New M365 SharePoint and OneDrive storage pricing models

A new Microsoft 365 SharePoint and OneDrive storage solution is now available in public preview. This solution uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, which is very compelling.

Many customers have faced SharePoint storage challenges for years. Enterprise customers, in particular, have accumulated significant amounts of data over time. Customers have implemented many creative solutions, including policies for deleting old data. They also have access to Microsoft 365 Archive, which can archive large volumes of data at a much lower price point. Removing data that users no longer actively use is beneficial because very old data can also affect how Microsoft 365 Copilot generates responses.

Until now, customers have had to purchase additional SharePoint storage in fixed amounts ahead of time. As a result, they have had to estimate data growth and maintain a storage buffer. Otherwise, whenever they exceed their allotted SharePoint storage quota, tenant administrators receive repeated reminders to purchase more storage.

With this new Microsoft 365 SharePoint storage pay-as-you-go framework, administrators can connect their tenant to a Microsoft Azure subscription, monitor consumption, and create storage budgets and thresholds. You no longer have to purchase storage upfront; you simply pay for what you use and can create policies to maintain cost control.

This new Microsoft 365 SharePoint storage pay-as-you-go framework can be used alongside Microsoft 365 Archive. When both are used, you can achieve a more cost-effective blended rate across active and archived data.

Additionally, this new solution extends to OneDrive for Business data. Administrators can set limits on how much additional storage an individual user can have beyond their entitlement, allowing storage to grow while placing a cap on that growth.

I know many customers will use this solution to help optimize their data costs.

 

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft_365blog/now-in-public-preview-microsoft-365-sharepoint-storage-and-onedrive-storage/4559758

New OneDrive Features and Capabilities Announcement

This month, it was announced that several new features are being released for OneDrive.

Copilot for OneDrive is Now Generally Available in the Commercial Cloud. This development significantly enhances the way users interact with and discover information.

• Copilot buttons are accessible through the OneDrive user interface.
• Files can be summarized quickly without opening them.
• FAQs can be generated from selected documents for use or sharing.
• File comparison with Copilot will analyze and display differences between files.
• Questions can be asked to Copilot without needing to open the files.

Copilot Agents are coming to OneDrive.  For instance:

• You can develop an agent that possesses comprehensive knowledge about a project by utilizing OneDrive as the primary source of information.
• Tasks can be automated and simplified by creating an agent capable of addressing common requests, such as retrieving the agenda and budget for an event you are managing.
• The agents you create are accessible across various user interfaces, including Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint.
• Instead of manually locating files to share with a new employee, you can provide them with access to the Copilot Agent, which enables interaction, inquiries, and real-time responses.

OneDrive serves as a centralized files application for all M365 files. New features will enhance the capability to filter, search, and interact with files through the OneDrive web app.

• File Type Filter Pill buttons help you quickly find files by type.
• A new data filter allows defining specific time frames by periods.
• In search results, a new column called Location shows the source location of a file, such as OneDrive, someone else’s account, a team site, or a Teams channel.
• Results also show who created a file and who last edited it, providing more context to the file.
• In search results, it is possible to filter/toggle between: All Files, My Files, Current Folder, and Current Library.

New AI driven policy recommendations and data management controls

• Site Policy Comparison: Identifies similar sites and missing policies.
• Restricted Content: Files with this policy won't appear in Copilot results.
• File Level M365 Archive: Moves inactive files on SharePoint to declutter main areas.

The OneDrive mobile app has been refreshed with several new experiences.  There are several new experiences with how you search for and visualize photos stored in OneDrive.

Resources:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/welcome-to-the-new-era-of-microsoft-onedrive-ai-productivity-and/ba-p/4265409 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/community-news-desk/get-to-know-copilot-in-onedrive/ba-p/4262317 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/enhanced-onedrive-search-experience-new-features-to-boost/ba-p/4260347 

Microsoft 365 Backup GA

A new solution called Microsoft 365 Backup and Backup Storage recently went GA.

This is a really cool new capacity that assists organizations in protecting themselves from disaster recovery and security scenarios when you need to recover your data.  Microsoft 365 has tons of data protection services built natively into the service.  Microsoft 365 Backup helps protect you against ransomware attacks and gives you the ability to have self-service recovery capabilities.

Microsoft 365 Backup is currently scoped to OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange data.  With Microsoft 365 Backup you have the ability to mass backups and recovery points for your most critical business data.

For more information, read here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-backup-blog/microsoft-announces-general-availability-of-microsoft-365-backup/ba-p/4205300

OneDrive for Business Vision

Back in October, the OneDrive team made an announcement around the next generation of OneDrive for Business - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/unveiling-the-next-generation-of-onedrive/ba-p/3935612

There are a lot of new interesting capabilities and vision that are part of this announcement.  Here are a few of my takeaways:

• The OneDrive home has been optimized to help you quickly and easily identify or find files that you need to work with.
• There are several new views like meetings, people, etc. where files and content are presented to you based on how you work.
• The OneDrive home screen on the web has been brought to Teams and Outlook providing you a consistent way to find your files.
• There is a vision statement on the capabilities that will become available with Copilot.  Instead of you trying to click around and dig in views, you will ask Copilot questions and it will find and organize information, documents and content for you.
• Copilot will then assist in sharing documents with coworkers when reading and it will keep you up to date on changes documents that you interact with in a conversational engagement.

Pretty cool.  Keep watching that Copilot innovation.

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

OneDrive On-Demand

OneDrive On-Demand
There was a recent announcement of some new features coming for OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online that I am very excited to see.  The new feature is called OneDrive On-Demand.

The OneDrive On-Demand capability allows you to access files without having to download them and use storage locally on your device.  Effectively, File Explorer has connectivity to data in the OneDrive for Business cloud just like it has with data on network attached storage.  When you select a file, that file will be synced locally and then opened in the app.

Additionally, there are reasons why some folders and files you will always want to ensure are available locally.  With this new capability, you have the ability to designate which files and folders you want to have as always available locally.

Benefits
A major benefit is not having to use local device storage.  This becomes important because storage available on a per user basis with OneDrive for Business in cloud can be more than what is available on the device itself.  So, if a user has 1TB of data of OneDrive Storage in the cloud, and they

Another benefit is more efficiency in data synchronization to a corporate network.  When lots of user sync a SharePoint Online site, all the files are synced to that device.  Additionally, when a file is updated, that update is pushed to all devices.  Now files are only synced at the user’s designation if the file must be available locally all the time.  This will reduce the amount of data being pushed.

