Microsoft just unveiled a new operating system at a press event this morning. Windows 10 S is a streamlined and more secure version of Windows 10. But it still looks and feels like a normal PC. And it runs essential apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
While I haven’t used Office apps for years, I spent most of my days using them back when I was in a student. I used Word to write papers, PowerPoint to prepare presentations and Excel to calculate stuff. And this is a great way to convince companies to buy Office subscriptions as most employees are already familiar with Office apps.
Microsoft is fully aware of that and plans to take advantage of that with its Chromebook competitors.
Sure, you can use Word Online, Google Docs and other web apps on your Chromebook. And Google has been saying for years that you’ll soon be able to run Android apps on your Chrome OS device. But very few Chromebooks currently support Android apps, such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Android.
Microsoft is restricting Windows 10 S devices to Windows Store apps. It means that you won’t be able to download app from the your browser and install it. Developers will have to submit their apps to the Windows Store first.
But the company instantly reassured everyone by saying that Office apps are coming to the Windows Store soon. So it means that you’ll be able to buy a $189 Windows 10 S laptop and run full-fledged Office apps. And if you’re a student or teacher, Office 365 is free.
Microsoft is probably going to use Office apps in its advertising campaigns for Windows 10 S devices as it’s a sweet deal if you want a cheap device that runs Word. This is going to be Microsoft’s killer feature when it comes to selling those devices and eating up Chromebook’s market share.
Now it’s still going to take years as schools don’t take this kind of decisions lightly. Districts don’t switch to another vendor because Microsoft is slightly ahead of the competition. It’s going to be a long fight, but it looks like Microsoft thinks it’s worth starting it.
Today, we’re excited to announce Data Visualizer, a new Visio feature that automatically converts process map data in Excel into data-driven Visio diagrams. This update, which is available to Visio Pro for Office 365 users, helps reduce manual steps while giving business analysts even more ways to create process diagrams in Visio.
Automatically create process diagrams from Excel data
Diagrams don’t always start in Visio. They often begin as hand-drawn sketches or—in today’s data-driven age—in Excel. Using Data Visualizer, business analysts can represent process steps and associated metadata in a structured Excel table and quickly convert that information into a visualized Visio diagram. You can do this by either using a premade Excel template or an existing spreadsheet of your own design. The premade templates—there’s one for basic and one for cross-functional flowcharts—provide a sample mapping table to populate with diagram metadata. The table includes predefined columns for process step number, description, dependencies, owner, function, phase and more. You can also customize the table with your own columns to meet specific business requirements.
Once the table is populated, Visio’s wizard helps you complete the remaining steps to transform your Excel data into a Visio process diagram. If you customize the premade template or create one of your own, the wizard helps you map certain flowchart parts, like swim lanes and connectors. The resulting diagram is linked to the Excel table, so if the underlying process data is modified, the diagram updates accordingly. Likewise, shape modifications in Visio are preserved if the Excel data changes.
Additionally, analysts can save their Visio diagrams and the underlying Excel mapping table as a single package using the “Export as a Template Package” feature. These packages can be shared and reused by others, eliminating the need to recreate the same diagram from scratch while encouraging process consistency across the organization.
No matter your preference—whether creating diagrams from a template or your own spreadsheet—the underlying Excel data travels with the related Visio Pro for Office 365 file, helping ensure your team always has the latest diagram version.
Today, as part of our deep and continued commitment to make Office 365 the most trusted cloud service for productivity, we are announcing the general availability of Office 365 from our new cloud datacenters in Seoul and Busan, South Korea. We are pleased to be the first global cloud productivity provider offering customer data residency in South Korea.
Since October 2014, we have expanded our global cloud footprint and opened new datacenter regions in Japan, Australia, India, Canada, U.K. and now South Korea. In addition to the same highly secured productivity capabilities already enjoyed by Office 365 customers all over the world, these new datacenter regions add local data residency, failover and disaster recovery to help effectively address the legal and regulatory needs of customers in industries like banking, public sector and healthcare.
To learn more about Office 365 and our security and compliance capabilities, please visit our website and the Office 365 Trust Center.
To Learn More About Cloud Services from Managed Solution, contact us at 800-208-4037
New to Sway—recording, closed caption, navigation, autoplay and view counts
Over the last few months, we’ve been on the ground asking users what features they would like to see in the Sway app. We heard all the ways you use Sway in your personal, school and work lives, and listened to tons of great recommendations on how we could make these experiences even better. As a result of this partnership, we’re proud to announce another round of updates from the Sway team.
Audio recording
The ability to add audio to Sways was the top request from educators—as students and teachers (among others)—love to express their ideas and thoughts in this natural and intuitive way. Now, you can record your voice directly in Sway web app to make your Sway more interactive and engaging.
For more information on how to record audio in Sway and what browsers support audio recording, please see “Record audio in Sway.”
