Recent Discussions
SharePoint 2013 Migration Offer Available from FastTrack
Today we launched the SharePoint 2013 Migration Offer to help customers move data to Office 365. This is a limited time offer for the Microsoft FastTrack team to move your on-premises SharePoint 2013 content to SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. You must request this offer before March 31, 2017. When you leverage this offer, FastTrack will assess your SharePoint 2013 environment prior to migration and will provide guidance on what content can be migrated and remediation options available. Team site migrations to SharePoint Online includes migrating document libraries and documents, list and list items, site title, site logo, and others. My site migrations to OneDrive for Business include documents, folders and folder structure, and documents & folders permissions and sharing. Refer to the offer https://fto365dev.blob.core.windows.net/media/Default/Resources/SharePoint%202013%20Migration%20Offer%20FAQ_Public_September2016.pdf a complete list items available for migration. To get started with the offer http://fasttrack.microsoft.comand request the offer from the list of available offers. The offer is available to customers with at least 150 licenses for an eligible service or plan for your Office 365 tenant. To learn more about eligible services and plans, see https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt651701.aspx. Threre is no fee for the services provided by the migration offer, so sign in and request the offer today. Brian ShiersConnecting with people to drive adoption
Today, the move to the cloud is broadening how IT pro roles are perceived—providing more opportunities for you to participate directly in business decision making and strategy development. Many of you are likely involved in—or even directly responsible for—increasing Office 365 adoption to speed your company’s ROI and improve productivity. And if you’re like a lot of the IT pros I’ve talked with, you’ve recognized the need to develop or deepen a new set of skills that can help you succeed. The evolution of your role might require you to work more closely with users than you have in the past. So, your people skills—leadership, communication, relationship-building—take on increased importance in helping you: Engage users and overcome their reticence to technology change. Understand users’ needs, and then match those needs to Office 365 capabilities. Create an implementation plan to motivate and train users. For now, we’ll explore three ways you might engage users and overcome their reticence to technology change. In future posts, we’ll take a closer look at understanding and matching users’ needs to Office 365 capabilities and creating an implementation plan. Be sensitive to how stressful this can be for some users Anxiety about learning something new can galvanize into fear-avoidance behaviors that can make adoption even more challenging—for you and for your users. As Mott MacDonald Business Architect Simon Denton stated, “We’re in a time now where we can’t just expect people to use what we provide…Employees want to understand how a new product is relevant to them and their work, and how it will help them with their clients.” For https://blogs.office.com/2016/04/15/driving-successful-adoption-of-office-365-at-mott-macdonald/, the best approach to encourage Office 365 adoption was to use customized posters and email templates from http://fasttrack.office.com/, and by identifying and engaging its employees most interested in and enthusiastic about the new Office 365 capabilities as technology champions. These champions played critical role in communicating about the transition with colleagues across the organization. Putting more effort into promoting, supporting, and fostering adoption paid off for Mott MacDonald in the higher level of engagement employees demonstrated throughout the transition process. Consider exactly what users might be resisting The user reluctance you see could be about more than the technology change itself. Research has shown that in many cases, people are just as fearful about social change—how the relationships they’ve built within and across teams will be affected—as they are about adopting new technologies. However, you know that Office 365 will enable them to develop even closer relationships with co-workers because they’ll have tools at their fingertips that enable stronger collaboration. As Harold Groothedde, technology solutions director at https://msenterprise.global.ssl.fastly.net/wordpress/2017/03/Coats-Case-Study.pdf explains, with Office 365, “Employees can communicate with one another instantly, in any way that suits the need.” He adds that Coats has been able to “connect a workforce fragmented across many sites and time zones in a seamless way.” From email to video calls, the new collaboration channels at Coats allows employees to connect with each other directly and instantly—in a way that’s most comfortable for them. Show users how much better work is going to be Go beyond project schedules, deployment details, and training. Most of us are working on almost twice the number of teams we were five years ago. Juggling more projects that involve more