Other Notes
OneDrive On-Demand is available as part of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.
This feature will work with OneDrive for Business, OneDrive (personal) and SharePoint Online.

What about Mobile?
Mobile Apps for OneDrive have always been on-demand.  A new solution is being introduced into the iOS and Android Apps which allow users to designate folders as “offline”.  This allows you to access those files while you have no internet connectivity.  Now we have some feature parity across devices.

References
https://blogs.office.com/2017/05/11/introducing-onedrive-files-on-demand-and-additional-features-making-it-easier-to-access-and-share-files/
https://blogs.office.com/2017/05/16/new-sharepoint-and-onedrive-capabilities-accelerate-your-digital-transformation/

Location Based Conditional Access for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business

I have been waiting for this capability to be released for some time now – Location Based Conditional Access.

SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business has released a new solution that will allowing admins to control where data is synchronized to.  Specifically, you can create policy that can block synchronization of SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business data based on IP address ranges. 

Why this is important?  For instance, there are many enterprise organizations that do not want their documents and files to be synchronized to non-managed devices or non-managed networks.  In many cases, administrators may only allow browser based access to documents when the user access documents from non-managed devices or non-managed networks.

Note if you have, Azure Active Directory Premium (AADP) configured, AADP will enforce its policy first and then the new SharePoint / OneDrive policy will be enforced.

Reference - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/Introducing-Conditional-Access-by-Network-Location-for/ba-p/39274

New ATP Features for Office, SharePoint and OneDrive

There were some new ATP features being released.  For instance there is new reporting capabilities, better performance with lower latency for emails/attachments that are being scanned, deeper URL detonation, and intelligence sharing with Windows Defender.

However, what got be excited is that ATP is being extended beyond Exchange Online.  ATP will now include protection for SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  I found this to be really exciting.

Reference
New ATP Features Coming - https://blogs.office.com/2016/09/26/applying-intelligence-to-security-and-compliance-in-office-365/

New OneDrive for Businss Admin and Compliance Management Capabilities

Back at the Ignite conference, you may have heard or read up on all the new capabilities being released for OneDrive - https://blogs.office.com/2016/09/26/sharepoint-online-sync-preview-headlines-ignite-announcements-for-onedrive/

There are tons of new user experiences, updated / improved sync capabilities, better mobile capabilities, etc.

However, what I get very excited about is the enterprise and compliance features that are being added into OneDrive.  There are a few features that were buried down in the announcement that enterprise customers should pay attention to.

• New OneDrive Admin Center – There is a new admin area being created just for OneDrive for Business.  It has been within SharePoint Online.
• New User Level Controls – This new capability provides the ability to set things like storage quota and external sharing capabilities down to the specific user versus the entire organization.  External sharing can be set-up to be to whitelist of trusted business partner domains.
• New User Support Features – There are new features that will assist the admin in supporting their end users to find files that they have misplaced or shared with the wrong people.
• Remove User Access – There is new capability that will allow you to quickly sign a user out of the service quickly when the lost a device or you need to remove them from the service.
• Retention After the User Leaves – Additionally when a user leaves or is terminated, there is new capability to assist you with moving or copying data to other locations.  There is additionally capability that will allow you to preserve files in a deleted user’s OneDrive for Business up to 10 years.  This is fairly consistent with the Inactive Mailbox feature of Exchange Online.

Office 365 Business-to-Business (B2B) Capabilities

Introduction

This has come up a lot lately and I want to write something about this.  Business-to-business (B2B) capabilities are available in Office 365 and here are some features can consider turning on.

Skype for Business Online

Federation

Skype for Business Online external connectivity (federation) enables a Skype for Business Online user to connect with users in other organizations that use Skype for Business (as well as those that host their own Skype for Business Server on-premises). Federated contacts can see presence, communicate by using IM, and make Skype-to-Skype audio and video calls.

Skype for Business Online external connectivity requires the consent and correct configuration of both parties of the federation relationship. After the federation is set up by the administrators of both sides, users in each organization can see presence and communicate with users in the other agencies.

References

• Skype for Business Online Service Description - Federation
• Allow users to contact external Skype for Business users
• PowerShell Commands for External Sharing (optional)
• Configure Federation between Skype for Business Online and Skype for Business on-premises

Public IM Connectivity

Additionally, Skype for Business Online can be configured to allow communications to consumer Skype.  This can enable communications scenarios with citizens and constituents.  Presence, instant messaging and video conversations is supported.

References

• Let users contact other Skype users
• PowerShell Commands for External Sharing (optional)

Exchange Online

Federated Sharing

Federation refers to the underlying trust infrastructure that supports federated sharing, a method for Microsoft Exchange Online users to share free/busy calendar data and contact information with recipients in other external federated organizations or with users that have Internet access. These include organizations that are also hosted by Exchange Online, or external Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 or Exchange Server 2013 organizations. Using organization relationships and sharing policies, Exchange Online administrators can enable users to send calendar-sharing invitations from Microsoft Outlook Web App or Microsoft Outlook 2010 or later.

Once configured, an organization will have the ability to coordinate schedules with people in different agencies or with friends and family members so that you can work together on projects or plan social events. With Office 365, administrators can set up different levels of calendar access in Exchange Online to allow businesses to collaborate with other businesses and to let users share their schedules with others. Business-to-business calendar sharing is set up by creating organization relationships. User-to-user calendar sharing is set up by applying sharing policies.

References

• Exchange Online Service Description - Federated Sharing
• Sharing in Exchange Online
• Organization relationships in Exchange Online (business-to-business)
• PowerShell - Federation sharing (optional)
• Sharing policies in Exchange Online (person-to-person) 
• PowerShell - Sharing and Collaboration (optional)

Exchange Online Protection

Trusted Partner Messaging

Organizations can set up secure mail flow with a trusted partner by using Office 365 connectors. Office 365 supports secure communication through Transport Layer Security (TLS). Agencies can create a connector to enforce encryption via TLS for business-to-business emails. Additionally, there is the ability to apply other security restrictions such as specifying domain names or IP address ranges from which your partner organization sends mail. TLS is a cryptographic protocol that provides security for communications over the Internet. Using connectors, you can configure both forced inbound and outbound TLS using self-signed or certification authority (CA)-validated certificates.

