Microsoft Viva Goals

The Microsoft Viva suite has been expanding and delivering its employee experience platform apps since its announcement in 2021. Integrated with Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva offers Viva Learning, Viva Topics, Viva Insights, Viva Engage, and Viva Goals, all accessible through the “home” of the Viva Suite, Viva Connections.

Microsoft Viva Goals supports the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) goal-setting framework for the natural alignment of an organization’s top strategic business priorities with the work that is being performed by its teams to drive results and feed a thriving business, keeping forward momentum. Not only will it align, but it will create, manage, and customize OKR workflows through automated check-ins and OKR templates. With a shared dashboard and advanced insights, OKR rhythms can be boosted through the connection of work and outcomes through deep integrations to projects and tasks such as data sources, critical tools, and advanced OKR configurations such as customizable weights and scoring guidance.

Viva Goals provides business leaders, HR leaders, and employees with the benefits of:

  1. Clarity through a centralized source that provides goal setting, progress monitoring, and success assessment across the organization. Teams will be able to connect daily work to outcomes, aligning with the organization’s top priorities on all levels;
  2. Focus teams on impact versus output. With the shift of focus from activity and effort to impact and outcomes, teams will share their progress on the customizable dashboards that translate data into insights for the organization; and
  3. Goals will be kept at the forefront of employees daily through the flow of daily work by bringing action and data into spaces that are already in use by your teams, such as Microsoft Teams, ADO, and the most popular project management and data tools.

Viva Goals: Capabilities

More exciting capabilities will be added in the future, but for now, the features available with Viva Goals to bring your organization’s OKRs into the flow of work for your employees include:

  1. Customize OKRs by using built-in templates or by creating them from scratch;
  2. Understand and align at all levels in your organization your team’s goals in the context of goals, down, up, and across the company with OKR approval workflows, Chart View, and Organizational, Team, and Individual Goal Pages;
  3. Engage and excite employees through clarity and communication of how their everyday work contributes to the progression of the organization moving towards its goals by connecting work to outcomes by aligning Projects and Tasks to OKRs;
  4. Focus discussion at town halls and team meetings with insights on real-time progress towards goals through context and simplified reporting with the use of a customizable dashboard combined with automation and dynamically updating OKRs; and
  5. Collaborate and share the progress and insights with shareable links to dashboards across the organization. By keeping every employee engaged with team goal setting and progress, individual team members of each team will be engaged with a sense of belonging in a community that is striving towards common goals.

Viva Goals: Logging In  

Once your organization has purchased the license for Viva Goals, you can log in by using your Azure Active Directory credentials. Remain logged in to your Azure Active Directory to log in to Viva Goals. Follow the following steps based on your scenario:

  1. On the Viva Goals Sign-In page, select Azure Active Directory;
  2. Log in to your Azure Active Directory;
  3. If there is no organization available, then you will be redirected to the No Organizations page. You will then be prompted to Create a New Organization;
  4. If you are a first-time user and received an invitation link to join your organization, then you will be redirected to your organization’s Viva Goals account;
  5. If you are a first-time user and are not part of an organization, you will then be redirected to the Join Organizations page. Here, select your organization from the list. You will then be taken to your organization after logging in.

Viva Goals: Creating Your First Organization

To create your first organization:

  1. Log into your Viva Goals account with your Azure Active Directory credentials;
  2. You will now be prompted to create an organization;
  3. Select Create Organization;
  4. Enter your organization’s name. You have the option to provide a brief description;
  5. Select the organization type as either Public or Restricted. A Public type allows anyone in your company to join your organization without the need for approval. A Restricted type provides the ability to choose which users get to join your organization. The purpose of Restricted is to keep and maintain a tight-knit user group’s information boundaries;
  6. Select Create Organization;
  7. Your first organization is now created; and
  8. As the Administrator, add users by inviting members.

Viva Goals: Creating Additional Organizations

You may find that you need to create another organization if you are part of more than one organization. To create another organization in Viva Goals:

  1. Log into your first organization in Viva Goals;
  2. At the top of the left menu, select the organization name;
  3. An organization-switcher dropdown list will appear. Select the Create or Join New Organization button;
  4. Select Create New Organization on the Join Organizations page; and
  5. Repeat steps 1 through 8 for Creating Your First Organization.

You can switch between organizations with the organization-switcher dropdown.

Viva Goals: How to Join an Organization  

You can join an organization in Viva Goals by:

  1. Using your Azure Active Directory credentials, log in to Viva Goals;
  2. If you are logging in for the first time and are not a part of an organization, you will be redirected to the Join Organizations page. Select your organization;
  3. If your organization is Public, then you can select the Join button to join your organization’s account;
  4. If your organization is Restricted, then select the Request to Join button. This will send a Request to Join notification to the administrator for approval;
  5. If you are a member of multiple organizations, then you can use the organization‑switcher dropdown list from the left menu. Select Create or Join New Organization. Next, select the organization that you want to join that is listed on this page.

Microsoft Viva Goals provides employees and organizations the ability to utilize the successful OKR framework for the successful alignment of business priorities by focusing teams on the impact of their contributions on the organization’s success in achieving its goals. Employees and teams will feel engaged, empowered, and invested in the success of their organization through the sense of community and collaboration when real-time data and progression is presented on the centralized dashboard during town halls, team meetings, and at anytime an individual or team checks their progress. The key success of the OKR framework answers the question of “Why am I working here every day?” by providing a visible and mental connection between individuals, teams, and the organization’s strategic business goals and how their contributions impact the progress of the organization to reach these goals. Viva Goals provides a new, collaborative, community-based employee experience while propelling the organization forward as individuals and teams pull in the same direction for the successful completion of the organization’s strategic goals.

