In the last 18 months, the world changed, and we adapted to a new working environment where people had to complement traditional communication tools and in-person collaboration with alternative solutions, quickly digitalizing everything we do across our life.

Schools moved to online-only classes, businesses got better at e-commerce, and companies hired a new generation of graduates who have met their teams only through a screen.

Additionally, communications moved to online meetings and chat, and digital content exploded spilling beyond traditional document types to more fluid, dynamic spaces. New kinds of content, formats, and channels demanded more flexible, powerful, and fluid tools to allow everyone to deliver a more impactful message and collaborate at their own pace.

So, Microsoft Office is changing with the times.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Microsoft Outlook are better than they’ve ever been—with Microsoft Teams integration and cloud-powered AI across web, desktop, and mobile.

But we needed to go further. That is why we are reimagining Office, adding new apps to respond to new opportunities, and making Office a universal, interactive canvas for creators of all kinds.

Now let’s see how we are enhancing collaboration, expanding our creation tools, and bringing the power of AI to you.

Introducing Microsoft Loop. Think, plan, create—together

Today, we are introducing Microsoft Loop, a new app that combines a powerful and flexible canvas with portable components that move freely and stay in sync across apps—enabling teams to think, plan, and create together.

Microsoft Loop consists of three elements: Loop components, Loop pages, and Loop workspaces. 

Loop components: An evolution of Fluid components—are atomic units of productivity that help you collaborate and get your work done in the flow of your work—in a chat, email, meeting, document, or Loop page. Loop components can be as simple as lists, tables, notes, tasks, or as sophisticated as a customer sales opportunity from Microsoft Dynamics 365, and because components stay in sync, no matter how many places they live in, you and your team always work with the latest information. 

Today, we are introducing new components for collaboration:

A voting table that makes it easy for teams to ideate, drive consensus, and finalize decisions together.

Figure 1. Easily make decisions with your team with the new voting table.

And a status tracker which will help you gather information from your team, track progress towards all aspects of your project, and always maintain an up-to-date status across your team.

Figure 2. Easily stay on top of your projects across apps. 

We are also adding new Loop components to facilitate your business workflows—starting with Dynamics 365 records. And beyond the components that we build, third-party application developers will also be able to build Loop components by extending their existing message extensions applications and Microsoft Graph connectors integrations with minimal investments. We will be sharing more specific details on this at our developer conference, Microsoft Build, next year.

Figure 3. Loop components work in the app you use to make your workflow easier.

Loop pages are flexible canvases where you can organize your components and pull in other useful elements like files, links, or data to help teams think, connect, and collaborate. Pages are optimized for thinking together and getting work done. They can start small and continue to grow to match the size of your ideas and projects.

Figure 4. Pages grow with your team’s projects.

Loop workspaces are shared spaces that allow you and your team to see and group everything important to your project. Workspaces make it easy for you to catch up on what everyone is working on, react to others’ ideas, or track progress toward shared goals. Teams can collaborate synchronously or asynchronously whenever inspiration strikes. 

Figure 5. Multiple people can work at the same time from different apps. 

Microsoft Loop brings everything together, keeping you and your team more productive, on track, and connected than ever before. Microsoft Loop components across Microsoft 365 apps like Teams, Outlook, and OneNote will start rolling out this month. We will share more about the availability of the Microsoft Loop app in the upcoming months.

Microsoft Editor with Context IQ—puts the information you need at your fingertips

We are also announcing Context IQ—our set of natively integrated AI experiences across Microsoft 365 that predict, seek, and suggest information people might need, right in the flow of their work.

The first experience to be transformed by Context IQ is Microsoft Editor. Currently, Editor helps you write with confidence—correcting grammar and spelling across documents, email, and the web.  

