Kurt Shintaku's Blog

This last week was a big week for Microsoft Cloud and Windows Server with the delivery of our first ever Windows Server Summit. The event was a great opportunity to engage the Windows Server community, provide HOURS of updates since the last Microsoft Ignite conference and get them excited for the upcoming Microsoft Inspire and Ignite conferences in July and September respectively.

We had top subject matter experts delivering a comprehensive agenda detailing what’s new in Windows Server and where we’re going in Windows Server 2019 with regard to Hybrid Cloud, Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Security and Application Platform.

The Windows Server Virtual Summit is available online for streaming here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/windows-server-summit

<taken from the Teams Community blog>

As of July 1^st we are happy to announce our refreshed version Enabling Teamwork with Microsoft Teams online course.  Our latest free course provides IT Pros with important information on how to plan for and enable Microsoft Teams for their users.

MOOCs are Massively Open Online Courses that can be accessed for free for everyone to be training on different topics. Microsoft leverages EdX.org as a learning platform, where courses usually last about 2-4 hours per week over four weeks. This course includes interactive labs that enable learners to practice Teams administration in a live Office 365 tenant.  In addition, there is an option to purchase a certificate of achievement for $99 USD to verify the successful completion of the course assessments.  This is the first of several courses that we plan to publish throughout the balance of 2018.

The course will teach you about the following:

• Enable users for Microsoft Teams
• Configure Microsoft Teams
• Configure audio conferencing with Teams.
• Best practices for using Microsoft Teams.

Special thanks to Brandon Neeb for putting the MOOC together (with some help from @Bryan Nyce, myself and other members across Microsoft Teams Engineering).

Call to action:

• Go to Enabling Teamwork with Microsoft Teams and enroll now!
• Any feedback? Let us know in the comments section!

In April we announced a new Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business Admin Center to give tenant admins a single place to manage all aspects of the service.

Based on your feedback, we have now started to rollout additional functionality and to migrate further settings to make the new Admin Center even more powerful and to enable you to manage Teams more effectively.

• Easy access to the Admin Center
• Call Analytics at your fingertips in the Admin Center
• Updates in user level policies and organization settings
• When will I start to see the new settings in my tenant?

Read about each of these in the blog post below:

• BLOG: What´s new for IT Admins in Microsoft Teams
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/What-s-new-for-IT-Admins-in-Microsoft-Teams/ba-p/213832

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Here’s my tl;dr notes:

“Surface Go”: (Codenamed “Lingo”)

• 10” display touch & pen display
• 7th Generation Intel Pentium Gold Processor 4415Y – FANLESS
• 9 hours of battery
• 1.15 pounds and 8.3 mm thin
• Starts at $399
• $399 for 64GB eMMC/4GB RAM
• $549 for 128GB SSD/8GB RAM
• $521.55 Special pricing for eligible students, parents, teachers, and military.
• Features & Accessories:
• Surface’s signature Type Cover keyboard
• Built-in kickstand with full friction hinge that extends to 165 degrees
• Windows Hello camera for secure sign-in using face recognition
• Surface Connect port for charging & docking with Surface dock
• USB-C 3.1 for data, video, and charging
• Headphone jack; and a MicroSD card reader
• TPM 2.0 chip
• 5.0MP front-facing camera with 1080p Skype HD video
• 8.0MP rear-facing autofocus camera with 1080p HD video
• Options:
• Surface Go with Wi-Fi: July 10^th (preorder), Aug 2^nd (ship)
• Surface Go with LTE: Later in 2018

Tech Specs detailed on the Store site:

• Surface Go – Tech Specs
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface/8V9DP4LNKNSZ?activetab=pivot:techspecstab

Announcement here – including video:

• Meet Surface Go, starting at $399 MSRP, it’s the smallest and most affordable Surface yet
  https://blogs.windows.com/devices/2018/07/09/meet-surface-go-starting-at-399-msrp-its-the-smallest-and-most-affordable-surface-yet/#qQsDQuw3XysYfji0.97.

There’s a fascinating post written on “The Art of the Possible” blog around the topic of whether or not IT permits end users to create their own Microsoft Teams sites.

