Siddhu Reed

Article / Updated 08-16-2022

Garnering support for Microsoft 365 Business adoption isn’t easy. It's understandable for a leader approving a significant budget for a SaaS solution (such as Microsoft 365 Business) to want to see the return on the investment (ROI). Guess who's on the hook for demonstrating the ROI of Microsoft 365 Business? Your IT team. One of the ways you can convince your leaders about the ROI is to show your success in getting end users to adopt the technology. Unfortunately, though, technology adoption is tricky. If you think you can just roll out the changes and expect users to start using the technology and singing your praises, think again. Change is usually met with resistance. Studies have shown that only 34 percent of the user population typically will adopt a new technology, as illustrated in the theory of Diffusion Innovations. Here, you find some of the best practices, tips, and tricks for driving adoption of Microsoft 365 Business. Feel free to customize and tweak these suggestions to fit your organization. Do take credit if any of the suggestions here bring you success. Get leaders to sponsor the adoption of Microsoft 365 Business Executive sponsorship in technology implementations are usually a foolproof way to get users to adopt a new technology, even if begrudgingly. Let's be honest, an IT admin does not have as much clout as the president, CEO or owner. After you identify the executive sponsors for your technology implementation, make sure you agree on what's expected of them. Ideally, you want executive sponsors to assume a shared responsibility for the success of the implementation. They can provide air cover when you run into political challenges in your organization or when end users push back on the changes you're rolling out. For your part, make sure to give your executive sponsors training on the functionalities of the technology based on relevant scenarios. For example, if they tend to use email a lot versus co-authoring documents, train them on the new features in Outlook instead of teaching them how to save and share files in SharePoint. When they see the value of the technology, they'll be able to share their experiences with the rest of the organization. Recruit and activate champs to promote Microsoft 365 Business adoption Scientists have not figured out a cloning machine yet, but you can create clones of yourself to scale up your training efforts. How? By recruiting and activating a network of champions for your cause, namely the adoption of Microsoft 365 Business. Usually, these people are early adopters and super users of the current technology in your organization. Give them access to the full suite of the Microsoft 365 Business services and conduct a focused training for them. Apply the “train the trainer” model so that they understand that they will be tasked with training other people in the organization. It might help if you give them an incentive to be in the Champs network (such as a new laptop) in exchange for going through the experience of a Windows 10 AutoPilot deployment. Ideally, you'll want a champ from each department who understands the workflow for the users in a department. You might find that people in the Marketing department, for example, are excited about Microsoft Stream, but the folks in the Finance department, not so much. Communicate the change It has been said that 90 percent of a project manager's job is communication. This statistic is true and applicable when you're implementing Microsoft 365 Business in your organization. Whether you have an assigned project manager or are tasked with the role of the project manager, it's best to have a solid communication plan. Be mindful of the cadence for the communication. If you send an email every day for three months reminding end users of an upcoming change, you may end up with annoyed people who will create a rule to automatically delete your emails or route them to a folder to read later. If you space the communication too far apart, they might miss a communication and be unprepared when you finally make the switch. You need to find the right balance based on what you know about your end users. For small businesses, you should make an initial announcement about the Microsoft 365 implementation around the time that licenses are procured. Then about three weeks before the email is cut over to the new system, the drip communication starts, and the frequency gradually increases as the cutover date approaches. Develop and execute a Microsoft 365 Business training plan The saying, “fail to plan, plan to fail,” couldn't be truer when it comes to implementing a new technology. Key to the overall implementation plan is the training plan for end users. The training plan doesn't have to be complex. Even an outline of who's going to be trained on what and when is sufficient, especially if you have a small organization. Remember the champs network and the executive sponsors? Those groups need to be included in the training plan. You may find that you need to adjust your training plan as you get a feel for how well your initial groups of trainees are responding. As such, create your training plan in a format that can be easily updated or collaborated on. You can expose your trainees to the new technology by using SharePoint lists or document libraries as the repository for your training plan. They will start to get trained on the functionalities without even realizing it! Start with “easy win” scenarios A trainer was once asked to deliver a four-hour training on Office 365 for a small business with 25 users. Attempts to get information from the business owner on the training needs and the technical skill sets of the employees were unsuccessful and the trainer was told to just train the users “the dummies way.” What that signaled to the trainer was that he couldn't have a fixed topic for the training. The trainer ended up preparing different scenarios to fit a variety of personas. Based on the flow of the conversation, the trainer pulled a certain scenario and focused the training around it. So, what is a scenario? In the above example, a scenario went something like this: Jane, Rob, and Paul work in the marketing department and are constantly emailing each other documents they're collaborating on. It's hard to keep track of the latest version of the document and figure out who's made what comment. Jane, who is in charge of culling all the feedback, is getting frustrated because just as she thinks she's made the final version of the document, someone sends belated feedback. Or someone pulls into the conversation another person who then provides feedback on issues, not knowing they have already been dealt with in previous conversations. The trainer presented that scenario to the workshop attendees and asked if that happens in their organization. The response was overwhelmingly yes. Based on that, the trainer spent 30 minutes showing them the co-authoring features in Word, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint. They then used their own laptops to practice. By the end of 30 minutes, everyone had a good grasp of the concept and figured out which people were better at it than others. The ones who were more skilled became the go-to person for the ones who needed more hand-holding. The lesson here is that if you want users to adopt the Microsoft 365 Business, make it a quick win for them and tailor the training to a scenario that is real for them. It wouldn't have worked if the trainer simply started the training with Outlook and how to send encrypted emails. Provide self-service Microsoft 365 Business resources If you have a small or one-person IT team, you can reduce the burden of supporting many users during the implementation of Microsoft 365 Business by creating a self-service portal in SharePoint or Microsoft Stream or both. You can post 30-second how-to videos to give end users a refresher on the training. You can ask the champs to post content at your portal, or open your self-service repository to anyone's contribution. By doing it this way, your end users will be practicing what they've learned as they load content in SharePoint or Stream. If you want to get fancy, you can gamify the process by giving incentives to users who have the most-liked video. The Internet has a ton of videos on different scenarios for Microsoft 365 that you can include in your resources. However, it’s often the case that raw videos created by a co-worker showing the organization's environment resonate more with users than high-production-value marketing videos from Microsoft on YouTube and other channels. If your users are not into videos, another option is to start a OneNote notebook from a SharePoint site. In the notebook, create different sections focused on a technology. In each section, include step-by-step instructions showing how to complete a task using the technology. For example, you could have a section on Outlook where you have a page for email, a page for the calendar, and a page for tasks. As users read your content, they'll be learning about not only Outlook but also OneNote and SharePoint, albeit unknowingly. Highlight your Microsoft 365 Business wins Implementing a new technology such as Microsoft 365 Business is not an easy task. When you have success stories, take the time to celebrate and share the win with your end users. When users understand the value of their contribution to the success of the implementation, it helps motivate others who may not be participating much. An example of a win is showcasing how much the company saved by reducing travel costs since people started having videoconference meetings using Microsoft Teams. A win might also be a testimonial from someone about the increase in productivity from co-authoring documents in real time versus emailing documents back and forth. SharePoint Online has a nifty feature called News, an out-of-the-box service that allows you to create content that then gets shared across the different SharePoint experiences and apps. You can highlight your wins by using SharePoint News to further drive adoption of the technology. To find out more about SharePoint News, download this PDF file. Check the Microsoft 365 Business usage report As a global admin to your Microsoft 365 tenant, you have access to usage reports that provide insight into how your user base is adopting the technology. The reports include activity and usage metrics for Exchange, Microsoft Teams, Office 365, OneDrive, SharePoint, Skype for Business, and Yammer. You can export the reports into Excel for further analysis. If you're so inclined, you can even analyze the data in Power BI, yet another tool from Microsoft for visualizing data. One way to act on the available data to drive adoption is to look at OneDrive for Business usage. The report includes information on the user, the last activity date, the number of files, the number of active files, and the storage used. If you notice that a user has zero (0) files and very low storage used, that might be a good indication that the user isn't adopting OneDrive for Business. Based on that information, you could target training for users who have low usage of OneDrive for Business. Be ready to provide support for your Microsoft 365 Business Integration When deploying a new technology, nothing fails as spectacularly as a deployment with no support model in place. Following a deployment, people have even been fired from their jobs because of bad user experience and no clear path for escalation. Depending on how you acquire your licenses, you may have different options for support. If you bought your Microsoft 365 Business licenses directly from Microsoft through their website, your support is provided by Microsoft. Unless you're paying big money for Premiere support, only the global admin can submit support tickets to Microsoft Support. That means you, as the IT admin, will be on point for providing support for your end users. However, you can submit a ticket on behalf of your end users, and Microsoft Support may end up working directly with them to resolve an issue. If you purchased your licenses from a Microsoft Partner, either through the Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) or Enterprise Agreement (EA) model, the partner is on the hook for providing support. Depending on your agreement with the partner, you can either send your end users directly to the partner's support team or act as the intermediary between your end users and the partner's support team. Be aware that partners may charge an extra fee for support on top of license fees. At Cloud611, you can purchase Microsoft 365 licenses that include 24/7/365 end user support for a minimal fee on top of the license cost. Bring in the Microsoft 365 Business pros If you have followed all or most of the tips above and still aren’t having success in driving adoption for Microsoft 365 Business, it may be time to bring in the pros. The Microsoft Partner Network is replete with highly qualified training and adoption partners who can help you unblock adoption challenges. Although you have to shell out good money to engage these partners, the investment may be worth it in the long run. You can search for Microsoft training partners. Just a heads up — that web address may not work in the Chrome browser, but the URL works perfectly in the Microsoft Edge browser. One of the partners you'll find from the Microsoft Partner Network is Softchoice Corporation. They have a robust end user adoption professional service that includes defining use cases to understand the end users' needs all the way to the creating an implementation plan to drive desired business outcomes. Yet another training partner you might consider is Brainstorm Inc. They were contracted by Microsoft to provide training for the Customer Immersion Experience program. If you feel your organization has unique training needs, you may just need to be connected with the right partner. Please send an email to [email protected] with the subject line “Need help with training.” Someone will respond ASAP.