Note - this solution does not impact the actual end user experience of sending email between organizations, however it adds an additional level of security if desired for sending email between agencies.

References

• Exchange Online Secure messaging with trusted partner
• Set up connectors for secure mail flow with a partner organization
• PowerShell - Mail flow (optional)

SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business

Guest Access

If an organization performs work that involves sharing documents or collaborating directly with vendors, clients, partners, or customers, it is possible to use SharePoint Online sites to share content with people outside your organization who do not have licenses for your organization’s Microsoft Office 365 subscription. When a site is shared in SharePoint Online, an email message is sent to the external user containing the invitation to join the site.

• If the external user is already associated to an Office 365 tenant, that user can use that identity to access SharePoint Online sites and documents that are shared. 
• If the external user does not have an Office 365 account, they can access SharePoint Online using Microsoft Account (Your Microsoft account is the one that you use for personal services like Xbox Live, Outlook.com, Windows 8, Windows Phone, and more).  Invitations can be sent to people with any type of email address, such as user@gmail.com, user@contoso.com, or user@Comcast.net. External users sign in to the shared site via a one-time association of their email address with a Microsoft account.

Additionally, site users can generate a Guest Link (an anonymous link to a document) to share documents stored in SharePoint Online with external users without requiring the external user to sign in. Site users can create a Guest Link right from where the document is stored, such as in OneDrive for Business or a team site library, by using the “Get a link” button.

Finally, there is solution called Restricted Domain sharing that you can consider using.  This allows for an Allow/Deny List based on email domain.  At the tenant level, administrators can limit sharing invitations to a limited number of email domains.  This is a powerful feature that will allow you to set-up controlled external sharing with your partners.

References

• SharePoint Business to Business Collaboration: Extranet for Partners with Office 365
• Share sites or documents with people outside your organization
• Manage external sharing for your SharePoint Online environment
• Set up and manage access requests
• Create a partner-facing Extranet Site in Office 365
• Restricted Domains Sharing in Office 365 SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business
• PowerShell - Manage tenant external config (optional)
• PowerShell - Manage External Sites (optional)
• PowerShell - Manage External Users (optional)
• SharePoint Online Service Description - External Sharing: External Access
• SharePoint Online Service Description - External Sharing: Guest Link 

What is Office 365 Groups?

Office 365 Groups is the next generation of collaboration solution available in Office 365 that brings together “best of breed” collaboration experiences.  Office 365 Groups bring together Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Office Online, and Skype for Business Online into a unified end user experience.  When a group is created:

• A mailbox is created for the group for shared email
• A shared calendar is created for group meetings and events
• A shared library is created to store files and documents
• A OneNote notebook is created to share project information and meeting notes
• A planning tool is available to organize and assign tasks

Note that Office 365 Groups is a “suite” feature requiring the acquisition of an Office 365 E3 (or higher) Suite.

Guest Access for Business-to-Business Collaboration

Office 365 Groups supports the ability to invite guests in a similar manner as SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.  Office 365 Groups has been available for time and this is a new feature that US Federal agencies should consider leveraging for cross-business collaboration.

• Video - Introduction to Office 365 Groups
• Video - Office 365 Groups: Quick tour of new user and admin experiences
• Learn about Office 365 groups
• Office 365 Groups - Admin help
• Introducing guest access for Office 365 Groups
• Guest access in Office 365 Groups
• Guest access to Office 365 Groups - Admin Help   

Office 365 MDM or Microsoft Intune?

Introduction
I have been asked several times, what are the MDM capabilities available in Office 365 versus what additional capabilities do you get with Intune?

In this quick article I will explore the differences.

What is Office 365 MDM?
In Office 365 there are several native MDM capabilities.

First there is Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) which is part of Exchange Online.  With EAS you:

• Have the ability to manage an inventory of mobile devices that are connected to Exchange Online. 
• Have the ability to remotely wipe email from a device.
• Have the ability to enforce mobile device configuration settings, such as PIN requirements, PIN lengths, etc.

Second with E1, you also get Office 365 MDM.  With this you:

• Can prevent access to both email and documents based on device enrollment and compliance policies.
• Protect against root and jail broken devices.
• Have reporting on devices that do not meet IT policy.
• Have selective wipe capability that allows you to wipe Office 365 data without impacting personal data.

Behind the scenes, Office 365 MDM leverages Microsoft Intune to help deliver these solutions.

What is Intune?
Microsoft Intune is Microsoft’s cloud mobile and PC management platform.  Sometimes customers will want to add this to help them manage devices and applications beyond what Office 365 natively provides.  With Intune you:

• Have the ability to manage traditional PCs MACs; not just mobile devices.  Plus you can manage Linux and UNIX servers.
• Have a full Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform available to you to protect enterprise assets beyond Office 365.
• Have the ability to create profiles for certificates, VPN, email profiles and Wi-Fi settings.
• Have the ability to enroll and manage corporate owned devices.
• Can deploy and protect customer built line of business apps using Mobile Application Management.
• Can securely protect access to corporate data using Office mobile and custom line of business apps by using Mobile Application Management by restricting such actions as copy, cut, paste, save as to only applications managed by Intune.
• Can enable more secure web browsing.

As you can see, this is a much more comprehensive solution you have access to.

Why do you need both? 
All depends on your approach.  Microsoft Office 365 has the ability to integrate with many third-party MDM providers.  Customers do have the power of choice.  Intune does provide unique capabilities for Mobile Application Management (MAM) to protect data on mobile devices without compromising the end user experience.  However, the big value sell of Intune is the expanded set of solution to manage PCs and MACs.

What are these new plans?
Intune is bundled into EMS.  EMS used to stand for Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite.  Now, EMS stands for Enterprise Mobility + Security.

Plus, the new EMS Suite has taken very similar plan structures as Office 365.  For instance:

• EMS E3 includes Azure AD Premium P1, Intune, Azure Information Protection Premium P1 (Azure Rights Management (RMS)), and Advanced Threat Analytics
• EMS E5 includes Azure AD Premium P2, Azure Information Protection Premium P2 (Intelligent classification) and Cloud App Security.

As you can see Intune, lands in the EMS E3 bundle or you can purchase it a-la-carte.  See references below.

