I have led several Office 365 implementation projects from scratch like from migrating emails to Office 365 to implementing various features of Office 365. When it comes to choosing the Office 365 subscriptions, I have seen that many of the organizations go with Office 365 Business Premium or Office 365 Business Essential subscriptions as both of these subscriptions are almost identical, the only difference is Office 365 Business Essential doesn’t contain Microsoft Office applications. In the below table you can find the list of features available with Office 365 Business Premium & Business Essential subscriptions. While in this article I am not actually highlighting the difference, I am just trying to provide the list of features available in these two subscriptions. I have also mentioned the Security & Compliance features which I have seen that most of the organizations don’t actually use but are very beneficial and I always try to convince my clients to use all these features. S. No. Features Features (Office 365 Business Premium) Features (Office 365 Business Essential)     1 Office Application Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote Not included     2 Services Included Exchange Online, Skype for Business, OneDrive, SharePoint, MS Teams Exchange Online, Skype for Business, OneDrive, SharePoint, MS Teams     3 Max Users 300 300     4 Mailbox Size 50 GB (Exchange Online Plan 1) 50 GB (Exchange Online Plan 1) Security & Compliance Features 5 Protect access to data and service Configure Multi-Factor Authentication Configure Multi-Factor Authentication Device Management (Enroll devices, Device Wipe) Device Management (Enroll devices, Device Wipe) 6 Prevent data loss Not Available Not Available 7 Manage data governance Import Data Import Data Archiving feature for Emails Archiving feature for Emails Retention for SharePoint & OneDrive Retention for SharePoint & OneDrive Retention (EAC) Retention (EAC) 8 Protection against threats Anti-Spoofing Anti-Spoofing Anti-Spam & Anti-malware Policies Anti-Spam & Anti-malware Policies Email encryption Email encryption Quarantine email messages Quarantine email messages Submitting malware to Microsoft for analysis Submitting malware to Microsoft for analysis 9 Search for content Content Search in Office 365 Content Search in Office 365   10 Manage legal investigations eDiscovery in Office 365 eDiscovery in Office 365   11 Audit Log Audit Log search in Office 365 Audit Log search in Office 365 Enable mailbox auditing Enable mailbox auditing 12 Monitor Security & Compliance Alerts in Office 365 Alerts in Office 365 Quarantine in Office 365 Quarantine in Office 365 Check secure score Check secure score Office 365 Service Health Office 365 Service Health Monitor reports (access and usage reports) Monitor reports (access and usage reports) Note: Many security features are not available within the subscription, but we can procure add-on licenses to enhance the security. Apart from these features, Microsoft also offers other services with these subscriptions. MS Teams– Platform that combines workplace chat, meetings, collaborate on files and especially the guest access feature in Teams is awesome. Exchange Online– Exchange for email services, also there is a lot you can do with Exchange Admin Center. OneDrive for Business– Storage for documents SharePoint Online– Document Management & Real-time Collaboration with attractive modern sites, document versioning, web parts & lot more. Hope this article helps you to easily find out the list of all features so that you can implement the same when you purchase any of the subscriptions and keep your organization secure.

I had one of my clients recently asked about the Office 365 Apps on their MacOS, of course, I guided him to download the same from Microsoft’s website but now I can easily tell the client to go to the Apple’s Mac App store and download Office 365 apps directly from there. It became so simple, isn’t it! Microsoft has finally announced that Office 365 is now available on Mac App store from where Apple users can directly download Office 365 Apps such as PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Outlook, OneDrive & OneNote. You can download these apps individually or as a bundle and the packages are free to download but as Office 365 is a subscription-based you will need to pay a subscription fee to use the apps. Microsoft Office has been available on Mac already, but it is available through Microsoft’s website, but people are nowadays preferring handy things! For e.g.: YouTube on the web or YouTube on the app? YouTube on the app, right? So as to have a smooth and flawless experience! This is exactly the case with MS Office now on App store. Microsoft finally releasing these apps on the Mac App store will be surely a huge hit. It will also be easier than ever to get the updated version of Office 365 for Mac, iPad & iPhone as we all know that with Office 365 we always have the best version of Office Apps.

