Kurt Shintaku's Blog

FastTrack has a set of graphics & logos to use in branding your launch/kickoff of Office 365’s deployment.

In onboarding to Microsoft Office 365 products, it’s important that users recognize the launch icons and product names. This Branding Toolkit includes icon assets and names for use exclusively in the onboard training of Office 365. Please make sure that you (and your customer if you’re a partner) read and adhere to the following Microsoft Office 365 Trademark License and associated Branding Guidelines.

Grab the Microsoft Office 365 Branding Toolkit here:

• DOWNLOAD: Microsoft Office 365 Branding Toolkit
  https://fasttrack.microsoft.com/en-us/portal.html#/field-dashboard/1/resource/brandingkit

Check out our exhaustive list of adoption content and other guides on our Resource Hub.

Normally I try to produce a full round up of reviews of our Surface releases but I haven’t had the time recently.

Here’s a few reviews that I’ve found for Surface Laptop 2 and Surface Pro 6 that are a bit indicative of the acclaim that this generation of Surfaces have gotten.

• BUSINESS INSIDER:
  “Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop 2 is one of the best you can buy today — and it’s a cheaper alternative to Apple’s MacBook”
  https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-surface-laptop-2-review-2018-11
• MASHABLE:
  “Surface Laptop 2: "Best Laptop of the Year"
  https://mashable.com/review/microsoft-surface-laptop-2/#6ogda55gnsqL
• ENGADGET:
  “Surface Pro 6 review: Still the best 2-in-1 PC”
  https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/16/surface-pro-6-review-tablet-pc/
• DIGITAL TRENDS:
  “Surface Pro 6 review: Don’t bother with any other 2-in-1. The Surface Pro 6 is still the best”
• https://www.digitaltrends.com/laptop-reviews/microsoft-surface-pro-6-review/
• LAPTOP MAGAZINE:
  Microsoft Surface Pro 6 Review – “Laptop Magazine Editor’s Choice”, 4.5 stars
  https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/microsoft-surface-pro

There’s a series of new features in Microsoft Intune.  One of them was quietly released:

Windows Win32 apps and PowerShell scripts
End users are no longer required to be logged in on the device to install Win32 apps or execute PowerShell scripts.

Yeah, so that’s kinda big.  Check the update out here:

• What’s new in Microsoft Intune – Week of October 29, 2018
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/intune/whats-new#week-of-october-29-2018

With Microsoft Teams live events, users in your organization can broadcast video and meeting content to large online audiences.

Microsoft 365 live events bring live video streaming to a new level, encouraging connection throughout the entire engagement lifecycle with attendees before, during, and after live events. You can create a live event wherever your audience, team, or community resides, using Microsoft Stream, Microsoft Teams, or Yammer.

Teams delivers chat-based collaboration, calling, meetings, and with live events, so you can expand the audience of your meetings. Teams live events is an extension of Teams meetings, enabling users to broadcast video and meeting content to a large online audience. These are meant for one-to-many communications where the host of the event is leading the interactions and audience participation is primarily to view the content shared by host. The attendees can watch the live or recorded event in Yammer, Teams, and/or Microsoft Stream, and can interact with the presenters using moderated Q & A or a Yammer conversation.

Teams live events are considered the next version of Skype Meeting Broadcast and will eventually replace the capabilities provided in Skype Meeting Broadcast. During the public preview release of Teams live events, we will continue to support Skype Meeting Broadcast, with no disruption in service for new or future events. However, we encourage you to try out Teams live events to leverage all the new and exciting features including screen sharing, attendee count, and support for external hardware/software encoders.

Take a look at how you can use Microsoft Teams Live Events to broadcast video and meeting content to large online audiences.

• INFO: Microsoft Teams Live Events
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/teams-live-events/what-are-teams-live-events?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

This paper is a collection of security best practices to use when you’re designing, deploying, and

managing your cloud solutions by using Azure. These best practices come from our experience with Azure security and the experiences of customers like you.

This paper is intended to be a resource for IT pros. This might include designers, architects, developers, and testers who build and deploy secure Azure solutions.