References

Exchange ActiveSync - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998357(v=exchg.150).aspx
Overview of Mobile Device Management (MDM) for Office 365 - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Overview-of-Mobile-Device-Management-MDM-for-Office-365-faa7d8e5-645d-4d59-839c-c8d4c1869e4a
Controlling Access to Office 365 and Protecting Content on Devices - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53317
Capabilities of built-in Mobile Device Management for Office 365 - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Capabilities-of-built-in-Mobile-Device-Management-for-Office-365-a1da44e5-7475-4992-be91-9ccec25905b0
Choose between MDM for Office 365 and Microsoft Intune - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Choose-between-MDM-for-Office-365-and-Microsoft-Intune-c93d9ab9-efb2-4349-9b93-30c30562ee22
Create and deploy device security policies - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-and-deploy-device-security-policies-d310f556-8bfb-497b-9bd7-fe3c36ea2fd6
Enroll your mobile device in Office 365 - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Enroll-your-mobile-device-in-Office-365-c8ac722d-dcaf-4135-8345-3e6327f5d3c5
Introducing Enterprise Mobility + Security - https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/07/07/introducing-enterprise-mobility-security/

Azure Information Protection with Office 365

Introduction
If you are a reader of my blog, you know for the past few years I have been very focused on discussing Office 365 services.  I recently decided to some catching-up on EMS and how it relates to Office 365.  Well as it turns out there have been several recent changes.  One thing that caught my attention very quickly was Azure Information Protection.  In this blog I will explore this solution.

I will say I am super excited to see the vision of this feature given I work with customers who have the most complex security and information protection policies out there.

Note that Azure Information Protection services is currently in Public Preview.

What is the new Azure Information Protection solution?A major challenge that organizations face is protection of their data.  Data loss prevention is constantly on customers’ minds.

With Azure Information Protection we can protect data at the lowest common denominator.  Instead of solely relying on the data storage systems to classify and protect data, we now protect the data directly at the source as email and documents move from place-to-place.

With Azure Information Protection:

• Classify, label and protect data at the time of creation or modification.
• Persistent protection travels with the data with rights management.
• Provide users simple intuitive controls help users make the right decisions and stay productive.
• Enable safe sharing of data both internally and externally.
• Ability to create organizational enforceable policies to protect data.
• Visibility and control over the shared data.
• Deployment and management flexibility through the cloud.

What is the difference between Azure Information Protection and Azure RMS?
Simply put, Azure Rights Management Services (RMS) got a bunch of new features added to it.  Azure Information Protection building upon RMS with several new capabilities that have been introduced as part of the Secure Islands acquisition.

The new capability that should catch your attention is the intelligent classification and labeling solution that has been integrated with Azure RMS.  This is super exciting capability.

With the new labeling capability in Azure Information Protection services, you have the ability to be able to create enforceable policy to classify and protect your more important critical data.  You have the ability to create labels (classifications) like Personal, Public, Internal, Confidential, Secret, etc.  Then you have the ability to create policies define how data should be tagged with these classifications.  Once data is classified, that data can visual indicators applied to it, RMS protection policies pro-actively applied to the data, and DLP rules (like Exchange transport rules) can watch for this data and take action.

Additionally, there are new reports available to you that allow you to see how the most critical data in your organization is being accessed and managed.  This provides an audit trail for your most critical data.

How can an organization use Azure Information Protection?
Let’s look at Azure Information Protection a little closer.

When a user is in Office, they will see a new ribbon item (Protect) along with new labeling mechanism in the ribbon.  Users have the ability to tag any document or email on the spot.

Administrators have the ability to create the labels that customers see.

Within each label you can:

• Associate RMS policies you want to apply (if any) to a specific label.  For instance, if you have a Confidential or Secret label, you may want to associate that label to an RMS policy.
• Create visual markings that would be applied to the email or document once the label is applied.  For instance, add headers, footers, watermarks, etc.
• Define conditions that could automatically label email and documents.  For instance, if you see data patterns within the content, a label can be auto applied.

There are numerous ways these labels can actually be applied.

• Automatic – Labels can be applied by IT based on information it can see in the documents and emails.  This means as the user is creating the content, the label can be applied for them. 
• User Drive – Users have the ability to choose to apply sensitive labels to email or file as they work on it.
• Recommendation – Instead of automatically applied the label, you can make recommendations to the user on how classify/label.
• Reclassification – Depending on your policy, you can allow users the ability to re-classify email and documents.  You can even require them to enter a justification which will be logged.

I see endless opportunity for organizations to use Azure Information Protection services to protect their data.  For instance:

• An organization could create a policy that all documents are automatically classified as Internal.  The Internal does not have to have a RMS policies associated to it, but doing this will set a baseline that all content in the organization has been tagged.
• As data needs to be become public, the data can be re-classified (labeled) as public by the end user.
• For documents as classified as Secret or Confidential, an RMS policy could automatically be applied.
• Re-classification can be allowed without justification for Internal and Public, but for any re-classifications of Secret or Confidential a justification must be provided.
• I really think there are endless opportunities here with Azure Information Protection services.

How does this relate to Office 365?
As part of the Preview, Azure Information Protection services can be integrated with Office 365 ProPlus.  This means files that you author in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. as well as emails in Outlook will have this user experience.  This will expand with time.

I thought Office 365 already had DLP, where does this play in?
Yes, Office 365 already has DLP capabilities within Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.  Azure Information Protection services provides another layer of protection to data protection along with labeling solution.

For instance, SharePoint Online DLP will identify sensitive documents that were put in a location that has too broad access.  That file can be locked down and then remediated with SharePoint Online DLP by the user or an administrator.  However, what if the end user made a mistake (or worse was malicious) and then tried to send a file tagged as secret outside of the organization?  Azure Information Protection could protect that data tagged as Secret based on your policies.  For instance, you can automatically apply an RMS policy to Secret data and not allow users to re-classify that data.  There are several other mitigations you can take such as watch for documents tagged as secret being emailed externally.

From what I have observed, a challenge customers have had with RMS is educating users on how they should use it.  With Azure Information Protection services classification and labeling solution, the decision has just been super simple for end users.  End users do not need to know complex RMS policies and rule sets; all they need to know are organization contextual tags and the RMS policy is applied for them.

How is Azure Information Protection related to the EMS Suite?
There are two plans, there is Azure Information Protection Plan 1 and Plan 2. 

Plan 1 provides the encryption for files and cloud based file tracking.  From a legacy perspective, this is what you know of as Azure RMS as part of the EMS suite.