Article / Updated 06-05-2019

What is Microsoft 365 Business? It’s Microsoft’s answer to business productivity. Baby boomers (1946–1964), Gen X (1965–1979), Gen Y (Millennials, 1980–1994), and now Gen Z (Centennials, 1995–2012) are the four cultural generations now converging in the workplace. If you think simply having a cookie-cutter approach for driving productivity in the workplace is all that’s needed, think again. Consider this. Baby boomers grew up during a time of prosperity and see work as a 9-to-5 career until retirement. Gen Xers, on the other hand, have the highest level of education in the US, saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the tragedy of Tiananmen Square, and see work as a contract — just a job. Millennials grew up with a computer and the initial stages of Internet at home. They do best in a flexible work arrangement and will account for 50 percent of the workforce by 2020. Centennials are the multitasking fiends, super-connected kids who can troubleshoot a baby boomer’s cell phone while building a website and Snapchatting with a friend. With such a diverse workforce and different work styles, businesses need to figure out a way to provide a flexible and productive work environment while ensuring data privacy and security. The best way to address this challenge is to embrace cloud technologies and adopt a business strategy to run a secure and productive enterprise. Enter Microsoft 365 Business. Realizing the value of Microsoft 365 Business Bring your own device (BYOD), touchdown stations, outcome-driven versus process-driven goals, flexible work arrangements, and data security and governance are just a few of the catchphrases you hear at work today. As businesses shift from the old-school approach to a modern workplace, they do not need to spend a lot of money and procure several solutions from different vendors. Microsoft 365 Business is a complete, intelligent, and secure solution delivered through the cloud that empowers employees to be productive with tools built for teamwork but designed to fit individual work styles. With one subscription, an employee gets a comprehensive productivity, security, and device management toolkit that doesn’t require expensive consultants and highly trained systems engineers to implement. This image provides a high-level comparison between several stand-alone solutions versus the bundled Microsoft 365 Business solution. Clearly, SMBs can benefit from the cost-effective, simplified, and integrated solution Microsoft 365 Business offers. Promoting teamwork in a diverse workforce with Office 365 We all work differently and have our own preferred method for communication and collaboration. In a team with representation from all four cultural generations, you could end up with someone who prefers phone calls, another who prefers email, someone else who thinks anything other than instant messaging is lame, and yet another team member who mainly communicates with emojis and office memes. Lucky for you, Microsoft 365 Business has a way to bring all these people together with a universal toolkit for collaboration: Office 365. Office 365 comes with four key workloads, or services: Exchange Online powers email, calendar, tasks, journaling, and more. It has built-in intelligence to protect users from phishing, spoofing, and so on. SharePoint Online provides online storage with built-in capabilities for real-time co-authoring and data protection. OneDrive for Business is part of this workload. Microsoft Teams (soon to replace Skype for Business) serves as a digital collaboration hub for online meetings, web conferencing, instant messaging, and more. Office ProPlus includes the familiar Office desktop applications: Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, and Access. In addition to these key workloads, Office 365 includes productivity and security tools that integrate seamlessly across the entire suite of services. Following is a partial list of services included in Office 365: Delve and Yammer help you identify people in your organization with certain expertise. Office 365 Groups automatically gives team members a shared mailbox, file folder, and notebook. StaffHub is a retail store’s solution for managing shift schedules for workers or associates, allowing them to share files, swap schedules, and connect to company resources. Stream is your YouTube at work. You can upload and view videos, create channels for your team, and even watch videos with transcripts and closed captions. Putting together a complete list of services is challenging because Office 365 is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering and Microsoft is constantly rolling out new features. Stay on top of notifications you receive from Microsoft regarding updates to the service. In that way, you will know about new features and will be prepared for functionalities scheduled for retirement or deprecation. If you’re wondering how you could possibly use all these services, consider the scenario below. On any given day, an employee in a modern workplace can work smarter by using at least four capabilities in Office 365.

Article / Updated 06-01-2019

When you run a business, you have data and you collect data. Data can be in the form of proprietary information, employee data, customer data, or data from your vendors and partners. In today's digital age, data is the new currency. That’s why you need to take the time to implement some basic security for Office 365. Hackers know that protecting data is a challenge for SMBs, so it is no surprise that hackers increasingly target small businesses. A few years ago, ransomware from hackers who wanted a quick buck started out at around $5,000. Nowadays, with the availability of ransomware-as-a-service, victims have been asked to pay $1,500 to get their data back. Although you can't stop hackers from being hackers, you can stop them from making you and your Office 365 tools their latest victim. The first step in protecting your environment is to assume that you will be attacked. With that mindset, you can begin securing your front door and letting hackers know they're not welcome. Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection overview Statista.com studies show that 48 percent of email traffic worldwide is spam. When you're using Office 365, the emails you see in your mailbox are mostly ones that have passed the cloud-based mail-filtering system for spam (unwanted mail) and malware (viruses and spywares). This filtering system is automatically configured in the subscription, but you, as an admin, can tweak the settings to fit your company's needs. Hackers, however, have become smarter. To bypass these filters, they've resorted to social-engineering techniques to try to breach your environment. They employ deceptive techniques to manipulate you — for instance, to get you to give them your password. Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is a cloud-based solution that employs a multilayered approach to protecting not just email but also data across the Microsoft 365 Business environment, including SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams. In the Microsoft 365 Business subscription, Office 365 ATP comes with two features: ATP Safe Attachments, and ATP Safe Links. Secure Office 365 using ATP Safe Attachments Here’s a story from a Microsoft 365 expert: “While traveling this year, I thought I’d use a 30-minute layover to be productive and check my email. I connected to the airport Wi-Fi and fired up Outlook; soon I was responding to emails and accomplishing a lot. As I was about to shut down my computer to start boarding my flight, I saw an email come in marked “Urgent.” It was from a colleague, with an attachment and a note saying she needed my immediate approval or the project we were working on would be delayed by four weeks. In my rush, I didn't verify the email associated with the sender and immediately double-clicked the attachment. As it turns out, even someone aware of phishing tricks can still fall prey to social-engineering tactics. Lucky for me, ATP Safe Attachments is running on my system, so instead of the hacker wreaking havoc, I was presented with a notification that the attachment was blocked.” The moral of this story is…use ATP Safe Attachments. The ATP Safe Attachments feature took the appropriate action based on the policies that were configured in Exchange Online. The policy allowed the user to see the body of the email but blocked access to the malicious file. Sophisticated machine-learning technologies, artificial intelligence, and a host of other automated systems run in the background in real time to ensure that the policies are in effect — that is the beauty of cloud technologies. Imagine if you were to do this all by yourself. You'd have to spend a ton of money, time, brainpower, and — actually, you simply couldn't do what this technology does. ATP Safe Attachments also works for files in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business document libraries. If someone loads malicious files in document libraries, the system detects them and prevents users from opening them. Here's how to set up ATP Safe Attachments for Office 365. Log in as a global administrator. In the left pane, under Admin Centers, select Security & Compliance. In the left pane, in the Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance portal, expand Threat Management. Then select Policy, and click the ATP Safe Attachments card. On the Safe Attachments page, select the box to the left of Turn on ATP for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams. This action enables Safe Attachments in SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams. Click the New button (+ sign) to create a new policy. In the New Safe Attachments Policy window, specify the name and description. Here, the policy has been named Deliver Right Away. Choose the action that's appropriate for your organization. In the example above, Dynamic Delivery was chosen. This choice delivers an email that contains an attachment immediately to the recipient. While the attachment is being scanned, a placeholder attachment is attached, and the user is notified that the attachment is being analyzed. After the scanning is complete, if the attachment is deemed safe, the attachment is reattached to the email. If the attachment is determined to be malicious, it is sent to quarantine, where the global administrator of Microsoft 365 Admin Center can review and manage it. In the Redirect Attachment on Detection section, select the Enable Redirect option and enter an email address. This step is required if you want someone investigate malicious attachments. In the Applied To section, in the *If… box, select The Recipient Domain Is. In the domain picker window that pops us, select the domain for your Microsoft 365 Business tenant that ends with .onmicrosoft.com, and then click the OK button. Click the Save button. A Warning window appears, reminding you that Dynamic Email Delivery is only for mailboxes hosted in Office 365. Click OK to close the window. You return to the Safe Attachments page, where you can see the Safe Attachment policy you just created. In the Save Attachments page, click Save to save your changes. If you're finished with creating policies for Safe Attachments, you can navigate away from the page by clicking any of the menus on the left or by closing the browser. ATP Safe Links Hackers are persistent. They will continue to find ways to try to breach your environment. If you close the door with attachments, they will try to open another door by tricking you into clicking a link in the body of an email or inside a document to take you to a malicious site. They may even make it so that the first time you click the link, it takes you to a legitimate website. If you click the link again, it redirects you to a malicious site! ATP Safe Links, another security feature in Office 365 ATP, verifies the link each time you click it in real time. If the link is malicious, and ATP Safe Links is configured, a warning page will appear to notify the user that access to the website is blocked. Office 365 ATP comes with a default policy for ATP Safe Links that blocks malicious links based on sophisticated machine-learning algorithms, artificial intelligence, and a bunch of automated processes. This service is constantly being updated, so stay current to align your policies based on what's new. As a cloud service, Office 365 ATP is updated regularly, so it's best to edit the default policy to ensure that all the new features are enabled for your company. To edit the default ATP Safe Links policy in Office 365, follow these steps: Log in as a global administrator. In the left pane, under Admin Centers, select Security & Compliance. In the left pane, under the Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance portal, expand Threat Management. Then select Policy, and click the ATP Safe Links card. On the Safe Links page, under the Policies that apply to the entire organization section, select Default and click the Edit icon (pencil). In the Safe Links Policy for Your Organization window, add any URLs you want to block. For added protection, select all boxes under Settings that apply to content except email heading. This default policy does not apply to email messages. You can use this as a guide to create your own policy to apply to emails. Click the Save button to save your changes. You return to the Safe Links page. If you're finished with creating policies for Safe Links, you can navigate away from the page by clicking any of the menus on the left or by closing the browser. Using encryption to protect Office 365 email Today, sending encrypted emails in Office 365 involves a few clicks. There is no software to install or keys to generate or share with others. All the magic happens in the backend. The IT admin doesn't even have to configure anything in the backend. That's because Microsoft 365 Business automatically comes with Office 365 Message Encryption as part of the Azure Information Protection service. Right out of the gate, licensed users can immediately take advantage of this security feature. Azure Information Protection labels As the name suggests, Azure Information Protection (AIP) is a cloud-based service designed to protect information. AIP includes a variety of features depending on the type of plan you subscribed to. One of the features of AIP is Office 365 Message Encryption (OME). Microsoft 365 Business includes AIP Premium 1, which includes OME. OME in turn, comes with the following four default labels: Encrypt: When this label is applied to an email, the entire email is encrypted and can be viewed only by the recipients of the email. Recipients can be people inside or outside your company. If the recipients of the encrypted email are using Microsoft cloud technologies such as Office 365 or Microsoft 365, no additional steps are required to decrypt and read the email. Recipients who are using another email system, such as Gmail or Yahoo, must complete a few simple steps to confirm their identity before the email is decrypted and becomes readable. Recipients of an encrypted email will not be able to remove the encryption. Do Not Forward: If the Do Not Forward label is applied to an email, the email will be encrypted and the recipient will not be able to forward the email to anyone. Confidential: The Confidential label allows anyone in your organization with a Microsoft 365 Business license to view, reply, forward, print, and copy the data. If an email labeled Confidential is accidentally sent to someone outside the organization, the recipient will still receive the email but the content will not be readable. The sender of the email will be able to track and revoke access to the email at any time. Highly Confidential: This label is similar to the Confidential label except that recipients will not be able to forward, print, or copy the data. These labels are accessible from the Outlook desktop application as well as its cloud version, Outlook Online. Sending an encrypted email in Office 365 No software installation, no key generation or distribution, and no admin setup and configuration. That's the promise of Office 365 Message Encryption. Sending encrypted messages from Outlook or Outlook Online is quick and easy with a Microsoft 365 Business subscription. To send an encrypted email in Outlook Online: In Outlook Online, click New Message to create a new message. Compose the email as you normally would. Enter the recipient's email address in the To line, the subject, and the message. In the top menu bar, click Encrypt. The Encrypt label is automatically applied to the email. You can apply a different label by clicking Click Change Permission in the gray bar above the recipient's name. Click Send. The email is sent and the screen reverts to Outlook's reading view. If the recipient of the email uses Exchange Online in Office 365 of Microsoft 365, the email will automatically be readable. If the recipient uses another email system, such as Gmail, the email will include a button that shows the recipient how to read the encrypted email. This image shows a recipient using Gmail. When the recipient clicks the Read the Message button, a new window opens. In the new window, the recipient is given two options for viewing the message: sign in with a Google account or use a one-time passcode. After one of these authentication requirements is met, the email is displayed.

