Office Online Server April 2017 release
We are excited to announce our second major update to Office Online Server (OOS), which includes support for Windows Server 2016 as well as several improvements. OOS allows organizations to provide users with browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote, among other capabilities offered in Office Online, from their own datacenter.
In this release, we officially offer support for Windows Server 2016, which has been highly requested. If you are running Windows Server 2016, you can now install OOS on it. Please verify that you have the latest version of the OOS release to ensure the best experience.
In addition, this release includes the following improvements:
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Performance improvements to co-authoring in PowerPoint Online.
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Equation viewing in Word Online.
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New navigation pane in Word Online.
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Improved undo/redo in Word Online.
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Enhanced W3C accessibility support for users who rely on assistive technologies.
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Accessibility checkers for all applications to ensure that all Office documents can be read and authored by people with different abilities.
We encourage OOS customers to visit the Volume License Servicing Center to download the April 17, 2017 release. You must uninstall the previous version of OOS to install this release. We only support the latest OOS version—with bug fixes and security patches available from Microsoft Updates Download Center.
Customers with a Volume Licensing account can download OOS from the Volume License Servicing Center at no cost and will have view-only functionality—which includes PowerPoint sharing in Skype for Business. Customers that require document creation and edit and save functionality in OOS need to have an on-premises Office Suite license with Software Assurance or an Office 365 ProPlus subscription. For more information on licensing requirements, please refer to our product terms.
Microsoft creates a physical programming language inclusive of visually impaired children
These days, most kids get their first introduction to coding through simplified tools that let them drag and drop blocks of commands, creating programs that can do things like navigate mazes or speed through space.
A team of Microsoft researchers and designers in the company’s Cambridge, UK, lab is taking that concept one step further. The team has created what they are calling a physical programming language. It’s a way for kids to physically create code by connecting pods together to build programs.
The system, called Project Torino, is designed to make sure that kids who have visual impairments or other challenges can participate in coding classes along with all their classmates. But Cecily Morrison, one of the researchers working on the project, is hoping the system also will be appealing and useful for all learners, regardless of whether they have visual impairments or other challenges.
“One of our key design principles was inclusion. We didn’t want to isolate these kids again,” she said. “The idea was to create something that a whole mainstream class could use, and they could use together.”
The ultimate goal is even more ambitious: To get more kids with visual impairments and other challenges, such as dyslexia or autism, on the path to becoming software engineers and computer scientists.
“It’s clear that there’s a huge opportunity in professional computing jobs,” Morrison said. “This is a great career for a lot of kids who might have difficulty accessing other careers.”
A project like this can serve two goals: Technology companies say they are struggling with a “digital skills gap” that is leaving them without enough engineers and coders to meet their needs, and experts say it can be difficult for visually impaired people to find meaningful, accessible career paths.
The World Health Organization estimates that 285 million people worldwide are blind or visually impaired, and the vast majority of those people live in low-income settings. In the United Kingdom alone, the Royal National Institute of Blind People says only one in four working age adults who are blind or partially sighted are doing paid work.
Steve Tyler, head of solutions, strategy and planning for the Royal National Institute of Blind People, which is working with Morrison on the project, said coding has often been thought of as a promising career path for people with visual impairments. In recent years, however, computer science has come to rely much more on pictorial, graphical and conceptual coding methods, making it harder for kids with visual impairments to get exposed to the field.
Tyler said systems like Project Torino could help provide that path.
“This, for us, was a core reason for running with a project like this and supporting it,” Tyler said.
Tyler, who has a background in education, also said there is currently a woeful lack of resources for visually impaired children who have an interest in coding or more generally are ready for an introduction to mathematical and strategic thinking. That’s a huge problem because a child’s first introduction to these concepts can be a make or break moment for whether they end up being interested in pursuing a career in those types of fields.
Traditionally, Tyler said teachers have used chess to teach those kinds of strategic concepts to visually impaired children.
“I see this project a little bit like that,” he said. “It brings to life, in a 21st century way, that kind of ability to teach children these new concepts.”
From left, Louisa Turtill, 9, and Khadijah Pinto Atkin, also 9, use Project Torino. The physical programming language is being designed with the help of children to make sure it is inclusive of their needs. Photo by Jonathan Banks.
