This month, we’re adding new features across Microsoft 365 to improve accessibility, support flexible workstyles, streamline routine tasks, and offer more ways to make your voice heard. We’re also launching new capabilities in Windows 11 and Windows 365 to help make hybrid work a little easier. Let’s dive into what’s new.

A more inclusive, seamless working environment

Support neurodiversity in the hybrid workplace

Notification overload can be disruptive, especially for employees with conditions like autism and ADHD. We’ve been working to cut down the noise by providing more ways to customize which notifications Microsoft Teams shows you and when, and new ways to protect time with Microsoft Viva Insights. We’ve also added new capabilities to support and improve reading and writing like text prediction options, voice control tools, and accessible authoring features—great for everyone, but a true game changer for workers with dyslexia and other learning disabilities.

Learn about these features and more intelligent tools to support neurodiversity in the hybrid workplace in our what’s new in Microsoft accessibility for spring 2022 blog.

Create tasks with natural language

The To Do Windows app now supports smart recognition of due dates, reminders, and repeat information from the task title.² Now you can simply use natural language—like submit project report on Friday or follow up with client on Tuesday at 1 PM—and To Do will automatically recognize and highlight the dates, times, and repeat information and add it to your task accordingly. Update your Windows To Do app to version 2.66 or above to get started.

Get more out of Yammer

We’ve released a series of updates to Yammer that help make it easier to find what you need, share ideas, and customize to your preferences. First, community members can now upvote a response if it’s a helpful or useful contribution to the question, making it easier for others to find answers. You can now also bookmark a conversation to see the post and its replies later. Finally, dark mode for Yammer web will be available soon.

Switch between accounts in Microsoft 365 web apps with a single click

Switching between user accounts can disrupt your flow of work when you need to sign out and sign back in again. Beginning this month, we have started adding support for multiple work and personal accounts on Microsoft 365 web apps in the same browser, enabling you to seamlessly switch between the accounts with a single click. Just add your accounts to the account manager on the top right of a Microsoft 365 web app to get started. Learn more about this new feature in the Tech Community blog Announcing account switching for Microsoft 365 web apps.

Work securely from anywhere with Windows 11 and Windows 365

Flexible work requires technology that’s built for a hybrid world. Earlier this month, we shared the latest Windows 11 and Windows 365 features that are designed to empower new ways of working. We’re bringing the power of the Microsoft Cloud and familiarity of the PC together, giving you an even more seamless Windows experience without sacrificing security.

Drive productivity and hybrid collaboration with Windows 11

With Windows 11, you can easily organize files you are working with in File Explorer by tagging them as favorites and using tabs to quickly access those you need.

New capabilities like automatic framing, voice clarity, background blur, and eye contact create more natural hybrid meeting experiences.³ Live captions provide a more inclusive hybrid work environment for the deaf or hard-of-hearing communities, as well as language learners. Finally, we added snap assist for touch to help people organize windows in predefined layouts on Windows tablets or two-in-ones.

Empower hybrid work with Windows 365, the world’s first Cloud PC

With Windows 365, employees can stream their entire Windows experience from the Microsoft Cloud, enabling them to access their personal settings, apps, and content securely on any device.

Windows 365 Boot enables users to sign in to Windows 365 at start up—no need to sign in to the local operating system first. Windows 365 Switch will enable users to move between the Windows 365 Cloud PC and the local desktop just like they do between different desktops today in the Task switcher. The Windows 365 app provides users with another way to access their Windows 365 Cloud PC from the taskbar or Start menu. And for those times you need to work offline, like on an airplane or in the field, Windows 365 Offline enables uninterrupted work, with an automatic sync as soon as you reconnect.

Empower IT with modern management

Managing devices for a dispersed workforce and keeping them up to date presents unique challenges for IT departments. To help, we’ve added Windows Autopatch, a new intelligent managed service designed to keep Windows and Office software up to date automatically, to Windows Enterprise E3 at no additional cost. Learn more about this announcement on our Tech Community blog post Get current and stay current with Windows Autopatch.

In addition, we are launching a new communications function in Microsoft Endpoint Manager that empowers IT to send targeted organizational messages directly to employees across various surfaces in Windows 11, including on the desktop or lock screen. Learn about this new cloud-managed capability and more in this Tech Community blog post The endpoint manager’s guide to what’s coming in Windows 11.

Simplify what it takes to protect your endpoints in the cloud

We announced our vision for advanced endpoint management and shared our plans to introduce a series of premium solutions over time in Endpoint Manager that will help organizations increase endpoint security, improve user experiences, and reduce the cost of ownership of your digital estate. Remote help for Windows is the first of these solutions, launched for general availability on April 5, 2022, and is featured in the new Microsoft Mechanics video about Windows cloud management.

Govern data across your entire data estate

To meet the challenges of today’s decentralized, data-rich workplace, we’re introducing Microsoft Purview—a comprehensive set of solutions that help you understand, govern, and protect your entire data estate. This new portfolio combines the capabilities of the former Azure Purview and the Microsoft 365 Compliance solutions that users already rely on, providing unified data governance and risk management. Learn more about Microsoft Purview in the video Go Beyond with Microsoft Purview.

Empowering the future of modern work

As the future of work unfolds, Microsoft 365 is continuing to help organizations and teams embrace a flexible work model. No solution is better positioned to support the needs of a hybrid workforce than Microsoft 365. Be sure to check back next month, when we’ll be sharing the news from Microsoft Build, our annual developer conference. 

¹ 2022 Work Trend Index, Microsoft. March 16, 2022.

² Feature currently available in English (EN-) languages only.

³ Hardware dependent.

The post From intelligent tools built on inclusivity to the latest in Windows—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Stay tuned for a lot of product and research news next month, when we’ll release our second annual Work Trend Index, along with a series of innovations designed to make hybrid work work.

Let’s dive in.

Focus on what matters and collaborate across boundaries

This month we’re happy to release some of your most requested features across Microsoft Teams, Viva, and Yammer.

Pin or hide your own video in Microsoft Teams meetings

Seeing your own video feed in meetings has its benefits, but some find it distracting. Now, users can select to hide their own video in a Microsoft Teams meeting, while remaining visible to other participants. Users can now also pin their own video on the meeting stage.

Stay on top of required trainings

Microsoft Viva Learning can now sync with learning management systems (LMS) like SAP SuccessFactors, Cornerstone OnDemand, and Saba Cloud. With this new generally available integration, employees can view required learning assignments from their LMS in their My Learning view in Viva Learning as well as launch the courses directly. Employees will get Teams notifications when they receive a new assignment and a reminder when the assignment is due.

Get suggestions on Yammer communities and people to follow

We want you to discover communities and conversations that help you work better. Now, Yammer will suggest communities and followers based on previous interactions. Find and join new communities and follow people right from your feed. 

Auto-renew active Yammer communities

Community admins will no longer need to manually review communities that have views or engagement. Now, Yammer communities can be set to auto-renew when someone posts, reacts, or any file activity happens from within the community (including viewing the Yammer posts through actionable emails).

Collaborate with people outside of your geography while maintaining compliance policies

Members from Yammer networks located in the European Union can soon join Yammer external networks hosted in the United States. Rollout will begin mid-February 2022 and finish in late March 2022. Read our Tech Community blog Cross-geo external collaboration support on Yammer External Networks for the EU to learn more.

More flexibility in how you provision Windows 365 Cloud PCs

Hybrid work means organizations need more flexibility to provide access to Windows across different types of devices. Windows 365 Enterprise provides 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. In February 2022, we released a preview of Windows 365 Enterprise support for native Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Join and localized first-run experience.

Provision Cloud PCs without an Azure subscription

In February 2022, we announced the preview of Azure AD Join in Windows 365 Enterprise, enabling organizations to provision Cloud PCs without requiring an Azure subscription or Azure connectivity to your on-premises environment. General availability will be announced soon. 

Localizing the Cloud PC experience

Organizations around the world use and love Windows 365, and we want to give them a familiar and natural user experience. In February 2022, we announced the preview for a localized first-run experience, empowering organizations to choose from an expanded list of languages when creating Cloud PCs for their teams in Windows 365 Enterprise.

Looking to the future

From offering the option to pin or hide your video in a Microsoft Teams meeting to Yammer community suggestions, these updates are designed to give everyone more flexibility for when and how they work. We’ve got a lot more in store for you next month. Stay tuned.

The post From hiding your meeting video to Yammer community suggestions—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Before we jump into the latest product news, I’d like to highlight the new flexible work resources we’ve made available for you. Our redesigned hybrid work page demonstrates how Microsoft solutions can help you build flexibility across your organization and enable your employees to thrive in this new world of work. Please check out the new resources and let us know what you think.

Now, let’s dive into the news.

Empowering frontline workers

For the last two years, the nearly two billion global frontline workers have played a critical role in supporting our communities and economies, all while weathering health risks, supply chain issues, and labor shortages.

Nearly 90 percent of all organizations employ frontline workers. This means nearly every organization across every industry has faced the same challenge: balancing the needs of this critical workforce while also achieving business results.

Our latest research shows there is a tremendous opportunity for business leaders to drive positive outcomes for employees, customers, and the bottom line by prioritizing culture and communication while investing in technology that enables frontline workers to thrive.¹ This month, we announced several new capabilities aimed at addressing the pain points being felt on the frontline, and to help with wellbeing, growth, productivity, and engagement.

Technology like Microsoft Viva Connections in Microsoft Teams can play a critical role in bridging cultural and communication gaps between leadership and the frontline workforce. This month, we added new integrations in the Viva Connections app with strategic partners Workday and Espressive, enabling workers to easily access important company resources and actions, like payroll and HR resources, in one location.

Setting employees up for success requires providing the right resources and training. To help make training more accessible, we have updated the Viva Learning app to streamline the workflow for assigning learning from partner solutions like SAP SuccessFactors, Cornerstone OnDemand, and Saba Cloud. And new partnerships with learning providers like EdCast and OpenSesame connect workers to an extensive content library that can help them upskill and train, all in the flow of work.  

To help make communication on the frontlines easier, we’re deepening our strategic partnership with Zebra Technologies, a world leader in software and hardware for frontline workers. Earlier this month, we announced the general availability of the Walkie Talkie app in Microsoft Teams, with a dedicated push-to-talk button on a wide range of Zebra mobile devices, as well as general availability on any iOS mobile device.

To help remove friction from managing appointments, we’ve updated the Bookings app in Microsoft Teams to a comprehensive view of virtual appointments in one location, including real-time updates on wait times, queueing, missed appointments, and staffing delays to create a first-class experience for customers and patients.

To help provide workers with the flexibility to own their schedule, we’ve enhanced Teams’ integration with  Reflexis Workforce Scheduler (RWS)to create a seamless, real-time sync for viewing, assigning, and managing shift requests right within Teams.