people can make it even more challenging for us to step out of our comfort zones. We become so totally focused on getting things done, that we just find what works and stick with it. That’s why it’s important to take the time to help users understand how Office 365 can make their work lives better. And how even small changes can have a big impact on their productivity. James McGlennon, EVP and CIO at https://blogs.office.com/2017/01/31/liberty-mutual-launches-an-it-transformation/, shared that Office 365 puts “business analytics tools in the hands of everyone, not just analysts and power users…to drive product innovation.” You might even find opportunities to reassure them about what won’t change. At Liberty Mutual, for example, day-to-day operations haven’t changed dramatically, but better collaboration across different business units has increased accessibility to more information and valuable insights—enabling employees to make better decisions. What’s next? The tips I’ve discussed here are just a few of the ways you can more effectively engage users to overcome their fear of technology change. Check out http://fasttrack.microsoft.com/ for resources, tools, and expert guidance to help you successfully drive adoption. And learn how other companies have successfully increased adoption by taking a look at our case study series about approaching adoption as a marketing campaign and outsourcing adoption. Also, be sure to download the introduction of the https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=843464 for end-to-end planning and implementation guidance.Email approval Button missing in Hybrid Scenario (Complete solution with troubleshooting)
In pure cloud or pure on-premises environment email approval works fine without any error. But in Hybrid scenario it’s very difficult to make sure email approval works when users are in cross premise environment. If you look for Microsoft Doc or any other third-party document, you won’t find any proper document. Here I am sharing one full step including all kinds of troubleshooting. The key and only factor of working with email approval is TNEF (Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format). TNEF, also known as the Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format, Outlook Rich Text Format, or Exchange Rich Text Format, is a Microsoft-specific format for encapsulating MAPI message properties. All versions of Outlook fully support TNEF. Outlook on the web (formerly known as Outlook Web App) translates TNEF into MAPI and displays the formatted messages. Other email clients that don't support TNEF typically display TNEF formatted messages as plain text messages with Winmail.dat or Win.dat attachments. Step by step demonstration to resolve email approval issue: The email approval button was missing because you have disabled TNEF or TNEF is not enabled. To enable TNEF log into your exchange server and run two PowerShell command in your exchange management shell. Get-RemoteDomain | Select Name, DomainName, TNEF*, Trust*, AllowedOOF*, IsIn* [To check ] Get-RemoteDomain | Set-RemoteDomain -TNEFEnabled $true [To change] After you change the TNEF you will see Approval button reappeared in your outlook. But it will create you another problem. Your email will start getting Winmail.dat as attachment. To resolve the issue, you have to change the setting from your ECP. You are receiving Winmail.dat because you made the change only from exchange on premise side. You did not changed some from office 365 side. You have to make sure Rich text format is disabled or you can use HTML or plain text. Because not everyone can read or convert rich text format. Login to office 365 admin portal and navigate to exchange admin center (convert to classic exchange) Select mail flow Inside mail flow select remote domain Select Default one and make necessary changes (Screenshot-1) If you have only one create a new one for your custom domain Click plus and keep everything same except same option (Screenshot-2) In domain name place use *.contoso.com After everything setting properly sometimes you might see some approval might fail with a NDR message To resolve the issue, add all the on-premise system mailbox in office 365 as mail contact. First find system mailboxes from on premise using below command. Login to on premise exchange management shell and run below command Get-Mailbox -Arbitration | Fl Name, DisplayName Add them into office 365 as mail contact following below format. Format: SPTP:Email address removed Replace System mailbox value with the value you found from on premise Replace custom domain with your domain name. Example: SMTP:SystemMailbox{2CE344-31E-D-9D7-A7C7D7A0DAA}@contoso.com Give first name, last name, and display name whatever you want. Just make sure you add email address according to format. Go to Office 365 exchange admin center Go to recipient Go to contact Click add contactVIDEO on the FastTrack expansion [Windows 10, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams]
Office 365 Senior Product Manager, Sharon Liu demos how FastTrack can help identify and prioritize key scenarios and stakeholders, build customized shareable success plans, engineer support and pre-built assets to train your users.
