A Method to track current and upcoming changes to M365 Products
Good evening (from Ireland at least), I've spent most of today traipsing down a variety of dead-ends and soon-to-be-discontinued features looking to create a useful location where I can find/send all new updates to products that I can peruse and ultimately highlight ones that may be of particular importance in my organisation. I've had a long chat with Copilot today and while I've made significant progress in some areas (had upwards of 30 great questions according to Copilot! ;P), when it comes to the final product, there's always some missing connector, or some RSS feed that is no longer supported. What I'm looking for here is any input on how you manage to stay ahead of changes and I'll share everything I'm doing and have learned as well, in the hope that the discussion is somewhat mutually beneficial. What I do: Message Centre: Manually check the Message Center (under Service Health in M365 Admin Center). You can sort by product here and by relevance which is quite handy. Link: https://admin.cloud.microsoft/?#/MessageCenter (Access to the M365 Admin Center on your tenant is required for this). Today I found out you can also send emails to yourself (and Teams channels) here so awaiting the next message to see if this has worked. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way of migrating past messages over so I'll have to go through these myself first. Road Maps: These have been the bane of my day. Currently, I actively check the road maps of the products I manage but going forward, I'd like to be able to track major changes to products used in my organisation so I can give users a heads up. I initially tried Power Automate to send updates to myself, however, it's not a feature widely used in our org yet and isn't well supported, so I wasn't too surprised when my efforts were blocked by existing policy. Not long after, I found RSS feeds, which seemed to be the answer to my problems. I created RSS Feeds for each of the Road Maps that I found useful, assured by Copilot that these would work. The assurance wasn't fell founded however as, true to form, once I showed Copilot by errors, they remembered that they were there all along! :') I'm yet to find a useful solution here beyond my current efforts so any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Community Blogs The final recommendation was these Community Blog posts which, to be fair, I've had immense success with to date. However, there is a slight issue with filtering. While I did finally get the RSS Feed to work on something (the Tech Comm M365 RSS Feed), it did then proceed to send me a mass of emails on every topic under the Sun & Moon. I've decided to return to the drawing board tomorrow with this, but I'm content in knowing that RSS isn't just a myth at least. I think what I'd like here is just to receive notifications when approved Blogs are posted (i.e., Monthly OneDrive Updates and the equivalent for other products). OneDrive Office Hours: This is a fansastic resource I do use every month as it gives you the opportunity to get in contact with the people who know the most about the product and the issues you're facing. I've spent weeks in a ticket before, only to raise it in one of these meetings and get a solution that took half an hour to set up. You'll get a yes or a no, but at least you'll have an answer. Copilot Chat: I don't have the full Copilot license because I haven't had a need for it yet. Everything I've wanted to do, I've been able to do in Copilot Chat. We haven't yet looked too much into Agents, and as a Public body, aren't going to rush into it until we know it's viable and can be supported. In the interim, I'm happy to test the waters with Copilot Chat asking it for Monthly Summaries on a variety of products, time frames, etc. It isn't perfect but it's faster than I am. It can find the sources for me and I can take it from there. As an organisation, we'll be pushing out all users on the most recent version (-1) on the Monthly Enterprise Channel. This means that they'll be supported whilst also being shielded from any brand new features. Our team will be on the most recent version and will be able to note any upcoming changes ahead of time. These are what I'm using so far but would be very grateful for any further input. Thanks in advance, Chris Martin
Does Exchange Online have an internal search Index for people ?