The Microsoft team has spent the last year or so testing the system with a small group of about a dozen students. Nicolas Villar, a senior researcher in the UK lab who was instrumental in designing Project Torino, said one of the unexpected pleasures of the project is the opportunity to work with kids who have a very different way of experiencing the world.
For example, he said, the team originally made the pods all white, until the kids with limited vision told them that more colors would help them. And although in electronics there’s often a push to make things as small as possible, with this project they found the kids were more engaged when the pods were larger, in part because two kids working together would often both physically hold the pod and touch hands as part of that teamwork.
“We really honestly designed it with them. It was a collaboration,” Villar said of working with the group of kids. “We thought we were going to be doing something for them but we ended up designing with them.”
Now, they are working with RNIB to do an expanded beta trial of about 100 students. The researchers and the RNIB will be recruiting potential participants for the trial in mid-March at the VIEW conference for educators in the United Kingdom who work with visually impaired children.
For now, the beta is focused only on the UK, which has spearheaded a massive effort to get more kids interesting in coding. Eventually, they hope to make it more broadly available to teachers and students outside of the UK.
A lesson in computational thinking
Project Torino is geared toward kids age 7 to 11. Using the coding tools, students can do things like make songs, even incorporating silly noises, poetry and sounds they create themselves.
As they build their code, Morrison said they learn the kind of programming concepts that will lead to careers in computer science or related fields.
“It is very specifically about building up concepts that will enable them to become computer scientists, programmers, software engineers, computational thinkers,” she said. “It gives them that computational base to whatever direction they go, and a shared vocabulary about what computing is.”
Morrison and her colleagues also have created a curriculum for teachers who want to use Project Torino. She said the teachers do not need to have a computer science background to use the curriculum – in fact, they assume that most teachers will not have any expertise in coding.
The system also is designed to grow with kids. Once they have mastered the physical programming language, Morrison said they also have created an app that allows kids to transfer the coding they have done with the physical system into text-based code, and then use other assistive technologies to continue coding.
“We’re mapping a pathway from the physical to something that a professional software engineer could use,” she said.
Introducing the new Office 365 profile experience
In the modern workplace, an organization’s most important assets are its people. The knowledge, skills and expertise found throughout your carefully recruited teams are tantamount to individual and collective success.
All too often, however, this specialized knowledge is obfuscated by physical and organizational barriers. People know what information they need, but are unable to track down the answers they’re looking for. The popular adage “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” reminds us that the best-connected employees get the most done.
That’s where Office 365 can help. As Microsoft works to reinvent productivity for the modern workplace, our goal is to put people at the center of the connected suite experience. When you’re able to tap into the hidden knowledge throughout your organization and leverage your talent pool, you’re able to achieve more.
Starting today, we’re rolling out an extended profile card experience across Office 365 to enhance the way you collaborate with colleagues and external contacts. We’ve made several big improvements that improve on the existing experience across three pillars to create an intelligent, holistic and integrated profile experience.
Intelligent
Traditionally, employees looking for specific information had to manually connect the dots between people and units of knowledge. By tapping into the Office 365 graph and machine learning, the new Office 365 profile card can identify information relevant to you based on the person you’re looking up. This can help you quickly look up documents that have been shared with you, independent of how they were sent.
Holistic
We’re also working to help employees connect with people across the organization that they don’t traditionally interact with. The new Organization view shows a complete picture of the highlighted user’s position in the company, including their direct reports and co-workers. Office 365 will also surface other people relevant to the person you are looking up based on their working habits and communication.
Integrated
We’re integrating the new profile card everywhere you see a person’s name—but it’s important that the experience doesn’t interrupt your productivity. We’ve made it easy for users to achieve these tasks with as little interruption to their workflow as possible. Hovering over a name provides a quick look at their most important attributes, such as contact details, recent documents and manager. More details are only a click away with the extended flex pane that displays additional information without navigating from the page.
Over the next few weeks, the new profile card experience will begin rolling out in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online for Office 365 customers enrolled in first release. We’ll continue to roll out this service for all Office 365 users over the next few months.
Getting Started with the OneNote Web Clipper
As written on support.office.com
Whenever you do online research with OneNote, you can use the OneNote Web Clipper to easily capture, edit, annotate, and share information. It’s free to use and it works with most modern Web browsers.