Article / Updated 05-30-2019

To deploy Windows 10 by using Windows AutoPilot, Azure Active Directory first must know that the company owns the device. This means that the device will need to be registered in Microsoft 365 Admin Center with the device’s hardware ID. After the device is registered, it is ready for Windows AutoPilot deployment. Keep reading to find out how to register the device. Capturing the device ID for Windows AutoPilot If you want to repurpose a computer or laptop for Windows AutoPilot, you must first extract the device ID of the device by using PowerShell, a utility tool installed on any Windows 10 device. In this exercise, you will be doing some geeky stuff, but don’t worry. No prior coding experience is required. The only skill required is the ability to read and type. Capturing the device ID for Windows AutoPilot involves three steps: Get the script that will extract the information from the device. Save the script in a shared folder or a USB flash drive for later access. Run the script on the device from which you want to extract the device ID. Windows AutoPilot step 1: Get the PowerShell script If you don’t want to reinvent the wheel, you might consider using a PowerShell script that's already been shared and tested in the geek community. Here's how to get the script that seasoned professionals use: From a device already running Windows 10, click the Windows Start icon and then type PowerShell. Right-click Windows PowerShell and choose Run as Administrator. Copy and run the following commands, which are the Get-WindowsAutoPilot script: Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Save-Script -Name Get-WindowsAutoPilotInfo -Path Install-Script -Name Get-WindowsAutoPilotInfo Accept the change by typing Y in the Execution Policy Change section and then press Enter.The PowerShell window displays an error in red. In the PATH Environment Variable Change section, type Y and press Enter. In the Nuget Provider Is Required to Continue section, type Y and press Enter. Under Untrusted Repository, enter Y and then press Enter. After the command has run successfully, the last line in PowerShell will be PS C:\WINDOWS\system32>/ Close the PowerShell window by clicking the X in the upper-right corner. Windows AutoPilot step 2: Save the script After you complete the preceding steps, you can add PowerShell in your IT admin's toolkit (check here to find out how to get executive buy-in for Microsoft 365 Business) — and be able to honestly add to your resume your experience using the tool. That's just the beginning. Next, let's save the script so you can it to capture the device ID. Open File Explorer by clicking the folder icon on the taskbar, and then navigate to C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Scripts Verify that the Get-WindowsAutoPilotInfo.ps1 file is there. Copy the file to both a shared location such as OneDrive for Business or a document library in SharePoint and to a USB flash drive. You will need to access that script from the device for which you want to capture the device ID. Windows AutoPilot step 3: Run the script Now that the script is readily accessible, let’s capture the device ID. You will step through two scenarios in this process: Scenario 1: Capture the device ID from a device that is already in use. Scenario 2: Capture the device ID from a new device that has not been turned on yet and has not gone through the Out-of-the-Box Experience, or OOBE. To capture the device ID from an existing device for Windows AutoPilot: From the device, navigate to where the PowerShell script is stored. Copy the file to the C drive, placing it in the root folder for easy navigation in PowerShell. Open Notepad and type the following: .\Get-WindowsAutoPilotInfo.ps1 -ComputerName {ComputerName} -OutputFile .\MyDeviceID.csv Make sure to replace {ComputerName} (including the braces) with the name of your computer. Don’t close Notepad. You will need it in Step 5. So you and your computer have been buddies for a while, but now you realize that you don’t know your computer’s official name! Fortunately, your computer won’t take offense. Just click the Windows Start button, click Settings, and then select System. In the left pane, click About to find the device name under the Device Specifications group. Run PowerShell as an administrator per the instructions above (“Step 2: Save the script”). PowerShell will default to the following path: PS C:\Windows\systems32> Point PowerShell to the folder where the script is saved from Step 1 by entering the following command: cd\ PowerShell displays the following path: PS C:\> Copy the code you wrote in Notepad in Step 2 and paste it after the > character in the resulting PowerShell path (PS C:\>) in Step 4. Then press Enter. PowerShell runs the script in the background. When it’s finished, it reverts to the C:\> path. In File Explorer, navigate to Local Disk (C:). You will find the file with the device ID called MyDeviceID.csv. The .csv file will contain information about the device in the following order: Column 1: Device serial number Column 2: Windows product ID Column 3: Hardware hash With the device information in hand, you're ready to register the device in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center for Windows 10 AutoPilot deployment. Registering the device for Windows AutoPilot deployment In this step, you upload the .csv file with the device information to Microsoft 365 Admin Center, and then create and assign an Windows AutoPilot profile to the device. Here’s how: In Microsoft 365 Admin Center, find the Device Actions card, and then select Deploy Windows with Autopilot. The Prepare for Windows page appears. Click the Start Guide button. The Upload .csv File with List of Devices page appears. Click the Browse button to locate the .csv file you created previously. Navigate to the C drive on the device, select the MyDeviceID.csv file, and then click the Open button. The Upload .csv File with List of Devices page appears. Click Next. The Assign Profile page appears. Create a new deployment profile by entering a name in the Name Your New Profile and then click Next. The You Are Done! screen appears. Click X (close). It will take a few minutes for the device to show up on the list of devices registered for AutoPilot. When it does, the end user will be taken through the simplified out-of-the-box experience (OOBE) for joining the device to Azure AD when he or she turns on the machine. Stepping through the OOBE Because Microsoft, HP, Dell, and Lenovo are part of the Windows AutoPilot program, these manufacturers can load the required device ID for your organization in preparation for an Windows AutoPilot deployment. If you purchase new devices from these companies, ask them about loading the device IDs for you. If you prefer to have a Microsoft Partner help you with device purchases and working with manufacturers, contact [email protected]. After the devices are registered for Windows AutoPilot, the end-user’s experience for joining the device to Azure AD for management is greatly simplified. For the IT admin, the Windows AutoPilot process eliminates the need to even touch the device. So, if you have employees out in the field and one of them loses his device while out on a trip, that employee can basically go to a computer store, purchase a laptop, have the IT admin register the laptop for Windows AutoPilot, turn the device on, enter the credentials, and — voila! — the laptop is now protected and managed. The following sequence provides a glimpse into the end user experience when users first turn on a new device that has been registered for Windows AutoPilot: The end user selects a language and region. The end user validates the keyboard layout and confirms whether a second keyboard layout needs to be added. The end user connects to the network. The end user enters his or her Microsoft 365 Business credentials. The system finishes the setup (about 5 to 10 minutes) and then displays the default Windows 10 desktop. If the IT admin has configured the deployment to also install Office ProPlus, the applications will automatically start to install after a few minutes. If you followed along with these steps and successfully deployed Windows AutoPilot for your company, congratulations! That was no small feat in the past, requiring deep technical expertise or the hiring of consultants and systems engineers. If you ran into issues, help is available. If you purchased licenses directly from Microsoft, you can call Microsoft support. If you prefer to have a Microsoft Partner guide you through the deployment, send an inquiry to [email protected]. Ready to delve into apps and features? Check out these top ten Microsoft 365 Business tools.