Microsoft Viva Engage

The Microsoft Viva suite, including Viva Learning, Viva Topics, Viva Insights, and Viva Goals, are all available through the Microsoft Teams app. The latest addition to the Viva family is Viva Engage. With Viva Learning, employees hone their skills and grow their knowledge. Viva Topics organizes expertise and knowledge, making it easily discoverable for your staff. Geared towards individual employees, Viva Insights encourages productivity balanced with self-care for one’s healthy well-being. Viva Goals improves business results by aligning teams. Viva Engage will connect people across an organization by creating communities, encouraging conversations, participating in activities like events, and sharing openly on topics ranging from personal experience to data-driven analytics. Viva Engage is a place where people in your organization can connect, share, and create a sense of belonging by creating communities with each other, regardless of their work environment, whether they are working onsite or remotely or a combination of both.

Viva Engage and Yammer: Their Relationship

The surfacing of new and existing employee-high-value experiences in Viva Engage, such as knowledge sharing, community building, self-expression, and leadership engagement, is powered by Yammer services. Being integrated into Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage also introduces Storylines and Stories, and both features will appear in the web, desktop, and mobile versions of Yammer. Users will see the same content and effectively access the same feature set whether they launch Viva Engage or Yammer.

In comparison to Yammer, there are a few features that are limited in Viva Engage:

  1. Live events and other videos hosted in Microsoft Stream (Classic) do not play on iOS;
  2. Settings such as Managing delegate setting and Setting your skin tone, both of which are available only in the new Yammer, are not available;
  3. Viewing community files stored in the document library of SharePoint; and
  4. Editing or Viewing full community info.

Viva Engage and Viva Connections: What’s the Difference?

The best way to describe Viva Connections is that it is the “home” for the Microsoft Viva suite. It is the gateway, the place for your employees to start their day, and easily and quickly catch up on organizational news, resources, and tasks. Viva Connections is a branded company app where staff can find everything they need to stay connected and complete their tasks. As the overall arcing home of Microsoft Viva, Viva Connections provides a structured, tailored, and curated experience that reflects the user’s job role and the organization’s priorities, including resources, tasks, and organizational news. Featuring content from Viva Engage and SharePoint News, Viva Connections’ feed includes announcements, storyline posts from people who staff follow, and @Mentions.

Focusing on individuals, co-workers, leaders, and communities, by connecting and engaging each other, Viva Engage is the social layer of Microsoft Viva and Microsoft 365. Viva Engage provides a space for people to socialize through conversations (and they may come onto some unexpectedly), volunteering and sharing of their expertise and knowledge, and asking questions (and these can be work-related or “get to know each other” types such as “Post a pic of your pet”), hosting and/or participating in virtual events, and most importantly, extending their work network with more in-depth interactions and engagement.

Viva Engage: What is it?

Connecting. Sharing. Belonging. Microsoft Teams Viva Engage encourages a positive, inclusive, engaging, and community-based work culture as a social platform. Viva Engage allows individuals to connect with their co-workers, leaders, and communities regardless of their physical location in the work world. By fostering a social work culture, Viva Engage enables all members of a community and network to share:

  1. Questions and Answers: this is a great way to crowdsource solutions to questions being posted. Questions can be posted and pinned, replies can be voted on, and the best answers can be marked.
  2. Conversations: get social! Initiate, join, and build conversations across teams and departments with pinned conversations and @Mention to draw co-workers into the dialogue.
  3. Announcements: there are several announcement types, and with each announcement, team members can be kept informed and engaged as notifications will reach them through the web or on mobile.
  4. Stories and Storylines: using familiar social tools like creating, uploading, sharing, and following, leaders and co-workers can create stories by sharing their thoughts, experiences, and knowledge through conversation and video for colleagues to engage and follow. Storylines will be a feed that features posts from peers along with the most popular posts across the organization and the Following feed will feature the latest posts from the people that you follow.
  5. Virtual Events: staff and leaders can be brought together to have meaningful conversations with virtual Town Halls, Q&A sessions, and video presentations.
  6. Topics: call in experts with @Mentions after creating and following #Topics. #Topics will assist employees in finding relevant content from company resources and learning providers.
  7. Analytics: detailed insights are provided for every conversation, event, and community. These detailed insights measure engagement and activity, providing enough data to act.

Viva Engage: Setting Up

Installing Viva Engage App for Yourself in Teams

  1. Open Microsoft Teams on the desktop client or the web
  2. Select Apps on the left side of Microsoft Teams
  3. In the Search bar, search for Viva Engage
  4. Select the app for Viva Engage
  5. Select Add to add the app to all your Teams clients, including the mobile app

Note: Check with your Teams admin if you do not see Viva Engage in the available apps as they may have renamed the app.

Installing Viva Engage App for Your Organization

If the Microsoft Teams admin chooses to deploy Viva Engage for specific departments, then this can be done through a Teams app setup policy. If the Microsoft Teams admin chooses to deploy for the entire organization, then they deploy and pin the app for all users.

Licensing for Viva Engage and Yammer

As Viva Engage is included in the existing Yammer license, enable Yammer users will be enabled to use Viva Engage.

Configure and Review Privacy and Security Settings in Yammer

The content in Yammer and Viva Engage is managed by the Yammer administrator. However, Privacy and security controls from Yammer are shared with Viva Engage.

Viva Engage: Customizing the Appearance in the Teams Store

For organizations that have given their network custom branding to reflect their corporate identity, Viva Engage can be customized in the Teams app store. The appearances that can be customized for Viva Engage include:

  1. Accent color
  2. App icons
  3. App name
  4. App description

The Microsoft Viva suite has provided Microsoft Teams with several apps, including Viva Learning, Viva Topics, Viva Insights, Viva Goals, and Viva Connections (the home for the suite). Now, with Viva Engage, there is a place where people in your organization can connect, share, and create a sense of belonging by creating communities with each other, regardless of their work environment, whether they are working onsite or remotely, or a combination of both.

Microsoft Ignite October 2022 Part 1: Security and Compliance Across SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams

Around the world, we hear how corporations fall prey to cyber predators. Cybersecurity has never been more important than now with the hybrid conditions for work. The challenge has been to ensure the cybersecurity of data and content for staff who work remotely on their systems and Wi-Fi network in conjunction with staff who work on-site. With so many possibilities of threat entries, cybersecurity has reached Zero Trust as the standard and norm. Microsoft is committed to enabling its customers to diligently, smoothly, and easily as possible manage content, people, and context across SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams.