Microsoft is committed to ensuring all biz-critical apps work on the latest versions our tech
Welcome to the App Assure discussion board on Tech Community. For those of you getting to know App Assure for the first time, the FastTrack App Assure program was launched in 2018 to fulfill Microsoft’s promise on application compatibility: we are committed to ensuring all business-critical apps work on the latest versions of our technology. While most apps will continue to work following deployment on the latest Microsoft products, App Assure engineers are available to help resolve any issues you might experience. App Assure supports application compatibility on: Windows 10 Microsoft 365 Apps (previously Office 365 ProPlus) Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) Microsoft Edge Windows 10 on ARM64 PCs App Assure remediates issues for: Customer Developed Line of Business (LOB) Applications Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Applications Microsoft First-Party Products App Assure is part of the FastTrack benefit, which comes at no additional cost with eligible Microsoft 365 and Windows 10 plans of 150+ licenses. Since launching, App Assure has received and evaluated nearly 750,000 applications, allowing our engineers to study and learn from customer experiences. Only a small group (approximately 0.31%) reported having any compatibility issues at all after upgrading to the latest Microsoft products, and certain questions and concerns appeared frequently. Be sure to reach out to us here on the discussion board, where our subject matter experts from our engineering and program teams will answer your questions. You can also contact us: Submit a Request for Assistance for valid app compat issues Questions? Email: achelp@microsoft.com For more information visit: aka.ms/appassure We are here for you. Seriously...reach out! Oh, and we support multiple global languages: English Japanese Chinese - simplified and traditional German French Spanish Korean Portuguese (BR) ItalianPlan for Office 365 migration and adoption success
For the final post in our series that began in April as part of the Tech Community's Driving Adoption theme, I wanted to round things out by talking about why creating a plan is so important to a successful transition to Office 365. I have to thank @Jeff James for providing such a great lead-in for me with his June post, "Celebrating Migration to Office 365." He did an excellent job of illustrating why making the transition to Office 365 requires a good plan. Or as legendary American professional baseball player, manager, and coach Yogi Berra put it, "If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else." In his own inimitable way, Berra cautions us about the potential risks that come with a lack of proper planning, and emphasizes just what makes planning so important. Creating a plan provides the opportunity to clearly articulate what needs to be done, how to get it done, who will get it done and what they'll be doing, and when it will be done. For everyone, top to bottom. With this in mind, let's take a closer look at three key aspects of planning that can lead to successful project outcomes. Create the plan. The idea that you need to make a plan might seem obvious, but too often, major projects begin without clear plans in place. Make sure you carve out enough time for you and your team to develop a viable plan. If you're working with a technology or services partner, it might be tempting to leave all of the planning details entirely to them. However, if you're responsible for driving Office 365 adoption, you should take an active role in the development of your organization's transition plan. This effort ensures that you're up to speed on every aspect of the plan, and enables you to solidify the support of top-level sponsors and recruit champions to help you build excitement among users. Share the plan. Now that the plan is complete, you'll want to get the word out to everyone across your company. Because you've been actively involved in planning your organization's transition to Office 365, you can more easily articulate what's going on throughout the process to management, colleagues, and users. Your planning experience will also help you develop and provide more effective training for users. And you'll be better at evangelizing the benefits of Office 365, which will, in turn, motivate users to adopt Office 365 more quickly. All of this hard work pays off for you, too, as your enhanced value to your team helps advance your career. Follow the plan. To get the most out of your plan, you have to follow through on it. That means more than ensuring that Office 365 is up and running. You have to stay focused on the specific, realistic goals and expectations you've committed to, measuring progress and performance against the success criteria you've established, and reporting outcomes. You'll need to monitor where adoption is lagging and devise new ways to train and motivate users over the longer term. Following a plan doesn't mean there's no room for flexibility. In fact, a good plan adds agility by taking the guesswork out of day-to-day tasks. Wondering where to start? Consider the https://fasttrack.microsoft.com/office/envision/createplan available through http://fasttrack.microsoft.com/. Through this collaborative environment, you and your team can work together to capture your business case, onboarding, and adoption plans all in one place.Celebrating Migration to Office 365
A recent post from my friend and colleague Sharon Liu (link to post) offers some great advice about how to ask more effective questions that help you drive adoption. It’s well worth your time if you haven’t read it already. Today I’d like to tease out some key threads from Sharon’s post, and a few others in the Microsoft Tech Community, about how to position and message your company’s transition to Office 365. First, your role as IT pro is changing in some very fundamental ways. Like a lot of IT pros out there, you will be more productive by developing a new set of critical, marketable skills as your industry moves to the cloud. These skills need to both help you articulate and deliver the value of Office 365, but also increase your value to your company and further your career. Embracing digital transformation is part of expanding IT pro roles, and offers you great opportunities to have a direct impact on business decision making and strategy development. At the same time, you’re engaging more directly with users to increase adoption. Second, Digital Transformation is driving a shift toward users and their role in the Office 365 transition. There are advantages in growing your technical expertise with skills that can help you get people to use Office 365. The business value for your company comes from the end users’ adoption of the new capabilities, not from completing the deployment project. You might know how your company runs from an IT perspective, but you might not yet be as aware of how things work from a business perspective. That’s why, along with ensuring that security, compliance, and other critical requirements are being met, it’s just as important for you to identify scenarios, understand user needs, and learn the language of your users. Taken together, these ideas present a perfect opening to shift your transition approach. Traditionally, the goal has been to make the transition to the cloud as seamless as possible. Employees would leave the office at the end of one day, and return the next morning to find the new service up and running. However, this approach is a bit anticlimactic and may even create anxiety rather than alleviating it. It is a golden opportunity missed where you could communicate value and capability to your end users! Once you realize how important adoption and usage of Office 365 is to the success of your organization, and how it is becoming a common yardstick for IT success, it makes sense that the move to the cloud should be an event. The activities leading up to the transition to Office 365 should build excitement in your company culminating in a celebration of all the new things users can do. Transitioning more than one workload at a time is an opportunity to increase that celebration because Office 365 has been built to be better together – the more components you roll out, the better the end user experience and productivity gains. For example, collaboration for mobile users can involve OneDrive for Business, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Skype for Business. Not only can you use the momentum to make your ongoing adoption efforts more effective, but you benefit from economies of scale by combining workloads. It may be a little bit more work on you up front, but you’ll create a much bigger event and impact. And your users will love it. With FastTrack, you can build a success plan that simplifies this process and takes into account every facet of the transition process. We’re constantly working to develop additional resources and improve the current ones so that you’re always getting the best possible guidance.Microsoft FastTrack on social media!