Article / Updated 05-30-2019

The term information protection, or IP, is generally used to encompass industry standards and best practices for protecting information from unauthorized access. In the Microsoft ecosystem, Azure Information Protection, is a cloud service that allows organizations to classify data with labels to control access. Azure Information Protection can be purchased as a stand-alone license or bundled into a solution such as Microsoft 365 Business. Here is a breakdown of the features included in each of the four versions of Azure Information Protection. The AIP Premium P1 license is included in Microsoft 365 Business. The evolution of Azure Information Protection Azure Information Protection has gone through an evolution in the last few years, and you may have encountered this technology under a different name. Some of the technology's old names are Azure Rights Management Service (Azure RMS), Azure Active Directory Rights Management (AADRM), Windows Azure Active Directory Rights Managements, Information Rights Management (IRM), or to some, simply “The New Microsoft RMS.” You'll do yourself and Microsoft a great favor by forgetting all those old names and just sticking with Azure Information Protection. The latest iteration of this cloud technology now offers classification and labeling capabilities that can, in turn, apply rights management to protect files. At a high level, Azure Information Protection protects your data in three key steps: First, data is classified and labeled. For example, if a document is classified as confidential and should be available only to the recipients of the email, the label might be Confidential — Recipients Only.” Next, data is protected through encryption, access control, and policies based on the label. Continuing with the preceding example, a document marked with the Confidential — Recipients Only label will be encrypted so that only the recipients can read it. Finally, documents can be tracked, and access can be revoked if necessary. From the preceding example, the sender of the email may decide that one of the recipients should no longer have access to the document. In that case, the sender can revoke access for a specific user. Office 365 Message Encryption, or OME, is one of the features in Azure Information Protection. If you have the AIP Premium P2 license, you can avail yourself of additional functionalities, such as automatic classification for cloud and on-premises data. Here, you discover the features available in the AIP Premium P1 license. Activating Azure Information Protection To start using Azure Information Protection, the first thing you need to do as an IT admin is to activate the service in your Microsoft 365 Business tenant. Even if you think the service is already enabled, it doesn't hurt to verify. Here's how: Log in to Microsoft’s Admin portal with your global admin credentials. In the left navigation, under the Settings group, click Services & Add-in. The Services & Add-ins page is displayed. Select Microsoft Azure Information Protection The Microsoft Azure Information Protection window is displayed on the right. In the Microsoft Azure Information Protection window, click Manage Microsoft Azure Information protection settings. Confirm that Rights Management is activated. If it isn't, click the Activate button In this example, the tenant is already activated for Azure Information Protection. After you've confirmed the status of your Azure Information Protection settings, you can safely close the browser window or navigate back to Microsoft 365 Admin Center from the app launcher. Getting familiar with Azure Information Protection labels Azure Information Protection comes preconfigured with default policies and labels that are applicable for most organizations, including small businesses. Before you start thinking about configuring custom labels and policies for your organization, take the time to become familiar with the Azure Information Protection default settings. You might save yourself a lot of work creating and testing custom policies. If your Office 365 tenant was provisioned with Azure Information Protection after February 2018, the following labels and corresponding descriptions are already available: Personal: Non-business data, for personal use only. Public: Business data that is specifically prepared and approved for public consumption. General: Business data that is not intended for public consumption but can be shared with external partners as required. Examples include a company internal telephone directory, organizational charts, internal standards, and most internal communication. Confidential: Sensitive business data that could cause damage to the business if shared with unauthorized people. Examples include contracts, security reports, forecast summaries, and sales account data. The Confidential label is further broken down into two sub-labels: Recipients Only: Confidential data that requires protection and that can be viewed only by the recipients. This label will only appear in Outlook and will apply the Do Not Forward policy. All Employees: Confidential data that requires protection that allows all employees full permissions. Data owners can track and revoke content. Anyone (not protected): Data that does not require protection. Use this option with care and with appropriate business justification. Highly Confidential. Very sensitive business data that would cause damage to the business if it was shared with unauthorized people. Examples include employee and customer information, passwords, source code, and pre-announced financial reports. The Highly Confidential label is further broken down into three sub-labels: Recipients Only: Highly confidential data that requires protection and that can be viewed only by the recipients. This label will only appear in Outlook and will apply the Do Not Forward policy. All Employees: Highly confidential data that allows all employees to view, edit, and reply permissions to this content. Data owners can track and revoke content. Anyone (not protected): Data that does not require protection. Use this option with care and with appropriate business justification. If your Office 365 tenant was provisioned before March 21, 2017, you'll find that the General and Highly Confidential labels are missing. Their equivalent in the older tenants are Internal and Secret, respectively. To further explore these labels and corresponding policies, you need to navigate to the Azure portal and access the Azure Information Protection service settings. Here's how: Follow Steps 1-4 above to activate Azure Protection Information. On the Rights Management page, click the Advanced Features button A new browser window launches and the Azure Information Protection — Labels page is displayed. The Confidential and Highly Confidential labels are collapsed by default. To view their sublabels, click the arrow to the left of the label to expand the selection. A few words about Azure Information Protection policies On the Azure Information Protection — Labels page, note that the labels all have Global under the Policy column. By default, Azure Information Protection comes with a Global policy that is applied to all users in the tenant. You can edit this policy, but you can't delete it. You can also create new policies and configure them to your heart's content, but the Global policy will always be there. To view the details of the Azure Information Protection Global policy, follow these steps: Follow Steps 1-4 above to activate Azure Protection Information. On the Rights Management page, click the Advanced Features button A new browser window launches and the Azure Information Protection — Labels page is displayed. In the left menu, under the Classifications group, click Policies. On the right, the Configure Administrative Name and Description for Each Policy blade is displayed.The Policy: Global blade is displayed. Be careful about changing the default settings in the Global policy because it is applicable to everyone in your organization. You might want to create another policy first and test it out. If you decide to change the Global policy, make sure to save your changes. (If you forget and simply close the blade, the system will prompt you to save your changes.) Putting Azure Information Protection Into Action Implementing Azure Information Protection is not something you would do without thoughtful planning and the involvement of keys stakeholders in your organization. You need to make sure that the rollout is communicated to end users, training is delivered, and support is planned. As an IT admin implementing Microsoft 365 Business, you should perform some testing and become familiar with the process before you implement Azure Information Protection for the entire organization. After you've explored the Azure Information Protection service in Microsoft Azure, the next step is to put what you know into action. In this phase, you need your end users to participate. Installing the Azure Information Protection client You can have the greatest policies and labels for Azure Information Protection in Azure, but they'll be no good if your end users can't see and apply them. The AIP client, a program that is run on the end users' devices, solves this problem. Before you install the AIP client, make sure Office ProPlus is already installed but not running on the device. When you're ready to install the AIP client, do the following: Navigate to the Azure Information Protection client download page. The Microsoft Download Center appears. Click the Download button. The Choose the Download You Want window is displayed. Select AzInfoProtection.exe by selecting the box and then click Next. From the notification that pops up at the bottom of your screen, click (or double-click) Run. The system performs a security check on the download. When the check is complete, the Microsoft Azure Information Protection window pops up. Click the I Agree button. You can opt to install a demo policy (not recommended because it will clutter your user interface) or send usage statistics to Microsoft or both. In the User Account Control window that displays, click Yes to start the installation. You see the progress of the installation. When the Microsoft Azure Information Protection window displays Completed Successfully, click the Close button. The installation window disappears, and you're now ready to check that the Azure Information Protection client was successfully installed.To verify the installation, open a blank document in Word. You see the labels below the ribbon. Applying a label to a document Now that the Azure Information Protection client is installed, and the labels are displayed in the Office applications, it's time to put it to the test. Create a Word document and pretend that it's highly confidential. On the Sensitivity bar, click Highly Confidential and select All Employees. The label is applied, and the other labels will disappear. Run Outlook, start a new email, and attach the Word document. Note that Outlook displays the Sensitivity bar with the same labels you saw in Word. Enter the email address of a user in your organization. Enter an email address outside your organization, and then click Send. Outlook sends the email to the recipients with the Highly Confidential/All Employees label.In this exercise, the email will still go out to both the internal and external user. The internal user will be able to open and read the document from the sharing invitation. The external user, however, will be blocked from opening the document and will be presented with the message shown here. Revoking access to information Azure Information Protection protects your company information from falling into the wrong hands — even after it has fallen into the wrong hands. For example, suppose you realize that you accidentally sent a document to the wrong people and want to remedy the situation by revoking all access to the document. Here's what you can do, continuing from the example above: Open the protected Word document from the preceding exercise. A yellow bar appears, indicating the sensitivity of the document and containing a button to view the permissions for the document. On the Ribbon, click Home, and then click the Protect button. A submenu appears below the Protect button. On the submenu, click Track and Revoke to launch the document-tracking site. Your browser launches to take you to the document-tracking site. If this is the first time you've visited the site, log in with your Microsoft 365 Business credentials. After a successful login, the document-tracking site displays a summary of views of your document. Explore the tabs to see the robust features in Azure Information Protection. At the bottom of the document-tracking site, click the Revoke access button. The Revoke access page is displayed. Click the Confirm button at the bottom of the page. The Revoke Complete window is displayed. Click Continue to go back to the document-tracking page. In the Summary view, the document displays the Revoked stamp. One of the features that is most amazing in this solution is that in the Map tab, you can see where around the world users tried to access your document! So, if you ever find that someone from, say, Russia or Timbuktu tried to open your document even though all your users are in the United States, you’ll know that access to the document should be revoked.