Now, Context IQ takes Editor to another level. Here are some predictive-assistance benefits Editor with Context IQ will provide:

• When you need to attach, insert, or share a file with colleagues, Editor suggests a relevant file or document based on similar subjects or because you have created or worked on them before.
• When you try to schedule a meeting in an Outlook email, Editor will recognize that effort and will recommend times when everyone is available, saving you time and context switching.
• When tagging colleagues in a file using the @ symbol in a comment or email, Editor recommends potential people to tag based on colleagues you currently work with or stakeholders you have previously tagged for document reviews.
• When you may be collaborating on a sales opportunity, and need to pull in Dynamics data, Editor will suggest related Dynamics 365 information as a Loop component allowing you to update and take an action on it in the flow of your work.    
• When entering data or objects as you write, Editor suggests information such as a frequent flyer number when booking a flight online or a sales message when collaborating in Teams.

Learn more about Editor with Context IQ.

Figure 6. Editor, with Context IQ, gives you context-based suggestions.

Clipchamp joins the Office family

Traditionally, Office helps you create documents, spreadsheets, and slides. Those still remain super important, but we also recognize there is a high demand for digital content, especially video. That is why we are excited to expand our creation tools to include Clipchamp, so you can create and tell your stories for work, school, and fun your way.

Clipchamp empowers creators of all skill levels to create, edit, and share beautiful, professional-looking videos easily and quickly. Whether it’s an ad to promote a side hustle, a virtual history lesson for students, or a family video to capture memories—Clipchamp enables people to create and share their stories.

Learn more about Clipchamp.

Figure 7. Quickly create professional-looking videos with Clipchamp. 

While we are bringing brand new product offerings into Office to help people create and collaborate, we also have new features coming to our beloved apps.

Tell your story in your own words with recording studio in PowerPoint

Delivering your message to your audience should not depend on you being physically or virtually present. Recording Studio in Microsoft PowerPoint lets you tell your story, in your own words, helping you deliver more impactful and engaging presentations. It allows you to customize your background, annotate on your slides, and even select different views to help you record, and deliver your content with ease.

Once you’ve completed your recording, you can watch a preview, and if needed, re-record either a particular slide or the entire presentation. When you are done editing, you can share your presentation with others by simply exporting it. Recording Studio will be generally available in early 2022.

Learn more about Recording Studio in PowerPoint.

Figure 8. Click “Record” in PowerPoint to start.

Video is a great way to tell your story but, sometimes, numbers and data can deliver a powerful message too—especially when you can use Excel to personalize data for your organization.

Find, create, and share with Office.com and Office app for Windows

With Office.com we are building a new experience to serve as the hub for your content—one place where you can not only find all your content and understand what’s happening with it but also take action. Our latest enhancements to Office.com and the Office app for Windows are designed so you spend less time finding your files and apps and more time working on them.

The homepage was redesigned so you can both quickly get to your most important content in the Quick Access section, and see what things need your attention with a set of Recommended Actions. A new My Content page provides a robust search and filtering experience making it easy to find any of your content across Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint at once. Additionally, a new Create page lets you see all your apps and tools in one place along with templates from multiple applications at the same time, making it easier to decide the best way to get started with your work.

These new experiences will begin rolling out in the next few weeks. Learn more about the new experiences.

Figure 9. See documents and files related to your content in Office.com

Easily finding the right tool for the job is key—and when you need to manage and analyze your data, Excel is your go-to app.

The next frontier for Excel data types

Until recently, Microsoft Excel only allowed two types of data, text, and numbers. Now, instead of simply basic strings of text or numbers, the cells themselves can contain much more complex entries like content cards, images, matrices, arrays, and more. 

We have been on a multi-year journey to up-level Excel’s possibilities with data types—first with the introduction of the Stocks and Geography data types and last year with the release of Power BI and Power Query data types, which allow customers to work with their own data as a data type.  

Now, we’ve taken linked data types to a whole new level again and are giving developers the ultimate freedom to build in Excel. Later this month, a new JavaScript API in Excel will be available in preview. This new API allows developers to create their own custom data types containing images, entities, arrays, and formatted number values backed by their own custom data source. It also allows for the creation of custom functions that can make use of these new Excel Data Types, both as inputs and outputs.

