<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"><channel><title>Microsoft Teams | Vlad Talks Tech</title><description>Globally, many organizations choose Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) as their corporate communication and collaboration solution for good reason!</description><link>https://vladtalkstech.com/</link><language>en-us</language><item><title>Going Beyond the Basics: Master Microsoft Teams at TechCon365 (Save with code VLADCATRINESCU)</title><link>https://vladtalkstech.com/microsoft-learning-and-credential-news/going-beyond-the-basics-master-microsoft-teams-at-techcon365-save-with-code-vladcatrinescu/</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://vladtalkstech.com/?p=43754</guid><description>Learn to master Microsoft Teams at TechCon365 with Vlad Catrinescu and Gokan Ozcifci. Save $100 with code VLADCATRINESCU.</description><pubDate>Tue, 29 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;Want to master Microsoft Teams from both the user and admin perspective? Join Vlad Catrinescu and Gokan Ozcifci for a full-day hands-on Microsoft Teams Masterclass at TechCon365 in Seattle in June 2025!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We’re combining real-world admin experience with practical end-user knowledge to help you:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;✅ Understand Teams from the user AND owner perspective&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;✅ Learn how to configure Teams policies like a pro&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;✅ Discover what admins can do behind the scenes to secure and streamline collaboration&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;✅ Walk away with skills you can apply in your environment the very next day&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;💥 Whether you’re managing Teams or just using it — this workshop is for you.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;🔐 Use code VLADCATRINESCU at checkout to save $100 on registration!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;📍 See you at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.techcon365.com/Seattle/&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;TechCon365 Seattle!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-summary&quot;&gt;Video Summary&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exciting Opportunity&lt;/strong&gt;: Vlad Catrinescu is hosting a hands-on Microsoft Teams master class with Gokan Ozcifci at TechCon 365 in Seattle at the end of June.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comprehensive Coverage&lt;/strong&gt;: The workshop will cover everything from end-user settings to admin policies, ensuring Teams works exactly as desired.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hands-On Experience&lt;/strong&gt;: Participants will get an 8-hour hands-on experience from both end-user and admin perspectives.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Special Discount&lt;/strong&gt;: Use the code “VLADCATRINESCU” to save $100 on registration.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Invitation to Join&lt;/strong&gt;: Vlad is looking forward to seeing attendees in Seattle for this informative and practical workshop.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-transcript&quot;&gt;Video Transcript&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Do you want to learn Microsoft Teams? Well, you’re in luck! I’m running a hands-on Microsoft Teams master class with my good friend Gokan Ozcifci at the end of June in Seattle for TechCon 365. As you probably have seen before, the workshop was called “Mastering Microsoft Teams,” but I was always missing a small part—the superhero part of administration. That’s why I needed Vlad Catrinescu. Together, we will share this workshop, providing a hands-on experience from both the end-user and admin perspectives. For 8 hours, we’re going to cover everything from end-user settings to Teams owner settings, including all the settings an admin can configure and the policies they can implement. This ensures Teams works exactly the way you want it to, allowing people to do the things you want them to do and blocking them from doing the things you don’t want them to do. So, see you in Seattle at TechCon 365! Use the special code “VLADCATRINESCU” to save $100 off your registration. Looking forward to seeing you there!&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded><category>Learning &amp; Credentials</category><category>Microsoft Teams</category><author>Vlad Catrinescu</author></item><item><title>Become the ULTIMATE Microsoft Teams Administrator at #M365Con</title><link>https://vladtalkstech.com/microsoft-365/become-the-ultimate-microsoft-teams-administrator-at-m365con/</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://vladtalkstech.com/?p=43534</guid><description>Learn to become the ultimate Microsoft Teams admin at M365Con with expert-led workshops. Join us in Las Vegas!</description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Feb 2025 13:00:00 GMT</pubDate><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;Want to level up your Microsoft Teams admin skills? Microsoft Teams is used by over 300 million users daily, but many organizations still don’t maximize its potential or worry that not all governance settings are configured correctly.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This workshop is where you want to be to learn everything you need to know to manage Microsoft Teams the right way.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://m365conf.com/#!/register?utm_term=VLAD150&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Register today!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For more information on the event, my session and workshop, or how to apply my discount code, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/microsoft-events-and-discount-codes/microsoft-365-conference/&quot;&gt;learn more here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-summary&quot;&gt;Video Summary&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exciting Workshop Announcement&lt;/strong&gt;: Vlad and Microsoft MVP Habib are hosting a comprehensive Microsoft Teams workshop at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference in May.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Admin Tools and Collaboration&lt;/strong&gt;: Vlad will cover various admin tools for managing Microsoft Teams, focusing on team settings, policies, templating, governance, and external sharing.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Communication Expertise&lt;/strong&gt;: Habib will dive into configuring Microsoft Teams phone systems, managing and securing Teams room systems, and discussing telephony features like auto attendants and call queues.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comprehensive Coverage&lt;/strong&gt;: The workshop aims to transform attendees into rockstar Microsoft Teams admins, covering everything from basics to advanced topics in collaboration, governance, and telephony.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Special Offer&lt;/strong&gt;: Attendees can use the code &lt;strong&gt;VLAD150&lt;/strong&gt; for a special discount on the workshop registration.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-transcript&quot;&gt;Video Transcript&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Hello everyone! I’m so excited to be heading to the Microsoft 365 Community Conference in May, where I will be presenting an amazing Microsoft Teams workshop with my good friend, Microsoft MVP Habib. We’re going to be doing the ultimate Microsoft Teams Administrator Workshop, focusing on various administration capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Since I come from a collaboration and SharePoint background, I’ll start by introducing all the different admin tools you have to manage Microsoft Teams. We’ll then focus on the collaboration side, covering team settings and policies, templating, governance, who can create teams, naming policies, and a bit of external sharing. External sharing is a big topic for admins today, especially with the Federation, guests, and shared channels in Teams.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Teams is more than just text and file collaboration; it’s also about communication, which is Habib’s area of expertise. He will provide instructions on configuring Microsoft Teams phone systems, discussing different architectures, managing and securing Teams room systems, licensing, auto attendants, call queues, and enhanced functionality around Microsoft Teams telephony.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It’s going to be a lot of information packed into one day. If you want to become a rockstar Microsoft Teams admin and learn everything from the basics to collaboration, governance, and telephony, join our workshop in Las Vegas. Use the code &lt;strong&gt;VLAD150&lt;/strong&gt; for the best possible price. We hope to see you there!&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded><category>Learning &amp; Credentials</category><category>Microsoft 365</category><category>Microsoft Teams</category><author>Vlad Catrinescu</author></item><item><title>ESPC24 Keynote Recap and Highlights You DON&apos;T Want to Miss</title><link>https://vladtalkstech.com/microsoft-copilot/espc24-keynote-recap-and-highlights-you-dont-want-to-miss/</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://vladtalkstech.com/?p=43281</guid><description>Learn the top highlights from the ESPC24 keynote, including updates on Microsoft 365, Copilot, Teams, and SharePoint.</description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Dec 2024 13:00:00 GMT</pubDate><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;Want to know what Jeff Teper covered in the #ESPC24 keynote in Stockholm? Listen to my recap and highlights video for ALL the details you NEED TO KNOW coming out of ESPC 2024!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://vladtalks.com/courses/pluralsight&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Watch my 80+ courses on Pluralsight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-summary&quot;&gt;Video Summary&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exciting Kickoff&lt;/strong&gt;: The keynote started with an energetic show featuring dancers to wake everyone up, followed by Jeff Keeper celebrating the Microsoft 365 community and promoting the Community Days website.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Copilot Innovations&lt;/strong&gt;: Microsoft highlighted over 300 new features for Copilot, including improvements in speed and quality. They also showcased new agents like the facilitator and interpreter in Microsoft Teams.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Copilot Studio Demo&lt;/strong&gt;: Kendra Springer demonstrated how easy it is to build agents with Copilot Studio, showing how easy it is to create amazing agents.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IT Controls and Security&lt;/strong&gt;: Jeff discussed the Copilot Control System, including SharePoint advanced management and Copilot analytics. Security features like requiring a PIN to join meetings were also highlighted.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SharePoint Enhancements&lt;/strong&gt;: Denise Trabona showcased new SharePoint features like autofill columns, custom fonts, and flexible sections, making SharePoint more attractive for companies considering other tools.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-transcript&quot;&gt;Video Transcript&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We are live at ESPC in Stockholm and the keynote just finished. As I try to do at every big Microsoft 365 and Power Platform conference, I’m here to bring you the top highlights. ESPC always does an amazing job of waking people up before the keynote because, let’s be honest, sometimes waking up at 9:00 AM for the keynote leaves you still a bit sleepy. They have this amazing show with dancers and lights to really set the mood and excitement for the keynote.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The keynote was, of course, kicked off by the one and only Jeff Keeper, who ran on stage. As usual, the first thing he talked about was the amazing Microsoft 365 community, the best community in tech. He also promoted the CommunityDays.org website, which, if you haven’t checked it out yet, is the one single place where you’ll find all the community events near you. So go and check it out.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As you probably guessed by now, a lot of the keynote was about Copilot and the AI revolution. Even though I was at Ignite just two weeks ago where Microsoft made a ton of different announcements, I managed to see some brand new things that I had missed at Ignite. So it was still great to be at the keynote.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The keynote was split into three main sections: Copilot, Teams, and the one closest to my heart, SharePoint. For Copilot, Microsoft talked about the over 300 new features they brought to Copilot in the past year. It feels like we’ve been talking about Copilot forever, but it’s only been one year since it has been out. Something that I really enjoyed was that Microsoft also talked about some foundational improvements in Copilot, from doubling the speed to actually tripling the quality of the prompt results, which is something that Copilot definitely needed.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We also talked about some other hot topics such as agents. Michael Boom from Microsoft demoed some of the new agents like the facilitator and the interpreter in Microsoft Teams, which were really awesome to see live. Kendra Springer then came on stage and showed us how easy it is to build an agent with Copilot Studio. We know it was a real demo because Copilot did not want to cooperate on this one. It did what tech sometimes does and failed. It happens. Even Copilot can get shy when 2000 people are looking at it. But the demos were amazing and really showed us how everyone, whatever their skill level, can build amazing agents with Copilot Studio.