Article / Updated 05-28-2019

Generally, people don't object to providing multifactor authentication when using ATM machines to withdraw cash. Train end users that their identities are just as valuable as the cash in their bank accounts and, as a result, the same security precautions should be followed. Microsoft processes billions of authentications monthly and the cloud intelligence they gather from such a scale allows them to detect and block tens of millions of attacks every day. As new types of attacks are detected in various parts of the world, Microsoft's systems automatically protect customers, such as those in your organization. For organizations that have implemented risk policies, Microsoft has seen compromises reduced by 96 percent. For those who implement multifactor authentication specifically, they see a 99.9 percent risk reduction. If you have any doubt as to whether you should embrace multifactor authentication, those statistics should be convincing. Admin tasks for setting up multifactor authentication in Microsoft 365 Business By default, Microsoft 365 Business tenants are enabled for modern authentication, a protocol required for multifactor authentication. If you're running a version of Office older than Office 2016 or have users who check email using Apple Mail, however, end users will need to create multifactor authentication app passwords because those legacy systems do not support two-step verification. To configure multifactor authentication service settings in Microsoft 365 Business, follow these steps: Log in to Microsoft 365 Admin Center. You need your Microsoft 365 Global Admin credentials. On the left, Under Users, click Active Users. The Active Users page is displayed. Click the More Settings icon (…) and then select Setup Multifactor Authentication from the drop-down menu that appears. The Users tab of the Multifactor authentication page appears. Click Service Settings. The Service Settings page appears. Ensure that the options appropriate for your organization are selected, and then click the Save button. The system saves the changes and displays a validation window to confirm that the updates were successful. From the Updates Successful window, click the Close button. The validation window disappears, and the Service Settings page is displayed. Enabling end users for multifactor authentication in Microsoft 365 Business To enable multifactor authentication for a user licensed for Microsoft 365 Business: Log in to Microsoft 365 Admin Center. You need your Microsoft 365 Global Admin credentials. From the left menu, Under Users, click Active Users. The Active Users page appears. Click the More Settings icon (…) and then select Setup Multifactor Authentication from the drop-down menu that appears. The Users tab of the Multifactor authentication page appears. In the list of users, select the box to the left of the user you want to enable for multifactor authentication. The right pane displays additional information about the user and actions you can take for the user. On the right pane below the end user's contact information, click Enable. The system displays a validation window to confirm your intent to enable multifactor authentication for the user. Click the Enable Multi-Factor Auth button. The system processes the changes and displays the Updates Successful window. Click the Close button. The Users tab of the Multifactor authentication page is displayed. In the Service Settings page is an option to enable the Remember Multifactor Authentication feature. This handy feature allows end users to bypass second-factor authentications on trusted devices for a certain number of days after they've successfully signed in using multifactor authentication. Although this is a great experience for end users, Microsoft recommends NOT enabling this feature and this is advice you should definitely heed. Otherwise, the device will pose a security risk if it is compromised. If you decide to enable this feature and a device is compromised, you must perform a task to restore multifactor authentication on all devices on which users have logged in with multifactor authentication. You can enable multifactor authentication for multiple users at the same time by selecting more than one user from the list. For large organizations, a bulk update option is available to save the IT admin from clicking thousands of users. To enable multifactor authentication for a large number of users, click the Bulk Update button, upload a file in .csv format with all the users to be enabled for multifactor authentication, and then follow the prompts to complete the process. From the same window, you can download a sample file to ensure that your .csv file follows the required format. How an end user registers for Microsoft 365 Business multifactor authentication You've done your due diligence as an IT admin and have communicated that multifactor authentication will be implemented in your organization to access Microsoft 365 Business. It's now time for your end users to do their part. The first step an end user needs to take is to register other methods for authentication. It is not enough that an end user is enabled for multifactor authentication; the end user also needs to complete the registration process. Here's the fastest way for an end user to register for multifactor authentication: Navigate to Microsoft’s sign-in page. The sign-in page is displayed. Enter your username and click Next. The Enter Password window appears. Enter your password and click the Sign In button. The More Information Is Required window is displayed. Click the Next button. The Additional Security Verification page is displayed. Choose the appropriate option under Step 1. To follow along with the example, choose Mobile App. Select Use Verification Code under How Do You Want To Use the Mobile App? section, and then click the Set Up button. The Configure Mobile App window appears. Follow the instructions and then click the Next button. This example uses the Microsoft Authenticator app. After the app displays the six-digit code, the system displays the Verifying App window and a notification appears on the Authenticator app asking you to Approve or Deny the sign-in request. On your mobile device, in the Authenticator app, tap Approve. The Additional Security Verification page appears. Click the Save button. The system processes the changes and then displays the Updates Successful window. Click the Close button. The user's Account page appears. If you’re like most, you don’t like reinventing the wheel. So here's a link from Microsoft about Azure Active Directory that you can use in your communication email to prepare your end users for the multifactor authentication implementation. Managing multifactor authentication for Microsoft 365 Business It happens. No matter how much you empower your end users to self-serve, those members in your Azure Active Directory will invariably reach out to you for help with requests related to multifactor authentication. Or you may need to take action to mitigate a risk from a compromised device. You manage user settings for multifactor authentication in the same location that you enabled multifactor authentication: the Multifactor authentication page. From the Users tab of the Multifactor authentication page, note the three statuses in the Multi-Factor Auth Status column: Enabled: The user is enabled for multifactor authentication but has not yet completed the registration. Enforced: The user is enabled for multifactor authentication and has completed the registration. Disabled: The user is not enabled for multifactor authentication. If for some reason you need to remove the multifactor authentication feature for a user, select the enabled user from the list, and then click Disable under Quick Steps in the right pane. If an enabled user's device is compromised, click Manage User Settings under Quick Steps in the right pane. In the Manage User Settings window that appears, select one or more options. Then click the Save button. Having trouble getting the green light for adoption? Use these ten tips to help get executive buy-in for Microsoft 365 Business.

