Office Productivity Server 2019

There is still lots of good reason why customers need to deploy Office Productivity Server builds either on-premises or in an IaaS cloud, in a hybrid mode with Office 365.  If you did not see this week, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Skype for Business Server and Project Server all had GA releases of 2019 complete.

All of these builds continue with the investment in hybrid experiences with the Office 365 cloud.  Recommend you read up on these releases and prepare your environments to get to 2019 as soon as possible.

Office All Up announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Office-2019-servers-available-for-commercial-customers/ba-p/275879

Skype for Business Server 2019 What’s New - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/whats-new

Skype for Business Server 2019 What’s Deprecated - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/deprecated - XMPP and Persistent Chat are the biggies.

Exchange Server 2019 What’s New - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/new-features/new-features?view=exchserver-2019

Exchange Server 2019 What’s Deprecated - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/new-features/discontinued-features?view=exchserver-2019 – Unified Messaging is the big one.

SharePoint Server 2019 What’s New - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SharePoint/what-s-new/new-and-improved-features-in-sharepoint-server-2019

SharePoint Server 2019 What’s Deprecated - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SharePoint/what-s-new/what-s-deprecated-or-removed-from-sharepoint-server-2019 - Definitions, Access Services, Groove Sync Client, InfoPath Services, SharePoint Designer, PerformancePoint Services, Sandbox Solutions, etc.  A lot of stuff I worked on over the years…

Project Server 2019 What’s New - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/Project/what-s-new-for-it-pros-in-project-server-2019

Project Server 2019 What’s Deprecated - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/Project/what-s-deprecated-or-removed-in-project-server-2019 - Resource plans, My tasks was some biggies

Disable Ability to create Microsoft Teams / Channels

I have seen a few situations now where customers are looking to transition from Skype for Business Online to Teams, yet they want to initially disable the Teams / Channel capability at the outset.  The thinking is, first transition over some of the core IM, presence, and web capabilities first.  Then later, once that has been adopted on Teams, start enable Teams / Channels.

There is a governance feature you have which will disable all user’s ability to create Teams / Channels.  Basically, you will disable the ability to create Office 365 Groups.  Here is a reference - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/manage-who-can-create-office-365-groups-4c46c8cb-17d0-44b5-9776-005fced8e618

Office 365 Data Delete

I receive lots of questions about how to remove data from Office 365.  There can be lots of business scenarios: for instance, someone leaves the organization and you no longer want to retain data another instance is critical business or mission data needs to be deleted.  If you are looking to build procedures for data deletion, recommend that you review these:

Deleting Personal Data - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/gdpr-dsr-office365#deleting-personal-data

eDiscovery solution series: Data spillage scenario - Search and purge - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/securitycompliance/data-spillage-scenariosearch-and-purge?redirectSourcePath=%252fen-us%252farticle%252fediscovery-solution-series-data-spillage-scenario-search-and-purge-d945f7dd-f62f-4ca7-b3e7-469824cfd493

Teams is Ready to replace SfBO, start your planning

There was an important announcement last week that Teams had completed porting over capability that is traditionally delivered in SfBO.

Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Microsoft-Teams-is-now-a-complete-meeting-and-calling-solution/ba-p/236042

Start your planning now!  Recommend you start reading here - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/Microsoft-Teams

SharePoint Server 2019 Preview

SharePoint Server 2019 is now in Preview and available for customers to try out.
Investments for SharePoint 2019 are in:
1) user experiences for desktop and mobile,
2) scalable collaboration platform
3) institutive user experience.

There is new integration with PowerApps and Flow from the cloud.

Expanded support for hybrid configuration with SharePoint Online.

Integration with the new SharePoint Framework.

SharePoint 2019 will be going GA before the end of CY18.

Announcement and References - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-SharePoint-Blog/Announcing-Availability-of-SharePoint-Server-2019-Preview/ba-p/214427 - Instructions are here to obtain the Preview.

Free Microsoft Teams

There was a big announcement by Microsoft Teams.  Microsoft Teams is now being offered in a Free version worldwide.  This capability is intended to provide Microsoft Teams to small businesses and groups of users who do not have access to an Office 365 subscription.

This new free version of Microsoft teams allows you:

• Collaborate with up to 300 people.
• Audio and video calling.
• 10 GB of file storage
• 2 GB per person of personal storage
• Office Online
• Ability to communicate with other organizations using Teams

Anyone can use this free version of Microsoft Teams.  However, if you use an identity that is associated to an instance of Office 365, the user will be routed to the Microsoft Teams user experience managed by Office 365.  

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

Comparison - https://products.office.com/en-US/microsoft-teams/free?ms.officeurl

Teams Live Events

Microsoft Teams had a recent important announcement.  Live Events has gone into preview.
Live Events is a capability that allows for one to many content and video sharing to large audiences.  Events can be scheduled through Teams, and then Stream delivers the webcast.  This solution is intended to replace Skype Meeting Broadcast over time.

Organizers will have the ability to:

• Manage permissions to the event
• Choose production method
• Assigning production roles
• Manage event reports (recording and attendance)
• Real-time caption and translation options 

Producers will have the ability to monitor the event itself.  They will have the ability to start/stop, share video, share desktops, chat with event attendees, view live attendance data, moderate question / answer, manage captions, etc.

Presenters will have the ability to share content and moderate question and answers.

Attendees can attend the event from browsers, desktops and mobile devices.  They have the ability to pause the stream and restart it on demand.  They can interact through question and answer.

Other important facts:

• Max supported audience size is 10,000 users
• If you have SfBO and SfB hybrid, and you want to allow SfB on-prem users to attend Live Events, it is possible to configure this through hybrid

References

Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Live-events-in-Microsoft-Teams/ba-p/214955

Technical Documentation - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/what-are-teams-live-events

Enable Teams Live Events - https://review.docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/teams-live-events-enable?branch=teams-live-events

Network Set Up for Live events - https://review.docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/teams-live-events-set-up-your-network?branch=teams-live-events

Articles and Instructions on Live Event Configuration - https://review.docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/teams-live-events-help?branch=teams-live-events

Best Practices - https://review.docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/teams-live-events-best-practices?branch=teams-live-events