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We then talked about IT controls, a very important topic today as everybody talks about oversharing and securing your tenant. Jeff covered the Copilot Control System, which includes SharePoint advanced management, now included with your Microsoft 365 Copilot license. If you have any questions or you’re not sure about that announcement, I recently did a video with Dave Minassian from Microsoft to answer all of your questions. You’ll find it linked in the description below. The Copilot Control Center also includes Copilot analytics from Viva Engage and Copilot in the admin centers.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We then switched over to Microsoft Teams, where some of the main topics were the new UI updates to merge chats and Teams together. Let me take a break and ask you, what do you actually think about that change? Are you a fan of it? Personally, I turned it off because I’m so used to the old interface, but I want to know how you feel. So please let me know in the comments.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We recapped some of the latest announcements from Ignite, such as Microsoft Places and digital signage in Teams Room being generally available. The one I’m most excited about is speaker recognition and how Copilot can know who said what in a meeting, even if you’re all in the same room. We also covered security features that I’m a big fan of, such as requiring a PIN to join meetings or email verification. We also saw a really cool slide with all the upcoming capabilities in Microsoft Teams for the next quarter, which was really interesting.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We then finished with SharePoint, which is the center of Microsoft 365. Denise Trabona showed us some of the latest cool features in SharePoint, such as autofill columns and new design features like using Copilot to create pages and the new flexible sections. This was announced at Ignite, but I had actually missed it. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know they announced it publicly. You can now have so much flexibility to make SharePoint look amazing with the new addition of custom fonts and flexible sections. This will take SharePoint to the next level. I hope many companies that maybe went to WordPress or other tools because SharePoint did not meet their design requirements are going to come back and take advantage of everything in SharePoint.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So that’s it for the keynote. It’s really exciting to see how Microsoft is working towards their mission to have a Copilot for every employee and an agent for every business process. If you enjoyed this and want to get the latest highlights from all the Microsoft events, make sure you like the video and subscribe to the channel on VladTalksTech. Thank you so much and I’ll see you at the next conference.&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded><category>Microsoft Copilot</category><category>Microsoft Teams</category><category>SharePoint</category><author>Vlad Catrinescu</author></item><item><title>How to Use Microsoft Copilot in Teams Channel Messages</title><link>https://vladtalkstech.com/microsoft-365/how-to-use-microsoft-copilot-in-teams-channel-messages/</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://vladtalkstech.com/?p=41487</guid><description>Learn to use Microsoft Copilot in Teams channel messages for summarizing conversations and identifying action items.</description><pubDate>Tue, 28 May 2024 06:52:00 GMT</pubDate><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;Microsoft Teams has 8 different Copilot experiences, and in this video you will learn how to use Copilot to become more productive in Microsoft Teams Channels!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://spvlad.com/copilot-microsoft-teams&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;FULL Course on Copilot for Microsoft Teams&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-summary&quot;&gt;Video Summary&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here are the key points from the video:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Copilot in Teams Channel Conversations&lt;/strong&gt;: Functions similarly to Copilot in Teams chats but for channel messages, appearing only in conversations with four or more replies.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summarizing Conversations&lt;/strong&gt;: Helps you quickly understand key points and decisions made in a conversation without reading through all the messages.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using Prompts&lt;/strong&gt;: Allows you to ask specific questions about the conversation, such as summarizing different opinions or recalling agreed-upon actions.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Action Items&lt;/strong&gt;: Identifies and lists action items from the conversation, making it easier to track tasks.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accessing Copilot&lt;/strong&gt;: Requires a conversation with enough replies to activate Copilot, which then provides summaries and action items.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-transcript&quot;&gt;Video Transcript&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Next up on our list of features is Copilot in Teams channel conversations. Copilot in Teams channel conversations offers similar functionality to the Copilot in Teams chats that we just learned about but for channel messages. You will only see Copilot in longer channel conversations, and by longer, I mean four or more replies. So, you will not see it if the post doesn’t have enough replies. Copilot for Teams channel conversations is limited to summarizing one conversation—the conversation that you’re currently in. If you ever want to summarize more content, like the discussions in a whole channel, you should use the Copilot app in Microsoft Teams, which we will cover a bit later in this course. You can use similar prompts as the Copilot in Teams chats, which we just learned, so you can use the same prompts, of course, adapted to the conversation for Teams channel conversations.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now that we have seen the theory, let’s head over to the lab and check out Copilot in Teams channel conversations. We are back in the lab. Let me open up the browser here where I’m back in Microsoft Teams, but now I am in the sales channel. As you can see here, I have a conversation started by myself on the product launch: “Should we offer a limited-time discount?” Now, the first reflex, and honestly what I was trying to figure out at the beginning, is I was looking over here and thinking, “Where is my Copilot?” I’m going here, and I do not see Copilot at all. Where is it at? So, in order to get to Copilot, you need a conversation that is a bit longer. You see, we have here the 21 replies or whatever number of replies are in that conversation from the people involved. You click on this, and now it will bring you to that conversation. As you can see, if we go to the top, we are focused on that conversation, and now at the top, I have my channel Copilot. Awesome. So again, channel Copilot—you can use similar prompts.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For example, I can ask it to recap this conversation from the beginning. Now, Copilot will go in, analyze the conversation, and then create a nice summary for me. Let’s give it a second to finish, and there we go. It’s done. You can see that Vlad proposed a 30% discount for the first customers. Mike expressed some concerns here, and after that, we can go through the conversation and really see what happened. What I really like is that it actually says here that Vlad and Mike aligned on the 10% discount in the end and discussed actionable steps. So, you see, it summarized the decision for me. If I ever forgot what we agreed on, I can always ask Copilot without having to read through all of the conversation. I can, of course, use the same prompts again. For example, I can ask, “Were there any different opinions in this chat? What were the pros and cons of each?” There we go. Vlad initially proposed a 30% discount. Mike expressed concerns about it. Vlad suggested that early adopters are crucial, and eventually, they agreed on a 10% discount for the first two weeks. So really, again, Copilot is able to get all of that data and summarize it for me. I can also ask very specific questions, for example, “What did we agree on for the amount of discount?” Maybe that’s the only question I have. I don’t want the summary; I just want to remember what number we agreed on. There we go. You and Mike agreed on a 10% discount for the first two weeks of the product launch. I can always click on the references where we can see exactly what was said. So, Copilot can help me find the information quicker, and if I ever want to double-check, I have a very easy way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, the final prompt, the one that I usually use the most often, is, “Is there anything that I, as Vlad, should do? Did I promise anything that I should do? Is there anything I need to do from this conversation?” Yes, there are several action items for me to do. You can see I need to coordinate with the finance team to adjust the pricing across channels, build and set up the training for the sales team, craft a customer-friendly email and ensure that the support team is well-prepared. So really, Copilot is there to help us summarize the conversation, find any specific answer that we’re looking for in that conversation, and the one that I love most to do is, “Okay, after all those 50-60 messages, what do I have to do? What did other people say I have to do? What did I sign myself up to do?” This way, I have a clear to-do list of things that I’m responsible for.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is it for this demo of Copilot in channel conversations. Remember, you need to have a longer conversation. So, if I start a new one here and just put “Hello there,” for example, I do not have Copilot. The conversation is not long enough. However, after that conversation picks up and you see I’m just writing the number of replies here, let’s go with four. There we go. After four replies, I now have the four replies from you here, so I can focus on that conversation here, and now I have Copilot. Right now, you can see because, well, it’s only 1, 2, 3, 4, it doesn’t have enough activity to generate responses, but at least I can see the Copilot button. It needs more characters. 1, 2, 3, and 4 will not make an interesting summary, but I just wanted to show you the number of replies needed so you can see the button to focus on the conversation and have Copilot in there. Something that is really cool is if you go back to it here, it will show you the history of your previous conversation, so everything you asked Copilot before, the history is kept here. Great. Now, let’s go back to the slides and learn about some other amazing features for Microsoft Teams Copilot in chats and channels.&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/@VladTalksTech&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded><category>Microsoft 365</category><category>Microsoft Copilot</category><category>Microsoft Teams</category><author>Vlad Catrinescu</author></item><item><title>IT Pros NEED TO KNOW These 7 NEW SharePoint, Teams, and Copilot Announcements</title><link>https://vladtalkstech.com/microsoft-365/it-pros-need-to-know-these-7-new-sharepoint-teams-and-copilot-announcements/</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://vladtalkstech.com/?p=41485</guid><description>Learn about 7 new SharePoint, Teams, and Copilot features IT pros need to know. Stay updated with the latest enhancements.</description><pubDate>Thu, 23 May 2024 05:52:00 GMT</pubDate><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;While Microsoft Build is all about Devs, there are 7 SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Copilot announcements you NEED to have on your radar as an IT Pro! As always, if there’s something important happening in the world of certifications or IT Pros, I have your back!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://vladtalks.com/courses/pluralsight&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Watch my 80+ courses on Pluralsight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-summary&quot;&gt;Video Summary&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here are the key points from the transcript:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Microsoft Build Announcements&lt;/strong&gt;: Although primarily for developers, Microsoft Build had several important updates for IT professionals, especially with the absence of the Inspire conference.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SharePoint Updates&lt;/strong&gt;: SharePoint Embedded is now generally available, allowing custom applications to use SharePoint’s backend without its UI. Enhanced version controls are also in public preview, helping manage storage by limiting file versions.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Microsoft 365 Features&lt;/strong&gt;: Microsoft 365 Archive is now generally available, and Microsoft 365 Backup is in public preview. Backup storage for developers is in private preview but will soon be public.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Microsoft Teams Enhancements&lt;/strong&gt;: New features include custom emojis, admin controls to prevent content sharing in externally hosted meetings, and the ability to configure default file services for uploads. Teams Premium users can also manage who can record and transcribe meetings.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Co-pilot Innovations&lt;/strong&gt;: New capabilities include creating co-pilots directly from SharePoint sites and introducing a team co-pilot for collaborative tasks. There are also new ways to extend co-pilot functionalities through connectors and plugins.