Figure 10. Bloomberg uses the new JavaScript API in Excel to bring information to their users

These more flexible structures give you the ability to organize complex data as objects and expose this data to users in more natural ways, while still providing easy access to the full information users care about for their analysis or reporting.

Figure 11. Easily analyze data from your organization.

Additionally, customers will be able to create their own add-ins or extend previously existing ones to utilize the power of data types, resulting in a more integrated and next-generation experience within Excel. You can share the power of data types across your entire organization and create add-ins or solutions which can connect data types to your own service or data. 

With this new API, we are giving the ultimate power to users and developers, allowing them to better organize, access, and work with their data.

Additional resources

I know we have covered a lot, so here is a summary of blogs and technical sessions that go into more details about these innovations:

Blogs

• Microsoft Editor with Context IQ
• About Clipchamp
• The new experiences in Office.com
• Recording Studio in PowerPoint
• New JavaScript API in Excel

Technical sessions

• Live components to think, plan, and create, together
• Excel Add-ins and Data Types
• Office Collaboration
• Office mobile app – Overview and new capabilities
• The Office experience on Mac, iPad, and the new Outlook for Mac
• Get the most out of Office.com
• Take care of your scheduling needs with Microsoft 365
• Complement employees’ skills with intelligent assistance in Microsoft 365
• Top 5 tips for managing your Microsoft 365 updates
• To Do – A lot of stuff

I hope you are as excited as I am about how we are changing with the times and bringing all these new experiences in team collaboration, human creation, and cloud-powered AI to Microsoft Office.

We can’t wait to see what you do next!

The post Microsoft Office—Transforming for the hybrid world appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

As some regions begin to make their way out of the challenges and disruption of the past 18 months, we’re seeing a new world of work emerge. Organizations everywhere have transformed themselves through virtual processes and remote collaboration. And as people embrace hybrid work—with people returning to the office, continuing to work from home, or some mix of the two—things will be different all over again.

The ability to work whenever, however, and wherever it’s needed has become the new normal. All employees want technology that’s familiar, easy to use, and available across devices. And in the most complex cybersecurity environment we’ve ever seen, businesses need a solution that helps their employees collaborate, share, and create while also keeping their data safe and secure. 

We have an opportunity to design the tools that will empower this new world of hybrid work with a new perspective—and the power and security of the cloud.  

Today we’re excited to announce Windows 365, a cloud service that introduces a new way to experience Windows 10 or Windows 11 (when it’s generally available later this calendar year) for workers from interns and contractors to software developers and industrial designers. Windows 365 takes the operating system to the Microsoft Cloud, securely streaming the full Windows experience—including all your apps, data, and settings—to your personal or corporate devices. This approach creates a fully new personal computing category, specifically for the hybrid world: the Cloud PC.

Today I’d like to share with you why we think bringing the cloud revolution to personal computing will be such a milestone for how customers work in the future and the opportunities this will create for our partners.

A powerful, personalized, full Windows experience in the cloud on any device

Our recent Work Trend Index found that 73 percent of workers want flexible remote work options to stay, but at the same time, 67 percent say they also want more in-person collaboration, post-pandemic. This creates the hybrid work paradox, leaving organizations around the world to grapple with how to connect in a hybrid world and provide workers access to organizational resources at home, in the office, and at all points between.

Much like how we’ve embraced the cloud for other products, our vision for a Windows 365 Cloud PC is to deliver a new way to experience Windows through the power of the cloud—while solving both novel and traditional challenges for organizations. This new paradigm isn’t just about allowing and securing remote access. The user experience is more important than ever for attracting and retaining talent, improving productivity, and ensuring security.

The Cloud PC draws on the power of the cloud and the capabilities of the device to provide a powerful, simple, and secure full Windows 10 or Windows 11 experience that you can use to empower your workforce, regardless of location or device. Windows 365 provides an instant-on boot experience that enables users to stream all their personalized applications, tools, data, and settings from the cloud across any device including your Mac, iPad, Linux device, and Android. The Windows experience is consistent, no matter the device. You can pick up right where you left off, because the state of your Cloud PC remains the same, even when you switch devices. You can get the same work done on a laptop in a hotel room, a tablet from their car between appointments, or your desktop while you’re in the office. Seasonal workers also can ramp on and off according to the needs of the business, allowing the organization to scale for busy periods without the complicated logistical and security challenges of issuing new hardware. Further, companies can be more targeted in how they outfit specialized workers in creative, analytics, engineering, or scientific roles who need greater compute power and access to critical applications.  