Install the OneNote Web Clipper
To set up the OneNote Web Clipper, do the following:
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Click the Get OneNote Web Clipper button.
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Follow the on-screen instructions that are displayed for the particular Web browser that you’re using.
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If prompted, acknowledge any security messages to give OneNote Web Clipper permission to work with your browser.
To configure the OneNote Web Clipper, do the following:
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In your browser, open any website, and then click the OneNote Web Clipper icon.
NOTE: The location of the OneNote Web Clipper depends on the browser you are using. For example, in Internet Explorer, it will appear on the Favorites bar.
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In the purple popup window that appears, do one of the following:
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Click Sign in with a Microsoft account if you want to use the OneNote Web Clipper with a personal account like Outlook.com, Live.com, or Hotmail.com. For best results, use the same account that you’re already using with OneNote.
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Click Sign in with a work or school account if you want to use the OneNote Web Clipper with an account given to you by your work organization or school.
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If prompted, confirm the requested application permissions for the OneNote Web Clipper. You can later change these application permissions at any time in your Account Settings.
Use the OneNote Web Clipper
The OneNote Web Clipper automatically detects the type of website content you want to capture — an article, a recipe, or a product page.
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Open the page that contains what you want to clip to OneNote, and then click the OneNote Web Clipper icon.
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In the small OneNote Web Clipper window, do any of the following (where available):
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Click Full Page or Region if you want to capture the current Web page (or a selected region of it) to your notebook as a screenshot image. These options preserve the content you’re clipping in exactly the way it appears.
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Click Article, Recipe, or Product if you want to save the current Web page to your notebook as editable text and images. When you select any of these options, you can use the buttons at the top of the preview window to highlight selected text, change between a serif and sans-serif font style, and increase or decrease the default text size.
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Click the Location drop-down menu, and then select the notebook section where the clipped Web page should be saved. The list includes all notebooks that you have stored on your OneDrive account, including any shared notebooks. You can click to expand any notebook in the list to see its available sections.
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Click Add a note if you want to give the captured information more context for later. This step is optional, but the additional note can be useful as a note or reminder to yourself (for example, “Follow up with Samantha about these product specs!"), or as a way to provide information to others who are reading it in a shared notebook (for example, "Hey everyone, check out this article I found!").
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Click Clip to send the captured information to OneNote.
Ideas for using the OneNote Web Clipper
Not sure what to clip? Here are some ideas to get you started!
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Travel — Clip all your travel research and trip planning from the Web, and add everything directly to OneNote.
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Recipes — Gathering recipes for an upcoming party? Clip the best images and ingredient lists from your favorite recipe sites.
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News — Capture import content from your favorite news sites to reference them later or to share them with friends.
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Inspiration — Collect inspiring images and ideas from around the Web, and keep them in OneNote for easy lookup.
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Research — Import relevant articles from the Web and save them to your research notebook for later reading.
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Shopping — Make sure you always get the best deal when shopping online by clipping price lists and product pages.
New OneNote Web Clipper Can Show You the Way
When exploring a new city, perhaps the most frustrating thing in the world is having now idea where you need to go to get from A to B (especially when you're trying to find a castle in Budapest on a Sunday). This is especially painful when you don't have an international data plan for your smartphone. Luckily, the new OneNote Web Clipper extension creates a simple, efficient way to keep all your directions in one place.
To get started, download the OneNote Web Clipper extension for your browser (available on most modem browsers including Edge, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome). Once downloaded, simply clip any page you're on with a simple click from your browser window. You can clip regions:
Or full pages:
Or even an entire PDF:
Your clippings will automatically show up as a new page in your OneNote Section of your choice:
So before you take on the streets of Budapest, look up transit directions and clip them to your OneNote (I would recommend multiple far away and up close screenshots of the map as well). Sync your phone and you are good to go! The directions will be available on your OneNote page even without internet. Less hassle = happy traveling.
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New features arrive in Microsoft Photos on Windows 10
Written by Chris Pratley as seen on blogs.windows.com
Focusing on the Creators in all of Us
Since I was a kid, I have been drawn to computers because of what they enable each of us to make, to create. Recently Microsoft announced new hardware such as the Surface Studio and Dial, the Windows 10 Creators update, and new software such as Paint 3D, all focused on creators. Creation is a theme that extends across our suite of experiences, including the Photos app that comes with Windows 10.