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-transcript&quot;&gt;Video Transcript&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Hello everyone! If you’re a Microsoft 365 administrator, you need to know about those seven new announcements that Microsoft made at Microsoft Build. Now, Microsoft Build is usually a conference for developers, and as an IT Pro myself, I usually don’t pay too much attention to it. But now that we do not have Inspire anymore, Microsoft only has two big conferences: Build and Ignite. I started digging deep and trying to see what are the announcements that might impact IT professionals. And don’t get me wrong, Microsoft made over 100 different announcements at Microsoft Build this year. Here on the screen, you will see the blog posts that have been posted in the past two days on the Microsoft Tech Community. Each one of them contains one or more announcements, so we are talking hundreds of announcements here. And while most of the announcements are for developers, of course, because it’s Build, there are some very important ones for IT professionals as well that you absolutely need to know about.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Those announcements are split into three different products: we, of course, have Copilot (I’m sure that nobody’s surprised that Copilot had a few announcements at Build), SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams. I’ll really try and focus on the announcements that are important for IT professionals. Let’s start with my first love of IT, which is SharePoint. From a SharePoint perspective, before Build, I looked at the session catalog, I searched for SharePoint, and I was a bit disappointed to see that there was only one session at Build that had to do with SharePoint. I was really, really disappointed actually because I was really hoping that we would get new stuff for SharePoint. You know, it’s such an important part of Microsoft 365 that I was really hoping that we wouldn’t have to wait until Ignite for any big announcements. So, at first, I was disappointed, but as I started looking through the different blog posts that Microsoft did, I found quite a few important announcements.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;First of all, SharePoint Embedded is now in general availability. For those of you who don’t know SharePoint Embedded, I’ll try to explain it here in 10 seconds. Think of it as a SharePoint site without any user interface. You still have all of the functionality of libraries, lists, and everything available via API. So, if you want to build a custom application that stores documents and manages lists, you don’t have to rebuild everything. You can have your own UI hosted in Azure or wherever you want it, and then you can still keep your files inside SharePoint and have all the benefits of SharePoint, such as versioning and all your compliance features. But you can build 100% of your own UI. Think of it really as a light SharePoint with no UI that you can build on top of. When I was working in the intranet space, I really wished we had this option. It would have been amazing. Well, now it’s in general availability, so if you were waiting for it to be GA before you could run production apps on it, now you can.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Moving on, the next features that we will talk about are Microsoft 365 Archive and Microsoft 365 Backup. First of all, Microsoft 365 Archive is now generally available, which is awesome, and Microsoft 365 Backup is now in public preview. So, if you want to test it out, you can now go ahead and test it out. Another new feature is Microsoft 365 Backup Storage, which is now in private preview but will be in public preview soon. What is M365 Backup Storage? This gives developers a way to provide customers with the same benefits as the native backup solution through their own integrated applications. So, think of it again as using all the backends of Microsoft 365 Backup but having your own custom solution and your own custom UI, which again is amazing.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But the SharePoint announcement I am the most excited about is enhanced version controls, which are finally in public preview. Why am I so excited and why do I say finally? Because this item was added to the roadmap in June 2023. That is almost one year ago, which, to be honest, at the speed that things are moving today, one year feels like forever ago. So, what is this feature? This feature allows you to limit the number of file versions kept in OneDrive accounts as well as SharePoint document libraries, which allows you to save on storage. Now, I’ve seen it with my own clients. I work with a CISIT, which helps organizations manage their storage as well. In the industry as a whole, we reached a point where organizations are reaching the top of their pooled storage and they’re starting to pay extra money to Microsoft for storage. Now that versioning is enabled by default and people have autosave on, we create so many versions, which just creates a lot of storage needs. Well, now as an admin, we can have settings that, for example, we can say that you know what, we go in manual and we say only keep the last 100 major versions or delete the versions after 180 days. This way, we don’t have a ton of files with 500 versions that are all two years old, taking up storage for nothing. So, we have a manual mode that we can configure by either the number of versions or how long ago the version was created and delete them after a certain period of time, or automatic. Now, I’m sure that a lot of you will ask me, “Vlad, what does automatic mean?” As I tried to go into the documentation, I realized that Microsoft is pointing to their private learn.microsoft.com. So, at the review.learn.microsoft.com, I’m not authorized to even see it. So, unfortunately, I don’t have all the details about what automatic means. I do have an idea because as a Microsoft MVP, they told us some of the magic behind it, but I’m not sure what got shipped with the product. So, what I will do is, as soon as that goes public and as soon as I’m able to test it out and test a few things, I will go in and do more of a deep dive video on how the automatic mode works and versioning. But because this is an admin video, before you see it in the user interface like I had over here, there are a few things that you need to do. Well, we have to do it with the SharePoint admin’s best friend, which is PowerShell. So, before we enable the public preview, you need to activate it via PowerShell. And don’t do as I did originally; make sure that you update your PowerShell module for SharePoint Online before. If you see the same error as I did here, it’s because you haven’t updated your module. Make sure to close PowerShell, reopen it, and update the module.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;SharePoint Embedded and Microsoft 365 Archive are now GA. Microsoft 365 Backup is now in public preview, so we can all finally test it. After that, Backup Storage is more of a dev thing, so it doesn’t matter as much for us, but just so you know it exists in case you ever want to use it. For the enhanced version controls, make sure you go test it. There are reports you can do, there are so many things that you can do with it. Make sure you go check it out and see if you can save any storage inside your tenant.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, let’s move on to Microsoft Teams. First of all, for Teams, we will finally get custom emojis. So now, you’ll be able to add a custom emoji using whatever logo you want in there. This will become available in June. I know that not every admin feels the same about the fun settings inside Microsoft Teams, whether it’s GIFs, memes, or all of that. Admins will be able to decide who can upload emojis. So, make sure that you start thinking about that, and you’ll be able to configure it starting in June when the public preview of this feature will hit your tenant. So, start thinking about it. Nothing to do today, but June is only two weeks from now, so it’s something to start planning.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We then have new admin controls. First of all, we have a new setting that allows us to prevent users from sharing content in externally hosted meetings. This feature is only for Teams Premium, so you need Teams Premium to have this feature. In the setting, you can specify in which externally hosted meetings users are able to share content. It can be either no other organization, so if it’s not hosted by a user inside your company, if it’s somebody outside your company that sent a meeting invite, don’t allow them to share content, including the screen, or trusted organizations and guests, where you will have a setting where you can set up what are the trusted organizations and guests that you have, and then you’ll be able to share only in meetings organized either by your company or people from those trusted organizations and guests.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, for our next feature, this is a small one but can be valuable for many companies. You can now configure a different domain for the Teams email service. So, you know when we get notifications from Teams, “Hey, you missed a call, you missed some messages, here’s what happened in the past few days.” Well, now you can configure those notifications to come from your domain or from another domain than the Microsoft default one. That is great. Small feature again, but I know it can have a lot of impact, especially for phishing prevention.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To continue on new admin controls, we will now have the ability to select which file service will be used by default when users upload files from their local devices by using the drag-and-drop functionality, whether it’s in a chat or a channel. By default, I mean we could always add third-party services for file storage to Teams, but people had to use the upload button to go there. If they did drag and drop, it would always go to SharePoint or OneDrive. Well, now we can configure the default behavior even for drag and drop, so the drag and drop file can go into a third-party file management service. If this is useful for you, go configure it. I’m sure your users will love it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Next up, our next feature is managing who can record and transcribe meetings. This is not as much of an admin feature as it is a Teams owner feature, but if you have Teams Premium, you can now decide if only organizers, co-organizers, and presenters can record and transcribe, or anyone from the meeting. So again, a small feature but can add a lot of privacy value, something you should talk to your users about.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Okay, for our final topic, let’s go and talk about Copilot. If any of you ever wondered how many times did Microsoft say the word “Copilot” inside a keynote, you have it over there. I added the video to Microsoft Stream and created a transcript. Then I asked Copilot in Stream how many times did they mention the word “Copilot,” and it’s 139 times. So, wow, that is quite a lot.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Okay, so what did we get new for Copilot? First of all, let’s talk about Copilot and SharePoint. We will now have the ability to create a Copilot directly from a SharePoint site. Now, why is this super important for admins? This is a text directly from Microsoft. Beyond only the site owner or admins, anyone who has edit permissions on a site, such as a site member by default, can now create a Copilot for the site with only a few clicks, and no coding skills required. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is awesome in a way that anybody can create a Copilot without any technical skills, but I can’t wait to see the admin controls we will have around it. Because as much as, again, I’m all for low code and all of that, but I don’t want to have 15 different Copilots on the same site. I don’t want to have a “when to use what” Copilot. So they haven’t talked about any admin controls, but just be ready for it, and I’ll show you a bit of how it works.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So you have the “Create a Copilot” button here that I showed you before. Then you just give it a name, an image, you tell it what documents to be grounded in because that’s the benefit. You can ground it in only some documents on that SharePoint site. You can test it in there. You can even add some starter prompts, for example, as well as instructions. So if you wanted to have some instructions for the base without the user specifying it, you can add them in the instructions for the Copilot there. And then people can publish it in SharePoint as well as in Microsoft Teams. Again, awesome functionality. I can’t wait to test it, and I love the idea that we’re able to do this. But as an IT pro, I hope we’re going to get some admin controls on it, whether it’s having a security group that’s able to do them or only site owners and not site members.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, I really hope we’ll have those controls in place. They haven’t talked about any of that yet, so know about it. Go play with the preview as soon as it becomes available later this year. And once it’s available, I’ll create more content on how to control it as an admin.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, another Copilot news, and this one is pretty important. It’s a brand new Copilot that’s actually not really a brand new Copilot. It’s a new type of Copilot that we have available now, which is the Team Copilot. Let’s play the video here in the back. And instead of having a personal AI assistant, we will now have a Team Copilot. So it’s not my Copilot as a user; we have it in the team. We can add it to meetings. We can tell it what we want it to do, like, “Hey Team Copilot, take some notes,” or “Hey Team Copilot, schedule follow-ups.” So it’s kind of like having an executive assistant for a specific team. Now, is that team a project team, or a department team? I guess we will be able to decide how it works. We don’t have too many details now. We’ve only seen the video, and I can’t wait to see it in action. But it’s definitely something to start thinking about. If your organization doesn’t have a Copilot for each and every user, does having a Team Copilot help? Does that make sense for you?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, Team Copilot will be in preview later this year, and you will need to have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license in order to have access to the preview. Again, I can’t wait to try it as an admin. Start thinking about where it makes sense. Are there any users for that maybe we don’t want to have a Copilot for each one of them, but we want to have a Copilot per team, maybe? I can’t wait to see the licensing as well. Right now, Microsoft said that you need a Copilot for M365 license for the preview. I don’t know if that’s the final license for general availability yet. They haven’t talked about it, but I can’t wait to learn more about Team Copilot. So take a look at the links. I’ll add a bunch of links below in the description where you can learn more.