The Microsoft FastTrack Tech Community is great resource for information, discussion, and feedback from fellow FastTrack users. But did you know that the community is even bigger? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to hear about the latest Microsoft news, customer stories, and updates from FastTrack, Microsoft 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365. Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/fasttrack Follow us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/microsoftfasttrackApp Assure is here to help with Windows 7 Year 2 ESU
Hi friends and colleagues, Are you (or someone you know) heading into Windows 7 Year 2 extended security updates (ESU)? Have concerns over application compatibility that has slowed or stalled your Windows 10 deployment? If yes, reach out to App Assure! We provide remote assistance to help customers by identifying the root cause and remediating application compatibility issues at no additional cost with eligible Microsoft 365 and Windows 10 subscriptions of 150+ licenses. Our scope also covers app compat for Microsoft Edge, Windows Virtual Desktop, and Windows 10 on ARM64 devices. Call to Action: Learn more at https://aka.ms/appassure Submit a request for assistance at aka.ms/AppAssureRequest You can also post your question(s) here and I'll be sure that one of our App Assure subject matter experts (SMEs) will respond. ~Michelle
When the time comes to grow up
It’s graduation season here in the US—an event that typically represents the transition from youth to adulthood. Responsibilities increase, along with expectations. Young people are faced with important decisions that will impact how the next phase of their lives unfolds. If you think about it, it’s not unlike a business that’s outgrown its technology. When companies are just getting off the ground, the last thing they’re probably thinking about is their software. Their focus is on solidifying their vision and strategy, growing the business, making sure they’re meeting their customers’ needs, and getting maximum value from every resource. Decisions about software often come down to what seems to be the easiest and lowest-cost—or even free—option that fits their short-term goals. So, company may start out using a mix of platforms, among them Google Apps. This option may work for them for a time. However, the feedback from customers is that at a certain point, they find they’ve outgrown those platforms. They reach a critical juncture: the business has grown. It’s exciting, but their needs have evolved. Productivity is more of a priority. Things like data management, security, and risk become much more important. They want software that can track the information they’re capturing—that helps them identify what’s relevant and keeps sensitive data safe. They need to stay focused on growing their businesses—and serving their customers—more effectively. When they do their homework, companies find out that Office 365 is the best option. They’re sometimes surprised to discover that it doesn’t matter whether they’re on their way to becoming large enterprises—or they want to stay small, but grow in sophistication and insight, perhaps to expand their market reach and customer base. Whatever their goals, companies recognize that the one thing they don’t have to worry about is outgrowing Office 365. Understandably, migration is a big consideration—with some companies wanting to complete their migrations to Office 365 as fast as possible to keep costs in check. Microsoft FastTrack can help with recommendations, guidance, and best practices designed to help organizations achieve quick and predictable outcomes. All of these factors play a role in the decision to make Office 365 the foundation of companies’ digital transformations—and a crucial element of their long-term strategies.
Purview 'snacks' - short demos of some Purview features
Feeling snacky? Interested in learning more about Purview? Here's a series of short (<4m) demos of features including mandatory labelling, blocking copy to network drive for sensitive content, sensitive data in Teams, and more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcOl0epQDPM&list=PLn-uphn08kkBh83kiLANvvcAynUr8flA4 More snacks are planned and we'll keep the playlist updated.GNPC puts Office 365 on a quick path to deployment with Microsoft FastTrack
See how the The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) worked with FastTrack to learn how to deploy, manage, and extract more value from Office 365. Read the case study on https://blogs.office.com/2016/11/02/gnpc-puts-office-365-on-a-quick-path-to-deployment-with-microsoft-fasttrack/.Microsoft 365 security solutions
To help ensure your organization’s data is safe on employee-owned devices, Microsoft 365 security solutions give you control and protection throughout the data lifecycle. With interoperating solutions for identity and access management, endpoint protection, information protection, and mobile device management (MDM), Microsoft 365 helps you protect your data against the complicated risks of a mobile landscape. Read more here: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/microsoftsecure/2018/08/02/protect-your-data-in-files-apps-and-devices/
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