Hello everyone, I'm managing users with Office 365 E3 licences. We have an hybrid Exchange Online / Exchange On-Premise architecture. My problem is the following: After I create an user with E3 licence, and after AAD Synchronisation between Azure / AD, the user is created on Azure but also the email mailbox (Exchange Online). But within the "To" input, through the Autocomplete suggestions, this user cannot be found, neither with Outlook Desktop Client nor with OWA Outlook (Web version of Otlook), even several hours later of the creation. I can use the mailbox (can login to OWA Outlook), can send / receive. So the mailbox is created correctly. I can connect to Exchange-Online via PowerShell and get all informations for the target mailbox (like others) with: Get-Recipient -Identity "email address removed for privacy reasons" And also via Get-Recipient -Anr "elon" (this gives me "Elon, Musk" as a suggestion through PowerShell). But why the autocomplete cannot suggest me this user ? Through the GAL (Global Address List) the user is visible (when I click on "To" button within Outlook Desktop Client -> Popup showing the Global Address List). But it's not suggested automatically, like others (old users). I made several hours of searches but I do not found any concluant result. My only question is: does Exchange Online infrastructure have an internal Search Index for People ? And if so, how often it's updated to include newly added users to the tenant? On what is based the autosuggestions within the inputs "To" / "CC" / "CCI". In my case (at least), the search for autosuggestions cannot be based on Global Address List / Offline Address Book from our On-Premise Exchange server, because EVEN the Web based OWA Outlook cannot find the newly created user! Thank you in advance for your precious help! Best Regards, Adam J.
I can't log in to my Microsoft account
This is incredibly frustrating, to put it mildly. Over 48 hours ago, I changed the passwords for my three email accounts. Once I made the change, I could log into Hotmail and see my emails and everything. Now, when I try to access them through my mobile phone, it says the password I'm entering is incorrect (obviously, I'm entering it correctly for each account). I also had access on my PC. Just in case, I thought, "Okay, I'll change it again," and when I try to change it through my mobile phone, it says "Not available at the moment, please try again later." I thought it was just a one-off... A while passes, I try again, and it still says the same thing. On one of the accounts, after trying several times with the code they sent me, it locked the account. They told me to wait 24 hours and it wasn't fixed. Then they told me to wait a week because after so many attempts to remove the "block" (you can check if it's blocked by entering it in the help section)... Are we crazy or what? This afternoon I spoke with Spanish support, and the woman who helped me really tried. We tried to log in and change the password through a VPN, but this time I didn't receive the code, so she opened a ticket and escalated it to a higher level, telling me to wait 3 to 5 business days. I know what that smells like: wait and then the same thing again. The real surprise was that I couldn't access my other two accounts for 48 hours, so I thought, "Okay, I'll check." I entered the password correctly, but it still said it was incorrect (even though it was correct), and I tried mobile verification, but it wasn't available... even using a VPN. I checked the status of both accounts in the help section, and they said there were no problems with them. Why am I never going to be able to access my three Hotmail accounts again? What's the solution? It doesn't matter if I use a VPN, if the account is blocked, or if it's unblocked. It's always the same. It doesn't accept the correct password -> you try to reset it -> you don't receive a code -> if you try again, it blocks you. Can someone tell me WHAT I NEED TO DO TO FIX THIS ATROCITY? Because waiting is clearly pointless, since the other accounts aren't blocked and I can't log in or reset my password. Furthermore, the account I blocked for trying to access it was unblocked after 24 hours, but it was still the same until it was blocked again. The other two accounts have gone 48 hours without me trying to log in, and I'm still stuck. MICROSOFT, do you plan to offer any solution other than "waiting"? I'm sorry if my English isn't very clear, I'm Spanish and I use a translator
Has Your Organization Set Up a Viva Engage Community for Microsoft 365 Collaboration?
Hi everyone! As a trainer, I often get great questions during my Microsoft 365 sessions. While I share answers live, only the attendees benefit—leaving many others without that valuable info. I’ve already set up a Microsoft Learning Pathways SharePoint site as a resource, but I’m exploring ways to extend knowledge-sharing beyond the classroom.Has anyone created or participated in a Viva Engage community to share tips, answer questions, and collaborate around daily Microsoft 365 tools? I’d love to hear about your experiences, best practices, or ideas on how to maximize impact and reach across your organizations. Thanks in advance for sharing! Let’s empower everyone to get more from Microsoft 365.😃