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, as much as I did really want to cover anything for devs, it’s still important for us as IT professionals. Microsoft announced a bunch of new ways to extend Copilot for Microsoft 365, so from Copilot connectors to Copilot plugins and many different ways to build them, from no code with Copilot Studio to pro code with Visual Studio Code. Again, not necessarily an IT pro thing, but we still need to understand how can our company extend it and how can we make sure that our developers are using it the right way. So if you need to extend Copilot in your organization, make sure you take a look at the build sessions. I’ll put a link in the description that covers everything about Copilot extensibility.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This is it. Thank you so much for watching. I hope if you’re a Microsoft 365 administrator, you found this valuable, and I hope you’re going to go in and test some of those features as they become available. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you like it, and make sure you subscribe to the channel. This way, you get notified first when I post brand new videos, whether certification news or news from conferences like this one. Thank you so much for listening.&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/@VladTalksTech&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded><category>Microsoft 365</category><category>Microsoft Copilot</category><category>Microsoft Teams</category><category>SharePoint</category><author>Vlad Catrinescu</author></item><item><title>TOP Microsoft 365 Conference 2024 Keynote Highlights | Copilot, Teams, and More</title><link>https://vladtalkstech.com/microsoft-365/top-microsoft-365-conference-2024-keynote-highlights-copilot-teams-and-more/</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://vladtalkstech.com/?p=41479</guid><description>Learn about the top highlights from the Microsoft 365 Conference 2024 Keynote, including updates on Copilot, Teams, and more.</description><pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2024 05:16:00 GMT</pubDate><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;The Microsoft 365 Conference 2024 Keynote focused on what’s possible today, and teased the future. Get all the top M365 Community Conference keynote highlights from two Microsoft MVPs, Vlad Catrinescu and Gokan Ozcifci!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://vladtalks.com/courses/pluralsight&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Watch my 60+ courses on Pluralsight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-summary&quot;&gt;Video Summary&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here are the key points from the video:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Conference Highlights: The Microsoft 365 Community Conference in Orlando featured over 3,000 attendees and 300 Microsoft representatives, focusing heavily on co-pilot, Teams, and SharePoint.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Keynote Recap: Jeff Teper’s keynote emphasized current features and updates rather than future releases, with a strong focus on security and responsible AI.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Teams and SharePoint Updates: Teams now boasts 320 million monthly active users, and SharePoint sees 2.5 billion documents uploaded daily. New features include voice isolation in Teams and co-pilot integration in OneDrive and SharePoint.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Stream Enhancements: A new feature in Stream allows users to edit video transcripts directly, simplifying video editing without needing expensive software.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Upcoming Events: The speakers hinted at more detailed sessions on SharePoint Premium and announced their next appearance at the European Power Platform Conference in Brussels.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-transcript&quot;&gt;Video Transcript&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Hello everybody, we’re in sunny Orlando at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference. Goen, this is day one. What do you think so far?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Absolutely amazed by the quality, the venue, the weather, and literally everything. I’m pretty happy to be here, Lance. Especially the weather; it snowed not even a week ago in Canada, so I’m super happy to be here for the weather. But also, 3,000 people this week at the 365 Community Conference. I think this is the biggest one since the SharePoint Conference back then. Something we learned during the keynote today was that we have over 300 people from Microsoft here, from all different levels—from executives to product groups to marketing, and a lot of customer-focused and partner-focused people as well. So, over 300 people to connect with and ask questions, which is amazing. It’s all about co-pilots, the age of co-pilots.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Let’s get into the topic of the keynote, Goen. The keynote just finished not even an hour ago. Do you want to get started? What do you think was one of the big topics of the keynote? And you’re not allowed to use the word “co-pilot.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Oh, that’s going to be very difficult, but let me try. So, Jeff Teper, a big classic, just ran to the main stage and started his show. It was pretty amazing because we got the three main pillars: the forbidden words—you can’t say co-pilot, Teams, and SharePoint. He gave all the exciting features they’re working on, stuff they have been releasing and have released. It was more a recap of all they have done in the last year, and at the end, a few exciting to-be-announced features.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I think we also have to be aware that this conference is happening right now. We are recording this on April 30th, but there’s a big Microsoft conference happening at the end of May, which is Microsoft Build. When you have a conference that is close to one of the two big Microsoft events of the year, you never know how many announcements you are going to get. But something that was very different for me compared to the usual Jeff keynotes is that it was a lot more about what we have today. It was not about stuff coming in six months or twelve months; it was about the stuff we have today. Jeff actually compared the transition we are going through right now—from not using AI to having co-pilot and using AI—to what we went through in about 2014 when companies were like, “Am I really going to move to the cloud? Is the cloud really worth it?” So, we’re in that sort of transition again.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There was a big focus on something at the beginning, a big word that starts with “S.” Goen, which one is it?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Security? No, no, security. I’m just joking. You dirty mind, Goen has a dirty mind. I’m talking about security.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Okay, my bad, my apologies.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;No, that’s okay, Goen. Responsible AI and responsible IT. There is a lot of focus on the fact that the co-pilot is safe, co-pilot is secure, and on all the compliance parts of the co-pilot. Jeff made a solid statement about that: the prompts and data belong to us, and Microsoft will never use them to train their models. The data that we get or the generative AI responses that we get are secured. We will only see stuff that we are able to see, and there is no leak or something like that. Those two solid statements were made by Jeff to reassure people if they still had questions about whether co-pilot is safe and secure, and whether they can see data from their manager, and so on. That’s one of the big advantages of co-pilot versus using ChatGPT-3 or Gemini or Claude. If you don’t have the enterprise subscription, which is as expensive as co-pilot and has fewer features, you’re sharing that data on those free services. Whereas with co-pilot, part of that money you pay is for commercial-grade data protection.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, let’s talk about the pillars. The first pillar was a co-pilot. Goen, did we see anything new about the co-pilot?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To be honest, no. We have seen how you could use co-pilot, a few very nice prompts, the difference between the web and the work, as well as an introduction to a co-pilot studio where you could actually have connectors going to SAP, retrieving data, and responding to a co-pilot. New? I wouldn’t say yes, but exciting stuff that people who never seen it would find very good.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Awesome. Yeah, I agree with you. We didn’t really see anything new, but we saw all the stuff that was released. I think still, for a lot of people at the conference, co-pilot is still at that new stage where the fact that they had live demos on a keynote—yes, all the demos were live—this was something that you don’t see often in keynotes. We went from having co-pilot only as pre-recorded demos to now having them as live demos, which shows the maturity of the product.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, let’s switch over to the second pillar, which is Microsoft Teams. Four favorites?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Well, I’m not sure because SharePoint is in my heart.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Okay, yeah, but Teams—how many users? They said about 320 million monthly active users. That’s still a lot. I’m sure we’ll get to 700, but for now, only 320 million.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Why 700 million?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I don’t know why. That’s how much you owe me. I had that in mind for some reason.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You just got to write me the check because Jeff shared numbers with us, which he never did publicly. May I state them now?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Sure.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He told us that we had more than 2.5 billion files per day coming to the cloud to M365, as well as half a million SharePoint sites per day. Can you imagine those numbers? They’re pretty phenomenal.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That is crazy. That’s 2.5 billion documents per day to the cloud and 500 new SharePoint sites. I kind of learned a new word today, Goen: exabytes. Most people look at storage in gigabytes, or some people who use it a lot talk terabytes. Microsoft is now talking exabytes. How much storage is that? We have terabytes, petabytes, and then exabytes. That’s a lot of zeros at the end.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That’s a lot of zeros. How many zeros, Goen?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I would say nine is a billion, twelve is a trillion, so fifteen?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We’re going to have to fact-check that in post-editing. Please cut it if it’s not true.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We’re going to have to fact-check you in the post and see how much an actual exabyte is. But yes, 11 exabytes of content and the servers running SharePoint have, what is it, 64 million cores of CPU? Again, big numbers. I can’t even imagine what it looks like because those numbers are so big.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Okay, we talked a bit about SharePoint. Any closing thoughts for Teams before we switch over?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We had nice demos such as voice isolation. There was a real meeting going on with a lot of noise, and the keynote speaker joined the meeting. There were people outside of the room, so it was really cool to have that real demo effect that shows the maturity of the features. But nothing really new for Teams, right? Did I miss anything?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;No, mesh, Teams recap, co-pilot prompts, and so on. All classic stuff that we already knew. But again, if you have 3,000 people, I’m pretty sure 20% have never heard about that, so it’s always good to refresh the memories and show existing stuff. It was pretty good.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Okay, now SharePoint. We actually had some really cool stuff. Let’s start with OneDrive co-pilot. When are we getting it?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, in summer. This year, summer. Co-pilot will be GA.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That’s what she said.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That’s what she said. Michelle said it. I don’t think everyone really understood that. There was no big applause or something like that, but we’re letting you know.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I’ll be honest, I was a bit disappointed by that because if you look at the roadmap, initially it was supposed to go GA in May. I was honestly expecting that Jeff would come up on stage and say, “OneDrive co-pilot, by the way, log in and you have it.” For, for you, for you, for you, for thinking co-pilot again on the M365 roadmap, it should go GA in May, and yet we didn’t really hear when.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For OneDrive, we know it’s coming to GA in the summer. For SharePoint, no ETA has been delivered or said to us. We have seen, however, one image or one little demo video about the SharePoint co-pilot where you can build beautiful and flexible sites. It was really beautiful, the way the prompt was structured and the way they created the site. I did not know co-pilot in SharePoint would be that good. It was really good to see it, but I can’t wait to get my hands on it, especially since I’m paying for my own M365 co-pilot subscription. I can’t wait to have it and play with it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To be honest, when I saw it for the first time, it was a quite different experience from the co-pilot that we knew from Outlook, Excel, Teams, and so on. It looks a bit different, but we have to see it. Let’s wait for summer, and we’ll have a preview of OneDrive and hopefully learn about SharePoint.