Windows 365 supports your business apps—Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Power Platform—line of business apps, and more. With Windows 365, we also stand by our promise of app compatibility with App Assure, a service that helps customers with 150 or more users fix any app issues they might run into at no additional cost.

Greater simplicity with familiar tools

One of the most important design principles of Windows 365 is simplicity. You can choose the size of the Cloud PC that best meets your needs with per user per month pricing. Organizations have two edition options that include a complete cloud-based offering with multiple Cloud PC configurations based on performance needs: Windows 365 Business and Windows 365 Enterprise.

For IT, we built Windows 365 to be consistent with how you manage your physical devices now. Your Cloud PCs show up right alongside your physical devices in Microsoft Endpoint Manager, and you can apply management and security policies to them just as you do to all your other devices.

Windows 365 is built on Azure Virtual Desktop, but it simplifies the virtualization experience—handling all the details for you. You can scale processing power and monitor the performance of the Cloud PC to make sure your users are getting the best experience. We’ve also built analytics into the service to look at connection health across networks to make sure your Cloud PC users can reach everything they need on your network to be productive. From the Endpoint Analytics dashboard, you can easily identify the Cloud PC environments that are not delivering the performance needs of a given user, and not only can you get recommendations, but you can also upgrade them at the touch of a button, which is immediately applied without missing a beat. Our new Watchdog Service also continually runs diagnostics to help to keep connections up-and-running at all times. If a diagnostic check fails, we’ll alert you and even give suggestions for how to correct the issue. 

For greater customization and flexibility, especially if your organization has virtualization expertise, we recommend Azure Virtual Desktop, which continues to see significant adoption as organizations modernize VDI in the cloud. You can read more about our increased investments in Azure Virtual Desktop in today’s Tech Community blog.

For more information about the management experience, check out the Tech Community blog from Scott Manchester.

Cloud security powered by Zero Trust

With a focus on a Zero Trust architecture, Windows 365 also helps solve for today’s critical security challenges by design, storing and securing information in the cloud, not on the device. Multifactor authentication (MFA) works to explicitly verify any login or access attempt to a Cloud PC through integration with Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). And within Microsoft Endpoint Manager, you can pair MFA with dedicated Windows 365 conditional access policies to assess login risk instantly for each session. We’ve also designed the user and admin experiences around the principle of least privileged access. For example, you can delegate specific permissions, like licensing, device management, and Cloud PC management using specific roles, so you don’t need to be a global administrator. You can use the security baselines for Windows 10, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and Microsoft Edge, just like you would for your physical devices now, and we’ve built a cloud PC-specific security baseline to help you get started quickly. 

If you use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to protect your devices, it also works seamlessly with your Cloud PCs. You can use Microsoft Endpoint Manager to quickly onboard your Cloud PCs just like your other devices with Defender for Endpoint. It not only protects your Cloud PCs, but also gives you security recommendations to lower risks, and helps you quickly discover and investigate any security incidents.

Finally, encryption is used across the board. All managed disks running Cloud PCs are encrypted, all stored data is encrypted at rest, and all network traffic to and from your Cloud PCs is also encrypted.

Windows 365 means new opportunities for partners

Windows 365 creates new opportunities for partners of all types across the Microsoft ecosystem to deliver new Windows experiences from the cloud.

Independent software vendors can continue to build Windows apps, and now, deliver them in the cloud to reach a broader audience. Windows 365 also presents new development opportunities, leveraging APIs available to partners, enabling them to bring their own innovations to market. In fact, check out the Tech Community blog that highlights the solutions ISVs like Nerdio, UKG, Service Now, and Net App are announcing today in support of different user scenarios with Windows 365.