Closed caption
With the Microsoft mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, we continue to add features to improve accessibility. We are excited to announce that authors can now associate closed caption files with their audio recordings or audio files added from their local drive or OneDrive/OneDrive for Business. Office 365 authors can also associate closed caption files with any video files uploaded from their local drive or from OneDrive for Business.
First, add a new video or audio card to your Sway—by either uploading the content, recording it or adding the content from your OneDrive/OneDrive for Business account—and then expand the card using the Details button. Next, click the Add closed caption button at the bottom of the expanded card and select your closed caption file (.vtt format) and the language it is in.
When viewing a Sway that has a video with closed captions available, it is easy to simply select the option to turn closed captions on and the language of the closed caption they’d like to see.
Navigation view
Sways are now easier to navigate. Jump back and forth between sections or get a glimpse of the Sway content—all from the new Navigation view.
When you click or tap the Navigation icon (in the bottom-right corner), the Sway fades into the background and the Navigation view appears. Your Sway title, section headers, images and text collectively form an engaging and informative navigation view.
Here’s an example of the Navigation view in the Universe Sway:
Autoplay
You told us you wanted to automatically play and continuously loop a Sway for unattended cases such as billboards.
We’re happy to announce that, if you have an Office 365 subscription, you can now set your Sway to play automatically! If you are the author of the Sway, use the … menu on the top right to go to Settings and turn autoplay on. Additionally, you can autoplay any Sway you are viewing by clicking the Settings gear at the top right-hand corner of the Sway. In the Autoplay settings box, set the delay and then press Start. The Sway will now play automatically.
Once the Sway is playing, you can change the delay, pause or stop playback using the controls on the bottom-right corner.
View count
We also heard from our users that they want to know how engaged their audience is with their Sways. Now, authors can see how many people have viewed their Sway. We officially started the view count on March 13, 2017, so if you see “No data,” this means that the Sway has not had any viewers since that date.
We hope you enjoy using the newest features in Sway, and as always, we look forward to your suggestions, feedback and comments on our UserVoice page.
Create and manage up to 30,000 projects in Project Online
The Microsoft Project team is continuously innovating to meet our customers’ most-pressing needs. That’s why we’ve released additional features during the past six months—and why we’re now excited to announce a huge increase in the number of projects you can support through Project Online, a Microsoft Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) solution.
Create more projects, get more done
In the past, Project Online only allowed for 5,000 projects. Today, that increases six-fold, enabling you to create and manage up to 30,000 projects in the cloud. You’ve been asking for greater scale through Project Online, and we believe 30,000 projects gives you ample space and flexibility to get more done without resorting to cumbersome workarounds.
We’re also excited to announce several updates that improve performance and help you get the project information you need faster. One of these updates is the ability to create more project sites—also called subsites or collaboration sites. Before, there was a limit of 2,000 project sites. If you wanted more, you had to split them into multiple Project Web App (PWA) sites, impacting team productivity. Now, there’s a one-to-one relationship between projects and project sites. For example, if your Operations department creates 4,000 projects, it can also create 4,000 project sites across multiple site collections, boosting collaboration and information-sharing among project teams. Additionally, you can set the destination of these project sites in the Enterprise Project Type (EPT) template to help streamline project creation.
Access the Project Center data faster
More projects also means more data. Every time you go to the Project Center, Project Online calculates aggregate information—like total cost of all projects—which slows the time it takes to pull up that page. Going forward, you have the option to disable rollup groups and Gantt charts, bringing you the project data you need faster—especially as you create more and more projects. We also expedited the process for displaying a list of projects within Project Center and improved the custom filtering feature to help you quickly find the right project data.
We also released OData performance enhancements to decrease the transmission time for retrieving data from project reports. This is particularly helpful if you use SQL Server Integration Services to transfer data from Project Online into your own warehouse. You can download all your data at once, then pull the changed records at regular intervals to keep project data updated.
Lastly, we added modify dates to the following entities:
AssignmentBaseline
AssignmentBaselineTimephasedData
AssignmentTimephasedData
Engagement
EngagementsTimephasedData
ProjectBaseline
TaskBaseline
TaskBaselineTimephasedData
TaskTimephasedData
TimesheetLineActualData
ResourceDemandTimephasedData
ResourceTimephasedData
The Project team is always innovating to help customers achieve better project outcomes. Please go to our UserVoice page to submit ideas for improving Project. You can also visit the Microsoft PPM website to learn more about Project Online and other PPM offerings.
Assigning multiple users to a task is now possible in Microsoft Planner
As of today, Microsoft Planner users can assign multiple people to a task—a feature that tops the list at planner.uservoice.com. Now, users can assign more than just one user to a task in Planner, and every user that is assigned the task will see it on their My Tasks page.
Our goal is to support additional collaboration, and we will continue to develop features and enhancements that our users want. Feel free to join the conversation about this feature and many others at our TechCommunity page. Also, please share your feedback with us about Planner features you would like to see at planner.uservoice.com.