Article / Updated 05-27-2019

Microsoft 365 Business is like the gift that keeps on giving. For $20 per user per month, your employees can have an enterprise-class email system, a robust online storage and collaboration solution, a boundary-less chat and telephony system, and the desktop version of Office applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. All four of these key workloads have built-in security and privacy features that an IT admin can configure to his or her heart's content. Best of all, Microsoft 365 Business also comes with the Windows 10 operating system, which simplifies the maintenance and upkeep of an organization's Windows devices. But wait — there's more! In November 2018, 27 apps were available for end users with a Microsoft 365 Business license — great value for your company, but additional work for the IT admin if end users start using these apps and then ask the IT admin for support when they get stuck. Here, you discover the top ten Microsoft 365 apps and features to help you administer the services effectively and support your end users better. The service is constantly being improved, so be sure to stay up to date by checking the Microsoft 365 roadmap. BitLocker Microsoft 365 Business provides a Setup wizard to enable device and app policies in your Microsoft 365 tenant. In the process, a set of policies were configured to protect the Windows 10 devices in your organization. One of those policies is BitLocker. BitLocker is a disk encryption feature in Windows 10 that is included in the Microsoft 365 Business license. You will want to use this feature to protect data, especially sensitive data, saved in the computer's hard drive. As a best practice, end users with the Microsoft 365 Business license should save their documents in either OneDrive for Business or SharePoint so they can access those documents even when they're not using their work computer. But sometimes, people will save data on their laptop's hard drive. Without encryption, the data in the hard drive could pose a risk to the organization if the laptop were lost or stolen. With encryption, you can sleep well knowing that even if someone manages to log in to a lost or stolen device, the data stored in the hard drive is protected. Or maybe you have a broken laptop you need to mail for repair. Do you want to have unencrypted data handled by strangers? If you don't, use BitLocker. When the BitLocker setting is switched on in the device policy for Windows 10, end users licensed for Microsoft 365 Business will see intuitive prompts to start encrypting their Windows 10 device after it's synced to Azure Active Directory. The end user can use other applications while the encryption runs in the background. The BitLocker key generated when encryption is first run is stored in the end user's profile. If, for some reason, the system does not prompt the end user to turn on BitLocker, you can start it manually. Search for bitlocker in the Cortana search box and then click Manage BitLocker in the search results (left). In the , and then BitLocker Drive Encryption window that appears, click Turn on BitLocker (right). End User Communications Let's face it. Using a SaaS application such as Microsoft 365 Business has tons of advantages, but it can also accelerate the graying of an IT admin's hair. Why? Because Microsoft is constantly updating the service with new features and sometimes replacing features your users have become accustomed to. There’s good news for users experiencing issues. Microsoft can communicate directly with your end users on changes to the Microsoft products they are licensed to use. Simply enable the End User Communications service in your tenant, and everyone in your organization will receive an email from Microsoft when new features are rolled out or old features are removed. End users can manage their own preferences for the email communication from their security and privacy settings in Office 365. To turn on End User Communications, log in to Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Under the Settings group in the left navigation, click Services & Add-ins. Then click End User Communications, and toggle the switch to On. Microsoft Flow A famous quote on the Internet supposedly came from Bill Gates: “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” If that attribution is true, apparently the people at Microsoft want us all to be lazy. This much be a thing because Microsoft 365 Business includes Flow, which is an application that automates your workflow. You can choose from more than 200 (and growing) templates to manage your work, stay informed, and streamline processes. For example, you can use a Flow template to automatically save email attachments to OneDrive for Business or a document library in SharePoint Online. If you have business processes requiring approval from several people, you can start with an approval template and customize it to fit your needs. You can also integrate Flow with third-party applications such as Slack, Gmail, and RSS feeds. No programming skills are required to use Flow templates. The step-by-step instructions are easy to follow. To find these templates, click the Flow tile from the app launcher when logged in to Microsoft 365. The image below provides a glimpse of the templates available in Flow. Go ahead and check them out before one of your end users beats you to it! Microsoft Forms Survey Monkey out. Forms in. Yes, it's true. You can skip paying for third-party applications to create surveys, polls, or quizzes. Your Microsoft 365 Business license includes the Forms app, which is enabled by default in your tenant. You can create surveys, polls, and quizzes for internal use only, or you can invite people outside your organization to respond to a form on a web browser or a mobile device. Forms can have branching logic. Each licensed user can create up to 200 forms, and each form can have up to 50,000 responses. Export form responses to Excel for analysis and reporting. You can disable Forms for an end user in Microsoft 365 Admin Center by toggling the switch Off for Forms in the user's licenses. If an end user creates a form and leaves the company, the forms created by that person will be deleted 30 days after the user is deleted from Azure Active Directory. Aside from the Microsoft Forms app, you can also create a form from OneDrive for Business and Excel Online. In OneDrive for Business, click New, and then click Forms for Excel to start a new form. In Excel Online, the Forms command is on the Insert tab. Microsoft Planner When you're in IT, you're bound to be involved in one or more projects at any given time. You don't want to drop the ball in those projects, so you need some type of project or task management solution. You probably don't have the budget for a complex enterprise project management solution like Microsoft Project. You're in luck. Microsoft 365 Business includes Microsoft Planner, a visual task management solution that helps organize teams working on projects. Planner allows you to quickly create a plan, invite others in your organization to the plan, and then start assigning tasks to the members of the plan. You can access Planner from the app launcher when logged into Microsoft 365. It has a task-board type of interface with easy drag-and-drop functionalities. A plan can be private (only members can see the content) or public (everyone in the organization can see the content). The My Tasks page aggregates all the tasks assigned to you, so you don't have to go to every single plan to manage your tasks. Planner is also synced with Outlook, so you can see the project schedule in the Outlook calendar. You can invite people outside your organization to participate as guests in Planner. Guests have limited functionality, but their access is sufficient to perform basic task management. Planner is enabled by default as part of the Microsoft 365 Business license. When someone creates a plan, the service automatically creates an Office 365 group and adds the members of the plan to that group. If you must disable Planner for a certain user, you can do so by deselecting the Planner license for the user in Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Microsoft PowerApps With Microsoft 365 Business, you and your end users can become app creators without going to programming school! PowerApps is a service in Office 365 that allows licensed users to create business apps that connect to data stored in various sources, such as SharePoint Online and Excel. Depending on the skill level of your end users, they can create apps in either the Power Apps Studio model or the App Designer model. The former is simplified to make building an app feel like creating a PowerPoint presentation; the latter is geared more for the geek in your organization who likes to tinker with model-driven apps. So go ahead and explore PowerApps. After you've built your first app, don't forget to update your LinkedIn profile to include Business App Development as one of your skill sets. One of the templates you'll find in the PowerApps portal is the Help Desk template. With a few clicks, you can create a mobile app that allows end users to submit support tickets from their phone and allows you to track the progress of the support tickets — without paying an app developer a few thousand dollars. Microsoft Search Have you ever used Bing to search for something? Well, you're about to make the search experience for your end users better with Microsoft Search in Office 365. With this feature, searches powered by artificial intelligence (AI) technology give users search results from within or outside your organization across Windows 10, Office Apps, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Bing from a desktop or mobile device. The image below shows an example search experience when logged into Bing.com with a Microsoft 365 account. Searching for the keywords Azure AD give you search results from your Office 365 environment (including conversations in Microsoft Teams) as well as the Internet. Microsoft Search is a new service that was announced at the Microsoft Ignite conference in September 2018, so expect the service to continue to evolve. If you want to enable this feature in your organization, you must first activate Microsoft Search and then follow the Setup wizard. It usually takes less than five minutes to set up. Ready to turn it on? Navigate to Microsoft 365 Admin Center with your global admin credentials. Then, under Settings in the left menu, click Services & Add-in, click Microsoft Search. Then follow these steps: Turn the toggle switch to On next to Activate Microsoft Search under Step 1. Click Save. Click the Get Started button under Quick Setup Wizard (below Step 2), and follow the prompts. A new browser tab launches and the Microsoft Search admin portal appears. After you've configured Microsoft Search, you're on your way to making your end users even more productive with AI-powered search results relevant to them. But what's in it for you? Well, you can reduce the number of help desk tickets coming your way by embedding answers to common questions, such as IT resources, policies, and new hire information. Happy searching! Microsoft Stream As in YouTube, users can create channels, upload videos, and rate and comment on videos. Unlike YouTube, however, Stream is a secure video service that uses Azure Active Directory to manage the identities of the users, so you can protect sensitive company data. When you upload a video in Stream, you can choose to have the service automatically generate captions by using Microsoft's Automatic Speech Recognition technology. You can watch Stream videos from a browser on a Windows PC, a Mac, and mobile devices. The service automatically adjusts the quality of the video depending on your bandwidth. And because it's part of Office 365, Stream integrates well with SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Yammer. Stream also allows you to broadcast live events. Suppose you have a company meeting or announcement, but some employees are in the field and can't make it to the meeting in person. With Stream, you can broadcast your meeting live and have employees tune in from their Internet-connected devices. If you are the organizer of the live event, you can monitor how engaged the participants are in real time. You can access Stream from the app launcher in Microsoft 365. To manage Microsoft Stream, click Settings (gear icon) beside your profile while logged into Stream with your Microsoft 365 Business global admin access. In the Admin Settings for Stream, under Live Events, you can specify who is allowed to create live events by toggling the switch On or Off. Microsoft Sway Do you secretly covet the web design skills of a friend or coworker? With all the work required of an IT admin, who has the time to take online courses on HTML and web development? Well, there's no need to give up that dream. Assuming you know how to use Microsoft Word, you can easily create beautiful and interactive web pages in Microsoft Sway without writing a line of HTML code! Sway is a web-based storytelling platform in Office 365, whether that story is in the form of a financial report, a corporate presentation, or a step-by-step instruction on how to use a sous vide tool. You can add text, pictures, and videos or embed content from other sources. To get started, go to the Sway portal by clicking the Sway app. Then you can choose from and customize a variety of templates. Another way to publish a web page that looks great on any device is available. Suppose you have a Word document that outlines your organization's security policies and the actions your end users need to take to keep your environment secure. Your millennial employees are not interested in reading your flat, boring document. You can quickly transform that document into a web page worthy of a web designer's thumbs up with the Transform to web Page command in Word! Simply open the document, choose File, and then click Transform in the left menu. The Transform to web panel appears on the right with style options. Choose the style that resonates with your users, click the Transform button, and then watch magic happens as artificial intelligence turns your boring document into an awesome web page complete with eye-catching headings and pull quotes to break up long paragraphs and make text easier to read. Do you want to be an IT admin who can design web pages? Check that off your list with Sway. Service Health Most self-respecting IT admins start their day with a prioritized list of critical items to tackle to keep the IT environment running smoothly. This is frequently interrupted with a phone call from an end user with an issue. So, for the next few hours, you troubleshoot and deal with bugs. By the time lunch break rolls around, half the day is gone and you have not completed a single item on your list. Worse, the end user's issue is still not resolved. Here's a no-brainer tip: Before you troubleshoot any issue related to services in Office 365, check out the Service Help page to see whether Microsoft engineers are working on advisories and incidents. You can waste a lot of time trying to figure out why someone's email is not synching only to find out that there's an Exchange Online outage you can't fix. You'll find the Service Health dashboard in Microsoft 365 Admin Center under the Health group in the left navigation. The dashboard displays incidents and advisories that Microsoft engineers are working, along with the status, the effect on end users, a description of the issue, and the steps Microsoft is taking to resolve the issue. If a service doesn't have any issues, a green mark appears next to the service name. At a glance, you'll be able to decide whether or not you should be troubleshooting an end user's issue.