Our customers will look to system integrators and managed service providers to help them get the most out of their entire Windows estate, using the additional services that our partners like Accenture/Avanade, Atos, Crayon, Content and Cloud, Convergent, Coretek, DXC, Glueck & Kanja GAB, Insight, and Netrix continue to bring to market. For small and midsize businesses, partners like Iconic IT LLC, MachineLogic LLC, and Nitec Solutions already support Windows 365 and can assist with additional services. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) gain an opportunity to integrate Windows 365 into their broad portfolio of services alongside their devices’ robust features and secure hardware.

Cloud PC represents the next big step in cloud computing that connects the Microsoft Cloud and personal devices in a powerful new way. With the announcement of Windows 365, we’re inviting organizations, employees, and partners to reimagine experiences with Windows and their devices and look forward to creating new scenarios for users everywhere.

Hybrid Windows for a hybrid world

We are so excited to share this new way to experience Windows 10 or Windows 11 (when available) through the power of the cloud across all your devices. We believe this will give organizations of all sizes the power, simplicity, and security you need to address the changing needs of your workforce as you embrace hybrid work.

Windows 365 will be available on August 2, 2021, to organizations of all sizes. In the meantime, you can learn more about Windows 365 now.

We are excited to be on this journey together, and we can’t wait to learn about all the new ways you will get work done using Windows 365.

The post Introducing a new era of hybrid personal computing: the Windows 365 Cloud PC appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

With 145 million daily active users (and growing) Microsoft Teams is where people start their day and stay in the flow of work. Over the past 18 months, people have come to rely on Teams to meet, chat, call, collaborate, and—increasingly—automate business processes. In a very real way, Teams has become the new front end for a new world of work. But empowering people for flexible work isn’t easy. Every organization will need to build a new operating model across people, places, and processes.

This year at Inspire, we shared three ways that we are innovating to create new categories for a new world of hybrid work with the Microsoft Cloud:

• A new Dynamics 365 + Microsoft Teams experience demonstrates the power of collaborative apps and enables organizations to activate this capability at no additional licensing cost.
• Windows 365, which takes the PC to the cloud, gives people the ability to connect to their content, applications, data, and settings without limiting them to any single device.
• New partner integrations with Microsoft Viva enhance the employee experience.

We’re also announcing additional innovations across Microsoft 365—including new security capabilities, new app monetization capabilities in the marketplace, and Microsoft 365 Lighthouse. In a changing world of work, these announcements bring opportunities for our partners and customers. Let’s take a look.

Collaborative apps: Activate the flow of work with Dynamics 365 in Teams

Hybrid work requires a new class of apps that surface in rich ways across all the places people work – within chat, channels, and meetings. These apps are a fusion of people and business process, and we call them simply “collaborative apps.” They also present an incredible opportunity for our partners to connect with the 145 million daily active users in Teams and expand their total addressable market.

Together, Dynamics 365 and Teams offer powerful new ways for everyone across an organization to seamlessly exchange and capture ideas right in the flow of work. Today we announced a new collaborative app that brings together the best of Dynamics 365 and Teams. We’re also eliminating the licensing tax that has historically held organizations back from this kind of integration, making these experiences available within Teams to any user, at no additional cost.

No other technology vendor offers this kind of integration and accessibility across the organization without the need to pay for multiple underlying software licenses.

View and edit Dynamics 365 records right within your Teams workflow

Dynamics 365 users can now invite anyone in the organization to view and collaborate on customer records right within the flow of a Teams chat or channel, ensuring the right individuals can take the next best action—faster and more efficiently without needing to switch context across multiple apps and data sources. For sellers, this includes sharing information like details on the sales opportunity, customer history, health of the customer relationship, key contacts, and more. For customer service representatives, this could include sharing the customer case record, sourcing troubleshooting steps, and tracking follow-up tasks.

