Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Beginning today, Microsoft Teams is available in a free version worldwide in 40 languages. This offer was designed for small businesses and groups of coworkers that don’t have commercial Office 365 subscriptions.

Now with this great introductory experience, any group can use Teams as their hub for teamwork and discover the value of Office 365 as they grow and scale.

Get the free version of Microsoft Teams, available now. And with more people using Teams, we’ll show you updates that extend stability and management, including for developers, how you can now bring your Line of Business applications into Teams.

…

Read more about this announcement here:

• NEWS: Introducing a free version of Microsoft Teams
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Introducing-a-free-version-of-Microsoft-Teams/ba-p/214592 

Recently, there’s been a surge in the number of people learning Skype Meeting Broadcast in Southern California.  A lot of it seems to originate from certain other solutions not doing very well when it comes to global reliability or scalability – both of which Skype Meeting Broadcast does very well.  Skype Meeting Broadcast is very reliable – and available to every Office 365 E3+ subscriber.

SCREEN SHARING CHALLENGE
One thing Skype Meeting Broadcast doesn’t do very well – or at all for that matter – is broadcast screen sharing.  Skype Meeting Broadcast will broadcast a video source and also a PowerPoint presentation… but if you need to share a desktop screen for the purposes of a demo during a broadcast, Skype Meeting Broadcast doesn’t inherently deliver that capability.

Fortunately Sonia Cuff found a relatively simple workaround for this, using a popular software tool called XSplit Broadcaster that simulates a virtual video camera with the video source being the desktop screen.

Read about this solution here in Sonia’s article on REgarding 365:

• ARTICLE: Skype for Business Broadcast — Screen sharing
  https://regarding365.com/skype-for-business-broadcast-screen-sharing-8c220ba80613

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

Effective project managers know how to provide strategic value by helping their organization deliver on promises. And they also recognize that having the right tools is vital to getting the job done right. Whether you need the basics like creating schedules and tracking statuses, or you’re looking at managing more complicated processes, Project Online can help.

“A crash course in Project Online” explores how Project Online enables you to:

• deliver on time and within budget
• identify risks
• set milestones
• assess the value of progress

No matter which critical path you’re on, Project Online helps ensure you and your organization are successful.

• DOWNLOAD: Overview – “A crash course in Project Online”
  https://resources.office.com/ww-landing-Crash-course-in-Project-Online-eBook.html
  

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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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