Farewell WordPad

Microsoft have announced the end of WordPad – declaring that the word-processing app will be removed from future versions of Windows.

The difficult middle-child of Microsoft’s three main word-processing apps was originally released for Windows 95, and always sat a little uncomfortably between Microsoft Word (which has remained a heavyweight of the word processing scene) and Notepad (a stripped back, plain-text editor.)

Able to edit rich text for free, but with many features missing, WordPad was beloved by students, techies and other irregular writers who either didn’t have, or couldn’t afford, a licence for Microsoft Word.

The app was offered for free with each new release of Windows as a kind of ‘teaser’ for Word itself – but didn’t support many important features such as footnotes, subscript, tables, numbered lists, indentation and other typesetting options needed for more formal work. For more than decade, it remained many people’s only way to open a Word document, and gave digital access on millions of lower-specification machines across the developing world.

But WordPad itself has not been updated since the ill-fated Windows 8, way back in 2012, and still looks somewhat reminiscent of Office 2007 a decade later. There are also more alternatives in 2023 – with Microsoft Word more affordable than ever as part of Microsoft 365 (both on the web and on the desktop), Google Docs chasing the education market, and free alternatives like Libre Office and Open Office winning over casual users.

Farewell WordPad!


New Microsoft Teams Launches

Microsoft has announced a new Teams experience for Windows, replacing the existing version with a faster, cleaner Teams app.

The new version seeks to dramatically improve user experience, introduces powerful-AI based tools to more users, and addresses performance issues that have crept into Teams since the platform’s astonishing success during the Covid-19 pandemic – which saw rapid adoption by organisations around the world and an explosion of new features.

Microsoft estimates the new communication and collaboration app is now twice as fast, but uses approximately 50% less system memory, completing initial loading in under 10 seconds compared to over 20 seconds in ‘Classic’ Teams in independent benchmarked testing.

Part of that extra speed – in loading, scrolling and searching – has been achieved by tidying many of the extra controls that have been added to teams, simplifying the design for a ‘cleaner’ viewing window. Users who need access to multiple accounts will also find it easier to switch between work environments.

Microsoft are also highlighting the extensive integration of ChatGPT AI tools in the form of Copilot – which debuted for Microsoft 365 a few weeks ago. Within Teams, AI assistance will be able to summarise meetings, write chat or documents on your behalf, and answering questions mid-discussion flow.

new microsoft teams for windows

While we’re not quite convinced about 3D avatars (!) the new Teams can highlight when individuals were speaking, automatically break long meetings into key ‘chapters’ for video review, redesigns Teams channels to feel more like the gathering point they’re intended to be, and use AI mid-chat in a way that has untold potential.

Overall the new design is more visually impressive, with customisation options that are available in public preview now, and available to Microsoft 365 users later in 2023.

 

For Microsoft 365 Expertise and support, please contact our team today.

 


Move Over Clippy: Microsoft Previews Copilot

Microsoft has announced a GPT-4 powered AI assistant for the Microsoft 365 Office apps named ‘Copilot’, in an impressive array of preview videos.

Copilot promises to bring OpenAI’s groundbreaking natural language assistant into Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, Teams and more – helping users to write documents automatically with prompts, analyse spreadsheets and more.

Copilot can also use other Office documents as its source material, allowing powerful cross referencing commands such as ‘Make a Presentation based on my notes in Document.docx’, or copy styles based on examples of your other work.

The new tool, announced at Microsoft’s ‘Future of Work’ event in March, follows a string of recent Chat GPT related developments for the tech giant – which Microsoft promises to dramatically cut the time required to produce first-drafts, as well as rapidly cross-reference with data the user doesn’t have to hand.

Within Microsoft Teams, Copilot promises to summarise meetings based on text analysis of the transcript, or even recap for late attendees based on what they have missed.

Unlike the original ChatGPT version 3 preview, Copilot promises to implement some of the advances used in the trial version of Bing – with references and links embedded inside the AI’s responses demonstrating why it chose that answer.

Don’t expect to see Chat GPT 4 doing all your work for you quite yet though – Copilot remains in a trial phase with twenty select Microsoft customers, with the preview set to expand in coming months. (No Clippy, I wasn’t trying to write a letter – Copilot will do it for me.)

 

For Microsoft 365 expertise and support, please contact our team today.


Dangerous New Outlook Exploit Triggers Automatically

Microsoft have acknowledged a critical new zero-day vulnerability with Outlook, that does not require any user interaction with an email to be triggered.

Reported by the Ukrainian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) to Microsoft and graded 9.8/10 on the severity scale according the NIST, the exploit is believed to have already been used by a “Russia-based threat actor” in attacks against European targets across government, transport, energy and military sectors.

The exploit (CVE-2023-23397) abuses the way Microsoft Outlook attempts to follow links in emails to retrieve remote content, even before they’re opened or viewed in the preview pane – allowing a remote attacker’s server to request authentication via an old technology known as NTLM, and automatically receive poorly encrypted username and password details from Outlook. NTLM was officially retired by Microsoft after Exchange 2003, but the technology remains available in current versions.