Add a Teams meeting to appointments and capture notes

Dynamics 365 users can now add a Teams meeting when creating an appointment, enabling access to key customer information during a Teams call. Users can also capture notes directly with the Teams call, which is automatically saved in the timeline of the Dynamics 365 record. Only users with appropriate permissions can access the data, helping to ensure the most appropriate employees are viewing, interacting with, and sharing customer records. 

Stay up to date on records with automated notifications and connected workflows

With more employees collaborating on records, it’s critical for stakeholders to know when colleagues make key changes as they happen. Automatic notifications keep stakeholders alerted to updates. Users can select specific chats and channels through which notifications are sent, as well as the frequency of notifications. In addition, specific adaptive cards can be sent based on the notification type, enabling more connected workflows.  

Break down barriers with collaborative apps from our partners

Our new integrated experiences between Teams and Dynamics 365 represent just one example of a collaborative app. Today, we also announced a host of new and enhanced collaborative apps from market-leading independent software vendor (ISV) partners including Atlassian Confluence, SAP Sales Cloud, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Workday. All these integrations bring structured business processes and data together into the context of collaborative work.

Manage your Teams app purchasing across the enterprise more easily

ISVs will also soon be able to sell their apps directly within Teams, offering new economic opportunities and providing a simplified experience for Teams IT admins to purchase apps and subscriptions directly from the Teams admin center on behalf of their organization.

Windows 365 Cloud PC: Hybrid Windows for a hybrid world

The past year has shown us the PC’s central role in keeping people connected, productive, and secure while they work, create, and learn. Last month, we introduced Windows 11, which reimages everything from the operating system to the store to provide real choice to users.

Today, we introduced Windows 365—a cloud service that offers a new way to experience Windows 10 or Windows 11 (when it becomes available later this year). From interns and contractors to software developers and industrial designers, Windows 365 gives users agency to connect to their apps, data, and settings from any device and any endpoint. It creates a new category called Cloud PC, which uses both the power of the cloud and the capabilities of the device to provide a full, personalized Windows experience, anywhere.

Log on to your Cloud PC from any device

With an instant-on boot experience, users can stream all their personalized applications, tools, data, and settings from the cloud across any device. The Windows experience—whether you’re using Windows 10 or the upcoming Windows 11 available later this year—is consistent, no matter the device. You can pick up right where you left off, because the state of your Cloud PC remains the same, even when you switch devices.

Provision Cloud PCs in minutes with no virtualization experience

A Cloud PC can be provisioned from the Microsoft Endpoint Manager dashboard. With provisioning policies, a group of Cloud PCs can be provisioned within minutes—including defining which version of Windows, assigning specific users or groups, and more.

Windows 365 is not just for enterprises; it has been designed to be approachable for businesses of all sizes. In fact, for small to medium-sized businesses, there are simple to use tools for helping citizen admins choose and configure their own cloud environments, ensuring everyone gets the opportunity to pick the right PC and bring the power of the cloud to their users.

Stay protected wherever you access your Cloud PC

Windows 365 is built on the principles of Zero Trust and is secure by design, helping solve today’s critical security challenges. Information is stored and secured in the cloud, not on the device. Windows 365 utilizes multifactor authentication (MFA) to explicitly verify any login or access attempt to a Cloud PC through integration with Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). And within Microsoft Endpoint Manager, you can pair MFA with dedicated Windows 365 conditional access policies to assess login risk instantly for each session.

With Windows 365, you can bring collaborative apps, Microsoft Teams, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform—plus your security and identity credentials—with you anywhere, anytime. Access your Cloud PC no matter where you are—at home, the office, worksite, or on the go. Windows 365 will be generally available on August 2, 2021, and you can learn more in the Microsoft 365 blog from Wangui McKelvey.

Microsoft Viva: Employee experience in the flow of work

Microsoft Viva puts people at the center, connecting them to company information, communications, workplace insights, knowledge, and learning to help them achieve their very best. Powered by Microsoft 365, Viva is an employee experience platform designed to work with your existing solutions and can be easily customized and extended to be part of any company’s portfolio to help drive its culture transformation. Today, we shared new partnerships, development tools, research on employee experiences, and more. Read more about the news across the Microsoft Viva modules—Viva Learning, Viva Connections, and Viva Topics.  