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Another Copilot I wanted to talk about is Copilot in Stream and more. Copilot in Stream was on the roadmap for May 2024 GA, but we didn’t really hear anything about it. However, we got shown a really cool feature that I had no idea Microsoft was working on, which is transcript editing for your video. So, you create a nice video, upload it to Stream, and then instead of opening up Adobe Camtasia or any other tool and manually cutting, the AI will create a transcript for you. You can edit it as a Word document, which will edit the actual video, so you don’t need to pay for expensive video editors anymore because AI will just do it for you.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Even in the second keynote, after the main one, we saw a video about how you can edit real videos, change the rotation of people talking in a video, change the colors, and even change the way they smile. They just showed the video, and it was pretty amazing. I would say this is going to change the video world if we can do that well. The thing is, we can already do a lot of it. I pay for Camtasia, which has that transcript functionality, which is amazing. But I pay $20 a month for that. Now, with Copilot, I can save $20 a month because Microsoft will have it in M365, so I am super excited about that.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;What else did we see in the keynote? We saw a lot of SharePoint premium features, e-signatures, and a lot of Viva demos, as well as a bunch of other stuff that we enjoyed. But there was really nothing new, nothing new as we knew about everything. E-signature has been there for a while. The feature was announced like six months ago, so we’re still waiting for it. But those features, for new people, are big news.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Right after the keynote, we had a second keynote, which was branded as a General Session, but it was still the only session at that time, so I’ll call it the second keynote. The second keynote was all about Copilot. There was nothing really new except one thing, which you liked. Most of the session was a recap of Copilot, educating people on what you can do with Copilot today. No real new features except one of them. Soon, we will get usage reports about Copilot, and you know what? It’s free. We’re not going to pay for it. We will be able to know which tool we are using Copilot and prompts, maybe Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, and we will get those reports and dashboards in the Compliance Center and Security. Those dashboards will help us understand how the usage is for Copilot, so that was pretty amazing.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He also said that we will get more admin features in the Admin Center soon, coming to Copilot. I love admin features. Lastly, there was a huge blog post dropped on the Tech Community about all the cool stuff that Microsoft started shipping in SharePoint Premium. It was not really covered in the keynotes, but I know there’s going to be a general session later today, so we should maybe go attend that and do another video where we can really deep dive into the SharePoint Premium stuff.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;One thing I really want to say is thank you, Microsoft, because when they showed the recap in Teams or e-signatures and autofill, they didn’t mention the premium. They just made it as if it was part of the tool, which I think is a pretty strategic move because you’re not confusing people. The message was clear: we have a lot of those features, and if you want to use them, maybe the licensing is different, but some companies don’t care about the licensing; they just want to use the tool. That’s exactly what they did. No mention of Premium, no mention of Licensing, no mention of Enterprise licenses. This is the feature, this is the use case and go for it, use it, which I really like. So, thank you so much, Microsoft.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If they didn’t talk about it, it’s free, right? Or you paid for it? I never said that, but you may always hope for it. I’ll hope for it. That said, thank you very much, everyone. We really hope you enjoyed it. Gokan, what conference are we going to be at next? What big conference? We’ll be in Brussels for the European Power Platform Conference. Are we going to do a keynote recap over there as well? You know what, if you offer me a caramel macchiato, I would say yes. I’ll offer you all the caramel macchiatos you want. Deal. There we go. Thank you so much, everyone, for watching. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you like the video and subscribe to the channel for the latest Microsoft 365, Power Platform, and certification news. See you soon. Cheers.&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/@VladTalksTech&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded><category>Microsoft 365</category><category>Microsoft Copilot</category><category>Microsoft Teams</category><author>Vlad Catrinescu</author></item><item><title>Troubleshooting File Sharing in Teams Chats (Person-to-Person)</title><link>https://vladtalkstech.com/microsoft-365/ms-teams/troubleshooting-file-sharing-in-teams-chats-person-to-person/</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://vladtalkstech.com/?p=41464</guid><description>Learn to troubleshoot file sharing issues in Teams chats with step-by-step guidance on resolving access errors.</description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Apr 2024 20:33:00 GMT</pubDate><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;Are you a Teams administrator that needs to troubleshoot file sharing issues in Microsoft Teams person to person chats? In this clip from my Troubleshooting Microsoft Teams: File Issues Pluralsight course you will learn how to troubleshoot file issues in person to person chats!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://bit.ly/microsoft-teams-troubleshooting-file-issues&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Full Course&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-summary&quot;&gt;Video Summary&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here are the key points from the video:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Identify the sender and receiver: Knowing who shared the file and who cannot access it helps in pinpointing the problem.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Check file permissions: Ask the sender to copy the link to the file. This link can reveal if the file is in SharePoint or OneDrive for Business, and you can check if the file exists and its permissions.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Common issues: Often, issues arise when a user is added to a chat after a file is shared, or when external sharing settings in SharePoint or OneDrive for Business don’t match those in Microsoft Teams.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Admin access: Admins can gain access to a user’s OneDrive for Business through the SharePoint admin center to check and modify file permissions if necessary.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Sync external sharing settings: Ensure that external sharing settings across Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive for Business are in sync to avoid access issues, especially for guest users.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-transcript&quot;&gt;Video Transcript&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now that we know the expected behavior, let’s talk about how to troubleshoot file issues in person-to-person chats. First of all, what are some of the common issues that you might encounter with person-to-person file sharing? The first one is that a user cannot upload a file to a chat. You might also encounter a situation where a user cannot access a file in a chat, or a user cannot access a file in a chat but others can, which makes it even more interesting. Lastly, a common issue is that a file from a chat was previously accessible but isn’t anymore.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To troubleshoot these issues, there are three main pieces of information that you need. First, who shared the file? Who is the sender? After that, who is the user or the users who cannot access the file? Finally, a good piece of information to have is whether the receiver is internal or external. Is it just an external user who cannot access files, or is it internal as well? This can really help you focus on the right settings right away. The easiest way to get a lot of this information is to simply ask them to go into the chat and copy the link to the file that they cannot access. By looking at the URL, you will see right away if the file is in SharePoint or OneDrive for Business, as well as the path to the file, so you can go in and check if the file exists and, if it does, check the permissions.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you try that and find that the item was deleted, you might get an error such as this one. I’ve seen this happen a lot of times when collaboration is done via chat, but the original sender leaves the organization and their OneDrive for Business files are deleted or migrated to another user’s OneDrive for Business during the offboarding process. Now, if we look at some common causes, the one that happens most of the time is that a user was added to a chat after the file was shared. This happens because when a sender uploads a file, that file is shared by default with people in the chat at that moment in time. If a user is added afterwards, those files are not updated automatically. Teams do warn you about this as a user, but users often forget and still open tickets about it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Another common configuration issue that I have seen, which impacts mostly external users, is that the external sharing settings in SharePoint or OneDrive for Business don’t match those of Microsoft Teams. Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive for Business can all have different configurations regarding whether external sharing is enabled or not, or even the allowed and blocked domains. Without those being in sync, file access errors can happen.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now that we have seen the theory, let’s head over to the lab and see how we can troubleshoot file issues in person-to-person chats. We are now in the demo environment. Let me open up the browser where I’m logged in as Vanessa Lee, and let’s start with a chat with John Smith. Here, let me just go and upload a document. I will go into the demos folder and pick this PowerPoint file. I’ll add some text here, “Hello John,” and then I will change the permissions. I will select “specific people,” take John Smith off and leave only Vanessa Lee there. I click on “apply,” and as you can see, Teams is really smart. It gave me another warning: “The recipient does not have permission to access this file.” I will still send it. Now, if I go to John Smith and click on the file, I will get an error.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To troubleshoot this, ask the sending user to copy the link. I will copy the link and put it in Notepad so we can take a look at what the link looks like. After the company name, I see a dash “my,” which tells me this is in OneDrive for Business. The link could have also come from a SharePoint site, in which case we would see “sites” at the end and not the dash “my.” Then, I see “personal,” which again tells me it’s OneDrive for Business, and I know it’s in Vanessa Lee’s OneDrive. As an admin, I might not have access to that user’s OneDrive for Business, but there are multiple ways to gain access. From the SharePoint admin center, I could go into “more features,” “user profiles,” search for the user, and add myself as a site collection administrator. Another option is from the Microsoft 365 admin center, where I could find the user and get access to their files.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Once I have access to Vanessa Lee’s OneDrive for Business, I can go to the account name, click on “manage personal site,” and navigate to the “Microsoft Teams Chat Files” folder. I see the file that was just uploaded, and I can check the sharing settings. I see that John Smith does not have access, and I can either modify it myself or train Vanessa on how to do it so the error doesn’t happen again. It’s important to ask the sending user to copy the link, not the receiving user because the receiving user won’t have access to the file. If the sending user cannot copy the link, it might be because the file was deleted.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If we have an external user, the process is similar. I will go to a conversation with John Smith and Vlad Kresco, my guest account. I will upload a PowerPoint file and leave the default setting, “people in this chat with the link can view.” If I go as John Smith, I can access the file with no problems. However, if I go as Vlad, the guest account, I will get an error. This can be due to the OneDrive for Business external sharing settings. In the SharePoint Online admin center, under “policies” and “sharing,” I can see the external sharing settings for SharePoint and OneDrive for Business. I need to ensure that OneDrive for Business can share externally and that the settings are in sync with SharePoint.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;After modifying the settings to allow new and existing guests, I might need to re-share the file. Vanessa might need to go in, change the properties of the file, and add Vlad. When adding another user to the chat, the permissions to the file will not be changed automatically. Vanessa needs to copy the link, go to OneDrive for Business, and ensure that the new user has access to the file. The key to troubleshooting file issues in person-to-person chats is to get the sending user to provide the link to the file, check the permissions, and ensure that external sharing settings are in sync across Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive for Business.