Microsoft announced at Ignite today, six new security and management capabilities including:

  1. Advanced access policies for secure collaboration
  2. Security controls to safeguard content
  3. Comprehensive compliance
  4. Migration enhancement
  5. Advanced sites lifecycle management
  6. Organization lifecycle management

In this article, we will review Advanced Access Policies for Secure Collaboration and we will review the remaining in the next article, Part 2: Security and Compliance Across SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams.

Advanced Access Policies for Secure Collaboration

Advanced access policies for secure collaboration are currently available as either private preview, general availability, or premium feature and span across SharePoint sites, OneDrive, and Teams.

Restricted Access Control (RAC) Policy for SharePoint Sites: Private Preview

Unauthorized access to content can occur when content is overshared by users. Users commonly share content with good intent, but they are unknowingly and mistakenly, sharing with a broad audience, resulting in unauthorized access to content by the broader audience. Oversharing has always been an issue, but with hybrid work environments, this has bubbled to the surface with an expansion of oversharing and unauthorized access to content.

With the RAC Policy for SharePoint Sites, administrators can now restrict access to SharePoint Sites, instantly restricting access to content to a confined set of users, regardless of how widespread the content has been shared or where inheritance was broken at the content level.

This advanced policy, RAC Policy v1 (Private Preview), allows administrators to restrict Microsoft 365 Groups-connected sites to having the same membership as the parent Microsoft 365 Group, even if the site or content was shared outside of that group membership. Microsoft announced that this policy will be extended to all SharePoint Site templates by configuring the RAC policy with a security group.

Restricted Access Control (RAC) Policy for OneDrive in Your Organization: General Availability

Announced at Ignite this week, the Restricted Access Control Policy for OneDrive is generally available. Similar to oversharing of SharePoint sites with external users, OneDrive content is also overshared.

By creating security groups in Azure Active Directory that contains all the organization’s employees and then configuring the Limit OneDrive Access to those groups in the SharePoint Admin centre, only those groups granted access will now have access. By restricting access to all OneDrives in your organization to a determined set of users such as only employees, your organization’s content is secure from being accessed by externals who should not have access in the first place.

Conditional Access Policies for SharePoint Sites, OneDrives, and Teams: General Availability

There is flexibility with the Conditional Access Policies for SharePoint Sites, OneDrives, and Teams by allowing admins to determine whether the content is classified as business strategic or general training content. Both types of content will require different levels of security whereby classified business strategic content is accessible only when certain conditions are met, and general training content should be easily accessible. The conditional access requirements should match the security posture of these sites.

This can be achieved by utilizing SharePoint Online PowerShell to set the appropriate access policy for a site. This will dictate the conditions that are required to access the specified site. For example, a site containing business strategic information can have the condition of multi-factor authentication (MFA) to be met in order for a user to access this site. Additionally, these policies can be associated with sensitivity labels, if deployed, by labeling the teams or sites appropriately. The key benefit of this policy is that it allows the admin to have users go through additional credentialing only when they are accessing critical sites or teams that contain business strategic content.

Access policies are just one of the methods that are being applied for cybersecurity by Microsoft. As Microsoft moves closer to Zero Trust, increasing security controls, safeguards, malicious malware protection, and lifecycle management are all integral parts of this advancement. In our next installment, Part 2: Security and Compliance Across SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams, we will examine these closer in detail.

Microsoft List: The Evolved SharePoint List

For the past 20 years, SharePoint has had a list building capability (think Access and Excel) and in 2016, Modern SharePoint Lists was officially launched as the default list. Building upon this legacy, Microsoft evolved and re-branded the Modern SharePoint List as the new Microsoft List in Microsoft 365. Microsoft List is a smart information tracking app, not your typical to-do list app (do not confuse this with Microsoft To-Do).

Building upon SharePoint Lists, Microsoft List is all about tracking and sharing information such issues (software, hardware, facility), inventory, teams, reporting, daily routines, pending actions, projects, event and speaker schedules, contacts, vacations, travel, and computer upgrades or anything that you want to track. This is all done in Microsoft 365 on your desktop or within Microsoft Teams. In the future, a mobile version for on the go will be released. Microsoft List will help organize your work by tracking information in a simple, flexible, and smart way across locations and geographies so everyone at your organization can be on the same page.

How does Microsoft List work?

The Microsoft List experience will be launched from within the Microsoft 365 desktop application. Once Microsoft List is launched, you will be brought to the List Home page. On the List Home page, your lists will be divided into two sections: Favorites at the top (pinned) and Recent Lists on the lower section of the page.

For Lists that are used frequently or if you want to pin a List to the top in the Favorites area, you can easily add your List by clicking the star on the top right of the icon on the List that you want to easily access. If you want to remove a List from the Favorites List, simply click on the star on the icon and it will disappear as it is “unfavored”. Navigating to the list is simple – just click on the List icon and you will be taken to the list.

List Home

The List Home page has three options for customization. On the icon of the List that you want to customize, click on the three ellipses located at the bottom of the icon. A pop up will appear and allow you the options to change the name, color, and icon picture.

Creating Microsoft Lists

Creating Microsoft Lists is simple, and two types of Lists can be created – a shared List and a personal List. As Microsoft List is a collaboration tool, a shared List is exactly that – it is shared with team members who are provided access by the List creator. Shared Lists live in SharePoint Teams sites. Sometimes, you might want to create the List before sharing or perhaps you want to have a private and personal List that is only accessible and seen by you. Though created as a personal List, this List is shareable when you are ready to grant permission to other team members. A personal List will have your name on the List title while a shared List will have the Team name or project name on it.