Enrich your employee experience with new Viva partner integrations

Earlier this year, we announced a number of Viva partner integrations, ranging from content providers to learning management systems to wellbeing tools that make it easy for customers to connect employees with the solutions they use every day. Today, we announced 21 new partner integrations including Workday, Qualtrics, and ServiceNow. These partner integrations, in addition to the ones we announced earlier this year, will be available later this year.

Bring your solutions into Viva

We also introduced new tools to help our partners and developers integrate with, build on, and extend their solutions into Viva. Available later this year, Viva Connections APIs enable partners to integrate with the Viva Connections dashboard enhancing the discoverability and engagement of their tools directly within the Viva experience. Viva Learning APIs, available later this year as a preview, can be used to integrate content from learning providers, as well as due dates and assigned content from learning management systems where they can be accessed in Teams, Office.com, SharePoint, and Microsoft Search in Bing.

We are excited by the momentum we are seeing from our customers in their adoption of Viva. Customers like Old Mutual in collaboration with PwC are using Viva to empower managers to better understand employee behavior so they can foster a more inclusive and connected experience.

To help our partners build and market apps for Teams and Viva, we are also introducing a new set of benefits to build Microsoft 365 apps. These benefits include access to Microsoft technology, one-to-one consults with Microsoft experts to help our partners design, and build collaborative applications and employee experience solutions—marketing resources to scale to new customers, and support to achieve co-sell status to increase visibility with our 15,000 plus Microsoft field sellers.

As hybrid work becomes our new normal, ensuring your people feel engaged, achieve balance, and are empowered to be their best from anywhere is critical to success. In a recent study, we found that companies with best-in-class Employee Experience programs were 2.2 times more likely than peers to exceed financial targets and 5.1 times more likely to engage and retain employees. Read an executive summary of the report we commissioned with the Josh Bersin Academy for more information.

Secure your digital transformation

We are also empowering our partners to build trust with customers through new security offerings that prioritize inclusion, accessibility, and sustainability. Highlights are below—read our colleague Vasu Jakkal’s blog for full details.

Manage customers’ security posture at scale

We announced today that Microsoft 365 Lighthouse is entering preview. It provides managed service providers with one central location and standard security configuration templates to secure devices, data, and users for small and medium business customers that are using Microsoft 365 Business Premium. Specifically, Microsoft 365 Lighthouse empowers partners to quickly identify and act on threats, anomalous sign-in, and device compliance alerts. Reducing management complexity as our partners scale, and driving standardization across customers will allow partners to proactively manage risks and improve the security posture for the customers. You can learn more about Microsoft 365 Lighthouse in today’s Tech Community blog post.

Protect end customers against fraud

For partners who already help Azure AD business-to-consumer (B2C) customers manage identity and access for their customer apps, we are extending the scope of protection to include fraudulent activities by integrating Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection with Azure AD B2C.

Get visibility across more applications

We have built the app governance add-on feature to Microsoft Cloud App Security, entering preview today. Partners, who already manage Microsoft Cloud App Security for customers, can use app governance to monitor, protect, and govern Microsoft 365 apps and quickly identify, alert, and prevent risky behaviors.

Identify risky activities for users with critical positions

We extended the priority user group capability in Insider Risk Management to include fine-grained role-based access control (RBAC), now also in preview. It adds permissions to priority user groups to further limit alerts and cases to specific individuals instead of the whole group.

Customize regulatory assessments to fit unique requirements

New universal regulatory templates for non-Microsoft cloud in Compliance Manager enable partners to utilize the more than 300 templates available to manage customers’ compliance posture across different clouds and apps.

The future of work

As we emerge from this time of incredible challenges, we are optimistic that together we can empower people across the world for the flexible work of the future. We see an era ahead where people can have breakfast with the kids and quickly catch up on any missed meetings. Where organizations of all sizes—from a locally owned bike shop to a massive multinational corporate—can harness the full power of the cloud, from anywhere. And where every employee feels included and engaged, whether they’re working onsite, remotely, or some combination of the two.