&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/@VladTalksTech&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded><category>Microsoft 365</category><category>Microsoft Teams</category><author>Vlad Catrinescu</author></item><item><title>NEW Microsoft Applied Skill – Build Collaborative Apps for Teams</title><link>https://vladtalkstech.com/microsoft-365/new-microsoft-applied-skill-build-collaborative-apps-for-teams/</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://vladtalkstech.com/?p=41386</guid><description>Learn about the NEW Microsoft Applied Skill for building Teams apps. Validate your skills with this free credential.</description><pubDate>Thu, 22 Feb 2024 18:06:00 GMT</pubDate><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;Are you a Microsoft 365 / Microsoft Teams Developer who wants to get certified? Microsoft just released a brand new credential for Teams Developers, and it’s the Build collaborative apps for Microsoft Teams Applied Skill! Learn everything you need to know about it in this video!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://learn.microsoft.com/training/paths/build-collaborative-apps-microsoft-teams/?WT.mc_id=M365-MVP-5000399&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Applied Skill&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-summary&quot;&gt;Video Summary&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here are the key points from the video:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Microsoft has introduced a new credential called “Build Collaborative Apps for Microsoft Teams,” replacing the retired MS-600 certification.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Unlike traditional certifications, this new credential is an applied skill, focusing on specific tasks like developing custom apps for Teams, and it’s free to take.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Candidates need experience with Microsoft Graph API, Microsoft Identity Platform, and tools like the Microsoft Teams Toolkit. The assessment includes tasks like building bots and integrating Microsoft Graph.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;The applied skill assessment is lab-based, unproctored, and can be taken anytime, anywhere. It involves practical tasks and provides immediate results.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Various training options are available, including free content on Microsoft Learn, premium online training, and instructor-led courses. The speaker emphasizes the importance of these resources for both new and experienced developers.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-transcript&quot;&gt;Video Transcript&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Hello everyone. Today we are talking about Microsoft 365 credentials, and I’m so excited to finally have some good news for Microsoft 365 certification seekers. I feel like we haven’t had those in a while now, so I’m super happy. We have a brand new Microsoft credential for Microsoft 365, and it’s called the Build Collaborative Apps for Microsoft Teams. Now, why is this important? This is super important because in March 2023, almost a year ago, Microsoft officially retired the MS-600 Teams Application Developer certification. While partners could still take it until December 2023, it’s currently not available anymore for anyone. This is why having a credential for Microsoft 365 developers is even bigger news.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, you notice that I’m using the word “credential” here, and this is because this new credential is not a certification like the MS-600 exam was. Instead, it’s one of the new applied skills by Microsoft. In this video, we will cover the basics of what you need to know for the new Build Collaborative Apps for Microsoft Teams applied skill. We will do an introduction to the applied skill, cover the difference between applied skills and certifications, and also cover the learning materials you need to pass this new applied skill.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So, let’s get started. Let’s start by talking about the Build Collaborative Apps for Microsoft Teams applied skill. This applied skill is the first applied skill for modern workplace professionals. Its goal is to validate your ability to develop custom apps for Microsoft Teams. I also have some good news for you: the cost is 100% free, which is a welcome change from the $150 it used to cost for a certification.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For the target audience, as a candidate for this credential, you should have experience developing applications for Microsoft Teams that use the Microsoft Graph API and the Microsoft Identity Platform. You should be familiar with tools for developing apps for Microsoft Teams, such as the Microsoft Teams Toolkit. For the skills measured, Microsoft doesn’t share as much information as they do for certifications, but we do know that you need to know how to build a bot, create a messaging extension, build webhooks, create a Teams tab, integrate Microsoft Graph into a Teams app, and distribute a Teams app. This page also mentions the products that you need to know, which are, of course, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Identity, and Microsoft Copilot. This last one I wasn’t necessarily expecting, and it really shows how up-to-date you need to be with Copilot before taking this applied skill. With Copilot still being fairly new, and organizations just starting to look at developing their own plugins and extensions for it, I was not necessarily expecting it to be in the applied skill. However, if you haven’t learned how to create custom solutions for Copilot, this is your opportunity to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Remember when I mentioned that there’s not a lot of information about the applied skill on the page? However, I dug a bit deeper and found more information on a training partner site about what is covered during the exam, which is really more written in the old skills measured of the certification. I will not read them all one by one, but this gives you a very good idea of what you need to know before you attempt to pass this applied skill. By looking at it, most of it seems to be in line with what a Teams developer needs to know. The only thing again that I didn’t really expect is to have Copilot in a Microsoft credential so soon.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, let’s talk about how applied skills work as well. Since this is the first applied skill for the modern workplace, a lot of you might still be very new to the concept. Microsoft applied skills are a new way to get a Microsoft credential that Microsoft released in 2023 for people to validate their skills. The huge difference between applied skills and certifications are the cost, the scope, and the way to do it. If we compare certifications and applied skills, first of all, the goal of certification is to validate broad technical capabilities, while for applied skills, they only validate a specific skill. In our example here, you’re not a Microsoft 365 developer, which might be a role; you are only a Teams developer. You validate the skill that you’re able to develop for Microsoft Teams. There is no mention of anything other than Teams in the products, and no SharePoint, for example. But if you look at the role of a Microsoft 365 developer, it’s rare that in an organization you have a Teams developer that doesn’t know or do anything with SharePoint because they are so tied together. Certifications are role-based, while applied skills are project-based. Again, for the scope, certifications will validate multiple skills. For example, for the M365 developer certification, you needed to know how to architect the solution, how to get business requirements, and how to even configure auditing for your solution. For the applied skill, you just need to validate that you know how to develop solutions for Microsoft Teams. Even the format is different, with certifications being mostly question-based and sometimes having some labs, but applied skills are a purely lab-based experience. For certifications, you needed to schedule the exam, and they are proctored, which means that you have somebody there watching you, making sure that you do not cheat. For applied skills, they are free to take anytime, anywhere. They are not proctored, so nobody’s watching you while you do them. You could do them from a coffee shop, from the airport, from the office—it’s up to you. The only thing you have to do is log in with your Microsoft account, accept the terms, and then click on start. Your applied skill assessment will start, and you will have two hours to complete it. You will then have a lab open directly in the browser, and you’ll have different goals or tasks assigned to you on what you need to do. For example, create a bot that does X, Y, and Z requirements. This is what it will look like to start. Of course, I can’t show you anything else because what happens in the assessment stays in the assessment, or at least that’s the theory. When you’re done, you will click on submit assessment, and it will take a few minutes to get graded. It might even take up to 10 minutes, and then you will know if you passed or not. If you didn’t pass, do not worry; you can retake the skill assessment 72 hours later at absolutely no extra cost to you.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now that we covered how to take it and what you will be evaluated on, let’s start talking about learning materials. There are three main options for training for the applied skill: first of all, free on Microsoft Learn; then premium online training; and finally, instructor-led training. I will share links to all the resources mentioned in the description below. Let’s start with Microsoft Learn. Microsoft has been offering so much free content on Microsoft Learn in the past two years, and even most of the content for instructor-led courses is now on Microsoft Learn. The downside, however, is that you are just reading documentation, and you do not have a trainer to explain how to do certain things or answer any questions that you might have. Trainers also bring real-life experience to the table, whereas Microsoft Learn is simply a collection of documentation on how things should work. You’ll also notice the warnings that some of the content on Microsoft Learn was created with AI. Of course, AI is there to empower us; there’s nothing wrong with using AI in general. However, I feel that AI does not have that instructional design experience that trainers have and a way to explain things, especially for new people who want to discover how to learn a skill. So, it’s a really great resource—it’s free, and there’s no reason for you not to check it out. It’s out there for free. However, if you’re advanced, this is perfect. If you’re just starting out, it might not be enough for you. Microsoft Learn estimates that the content on there is about four hours total.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now, let’s talk about premium online training. These are online, on-demand classes that will be taught by an expert and usually go through peer review before they are published. I will, of course, start with Pluralsight, where I publish my content. Okay, yes, I do have a Microsoft Graph t-shirt today. I am not a developer, and I don’t think I will ever create any content for this applied skill. However, I will make sure to add some resources in the description of the video. Our next resource is Voitanos by Microsoft MVP Andrew Connell, which is known to be one of the best resources for Microsoft 365 developers out there. I personally know that Andrew is one of the best trainers out there, and I will share a link in the description below to his resources. Finally, we have LinkedIn Learning, which is not known for the most in-depth technical courses, but they do have some Teams developer content as well.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Finally, we have instructor-led training, where we have course number MS-4001 called Build Collaborative Apps for Microsoft Teams. It’s a one-day course. This is still pretty new, and more and more training providers are starting to offer it. The benefit of getting in-person training, other than having a trainer live there for questions, is that these can only be delivered by Microsoft Certified Trainers, which should guarantee a good class experience.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Before we finish off this video, I wanted to share some of my thoughts about this applied skill. Let me start by saying that I’m so happy that we finally have a new credential for the modern workplace. Last year was all bad news, and we lost 50% of our certifications. We definitely needed a Microsoft Teams or a Microsoft 365 developer certification, as companies are all now working on integrating their custom apps with Teams, where people end up working. We want to bring everything inside Teams, and we need the developers. Having this new applied skill is an excellent way for qualified professionals to prove their expertise with Microsoft Teams. That’s the part that I love&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/@VladTalksTech&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded><category>Microsoft 365</category><category>Microsoft Teams</category><author>Vlad Catrinescu</author></item><item><title>TOP ESPC 2023 Keynote Highlights | SharePoint Embedded, Copilot, Teams, and More</title><link>https://vladtalkstech.com/microsoft-365/sharepoint/top-espc-2023-keynote-highlights-sharepoint-embedded-copilot-teams-and-more/</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://vladtalkstech.com/?p=40935</guid><description>Learn about the top ESPC 2023 keynote highlights, including SharePoint Embedded, Copilot, Teams, and more. Find out more on my video channel.</description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Nov 2023 16:56:00 GMT</pubDate><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;Get all the top ESPC 2023 Keynote highlights in Amsterdam from two Microsoft MVPs, Vlad Catrinescu and Gokan Ozcifci!