This is dangerous because with a username, password and corresponding email address, hackers have effectively completed a credential theft without any interaction from the end user. Many users use their email account as a single-sign on for other applications, putting numerous other services at risk.

CVE-2023-23397 is not yet fully documented however Microsoft believe the vulnerability occurs “when an attacker sends a message with an extended MAPI property with a UNC path to an SMB (TCP 445) share on a threat-actor controlled server. No interaction is required.” Once a connection is made, the server sends the user a new technology LAN manager (NTLM) negotiation message which is relayed for authentication – none of which requires the user to even view the email itself.

The exploit affects only the Microsoft Windows version of the Outlook Desktop client. Outlook for Mac, the Outlook Web & Mobile Apps (as well as Outlook.com) are not affected – since these do not support NTLM authentication. Estimates vary but Outlook is said to be used by over 400 million users worldwide, in its various forms.

System administrators are advised to urgently patch with the latest Outlook updates from Microsoft within 24 hours.

Where this is not possible, system administrators are advised to add users to the Protected Users Security Group (blocking NTLM), or Block TCP 445/SMB outbound from network firewalls or via VPN settings, cutting off any NTLM authentication messages at the perimeter of your network. In both cases, Microsoft warn this may affect other services from working correctly.

 

For Cyber Security expertise and support, please contact Lineal’s Cyber Security Team today.


How to Use Files On Demand

One of the best features available to Microsoft 365 users is a special setting in OneDrive called Files on Demand.

Where OneDrive normally synchronises a local copy of a file on your device to the copy saved in your account in the cloud, Files on Demand allows you to be more selective – only downloading local copies of files from OneDrive when you really need them.

This helps you conserve storage, and is especially useful on laptops with smaller hard-drives.

Each user can choose which files are also kept locally on their device – synchronising a local copy of essential files that will be available offline – while relinquishing larger files likely to take up space (such as videos) to only reside in your Microsoft 365 account in the cloud until you need them.

Users see a green tick where files are available both locally and synchronised in the cloud, and a blue cloud icon where files are saved in the cloud only.

When a file is accessed, the local copy is downloaded in the background, and made available locally for the future. The same control is available via a right-click option, by clicking on ‘Always keep on this device.’

Alternatively if you need to manage your local storage usage, you can right click and select “Free up space” to remove it from your device, knowing it still remains available in the cloud.

For Microsoft 365 expertise and support, please contact our team today.


Microsoft calls time on Windows 7/8 OneDrive

Microsoft have announced that OneDrive Personal will cease to synchronise on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 from 1st March 2022.

Beyond this date, data saved to the OneDrive desktop app will not be saved to the user’s online Microsoft 365 account. Instead the user must either upload files via their account on the web through their browser, or upgrade their hardware to Windows 10/11.

Business-licensed users will still be able to synchronise OneDrive files until Windows 7 extended support finally ends in January 2023, although time is clearly ticking for business users of the popular file storage app who remain on older operating systems.

The hugely successful Windows 7 reached ‘End of Life’ (the end of official support) as of January 2020, but remains in surprisingly widespread use. Despite the free release of Windows 10 and 11 over the past decade, Windows 7 alone still has millions of PC users remaining – approximately 14% of the global market.

Keen observers will note that with the business version still running (for now) there’s likely no overriding technical reason the Personal version must cease, but that OneDrive itself sits at the centre of Microsoft’s hugely popular suite of Office apps – and that announcements like this are one of the few remaining ways Microsoft can clearly signal the need to upgrade decade-old hardware that may have security vulnerabilities.

Lineal are a certified Microsoft Gold Partner. For IT support and expertise, please contact our team today.


An Important Change: MFA

Lineal’s IT Support Teams are rolling out an important security change to the way we secure your Microsoft 365 accounts – enabling Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for all users.

We’re taking this step in response to a marked increase in account-theft attempts that we’ve seen in recent months; where previously MFA was an optional extra for added security, we’re now strongly recommending this be enabled across the board.

We feel this is an appropriate measure – in addition to having become a standard security measure across many web-based services in recent years, the advantages of MFA are increasingly recognised as vastly outweighing the downsides.

 

Who is affected by this change?

Every person with a Microsoft 365, Exchange Online or Azure user account licensed with Lineal.

 

What are the advantages?

An extra ‘factor’ at login drastically helps improve the security of your user account – making it difficult for any attacker who manages to obtain your username & password from logging into Microsoft 365 using your identity.

If your credentials are stolen from another website, or tricked from you via phishing email, this is no longer enough information for a hacker to be able to access your account from another location. Multi-factor authentication is estimated to stop over 99% of this kind of automated (harvested credential-stuffing) attacks.

 

Why are Lineal enforcing this?

We’ve encountered a noticeable increase in account-takeover attempts in recent months, with individuals’ work emails then being used for the onward spread of supply-chain attacks and phishing emails to others.

Multi-factor authentication is already standard practice across online-banking in the UK, and we believe it should be standardised for all identity-based online services.

 

How does it work?

In addition to your username and password, each user registers a third factor – typically either a mobile phone number (for SMS), smartphone authenticator app, USB security key or password manager – any of which generates a temporary code for login. This extra ‘factor’ verifies your identity – making it hard for a third party to log into your accounts, since they won’t have access to the temporary passcode.