To create a new List, click the + Create New List located at the top. From here, you can now choose one of four options to create your new Microsoft List:

1.  Blank: this is a blank canvas and you can create any type of list that you want;

2.  Excel File: with your Excel file located in OneDrive or on your desktop, you can upload the file and extract one of the data tables from the file to create a new List;

3.  Existing List: working smart, you can copy a List that you or another Team member has created and modify it to your needs; and

4.  Template: out of the box tracking templates will be available and these can be used as starting points. Each template is purpose-driven and includes tracking for issues, assets, teams, inventory, contacts, reporting requirements, pending actions, vacations, department/division travel, projects, events and speaker schedule, computer upgrades.

List Views

The default view for Lists is grid view, but there are two other options including a gallery view and a calendar view. Each view provides ease of access to perform tasks.

The grid view is the best view for editing as it gives you rows and columns to reorder. However, it does not have point and click capabilities as it is very much like a database with rows and columns (like a spreadsheet, so if you’re accustomed to Excel spreadsheets, this will be familiar to use). A worthwhile feature to note is the ability to change the default autofit height to the fixed height of the rows which allows you to change the row height that results in the ability to see more rows on the screen at one time. This is super handy when you have long lists.

Gallery view is the most visual view, providing images and cards that display information and dates. Each image can be uploaded from the desktop or OneDrive without the app having to fetch it from the source.

The third view is the calendar view. This is an extremely handy way to see your Lists that have dates associated with it and you can easily see the higher priority and ones coming up due that requires action. Using the Format View, List creators will have the ability to determine how cards will look for everyone upon loading the List.

Conditional formatting is available in Lists and these rules are based on if this, then that scenarios. With conditional formatting, notifications and reminders can be sent to the Team. Leveraging conditional formatting, program values can be updated in Lists based on value changes. Additionally, the background colour fill of an item can be changed to show conditions such as approved, review, and more. The font will not need to be changed as it will adjust automatically with the background colour fill.

Microsoft List and Microsoft Teams

Microsoft List and Microsoft Teams continue to support, enhance, and encourage collaboration in your organization. In Microsoft Teams, by navigating to a Teams channel, you can create a Microsoft List without having to leave the app. Visually, Microsoft Lists that are created in Teams will look like Lists created on the web. There will be options for creating and saving views (grid, gallery, or calendar) for each List, adding new columns, defining choices in drop-down menus, setting up custom filters, editing share links, and changing the pill shape of the buttons to the classic rectangular shape.

Coupling Microsoft Teams and Microsoft List produces a process for smooth, open, and accurate communication. Lists are the product of many people working together, and the goals of Lists is to fulfill the fundamental goal of collaboration.

Microsoft Lists can easily be shared with Team members by granting access to that person. When you share a List, there will be two options available: edit or read-only permissions. Like OneDrive and SharePoint, individual items in a Microsoft List can be shared with the team or individuals. There are options to allow or disable editing abilities, entry of a required password before granting access or setting an expiration date. Once a List is shared, there will be an expandable comment feed and the indicator that there are comments in the feed is indicated by a chat bubble. By clicking on the chat bubble, it will bring up the form and the comments related to the List item. You can converse on the List for better collaboration. Later, there will be an @mention so you can pull them in to collaborate.

Easily configure simple business behaviours inside a List and efficiently keep your team updated when things happen in the List by specifying conditions and the actions in response to the conditions by applying and modifying rules and notifications. Several types of rules, including sending of notifications, can be created in a response to specific actions. For example, if any of these conditions occur – deletion of an item, changes to a session type, creation of a new itinerary, and changes or additions to a duration of an event – then a notification is sent to the Team members and/or to the List creator.

Microsoft Lists, either combined with Teams or on its own, is a smart and flexible app that tracks, shares, and conveys information in Microsoft 365. Undoubtedly, Lists are simple and the most efficient way to organize important details while communicating what needs to be done to your Team. Using SharePoint Lists and Libraries, Microsoft Lists collects, manages, and distributes content and data with native efficiency. Microsoft Lists empowers the business process on its web application through Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams. Soon, Microsoft Lists will be launched and ready for on‑the‑go creation, editing, and collaboration.

Microsoft Teams: Updates for IT Admins

Teams in Office 365 and Microsoft 365 have received many new features and enhancements that enable Teams to communicate more effectively, clearly, and quickly. These key elements were discussed in my article Microsoft Teams: Updates for Users. Users are not the only ones benefiting from this month’s updates as many new features and additions are happening behind the scenes for IT Admins.

Small to Mid-Sized Organizations: Automatic Creation of an Org-Wide Team

Global admins can create org-wide teams, and each org-wide team is limited to 5,000 users with each tenant limited to five org-wide teams. Tenants with fewer than 5,000 users will start with an org-wide team which will help streamline the process of bringing everyone together as a single team for collaboration. With org-wide teams, global admins can easily create a public team while membership is kept up to date as users join and leave the organization with Active Directory.

Calling and Meetings: In-Region Storage When Stream is Not Available in Go Local

Tenant admins have the option to enable, through the Admin Centre, “Allow Cloud Recording” settings for Teams meetings with the toggle On/Off button. When turned On, Team meetings are recorded and are then stored in the Microsoft Stream cloud storage. However, for customers where Stream service is not available in the corresponding Go Local region, Cloud recordings are currently not allowed/enabled. This behaviour will now be changed by defaulting “Allow Cloud Recording” to On. By changing this behaviour, Teams meeting recording will now be stored in the respective in-region data centre.

IT Admins: Managing App Catalogue in Teams Admin Centre

The app catalogue provides the tools for admins to streamline the process of testing and distributing line-of-business applications. Through the Manage apps page in the Microsoft Teams admin centre, IT admins can view all available apps in the tenant, including information that aides in the decision of determining which apps should be enabled for their organization.

IT Admins: Office 365 ProPlus

Microsoft Teams will now be included with Office 365 ProPlus on the 6-monthly channel. Users will no longer need to install Microsoft Teams separately.

Security & Compliance: Legal Hold for Teams Private Channels Messages

Legal litigation is a fact in the business world, and when proactively preparing for possible future legal litigation, organizations are expected to preserve electronically stored information (ESI). This includes Teams chat messages that are relevant to the legal case. In these instances, preservation of messages related to a specific topic or for certain individuals may need to be preserved. Legal hold supports the preservation of private channel messages. By preserving information in Teams with legal hold, legal requirements are being addressed.