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://vladtalks.com/courses/pluralsight&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Watch my 60+ courses on Pluralsight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-summary&quot;&gt;Video Summary&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here are the key points from the video:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exciting Keynote Highlights&lt;/strong&gt;: The keynote at the European SharePoint Conference featured new announcements and updates, including the latest on Microsoft 365 and AI innovations.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Microsoft Teams Updates&lt;/strong&gt;: The new version of Microsoft Teams (Teams V2) is now live, offering faster performance and new features, including custom immersive spaces with Mesh.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SharePoint Enhancements&lt;/strong&gt;: SharePoint is getting new branding capabilities, allowing for custom fonts and more beautiful site designs, making it easier to match company identities without extensive custom development.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SharePoint Premium&lt;/strong&gt;: SharePoint Syntex has been rebranded as SharePoint Premium, integrating advanced features like data extraction and e-signatures, making it more appealing and accessible to users.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SharePoint Embedded&lt;/strong&gt;: A new feature called SharePoint Embedded allows third-party and first-party applications to leverage SharePoint’s repository services, enhancing data management and compliance within Microsoft 365.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-transcript&quot;&gt;Video Transcript&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Hello everyone, we’re so glad to be here in Amsterdam at the amazing European SharePoint Conference. I’m here again with my good friend Goen. Goen, how are you doing?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“Wonderful, thank you so much. How are you, Vlad?”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“I’m doing great, Goen. You’re from Europe, and I feel like I always see you in North America at all the North American events. How does it feel to have such an amazing conference in Europe and be able to connect with your local peers?”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“It’s amazing, like seeing all those industry experts, leaders, and Microsoft people coming down to one big event, talking about M365, the future of collaboration, and all the AI stuff is just simply amazing. We’ve got a lot of new stuff to share with you guys, and I’ll give it back to you to make the introduction.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“Awesome. So, we actually just came out of the keynote not even 20 minutes ago. The keynote ended and wow, we had so many Microsoft people, it was crazy. But something that I like, especially at the European SharePoint Conference, you know when you go to a keynote, it’s always in the morning and I’m not a morning person as a lot of people now know. You get there, you wake up super early. What I love about ESPC is that they have this amazing show before every keynote, and this time we had these light suits that were dancing with some really energetic music. That really wakes you up, puts you in the mood, like I’m excited to be here, I’m excited to learn, and I’m happy to be here. I really love that. I was expecting that at the end of the show it was just Jeff Teper and all the crew just saying like, ‘Hey,’ but that wasn’t the case. No, they said they would like to have the suits as well, so I don’t think it was them, but we never know. We never saw the faces, so it might have been Jeff in that dancing suit as well. I guess we’ll never know. But then we went into the content, and what an amazing keynote it was. I’ll have to say, when I got into that keynote, I was a bit expecting them to just do Ignite all over again because that’s what happens a lot of the time at conferences, especially when you’re so close to a big conference like Ignite where Microsoft announces so many things. They don’t usually have announcements just one week later, but we actually had some cool announcements, brand new stuff today in the keynote. We’ll talk about that in a few minutes here, but I was so excited that it was not Ignite. It was different. One of the things that I loved, and Jeff is always a great speaker, but I loved how the Microsoft team adapted the keynote to this crowd. Jeff really, I mean Jeff always starts by thanking the community of course, but in the content, he said that we know that AI stuff and the new innovations are what goes in the press, but don’t worry, more than half of our team is focused on building things for today, on making SharePoint, Teams, and the whole M365 faster and more stable. So, we’re not only working on brand new shiny things, we still have more than half the team making your lives better today even if you don’t have a Copilot license. That makes me extremely happy because that shows that Jeff Teper’s team knows that they have struggles today within the actual platform. They know not everything is perfect. They work with the shiny stuff, as you said, but they face the real world and they have to make the platform better with the actual stuff of today. So, that makes me very happy.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;What did we talk about today? We talked about three main things in the keynote, right? The first one, which I’m sure is no surprise to anybody, Copilot. Copilot was of course there. Then we talked about Microsoft Teams, and then we ended with, we kept the best for last, or at least you know SharePoint is dear to my heart, we kept SharePoint for last to close out the show. So, for Copilot, Goen, any highlights? What did they show?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“It was basically a recap of all what we knew, like how you could use Copilot within the collaborative apps within PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel, Word, and so on. But one thing I have to say, what really shocked me or like I was not aware of, is that you could rephrase the Copilot responses on your own tone or on your own language style of speaking. It was like, ‘Make it sound like me.’ There you go. As a non-native American, I always aim to make mistakes or as a French, it’s straightforward, you know, like it’s like, ‘Oh, go to the point.’ And by clicking on one button and saying like, ‘Hey, make it on my tone,’ that was simply amazing. So, I think I’m going to use it every single day now, just you know, the response of the Copilot, bring them into my mail or Teams channel or Teams chat. Phenomenal stuff. So, big hats off. But now, now I’m a bit scared I’m never going to know if you wrote the email or if you just had AI.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“It’s going to be a mix. Anyways, they’re going to put stuff in AI and then copy-paste it to me on Facebook. I’m a bit scared about that. But other than that, on Copilot, I think there was nothing really new. We saw some of the same videos about Copilot in Excel, Copilot in PowerPoint, Copilot in Word and Outlook and everything, and of course Copilot in Teams. We had the M365 chat, which is Copilot that allows it to really ask it any question wherever in M365. But then it got a bit more exciting with Teams. So, at Ignite last week, there were quite a few announcements about Teams, and I was there in the Teams expert booth, so I had to learn all of them by heart. The biggest announcement, the new version of Teams, so Teams V2 is now live, not only on the Windows client but also on the web. As somebody that uses Teams on the web a lot because I have so many tenants, I’m so happy. The first thing I did was go there, click the button, and switch to the new Teams. So, that was super exciting. Teams, again, two times faster, which brings us to the point that Jeff was making. We still have people working on making the existing Teams better for everybody. Then I think there’s some Mesh stuff you really like.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“Yes, so being able to create rooms and build those immersive spaces where you can just invite people, collaborate, talk to them is simply amazing. But what’s even better is that they announced that soon, early 2024, we could have custom immersive spaces, so we can build with Copilot rooms, spaces like we wish them to be. There was a video, pretty amazing, where people could just talk to Copilot and say, ‘Make me that room cozy,’ or ‘Bring this to the early 50s,’ and your room would be looking like that. So, that’s pretty amazing, to be honest.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“Are you looking forward to making Mesh look like your childhood in your early 50s?”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“50s? Like, 50s? But I did not know about Copilot in Mesh last week. I knew about Mesh. By the way, for everybody, it’s in public preview right now. Mesh will be GA in January 2024, so Mesh as a whole really, really soon. But I did not know about Copilot in Mesh, and that will make it so much more fun to design a space that people love. And talking about Teams, we also had some cool numbers, by the way. 320 million monthly active users of Teams. That’s a lot of people. That’s a big jump, and Teams just keeps growing and growing and growing. So, it’s amazing to see more companies be on Teams, and hopefully, we’re going to have to work with Slack less and less as we move people to Microsoft Teams.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“I guess you’re making reference to some tweet conversations from…”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“That’s top. Never mind, never mind, never mind. Then we went to SharePoint.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“Okay, so SharePoint. SharePoint, our love. Then we talked about SharePoint, and for me, and I mean this conference now, it’s called ESPC. It used to be called the European SharePoint Conference. I think even when I did the introduction, I said we’re at the European SharePoint Conference instead of the new name, which is just ESPC. I guess old habits are a bit tough to change, but it’s still SharePoint in my heart. But wow, I’m so looking forward to all the stuff in SharePoint. The brand center, so we’re going to be able, as a client, you’re going to be able to add your own custom fonts in SharePoint. So, we know that SharePoint is your intranet, and you want it to match your custom identity, but for so many years, if you wanted it to truly look good, to truly follow your brand, you needed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to developers that all they do is break stuff, right? Developers, not going to comment on that. But you had to pay a lot of money to make custom solutions for things as simple as a custom font. But now those are coming out of the box, and not only that, but also the ability to create truly beautiful sites. I mean, modern SharePoint made sites way more beautiful, but what we’ve seen in the keynote with the different layers that you can add stuff, the different ways we can position things, I can’t wait to try it. It almost feels like a public website builder, like a Wix or something, but enterprise-ready in SharePoint. So, really looking forward to that.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“I’m disappointed you didn’t tell SharePoint Server 2010, where we did build those phenomenal, you know, Ferrari SharePoint sites. I was going to make a joke about SharePoint on-prem. You know how Microsoft said, talking about numbers, by the way, 2.3 billion documents daily uploaded to SharePoint. That’s a lot of documents. And remember the book we wrote a couple of years ago on how to increase SharePoint performance? I’m sure the farms we built following that book could handle 2.3 billion documents a day, right? Not going to commence either. We should try it. We should rebuild a SharePoint farm and see how many documents we can upload in a day and have it not break. But 2.3 billion documents in a day is just crazy, tremendous, to be honest. It feels almost impossible to manage and handle, and Microsoft can do it without any downtime. It feels normal. Those numbers feel normal, and that’s where it actually gets tricky. That’s where you see that Jeff Steeper’s team is doing an amazing job. It feels like normal. Yeah, 2.3 billion documents standing there, just this many zeros. If only I had a dollar for each document per day, I’d be really happy. A penny, a penny, a penny. I’ll take a penny as well. I’ll be happy with that.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But other than that, for SharePoint, what else do we talk about? Goen Premium, SharePoint Premium, Syntex. Syntex was the tool that I was using for the last year. I’ve been using it, been evangelizing it, been trying to sell this to customers. And Jeff did tell us one thing: the branding. The branding was not that optimal, although all the new features we got into that, like data extraction, e-signatures, the management, the project Archimedes, all of those stuff that probably could handle all the issues we had today. Well, due to the branding, it was almost not visible. And I think they made a great job to rebrand this as SharePoint Premium. And we heard that people, when they see SharePoint, they get automatically interested. They made three main categories, basically SharePoint Syntex, just take it out and put it into SharePoint Premium. I feel a bit sad because Syntex is going away. I still have the swag. Syntex is going away, but I’m extremely happy because it’s back in SharePoint. So the SharePoint love is back, and everyone is going to try the new models, use AI Builder credits to build the data extraction models, use the queries, search e-signatures. They’ll go for M365 backup, archive all the stock we have within Syntex. It’s going to be loved typically now, not only by the Syntex lovers but tremendously by every SharePoint lover. So I’m extremely happy.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I was just thinking as you’re explaining that if you love something, let it go, and if it’s meant to be, it will come back, right? Videos in SharePoint, they left us in Office 365 Video and Stream, back in SharePoint. So many things. It was way before Microsoft Syntex. It was called SharePoint Syntex from SharePoint Syntex, Microsoft Cortex, SharePoint Syntex, Microsoft Syntex, and now back to SharePoint Premium. So, you know, kind of everybody tries to do their own thing, but they know SharePoint is home in the end, so they come back to where they belong. East, West, SharePoint best. No, East, West, SharePoint is best. There we go. We’ll take it. I love that.