Earlier this month, my colleague Steve Dispensa wrote about how we’re helping provide workers on the frontline with protected devices that make their lives and daily jobs easier. Read the blog, Using technology to reduce the load on frontline workers, for more information.

Create content that everyone can use

Making content accessible enables employees to more easily collaborate and contribute, which is why we’re simplifying accessible authoring and bringing it into the flow of work across Microsoft 365 Apps.

Keeping accessibility front and center throughout the creating and editing process helps make remediating accessibility issues more manageable. We are currently rolling out a new option to run Accessibility Checker in the background while you work within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Windows. This will help flag accessibility issues for you to correct right in your flow of work.

Alternative text (alt text) makes image-heavy, digital documents accessible to screen reader users. Recently, we rolled out the ability for users to provide alt text for images they share in Microsoft Teams Chat on Windows, with macOS coming soon. And Excel now provides screen reader users with automatic alt text for charts and PivotCharts, generated on-demand at the point the screen reader reaches the object to ensure that it’s based on the most recent data.

Creating content is a highly collaborative process, and in a hybrid world, that often means communicating asynchronously with each other. We’ve introduced several updates to Microsoft Teams to help enable flexibility in when and how you collaborate. Now, you can catch up or refresh yourself on what happened in unscheduled meetings or channel meetings with Live Transcript. For those who prefer to listen to the full recording, you can now adjust the variable playback speed (0.5 to 2 times) for Teams meeting recordings in Stream and view indexed recordings based on slide transitions to make it easier to listen at your own pace and quickly navigate to relevant content.

Increasing productivity with new features in your favorite apps

This month, we’re adding the ability to see the order of raised hands to Teams as well as bringing core Microsoft Visio capabilities to the Microsoft 365 suite.

The raised hands feature in Microsoft Teams enables meeting participants to inform presenters they want to speak or have a question without interruption. Now, Teams can show the chronological order of raised hands, helping presenters know the order of who to call on first to speak so that no participant is missed.

With the shift to hybrid work, business processes often need to be transformed and diagrams are a great way to illustrate how work gets done. To help make diagramming more accessible, we’re bringing core Visio capabilities to Microsoft 365, enabling you to create, edit, share, and coauthor diagrams with team members across your organization. With access to popular diagram templates and shapes, you can easily visualize any business process. The Visio web app in Microsoft 365 is now available to all users with a Microsoft 365 commercial subscription.

Also new this month

We launched a new Microsoft Edge training for business users. Register to learn how the fast and secure Microsoft Edge browser can help simplify your workday with intelligent search and innovative Microsoft experiences.

Looking to the future

Whether it’s helping frontline workers feel connected and empowered or making content more accessible for everyone, we’re committed to enabling every employee to thrive. We’ve got a lot more in store for 2022. Stay tuned.

¹The Work Trend Index, WorkLab, Microsoft. January 12, 2022.

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The established patterns of work we relied on for years are undergoing monumental changes. Asynchronous communication is the new norm. Meetings transcend time and space. The promise of AI is being realized—amplifying human ingenuity in ways that feel like magic.

To thrive in this new world, every organization needs a digital fabric that binds the organization together with secure communication, collaboration, and creation. This digital fabric will enable flexibility and strengthen connections across people and teams. It will seamlessly weave together data, automation, and AI—all in the flow of work. It needs to extend beyond organizational boundaries to customers and partners. And it needs to include every type of worker—information, frontline, and flexible workers.

We are innovating across the Microsoft Cloud to deliver this digital fabric to empower everyone in this new era. And at the center of it all is Microsoft Teams.

At Ignite, we are introducing exciting new apps and capabilities that in one year will be just as integrated into your daily workflow as Teams is today. Let’s dive in.

Collaboration that transcends boundaries and keeps you in the flow of work

As computing becomes embedded in the real world, the real world is being embedded in computing—that’s Microsoft Mesh, the metaverse platform. We’re taking that experience and building Mesh right into Teams, recreating a lot of what we value about being together and extending productivity beyond what was previously possible.

Mesh for Microsoft Teams introduces a new generation of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) meetings. How you project yourself in an immersive space really matters. Personalized avatars give you control to customize your avatar and use AI to imitate movements and gestures that enable you to bring your physical presence into the conversation, even when your camera is off.

Organizations will also be able to create immersive spaces that resemble physical spaces such as conference rooms, design centers, and networking lounges to enhance camaraderie, spark creativity, and foster serendipitous water-cooler connections. Learn more about Mesh for Microsoft Teams.

New updates to the Teams meeting experience

We are bringing new updates to the Teams meeting experience to foster more inclusive and productive hybrid meetings. Users can now assign roles from the scheduling form and see the order of raised hands to ensure that all the voices are heard. Also, we’re revamping the mobile overflow menu to prioritize key actions, like viewing chat and adding a notification drawer for in-meeting system messages, so users can preview, collapse, and clear all notifications with one tap.

Unlock better hybrid meeting experiences

In partnership with some of the world’s best hardware partners, we’re working to deliver Teams experiences on devices that help people stay connected and participate fully in meetings regardless of where they are attending from.

Upon certification, the Yealink desk Vision AIO24 with its new 24-inch display can be used as a standalone device for Teams collaboration or connected to a PC as a second screen.

Logitech Tap Scheduler is joining the Teams panels portfolio pending certification, enabling people to easily view meeting room availability, location information, and meeting details at a glance.

Direct Guest Join allows users to join a third-party meeting, with basic controls, from their Teams Rooms. Similarly, it allows people to join Teams meetings from their third-party room systems. Today, this is available with Zoom and Cisco. Next year we will expand this to include Bluejeans and GoToMeeting.  

Surface Hubs can now be managed from the Teams admin center alongside other Teams devices. In the coming months, Microsoft Teams Room managed services will be expanded to include Surface Hub in the cloud-based IT management and monitoring service.

Make cross-organizational collaboration easier and more secure

Work doesn’t happen in a silo—it requires communication and collaboration with individuals both inside and outside the organization. We’re delivering new capabilities to Microsoft Teams Connect that remove barriers and make it easier and more secure to collaborate with anyone.

Share a channel with individuals and teams across multiple organizations, schedule a meeting, collaborate in real-time on apps, and share channels with up to 50 teams and as many organizations as you need (available in public preview in the first quarter of 2022). Meanwhile, we are extending Teams chat capabilities, enabling you to chat with team members outside your organization with a Teams personal account (available by the end of 2021).

Deliver engaging and memorable events

A host of new webinars and broadcasting capabilities will make it easy to set up and deliver professional, engaging experiences to internal and external audiences. The virtual green room will enable organizers and presenters to socialize, monitor chat, conduct Q&As, manage attendee settings, and share content before the event starts. Organizers and presenters will be able to manage what attendees see to ensure that attendees will only see shared content and participants that are brought on screen. Both of these capabilities will be available in preview in early 2022.

Leading events and hospitality management platform, Cvent, is now integrated with Teams. Starting in early 2022, customers can use Cvent to manage the event lifecycle, including registration and agenda management, and to deliver the virtual meeting and event experience via Teams.

Unlock teamwork with collaborative apps

Collaborative apps are a new generation of applications with collaboration at the core. Designed and optimized for the flexibility of hybrid work inside Teams, they bring the relevant processes, data, and people together to accomplish more. New collaborative apps from partners including Atlassian, SAP, and ServiceNow enable customers to engage with these apps across chat, channels, and meetings. Meanwhile, new experiences between Dynamics 365 and Teams bring more data and connectivity right into your workflow.

The redesigned Teams Store, now available, makes finding the right app for your needs simple and streamlined.

Streamline the contact center experience

A new all-in-one digital contact center solution, powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Teams, brings together traditional contact center, unified communications, and customer service capabilities into a single, integrated software as a service (SaaS) solution. With this new all-in-one solution, you’ll be able to deliver chat and voice connectivity, extensibility with other business applications, and intelligence embedded at every step of the customer service experience.

Empowering creators everywhere

We’re completely reimaging Office to go beyond the traditional confines of a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, spilling over to entirely new mediums. Just like Teams transformed collaboration and productivity, Microsoft Loop is the next big breakthrough in Microsoft 365.

Microsoft Loop is a new app that combines a powerful and flexible canvas with portable components that move freely and stay in sync across applications—enabling teams to think, plan, and create together. Microsoft Loop has three elements: Loop components, Loop pages, and Loop workspaces.

Loop components are atomic units of productivity that help you collaborate and complete work right within chats, meetings, emails, documents, and more. You can build your own Loop components, or leverage ours, including:

• Voting table makes it easy for teams to brainstorm, drive consensus, and finalize decisions together.
• Status tracker will help you gather information from your team, track progress towards all aspects of your project, and always maintain an up-to-date view of the project across your team.

Loop pages are flexible canvases where you can organize your components and pull in helpful elements like links, files, or data in ways that suit your specific project needs.

Loop workspaces are shared spaces that allow you and your team to see and group everything important to your project. And workspaces make it easy for you to catch up on what everyone is working on, react to others’ ideas, and track progress toward shared goals.

Microsoft Loop components are rolling out in preview across Microsoft 365 apps, such as Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and OneNote in the coming months, with more Microsoft Loop functionality to follow.

The promise of AI has always been about augmenting human capability in ways that feel like magic. That’s becoming reality with Context IQ. Context IQ turns insights into action, harnessing the power of Microsoft Graph to glean insights about your work throughout the day, then predicting, seeking, and suggesting information you need, right when you need it—at the point of action.

For example, Context IQ takes Microsoft Editor, to the next level, helping with things like suggesting a relevant file or document, finding available calendar times with collaborators, suggesting colleagues to tag in emails, or suggesting related Loop components for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales opportunity records.

We’re boosting our support for video creation with the recent inclusion of Clipchamp to the Office family. Clipchamp empowers people to create beautiful, professional-looking videos easily and quickly. Its fun and intuitive interface combined with powerful capabilities and a large stock library help ensure people can bring their video visions to life.

We are launching new experiences on Office.com and the Office app for Windows with new Home, My Content, and Create pages. These new experiences make it easier to find all of one’s content and files across apps and storage locations, see what needs attention, and get to the apps and templates needed for work—all in one place.

The new experience will begin rolling out to users next week. Learn more about these updates in the Office blog.

The digital employee experience is the employee experience

The employee experience is no longer defined by or tethered to a physical location. We need new ways to keep employees engaged and informed, all in the flow of work. That’s where Microsoft Viva comes in.   

Microsoft Viva is now available for purchase as a suite that includes the Insights, Learning, and Topics modules. The Viva suite will also include a new goals management module in 2022 based on our recent acquisition of Ally.io. Viva Learning is now generally available for everyone. Finally, we are launching new experiences for Viva Connections mobile and desktop.  