Plan 2 adds the new intelligent classification and labeling policies.

There are as well EMS Suites (E3 and E5).  Azure Information Protection Plan 2 is part of the EMS Suite 5.

If you are an Office 365 E3 suite customer, you already get access to Azure RMS service.  However, having Office 365 E3 does not give you access to all the EMS E3 or E5 capabilities.  So to get access to Azure Information Protection Plan 2, to get this new classification and labeling solution, you will need acquire some additional EMS plans.

References
Announcing Azure Information Protection - https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/06/22/announcing-azure-information-protection/
Azure Information Protection Public Review Announcement- https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/07/12/azure-information-protection-public-preview-available-now/
Introducing Enterprise Mobility + Security - https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/07/07/introducing-enterprise-mobility-security/
Acquisition of Secure Islands - http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2015/11/09/microsoft-to-acquire-secure-islands-a-leader-in-data-protection-technology
Azure Information Protection product page - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/azure-information-protection
What is Azure Information Protection (good video) - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rights-management/information-protection/what-is-information-protection 
Azure Information Protection FAQs - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rights-management/information-protection/faq
Azure Information Protection Quick Start for Preview - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rights-management/information-protection/infoprotect-quick-start-tutorial

Office 365 Secure Score and Information Security Planning

Introduction
Office 365 customers are provided a highly security solution for business productivity.  Microsoft ensures that the Office 365 service is secure and demonstrates this commitment through many of the third-party accreditations it receives.  Yet that is only half the battle as the customer who manage the Office 365 tenant shares in that security responsibility.  There are a tremendous amount security features and capabilities that are available to Office 365 customers that require configuration and management.  Customers frequently miss they too have a security responsibility to manage and continuously monitor their tenant.  In this blog I will discuss:

1. The new Office 365 Secure Score analytics tool.
2. Office 365 Information Security Planning.

Microsoft is invested in providing a safe and secure productivity cloud solution for your end users.  A clear differentiator for Microsoft is that they provide you plans, frameworks and tools that help you plan and continually monitor your security risk with Office 365.

Office 365 Secure Score
Microsoft has released “in preview” a new capability called Office 365 Secure Score.  This is a new analytics tool that can review the configuration of your tenant and make recommendations (based initially on 77 different factors).  Think of it as a “credit score”.  The higher the score, the more controls you have configured into your tenant.  The goal is to create a score that is aligned to your business requirements which do not impact your user experience.

Features of this capability are:

• There is a summary panel that provides you your score and when you last ran it.
• There is a modeling tool that allows you to do analysis to determine if you introduce more controls how those new controls will impact your score.
• There is detailed information about each control it evaluates and the risk that it mitigates.
• There are remediation instructions for each control that you introduce and how it would impact your end users.
• There is a score analyzer that allows you to measure your performance over time.  You can download the scores from the reports and make them part of continuous monitoring program.
• New controls will be introduced into the tool as new features are added to the service.

Plan for Office 365 Information Security
Since I have discussed this new Office 365 Secure Score tool that helps you continuously evaluate your security position, it is also worth mentioning there are several new Office 365 Information Planning worksheets you should review (see references below).
What these references will do is provide you direction on how you can utilize and configure all of the Office 365 security features (several new ones). 

Here are features I talk about a lot:

• Federated Authentication (ADFS) and ADFS Client Access Policies.
• Two-factor Authentication with Office 365 MFA and integration with third-party 2FA (smart cards, PIV, CaC).
• Data Loss Prevention for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Skype for Business Online.
• Rights Management Service (RMS) Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Office 365 ProPlus.
• Office 365 Message Encryption (OME) and S/MIME support.
• eDiscovery, Legal Hold and Retention policies for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Skype for Business Online.
• Advanced eDiscovery with text analytics, machine learning and predictive coding.
• Exchange Online Inactive Mailboxes.
• Data spillage and deletion methods.
• Permissions management.
• Service usage reports.
• Customer Lockbox
• Office 365 MDM and Exchange ActiveSync policies.
• Intune MDM advanced features for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Skype for Business Online.
• Office on the Web (OWA) client policies for data sync and attachment downloads.
• Exchange Online Protection.
• Advanced Threat Protection for Exchange Online.
• Office 365 Advanced Security Management.
• Azure AD usage and audit reports.
• Exchange Online mailbox auditing and administrator auditing reports.
• SharePoint Online usage audit reports.
• Rights Management Service (RMS) audit reports.
• External sharing policies for SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Skype for Business Online.

There are a lot of features available to customers and planning is required.

In Closing
It can be daunting to see the amount of information security features that a customer has available to them in Office 365.  Customers need to plan and develop continuous monitoring plans to evaluate their risk in the Office 365.  Microsoft, unlike many of the cloud vendors out there, provide comprehensive solutions to help you plan and measure your risk.

Reference
Office 365 Secure Score Announcement - https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/office365security/new-security-analytics-service-finding-and-fixing-risk-in-office-365/
Take a systematic approach to security and information protection with Office 365 - https://blogs.office.com/2016/07/27/take-a-systematic-approach-to-security-and-information-protection-with-office-365/
Plan for Office 365 security and information protection capabilities - https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Plan-for-Office-365-security-and-information-protection-capabilities-3d4ac4a1-3920-4ff9-918f-011f3ce60408?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

SharePoint Online Announcements and Futures

There was a bunch of new announcements in beginning of May 2016 in regards to SharePoint Online.  Here are my notes and initial thoughts on each.