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And the last part of the keynote was about something, again, we mentioned at the beginning of the video. We had a brand new announcement that I was honestly not expecting, and it was published today at the same time on Tech Community, the public preview of SharePoint Embedded. Goen, can you tell us a bit? And I mean, again, we’ve learned about this 20 minutes ago, so we probably should do a more in-depth video in the future. But the first look, what is SharePoint Embedded? So SharePoint Embedded looks really like the repository as a service we have in SharePoint Syntex or Microsoft Syntex, which is now SharePoint. It’s always so confusing with all of those names, but it’s like the repository as a service where first-party and third-party people can just build applications relied on the M365 services and bring that in SharePoint. So basically, you would have a SharePoint without the SharePoint interface. You just go to your SharePoint, bring that data, and build your custom apps. So that’s what they, I think, call SharePoint Embedded, which was the repository as a service or RaaS as we have known. But again, we’ll have to double-check. We’ll have to see. I’ve quickly seen the images. It really looked like the repository service. I understood the same thing as you, like a barebone SharePoint for third-party vendors to store data while allowing companies to still use their compliance tools, security, and keeping the data most important in M365, where Copilot can use it. You can add retention labels. You can really add everything around it, third-party as well as first-party. So I can actually go within my organization, build that app, and consume data from a stack where I have no actions to do and consume that in my app. And Microsoft is using it. You mentioned first-party for Microsoft Loop and Microsoft Designer, fully built on SharePoint Embedded. So again, great to have those for us.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And that’s about it for the keynote. Something I forgot to mention, and Goen, just last minute, I love the names of the customers they showed, especially when talking about AI, when talking about SharePoint Embedded. A lot of the European customers that they showed, because let’s be honest, Europe at the beginning of the cloud were not the first ones to go in the cloud, right? And especially Germany. If we talk about Germany, they’re one of the first. They don’t really want to go to the cloud. They love their on-prem. But it’s amazing now to see how many European companies were on that list of big customers, first ones to use Copilot, first ones to use SharePoint Embedded. How did that feel for you? Well, honestly, it feels priceless seeing some names where I’ve been working before, seeing some names that are ex-industry leaders in Europe being leading products and giving insights to Microsoft. That’s priceless. You know, like always seeing those giants in the US is good, but finally some European leaders into that list. And hopefully soon we’ll get other countries from Asia, from APAC, maybe from one day from Africa, leading us projects and saying like, hey, this is the way that we should go. It’s priceless.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Awesome, Goen. I think we covered it all. Now, well, first of all, thank you so much for being on the channel again. I feel like every other week Goen is here. I’m going to have to get you some swag. And talking about swag, one of the best parts of being at an in-person conference is that we can now get swag again. So thank you very much for watching. Me and Goen will go swag hunting and maybe even do a quick video after of all the cool swag we got at ESPC. We’ll see. That would be a cool idea. So thank you very much, everyone, for watching. Make sure you like the video, subscribe to the channel to get the latest M365 news, and until next time.&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/@VladTalksTech&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded><category>Microsoft 365</category><category>Microsoft Copilot</category><category>Microsoft Teams</category><category>SharePoint</category><author>Vlad Catrinescu</author></item><item><title>How to Restrict Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups Creation</title><link>https://vladtalkstech.com/microsoft-365/how-to-restrict-microsoft-teams-and-microsoft-365-groups-creation/</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://vladtalkstech.com/?p=40929</guid><description>Learn how to restrict Microsoft 365 group creation to select users, ensuring better management and reducing inactive groups.</description><pubDate>Tue, 14 Nov 2023 16:56:00 GMT</pubDate><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;An integral part of managing Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups is restricting who can and can’t create them. Watch for a demo on how you can restrict access!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://spvlad.com/MSTeamsGovernanceAndCompliance&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Full Course&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-summary&quot;&gt;Video Summary&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here are the key points from the video:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Restricting group creation helps manage and control the creation of Microsoft 365 groups, preventing duplication and inactive groups.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;First, create a new security group or Microsoft 365 group and add members who are allowed to create groups.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;This configuration is done via PowerShell, not through the user interface, and it may take 24-36 hours to take effect.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Ensure there’s no existing Active Directory setting object before creating a new one. Use specific PowerShell cmdlets to check and create settings.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Users without permission won’t see the option to create groups, ensuring a streamlined experience. This restriction can be useful for organizations to control group creation based on training or employment status.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id=&quot;video-transcript&quot;&gt;Video Transcript&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Next up, let’s learn how we can restrict who can create Microsoft 365 groups inside your tenant. By default, everyone in your tenant can create Microsoft 365 groups. However, we can configure it to only allow select users to create a group inside your tenant. By reducing the number of people who can create groups, you can train the super users in your organization to understand the groups concept and reduce the chance of group duplication or inactive groups. Configured users that do not have the permission will not even see the option inside the user interface, so it’s quite well implemented from a user experience point of view.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Before we start configuring, the first thing you will have to do is to create a new security group or a Microsoft 365 group, which we will use to basically say this is the group that is allowed to create Microsoft 365 groups inside the organization. After you create it, make sure you add all the members that will be allowed to create a Microsoft 365 group inside. This configuration can only be done via PowerShell, so there is no user interface option for this one. Similar to the other settings we have seen so far, it might take 24 to 36 hours until this setting is reflected for all of the users inside the interface.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now that we know the setting, let’s learn how to configure the group creation restriction. This setting is done via an Active Directory setting object. The first thing we will have to do is to make sure we have our Azure Active Directory setting object, and we will have to create it. But before you go creating it, make sure that there isn’t one that already exists because another admin might have already created one, or even maybe yourself for another setting a while ago and you forgot about it. To verify if there’s already an existing Active Directory setting object and if yes, the configurations inside, we will use the Get-MgBetaDirectorySetting PowerShell cmdlet and we will filter where the display name is “Group.Unified” and we will save it all in a variable called “setting.” We will then check the values of the setting variable. If we see values, it means we already have an AD setting object and we can just modify that one. But if nothing is returned, it just means there is no Active Directory setting object, so we have to create our own.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If we need to create one, we need to first run the Get-MgBetaDirectorySettingTemplate and filter where the display name is “Group.Unified” and we will save it all inside a variable called “settingTemplate.” We will then run the New-MgBetaDirectorySetting PowerShell cmdlet and give it a template ID, which will be the ID of the template. We will first run a Get-MgGroup cmdlet to get our group and especially the ID of our group, and afterwards, we can start creating the group creation restriction. To configure it, we will create again a hash table, but this time we will have two values inside. First of all, “EnableGroupCreation,” which we need to set to false. If we only configure this setting without the second, we are completely turning off group creation inside the tenant. But then we have a second setting called “GroupCreationAllowedGroupId,” in which we say except for the members of this group. So basically, we’re saying group creation is turned off for everybody except the members part of this group, and here is the ID of the group. We will then update the settings exactly like we have done in the past examples from this module.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now that we know the theory, let’s go to the lab and restrict who can create Microsoft 365 groups. We’re now in the lab environment, and first of all, let me open up the browser here where I’m in the intro admin center. As you can see, I do have a Microsoft 365 group called “Microsoft 365 Group Creators.” Right now, it has two members inside: John Smith and Vlad Katrinescu. So this is my group. Then let’s go to PowerShell. The first thing I will do is I will run a Get-MgGroup and filter on that group name. What I will need is basically the ID of the group here, which is b1d31e97 and so on. Then if we take a look at the setting values from our AD directory object setting that we talked about before, we do have two different properties that we will modify. First of all, “EnableGroupCreation,” so we will set that to false. Then we have the “GroupCreationAllowedGroupId.” Right now, it’s empty, but we will set it to the ID of the group that we just showed. Let me create this PowerShell object here. It did not copy-paste the right thing. Let me try again. There we go. Then I will get my setting again just in case, and run Update-MgBetaDirectorySetting like we have done in the previous examples. If we double-check that everything got configured properly, let’s go in the setting values and you will notice that “EnableGroupCreation” is now false and I do have the group ID in here. Now again, this is one of those where we’re going to have to wait 24, I even think 36 hours, before it fully takes effect across all applications. I’ll stop the recording now but we’ll be back in just a few seconds for you so you can see the result.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We have now seen how to do it and we give it 24 hours to make sure it applies. So now let’s go in the lab and take a look at what it looks like when a user is not in the allowed group to create Microsoft 365 groups. We’re back in the lab environment. First of all, I will open Teams up as Vlad. You’ll notice I have the option to create a team or join a team with a code, and I can create a team which will create a Microsoft 365 group. If I go to the browser here again as Vlad, I have in my Outlook on the web, I have the option to create a new group or even go under new mail here and I have the group option. However, if I now log in as Vanessa Lee, and Vanessa was not a member of the group that’s allowed to create Microsoft 365 groups, when I go to join or create a team, I do not have the option to create a brand new team. Now just so you know, if a user is an owner of a Microsoft 365 group that doesn’t have a team, they will see the option here. Why? Because the restriction is really we’re not allowing users to create new Microsoft 365 groups, but we allow them to create new teams for existing groups. So just so we make sure we understand the difference. But right now, since I’m not the owner of any groups without a team attached, I do not see it in here. If I go to Outlook, if I go under new mail here, you see I do not have the group option. Under my groups here on the left, I do not have a new group. I have manage groups, discover groups, but I do not see new group. So this is the user experience when a user is not allowed to create a Microsoft 365 group. They will not see the option in the user interface. That is a truly great experience in my opinion and something that many organizations I work with are implementing to make sure that maybe only users that passed a certain level of training can create groups or users that are full-time employees or work from the main office are the only ones allowed to create groups. This is it for this demo. Let’s head back to the slides and learn about another tool to help us with our group’s governance.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/@VladTalksTech&quot; rel=&quot;noopener noreferrer&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded><category>Microsoft 365</category><category>Microsoft Teams</category><author>Vlad Catrinescu</author></item></channel></rss>