Viva Insights will offer a new effective meetings experience and manager insights to help employees build new habits and norms that boost connection, productivity, and wellbeing.  

Finally, we’re happy to share that several of the partner integrations we announced for Viva Learning and Viva Connections earlier this year—including SAP SuccessFactors, Qualtrics, ServiceNow, Cornerstone OnDemand, and UKG —are now generally available. Learn more about all of our Microsoft Viva announcements.

Windows for a hybrid world

Each of these exciting new innovations are built for and powered by Windows—the only OS designed for hybrid work. The launch of Windows 11 means easy, zero-touch deployment and the ability to tune devices and tools to meet the unique needs of individual teams and employees:

• To make it easier for organizations using Intune to take advantage of the Windows Update for Business deployment service, we are integrating controls for scheduling and deploying Windows feature updates directly into Intune. Learn more in our blog post.
• Microsoft Test Base for Microsoft 365, now generally available, is a cloud service that enables independent software vendors, enterprise partners, and organizations to test their line of business applications against versions of Windows Client and Server. Read more about Test Base for Microsoft 365.

• Universal Print is a cloud service that allows users to securely print to any printer in the organization without a need for print servers. Learn more about Universal Print.

Read about 11 things we like about Windows 11 in this Tech Community blog.

New enhancements to Windows 365, including Windows 11 support on Business Edition

We’ve taken the PC to the cloud with Windows 365, so businesses of all sizes can securely stream a full Windows experience to any device. You can now choose to experience Windows 11 in the cloud with the Windows 365 Enterprise edition today. Support for the Business edition is coming soon.

There are several new updates being made to provide an optimal Windows 365 experience, including:

• Enhanced security and support via a virtual Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip to enable Windows 11.
• Web client improvements for faster load times, better performance, local resource settings, accessibility features, and more.
• Support for Azure Active Directory joined Windows 365 eliminates the need for on-premises or Azure infrastructure.
• Endpoint analytics resource reports in Microsoft Endpoint Manager provide metrics on central processing unit (CPU) and random access memory (RAM) performance in Windows 365.

For customers who want a modern cloud service for desktop and application virtualization but also need to support some apps and data on-premises, we are announcing the preview of Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI. Learn more about Azure Virtual Desktop announcements.

Also new to Microsoft 365

According to our research, more than 60 percent of small businesses said they didn’t feel equipped to handle cyberthreats. Microsoft Defender for Business is a new endpoint security solution that helps organizations with up to 300 employees protect themselves against cyberattacks. It will be available as a standalone solution and will be included in Microsoft 365 Business Premium. Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Business.

Looking ahead

From redesigning physical meeting spaces to include those not in the room to reinventing the way you create digitally in the world of hybrid work, we’re committed to enabling every employee to thrive in this new world of work. This is just the beginning, and we can’t wait to share more with you in the coming months. Stay tuned.

The post What’s new in Microsoft 365—How we’re empowering everyone for a new world of hybrid work appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

As hybrid work shifts from “new” to “the new normal,” we’re continuing to learn how to successfully navigate the transition. One thing remains clear: hybrid work is about providing flexibility. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. One of the latest findings from our Work Trend Index¹ illustrates this perfectly: when we surveyed our own employees, we found those who plan to spend the most and least time in the office are doing so for the same reason: focused work. Through the launch of new technologies, like Windows 11 releasing on October 5, 2021, we’re empowering employees to contribute and be productive from anywhere, on any device, at any time.

This month, we’re adding more spoken languages to live captions and transcripts in Microsoft Teams. And in preparation for a season of new operating systems, from Windows 11 to Apple iOS and macOS, we are adding new capabilities to Microsoft Endpoint Manager to help ensure your employees have a great experience on day one. Let’s dive into these, and our other announcements, for more details.

Deliver more inclusive meetings for everyone

Earlier this month, we shared several new Teams announcements to help organizations prepare their physical office spaces for hybrid work, make remote meetings as effective as being in person, and enable employees to stay in the flow of work.

We’re now introducing enhanced support for live captioning and transcripts and Microsoft Viva Topics integration between Microsoft Yammer and Microsoft Viva.

• Turn on live captioning and transcripts in more languages: Now, meetings held in one of the supported languages are also supported by real-time captioning and live transcripts. We have expanded to 27 new spoken languages including German, Portuguese (Brazil), Japanese, and Hindi to name a few. Users on mobile can view captions in the supported languages, and desktop users will be able to switch the spoken language. This provides flexibility and additional clarity for your participants to engage in the meeting. Customers can access this via a Teams Meeting on the desktop app by clicking the More Actions option.

• Discover knowledge with Topics integration between Yammer and Viva: Yammer is integrating with and adopting Viva Topics to make community-sourced knowledge easily accessible across an organization and support a consistent experience in Microsoft 365. With this new integration, Topics will refer to the same thing whether in Yammer, Viva, or elsewhere in Microsoft 365. For example, users will see topics in Yammer enhanced with Viva Topics experiences, such as Viva Topic cards, and Viva Topics experiences like pages and cards will include content from Yammer—such as questions and answers and conversations. To get started, download the Yammer Topic API Changes documentation.

Co-author encrypted docs and create more colorful diagrams

This month, we’re adding support for co-authoring in encrypted documents and custom colors in Microsoft Visio for the web. 

• Co-author in encrypted documents in Microsoft 365 Apps: In 2019, we added support for sensitivity labeling in OneDrive and SharePoint, enabling labeled and encrypted documents to be opened, edited, and AutoSaved in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on the web for the first time. This month, we’re extending co-authoring and AutoSave to include Microsoft 365 apps on the desktop for both Windows and macOS. Now, multiple people can co-author Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents simultaneously, frictionlessly, with auto-save, while maintaining the sensitivity labeling and document protections, across the web and desktop applications. This capability helps enhance organizations’ ability to keep their sensitive content protected while empowering users to be more productive while working remotely. This feature is available for Current and Monthly Enterprise channels following our channel release cadence.

• Expand your color palette with custom colors in Visio for the web: Until recently, Visio for web users were limited to Theme Colors, Standard Colors, and the option to change the transparency for objects in their diagram. With the addition of Recent Colors and More Colors, you can now quickly access recently used colors in your diagram or choose from a full spectrum of colors. View the Recent Colors and More Colors documentation for details.

Ensure your employees can be productive from day one

This month, we’re releasing new capabilities to help ensure you’re prepared for your employees to be working from new versions of Windows, Apple iOS, and macOS.

• Understand device readiness for Windows 11 with Endpoint analytics: With Windows 11 nearing release, you’ll need to know which of your devices are ready for an upgrade. The Endpoint analytics service in Microsoft Endpoint Manager offers a new Windows metric that helps you measure the number of devices running older versions of Windows, and then provides remediation steps to upgrade your Windows OS version.

The digital employee experience plays a huge role in overall satisfaction and productivity. Our Endpoint analytics service provides your organization with meaningful metrics and insights for measuring the quality of your users’ experience, while also helping you assess the performance and health of various endpoints managed by Microsoft Endpoint Manager. Learn more about Endpoint analytics and how the recent enhancements can help you assess digital employee experience.

• Manage iOS 15 and macOS 12 with Endpoint Manager on launch day: Apple announced several changes coming to iOS 15 and macOS 12 at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2021. This month, we announced that Microsoft Endpoint Manager will be able to support many of your endpoint management needs on day zero release of the new versions of Apple’s operating system to help keep your endpoints secure and protect company data. You can learn more about these and other new iOS, iPadOS, and macOS endpoint management capabilities that can improve the experience of workers on the frontline and hybrid work environments. These updates are rolling out now in line with the rollout of the new Apple operating system and through the October 2021 release of Endpoint Manager.

Looking to the future

From the upcoming launch of Windows 11 to the updates in Microsoft Teams that help every attendee feel more included, we’re committed to supporting the work-from-anywhere model required for hybrid work. And there’s more to come. Our next blog will cover announcements from Microsoft Ignite, our biannual product announcement event, which we’ll be brought to you digitally this year.

¹ Work Trend Index, WorkLab, Microsoft. 2021.

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This month, we are continuing to build on our recent announcements, from making Windows 365 available to everyone to introducing new features in Microsoft Teams and across Microsoft 365 designed to empower your people to work from anywhere.

Let’s dive into the details.

Be productive from anywhere with Windows 365

At Inspire, we announced Windows 365, a cloud service that introduces a new way to experience Windows 10 or Windows 11 (when available). Now generally available, Windows 365 gives everyone, from interns and contractors to software developers and industrial designers, the agency to connect to their apps, data, and settings from any device. With Windows 365, you can begin working on a laptop at the kitchen table, pick up where you left off on a tablet in the car between appointments, and finish up on your desktop when you get to the office. Windows 365 is always ready for you to jump back in—even when you switch devices—and makes it easier for organizations to scale to meet annual busy periods by eliminating the logistical complexity and security challenges of issuing new hardware to seasonal workers.

Learn more about Windows 365 or sign up for your plan today.

Work together and personalize your Microsoft Teams meeting experience

This month, we’re introducing additional collaborative apps from our partners, a new Q&A app for Microsoft Teams, a new Communities app, and more.

Take notes and edit records right within Teams with new partner apps—Last month, we announced the general availability of new collaborative apps from our partners. Confluence Cloud by Atlassian in Teams is designed to enable more effective meetings where users can take notes with a Confluence notes panel inside a Teams meeting. Confluence makes team notes digestible and action-oriented and allows users to format notes such as action items, decisions, code snippets, mentions, and tables. These notes are then formatted and automatically shared in a Teams channel.

Salesforce for Teams is also now generally available. With this collaborative app, sales and service teams using Salesforce Sales Cloud or Service Cloud can bring account data and records into their Teams workspace for better collaboration and decision making. With the Salesforce for Teams app, users can pin Salesforce records to channels, chats, and calendar meetings to easily keep access to them—with an expanded set of supported Salesforce records, including Custom Objects.

Simplify virtual health workflows for your frontline healthcare workers—To help healthcare workers schedule and manage virtual appointments more effectively, we have added Microsoft Bookings with Microsoft Teams in all Microsoft 365 for frontline workers product licenses. For example, with the Bookings app in Microsoft Teams, healthcare workers can easily schedule, manage, and conduct virtual visits for simple telehealth workflows. Microsoft 365 for frontline workers provides an attractive, low-cost licensing option for healthcare providers that are interested in using Teams to support virtual health and care team collaboration.