There’s a short video introduction to MFA here, and you can learn more via our Client Portal guide here.

 

Which MFA method should I be using?

For preference, we recommend free Authenticator-app based MFA via Microsoft Authenticator, Google Authenticator or similar apps for iOS/Android. These are generally considered to be a more secure method than single-use SMS (text-message) codes, which have their weaknesses, with Microsoft and others announcing this method will be phased out.

However, even SMS-based MFA will be more secure than a standalone password, so we’ll still implement this where necessary.

 

Does my organisation need to budget for this?

No – although paid options are available if you need your MFA backed by Conditional Access or other security settings.

 

What’s the timetable for this change?

We’re aiming to have this change fully deployed by 2022.

 

What do I need to do?

Nothing for now – a member of your Lineal IT Support team will be in touch to discuss implementing the change.

 

What if I experience issues getting started with MFA?

Please contact our IT Support Teams via [email protected], 01271375999 or via our Client Portal, and one of our team will be happy to assist.


Microsoft Announces Licensing Changes

***Edited 1st February 2022 – To reflect updated information issued by Microsoft.***

Microsoft has officially announced 2022 pricing updates for UK customers of Microsoft 365, Office 365 and many related cloud services.

The hugely popular cloud-based collaboration software is used by millions of organisations around the globe, and assists around 300 million end-users to work more productively.

New pricing – the first mainstream increase for a decade – is set to go-live from March 2022, and will see increases of between 0% and 25%, depending on license type.

To help businesses know what to expect, we’ve assembled a short guide to the upcoming changes.

 

Which License Types are affected?

Although exact UK figures have not been published in full yet, indicative US pricing changes are expected to be as follows:

Old Expected %
Microsoft 365 Business Basic $5 $6 20%
Microsoft 365 Business Standard $12.50 $12.50
Microsoft 365 Business Premium $20 $22 10%
Office 365 E1 $8 $10 25%
Office 365 E3 $20 $23 15%
Office 365 E5 $35 $38 9%
Microsoft 365 E3 $32 $36 12.5%
Microsoft 365 E5 $57 $57
Microsoft 365 ‘F’ Plans No Change Expected
Microsoft 365 ‘A’ Plans No Change Expected
Microsoft 365 Personal Plans No Change Expected

 

Will anything stop working?

Unfortunately, yes – Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365-based data and services will cease to be available to businesses using old subscriptions after 1st July. All users will need a new NCE license assigned to them by their Microsoft licensing provider before this date. Microsoft Partners will continue to provide, deploy, manage and administer licensing, exactly as before.

However the service itself will remain the same – all old license options will be available under new NCE license types and new pricing.

 

Why is Microsoft making this change?

This is the first such price rise for a decade, and reflects the huge leap forwards in the quality of technology, range of apps and business value of cloud-based services that have been added to Office 365 since the package originally launched in 2011.

 

Can I ‘lock in’ the old price in any way? / Any offers… on offer?

Organisations who replace their old licensing with new SKUs prior to the 1st February are able to ‘lock in’ some of the legacy-pricing, and avoid the upcoming price rise until February 2023.

Purchasing new licensing also reserves this price for additional users that the customers might add during the term – meaning that customers expecting to increase their staff/license count later this year may be incentivised to move themselves to new licensing now, before pricing changes take effect.

However, 2022’s new annual licensing prices also includes annual minimum terms that restart each year at renewal, so licenses do not ‘leave contract’ entirely after the first year as before. Please contact Lineal for more information.

 

So many license types – help!

Don’t panic – we’ve published a handy guide to what each license type contains, and this page will be regularly updated with the latest information. Alternatively, please contact our team and we’ll be happy to clarify your current or future licensing.

 

Where can I get more information?

Please contact our team via: [email protected] or 01271375999.


Visio made free to all Commercial M365 Users

Microsoft have announced a web-based version of Visio will soon be made free to all commercially licensed Microsoft 365 users.

The popular diagramming and visualisation app was originally a standalone license, but will transition to being offered as an inclusive web app for the first time, much like Microsoft PowerBI, Microsoft Project, and other historically specialist apps Microsoft have been keen to promote more widely.

Visio (Online?) is described an initially ‘lightweight’ version of the original, allowing business users to create, edit and share professional diagrams live within their browser – as well as integrate these with other apps such as Microsoft Teams, Office apps like Word or Excel, and even via PowerBI.

This new version will be available to all business users with Microsoft 365 Business Basic (or higher) subscriptions. Power users needing extra functionality (such as the ability to automatically visualise external data sources) will still need a standalone plan (Visio Plan 1 or Plan 2) to access higher level features.

A ‘Visio in Microsoft 365 Early-Access Signup’ Form is available here for keen diagram-makers everywhere!

 

Lineal are a certified Microsoft Gold Partner – for expertise and support, please contact us today.