Beginning February 2020, the default is now On for legal hold, or case hold, on private channels. Note that private channel chats are stored in user mailboxes while normal channel chats are stored in that Teams’ group mailboxes. Within Microsoft Teams, Admins can select specific users or an entire team to be placed on hold. Once this is done, all messages that were exchanged in those teams, including private channels, or messages exchanged by individuals, will be discoverable by the organization’s Teams Admins or the organization’s compliance managers.

It is important to note that all message copies will be retained for users or groups on hold. This means that if a user posts a message in a channel, and then modifies the message, both copies of the message (the original post and the modified post) will be retained. If the hold is not enabled, then only the latest message is retained.

Security & Compliance: Safe Links 

Safe Links is a new tool that verifies URLs in Office documents and emails, improving security as you click on them. Safe Links protects Teams from dangerous URLs.

Security & Compliance: Communication Compliance  

A new insider risk solution set in Microsoft 365, Communication Compliance helps minimize communication risks by detecting, capturing, and taking remediation actions for inappropriate messages in your organization. By implementing custom or pre-defined policies, internal and external communications can be scanned for policy matches for examination by the organization’s reviewers. The organization’s reviewers can investigate Microsoft Teams, scanned emails or third-party communications in the organization and then take appropriate remediation actions to ensure compliance with the organization’s communication policies. Communication compliance’s workflow involves the configuration of communication policies, the investigation of communications, remediation for inappropriate communications, and continual monitoring of communications to ensure policy compliance.

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/  

Dev Tools: Cloud Communications APIs

The addition of MS Graph Cloud Communication APIs, including Phone System Direct Routing and MS Graph Presence, provides partners the ability to create their contact solutions.

Intrazone Podcast Episode: “An API for Teamwork”

In this podcast episode, “An API for Teamwork”, hosts Mark Kashman and Chris McNulty discuss bots, tabs, and connectors with experts inside and outside of Microsoft. By exploring the basis of what and how to approach extending the Microsoft Teams platform offering, the power and capabilities of Microsoft Teams are uncovered. You can download and listen to this podcast, “An API for Teamwork”, on your drive into the office!

There are many new and exciting features with this year’s February update! These updates are enabling transparent, easy, efficient, and immediate communications for collaboration across platforms. As complex as these processes are, Microsoft has ensured to consider the effects on IT Admins and has addressed many issues that enable the IT Admin to review, monitor, and enact the necessary processes to ensure smooth delivery of the system. Microsoft has, once again, done an amazing job with this month’s updates.  

Microsoft Teams: Updates for Users

Microsoft Teams is a powerful hub for communicating with your team for ultimate collaboration in cloud-based Office 365 and Microsoft 365. Collaboration enlists a variety of tools for your users to succeed, and these tools include Outlook, chats, video, and voice, and of course, there are more! With the February 2020 update to Microsoft Teams, communication between Teams members has been enhanced with several new features and improvements.

Communication: Outlook Integration

Users can move a Teams conversation to a conversation in Outlook by clicking on the options ellipses (…) in the Teams’ conversation and then choosing to move this conversation to Outlook.

Another powerful integration is the ability for users to move an email conversation, with its attachments, from Outlook into a Teams channel or chat conversation. Moving email conversations from Outlook to a Teams channel can be accomplished simply by choosing “Share to Teams”. This short video clip demonstrates how easily this can be done.

Chat and Collaboration: Targeted Messaging

By assigning tags, admins within the Microsoft Teams admin centre can control who and how tags are assigned across an organization. Team owners who have the right to assign tags can then organize users based on common attributes, such as location, project, and role. Targeted communication is based on these tags. By simply using the @MentionTheTag in a post, team members can send a communication message to everyone at the same time with that tag.

Chat and Collaboration: Receipts and Notifications

An optional tool, but a very useful tool, is Read Receipts. Once turned on, Read Receipts will provide an indication as to whether your private messages have been read or not.

Appearing in the activity feed, you can quickly connect and give new team members a warm welcome as the Colleague Joined Teams notification informs you.

Files Experience in Teams: SharePoint Powered

Powered by SharePoint, Files Experience in Teams is found under the File tab of a channel. Teams users will be able to preview over 320 supported file types while file cards can be easily reviewed while hovering over them. Creating views, working with metadata, pinning files to the top,  viewing document life-cycle signals, taking actions like check-in and check-out, and syncing files to their PC or Mac computer are a few examples of what users will experience in the Files Experience for Teams.

Calling and Meetings: Voice Administration, ThinkSmart View for Phones, and CCX Microsoft Teams Phones

Customers of Microsoft Calling Plan will have the ability to search, discover, and set phone numbers for users. Teams Admins will have greater visibility into additional workloads.

ThinkSmart View for Phones will provide users the capability to manage video/audio calls through a desktop service with extra security features.

The Poly CCX Series of Microsoft Teams phones are designed specifically for Teams calling and are highly customizable to optimize the user experience.

GCC, GCC High & DOD: Phone Systems Additions for GCC

For GCC customers, the following new features are now available:

1. Team users can screen share to Skype for Business users;

2. Callers can transfer directly to voicemail;

3. Teams users (AAD) have caller ID;

4. Users on the Chrome browser can send and receive video calls; and

5. Place PSTN calls with the PowerBar slash command.

Apps & Workflows: Enhanced Power BI Tab for Teams

Microsoft Teams has received a new tab! The Power BI tab adds support for reports in the new workspace experiences, paginated reports, and reports in Power BI apps. Users can find and track data for successful objective outcomes when the Power BI tab is added to channels and chats. For new team members joining, data is easily and readily accessible.

Apps & Workflows: Pinning Apps for Easy Access

Pinning personal apps to the left-hand rail, the Teams app bar, is not only simple and easy, but it ensures that the apps that the user frequently accesses are easily located and launched. Users can pin their favourite and/or most frequented apps by right-clicking on the app icon and then selecting Pin, and the pin remains in place even after the user navigates away. Apps can also be pinned to relevant channels or chats, making them easily accessible. Not only can a user pin apps, but the Teams Admin can create a group policy so that specific apps appear pinned on everyone’s Teams app bar. 

