience-virtual-environments/

Cloud-based advanced services, like machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data analytics, open new opportunities for technical teams to drive business value. Find inspiration and guidance about what kind of transformational changes are possible and how you can achieve them. Download this free e-book, Designed to Disrupt: Reimagine Your Apps and Transform Your Industry, to help you:

• Use cloud technology to give your company a competitive edge by accessing new markets, enhancing your customers’ experience, and increasing operational efficiency.
• Learn from companies who have successfully used innovative technologies—such as cognitive services, Internet of Things (IoT) and bots—to grow their businesses. 
• Create a digital journey roadmap, with envisioning sessions to reimagine your company’s goals and practical tools to bring your visions to life.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/designed-to-disrupt-reimagine-your-apps-and-transform-your-industry/

Recently there’s been some significant changes to the way the PowerPlatform is licensed.

For more details, read the following sites:

• A Quick Summary of the October 2019 Power Platform Licensing Changes
  https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/magnetismsolutionscrmblog/posts/a-quick-summary-of-the-october-2019-power-platform-licensing-changes
• New licensing options for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow standalone paid plans
  https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-licensing-options-for-powerapps-and-flow/

Azure Personalizer is a cloud-based API service that allows you to choose the best experience to show to your users, learning from their real-time behavior.

• Provide information about your users and content and receive the top action to show your users.
• No need to clean and label data before using Personalizer.
• Provide feedback to Personalizer when it is convenient to you.
• View real-time analytics.
• Use Personalizer as part of a larger data science effort to validate existing experiments.

How does Personalizer work?

Personalizer uses machine learning models to discover what action to rank highest in a context. Your client application provides a list of possible actions, with information about them; and information about the context, which may include information about the user, device, etc. Personalizer determines the action to take. Once your client application uses the chosen action, it provides feedback to Personalizer in the form of a reward score. After the feedback is received, Personalizer automatically updates its own model used for future ranks. Over time, Personalizer will train one model that can suggest the best action to choose in each context based on their features.

Read more about Azure Personalizer here:

• PREVIEW: Azure Cognitive Services Personalizer
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/personalizer/

Today, we are proud to announce that Microsoft is positioned as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Endpoint Security Suites, Q3 2019, receiving among the second highest scores in both the strategy and market presence categories.

According to Forrester, “Microsoft has a compelling vision for the future where endpoint threat prevention and detection are completely integrated and inseparable.”

Read the entire announcement and download the Forrester Report here:

• Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in 2019 Endpoint Security Suites Wave
  https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2019/10/01/forrester-names-microsoft-a-leader-in-2019-endpoint-security-suites-wave/