We have now made available the next step in this creator’s journey with an update to Microsoft Photos. We’re making it fun to view all your digital memories in photo or video form, with a refreshed user experience that makes it pleasant to browse your collection. We’ve updated the way you edit photos and apply filters to simplify the most common actions. To celebrate the new hardware and the creator in all of us, we’ve added the ability to draw on your photos and videos and even play back the ink with animation!
We have ambitious plans with much more to come as we think about creators, digital memories, and storytelling. Stay tuned.
The updated Photos app: Now in dark or light
One of the first things you’ll notice in the updated Photos app is that things got a little lighter. We heard your feedback that for some people (most people!) a dark theme can be overwhelming or intimidating. We’ve got a new, light theme for browsing your pics! Let your memories shine through with the new light theme, or you can always go back to the dark theme in Settings. The single photo view still uses a black ‘lightbox’ feel to let your media show most effectively when it is the center of attention.
Plus, Photos also now has a horizontal navigation bar, making it easier than ever to view your memories in different ways: your whole collection chronologically, or by Albums or Folders. We’ve also taken the time to add subtle animations throughout the experience to make your memories come alive.
Draw on your memories
We each use photos and videos to capture some of the most important moments in our lives. But sometimes, there is more to the story than what our pictures and videos can convey on their own, or you’d just like to personalize a message. Now you can use your stylus (or your finger if you have a touch screen device, or your mouse!) to draw on your memories directly.
Choose from three pen types (I like calligraphic!), pick a color to draw with, and use the eraser to fine-tune your work. Once the ink dries, you can share a still of your new image. But even cooler, allow your message to come to life by sharing an animation of your drawing with friends and family as a video. Share it on Facebook, send over email.
You can also draw on videos, and the ink will play back at the right places when others view it. Use the pen to mark up the peewee league football video just like the pros. Or give stage direction for the school play. Or just add funny comments, thought bubbles and moustaches to lighten up a goofy video.
Editing made simple
The photo editor now has a new, easy-to-use interface. The commands have been rearranged to emphasize the most common user needs, such as easy cropping and adjusting. All the other capabilities are still there under Enhance and Adjust. We’ve added a whole new set of filters too. Get creative with filters such as Zeke or Denim, then check out the other adjustable enhancements you can make to your photos, like tweaking the lighting or warmth.
Photos now on Xbox
As a Universal Windows application, Microsoft Photos is showing up throughout the Windows ecosystem. We’re also releasing Photos for the Xbox, which allows you to browse media you have stored on OneDrive for access on all your devices. Use your controller to navigate your memories just as you would expect with our Xbox optimized user interface.
We’d love to hear from you!
We’re making a big investment in Photos these days and we want your feedback on how to make it better. You are a key part of all the changes we make to the Photos experience. Try out the latest update, edit some photos, draw on some videos, and continue to share your feedback with us through the built-in feedback tool. You can find “Send Feedback” under the “…” menu.
Chris Pratley
Studio Manager
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New Security Analytics Service: Finding and Fixing Risk in Office 365
Microsoft is pleased to announce the preview availability of a new security analytics service called the Office 365 Secure Score. The Secure Score is a security analytics tool that will help you understand what you have done to reduce the risk to your data in Office 365, and show you what you can do to further reduce that risk. We think of it as a credit score for security. Our approach to this experience was very simple. First, we created a full inventory of all the security configurations and behaviors that our customers can do to mitigate risks to their data in Office 365 (there are about 77 total things that we identified). Then, we evaluated the extent to which each of those controls mitigated a specific set of risks and awarded the control some points. More points means a more effective control for that risk. Lastly, we measure the extent to which your service has adopted the recommended controls, add up your points, and present it as a single score.
The core idea is that it is useful to rationalize and contextualize all of your cloud security configuration and behavioral options into one simple, analytical framework, and to make it very easy for you to take incremental action to improve your score over time. Rather than constructing a model with findings slotted into critical, moderate, or low severity, we wanted to give you a non-reactive way to evaluate your risk and make incremental changes over time that add up to a very effective risk mitigation plan.