Add open or moderated Q&As to any Teams meeting—To help provide a more structured question and answer experience during larger meetings, we introduced the new Q&A app that enables attendees to ask and reply to questions before and during a meeting. Organizers and designated presenters can mark best answers, filter responses, moderate and dismiss questions, and pin posts. Responses to questions are threaded in a conversation with the original question. Designated presenters can act as co-moderators to help screen questions. The Q&A app will be generally available in September. To add Q&A to a meeting, simply add the app during the scheduling process.

Experience the new Communities app in Teams and Outlook for web—The Communities app for Microsoft Teams brings a full-fidelity community experience, powered by Yammer, into Microsoft Teams. In the coming weeks, we’re updating the app’s design, bringing enhancements to notifications and deep-linking, and adding new capabilities like suggested communities, which uses AI to recommend valuable communities to join.

We also announced the new Communities app for Outlook for the web. Starting next month, you will be able to engage in communities, participate in conversations and live events, and share knowledge openly with your peers without leaving the Outlook web app.

Build in breaks and stay on top of what’s most important

Research has shown that small breaks throughout the day make a big difference in employee wellbeing. This month, we are introducing new features in Outlook and Yammer to help ensure you can plan breaks as needed throughout your day and help you keep track of important messages and critical tasks.

Get a break with speedy events—With increased online meetings and many of us being more sedentary than we would like, it is important to take breaks throughout the day and stretch our legs. In April, we introduced speedy events, which automatically sets events to start “late” or end “early,” helping people carve out essential breaks between back-to-backs meetings. This month, we are expanding support to the new Outlook for Mac.

Pin your most important messages at the top of your inbox—With large inboxes and busy days, finding a specific email you read earlier can be tedious and disruptive to your workflow. We’ve added the ability to pin a message, moving it to the top of your inbox so it’s easy to find later. Pinned messages is now generally available to all users in Outlook for the web, Mac, and mobile.

Get reminders to take action on email messages you might have missed—Message reminders in Outlook on the web help you stay on top of things by bringing messages you might have missed to the top of your inbox so you can easily take action on it. Don’t worry, we don’t want to clutter your inbox so Outlook will only remind you of one message at a time. Log in to Outlook on the web to try it out.

Post on behalf of in Yammer—We also announced that users can now post on behalf of another user in Yammer. Once approval is granted, internal communicators to share news and updates as well as reply to comments on behalf of leaders and their teams. To get started, leaders and teams will first need to setup their delegate in their Yammer settings.

Increase productivity with new features in your favorite apps

This month, we introduced suggested attachments in Microsoft Planner and the ability to create shapes in Visio for the web.

Find your files more effectively with suggested attachments—Planner now supports suggested attachments in tasks. Now, when you want to add attachments to a task, Planner will show you a list of related files for you to select from. No more hunting through your folders, servers, or cloud storage to find the right file to attach. Suggested attachments in Planner automatically recommends files that you might want to attach to the plan, saving you time. To experience the new capability, within a task in Planner for the web, scroll down to the bottom of the task to find the Suggested attachments section and select Add next to the file you’d like to attach.

Create shapes in your diagrams in Visio for the web—Currently, when you select a shape to add to your diagram from the available shape sets, the shape is added with predetermined dimensions. You then have to resize the shape based on their requirements. To help, we’ve added the Draw Shape tool, enabling you to draw shapes, including rectangles, squares, lines, circles, and ellipses, at the size and location you prefer. To create a shape in your diagram from the Insert tab, select the Draw Shape drop-down, select the shape you want, click anywhere in the canvas, and then drag to draw the shape.

Tools for the future of hybrid work

Hybrid work is here. As organizations across the globe navigate the increased complexities of this once-in-a-generation shift in the way we work, we will continue to deliver innovation that enables people to be productive and feel included in this new world of work. 

From Windows 365, which enables people to stream all of their personalized applications, tools, data, and settings from the cloud across any device, to the Q&A app for Teams, all of these capabilities are designed to empower people in this new world of work. And this is all just the beginning. Stay tuned for more. 

The post From Windows 365 to Q&A in Microsoft Teams meetings—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

イノベーションを続けてきた 10 年

10 年前にリリースして以来、法人向け Office 365 は有料シートが 3 億を超えるまでに成長しました。これまで、お客様のニーズの変化に対応するために継続的に投資を行ってきました。4 年前に、Office、Windows、Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) の優れた機能を統合した Microsoft 365 を発表しました。また、同年、Microsoft Teams を追加しました。これは、業務フローの中で、会議、チャット、通話、共同作業、ビジネス プロセスの自動化を実現できる、唯一の統合ソリューションです。

Microsoft 365 の発表以降、Microsoft Teams、Power Apps、Power BI、Power Automate、Stream、Planner、Visio、OneDrive、Yammer、Whiteboard など、24¹ のアプリを追加し、主要 3 分野において 1,400 以上の新機能をリリースしました。

1. コミュニケーションとコラボレーション: Microsoft Teams は、2 億 5,000 万人を超える月間アクティブ ユーザーが、仕事、生活、学習で活用している新しいツールです。2017 年のリリース以来、唯一の統合ソリューションとして、Office アプリの機能を活用しながら、業務フロー内で会議、チャット、通話、共同作業、ビジネス プロセスの自動処理を実現してきました。2020 年だけを振り返ってみても、Together モード、背景効果、ラージ ギャラリー ビュー、挙手、ライブ リアクション、ブレークアウト ルーム、ライブ キャプションの発言者名表示、Fluid コンポーネントなど、300 種類以上もの新機能をリリースしました。

また、新しいカテゴリのコラボレーション機能も導入し、Power Platform、Whiteboard、Lists、Planner、Shifts、Forms、SharePoint との緊密な統合により、ユーザーや組織のハイブリッド ワークを可能にしています。Adobe、Atlassian、Salesforce、SAP、ServiceNow、Workday などの企業も、Teams と緊密に連携するアプリケーションを開発し、ビジネス プロセスや機能を業務フローに直接組み込んでいます。

マイクロソフトは、常にリアルタイム コラボレーションと非同期コラボレーションの両方に革新をもたらしています。Word、Excel、PowerPoint のデスクトップ アプリでのリアルタイム コラボレーションを実現したほか、@メンション、タスクの割り当て、最新のコメント機能、自動保存などの充実した機能によって、エクスペリエンスをより効率化しました。他にも、OneDrive クラウド ストレージと Exchange Online のメールボックスの追加や拡張も行っています。

2. セキュリティとコンプライアンス: サイバーセキュリティの環境は、複雑性を増すばかりです。サイバー攻撃は増加し、巧妙化しています。攻撃の規模が拡大する中、あらゆる組織がセキュリティとコンプライアンスを優先課題として挙げています。Microsoft 365 はリリース以来、攻撃対象領域を削減する新機能により、ランサムウェアなどの脅威から組織を守れるようにしてきました。また、メールやドキュメントのデータ損失防止 (DLP)、秘密度ラベル、メッセージの暗号化といった機能によって、重要なデータを組織内に留めておけるようになりました。さらに、コンテンツ検索、電子情報開示、コア訴訟ホールドなどの強力なコンプライアンス機能により、組織がリスクを低減し、厳しい規制要件に対応できるようにしています。組み込みの MDM (モバイル デバイス管理) や、Microsoft エンドポイント マネージャーなどの管理ツールは、管理者がリモート ワークやハイブリッド ワークに対応するのに役立ちます。

3. AI と自動化: この 10 年間、マイクロソフトは生産性アプリやコラボレーション アプリに AI 機能を組み込み、すべてのユーザーがより多くのことを達成できるよう支援してきました。Microsoft 365 全体に AI を活用したイノベーションを導入し、ドキュメント作成、デザイン、プレゼンテーションの機能を強化しました。クラウド ベースの AI によって、Excel ではマップ、グラフ、表を自動作成できます。Outlook ではメールをソートし、すっきりと整理します。また、AI を活用したリアルタイム翻訳、字幕、文字起こしにより、共同作業やコミュニケーションを促進し、だれもが作業に参加できるようになります。

電話会議機能の拡張

このたび、大企業、一般法人、現場担当者、政府機関向けの各スイートで、Microsoft Teams 会議に無制限のダイヤルイン機能を追加いたします。クラウド接続が増えても、外出先やインターネット接続が不安定な状況で Teams 会議に参加するユーザーもいます。現在、ダイヤルイン機能は Microsoft 365 E5、Office 365 E5 で提供されていますが、Teams をフルに使いこなすための重要な要素となっていることがわかっています。無制限のダイヤルインは、70 か国以上で販売され、44 の国と地域の言語による対話型音声応答に対応しているため、ユーザーが場所を問わずに、ほぼすべてのデバイスから安心して Microsoft Teams 会議に参加できます。

新しい料金

今回発表した料金改定は、6 か月後に適用されます。2022 年 3 月 1 日に、次のとおり法人向け製品の料金を引き上げます。1 ユーザーあたり、Microsoft 365 Business Basic は 5 ドルから 6 ドルに、Microsoft 365 Business Premium は 20 ドルから 22 ドルに、Office 365 E1 は 8 ドルから 10 ドルに、Office 365 E3 は 20 ドルから 23 ドルに、Office 365 E5 は 35 ドルから 38 ドルに、Microsoft 365 E3 は 32 ドルから 36 ドルになります。新しい料金は世界中で適用されますが、一部の地域の市場では調整を行います。教育機関やコンシューマー向け製品については、現時点では料金を変更する予定はありません。

世界中の経営者たちが、より柔軟でハイブリッドな働き方に向けて従業員を支援しようとしている今、間違いなく、あらゆる組織がさまざまなユーザー、場所、プロセスに対応する新しい業務運営モデルを求めるようになるでしょう。マイクロソフトは、過去 10 年間に提供してきた価値をさらに高め、引き続きお客様の成功と繁栄を後押しするイノベーションをお届けしてまいります。

^{1 2011 年 6 月のリリース時点では、Office 365 には Word、Excel、PowerPoint、Outlook、Lync、Exchange、InfoPath が含まれていました。その後、他のアプリの全部または一部の追加、まったく新しい機能の追加 (Access、Bookings、Delve、Forms、GroupMe、Kaizala、Lens、Lists、OneDrive、OneNote Class Notebook、Planner、Power Apps、Power Automate、Power BI、Publisher、SharePoint、Staff Hub、Stream、Sway、Teams、To-Do、Visio、Whiteboard、Yammer) を経て、拡張されてきました。}

The post Microsoft 365 の料金改定 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.

We’re also committed to building experiences that put everyone on equal footing—whether they’re together in a conference room in Atlanta, presenting remotely from a home office, or catching up with a meeting recording once the workday begins in Sydney.  