Do you have SharePoint Online and want to better automate and streamline your business processes? Have you heard of PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, or Power BI, but you’re not sure how to use them with SharePoint Online? You’ve come to the right place! We’ve written a paper that explores how to build out a basic project-management app based on SharePoint lists and three key technologies that integrate with SharePoint Online: PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Power BI. These three technologies are all part of the Microsoft business platform, which makes it easy to measure your business, act on the results, and automate your workflows.
Business scenario
In the paper, the company Contoso has a SharePoint Online site where they manage the lifecycle of projects, from request, to approval, to development, to final review. A project requestor, such as a department head, requests an IT project by adding an item to a SharePoint list. A project approver, such as an IT manager, reviews the project, and then approves it or rejects it. If approved, the project is assigned to a project manager, and additional detail is added to a second list through the same app. A business analyst reviews current and completed projects using a Power BI report embedded in SharePoint. Microsoft Flow is used to send approval email and respond to Power BI alerts. When you’re done with the paper, you will have a cool scenario like the following:
Downloading the paper
You can download the entire package, with the paper and the accompanying files, or you can download individual pieces. After you download, open spo-scenario.docx, and follow the paper. The paper describes the role of the other downloads. Before using the sample apps and report, create your own SharePoint lists and update connections in the samples. For more information, see the section "Task 1: Set up SharePoint lists" in the paper.
The scenario we present in the paper is simple compared to a full-blown project management and analysis app, but it still takes some time to complete all the tasks. If you just want a quick introduction to using PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Power BI with SharePoint, check out the following articles:
When you’re done, we hope you’ll be back to check out the full scenario. Even within the scenario, you can focus on the tasks that interest you, and complete the tasks as you have time.
J. Walter Thompson pioneers new brands on a global scale with Office 365
By Jamie McLellan, chief technology officer at J. Walter Thompson as written on blogs.office.com
For 152 years, J. Walter Thompson (JWT) has been moving at the speed of culture—and in some cases even shaping it.
As one of the world’s best-known communications brands, JWT achieved this level of cultural relevance through our deep understanding of people, from our clients to our employees. And as the CTO of JWT, it is my job to make sure the technology we choose is people-first: supportive, intuitive and connected.
We are a people business, so collaboration among employees and across the agency-client line is key to getting work done. We use Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based services, like the newly launched Microsoft Teams, to support frictionless collaboration among the 12,000 people and 200 offices that make up our global workforce.
One of the most appealing features of Microsoft Teams is the ability to start a small project among four or five people, and expand that group naturally with quick and easy onboarding as the project grows. The threaded conversations, tabs and dedicated Microsoft SharePoint sites within Teams make it simple for new team members to get up to date quickly. The faster that new team members become informed, the sooner they can start contributing value to the project overall.
Microsoft Teams connects our organization with an interface that supports the way we work, and I have seen firsthand how diverse working styles and demographics can all flourish within the Teams framework. For the employees in our company who are excited about technology that mirrors the software they use at home, the immediate chat-based collaboration and feedback across devices and the engaging Teams interface are very familiar and appealing. At the same time, employees who prefer a structured working environment, or who are concerned with policy, find that Teams fully meets their needs as well. It’s the best of both worlds and it’s not often that you find a single tool that has such a wide appeal.
The responsibilities of a large IT group extend beyond providing employees with the most effective tools to do their jobs. We are also accountable for the security concerns of JWT clients, which include some of the world’s largest and best-known brands. Microsoft Teams incorporates advanced Office 365 security and compliance capabilities, giving us and our clients peace of mind. It helps, too, that Microsoft is such a trusted entity; clients are likely to feel safer interacting with us in a Microsoft platform like Teams as opposed to a third-party or start-up program.
We chose Teams as a powerful alternative to a disparate collection of ad hoc solutions. Now, our employees all use the same tool that integrates with the rest of Office 365 to support collaboration, while maintaining a high standard of security. We consider Office 365, and all the powerful tools that come with it, a major strategic investment that helps us continue to shape culture at JWT.
In the future, we envision Teams becoming our central platform for collaboration on a global scale. We see it outpacing third-party tools that are not designed for enterprise collaboration, and enticing users back onto a single platform. The value of Teams is simple and powerful: wherever we can collaborate more productively as a team, we are better able to innovate and create stronger brands for our clients.
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Announcing general availability of Office 365 from local datacenters in South Korea
When you click or tap the Navigation icon (in the bottom-right corner), the Sway fades into the background and the Navigation view appears. Your Sway title, section headers, images and text collectively form an engaging and informative navigation view.
We’re happy to announce that, if you have an Office 365 subscription, you can now set your Sway to play automatically! If you are the author of the Sway, use the … menu on the top right to go to Settings and turn autoplay on. Additionally, you can autoplay any Sway you are viewing by clicking the Settings gear at the top right-hand corner of the Sway. In the Autoplay settings box, set the delay and then press Start. The Sway will now play automatically.