Microsoft Teams now has over 145 million daily users

Microsoft, continuing the trend of growth in online communications during the COVID-19 pandemic, has informed on social media that their telecommunications app Microsoft Teams now has over 145 million daily users.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Microsoft Teams amassed an estimated 32 million daily active users – with an increase to 75 million users as the reliance on digital tools from the need to work at home dramatically amplified.

The figure is estimated to be about a 26% growth since October 2020 where there was an average of 115 million active users daily. This rapid growth in users has been paralleled with the expansion and inclusion of new features to the telecommunications app including the continual development of Teams Connect which allows the user to share channels with anyone internally or externally to their organisation, virtual meeting whiteboards and background effects for working at home environments; to name a few.

In relation to its competitors, Zoom revealed they had 300 million daily participants and Google Meet displayed 100 million daily participants. It must be noted that both these apps do not record daily users individually, but rather daily participants which implies that a single user could be logged several times if they attend multiple meetings during one given day. However, all these apps have undoubtedly experienced a rapid upsurge in user counts throughout 2020 and 2021 regardless of their user calculation systems.

CEO Natya Sadella states that the “digital adoption curves aren’t slowing down. They’re accelerating and it’s just the beginning”.

Future plans for feature incorporation into Teams include the interoperability with the new Microsoft Mesh, powered by Azure, which promises to be the office meeting’s digital leap into mixed reality technology combining both the physical and virtual world into one shared interactive environment.

For the Teams app itself, Microsoft has promised a host of new capabilities including end to end user encryption for one-on-one voice calls, ability to lock meetings to prevent unauthorised guests from attending and business branded lobbies where admins will be able to add custom logos to their Teams experience.


Microsoft Teams adds Breakout Rooms

Microsoft Teams have added Breakout Rooms to online meetings to support group collaboration.

Breakout rooms act as small satellite virtual meetings, and can be used to temporarily divide a larger meeting into smaller teams for workshop exercises or brainstorming sessions.

The feature has been a popular request among Education users, as successive Covid-19 lockdowns forces more academic institutions to adopt remote-teaching.

Teams supports up to fifty simultaneous breakout rooms with custom names, assigning individuals to specific rooms, organiser announcements across rooms, and automatic closing of rooms back into the meeting.

The additional control is still marked as ‘Preview’ while the feature is being rolled out to PC and Mac users.

Lineal are a certified Microsoft Gold Partner – for Microsoft 365 expertise and support, please contact our team today.


Make Microsoft Teams your Phone System

Gamma Communications have officially launched Teams Direct Routing, allowing organisations which use Microsoft 365 to make Microsoft Teams your phone system.

Teams Direct Routing is a simple monthly bolt-on to Teams-enabled Microsoft 365 licenses, that allows the user to make or accept normal voice calls via the UK phone network.

But what about the actual… phone? Yes, end users can use either the Teams mobile app for their smartphone on iOS/Android, or their PC/Mac – however hardware manufacturers are surprisingly close behind: with Poly and others announcing hardware officially approved to operate a Microsoft Teams based phone system.

teams phones

Poly CCX Series Teams Phone Handsets

This makes Microsoft Teams a compelling choice as a full-business phone system, with call-routing, voicemail and many the other features commonly associated with work phones – available ‘through’ Teams.

Each user’s overall license package comprises three parts: two Microsoft elements including the user’s Microsoft 365 license that includes Teams, the ‘Phone system’ (PBX) bolt-on, and one from Gamma – the Teams Direct Routing Bolt-on itself.

teams phone system licensing

All this is backed by the remote-working flexibility of Microsoft 365’s cloud infrastructure and Trust Centre – better yet, the monthly cost of extending Teams in this way is a tiny fraction of the upfront cost of buying a traditional business phone system and unifies the user’s other key work communication tool (email) under a single account, calendar, and set of security permissions.

With a user-base of over 70 million daily active Teams users, Teams itself is a workplace juggernaut given extra momentum by the important need for home-working driven by Covid-19. Although Microsoft themselves also offer direct routing call plans that integrate with Microsoft Teams, these do not include the numerous extra functions extensively supported by telecommunications suppliers, such as flexible number porting, extra control over redundancy and business continuity plans, and other related considerations needed to better ‘manage’ an organisation’s communications.

Gamma, whose popular Horizon system operates nearly half a million UK business phone seats, are also giving every sign that Teams Direct Routing will also be the more cost-effective choice when compared to Microsoft’s own call plans.

Teams Direct Routing is likely to prove an extremely popular choice for companies seeking to modernise, and ‘get the most’ out of Teams. Take our advice: this one is going to be big.

 

For more information on Microsoft 365 and Teams, click here.

For more information on Microsoft 365 licensing, click here.

For more information on how Microsoft Teams can be deployed as a full phone system, please contact our team today.


The Ultimate Guide to Microsoft Teams

This week Microsoft Teams gained 12 million daily users, bringing the total to 44 million globally. During the past few days, Microsoft have raised cloud computing capacity by 600% to support this surge in demand for remote-working tools.  

If its all new to you, or you’re working from home for the first time – never fear! Lineal have assembled some of the best online Microsoft Teams resources to help users of all levels. 

We’ll update this ultimate guide to Microsoft Teams to include valuable new videos, examples and training materials as we discover them. 