Microsoft Teams is mission-critical to this vision for a more flexible world of work. Teams is unique in that it brings together meetings, chat, calls, collaboration, and business process automation in a single app. Since COVID-19 spurred office workers around the world to work from home, we’ve been innovating in Teams to do things like create more natural and engaging meeting experiences—enable people to connect seamlessly with those inside and outside of their organizations and provide ways to make remote presentations richer and more impactful. And as we emerge into this new hybrid reality, we are focused on building experiences in Teams that are designed to ensure all voices are heard including the people not in the room—empowering everyone to connect and engage, from anywhere and at any time. And to make it easier to collaborate synchronously and asynchronously, we’re also announcing new Microsoft Fluid canvas innovations—in Teams and beyond. 

But COVID-19 also taught us that meeting fatigue and digital overload is real, and remote work has challenged our wellbeing. To help, Microsoft has built Microsoft Viva—our integrated employee experience platform—into Teams, so that employees can find ways to protect time and preserve their wellbeing right in the flow of their work.

Today we are announcing new innovations—in Microsoft Teams Rooms, Fluid, and Microsoft Viva—all designed to empower your people for hybrid work. Let’s have a look.  

Participate on equal footing—at home, onsite, or on the go

Unlocking better hybrid meeting experiences for everyone begins with designing for the people who aren’t in the room, so that everyone feels like they have a seat at the table, whether they’re joining in the room, at home, or on the go. Today, we’re announcing enhancements to Teams meetings and Microsoft Teams Rooms built to create engaging experiences for every participant.

Over the course of this year, we will roll out front row in Teams Rooms, an immersive room layout that makes interactions feel more natural and gives in-room participants a greater sense of connection to remote participants. We’ve moved the video gallery to the bottom of the screen so remote participants are face-to-face with those in the room. And to help everyone stay engaged, meeting content is surrounded by contextual meeting information like the agenda, tasks, and notes. Meeting chat will also be clearly visible to those in the room, so they can see and respond to comments shared through chat.

To help remote participants establish their presence in the room and maximize inclusion, Teams Rooms will expand screen real estate using new video layouts that disperse the video gallery across multiple displays when content isn’t shared. The increased space means remote participants show up larger and more true to life. We’re also bringing more features from desktop to Teams Rooms this summer, to help bring attention to the remote participants engaging in the meeting. These features include live reactions, spotlight, and the ability to pin multiple video streams (coming this fall) and chat bubbles when using the classic video grid layout.

Remote participants should also be able to see who is in the meeting room, and what’s happening. Jabra, Logitech, Poly, and our newest Teams device partner Neat are using advanced AI-powered camera technologies to provide new video views optimized for hybrid meetings, allowing every person in the room to be seen more clearly.

We’re also making sure those who speak in meetings are clearly identified. The Teams intelligent speakers from EPOS and Yealink are now generally available and are built for Teams Rooms and use Microsoft’s voice recognition technology in Teams to attribute remarks to the meeting room speaker in the transcript. With speaker attributed—meeting transcription, people can focus on contributing to the conversation instead of taking notes, and those who missed the meeting can see a record of the conversation after the meeting.

And we’re thrilled to announce the new Teams Rooms on Surface Hub experience. Surface Hub is purpose-built for teams to meet and co-create, wherever they work, and the next generation of Teams on Surface Hub brings more of your favorite meetings features and controls from the desktop to the meeting room—including a modernized meeting stage, Together Mode scenes, and PowerPoint Live. Coming this fall, the new Microsoft Whiteboard experience will also be available on Surface Hub, so everyone can draw and ink on the same digital canvas.   

You can find more information on these Teams Rooms and partner announcements on our Teams Tech Community Blog.

To empower remote participants to initiate and facilitate whiteboard sessions, we’ve created a completely new, hybrid work-focused Whiteboard experience where all attendees can visually collaborate across the same digital canvas. Available in summer 2021, new features will enable anyone to bring existing content to Whiteboard to co-author; and new templates will help groups start ideating faster, improving their ability to follow along with contributors, and more.

Effective hybrid meetings require every participant to be able to present, and experience a presentation in a way that’s engaging and inclusive. New PowerPoint Live features help create a shared space for collaboration and contributions from everyone in the meeting. Slide translate allows attendees to see the presentation in their chosen language, for instance. And with our new inking experience, you can annotate your PowerPoint as you present—or use a laser pointer to call attention to key points. 

And look for these latest features in the Teams mobile app as well. You can now access PowerPoint Live and Dynamic view on your mobile devices. Custom background is also now on iOS and coming soon to Android.

Collaborate in the flow of work

To work effectively in hybrid and asynchronous models, people need a super-rich canvas that both creates and maintains context before, during, and after the meeting. Fluid components are atomic units of productivity that help you get your work done in the context of chat, emails, meetings, and more. Recently, we announced new Fluid components in chat to create live, collaborative experiences that can be edited in real-time and shared across Teams and Office apps. And today, we’re announcing the expansion of Fluid components for Teams meetings, OneNote, Outlook, and Whiteboard that make it easier to collaborate synchronously and asynchronously across Teams and Office apps. We’re also announcing new chat features that further support asynchronous collaboration, so you can keep the work moving forward in between meetings. Pin a message, providing your chat members with quick access to critical content anytime, and reply to a specific chat message maintaining context within the ongoing conversation.

Meetings have increased significantly over the past year, along with unstructured communications. Research from our Work Trend Index shows the average Teams user is sending 45 percent more chats per person per, week than they did one year ago. And ad-hoc, unstructured meetings are on the rise as well. To help manage this digital overload, new Fluid components in Teams meetings make it easy to co-create an agenda, take notes, and assign tasks, right within the Teams meeting, and access persistent recap content whenever you need it. And the note, agenda, and tasks from meetings will be automatically “placed” in the new meeting notes home of OneNote. While the meeting is underway, take the discussion a step further by ideating and brainstorming together by creating and editing live Fluid components in Whiteboard. Fluid components can also be leveraged across Outlook—in email or the calendar—making it easier to manage your time, agenda, notes, and tasks across apps.

Protect time and prioritize wellbeing

Weekly meeting time for Teams users has more than doubled since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Back-to-back meetings increase stress and make it harder to stay engaged and focused. In just a few minutes a day, meditation and mindfulness with Headspace can help you reduce stress and improve focus. Starting later this month, we’re bringing a curated set of guided meditations and mindfulness exercises from Headspace to the Viva Insights app in Teams to help you start your day grounded, relax your mind before a big presentation, or disconnect from work in the evening.

Building upon the Viva Insights ability to schedule daily focus time to work uninterrupted with Teams notifications silenced, we are introducing a new focus mode in the Viva Insights app later this year. This will feature Focus music from Headspace and implement timers to help you make progress on important tasks in regular intervals with breaks planned in between.

Remote work has eliminated physical boundaries between work and life leading to an increase in after-hours chats, and a feeling of being always-on. We want to help your people find balance and protect personal time. Later this year, Viva Insights will offer the ability to configure quiet time to silence mobile notifications from Outlook and Teams outside your working hours as well as provide personalized insights on how well you are disconnecting. Quiet time settings will also be available for users in Teams and Outlook mobile and accompanied by IT administrator controls in Microsoft Endpoint Manager to support the creation of organization-wide policies to mute after-hours notifications.

As we all navigate this new world of work together, we will discover new ways to help people work both flexibly and effectively. At Microsoft, we’re committed to bringing you experiences that empower people to work from anywhere, at any time. By studying the research and the usage patterns in our apps—and talking to customers every day—we are continuing to hone our understanding of what people need, to bring their best selves to work every day. This understanding guides our innovation as we work to bring you and your people experiences that help them achieve more.

The post New hybrid work innovations in Microsoft Teams Rooms, Fluid, and Microsoft Viva appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Nearly every day, my team sits down with organization leaders and partners from across the world who are doing the hard work to ready their people for the coming future of work. Naturally, in these meetings, we are often asked: What is Microsoft doing? And the first thing I tell them is: Just like you, we’re learning as we go—studying data, listening to our employees, and responding with agility to what works and what doesn’t. Because a growth mindset is the key to charting a path forward in any moment of uncertainty. 

There’s no doubt that this shift to a more flexible approach to work will be an enormous undertaking for every leader and every organization. That is certainly true for us as we create a plan to implement a hybrid work model for our more than 160,000 employees across the globe. We know that no one person or organization will have all the answers, but we believe that, as part of a growth mindset, each of us will be better off if we share what we’re learning with each other. 

Two new resources for navigating the shift to hybrid work

That’s why we recently released two resources that detail what we’re learning as we adopt a hybrid work model at Microsoft, in hopes that we can help you create the hybrid work plan that best fits your organization. At their core, these resources reflect our belief that leaders will need to come together to create a new, flexible operating model—spanning people, places, and processes—to fundamentally rewire their organization for hybrid work.  

The first resource I want to point you to is our Hybrid Workplace Flexibility Guide—which we originally created for Microsoft employees. In it, you’ll find sample team agreements, templates, and tools for hybrid work. There are also detailed plans that encompass everything from strategies to keep your people healthy, to exact roadmaps for how to help divide your people’s time between a physical or remote workplace. And there’s much more to come soon. 

The second is called Hybrid Work: A Guide for Business Leaders, and it wraps up much of what we’ve learned about how to reimagine people, places, and processes for a hybrid world. Here’s a quick summary of the highlights:

People 

To help people thrive in a more flexible work world we need to rethink the entire employee experience—from creating culture to attracting and retaining talent and building listening systems. Every organization needs a plan and policies that put us on the path to extreme flexibility and help us build digital empathy into every aspect of our culture. At Microsoft, we’re giving employees a clear flexible work policy—any employee can work remotely up to 50 percent of the time. We’re also we’re building privacy-backed listening systems to capture digital signals with tools including Workplace Analytics, part of Viva Insights, which lets managers and leaders check in on the wellbeing of their teams and organizations empowering managers and leaders to “hire talent from everywhere” and create their own team norms.

Places

Our approach to places hinges on bridging the gap between the physical and digital, and evolving with employee needs. This starts with putting employee safety first. For instance, we’re analyzing data from multiple inputs across public and private sources in a Microsoft Power BI dashboard to determine when people should be allowed at the worksite and how many. And we’re using a simple app built with Power Apps to help employees self-attest to their health and wellbeing when they come into the office.  

And when it comes to meeting spaces, we’re turning our pre-pandemic design philosophy on its head and designing for the people not in the room. By combining new design patterns with Microsoft Teams Rooms innovations, we’re giving everyone a seat at the table so they can fully participate, no matter where they are. 

Processes

The shift to hybrid work gives business leaders a rare opportunity to transform key business processes in bold new ways. If you’re thinking of the next few months simply as “a return to the office,” you’re missing the big picture. Instead, take some time to identify and prioritize digital transformation processes that leverage and scale what you’ve learned over the last year. If you don’t, your competitors will. The winners of the future are being decided today.   