The post From collaborative apps in Microsoft Teams to Windows 365—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365 at Inspire appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

This is especially true as it relates to an organization’s Firstline Workforce. In manufacturing, Firstline Workers are the employees who deliver products and materials, drive product quality, and keep critical equipment running. To help manufacturers with their digital transformation, we’re enabling new ways to work with Microsoft 365 for Firstline Workers to learn, communicate, and collaborate more effectively.

Upskilling and equipping the Firstline Workforce

With the rise of Industry 4.0, manufacturers must reimagine the roles, skills, and tools to transform work throughout their organization. This means providing digital and soft skills, empowering workers with modern tools, and blurring the boundaries of technology with new immersive experiences. In an increasingly digital and complex landscape, the types of skills that employees need are rapidly evolving, and it is increasingly difficult for the workforce to keep pace.

Solutions in Microsoft 365 that enable Firstline Workers to learn, communicate, and collaborate include:

• Using Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Online, manufacturers can securely centralize training efforts, easily distribute onboarding and training materials, and connect all levels of the organization to find and share best practices.

• Using Microsoft Stream, organizations can deliver dynamic, role-based content and video to increase engagement and retention of training programs and support peer-to-peer information sharing.

To help equip workers to operate in a digitally-enabled manufacturing environment, Teams provides a single hub for teamwork to communicate, collaborate, and coordinate production from the engineering rooms to the factory floor.

• Earlier this year, we announced new capabilities—including urgent messaging, location sharing, and image annotations—which organizations can use to create a safer and more efficient workplace. For example, these features can help workers identify, communicate, and share the location of hazardous spills to help reduce operational disruptions.

• Additionally, Microsoft Teams is extensible and allows companies to transform business processes using Microsoft Flow and PowerApps. These services help to digitize everyday activities—such as documentation during quality assurance, data capture, and inventory management—helping reduce costs and free up time for Firstline Workers to focus on higher value activities.

As Industry 4.0 reshapes the manufacturing industry, finding new innovations to help workers learn, communicate, and collaborate remains a top priority. Microsoft is addressing these challenges through breakthroughs in hardware design, artificial intelligence (AI) experiences, mixed reality with HoloLens 2, and through business-ready solutions with Dynamics 365 and industry partners.

• Using Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, technicians can solve problems faster by calling in remote experts via Microsoft Teams to help walk through repairs using mixed reality annotations, sharing diagrams and schematics. And with Dynamics 365 Guides, employees can learn new skills with step-by-step instructions that guide employees to the tools they need and how to use them in real work situations.

Helping our customers succeed

Leading manufacturers choose Microsoft 365 to prepare, equip, and empower their employees at all levels:

To accelerate productivity and information flow, Cummins replaced its existing productivity and collaboration tools with Microsoft 365, introducing a modern knowledge management and collaboration framework to reduce skills gaps and anchor a new culture of work.

“Our modern, tech-driven workplaces give employees the tools they need to innovate, so we can introduce new energy products and technology solutions to the market. It’s also a key strategy in attracting top talent.”
—Sherry Aaholm, VP and CIO for Cummins

Goodyear is using the integrated and adaptive tools in Microsoft 365 to help accelerate innovation and enable new capabilities inside the company. For example, Goodyear is connecting its workforce via tools like Teams, which is driving productivity and generating efficiencies to deliver the right products to the right place at the right time.

“Enhancing collaboration is crucial to us for improved decision making and to drive innovation, both in tires and beyond tires… Our multigenerational and multicultural global workforce is now sharing perspectives and ideas more quickly and easily than ever.”
—Sherry Neubert, CIO for The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company

We’re incredibly excited about our opportunity to help manufacturers transform and we are just getting started!

Join us at Hannover Messe and learn more

Next week, members of the Microsoft team will be at Hannover Messe, the annual manufacturing conference. Visit us at Microsoft stand C40 and learn how Microsoft is enabling Intelligent Manufacturing.

The post Closing the skills gap in manufacturing with Microsoft 365 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.