 

The Basics 

teams quickstart

Intermediate 

teams training

Experienced 

 

Lineal are a Microsoft Gold Partner – for expertise and support, please contact our team today.


Hands on with the new Office Mobile App

Microsoft have combined the mobile versions of its Office programs into a single new Office app, uniting Word, Excel and Powerpoint under a single banner.

It’s true that Microsoft would prefer you use their whole Office 365 suite of apps, but the combination isn’t just strategic – the new mobile Office includes a whole toolkit of new abilities better optimised for mobile.

A number of typical tasks people might tackle when using a smartphone, such as PDF signing, reading QR codes, photo-to-document conversion or scanning PDFs with Microsoft Lens, are all ‘baked in’ to the new mobile Office version, with Microsoft clearly trying to maximise awareness of these lesser-known extras.

Such tools are activated from a new ‘Actions’ menu aimed at simplifying the controls users have to input to complete common tasks, as part of Microsoft’s Fluent design scheme.

Microsoft Word comes with a new dictation ability (which may be familiar to those using the desktop app) that supports speech to text. It’s hard to imagine users writing lengthy documents this way unless forced not to type, although assembling plain text into a OneDrive file for others to collate, or editing changes into an existing project might be more practical.

Excel is, of course, not a natural fit on mobile – where individual cells remain a bit fiddly on a touchscreen. Even so, there are improvements here too: Excel ‘cards’ simplify wide Excel rows into a simple summary, which ensures the user doesn’t have to open an unwieldy spreadsheet to find information.

 

Again, there’s an awareness here – that very few users will seriously attempt heavy editing via mobile, but access and convenience is critical for a workforce that increasingly operates on the move. Powerpoint presentations can also be created from a bullet-point list: not a work-of-art perhaps, but potentially a lifesaver at short notice.

Outlook, Teams, OneNote and the other Office 365 apps remain independent (for now) although it’s easy to imagine some of these also being merged into the combined app in future, as Microsoft seeks to build a seamless experience between the different productivity apps of the popular Office package.

In a diplomatic move, Office also includes support for popular third-party storage apps including Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud and Box.

Microsoft Office is available for iOS via the App Store here: (https://apps.apple.com/app/id541164041) and for Android via Google Play here: (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.officehubrow)

Try it today!

 

Lineal are a Microsoft Gold Partner – for IT support and expertise, please contact us today.


Free Charity Microsoft 365 for Nonprofits

Microsoft are offering an initial ten free Charity Microsoft 365 licenses for Nonprofit organisations.

Microsoft 365 allows users across an organisation to work more flexibly, collaborate on shared work and maintain an ‘always-up-to-date’ software base across a charitable organisation.

The flagship ‘Microsoft 365 Business’ cloud IT bundle, which normally retails at £15.10+VAT per user per month (Or £3.80+VAT per month for NonProfits) includes everyone’s favourite Microsoft Office 365 apps such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook and more. 50GB of Exchange Online email hosting per user is also included as standard, with 1TB of cloud OneDrive storage, and Windows 10 Pro licensing for each user’s device, packaged with a host of organisational security features.

Lineal’s Head of Technical Services Matt Norris explained: “This is a super offer which we’re expecting to do some real good in the Charitable sector especially – and hopefully nonprofits will snap up their free Charity Microsoft 365 licensing while it’s available. Office 365 makes flexible working and collaborative projects much easier, advantages that we know are a key concern for many in the voluntary sector.”

Interested in this offer for your organisation? Please click here.

 

Lineal are a trusted Microsoft Gold Partner, click here to learn more about Microsoft Office 365 cloud working.


Office 365 Dark Mode Announced

Microsoft have announced dark mode for Microsoft Office 365.

Dark mode will extend muted and low-light colour schemes across Microsoft’s suite of Office 365 apps, and across Office.com, beyond the Outlook dark theme introduced last Summer. The improvement comes just in time for the newest releases of iOS and Android smartphone operating systems.

Adding low-light themes has become a popular addition for the major tech players in recent years – with Apple and Microsoft making significant strides in adapting their operating systems to be easier to use after-hours.

Office 365’s development team point to the changing nature of work: that office users increasingly use battery-dependent devices (such as laptops, tablets and smartphones) that need to conserve power, over desktop PCs with fixed power connections.

Today’s workforce is much more mobile, often working from home at night, in shared office spaces or even darkened aeroplanes – and are more aware of the health dangers of eye-strain and sleep deprivation that can be caused by unnaturally bright screens.

Instead the focus is on a more ‘relaxed’ viewing of Office 365, with Outlook even able to automatically able to switch to dark-mode depending on the hour and date dynamically, or when the user has enabled battery-saver.

Dark Mode is expected to roll-out to Office 365’s 200-million users in coming weeks.

 

Lineal are certified Microsoft Gold Partner – for Office 365 expertise, licensing and support, please contact us today.


5 Cool Tricks for Microsoft Teams

Office 365’s Microsoft Teams has grown and grown to become far more than a simple work chat or video conferencing app.