At Microsoft, we’re taking the opportunity to reimagine our key business processes—from operations to sales. For example, we’re transforming our inside sales team; using Microsoft Power Platform—Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps—to automate order-to-cash; and investing in a centralized Global Demand Center to increase lead gen and customer engagement through automated digital marketing. 

There’s a lot more on what we’re learning, and what we’re changing, in the guide, and I’d encourage you to download it to get all the details.  

The thing I love most about the growth mindset is that it encourages you to be open to the best ideas—no matter where they come from. I’m excited to share these two resources with you and hope that they’ll be useful for you. But I’m even more excited to hear about what you’re learning on your journey. Together, we have the opportunity to create a new world of work that can be better for everyone.

More to come soon.

The post How Microsoft approaches hybrid work: A new guide to help our customers appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

From viewing live transcriptions during Microsoft Teams Meetings and tracking changes in Microsoft Excel documents to discovering and securing unmanaged devices, this month we’re announcing new features across Microsoft 365 designed to enable the flexibility that hybrid work requires. Other highlights include the ability to transform Microsoft Word documents into beautiful PowerPoint presentations using AI, expanded polling capabilities in Teams, and an updated Remote Desktop for Mac app.

Let’s dive in.

Make meetings more engaging, inclusive, and productive

This month, we’re announcing live transcriptions for Teams Meetings, new capabilities for polls, and the general availability of Meetings recap.

Expand access and streamline the management of polls in Teams Meetings

Last month, we announced several new features to help you deliver a seamless, engaging meeting experience using polls. We have expanded access to polling so meeting attendees who are external guests or are joining from Teams mobile app have the same quality experience. And meeting presenters and organizers can soon launch two new poll types—open text and multiple-choice quiz—providing more options to help ensure your attendees are heard and engaged. We’ve also released intelligent poll suggestions, which help minimize the effort it takes to create polls, and post-meeting poll insights to help uncover meeting engagement metrics and enable you to take action on your gathered information. These features will become available in the next few weeks.  

Make meetings more inclusive and productive with live transcription

Live transcription allows meeting participants to follow and review conversations (in English-US) alongside the meeting video or audio in real-time. This promotes inclusivity for participants who have hearing disabilities or different levels of language proficiency. Attendees who joined late, or missed the meeting, can also easily catch up by reading what was discussed and searching the transcript by speaker. Participants can also choose to not be identified in meeting transcripts. To enable live transcriptions, tenant admins will need to turn on the Allow transcription policy.

Stay on track and keep work moving forward after meetings are over with meeting recap

Microsoft Teams now will provide a recap with the meeting recording, transcript, chat, and attached files being shared with participants in the meeting Chat tab and viewable in the Details tab. Those who missed the meeting, joined late, or want to revisit what was discussed can play the recording or review the transcripts respectively. Meeting recap is now rolling out.

Collaborate more easily in Excel workbooks, stay organized, and save time creating presentations

This month we’re announcing several long-requested features to Microsoft 365 apps.

Collaborate with confidence with Show Changes in Excel Workbooks

One of our most requested features for Excel is finally here—the ability to track changes. Now, you’ll see the details of who changed what, where, and when, along with the previous value of the cell for quick reversion. You can narrow down the list of changes by selecting any sheet, range, or individual cell to see all changes that were made, including bulk edits. Show Changes is now available.

Transform Word documents to PowerPoint presentations with just a few clicks

Last month, we announced a new capability in Word for the Web that enables you to export a Word document as a professional-looking PowerPoint presentation. This new capability uses AI to suggest imagery, icons, videos, themes, and fonts to arrange your content. This feature is now available to all users.  

Connect, organize, and get things done more seamlessly with updates to Outlook for the web

This month, Outlook for the web is rolling out an update to make it even easier to navigate Outlook and access your favorite apps. We’re updating the experience with a new location for your core Outlook capabilities such as email, calendar, and contacts, as well as providing easy access to launch other Microsoft 365 applications like To Do, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Yammer, and Bookings, all from the left side of Outlook. Start a presentation after checking your mail by simply clicking PowerPoint—one click, and you’re on your way. In the next couple of months, we will also be offering this update to Outlook for Windows to those who wish to try it.

Categorize similar tasks with more editable labels

Labels are a quick, visual way to categorize similar tasks in Planner and Tasks in Teams. Currently, you might use labels to tag tasks with the same completion requirements, dependencies, or issues, and then filter your plan on those labels to zero in on related tasks. But we’ve heard from you that you need more label options, and we’re happy to announce we’re increasing the number of available labels from six to twenty-five. This update is now available on all platforms.

Making hybrid work environments more secure

This month, we’ve added the ability to discover and secure unmanaged endpoints and network devices to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and released an updated Remote Desktop for Mac app.

Remain productive and protected on M1 and Intel-based Macs with Remote Desktop

Given today’s remote work scenarios and the shift to hybrid work, more and more businesses rely on virtual desktops to help ensure their employees can remain productive and secure wherever they work. We’ve updated the Microsoft Remote Desktop for Mac to add native universal support for macOS, making it easier for those using M1-powered Macs to have an optimized remote desktop experience. This update also provides Kerberos integration and support for East Asian keyboard input.

Protect unmanaged devices with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

As we have entered into new hybrid work environments, businesses need to think about how they will proactively protect their organizations from the influx of new or “bring your own” (BYO) connected devices. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint now provides a new set of capabilities that empower organizations to discover and secure unmanaged workstations, mobile devices, servers, and network devices on their business networks. No need to deploy new hardware or software or make changes to the network configuration to get protection. This new capability is now in preview—turn on preview features to try it out today.

Also new this month

• Microsoft Viva Connections is now available for the Teams desktop experience, providing a curated, company-branded experience that brings together relevant news, conversations, and other resources.
• Microsoft Viva Learning is now available in preview. Sign up to test out the app in Teams which creates a central hub for learning where people can discover, share, recommend, and learn from content libraries across an organization.
• The Microsoft Visio desktop app now includes support for sketching Amazon Web Services (AWS) architectures, offering more than 400 infrastructure shapes to help visualize the design, deployment, and topology of IT solutions built on AWS.

As we all navigate a new world of work, we’re committed to helping every organization embrace flexibility in when, where, and how people work. From live transcriptions that make Teams meetings more inclusive to remote desktop updates that help make hybrid work more secure, all of these new capabilities reflect that commitment. There’s so much more on the way, so stay tuned. And be sure to check back here next month when we’ll be sharing the news from Microsoft Build, our annual developer’s conference.  

The post View live transcripts in Microsoft Teams meetings, track Excel changes, and increase hybrid work security—here’s what’s new to Microsoft 365 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

And it’s clear that flexible work is here to stay: According to research conducted for Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, over 80 percent of managers say they expect more flexible work from home policies post-pandemic, and more than 70 percent of employees say they expect to take advantage of them. So we can anticipate some pretty significant changes in the weeks and months to come.

To thrive in this new hybrid world, people and organizations need solutions that are fluid, dynamic, and cloud-powered.

At Microsoft, we’re building experiences to help everyone thrive in this new hybrid world of work and learning. Today at Microsoft Ignite, we are announcing new features designed for a hybrid world. From new digital event experiences in Microsoft Teams designed for internal and external attendees to new availability announcements about Microsoft Viva, there’s so much to share.

Let’s dive in.

Break down boundaries to make it easy to connect and collaborate across organizations

Now more than ever, rich, engaging digital events are critical for successful collaboration—whether you’re inviting internal participants, external participants, or a combination of the two. We’re introducing new features that make it easier to collaborate across organizations and event sizes. 

Improve collaboration and knowledge management

Microsoft Teams supports a spectrum of communication needs, from small internal meetings to large virtual events. Now with Teams, you can easily organize and conduct interactive webinars for people inside and outside of your organization with up to 1,000 attendees. Webinars include end-to-end experiences—like custom registration, rich presentation options, host controls such as the ability to disable attendee chat and video, and post-event reporting. And if your webinar grows to over 1,000 attendees, Teams will seamlessly scale to accommodate a 10,000-person view-only broadcast experience. Plus, during this time of increased remote work, take advantage of even larger 20,000-person broadcasts through the end of this year. These new event capabilities are included with many of the Office and Microsoft plans your organization uses today!

Coming soon, new integrations will bring together Teams events with the robust attendee management experiences from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing. Managing attendee information across Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365 Marketing to nurture attendees before, during, and after the event is now easier than ever before.

And we’re announcing Microsoft Teams Connect, which allows you to share channels with anyone, internal or external to your organization. The shared channel will appear within an individual’s primary Microsoft Teams tenant alongside other teams and channels, making it easy for everyone to access it in their workflow. In the shared workspace, you can leverage Microsoft Teams rich collaboration capabilities: chat, meet, collaborate on apps, share, and co-author documents in real-time. Admins have access to granular controls, allowing their organization to stay in control of how external users access data and information. Microsoft Teams Connect is available today in private preview and will roll out broadly later this calendar year.

Better meetings and presentations for a work-from-anywhere world

With hybrid work and learning, we need meetings that offer a first-rate experience to every participant whether they’re in the room, remote, or on the go. And as education continues to evolve, so does the technology used to enable digital and hybrid classrooms. New experiences in Microsoft Teams help speakers create more impactful, dynamic presentations while connecting with everyone in the meeting more naturally.

Presenters often share their desktops in virtual meetings, creating an inconsistent presentation experience and limiting the ability of the audience to interact. Today, we’re announcing Microsoft PowerPoint Live in Microsoft Teams, which will enable presenters to deliver more impactful and engaging presentations. Presenters will now be able to lead meetings more confidently with notes, slides, meeting chat, and participants all in a single view. Meanwhile, attendees can personalize their experience by privately navigating the content at their own pace or using the screen reader to make content accessible. PowerPoint Live is now available in Teams. Learn more about PowerPoint Live.

The new Presenter mode empowers presenters to customize how their video feed and content appear to the audience. Our first mode, Standout, shows the speaker’s video feed in front of the shared content. Next, Reporter will show content as a visual aid above the speaker’s shoulder, just like during a news segment. Third, Side-by-side will show the presenter’s video feed alongside their content as they present. Presenter mode will be available soon.

Today, we are also announcing Dynamic view, which intelligently arranges the elements of your meeting for an optimal viewing experience. As people join, turn on video, start to speak, or begin to present in a meeting, Teams automatically adjusts and personalizes your layout. We’ve also added a new option to place the participant gallery at the top of the meeting window, helping you maintain a natural eye gaze. Dynamic view will be rolling out soon.

New meeting experiences for the hybrid workplace

Historically, meeting rooms were designed to facilitate in-room collaboration. As meetings evolve around hybrid work norms, room experiences must be inclusive so everyone can be seen and heard clearly, and fully participate in the meeting.

