Top 10 Office 365-related Announcements from Microsoft Ignite, nimblia edition
- Tim Schaffler
- Oct 2, 2018
- 4 min read
Microsoft Ignite, the biggest Microsoft event of the year for IT Pros and enterprise users, was held last week in Orlando, FL. Each year at the conference, Microsoft's various teams introduce major new features, updated roadmaps, and coming enhancements for the gamut of Microsoft's enterprise-facing products over the course of a week. Assuming you weren't there, I'm betting you don't have a full week to watch session recordings to catch up on the biggest news; so I'm going to save you some time. Below are the top 10 announcements from the week from my perspective, which is heavily Office 365-biased of course. Feel free to comment if I missed some or if you disagree with my rankings!
10. Microsoft declares the end of the password era: enhancements to technology like Microsoft Authenticator seek to provide other means of authentication to apps that use Azure AD, ideally eliminating the use of the primary source of corporate data breaches - passwords and their potential compromises. Read more
9. OneDrive files on demand extends its reach: it's about to be much easier for Teams users to sync files to their local devices for offline use, without eating up local storage space. Likewise, Mac users will finally be able to do the same through Finder, also without having to consume drive space except for specific files where chosen. Read more
8. Ideas for Office debuts: Microsoft is adding big new AI-driven improvements to Office products, designed to make it very easy to build compelling content with minimal effort. Office will suggest styles, themes, content additions, and ideas based on the current content you're adding, along with other work you've been doing recently, and social data from the Microsoft Graph - as you type. Read more
7. LinkedIn integration matures: Now that Microsoft owns LinkedIn, it's time to start seeing how this helps everyone. To this point, Microsoft demonstrated new integrations between LinkedIn and Office 365 - including the ability to co-author documents with your LinkedIn connections, and view LinkedIn profile information right from the contact cards in O365 as you add invitees to meetings, or just mouse over user pictures associated with content. Read more
6. Cortana Skills dev tools rolling out: You may have used Alexa skills before - i.e., just ask Alexa to do something, and voila, there it is. Microsoft's taking this concept a step further with its Cortana offering, now allowing companies to build their own collection of internal-use Cortana skills. This should allow company Windows users to instantly pull up answers to FAQ's, open tools and apps, and trigger automated processes through multiple interface points, including voice. Read more
5. Yammer's not going away: Some have assumed the massive growth of Teams would mean a diminished role for Yammer in the O365 platform. Not the case; instead, Yammer's presence should grow through use of newly introduced features like a Yammer tab coming to Teams (i.e., project teams can now chat as a group, then make company-wide announcements or solicit ideas from the same interface), and SharePoint intranet web part. Read more
4. Live streaming capabilities grow: Microsoft is adding features to make it easy to create live video feeds from Stream, Yammer, and Teams. This can be a great way to engage your organization at broader levels - live town hall sessions and leadership message broadcasts are a couple of quick examples. This also creates a new avenue to reach out to your partners and customers. Read more
3. The case for modernizing your intranet with SharePoint Online grows: The SharePoint team announced new features that are going to make it very hard to resist moving your intranet to Office 365. You'll soon be able to build mega-menus and add site footers, while adding audience targeting to modern web parts. Other coming personalization enhancements and Yammer feed integration promise to keep content fresh and relevant to each of your users. Read more
2. Search reaches everything: Microsoft's made big investments to make the search experience across all of its tools more intuitive and productive. They've added consistencies with search box location and suggestions across all apps, with the ability to find and suggest content from numerous places through the search box in any tool, including Office 365. Plus, the Office Graph is connected to suggest searches that may relate best to what you're working on now. Read more
1. Microsoft Teams keeps growing: Teams is now the fastest growing app in Microsoft history, already in use in over 329k organizations. Microsoft announced key new enhancements that will continue this adoption trend - automatic searchable meeting transcripts, live voice language translations in meetings, industry-specific features like staff/shift scheduling for frontline workers, and secure messaging with EMR integration for healthcare workers. Read more
Yep - it's a lot. Just understanding those 10 topics and their potential impact on your organization takes some effort, and I'm only covering a handful here (apologies to other major news like the Open Data Initiative and Azure Windows 10 hosted virtual desktops - those are huge too, just not as directly impacting O365). The main takeaway - Office 365 and related Microsoft technologies are improving at the fastest rate in the company's history - really good news for all of us who get to use and work with them. The tools are all there, now just add your ideas make some great things happen!
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