As new features are added to the collaboration suite all the time, you could easily miss the best of the new updates – so we’ve collated some of the most interesting cool tricks for Teams:

 

Blur background

Homeworking? Taking an important video call with a less than formal background? Unless you want to end up in a viral video clip like BBC commentator Professor Robert Kelly, Teams has got you covered with simple controls to mask your immediate surroundings from a video call.

With a simple toggle, Microsoft Teams will detect your face in the foreground and blur the remainder of the screen, to spare everyone the embarrassment of your favourite coffee shop or messy home office.

Teams background blur

 

Screenshare to Mobile

Teams has had the ability to optionally share your screen with other attendees in the same meeting for some time, choosing to show either the whole Windows desktop or restricted to a single window (such as a presentation.)

However, Microsoft have also recently added this feature for iOS/Android, allowing attendees to enjoy the full Teams experience on the move.

Teams Screen Share Android

Viewing a desktop on a mobile can be an eyesight challenge, although it’s especially handy to be able to view a shared Powerpoint presentation in Private mode – and skip back through slides without interrupting everyone else’s flow.

 

Join by proximity

Join by proximity allows Teams to detect meeting that’s physically located nearby. This seems like a peculiar idea to begin with, but is actually designed for more open ‘meeting’ situations – such as conference venues or hotdesking environments: making individuals’ screen space as collaborative as the room itself, or extending a spontaneous group meeting into a virtual one.

Teams Join by Proximity

Teams will prompt within the meeting room lobby if any existing rooms are available nearby via Bluetooth, allowing the user to apply to join the meeting with audio muted, and without an original Teams invite. The meeting room organiser must accept via a Meeting Room control unit for security reasons, to ensure only welcome attendees join the meeting room.

Proximity join is available from May 2019, including on mobile versions of Teams.

 

Integrate Interactive Tabs

One of the best untapped features of teams is the ability to add custom tabs (click ‘+’) into each chat channel which allows for the creation of something entirely custom.

Among our favourites are embedded maps, OneNote notebooks, diary, Sharepoint files, and Microsoft Power BI’s impressive data visualisations.

Of course, Channel admins can also add from a category simply marked ‘website’ – via which any responsive web service with a valid SSL certificate can be deployed neatly through teams for the look-and-feel of a more integrated desktop.

Teams Add Tabs

 

Get Notified of Availability

Status indicators mean its easy to tell if a contact is unavailable to chat, but right-clicking on a contact now offers a handy ‘Notify When Available’ option which performs the basic requirement of call back – allowing Teams to prompt you of contact availability the best time.

Teams Notify Me

Microsoft Teams is available with Microsoft Office 365 Business Essentials licensing and above.

 

Lineal are a Gold Microsoft Partner – for Microsoft Office 365 support, licensing and expertise, please contact our team today.


Microsoft Previews New Office 365 Design

Microsoft have released previews of a new Office 365 design theme with updated visuals.

Debuted via a glossy reveal trailer, the new icon set for Word, Excel, Powerpoint and other Microsoft Office favourites have been revised with a lower-contrast ’stained glass’ style design.

Early feedback from users was positive (despite recurring jokes that the Microsoft Office user-interface may also need a similar makeover from designers.)

That makeover has already begun with Office 365’s new fluent menus: specifically, streamlined menu bar options for both the web and desktop client versions of the major Office apps, which load faster during general use. The existing option-heavy menus will also remain optionally available, as might be expected for a product being used by more than a billion knowledge-workers worldwide.

Licensed Office 365 customers receive ongoing updates throughout the lifetime of their subscription, including security updates and all new visual improvements. However, revised icons for gradually retiring apps, such as Yammer and Skype for Business, might imply these products have greater independent lifespan than is actually expected by Microsoft support.

Free trials of Microsoft Office 365 (up to 25-users) are available for businesses and organisations via certified Gold partners, such as Lineal.


Microsoft Forms Previews to Business Clients

Microsoft Forms has launched in initial preview to commercial customers – adding data gathering, surveys, opinion polls and quizzes to Office 365’s list of abilities.

Originally released to Microsoft Education customers for classroom use, the commercial release is likely to interest those gathering client or staff feedback, or doing market research.

The delay in launch has been worth it though: entirely cloud-based Microsoft Forms boasts some more advanced features than free alternatives, including branching surveys which alter question paths as the subject answers, and more extensive visual customisation – helping companies match each survey to their branding.

By swapping from the ‘Questions’ Tab to the ‘Reponses’ tab form-builders can view data collection in real-time and Forms integrates nicely with other popular business applications in Office 365, including Excel and even SharePoint. As with others, form-builders can also use a range of link-based permissions sharing to make surveys open to exact security groups.

It’s not yet been made clear which Office 365 packages will grow to include Forms as standard, although it looks intuitive, clear, responsive across a wide array of screen-sizes, and powerful enough to become a firm-favourite.

 

Lineal are a Microsoft Gold Partner and Authorised Education Gold Partner: for Office 365 support and advice – contact our team today.


Microsoft Access to become available on Office 365

Microsoft Access

Microsoft Access is making a return to Microsoft Office, and will soon be offered as a free extra to many cloud customers.