We are bringing new gallery views to Microsoft Teams Rooms, including Together Mode and large gallery, to make it easier to see everyone in the meeting. And whether the room has one screen or two, you’ll be able to see meeting content, along with everyone joining from home, at the same time.

We’re also announcing new Microsoft Teams Intelligent speakers that can identify and differentiate the voices of up to 10 people talking in a Microsoft Teams Room. These speakers were created in partnership with EPOS and Yealink, and allow attendees to use the transcription to follow along or capture actions, by knowing who in the room said what. Whether you are working remotely or following the meeting in the conference room, you can effectively see who said what during the meeting. To enable privacy and security, users are in full control and can turn attribution on or off at any time.

We’re expanding our portfolio of devices that users can choose from when building out their home offices. Today, we’re announcing the first monitors certified for Microsoft Teams, the new Dell Video conferencing monitor, and the Poly 21. These new monitors integrate critical conferencing hardware like a microphone, speaker, camera, and light right into the monitor, so employees can simply attach their PC via USB to get started on collaboration and maximizing productivity. The new P15 video bar from Poly is an easy-to-mount peripheral that transforms an existing monitor into a high-quality Teams endpoint. Lastly, the new Cam 130 by Aver integrates lights as well, allowing users to present their best selves in video meetings.

Ensuring secure communications

To further address our customers’ security and compliance requirements, Teams will support end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for one-to-one Microsoft Teams calls, providing an additional option for conducting sensitive online conversations. IT will have full discretion over who can use E2EE in the organization. E2EE for Microsoft Teams one-to-one ad hoc VoIP calls will be available to commercial customers in preview in the first half of this calendar.

Reimagining the employee experience for a hybrid workplace

As hybrid work models become the norm, reimagining how we nurture employee development and training—along with how we access benefits and wellbeing opportunities for digital workers—becomes critical to success. Last month, we launched Microsoft Viva, our new employee experience platform built to empower people and teams to be their best from anywhere. Powered by the full breadth and depth of Microsoft 365, it is experienced through Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps that people use every day. Learn more in our Microsoft Viva announcement blog.

Our first module, Viva Connections, gives you a curated, company-branded experience that brings together relevant news, conversations, and other resources. Today, we’re announcing that the desktop experience for Viva Connections is now generally available. Viva Connections will be available to all customers as part of their existing SharePoint license.

Viva Insights, now in preview, gives individuals, managers, and leaders personalized and actionable privacy-protected insights that help everyone in an organization thrive. Starting next month, the virtual commute experience we announced last year will begin rolling out as part of the Microsoft Viva Insights app to help you mindfully wrap up your workdays. The new Home tab will also be available next month, providing a seamless way to stay on top of pending tasks, reflect on your feelings, send praise to your colleagues, and take a breathing break anytime during the workday—all without leaving Microsoft Teams. Learn more in our Viva Insights blog.

Finally, Viva Learning provides a central hub in Microsoft Teams where people can discover, share, recommend, and learn from best-in-class content libraries across the organization—including LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, third-party content providers, and an organization’s own custom content. The Viva Learning app for Microsoft Teams will be entering preview starting in April, and we expect to make it generally available later this year. We encourage you to sign up to learn more about Viva Learning, including further details about new experiences, partner APIs, and preview as they become available.

Helping you on your Zero Trust Journey

At Microsoft, our approach to digital safety is unique in our industry because we bring two superpowers to security. The first: an integrated, end-to-end approach. The second: incredible AI and automation. We can use these together to tackle security from all angles, at scale in the cloud—combining security, compliance, identity, and management as an interdependent whole for total protection. Since you can’t stop what you can’t see, we put world-class artificial intelligence (AI) to work for you, analyzing more than eight trillion threat signals every single day to give you enhanced visibility and always-on vigilance that helps catch what others miss.

We build these protections into our platforms for a seamless experience that won’t slow users down or stifle business innovation. This week at Microsoft Ignite, we are making several important announcements across all of these areas to help you on your Zero Trust journey. A few quick highlights include:

• Co-authoring of documents protected with Microsoft Information Protection. This enables multiple users to work simultaneously on protected documents while taking advantage of the built-in, intelligent, unified, and extensible protection for documents and emails across Microsoft 365 apps. 
• Threat Analytics in Microsoft 365 Defender. Now in preview, the new Threat Analytics provides a set of reports from expert Microsoft security researchers that help you understand, prevent, and mitigate active threats, like the Solorigate attacks, directly within Microsoft 365 Defender.
• Passwordless authentication is now generally available for cloud and hybrid environments. Now you can deliver a more secure, seamless sign-in experience for all employees where they no longer need to enter passwords to sign in and access data. Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) passwordless supports sign-ins with biometrics or a tap using Windows Hello for Business, the Microsoft Authenticator app, or a compatible FIDO2 security key from Microsoft Intelligent Security Association partners such as Yubico, Feitian, and AuthenTrend. You can customize policies for different users, groups, and types of credentials and track your progress with new reporting tools. With Temporary Access Pass, now in preview, you can generate a time-limited code to set up or recover a passwordless credential.

But there’s so much more. Please check out the Security blog post from my colleague Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President of Security, Compliance, and Identity, for all security announcements.

Also new to Microsoft 365 

Last year, we announced our Microsoft 365 cloud print solution, Universal Print, which offers simple and secure printing in zero-trust environments. Now generally available, Universal Print enables workers with workplace-joined Windows devices to easily discover printers based on location and print without installing any additional software. Later this summer, users will also be able to print documents from the OneDrive for Business web experience on any device using the browser of their choice. Learn why other customers and partners value the solution in our Universal Print blog.

To help customers meet data residency requirements, Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo allows customers to provision and store data at rest in the geographic locations they’ve specified. We are announcing that Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo will be extended to include Microsoft Teams, allowing organizations to specify where their Teams customer data is stored down to the team and end-user. Microsoft Teams support for Multi-Geo will be rolling out in Spring 2021.

From physical spaces to digital solutions to employee experiences—we’re working alongside our customers to reimagine work and learning for a hybrid world. While we’re always so happy to share our latest innovations with you, we know that this is just the beginning. We can’t wait to share more with you in the weeks and months to come. 

The post Flexible work is here to stay: Microsoft 365 solutions for the hybrid work world appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Every customer I talk to wants to empower people for a world of work that is dynamic, fluid, and cloud-powered. They want to find ways for people to work not just from anywhere but at any time, with solutions that allow both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. And it’s a ‘whole organization’ shift. From IT, to HR, to operations, to marketing and manufacturing—this is a conversation that requires leaders across the entire organization to come together to rethink work. 

As students of the new world of work, we’ve been experimenting and sharing what we learn as work evolves. Today, I want to share our approach to empower your employees around the world for a flexible work world. It’s a three-part strategy: First, create policy to empower people for extreme flexibility. Second, reimagine physical spaces. And third, invest in technologies that connect people anywhere and anytime.

Let’s take a look at each.

Create policy to empower people for extreme flexibility

The choices you make today will impact your organization for years to come. It’s a moment that requires a clear vision. You need a plan and policies that put you on the path to extreme flexibility. These decisions will impact everything from how you shape culture to how you attract and retain talent to how you respond to changes in the environment to future innovation.

Many organizations have already stepped forward with strong stances on flexible work. Twitter declared its workers could work remotely “forever.” Dropbox announced it will essentially eliminate office space for focused work, transforming physical locations to cater to meetings and collaboration. Spotify hopes to lure talent with New York and San Francisco-level salaries for employees working remotely anywhere in the world. And at Microsoft, employees can now work from home up to 50 percent of the time. 

Empowering people for extreme flexibility begins with answering critical questions: Who will be able to work remotely? Who will need to come into the office, and for what amount of time? When people do focused work, where will they do it? What about collaborative work? And in a world where ongoing disruption is part of the new normal—with natural disasters, geopolitical events, and global health crises—you need to be prepared to respond to sudden changes. New, flexible policies take the answers to these questions and codify them, providing clarity and guidance to employees as they experiment. 

Reimagine your physical spaces

Once you’ve determined your policies for extreme flexibility, use them to guide your approach to physical space. From here on out, we will no longer rely solely on physical spaces to collaborate, connect, and build social capital. But space will still be important. We’re social animals and we want to get together, bounce ideas off one another, and experience the energy of in-person events. Moving forward, office space needs to bridge the physical and digital worlds and meet the unique needs of every team—and specific roles.

Purposeful design

At Microsoft we’re surveying employees and looking at everything from social graphs to employee traffic patterns to understand how to equip teams with the spaces they need, knowing those needs will evolve over time. Sales teams who need to come to the office infrequently can use a hoteling model to book workstations for the day or hour, while engineering teams may need dedicated collaboration spaces and workstations. To accommodate remote workers, we’re exploring offsite coworking hubs. Because we know how we work will continue to evolve, we’re building flexibility into every space we design.

Connecting the physical to the digital

It’s also critical to think about bridging the gap between in-person and remote experiences. Working together when everyone is in the office is fairly straightforward. And over the last 12 months, we’ve figured out how to get things done when everyone is at home. It’s how to handle that messy middle—when some people are physically together and others are joining virtually—that’s going to be a challenge. 

Today’s state-of-the-art Microsoft Teams Rooms include high-quality audio and video to help everyone be seen and heard. Meeting room cameras deliver high-definition video streams and optimize the view by framing the people in the room or following the active speaker. Intelligent speakers identify who in the room is speaking, and individual names and profiles are represented in meeting transcripts. Features like live captions, live transcription, raise hand, reactions, and chat help people follow along and offer opportunities to chime in non-verbally or without interrupting the speaker. Digital whiteboards—accessible both in the room and at home—foster collaboration and co-creation. People onsite can ink directly on a Surface Hub or from their own phone or laptop and remote participants can draw on the same shared digital canvas. In addition, our Intelligent Capture cameras can capture, focus, resize, and enhance analog whiteboard images and text, so remote attendees can clearly see brainstorming in real-time, even when someone is standing in front of the whiteboard.

All of this is available today in Microsoft Teams Rooms, but we’re just getting started. We see a not-so-distant future where meetings become immersive experiences that allow us to ‘be there’—from anywhere and at any time. Our vision for the future includes changes to meeting room layouts; the addition of multiple screens create dynamic views of participants, chat, whiteboards, content, and notes; and enhancements to in-room technologies to help remote participants track and participate in the flow of the meeting. 

Invest in technology that connects people—anywhere and anytime

Along with physical spaces, your plan for extreme flexibility should include technology that enables teamwork and creates a new digital employee experience that follows your employees no matter where they go.