Article / Updated 05-27-2019

Your Microsoft 365 Business subscription includes access to not only the desktop application of the Microsoft Office suite but also its mobile versions. Office mobile apps are rated highly across the different mobile platforms. Every day, millions of information workers around the globe, myself included, are actively using these apps to do work without being tethered to an office desk. Here, you learn ten productivity tips available in Microsoft 365 Business. Use these tips as part of your adoption campaign to drive usage of the service and to reduce support calls to your IT team. You can confidently share these tips to your end users knowing that your organization's data is protected and managed. Pay attention to the notifications in Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Be on the lookout for new features so you stay on top of additional productivity tips that you can share with your end users. Pick up where you left off in Microsoft Word Let's say you start reading a Word document in your office and then realize you have to shut down your computer to get to a doctor's appointment. You arrive at your doctor's office and are told to wait in the reception area until someone is ready to see you. Disappointed that the magazines available are unappealing, you’re relieved to remember that you have your smartphone — and the doctor's office allows the use of mobile devices. You whip out your smartphone, run the Word mobile app, which is registered with your Office 365 account and voila! The last document you were reading back in your office is listed in the Recent documents list. You start reading the document, and close it when you're done. You are still waiting for the doctor, so you look at your Word app again and see that a list of documents has been shared with you and needs your attention. You open one to start editing, and then your name is called. No worries. You'll probably have time to finish editing the document after you get to the inner waiting room. Share Office 365 documents with confidence Securely sharing documents with other members in your organization from a mobile device is similar to sharing a document from a desktop. Microsoft has invested heavily in making the mobile experiences in Office 365 as seamless as possible, so that your productivity — on a desktop or a mobile device — doesn't take a hit. Suppose that you are on your way to work and get an email from your project manager asking you to quickly put together a presentation for your project team's kickoff meeting. While sitting on the bus on the way to work, you figure you can use the 30-minute commute to do something productive. So you run the PowerPoint app on your phone and start creating your presentation. You finish the presentation and save it to your OneDrive folder, but you then realize that one slide needs your project manager's input. You look at the time and notice that you have five more minutes before reaching your destination. You go back to your presentation and tap the Share icon, tap the Invite People button, and enter your project manager's email address. Because the app defaults to Edit access, you go directly to the message area to type a quick message, asking your project manager for input. You tap the Send button and then tap Done. The system sends an email to your project manager with a secure link to the document so she can start editing. Ten minutes later, off the bus and walking into your office, your project manager sees you. Perplexed, she looks at you and asks: “Didn't I just email you an hour ago? How did you manage to get that presentation in my inbox before you even arrived at work?” You cast a glance at your hero, the IT admin sitting nearby. Co-author documents with Microsoft 365 Business anytime, anywhere It happens. You finalize a document and send it to a bunch of people, and then you realize that you need to change one key bit of information in the document. So what do you do? You email everyone back, telling them to ignore your previous email and that you'll be sending an updated version of the document. The problem is, a few people had already replied with their own updated versions, so now you have to consolidate their feedback into the updated document and then send the document back to everyone. All the while, you're hoping you don't end up in an email tree nightmare where people just keep emailing their own new versions of the document back and forth. Fortunately, you don't need to live in that nightmare. If you start using the co-authoring features of the Office applications in your Microsoft 365 Business subscription, everyone on your team can work on the same document — making edits and updates and seeing each other's comments — in real time! The co-authoring features of Office also work seamlessly in the mobile app versions. Catch someone's attention easily with Microsoft 365 In social media such a Facebook or Twitter, @mentions are a great way to tag people and let them know you want their attention. You simply type @ followed by the name of the person you want to tag. As you're typing the name, a list of suggestions is presented, so you don't have to type the entire name. Well, guess what? @mentions are now part of your Office suite! In Outlook, for example, you can @mention a co-worker in the body of an email or in a meeting invitation, and the system will automatically add the mentioned user in the To line of the email or meeting invitation. As in Facebook, when you @mention someone, the full name is added automatically to the message. If you want to make the message sound more like the way you would normally relate to your co-worker, you can delete a portion of the mention, so it displays only the first name, for example. Don't worry, the email address in the To line will stay intact. If you find that a lot of people are trying to get your attention with @mentions, you can filter your mailbox to display only the emails where you were @mentioned. To do this, click the arrow next to All in the message list, and then click Mentioned Mail. This feature works in both the Windows and Mac versions of Outlook. Figure out whodunnit with Microsoft Word Office 365 co-author documents in real time with multiple people. This feature is great because you're all dealing with a single source of truth. But what happens if you one day open a document and realize someone has deleted an entire paragraph you painstakingly wrote the day before? Well, you could email everyone and ask the culprit to fess up. Or you can go the stealth route and simply view the version history of the document to see a log of the different versions that have been saved along with the name of the person who saved it and a time stamp of when the version was saved. You can even open the previous version of the document and restore it. To display the version history in Microsoft Word, click the filename in the top bar and then click Version History. The Version History pane appears on the right of the screen, providing quick access to the versions of the document and the name and icon of the version author. In the web version, click the History icon at the top right to display the Version History pane. This feature not only improves productivity but also promotes harmony when used correctly! Blur your background in Microsoft Teams Imagine being on a live interview broadcast worldwide discussing the ramifications of the impeachment of a South Korean president when your toddler crashes your interview by walking into your home office and starts dancing. Now imagine the situation getting even worse when your infant child in a walker waddles into the room, followed by your panicked spouse trying to drag both kids out of the room. Well, this did happen, and it made for a hilarious viral video back in March of 2017 when Professor Robert Kelly was interviewed by BBC. The new Blur My Background capability in Microsoft Teams avoids this scenario. If you schedule a meeting with Teams, click the More Options (…) button, and then click Blur My Background, everything behind you will be subtly blurred. Imagine how much more productive you're going to be now that you know you can skip the commute, have video-conferencing meetings from your home office, and look professional without worrying about your kids or dog coming in during your meeting and becoming distractions. Chances are Professor Kelly would love this feature. But then again, if his hilarious interview hadn't happened, he wouldn't have inspired the folks at Microsoft to add this feature. Design like a pro by with PowerPoint’s AI support Let's face it. Not all of us have been gifted the talent to create presentations that pop and capture people's attention. Unless you're one of those creative ones, creating a TED-worthy presentation is out of reach. There's good news for all of the design-challenged individuals out there! With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), creating PowerPoint presentations that have the touch of a highly paid marketing guru is now achievable. In the desktop or web version of PowerPoint, start a new presentation. Just plug in the details you want to convey in your slide and don't worry about the look and feel. When you're finished, go to the Design tab on the ribbon, and click the Design Ideas button. The AI technology in Office 365 automatically generates some design ideas for you to choose from. Talk instead of type with Office 365 As a cloud service, Office Apps in Office 365 gets smarter over time. Machine learning and artificial intelligence enable Office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook to adapt to how you work, saving you time and even improving your writing skills. One of these intelligence services is the Dictate feature, which allows you to dictate text instead of typing. In Microsoft Word, the Dictate button is on the Home tab on the ribbon. If you're using Outlook, start a new email, go to the Message tab and then click the Dictate button. When the Dictate icon turns red, you can start talking. As you talk, text appears in your document. Just make sure your microphone is enabled and you're talking clearly and conversationally. You can insert punctuation by saying the name of the punctuation. For example, at the end of the sentence, say “period” or “question mark” or “exclamation mark.” If you want to start a new paragraph, say, “new paragraph.” What are you waiting for? Give it this Microsoft 365 feature a try! Go hands-free with Office 365 Read Aloud Productivity in Office 365 is designed to meet the needs of people all over the world with different abilities. Dictate, Tell Me, which gives quick access to commands without cycling through the different tabs on the ribbon, and Accessibility, which works seamlessly with screen readers, are just a few of the features in Office 365 that drive productivity and promote inclusion in the workplace. Yet another nifty feature you'll find in Office applications is the Read Aloud feature in Word. Although touted as one of the capabilities in the Learning Tools in Office especially useful for people with dyslexia, The Read Aloud feature is great for proofreading because it highlights the text as each word is read. A bonus for people whose first language is not English, the Read Aloud feature is also a great tool for learning how words are pronounced. Give this feature a try and see if you can incorporate it into your workflow. The Read Aloud button is in the Review tab in Microsoft Word. Happy reading aloud! Time travel with Windows Timeline Have you ever found yourself wasting 30 minutes looking for a document that you worked on a few days ago but can't remember where it was saved? Or going through your browsing history to find a search you did for a renovation project? If you've had that unpleasant experience, you’ll be happy to know that you don’t need to waste time in that fashion again. The Timeline feature in Windows 10 helps you reclaim that lost productivity by enabling you to see all your activities during up to 30 days in one screen. The image below shows a screenshot of the Windows Timeline. The slider bar on the right allows you to go to different points in time and see your activity. You can also use the Search box to do a keyword search of your activities. To activate the Windows Timeline feature, click the Task View button next to the Cortana search bar, or press the Windows and tab keys. So go ahead and pick up where you left off with Windows Timeline. You may not be able to go back in time, but at least you can always go back in the Timeline!