There are several new sharing and collaboration features that are being release for SharePoint Online.  There is a focus making it easy to share information across devices.  Some of the new features being released are:

• New Mobile App - Access to SharePoint Online document libraries and Office 365 Groups from the OneDrive mobile app.  Plus access to SharePoint document libraries on-premises.
• Discover View - Intelligent discovery of items in SharePoint and OneDrive.  Specifically, there is a new view Discover View which uses Office Graph to suggest relevant and trending files to you in a similar fashion Delve does.  It recommends based on the work you do.
• Copy and Move from OneDrive to SharePoint Online – This is a really neat new feature and really needed.  Users typically create files in their OneDrive and then want to publish that file out to a team site in SharePoint Online.  New capability is being created to do this easily through the browser.  Yes a user can easily share files from their OneDrive to broad audiences, however users sometimes want to share their files through team sites that are already set up to support broader collaboration experiences.
• Pin to Top – Really cool collaboration feature.  A document library may have tons of files in it.  A user can pin a file to the top of the library for all users to quickly see, regardless of how the library is sorted or filter by default.  Very cool.
• Link to File – Another new feature will allow you to easily link an item to a document library that resided in a different document library.
• Document Analytics – What this will do is show you over time how many people have discovered and viewed your files in a very user intuitive and graphical report.  You can see views, who is viewing it now, likes, comments, mentions, etc.  This will tell you how the content being created is utilized within the organization.
• New Synchronization – New OneDrive Sync client twill work with SharePoint Online document libraries and shared folders.
• SharePoint Mobile App (Intranet) – There is going to be a new exciting SharePoint Mobile app that will not just bring files to your mobile device, it will bring the Intranet so you can access news, announcements, people, sites, content and apps.  Yes there is still a mobile browser experience too.  It is highly integrated with the Office 365 Graph to surface up information and data that is relevant to the user.  Users will see all the list site that are relevant to you and ones the users follow, so you can access your sites while you are on the go.  Users have access to all the content of that site, not just documents.  Also on this app, I can see all the people who I interact with the most and can quickly find them and collaborate with them.  It is worth noting this new mobile app will work with SharePoint 2013 and 2016 on-premises.
• SharePoint Home – This is a new page that will be presented to end users which will show users all the files and sites they use the most very quickly across devices and browsers.  Again it is integrated with the Office 365 Graph to show you files that are relevant to you.  Users will also be presented sites that corporate wants to push out to all users.  Plus from this page, users can quickly create new Modern Team Sites.
• Modern Team Sites – Specifically SharePoint Online Team sites and Office 365 Groups are being brought together.  They are completely integrated now and I see this as the best path forward bringing together SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Exchange Online and Office Online together for a unified user experience.  Document libraries will have an updated user experience, site pages are revamped and are streamlined for a strong mobile user experience.  When you create a new modern team site, you have the ability to create a new Office 365 Group that will be associated to the team site.
• Modern Pages – There has been a ton of new work to provide a new page authoring experience.  You have the ability to create clean, highly visual web pages that work well on a browser or in an app on mobile device.
• Microsoft Flow – Is a new service for automation workflow that can work directly in SharePoint lists.  It has connectors to work with third-party services as well as SharePoint; you have the ability to create mash-ups of services.  For instance you can connect SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business with over 35 difference services such as Slack, Twitter, Salesforce.com, DropBox, Google Drive, Dynamics CRM, etc.  There will be a new Add Flow button in a list that will allow you to quickly add workflow to a list or document library.  You can create flows that create a flow that will send me a text message when an important email message is sent to me.  Another flow could monitor Twitter for information that is important to the user and then save the information about those Twitter to OneDrive.  You can even do the traditional content approval workflows.
• PowerApps – Is a new enterprise service to connect, create and share business apps that can be integrated directly into modern team sites, list and document libraries.  Specifically, it will allow you to create mobile apps that are connected to SharePoint Online and drive by data and logic that reside in SharePoint Online, yet the user is interacting with a mobile app in iOS, Android, etc.  You can create these apps right out of the SharePoint Online list or document library and the PowerApps can leverage the Microsoft Flow automation previously discussed.  Plus, these apps integrate with the new SharePoint mobile app and are available through the browser too.
• New Site Activity and Insights – There is a new page in SharePoint Online that provides a redesigned user experience to visually the activity occurring in a modern team site.  You can see site visits, trends around site visits and the content being accessed, etc.
• SharePoint Framework – is an enhanced page and part model that fully supports client side development, integration with Office 365 Graph and embrace open source tools (React, Angular, etc.).  It delivers a new client side rendering framework that developers can use JavaScript and web templating frameworks.  There is a strong trend to move away from server side code and focus on client side code given the evolution of browsers and mobile devices.  Microsoft put this into practices, as all the new modern list, document libraries, SharePoint homepage, new mobile apps, etc. are all leveraging this new SharePoint Framework that uses client side APIs.  Customers and partners can use the same APIs that Microsoft uses to deliver its user experiences.  There is also a new solution called the SharePoint Workbench will allow you to test you web parts locally without having to deploy it into SharePoint Online; which is great for remote development.
• Dynamic Conditional Access Policies – This new feature will allow you to intelligently define access based on who the user is, the app/device being used and the network location.  This is a huge update and is very important to enterprise organizations.
• SharePoint DLP – This has been released for awhile in SharePoint Online and it will continue to have move investment.  Specifically, SharePoint Site Classification is being added.
• User Activity Audit Logging – Several new capabilities, specifically the ability to see activity for views and downloading have been added.  There is a brand new reporting and filtering experience.  You have the ability to get pretty granular information down to the users and documents.
• Customer Lockbox for SPO – SharePoint Online customer lockbox is being added just like in Exchange Online.

References

The Future of SharePoint - https://blogs.office.com/2016/05/04/the-future-of-sharepoint/

Keynote - https://resources.office.com/en-us-landing-the-future-of-sharepoint.html

Announcing simple and powerful file sharing and collaboration for Office 365 - https://blogs.office.com/2016/05/04/announcing-simple-and-powerful-file-sharing-and-collaboration-for-office-365/

SharePoint—the mobile and intelligent intranet - https://blogs.office.com/2016/05/04/sharepoint-the-mobile-and-intelligent-intranet/

Power to the people: introducing Microsoft Flow and announcing the public preview of PowerApps - https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-microsoft-flow-and-announcing-the-public-preview-of-powerapps/

SharePoint and Flow - https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/sharepoint-and-flow/

Microsoft Flow - https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/

Get started with Microsoft Flow - https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/getting-started/

Welcome to Microsoft Flow - https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/welcome-to-microsoft-flow/

PowerApps and SharePoint - https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/powerapps-and-sharepoint/ 

Announcing Public Preview for PowerApps - https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/powerapps-public-preview/

The SharePoint Framework—an open and connected platform - https://blogs.office.com/2016/05/04/the-sharepoint-framework-an-open-and-connected-platform/

Office 365 Unified Audit Logging with SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business

Introduction

SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business audit logging as received an overhaul.  For the longest time, there were the following challenges:

• View/down log events were not possible in SharePoint Online.
• To turn on user event logs, you had to go to each site collection and turn it on.
• Getting user event logs out of SharePoint Online was not easy, especially if you wanted to do it in an automate fashion.