Education: Microsoft Teams QBot

An exciting new solution, Microsoft Teams QBot is specially designed for classroom teaching. QBot allows teachers, students, and tutors to intelligently answer each other’s questions within the Microsoft Teams platform by leveraging QnA Maker in Azure Cognitive Services.

How does this work? Microsoft Teams QBot app is deployed to a Team. Once deployed, a student can ask a question on the channel. By tagging the question @TaggingQBot, QBot will respond with the correct answer, or it will tag a group of responders, allowing them to collaborate on a response. Accepted answers are used to train QBot for future questions.

Many of these features have behind the scenes, out of sight, talent that designs, plans, deploys, monitors, and troubleshoots to keep the whole system running at maximum potential. In our next article, Microsoft Teams: Updates for Admins, we go behind the scenes to see what enhancements and new features have been made to make the IT Admin role more effective.

Optimize your organization’s cloud collaboration and communication by leveraging Teams in Microsoft 365 or Office 365. With the continuous updates and enhancements of Teams, communication and collaboration are done with ease, simplicity, and transparency.

SharePoint List: How to Add Formatting for Rows

It is a challenge to read monochromatic, long, scrolling lists on the screen, especially when searching and reading for any length of time. In SharePoint List, we can now format odd and even rows with a background colour. Alternating background row colours will help the user easily consume the content, especially when the list is lengthy.

Alternating the background row colours is advantageous for many reasons, including increased productivity as lists become more easily read and searched. Adding rows formatting in SharePoint Lists is straightforward and is easy.

Formatting rows with background colour can be done by following these steps:

1. Create a List;

2. Choose to either:

a. Create a New View; or

b. Edit the View for the default “All Items” view;

3. Click on the “Alternating row styles” button which is located at the top right-hand corner. By clicking on this button, you have now enabled the ability to edit the alternating row styles in your SharePoint List;

4. Once enabled, the default colour for alternating odd rows is grey. To change the default colour of the odd rows and the colour of the even rows, choose the “Edit Row Styles” link;

5. There are now two options for editing and choosing alternating background row colours:

a. Colour Palette Icon:

Choose either the Even or the Odd row to be assigned a colour. Click on the Colour Palette icon to the right. When you choose a colour, it will appear automatically within the list, providing you a preview of the colour combinations before you save it.

Keep in mind that certain colour combinations are difficult for the user to discern the difference in row colours, can be difficult to look at for long periods, can cause eye strain, can tire the eyes with brightness, and some combinations are difficult to work with. An example of a colour combination that poses difficulty in distinguishing the two colours is a blue and grey combination. If the blue is a cool grey-blue, then it can look similar to the grey, rendering difficulty in distinguishing between the rows. The intensity and hue of the colour will also affect the legibility of the content. For example, black font colour is difficult to read if the background colour is dark or too bright.

Choosing the background colours for the alternating rows requires an understanding of how colours affect productivity, psychology, and ease of use for your users.

Once you have completed this process for one type of row, repeat with the other type (ie. modify odd rows, then modify even rows); and

b. Customized Solutions:

Flexibility in creating advanced solutions is available by clicking on the “Advanced Mode” button. For this solution, you can add your custom JSON to create unique experiences. Customizable solutions allow you to choose relevant colours, such as underscoring your organization’s branding and creating a uniform experience for your user. As an example, alternate background row colours can be your organization’s two dominant brand colours.

When applying customized solutions, it is still important to take into consideration the factors that are discussed above regarding colour contrast for ease of discernment, colour intensity for eye strain, and colour hues for psychological impact on your users.

If feedback from your users indicates that there is too high of colour contrasts, it is straightforward to revise your colour selections.

As you can see, assigning and applying alternating even and odd row background colours for SharePoint lists can be easily accomplished but there are factors to consider when choosing the background colours. If chosen correctly, the application of the alternating even/odd row background colours in your organization’s SharePoint list will provide your users with easily consumable content.

SharePoint Conference 2019 (SPC2019): Announcements

At the SharePoint Conference (SPC2019) held in Las Vegas this spring, many new announcements were shared that will impact SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Yammer, PowerApps, Microsoft Flow and several other applications within Office 365 and Microsoft 365.  

The internet connects the world while an intranet connects the people and content in the workplace. But, an intranet does more than just connect people and content. A properly organized intranet will cause collaboration between people, whether in teams or in siloes, through the sharing of knowledge, the harnessing of this collective knowledge to create solutions and the provisioning of a platform for communication. SharePoint has been the powerhouse behind intranets for more than a decade and can be found in every industry and geography. As a leader, SharePoint continues to set the bar higher and higher, meeting the needs and goals of organizations and its people with intelligent solutions.

SharePoint Home Sites

A SharePoint communication site, but amped up, SharePoint Home Sites is the landing page for your organization and the new home view on the SharePoint mobile app. SharePoint Home Sites, with personalized content, information, and navigation, not only engages through conversation but also through video that is powered by Yammer and Microsoft Stream. It neatly organizes and curates the organization’s news, with official news being marked visually and is available for all users with access to the home site. Relevant content and news are shared based on the role of the person as well as their role while Microsoft Search serves as the main connector of content within the organization.

A key focus with all of SharePoint’s enhancements is the time-to-value for customers. With the improved navigation and activity insights across sites, and coupling these features with views of your documents to get back to work quickly, work processes are greatly streamlined, underscoring the valuable time-to-value gained.

As we all experience, we may come across content that we would like to read, but at that moment, cannot. With SharePoint Home Sites, news and content can be flagged for review at a later time. This feature, enhanced saved for later view, will be an extremely useful and well-used feature.

SharePoint Home Sites are easily deployed – within minutes – straight out of the box with no coding! Customizations to reflect company branding and design are easily done through web parts, navigation, and site design – all straight out of the box.