The Office 365 Secure Score is a preview experience, so you may find issues, and you will note that not all of the controls are being measured. Please share any issues on the Office Network Group for Security. You can access the Secure Score at https://securescore.office.com.
The Secure Score does not express an absolute measure of how likely you are to get breached. It expresses the extent to which you have adopted controls which can offset the risk of being breached. No service can guarantee that you will not be breached, and the Secure Score should not be interpreted as a guarantee in any way.
Your Secure Score Summary
The first, most important piece of the Secure Score experience is the Score Summary. This panel gives you your current Secure Score, and the total number of points that are available to you, given your subscription level, the date that your score was measured, as well as a simple pie chart of your score. The denominator of your score is not intended to be a goal number to achieve. The full set of controls includes several that are very aggressive and will potentially have an adverse impact on your users’ productivity. Your goal should be to optimize your action to take every possible risk mitigating action while preserving your users’ productivity.
Risk Assessment
While the Secure Score is framed as a ‘gamification’ of your security, it is important to recognize that every action you take will mitigate a real world threat. This panel shows you the top threats for your tenancy, given your particular configuration and behaviors. Make sure you read about and understand the risks you are mitigating every time you take an action.
Compare Your Score
The Office 365 Average Secure Score is calculated from every Office 365 customer’s Secure Score. You can use this panel to get a better sense of how your score stacks up against the average. The specific controls that are passed by any given customer are not exposed in the average, and your Secure Score is private. Note that the Average Secure Score only includes the numerator of the score, not the denominator. So, the average points may be higher than you can achieve because there are points in controls associated with services that you have not purchased.
Take Action
Helping you figure out which actions to take to improve your score is the purpose of the Secure Score. There are three basic parts to the experience:
First, there is the modeler. Use the slider to figure out how many actions you want to review. Sliding to the left will reduce the number of actions in your list below, sliding to the right will increase the number. Each tick of the slider will add one control to the list. The target score shows you how much your score will increase if you take all the actions in the queue.
Second is the action pane. When you open this, you will see a description of the control, explaining why we think it is an effective mitigation, and what we observed about your configuration. We’ll also show you some details about the control such as the category (account, device, data), what the user impact of the action is (low or moderate) as well as your measured score. Clicking Learn More will open a fly-out pane that will walk you through taking the desired action.
Thirdly, you will see a remediation pane fly-out that explains exactly what you are about to change, and how it will affect your users. Eventually, the Launch Now link (which takes you to a separate security center now) will allow you to make the desired change right from the Secure Score experience.
Score Analyzer
Since the Secure Score experience is restricted to users that have been designated a Global Tenant Administrator, we wanted to make it easy for admins to analyze and report to their executives and stakeholders their progress on risk mitigation over time. The Score Analyzer experience allows you to review a line graph of your score over time, to export the audit of your control measurements for the selected day to either a PDF or a CSV, and to review what controls you have earned points for, and which ones you could take action on.
What’s Next
As mentioned, the Office 365 Secure Score is in a preview release. Over the coming months you will see us continue to add new controls, new measurements, and improvements to the remediation experiences. If you like what you see, please share with your network. If you see something we can improve, please share it with us on the Office Network Group for Security. We’re looking forward to seeing your scores go up, and making the Secure Score experience as useful, simple, and easy as it can be.
Power BI teams up with Microsoft Teams
Have you seen the announcement about Microsoft Teams, the new chat-based workspace in Office 365? Check it out!
Groups in Power BI are built on Office 365 groups, too, so now you can add and interact with Power BI groups in your Microsoft Teams groups.
If you're an admin for a Power BI group, when you create a team in Microsoft Teams, the app suggests that you add Microsoft Teams functionality to your existing group.
In your Microsoft Teams channel, you just tap the + sign, then add Power BI as a tab in your channel.
Microsoft Teams automatically detects all the reports in your Power BI groups and in My Workspace. You can choose which ones to show in the Power BI tab in your channel.
Now your Power BI report is handsomely displayed in your Microsoft Teams channel.
If your team isn't taking advantage of groups in Power BI yet, now is a great time to try them. They're a great way to share your dashboards, reports, and datasets with your coworkers. Read more about groups in Power BI.
Then see how you can leverage your Power BI groups in Microsoft Teams!