In a recent announcement from Microsoft, the ‘Access Team’ confirmed that the popular business database tool would be making a return as a part of the standard package available to all Office 365 Business Premium customers.

Officially the move continues Microsoft’s commitment to keep expanding Office 365’s cloud service to make more features available (including the new Slack-style Microsoft ‘Teams’) giving Office 365 subscribers ever more for their money. 

Unofficially, we wonder whether omitting Microsoft Access from the well-known ‘suite’ of Microsoft Apps (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and others) has seen Microsoft lose it’s 1990s database dominance to other platforms or CRM systems. Reintroducing the app may be timely for modern businesses that are increasingly interested in studying their data, and help encourage a wider audience to take a second look at the powerful program.

Recent iterations of the popular database management system have expanded on the traditional database store and report tools, allowing power users to use Access to develop web apps and other software, or act as the practical visual ‘front-end’ for more complex ‘back end’ database systems like Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle.

In addition, Access will be available with a set of enterprise data connector allowing Office 365 users to integrate their databases with Dynamics CRM, Salesforce and others.

Office 365 Business premium (which you can try through Lineal for free here) will include the latest version of Access to all new and existing customers from December 2016.

Lineal are a Microsoft Gold Partner – for help and expertise, contact us today.


Microsoft opens new UK Data Centres

UK data centres –

Microsoft’s Office 365 Team have announced the availability of multiple UK data centres for customer data.

The move follows increasingly strict rules on data compliance in the financial, security, health and public sectors – with more cloud IT users looking to ensure their data remains safely located in the UK.

Prospective customers considering the implications of Office 365 are able to view the locations of Microsoft’s uk data centres with this online ‘Where Is My Data?’ map, which now displays both the additional data centres and the Microsoft cloud services they support, in both London and Durham, with a third site anticipated for Cardiff.

Office365 and Azure Users will also have the ability to ‘re-locate’ their data from regional data centres (in most cases based within mainland Europe) to the new UK service.

In addition to the security and legal advantages for protecting sensitive data, cloud users of Office 365 are likely to benefit from lower costs, online backups and collaborative, remote access to files.

For now, the ability to re-locate Office365 or Azure data to the UK is likely to be restricted, with priority expected to be given to high-profile UK public sector customers including NHS Trusts and the Ministry of Defence – the latter mirroring many customers belated move to the cloud, upgrading legacy on-site systems in use since 2005.

The new infrastructure has been widely praised, with Microsoft clearly investing heavily in addressing the doubts many have about moving their IT to the cloud; reducing Office365 downtime to just 4 hours per year, and now re-locating data within country of origin for compliance with a high standard of data protection.

 

Contact Lineal for advice on moving to the cloud, or for a free trial of Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium, click here.

 


Fake Invoices – Don’t enable document malware!

fake invoices

This week’s IT security alert from Lineal – fake invoices which ask users to run a dangerous piece of code.

The example above comes from a fake Word document emailed with a typical text line, such as ‘Please check this invoice’ or ‘Double check my numbers for me’, to an unsuspecting user.

Upon opening, the document appears to load a popup from Office 2016 prompting the user to ‘Enable Content’ for compatibility purposes, before they can view the detail of the ‘invoice.’

In fact, the display is just an image within the word file, and the ‘Enable Content’ content button instead runs a piece of Visual Basic code downloading unknown malware from the internet.

The scam relies on users’ curiosity at the unusual $1999.00 charge, and upon reaching a user still running an outdated version of Microsoft Office.

 

Several measures can be taken to prevent this kind of attack:

  • Don’t click any popup that doesn’t visibly pop ‘open’ in Microsoft and don’t ‘Enable Content’ you can’t see in a document.
  • Consider an email filtering service like Barracuda – in the above example, Barracuda had recognised this email as malicious and stripped the code from the document before placing it in the correct email inbox for the intended recipient.

 

For IT Security advice and guidance – speak to Lineal today.


Touchpad draw ‘Ink’ added to Office 365

 

Ever wish you could add handwritten notes to documents in Microsoft Office? Now you can – as Microsoft have unlocked the ‘Draw’ tab for Office 365.

The new tools come with a range of pen shapes and bright colours, and have been designed particularly with touchscreens and tablets in mind. Accessible across all Office 2016 documents, spreadsheets, presentations and notes, the ‘Draw’ tab follows the recent releases of Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and the iPad Pro. Those with clumsy fingers may prefer to use a stylus.

It’s undoubtedly a pretty and relevant addition to Microsoft’s historically bland Microsoft Office – the simple colour wheel can be used for highlighting text or adding freeform annotations in various ‘ink’ colours.

Behind the new sketchpad fun is some intelligent software, which includes shape recognition that allows users to ‘rough’ draw polygons for conversion to regular shapes for use in diagrams or flowcharts .

The possibilities for working collaboratively, marking homework, sketching designs, reviewing reports or simply saving paper are endless and enjoyable – and show just how practical Office 365 has already become.

 

Explore Office 365 with Lineal today: click here or call 01271 375999


The Windows 10 update you didn’t notice

 

Windows 10.1 updates security

With ‘Windows 10.1’ now barely a month old, and the Microsoft operating system already running on over 12 million business PCs, how fares Microsoft’s free updates strategy?