Being the leader as the powerful platform for delivering applications on the intranet, many SharePoint partners are onboard with integrating their intranet offerings closely to the SharePoint intelligent intranet. Additionally, solutions built with SharePoint Framework by your developers or by SharePoint partners can be embedded.

Yammer and Microsoft Stream

Both Yammer and Microsoft Stream are featured out of the box for SharePoint Home Sites. With Yammer and Microsoft Stream, engaging employees in communication and learning has never been easier.

Yammer provides the platform for employees to engage in open conversations that can drive cultural transformations and cause organizational alignment.  Every employee across an organization is empowered to express their opinions, ideas, and feedback and now, with the new Question and Answer feature, you or a group admin can mark the best answer, making this knowledge easy to find, share, and reuse. Taking it one step further, a group can feature bot-like, intelligent answers to questions that are frequently asked.

There are some major changes for customers using Yammer groups connected to Office 365 groups. For these groups, e-Discovery for Yammer will be available for them. Recognizing the unique data residency requirements for European customers, in-geo data storage for Yammer in the EU is now available for new Yammer networks in the EU. Yammer messages and files attached to these will be stored at-rest in Microsoft EU datacentres.

Video is becoming more popular, and is quite often the first choice, for learning, engaging, and communicating. Microsoft 365’s video capability is powered by Microsoft Stream, a powerful engine that provides users the ability to securely record, upload, and share videos from the iOS or Android mobile apps. By incorporating Microsoft Forms into Microsoft Stream, polls, surveys or quizzes can easily be inserted into the videos.  

A natural extension of video is 3D and virtual reality. SharePoint Spaces has been in development since 2018, and at Ignite 2019, expect to see what SharePoint Spaces is in its early stages.

OneDrive

OneDrive is the Office 365 files application that stores all your individual and shared files across platforms, across browsers, and across devices and is accessible on mobile or on desktop. With so many files stored, accessing has become more streamlined and simple with Microsoft Search in OneDrive as the powering search engine. Personalized recommendations are provided with the new AI-powered experiences. Activity, file insights, and lifecycle signals such as DLP policies are shown on OneDrive’s enhanced file hover cards. Another great feature is the save for later which allows you to flag a file that you can return to later to read.

With the OneDrive web application, you can now work with metadata columns, custom views, sync files to your PC or Mac, and preview more than 320 file types, including 360-degree images and AutoCAD .DWG files. This can all be done with the new, full-fidelity files experience for shared libraries. And, with the comments on non-Office files, comments and be added to any of the 320+ file types, including PDFs, CAD drawings, and images.

Sharing policies set by your organization can now be done directly from OneDrive, making it that much easier to collaborate through file sharing with internal and external collaborators with the create a shared library with a streamlined experience backed by an Office 365 group. With this, you can specify the people you want to share with. Files can also be shared in Teams, which is the hub for teamwork, with the new file sharing control in Teams chat. This allows you to either upload a copy of the file or share a link, and the access provided by the link is configurable. The new sharing control to Outlook will also be implemented.

A new request files capability is being introduced which allows you to select a folder and invite people to add files. Everyone can upload folders to the file, but the only files they see will be theirs. With each file added, you will receive a notification. With request files, you are able to collect files from multiple individuals while preventing individuals from seeing other peoples’ files.  

These are few of the highlights announced and shared at this year’s SharePoint Conference. All are very exciting and will help your organization’s employees collaborate with greater efficiency and productivity while encouraging learning through enhanced media platforms.

Building an FAQ Chatbot in SharePoint

What exactly is a Chatbot? Through the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) software, chats, or conversations, in natural language can occur between a user and applications like messaging apps, virtual assistants, websites, telephone, and mobile apps. The most common and recognizable Chatbots are Cortana, Siri, and Alexa.

Chatbots are becoming widely implemented by corporations as they are one of the most advanced expressions of interaction between humans and machines. This provides enterprises the opportunities to practice wise resourcing and reduce costs of staffing support while providing excellent, streamlined, and dependable user support. Though chatbots are automated, human intervention is still crucial to their success. They still require configuration, training, and system optimization.

A chatbot is composed of two parts. The first is a user’s query that is analyzed. Once analyzed, the second part occurs which entails the response which is sent to the user. Though this sounds simplistic, it is not as beneath this “simple exchange” are complex mechanisms that invisibly take place without the user’s awareness.

The very first step is the ability of the AI software to determine the intent of the user, analyze the request, and extract data based on the intent. This is the most important function of your chatbot. If the intent of the user cannot be understood, then a response to the query cannot be given. However, if done correctly, the most appropriate response will be provided to the user. The response can be retrieved from several different sources including predefined generic text, text retrieved from a knowledge database, data stored in an enterprise, contextualized information based on data from user input, or from actions that the chatbot had previously performed through other interactions with one or more backend applications.

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Microsoft has been using the combined powers of machine learning and AI in SharePoint and Office 365 and a FAQ Chatbot is a next step in this evolution. A FAQ Chatbot can be generated by utilizing LUIS, SharePoint Online, PowerApps, and Flow.

LUIS is the heart of your bot as it is the machine learning based service that is used to build natural language into bots, apps, and IoT devices. LUIS allows you to configure questions that your users might answer to determine their intent. The type and configuration of utterances (the input from the user that the app needs to interpret) should be considered when configuring LUIS. Utterance length, such as short, medium, and long, can play an important role. The phrase length can be long, such as full sentences, or short, such as keyword searches. The word can be truncated from full text to acronyms or abbreviations. Other variances to consider are spelling, grammar, stemming, pluralization, noun and verb choice, punctuation, and word placement.  A solution and a consideration for misspelled words is the provisioning of a spell checker, like Bing Spell Check, that will allow the user to correct the word spelling before hitting the submit button. The more utterances you configure with LUIS, the higher the probability that LUIS will be able to identify the user’s intent. One key thing to remember is that users may not have the domain experience of the question that they are querying, and it is important to create phrases and use terminology that the majority of users will use.

