Microsoft Teams Now Deploying with Office 365 ProPlus

We have received a lot of feedback to have the Microsoft Teams client to be incorporated with Office 365 ProPlus such that organizations can deploy Teams and ProPlus in a single process.


Starting in Jan 2020, you will have the ability to start receiving Teams through ProPlus through the semi-annual channel.


More information can be found here.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/office-365-blog/streamline-deployment-and-management-of-microsoft-teams-with/ba-p/1100293

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/teams-is-coming-to-office-365-business-amp-office-365-proplus/ba-p/725481

Office 365 ProPlus Activation Improvements

There is are interesting improvements coming out for Office 365 ProPlus.  As many of you know, users can install ProPlus on 5 devices.  Today when they exceed that a user, is prompted and the user is forced to make a decision on which other device to deactivate ProPlus on.

Now the users can install ProPlus on new devices without getting prompted.  Now when the user reaches their sign-in limit, the user will be automatically signed out of ProPlus on the least used device.  Next time the user goes back to that device, they will be prompted to re-activate.

Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Office-365-Client-Licensing-and-Activation-Improvements/ba-p/763694

Office Customization Tool for Click-to-Run Preview

There was an interesting product release that has gone into preview that I felt was worth sharing.  For years, Office 365 ProPlus administrators had to use XML to write the configuration.xml file which is used with the Office Deployment tool to deploy Office 365 ProPlus client.

Microsoft has a new solution in Preview called the Office Customization Tool for Click-to-Run.  This tool provides a nice GUI that will generate your configuration.xml file for the Office Deployment Tool.  You can also input existing configuration.xml files to the tool to modify them.

Sometimes it is the small things that count, and doing this does not require you to memorize the configurations, and make mistakes within the XML file itself.

References
Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Customizing-Office-365-ProPlus-using-the-Office-Customization/bc-p/143275#M334

Office 365 Deployment Tool Reference - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/overview-of-the-office-2016-deployment-tool

Office Customization Tool for Click-to-Run (Preview) - https://config.office.com/

Advanced Threat Protection expands to Office 365 ProPlus

I have been watching the Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) service evolve over the past year.  Every time they add some new, I am just impressed.

In the most recent announcement, it was stated that ATP Safe Links is now being extended to the Office 365 ProPlus desktop clients.  That is super exciting.  So now embedded links that are in Word, Excel and PowerPoint files are protected by ATP Safe Links.

ATP initially started as an Exchange Online solution.  It has subsequently expanded to Office Online (browser).  The goal is to have ATP Safe Links uniformly applied to all Office 365 services.

Announcement - https://blogs.office.com/2017/04/04/announcing-the-release-of-threat-intelligence-and-advanced-data-governance-plus-significant-updates-to-advanced-threat-protection/
Other Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) feature releases - http://www.astaticstate.com/search/label/Advanced%20Threat%20Protection

2007 Products Nearing End of Support

I saw that there was a reminder going around that some software was coming end of extended support in Calendar Year 2017.  For instance:

• Office 365 ProPlus client using 2013 rich client is coming to an end 2/18/17.  This means you need to finish your transitions to Office 365 ProPlus 2016 client as soon as possible.
• Exchange 2007 will be ending 4/11/2017.
• Office 2007, Project Server 2007, and SharePoint 2007 are also coming to end of extended support.  I still see customers with SharePoint 2007 sitting out there.
• OCS R2 (2007) has a little bit more time, 1/9/18.

I just call this out because in my mind, these 2007 releases was the first year where you could start seeing Microsoft’s vision of bringing together Exchange, SharePoint and OCS into a single collaboration platform.  That little presence “jellybean” was the start of something great.  Seeing what we have now with Office 365 where productivity is delivered as a SaaS service where Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Skype, Office, Groups, Teams, etc., etc. are delivered in a fully integrated and seamless user experience brings a smile to my face. 

Here are some references:https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/selectindex
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3198497/office-2007-approaching-end-of-extended-support
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2016/04/11/exchange-server-2007-t-1-year-and-counting/