Here’s your guide to quickly setup a multi-factor authentication for an Office 365 user. Manage Multi-Factor authentication Multi-factor authentication can be managed for the O365 under Services and add-ins. If you are in O365 Administrator, find the Services as shown below. You can find this service called ‘Azure multi-factor authentication’. Select it. Open the same and click on Manage multi-factor authentication. Also, I recommend you go through ‘Learn more about Azure multi-factor authentication’ before you proceed for licensing details. Please go through these links: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/active-directory/authentication/concept-mfa-howitworks You’ll see a list of users who can be enabled for multi-factor authentication. In this example, I’ll select myself – Priyesh Wagh to enable my multi-factor authentication. You can either directly enable for the user of invite them to register from the link provided in the screenshot – And that’s it. Multi-factor authentication is enabled for the user. Setting up MFA for the user When the user then logs into the system, they are asked to enter, they will prompted to enter additional log in information to setup MFA. I will be asked to enter the phone number and select the preference or either phone or text message. And you can proceed with your selected preference of text message or phone call. I’ve selected phone call in this case. And finally, it will be setup Logging In As usual, when you log in. You’ll be asked to enter password. Post that, 2-step authentication will take place and as I had selected Phone Call. The system will make a call on my phone and I’ll follow the instructions as asked (asked to press the # key to confirm) Or, alternatively, it can ask you to enter the code received on your phone in text message. That’s it. Simplest way to get started with MFA. Furthermore, you can make the users to create App Passwords and enter contact methods etc. among other features as shown below – Hope that was easy!

Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based chat and collaboration platform, designed to simplify group work. Whether you prefer any chat options available across the markets, if it is not user-friendly, it won’t make any sense. For being user-friendly, the first and foremost requirement is the notifications. Of course, you would not want the hassle of logging and checking into the app every moment. So, we all rely heavily on notifications on the chat to persuade us to open it. This ensures you are updated in the real time. Such kind of wonderful notifications features is available in MS Teams. Now, having said this, let’s check out all the fabulous notification features one by one. Channel notification: To turn ON notifications for any new activity or messages on channels in Microsoft Teams, you need to follow the channel. You will not be able to follow the Team (Team is a group of personnel’s together for work, projects, etc and team are made up of channels), so you need to follow the channels within that team. Once you follow the channel, for any new message or activity in the channel you will be getting a notification (see below image). Chat notifications: You will be automatically getting a notification for one to one chat (see below image). Customize your notification settings: To further customize your notification settings, click your profile picture at the right-hand top of the application and then click Settings > Notifications. You can select, how you want your notifications from the given options (see below image). Do not disturb: As we know that if we are in a Do not disturb mode, we do not get notifications for any messages. In Microsoft Teams, we have this feature that we can still receive notifications from people who have priority access when your status is Do not disturb. You just need to add those people to Manage priority access. Click your profile picture at the right-hand top of the application and then click Settings > Privacy Mobile Notifications: Turning ON notifications on MS Teams mobile app, go to the Menu option (Hamburger button) and then click on Settings > Notifications. And then you can select from given options, how you want the notifications. To ensure you are updated in the real-time, we heavily rely on the notifications. And this is how we can manage notifications in Microsoft Teams.

Introduction: Activity alerts play a very important role while setting up Security & Compliance. You can create an alert that will send you an email notification when users perform specific activities in Office 365.  In this article, you can see how we can get alerts if someone accesses any document in SharePoint Online. Similarly, you can also set alerts for different activities such as common user activities, file & folder activities, file sharing activities, synchronization activities & also for administration activities. Difference between Alerts and Audit logs search in O365 Security & Compliance? Activity alerts are similar to searching the Office 365 audit log for events, except that you’ll be sent an email message when an event that you’ve created an alert for occurs. In Audit logs search, we can see the results as soon we search for it within the period of 90 days since the activity occurred (retention of the audit records depends on the subscription you have). Creating Alerts  Office 365 Security & Compliance center > Alerts > Dashboard You can also go to Office 365  Security & Compliance center using URL – https://protection.office.com Name your alert, add description, severity & select category. Next, you will need to choose an activity & when to trigger an alert. So, in our case alert needs to be triggered whenever a file is accessed from SharePoint Online. You can also add a condition, for this alert. Such as in this case you can mention the Site Collection URL so that if the file is accessed in SharePoint Online from that Site Collection an alert will be triggered. After that click on NEXT. The last step is setting up your recipients & daily notification limits. You can choose a user to whom the alerts will be sent. After the alert is all set, you can now review your settings, turn ON the policy and click FINISH. Alert result – If any user tries to access any file in SharePoint Online, the recipients (the user which has been mentioned as a recipient in the alert policy) will get an email notification (see below image). Conclusion: In this way, we can create different types of alert policies with respect to Security & Compliance of any organization and this is how you can monitor each activity within your organization. We can create alert policies for different activities like common user activities, file & folder activities, file sharing activities, synchronization activities & also for administration activities.