While LUIS determines a user’s intent, or what they are asking, SharePoint Online, rather SharePoint Lists, is used to store the responses from the Chatbot by using the intent keywords returned by LUIS. By employing SharePoint Lists, users without an Azure account will be able to maintain the responses of the bot while allowing the creation of rich text formatted responses. SharePoint List will return the response content of the intents of the users and users will be able to maintain responses within SharePoint without having to go to any other tool to do so.

To begin creating the FAQ Chatbot, you will need to create an app in LUIS to store your intents. Next, you will need to create a list in SharePoint Online to store the response content for the intents.

The most efficient way of building the bot is to create it in Flow as Flow will do most of the work. Once the bot is created in Flow, the next step would be to connect Flow with PowerApps to make it run.

Create the Flow

  1. Create a New Flow. Choose Blank;
  2. Choose PowerApps as the trigger. Next, Add New Step;
  3. Add an Action, such as Send it to LUIS. Note that there are already LUIS actions available to choose;
  4. Open the LUIS application. At the top, click on the “Manage” tab. You will be taken to the Application Information page where the LUIS application ID can be found. Copy and paste the LUIS application ID into the Flow content box that requires this ID;
  5. Complete Utterance Text, which is the question being asked that needs to be passed to LUIS to get the intent. This comes from PowerApps. On the text box, choose Dynamic Content and a section for PowerApps will come up. Next, click on the tab “See More”. This will now provide a selection to Ask in PowerApps. By clicking this, the question will now come from PowerApps; and
  6. Specify the desired intent to be saved. There are several value choices plus an option to customize the value. Choose “None”.

Once this step is completed, the functionality is written to get an intent from a user when they ask a question in PowerApps.

The next step of the process is to take the intent and query the SharePoint List by that intent to get the correct or most probable response. Intents will be listed in LUIS. Your SharePoint List, titled FAQ List, will have the title field that is the same as the intent that exists in LUIS. In other words, the Title Field of the FAQ in the SharePoint FAQ List is the intents listed in LUIS. The response that you want to send to the user is in a field called “FAQ” in the FAQ List.

We now need to query SharePoint from Flow. Start by searching “SharePoint Get Items” which will populate a drop-down list with the site that houses your list (FAQ). Choose the site that has your list. Then, choose the type of filter query. In this instance, you can set the query so that the title field equals the intent. An example can have the Filter Title equal to the Top Scoring Intent Name, and this comes from LUIS. There should always be only one entry for the Top Scoring Intent Name, so chose the top One Count.

A variable will now need to be created to store this response in to pass that variable back to PowerApps. To do this, create a New Action to initialize a variable called “Response”. Add a new step to set the variable. This is a separate step, and not created during initialization because it is based on a collection from the Get Items Query.

Set the Variable response to the value of the response of the query of the FAQ. This is the field that holds the response. Flow will automatically fill it and applying it to each variable as it does not know the number of items being returned.

The response is now stored in a variable called Response and it will now be passed back to PowerApps.

The final step in this process requires a Search for PowerApps. Choose to Respond to PowerApps with one of several options, including Respond with Text or Respond with the Name of the Variable (Response). Save the Chatbot query settings.

Create Display Form for the Flow

Up until now, these processes occur in the background, invisible to the user. Which leads us, now, to build the form in PowerApps:

  1. Create a New App. Choose a blank app as well as the phone layout so that it is mobile friendly;
  2. Insert Text Box which will be used by the user to enter their query. Set the parameters;
  3. Add a Submit button so that the user can send and activate the process; and
  4. Add HTML Text to Screen to display the response in text and not HTML.

These four pieces are required to display the response from Flow.

Connecting Flow and PowerApps

In the apps screen above, highlight the Submit button. Go to the Actions tab in the menu bar and select Flows. Choose the Flow that you just created. Once you choose this Flow, it will automatically be added to the function/formula line. It automatically adds it as it knows that information will be needed from PowerApps because it was told that information would be passing in the query that was entered. Note that the function/formula is incomplete, and to make it run, it must be completed. The value or question that the user enters in the text box will be passed in the run function. Enter textinput1.text. By doing so, it will now call the Flow, passing the question. The response that comes back from the Flow is in the form of a collection so we cannot set the response to a variable and display that variable.

Therefore, when the Flow is completed, a function called Clear Collect needs to be called. This function clears the variable in the collection and sets that collection variable to the results. Because the results of the Flow is a collection, the responses from that Flow can be stored in a variable called Responses in a collection.

What is happening is that we call the Flow, pass the question, receive the response, and that response is stored in a variable collection.

As we are storing this response in a collection, we need to be able to display that data as it is no longer a variable. This is done by inserting a data table. The data source for this table is the Response variable.

Open the function/formula line. Select the Response variable. This will populate into the formula line and in that formula, set the data to be the Response variable. The data table is set up as the data in a collection. Next, click on the link under the data slide out box. The data field Response will appear. Choose Response to add to the app. This will now tell it what data from that collection you want to display in the data table.

The final step of this whole process is to ensure that the data does not display as HTML by choosing to that response to be Display HTML Text Field. The response cannot be displayed from the data table because the response is not formulated with HTML and without the Display into an HTML Text Field, it will appear as gibberish to the user. The source of the HTML text box must be specified as the data table along with the response from that selected row in the formula. Finally, select “Hide Data Table” so it is not visible to the user.

Save your FAQ Chatbot. Then, test your FAQ Chatbot by running PowerApps and Flow with a query.

This is your FAQ Chatbot and it runs like this. Your user enters a question in the text box. Once completed, your user will hit the Submit button. The Submit button then calls a Flow, which then passes the value of the text box, returning a response into a collection variable called Response. This collection is then set as the data table and Flow will take the selected entry from the data table and display it in the HTML textbox. The user will now have a response to the query in a natural language.

An FAQ Chatbot is an essential part of any enterprise. It provides efficient, fast, and dependable user and client support. It allows your clients and users to perform independently, freeing up valuable resources, lowering staffing costs, and providing immediate answers. As you can see, a FAQ Chatbot can easily be generated with LUIS, SharePoint Online, SharePoint Lists, Flow, and PowerApps.