Article / Updated 05-23-2019

Microsoft Teams is a core technology in Microsoft 365 Business. It is the hub for teamwork for today’s workforce. To begin to understand the power of Microsoft Teams, consider that within two years since its release, it has been adopted by more than 125,000 organizations in 181 markets in 29 languages with over 120 million active users. The number of companies using Microsoft Teams continues to grow. Making the business case for Microsoft Teams Every organization has decision makers, and as an IT admin, it’s up to you to know the capabilities of the software you’re pitching. Here’s what you need to know about Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams can be accessed from a web browser, a desktop application, or a mobile app. You can conduct one-on-one or group audio and video calls, share screen during web conferencing, schedule meetings, record meetings, and use up to 1 TB of storage per user. As an IT admin, you have tools to manage third-party applications that can be integrated with Microsoft Teams. Reports are available to glean usage, and you can configure settings with policies specific to your organization. For peace of mind, Microsoft Teams has a 99.9 percent financially backed service level agreement uptime from Microsoft. In other words, the service has a .1 percent (not 10 percent) chance of going down; if it were to exceed that, Microsoft would have to compensate its subscribers a certain amount. So, what can you do with Microsoft Teams? In a nutshell: Communicate more efficiently and effectively — internally and externally. You can chat or send an instant message, make a phone call, host a web conference, or share files. Team members can engage in private one-on-one chats or have group conversations that are persistent. (In a persistent chat, a new team member can read previous conversations, which helps with onboarding.) Microsoft Teams accommodates diverse communication styles and even allows you to include emojis, memes, and other fun graphics. If you have a small business that employs a younger workforce, giving them a tool to express this communication style can be a hiring advantage. Simplify the flow of work for employees and increase their productivity. If you're in Microsoft Teams chatting with a co-worker and realize that you both have to collaborate on a document, you don't have to leave Microsoft Teams to go to OneDrive or SharePoint to find the file, run Word to open the document, and then start collaborating. Office Apps such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and SharePoint are integrated into Microsoft Teams. From a chat conversation, you can jump directly into document co-authoring without leaving Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams has built-in integration with Exchange Online so users can forward emails from their Outlook mailbox into a Microsoft Teams channel. This feature is helpful if you have an email that could be valuable for current and future team members. Each channel in a Microsoft Teams hub has its own email address, which can be obtained by clicking the ellipsis next to the channel name. Empower users to be more productive. Not all teams work the same way, so why not enable them to configure their workspace in a way that works for them without involving an IT admin? In Microsoft Teams, you can! The technology is customizable, so users can tailor their workspace according to the way they work. For example, in a Microsoft Teams hub, users can create channels to have a more focused conversation on specific topics. Users can pin important file on tabs so others can quickly access the file in one click. Microsoft Teams uses the intelligence capabilities of Microsoft Graph so you can increase productivity in your organization. For example, suppose you need help creating marketing material. Within Microsoft Teams, you ask Who-Bot for a list of people in your organization who have expertise in marketing. Minimize data risks and stay compliant. Microsoft Teams benefits from the enterprise-class security features in Microsoft 365. Data in Microsoft Teams is always encrypted, whether it's sitting in storage or being transmitted. As an IT admin, you can go to the Security and Compliance Center and set an alert or search audit logs for all user and admin activities in Microsoft Teams. From Microsoft Teams, you can also conduct content searches of all data and export the data in to support compliance or litigation requests. The Microsoft Teams user interface: A review for IT admins Get ready to expand your Microsoft Teams vocabulary with words such as command bar, tabs, bot, @mentions, and red bangs when you roll out Microsoft Teams. Then add mainstream social-media-speak such as emoji, stickers, and Giphys. The Microsoft Teams user interface is consistent whether you're using the web version or the desktop application. The key elements in the user interface are detailed in the following list: The app bar on the left has icons for Activity, Chat, Teams, Meetings, Files, More Apps (shown as an ellipsis), Get App (shown in the web version for downloading the desktop app), the Teams Store, and Feedback. The Teams section next to the app bar lists the teams and channels to which the logged-in user is a member. The Conversations window next to the Microsoft Teams section displays all conversations in the selected channel. Chats can include visual indicators such as @mention, which indicates that the chat specifically mentions a user, or a red bang (!) to indicate high importance. The command bar, at the top, is used to query apps or perform a search in Teams. The Conversation and Files tabs is found just below the name of the team and channel. The Conversation tab is where you'll find chat or instant messages (IM). The Files tab displays the files in the folder for the channel. The + sign allows a user to add shortcuts to content in Microsoft Teams. The compose box, at the bottom right, is where you type a message to start a conversation. Check here to learn more about the pros and cons of the Microsoft 365 Cloud.

Article / Updated 05-22-2019

Your subscription to a Microsoft 365 Business license includes 1TB of cloud storage in OneDrive for Business per licensed user. In addition, your organization gets 1TB of storage in SharePoint Online plus 10GB per licensed user. Let’s say for example you have 10 users, each with a Microsoft 365 Business license. Here’s what your free cloud storage would look like: 10 users x 1TB per user in OneDrive for Business = 10TB 1TB in SharePoint Online 10 users x 10GB per user in SharePoint Online = 100GB (0.1TB) Total cloud storage: 11.1TB If you’re wondering how much data you can store in 1TB of storage, consider the infographic from IT Elementary School. In it, the author claims you’d have 60 piles of typed paper stacked as tall as the Eiffel Tower to consume 1TB of data. With that much storage, you might wonder why SMBs are still using file shares and third-party SaaS applications such as Dropbox. For a majority of small businesses, the challenge is moving their existing data to SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business. Traditionally, migrating data to SharePoint Online required complicated tools requiring senior engineers. If a business did not have a budget for such tools or expertise, an IT admin would have to spend an enormous amount of time manually moving files and dealing with sync issues. The good news is that Office 365 is designed to break traditions. What was challenging a few years ago is now a simple, free, self-service tool. With a few clicks, an IT admin can now confidently migrate files to document libraries in SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business. Microsoft 365 Business: The SharePoint Migration Tool The SharePoint Migration Tool is a handy application taking the guesswork out of moving files to Office 365 from either your hard drive, third-party SaaS storage provider, or on-premises SharePoint environment. You basically just need to download the tool and, with a few clicks, the tool will do its magic while you, depending on the size of data you are moving, grab a cup of coffee or turn on Netflix to watch your favorite show while you wait for the tool to finish its job. Here’s how the SharePoint Migration Tool works. Download Microsoft’s SharePoint Migration tool. Double-click the downloaded file to run the tool and then click the Sign In button. The Where Is Your Data? screen appears. Select the source of your data (for this exercise, choose the File Share option): If you’re moving files from an on-premises SharePoint environment, choose SharePoint on-premises. If you want to move files from your hard drive or file shares, choose File Share. If you want to move files from Dropbox, make sure the Dropbox app is running on your desktop and select the File Share option. If you have multiple sources of data, choose JSON or CSV File for bulk migration. Note that you’ll need some programming skills to create a JSON file. In the Select a Source and Destination screen, click the Choose Folder button. In the Browse for Folder window, choose the folder you want to migrate and then click OK. The Select a Source and Destination screen reappears. Click the Next button. A new box appears in the same screen so you can paste the URL for SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Document. In the Enter a URL box, enter or paste the URL of the destination library. In the Choose a Document Library drop-down menu, choose the appropriate document library. Then click the Add button. On the next screen, review the entries for the Source and Destination, and then click the Migrate button to start the migration process. The tool displays the migration status. If you need to change the Source or Destination entry, you must restart the process. When the SharePoint migration is complete, click the Close button. The tool captures logs from the migration job, which you can view after the SharePoint migration. Seeing the logs can be helpful for troubleshooting. If you must close or accidentally close the tool before the SharePoint migration job is complete, you can resume the job from any computer, provided that the job has run for at least 5 minutes. Another cool feature of the tool is its capability to perform future incremental SharePoint migrations. If someone in your team didn’t get the memo and continues to save files to your file share, you can run the tool again and move just the new or updated files from the source location. To take advantage of this feature, click Yes when the tool asks if you want to keep the migration settings for future incremental runs after the migration is finished. Microsoft 365 Business: Syncing files with the OneDrive client Another way to migrate files to SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business is through the OneDrive sync client. After the sync client is running, you can simply drag files from the source location to the appropriate library in either OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online. If Windows 10 has been deployed with the Microsoft 365 Business license, the OneDrive for Business sync client is automatically set up for the account using the device. As such, OneDrive for Business folders will be available in File Explorer. If you’re migrating files to a SharePoint Online document library by using the OneDrive sync client, you first need to sync the SharePoint document library to your desktop. You do this by navigating to the SharePoint Online document library, and then clicking the Sync icon on the command bar. The sync client will prompt you through the rest of the steps, which are straightforward.