These issues were a problem over and over again for enterprise customers who needed access to these logs for compliance scenarios.

 

I am happy to say, this gap is now gone.  This has been on the public roadmap for some time and it is now rolling out.  I am really impressed with the solution that been put in place.

 

Unified Audit Logging

We not have a Unified Audit Logging solution across Office 365.  SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business provide a rich logging experience and is no longer second class to something like Exchange Online (which always had mailbox audit logging and Exchange admin logs).  With the new Unified Audit Logging solution in Office 365, you have both a user interface and APIs to go obtain user event logs from:

• Exchange Online
• SharePoint Online
• OneDrive for Business
• Azure AD

For SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business logs, you now have access to event logs on view, create, edit, upload, download and delete; sharing actions like invitation and access requests; and synchronization activity.  You now can see who has accessed or had had potential access to data which has been a big deal for enterprise organizations when they are performing compliance investigations.  Cannot underscore how big of a deal this is.  See reference below to a detailed listing of the events captured Unified Audit Logging.

 

Search Audit Log User Experience

Gaining access to these logs is super simple.  You do not have to be a super technical person to gain access to these logs and you do not have to go to multiple places.  All you need to do is go the Office 365 Compliance Center, and go to the audit log site.

 

 

From there all you need to do is identify the types of logs you are looking for, in what day range, for what users and where in Office 365.  It could not be any simpler than that.

Once you have the search results, you can filter them down to specific log events that you are looking for.  You have an export button right there to dump out that set of logs.  Having that easy to use export button makes life so easy if you have been asked to turn over user logs.

And remember this is Unified Audit Logs.  This means you are getting user event logs across Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Azure AD all at one time.  I am just happy to see this feature.

Other Things You Should Know

Here are some important facts that you should know:

• Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business audit logs are retained for 90 days.  Azure AD audit logs are retained for 180 days.
• SharePoint Online / OneDrive for Business corresponding logs start to appear in 15 minutes after the event.  Exchange Online and Azure AD logs appear after 12 hours.
• If you require longer term retention for audit logs, that are APIs and Web Services available (references below) which can be used to export that data and then retain that data for a longer period of time.  Microsoft ISV partners are building rich solutions around these APIs.
• You have the ability to create your own more complex reporting and analysis solutions using these APIs as well.

References
Announcement - https://blogs.office.com/2016/02/17/auditing-reporting-and-storage-improvements-for-sharepoint-online-and-onedrive-for-business/

Office 365 Management APIs - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn707385.aspx

How to search the audit log - https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Search-the-audit-log-in-the-Office-365-Protection-Center-0d4d0f35-390b-4518-800e-0c7ec95e946c

Detailed listing of all the available log events across Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Azure AD - https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Search-the-audit-log-in-the-Office-365-Protection-Center-0d4d0f35-390b-4518-800e-0c7ec95e946c#auditlogevents

Azure AD Audit Report Events - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/active-directory-reporting-audit-events/

Azure AD Audit Reporting API - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/active-directory-reporting-api-getting-started/  

SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business Storage and File Size Increases

We have been waiting and they are finally in, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business max file size and storage has been updated.  Here is what has changed, and suspect a lot of people will be happy to hear it.

Max File Size Increase
File Size has now been increased to 10 GB per file; it was 2 GB.  This increase is for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.  You can now store those bigger files and it really helps with storage of videos that can be used with Office 365 Video.

Additional Default Storage Per Tenant
More pooled storage has been added to the tenant by default.  Now every tenant will get 1 TB plus .5 GB per user for pooled SharePoint Online storage; it used to be 10 GB plus .5 GB per user.

OneDrive for Business Storage Increase
Unlimited storage is still going to be delivered for OneDrive for Business.  The first phase of that expansion was to increase OneDrive for Business storage per user from 1 TB to 5TB per user.  This increase has now been completed.

Announcement
https://blogs.office.com/2016/02/17/auditing-reporting-and-storage-improvements-for-sharepoint-online-and-onedrive-for-business/

Office 365 Groups is Expanding

Introduction
Office 365 Groups was a feature released some time ago.  Initially I had not played around with it too much because at the time as there were two things lacking:

1. It was not integrated into my rich Outlook experience which is where I do all my group messaging and group calendars.
2. It was lacking several of the enterprise capabilities I wanted to see.

These two issues have now been addressed and I see immense possibilities for Office 365 Groups for enterprise business. 

The game has changed and organizations should be taking a long, hard look at Office 365 Groups to change the way their users collaborate with each other.

What are Office 365 Groups?

In my personal opinion, Office 365 Groups is the replacement for distribution groups / lists with enhanced capabilities.  It brings together best of breed user experiences with email, calendar, OneDrive, and OneNote into a single unified user experience.  In the past:

• If you wanted to share files with a group of people, you could create a SharePoint site but there was not true integrated email capability.  SharePoint had alerts and discussion boards yet the messaging experience was not integrated.
• If you wanted a shared calendar SharePoint Online had one and its integration with the user’s Outlook calendar experience was ok, however the Outlook calendar capabilities were not available in SharePoint.  On the other side of the coin, you could create a shared group with an Outlook calendar yet all you had was a great calendar capability that was not integrated with messages and files.
• Distribution groups were not effective way for collaborating on files as you could email attachments to a group of people, however if you were trying to create a work product together there was no place to manage the files.
• Sharing thoughts and ideas with a group was limited to just what you could capture in an email message, or attach to a message.
• Even if you cobbled together a solution, access rights management always became a challenge across all the feature solutions.  You need to make sure the distribution group, shared calendar and SharePoint site were all using the same permissions.
• Etc.

This all changes with Office 365 Groups.  When you create a group you get unified experience across Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Office, Office Online, OneNote, etc. built specifically to cater to the needs for productivity collaboration.

In Office 365, the Office 365 Groups feature is considered to be a suite feature.  It is only available if you purchase a suite because all of Office 365 is used to deliver this experience.

I see this as a true trend for Microsoft and Office 365.  We are going to continue to see best of bread features brought together to deliver “solutions” versus just stand alone applications.

I highly recommend you review some of the links below and some of the videos to learn more about Office 365 Groups.

What has changed?

So what changed that got me completely hooked on Office 365 Groups?  1) integration with Outlook 2016, 2) Enterprise compliance feature integration and 3) the list of features coming down stream.  Let’s look at each one.