Introduction: This blog explains how to Authenticate Dynamics 365 Online with Client Credentials. Steps: Steps in Azure 1. Register a App in Azure Active Directory. Login to portal.azure.com Navigate to Azure Active Directory –> App Registration –> New Application registration 2.  Create App with Application type -> Web app/ API. Copy the Value of Application ID. 3. Give permission to Dynamics 365 Online. Go to Settings –> Required permissions –> Add –> Dynamics CRM Online –> Select  Select the following permission. 4. Click on Grant Permissions –> Yes 5. Generating client secret key. Go to Settings –> Keys Create a new key and copy its value Steps in D365 Sales Create Application user. 1. Add a user from Portal.office.com 2. Go to settings -> security -> users. Change the view to Application Users. Add New user. 3. Enter User name and Application ID. Value of Application ID is obtained from MS Azure. 4. save 5. After Saving values of Application ID and Azure AD Object ID will come automatically. Steps in Azure 1. Add this user as Owner of the App which we created in MS Azure. Settings –> Owners –> Add owner 2. Obtain tenant id Azure Active Directory –> Properties –> Directory ID   Making a Request using Postman POST URL: https://login.microsoftonline.com/<tenant id> /oauth2/token Header:Content-Type: application/json Body: Key Value client_id Application ID of the registered app in Azure resource https://trial.crm.dynamics.com (Dynamics 365 Online Insance URL Client_secret Key value from the registered app in Azure Grant_type client_credentials Below screen shows how to use above given keys to generate the access token. This token has expiration time. You need to refresh this token.

Introduction: Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based platform which includes business messaging, calling, video meetings and file sharing. A lot of people have been demanding for a feature on MS Teams user voice forum, which is to initiate screen sharing through Microsoft Teams without calling. So guys, it is finally here. Process: Now share your entire desktop or a specific window from a private chat session and you can even let the other to take control to team up and collaborate. For sharing your screen during a private chat, you just need to click the open share tray icon on the top right of the screen and pick one of the available window options. (see below image) After clicking the share tray icon, you can choose the windows to share. The user on the other side is required to accept the session. A user can also request for the controls by clicking on the Request Control button. (see below image) Conclusion: That’s it, folks. You can access the screen sharing right away. Microsoft Teams is continuously undergoing updates and this newly rolled out features will create wonders while communicating with partners, colleagues, and clients and help to resolve key issues more effectively.

Introduction: You can use the Content Search eDiscovery tool in the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center to search for items such as email, documents, and instant messaging conversations in your Office 365 organization. You can search for – Exchange Online Mailboxes SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business sites Microsoft Teams Office 365 Groups Create a Search: Go to Office 365 Security & Compliance. In the left pane, click Search & Investigation > Content Search. Click New +, to create a new search. Provide a name for the Search (name must be unique). Choose the content locations that you need to search. You can search mailboxes, sites and public folders in the same search. Search everywhere – Select this option to search content from all location in your Office 365 organization. You can choose all mailboxes (including mailboxes for all Office 365 Groups and MS Teams), all SharePoint and OneDrive for Business sites (this includes sites for all Office 365 Groups and MS Teams) and Public Folders. Custom location search – Select this option to select mailboxes and sites that you want to search. After choosing mailboxes and Sites, click Next. On the New Search page, you can add keywords and conditions to add a search query. You can specify keywords, message properties such as sent and received dates, or document properties such as file names or the date that a document was last changed. You can use a more complex query that use a Boolean operator, such as AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, or ONEAR. You can also search for sensitive information (such as social security numbers) in documents, or search for documents that have been shared externally. Under Conditions, add conditions to a search query to narrow a search and return a more refined set of results. Click Search to save the search settings and start the search. The search is started. When the search is completed, the following information is displayed in the details pane. Preview Search Results –After a search is successfully run, you can preview search results by click Preview Search results (see below image). Result preview will look like this (see below image) Export Search results – After a search is successfully run, you can export the search results to a local computer. When you export email results, they’re downloaded to your computer as PST files. After generating the report, the report can be downloaded, click on Download exported results. A new window will open, click Download Results (see below image) If you are prompted to install the Microsoft O365 eDiscovery Export tool, click install. In the eDiscovery Export Tool, paste the export key from the download export results window. Click Browse to specify the location where you want to download the search result files. Click Start to download the search results to your computer. Conclusion: In this way, you can search for your contents in Office 365. You can quickly view the statistics. Preview the search results or download the results to a local computer.