Windows 10.1 update was released with relatively little fanfare (be honest, you didn’t notice) adds features that, understandably with hindsight, might have been a distraction at the main Windows 10 release back in July.

Packaged within were mainly performance and security upgrades – Windows 10.1 will now boot almost 30% faster than an old Windows 7 system on the same device, the Cortana virtual assistant has some new handwriting recognition skills and there are new enterprise tools for mobile devices. Microsoft Edge runs smoother too, offering previews of tabs before viewing and syncing favourites across devices.

Most importantly, after recent corporate data breaches in the news, Microsoft have added a range of new security safeguards. These including ‘Windows Hello’, supporting enterprise grade biometrics including fingerprint and facial recognition – sadly currently only available for US users.

Aside from controversy surrounding user privacy then (if you didn’t notice your Windows 10.1 update, that’s maybe because Microsoft installed it automatically on your device without asking you) the first free update went ahead with relevant additions and limited fuss.

Starting free updates officially moves Microsoft into line with Apple’s OS X business model that has become the industry standard. Yet limited promotion of Windows 10’s ongoing development risks downplaying Microsoft’s progress.

Which would be unfair, because Microsoft is plainly taking extra care to develop the business security of their product range, including the excellent Office365, Microsoft Azure and now Windows 10.1. Microsoft is clearly listening to business’ fears, and businesses should welcome it.

 

For help and support with Microsoft enterprise IT, contact Lineal today.


Cyber Crime hits the headlines

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Cyber crime is finally set to become the UK’s most common crime type, following inclusion in the latest crime figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

This re-classification comes only days after news headlines emerged that an Eastern European crime group successfully used ‘Dridex’ malware to steal over £20m from UK bank accounts via thousands of infected PCs in the UK.

Cyber criminals are increasingly mounting more organised attacks on businesses, small and large – last year even U.S banking giant J.P Morgan suffered unfortunate press and a sudden plunge in its share price when digital thieves stole the personal information and contact details of more than 76 million customers.

The 2015 National Strategic Assessment from the National Crime Agency estimates that losses due to cyber crime in the UK now amount to a staggering £16 billion annually. The NCA also asserted that the theft of large amounts of private companies’ data still faces ‘considerable under reporting.’

Nowhere is this more threatening than for those in the financial services industry, where both reputations for reliability and access to funds make IT security of paramount importance, requiring compliance with the strictest procedures for identity validation, network safety and fraud detection.

All businesses need to be prepared for the future, where cyber crime is likely to become more sophisticated and UK companies may be expected to demonstrate greater data protection measures. This week Microsoft promoted it’s Financial Services Compliance program in connection with Office 365 – making assurances (aimed squarely at businesses in the financial sector) of direct access to staff and resources to ensure that Microsoft Office cloud services comply with financial security regulations.

Greater awareness of cyber crime amongst Government figures, the media and the public can only be a good thing, but ultimately it still remains very much up to the individual to ensure their IT systems are secure – before the worst happens.

 

More than 70% of businesses fail after significant data loss. Lineal can install a range of security measures to safeguard your business IT systems and data – enquire today via: http://www.lineal.co.uk/contact/

 

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Smarter working: why you need Office 2016

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Microsoft Office 2016 is here: the staple of word processing, spreadsheets and presentation work everywhere is now available for single purchase on Windows 10 and Mac OS X.

Office 2016’s apps will look very familiar to existing customers – but Office 2016 is undoubtedly ‘smarter’ than any previous version of Office, with its most impressive new features aimed at boosting productivity for both home and business customers.

Take Microsoft’s new ‘Smart Lookup’ function for example – click a single word in a document and Office will web search that term (via Bing) within the window, allowing instant research.

Cleverly, Office 2016 will even infer from the context of the surrounding paragraph the exact meaning of the word being searched for, preventing irrelevant homonyms clouding your search results. A neat trick certainly, but also an important one for certain sectors – for instance helping children do school work with protection against loading inappropriate search results based on words with double-meanings.

It is a similar case with 2016’s new ‘Tell me’ function. Gone are the clunky help menus or cartoon paperclips – ‘Tell’ Word for a tool like ‘mail merge’ or ‘footnotes’ and the Office 2016 apps will not load search results, but immediately take you to the exact menu and function needed.

The latest version allows for collaborative working (finally catching up with rival Google Drive) with multiple users able to edit documents in real time with a visible tracked changes function, from remote locations if needed. As an added bonus, Office is integrated with Skype, aimed at making the process of collaborative working more easily communicated.

Part of productivity is personal though, so Office 2016 also introduces ‘Office 365 Planner’, an app aimed at time and project management. Even Outlook will attempt to shave a few minutes off your day by linking attachments from cloud-based OneDrive and introducing ‘Clutter’, an automated email filtering service which avoids distractions by pushing less relevant emails into a separate folder, helping you to best utilise your time. Office 2016 knows that time is worth money, and for some may be a very smart investment indeed.

 

Need advice on software for your business, or help migrating to Microsoft Office 365 services? Lineal can help – contact us today: http://www.lineal.co.uk/contact/