Outlook 2016 Integration with Office 365 Groups

What I was waiting for was deep integration with Outlook rich client.  Outlook on the Web (OWA) had deep Office 365 Groups integration, however I prefer to work in Outlook rich client.  When the integration was announced publically I was ecstatic to talk about it.

Creating an Office 365 Group is super simple.  I just create a new Office 365 Group right there inside of Outlook 2016.  I do not need to navigate away to a browser to create a group.

When I am in an Office 365 Group, I have the ability to:

• Create new conversations or interact with existing ones.  Underneath the hood a mailbox was created for all users to access.
• Click over to the shared calendar.  Underneath the hood a shared calendar was dynamically created.
• Collaborate on files by clicking the Files button.  Underneath the hood a OneDrive for Business site was created and associated to the group.
• A OneNote book was created for everyone to collaborate thoughts and information through.  Underneath the hood, a OneNote book was created in the OneDrive for Business site.
• I have the ability to manage membership of the group right in Outlook and I have the ability to edit information about the group too.

The usage of this is endless.  You have the ability to quickly bring together groups of people to collaborate.  An experience SharePoint person may counteract by saying why not use a SharePoint Team Site?  My response would be SharePoint Team sites are great and still needed.  I would say if you know the level of communication and collaboration is more than file sharing, but needs to bring together email and calendar Office 365 Groups is the right feature.  Office 365 Groups are not a type of site that should I would use to bring in hundreds of users to access files and web content; in that case I would use a SharePoint Site.

What I find truly exciting about Office 365 Groups is that aligns to how I need to work in enterprise.  I am constantly working with tactical teams of people.  Everyone has specialties and we cross matrix with each other to complete critical timely tasks.  Office 365 Groups is a wonderful solution.  I can quickly create an Office 365 Group with a broad range of co-workers and we have an area where we can effectively work with each other.  I no longer have dig through email for that one-off conversation or file as I can quickly find it in the Office 365 Group.

Enterprise Compliance Integration with Office 365 Groups
Office 365 Groups when first released focused purely on the features and capabilities.  It was a rich solution but not all of the enterprise compliance features were available.  Now they are.  For instance:

• eDiscovery and litigation hold is now available on Office 365 Group mailbox and calendar stored in Exchange Online.
• eDiscovery and litigation hold is also now available on the Office 365 Group files that are stored in OneDrive for Business.
• IRM messages and files is not integrated into Office 365 Groups.
• Auditing events to group management events such as creation, updates, membership changes, etc. are available to see changes to the Office 365 Group over time.

Other Features Recently Added or being added soon

There are other recent features added to Office 365 Groups such as:

• Dynamic Group Membership was added such that rule-based membership can be used to manage access to an Office 365 Group.  For instance, maybe there are directory based attributes that dictated whether a user can have access.
• File quota management is now available.  Office 365 Groups utilize the shared storage of SharePoint Online and you have the ability monitor and control the size of Office 365 Group content.
• Multi-domain support is being added.  This is needed when organizations have multiple email domains associated to a single tenant.  With this new feature, you have the ability to control what domain the Office 365 Group is associated to.
• Office 365 Groups will comply with naming policies for emails alias set by the tenant administrators.
• There is now PowerShell available to manage Office 365 Groups (see link below).
• The ability to browse and join Office 365 Groups from Outlook 2016.
• Yammer integration with Office 365 Groups.
• Office 365 Admin app that will assist with central administration of Office 365 Groups.
• Ability to limit the creation of Office 365 Groups to a specific group of people.  This will be controlled through policy by the tenant administrators.
• Data Classification and customizable classification will be available for Office 365 Groups in the future.  This will allow you to create policy for groups that may be internal, unclassified, classified, corporate confidential, etc. and then allow you to manage policy to that content as appropriate.
• Office 365 Groups will soon have a deletion recovery feature which will allow end users and administrators to undelete an Office 365 Group in a single action.
• There will be a future feature to allow inactive Office 365 groups to be expired based on a configurable inactivity period.  This will be good for getting rid of stale groups no longer utilized.
• General Office 365 Groups admin reporting will be expanded to allow for analysis to determine how they are being utilized.
• Guest support will be added soon to Office 365 Groups to allow external users and team members to collaborate.
• Hidden membership is being added to soon to Office 365 Groups as sometimes it is not appropriate to share the members of group to end users who do not have access to the Office 365 Group.
• New Intune feature are being created to help with management of Office 365 Groups.
• Office Delve will soon be integrated with Office 365 Groups so you can see activity occurring within groups you are associated to.
• A new Office 365 Groups mobile app is being created to allow for rich mobile experiences.
• Usage guidelines will be added soon to Office 365 groups.  This will allow administrators to educate end users on how they should be used in the organization.
• There is a new project called Hummingbird which will help organizations migrate all of their distribution lists over to Office 365 Groups (see link below).
• Integration with Office 365 Planner is now available so you can do project management with Office 365 groups (see link below).

To read more about these features coming out, just go to the Office 365 public roadmap (http://fasttrack.office.com/roadmap) and search on the word “Groups”. 

The future is bright for Office 365 Groups.  I recommend that if you are not using them
Resources
Office 365 Roadmap - http://fasttrack.office.com/roadmap
Announcement – Outlook 2016 now has Office 365 Groups Integration - https://blogs.office.com/2015/09/22/introducing-availability-of-office-365-groups-in-outlook-2016/
TechNet – Outlook 2016 Integration with Office 365 Groups - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-s-new-in-Outlook-2016-for-Windows-51c81e7a-de25-4a34-a7fe-bd79f8e48647?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
Announcement - Office 365 Compliance features being added to Office 365 Groups - https://blogs.office.com/2015/12/09/office-365-groups-now-supports-ediscovery-litigation-hold-dynamic-membership-and-more/
Office 365 Service Description for Office 365 Groups - https://technet.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/office-365-suite-features.aspx
Office 365 Groups Introduction - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Learn-about-Office-365-groups-b565caa1-5c40-40ef-9915-60fdb2d97fa2
PowerShell to Manage Office 365 Groups - https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Use-PowerShell-to-manage-Office-365-Groups-aeb669aa-1770-4537-9de2-a82ac11b0540
Hummingbird Project - https://github.com/Microsoft/hummingbird
Office 365 Planner - http://www.astaticstate.com/2015/12/new-office-365-planner.html