• DOWNLOAD: Security best practices for Azure solutions (.PDF, 47pgs)
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/security-best-practices-for-azure-solutions/

[I didn’t post this soon enough – my bad.  But all the answers are located at the site below]

We are very excited to announce a Microsoft Information Protection Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) to answer questions about the new capabilities announced at Microsoft Ignite.

The AMA will begin on Tuesday, November 6th at 9am PT.

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.

We will open up the space for questions when the event begins at 9AM PT.

If you absolutely can’t attend and have questions you want to ask, share your questions in this thread and we’ll be sure to move them to the main space.

View the Q&A at the AMA site here:
https://aka.ms/InformationProtectionAMA

Finding a balance between readily sharing files and protecting corporate assets is crucial. At Microsoft, we get it. With over 400,000 SharePoint team sites, intranet portals, and OneDrive for Business sites, we have a lot to manage.

Learn how we use custom solutions, organizational policy, Office 365, and Azure Active Directory to help manage, govern, and protect our data in a highly collaborative environment.

Access additional technical content, discover new and exciting career opportunities in IT, and much, much more.

DATE/TIME:
Thursday, Nov 8, 10:00 AM PT

• WEBINAR: “Securely sharing, managing, governing and protecting content at Microsoft” – Thursday, Nov 8, 10:00 AM PT
  https://resources.office.com/en-us-landing-US-M365-AWR-WBNR-FY19-11Nov-08-SharePoint-and-Office-365-Securely-sharing-managing-1079.html

“I am excited to announce that group-based licensing is now generally available! As part of our general availability release, we made the service more scalable by adding these capabilities:”

• Developer APIs in Microsoft Graph to allow you to programmatically read group-based licensing assignments on groups, as well as programmatically get assignment status and errors.
• Ability to reprocess group-based licensing assignments for a single user.
• Simplified licensing requirements for group-based licensing. Users who are targeted for group-based licensing need Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Basic (and above), or Office 365 E3/A3 (and above).

To start using group-based licensing, look at our Assign licenses to users by group membership in Azure AD documentation.

• ANNOUNCEMENT: Azure AD group-based license management is now generally available!
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Active-Directory-Identity/Azure-AD-group-based-license-management-is-now-generally/ba-p/281355
• DOCS: Azure AD group-based license management
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/users-groups-roles/licensing-groups-assign

Looking for cost efficiency around you Azure spend?

Check out this session from Microsoft Ignite by Joanna Van Gansen, Group Program Manager for the new “Azure Cost Management” (A combined portal incorporating the Enterprise Portal & Cost Management from Cloudyn). 

She goes over techniques for saving money on Azure, including:

• Azure Cost Management
• Azure Advisor
• Reserved Instances
• Azure Hybrid Benefit
• Changing behaviors, planning for the move from on-prem vs the cloud
• Microsoft IT’s experiences in drive down costs in Azure

And the recording has 20min of Q&A with Joanna which is very interesting.  Here’s the recording:

• BRK2476 – Make the most of Azure by optimizing your cloud spend through Azure Cost Management and Reserved Instances
  Learn how to optimize on Azure by analyzing your cloud spend with Azure Cost Management, and by saving on your resources through reserved instances and Azure Hybrid Benefit, which will help you accelerate your future investments confidently. In this session we’ll demo Azure Cost Management and show how you can analyze and set budgets to monitor and optimize your costs and usage.
  RECORDING: https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/64710?source=sessions#ignite-html-anchor
  POWERPOINT DECK:
  https://mediusproduction.blob.core.windows.net/presentations/Ignite2018/BRK2476.pptx

Did you know that Outlook Mobile for iOS & Android is now supported in Office 365 Government?

It can now be used against Office 365 Government tenants without any sort of exceptions or waivers. (Which were required prior to getting FedRAMP approved.)

As with most GovCloud solutions, there are some differences in functionality to know.  Read about GovCloud usage of Outlook Mobile here:

• ANNOUNCEMENT (& FAQ): The Outlook for iOS and Android architecture is FedRAMP compliant for US Office 365 GCC customers
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Outlook-Blog/The-Outlook-for-iOS-and-Android-architecture-is-FedRAMP/ba-p/178007
• DOCS: Using Outlook for iOS and Android in the Government Community Cloud
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/clients-and-mobile-in-exchange-online/outlook-for-ios-and-android/outlook-for-ios-and-android-in-the-government-cloud