Here’s the intro:

Are you here looking for an answer to the question in the tile? If you are Microsoft partner helping our customer implement Teams or our customer in the process of implementing Teams, then it is likely this topic is being discussed. Almost every customer I work with asks me what other customers are doing about Teams provisioning? Are others allowing end users to create a new Team as and when they need or is there a review and approval process?

Few years back, this question was not even asked in large enterprises. In recent years, organizations have developed processes for provisioning SharePoint sites and file shares. This process usually included request from end user, followed by review and approval by IT prior to provisioning an additional content store. Then why this question now? What has changed that has prompted IT to even consider if end users should be allowed to create a new Team without any review and approval?

To understand this, lets understand why organizations have a process in place for provisioning:

…

Read more at the blog post:

• BLOG: Analysis: Who creates a new team in Microsoft Teams – End user or IT?
  https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/arbindo/2018/05/01/analysis-who-creates-a-new-team-in-microsoft-teams-end-user-or-it/

There’s an interesting debate between end users & IT pros orchestrated by the blog authors, BTW, that goes over this exact topic:

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Got a Surface Pro 3?  Have you updated the TPM module’s firmware?  Get ready for some big fun, if not. 

There’s a vulnerability in TPM that was reported a while ago that requires an update to the TPM chip firmware from 5.0.1089.2 to 5.62.3162.2.  Doing so is really laborious.

Because TPM touches certificates & the drive encryption, it’s a fairly involved & carefully orchestrated process that can take 30 minutes or more.  It involves:

1. Downloading & installing an Update tool to the local machine
2. Running the tool to format & create a bootable USB drive then unplug the drive
3. Suspend Bitlocker on your machine (Super critical step!)
4. Go into the UEFI boot menu of the Surface (Volume UP+Power)
1. Delete all Secure Boot Keys
2. Disable Secure Boot Control
3. Save the configuration
5. Reboot the computer (It will display a RED boot screen) then shut it down.
6. Plug in & boot up the bootable USB drive that was created (Volume DOWN+Power)
7. Update the TPM firmware using the steps from the booted USB key
8. Boot up Windows & verify that the TPM chip has been properly updates through TPM.MSC
9. Shutdown the PC & boot into the UEFI menu (Volume UP+Power)
10. Enable Secure Boot Control
11. Install Factory Default Keys
12. Resume Bitlocker
13. Reset Windows Hello for Business PIN by deleting the certificate container for Hello (certutil –deleteHelloContainer)

WHEW!
Not gonna lie – this isn’t for the light hearted.  I was very surprised that this process was what was required.

For detailed instructions, go to the following page:

• Surface Pro 3: Install and use the Surface Pro 3 Trusted Platform Module (TPM) update tool
  https://support.microsoft.com/en-US/help/4100374

NOT JUST FOR SURFACE DEVICES
While I described the hair-raising process that is required for Surface Pro 3s, this is technically required for ALL devices that have a TPM chip from what I understand – including Surface Pro 4, Surface Book, etc. although there are different less involved processes for those.

There are instructions available for this update for various hardware vendors including HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, Fujitsu, Panasonic, and others, on the Microsoft Support site so head on over there to see what the process is for your machine:

• Update your security processor (TPM) firmware
  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4096377/windows-10-update-security-processor-tpm-firmware#firmwareupdates

A few months ago Paul Bowden, a Software Development Engineer from Microsoft for Office Deployment & Manageability did a presentation on “Deployment & Management of Office 365 ProPlus on Mac”.

I’ve not seen this information elsewhere so I thought I’d post his presentation here:

1. Office for Mac Community links and sites for more info
2. Native applications on the Mac versions, sizes, and contents of each app
3. Benefits of deployment architecture
4. How to deploy the bits in the enterprise
1. Deploying Office with Jamf
5. Deployment source automation (cached vs ondemand)
6. Network endpoints
7. Activation and licensing
8. License storage & conversion
1. VL to O365 license conversion
9. Office for Mac update channels
10. Update cadence recommendations
11. Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU)
12. MAU caching server
13. Roadmap
1. Today’s current deployment model of 4GB pagages
2. The future of Office update management
14. Deploying application settings
1. Comparisons with Office on PC/Windows

Grab the deck here:

• DOWNLOAD: Deployment & Management of Office 365 ProPlus on Mac
  https://1drv.ms/p/s!Ao0Dfn8MQdoArP4zWvo9SAuDu2p5TQ