For every sales person, getting a signed contract from the client is a euphoric moment. You finally closed the deal, and everything seems right. But the process after winning the deal is cumbersome for many of us. This article documents how we made this process a lot less painful through MS Flow and the D365 App for Outlook. Hopefully you find it very useful as well. I will first walk you through my old process – Once I got the signed contract as a Word or PDF attachment in my email, I would download it and save it to my OneDrive under the respective client folder. I would then open D365, go to the opportunity, then browse to the Documents folder and create a new SharePoint document folder. Then I would click the upload button and browse to the document location the OneDrive folder on my computer and attach the proposal. I would then finally mark the opportunity as Won, which would send out internal emails to our Delivery Team (for Project creation), Accounts Team (for billing details) and our HR team (so they can keep an eye on recruitment needs). Here is what we achieved through the implementation of the new process using MS Flow and D365 App for Outlook – Once I got the signed contract in my email, I would track this email using the D365 App in Outlook. I would also set the regarding field as the Opportunity that this proposal is for. The above action would trigger an MS Flow that would do the following in near real time – It would check if the Opportunity already had a folder created and if not, it would first create the SharePoint document folder on the Opportunity. It would then upload the proposal to the above folder. It would remove the attachment from the tracked email (saving valuable space!) I would then open the Opportunity right from my D365 App for Outlook and mark it as Won. The step by step directions for setting up the MS Flow are documented in this blog article from Krishna Bhanushali from our D365 team – https://www.cloudfronts.in/move-attachments-from-tracked-email-to-sharepoint-using-microsoft-flow/. In conclusion, the above implementation has benefited us through – Significantly reduced number of steps post winning a deal. Time saved by not having to leave Outlook which is where most of us are spending our time. A better process that makes pipeline management easier for sales people, thus driving adoption. If you want to discuss your sales processes further or provide any feedback for improvement, I can be reached at ashah@cloudfronts.com.

Introduction: In this article, we are going to see how we can recover content which has been deleted or modified. Each time a document subject to a retention policy is edited or deleted, a version is copied to the Preservation Hold Library. Though, we can use SharePoint Online permissions level so that we can restrict users from deleting any content (Understand Permission Level) but then there is also a solution so that we can recover deleted or modified content. Preservation Hold Library – A Preservation Hold Library is created when you include a SharePoint site or a OneDrive account in a Retention Policy and is visible only to Site Collection administrators. Pre-requisite: Retention Policy needs to be applied to SharePoint Online and OneDrive from Office 365 Security & Compliance center. Note – Preservation Hold Library will not be automatically created after applying Retention Policy to SharePoint or OneDrive site, it will be created after the first time the content has been modified or deleted. SharePoint content recovery through Preservation Hold Library: Site Administrator can recover deleted files from Preservation Hold Library (Only Site Administrator can access Preservation Hold Library folder) Go to SharePoint Online Site for which you want to recover content. Site > Site Contents > Preservation Hold Library. Select the content and download. OneDrive content recovery through Preservation Hold Library: As OneDrive is used as a personal storage location, users have the permission to recover deleted items. When a file is deleted it will be stored in Preservation Hold Library. (In the below images, I am deleting a doc) Sign in to portal.office.com and open OneDrive. After opening OneDrive, in URL replace “_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx” by “_layouts/15/viewlsts.aspx” https://domainname-my.sharepoint.com/personal/agupta_cloudcfs1_onmicrosoft_com/_layouts/15/viewlsts.aspx You will be redirected to site content and if you have any deleted or modified files, you will be able to see Preservation Hold Library folder. (see below image) Conclusion: With this simple process, you will be able to recover deleted or modified content from SharePoint Online & OneDrive for Business and avoid losing your important contents.