When the pandemic compelled people everywhere to shift to remote work, videoconferencing was the primary tool that people used to connect and keep work moving. Within months, people were participating in 55 percent more digital meetings compared to pre-COVID-19—and we all felt the related stress and burnout. Videoconferencing will always be important, but it’s just one tool, and doesn’t provide the communication and collaboration infrastructure needed to power hybrid work. Microsoft Teams is the only solution that combines meet, chat, call, and collaborate in a single place—all integrated with the Office apps and business process automation tools. What’s more, it opens up collaboration between knowledge workers and frontline workers and blends synchronous and asynchronous work naturally. It’s the only app that does it all, providing an organizing layer that supports the flow of work across the organization. 

We’ve introduced more than 100 new features in Teams over the past year, all built with extreme flexibility in mind—and there are many more on the way. But we need to go even further to support the new emerging patterns of distributed work. Microsoft Viva, is the first integrated employee experience platform designed for hybrid work. Taken together, Teams and Viva deliver a technology platform that will connect your people and help them navigate the new reality.

Work is evolving rapidly, and there’s just no going back to our pre-pandemic world. As vaccines begin to roll out globally, business leaders everywhere need a plan for the new operating model—extreme flexibility. While we’re all still learning as we go, it’s clear that every organization is going to need three things: new policies, re-configured physical spaces, and technology that binds it all together. There are challenges ahead but we are optimistic about creating a future that empowers people to connect from anywhere, at any time, and to be and bring their best each day.

The post Hybrid work is here. Are you ready? appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Earlier today, we announced new capabilities that enable customers to unlock the value of Microsoft 365 even if they rely on shared workstations or devices that must be offline for months at a time. We also reviewed new management capabilities that have come to Microsoft 365 over the past 18 months to help IT admins ensure their businesses are secure, and their people can work with confidence from anywhere. And now, I’m pleased to provide an update on Microsoft Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC), the next perpetual release of Office. A commercial preview of Microsoft Office LTSC will be available in April.

A specialty product for specific scenarios

We have built Office LTSC for a limited set of specific situations: regulated devices that cannot accept feature updates for years at a time, process control devices on the manufacturing floor that are not connected to the internet, and specialty systems that must stay locked in time and require a long-term servicing channel.

We expect that most customers who use Office LTSC won’t do it across their entire organization, but only in specific scenarios. The good news is that you can deploy both Office LTSC and the Microsoft 365 version of Office with the same deployment tools.

About this release

With this release, we will bring Office and Windows into alignment in support of the same limited scenarios. Both Office LTSC and Windows 10 LTSC will remain governed by the Fixed Lifecycle Policy. Both products will be supported for five years, and both the next perpetual version of Office LTSC and Windows 10 LTSC will be released in the second half of this calendar year.

Without access to the cloud, Office LTSC will include only a subset of the value found in Microsoft 365 Apps, building on the features included in past releases. New Office LTSC features will include accessibility improvements, capabilities like Dynamic Arrays and XLOOKUP in Excel, dark mode support across multiple apps, and performance improvements across Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. The next version of Office will not ship with the Skype for Business client app, which will be available as a download in the Microsoft Download Center. It will ship with the Microsoft Teams app, allowing customers to enable and trial this experience if they so choose.

In contrast, Microsoft 365 will continue to get the latest innovations in modern collaboration, advanced security, and intelligent capabilities and ship them as soon as they are available.

As with previous releases, Office LTSC will still be a device-based “perpetual” license. We designed it as a specialty product intended for specific scenarios and will increase the price of Office Professional Plus, Office Standard, and the individual apps by up to 10 percent at the time of general availability. And, because we are always asked at release if there will be another one, I’m happy to confirm our commitment to another release in the future.

We will provide additional information about the next version of on-premises Visio, Project, Exchange Server, Skype for Business Server, Project Server, and SharePoint Server in the coming months.

Office 2021 for consumers and small businesses

We also plan to release Office 2021 for personal and small business use later this year. Office 2021 will also be supported for five years with the traditional “one-time purchase” model. We do not plan to change the price for these products at the time of the release. We will announce more details about new features included in Office 2021 closer to general availability.

Our commitment to customers

To fuel the work of the future, we need the power of the cloud. The cloud is where we invest, where we innovate, where we discover the solutions that help our customers empower everyone in their organization—even as we all adjust to a new world of work. But we also acknowledge that some of our customers need to enable a limited set of locked-in-time scenarios, and these updates reflect our commitment to helping them meet this need.

FAQ

Q. Will the next version of Office have a Mac version?

A. Yes, the next version of Office will have both Windows and Mac versions for both commercial and consumer.

Q. Will the next version of Office include OneNote?

A. Yes, the next version of Office will ship with the OneNote app.

Q. Will the next version support both 32- and 64-bit?

A. Yes, the next version of Office will ship both 32- and 64-bit versions.

The post Upcoming commercial preview of Microsoft Office LTSC appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

In my role at Microsoft, I get the chance to talk to our customers every day about their experiences in this new digital era. It’s exhilarating to work on the tools that have unlocked new forms of connection and collaboration for their people—even as they navigate the challenges of the pandemic. We built Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 as the organizing layer for all the ways people work, learn, and collaborate. Microsoft Teams is the only solution with meetings, calls, chat, content collaboration, and business process workflows—all in a secure, integrated user experience. This fall, we saw the daily active users number in Microsoft Teams climb to 115 million, while Microsoft 365 users around the world generated more than 30 billion collaboration minutes in a single day as people communicated, collaborated, and co-authored content. And in our new hybrid work reality, Microsoft Teams is empowering everyone in organizations—from information workers to frontline workers, and everyone in between.

But to truly empower people to feel connected, supported, and able to bring their best selves to work we need to do more.

Today, organizations spend over $300 billion a year on employee experience. That number includes employee development and training, benefits and wellbeing, and a whole host of employee experience technologies. But too often, these technologies are fragmented, hard to find, and disruptive to the flow of work. 

As digital tools become more crucial to a great employee experience, business leaders across every industry are embracing the opportunity to learn, and they’re re-evaluating both their spending and their approach. 

We believe what’s needed is a new approach and a new category of technology solutions called employee experience platforms (EXP). In the past few months, my team and I have been talking with analyst Josh Bersin, who closely studies this space. These conversations helped solidify our vision of EXP as a digital platform that provides people with the resources and support they need, seamlessly integrated within the same tools they use to do their work, so they can succeed and thrive no matter their location.

Introducing Microsoft Viva

Today we’re introducing Microsoft Viva, the first EXP built for the digital era. Microsoft Viva brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights into an integrated experience that empowers people and teams to be their best, from anywhere. Powered by the full breadth and depth of Microsoft 365, it is experienced through Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps that people use every day.

A new kind of employee experience

To start, Microsoft Viva will include four modules: Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Learning, and Viva Topics—with more on the way. I’ll walk you through each one.

Let’s begin with Viva Connections.

Research from our Work Trend Index shows nearly 60 percent of workers feel less connected to their team since the move to remote work. And we’re struggling to replace the comradery once created by things like company town halls, offsites, and events. This is challenging for all of us, but especially impactful on new hires—imagine how it feels for an employee who has never been to the office or ever met anyone face-to-face.

Accessed in Microsoft Teams, Viva Connections provides a single-entry point for employee engagement and internal communications. You can think of it as a gateway to your digital workplace.

Viva Connections is built on Microsoft 365 capabilities like SharePoint to provide a curated and branded employee destination. Leaders can connect with employees via company town halls, and employees can access everything from company news, policies, and benefits to employee resource groups or communities they want to join with Microsoft Viva’s integration to Yammer. It provides a personalized feed and dashboard to help you find all the helpful resources you need from Microsoft Viva and from other apps across your digital workplace. The content can also be customized for specific roles within the company—including frontline workers—so that they have a comprehensive view of just the resources they need.

Next, Viva Insights.

At a time when over 30 percent of workers say the pandemic has increased their sense of burnout, it has never been more important to help people unplug and make the most of their scarcest resource: their time.

Viva Insights gives individuals, managers, and leaders personalized and actionable privacy-protected insights that help everyone in an organization thrive. It brings new personal wellbeing experiences, insights, and recommended actions from Workplace Analytics and MyAnalytics into the flow of people’s work in Microsoft Teams.

Accessed in Microsoft Teams, Viva Insights for individuals help employees stay connected with their colleagues and protect time for regular breaks, focused work, and learning. Experiences we announced last summer, like virtual commute and integration with Headspace, kickstarted our work here. They will now be part of Microsoft Viva and will start rolling out in the coming months. 

For managers, Viva Insights provides data-driven, privacy-protected insights and recommendations to foster healthy, successful teams. For instance, Viva Insights can help a manager see if their team is at risk of burnout and provide recommendations like encouraging your team to turn off notifications, set boundaries in their calendar, and set daily priorities to focus on what matters most. 

For company leaders, Viva Insights helps address complex challenges and respond to change by shedding light on organizational work patterns and trends. These could include wellbeing opportunities, but also things like space planning as companies reimagine their offices for hybrid work. Viva Insights also provides leaders with organizational network analysis to understand the connectedness and cohesion between and across teams.

These organizational insights are even more powerful when combined with other data sources. Today, we’re excited to introduce a new dashboard for Microsoft Viva and LinkedIn’s Glint customers that maps insights about how people work to employee survey data about how people feel. In addition to using data and signals from Microsoft apps and services, Microsoft Viva builds on an organization’s existing investments. A customer can also leverage data from third-party tools like Zoom, Slack, Workday, and SAP SuccessFactors.

To help ensure privacy and security, Microsoft Viva uses aggregation, de-identification, and differential privacy. This means personal insights are visible only to the employee, while insights for managers and leaders are aggregated and de-identified by default to protect individual privacy.

Now onto Viva Learning.

Organizations need to develop a culture of learning to keep up with the pace of change and to retain great talent. Specifically, a recent report from LinkedIn found that 94 percent of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development.

Viva Learning helps make learning a natural part of both every employee’s daily work and company culture.

With Viva Learning, employees can easily discover and share everything from training courses to microlearning content. And managers get the tools they need to assign learning and to track the completion of courses to help foster a learning culture. Viva Learning creates a central hub for learning in Teams, with AI that recommends the right content at the right time. It aggregates content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, your organization’s own custom content, and trainings from leading content providers like Skillsoft, Coursera, Pluralsight, and edX. Viva Learning also works with leading learning-management systems. Today we’re announcing partnerships with Cornerstone OnDemand, Saba, and SAP SuccessFactors. And there are more are on the way.

Finally, Viva Topics.

As we have all experienced, finding an expert, understanding company acronyms, or surfacing the content you need can be tedious, especially when you’re a new employee or working remotely. In fact, our research shows that people spend the equivalent of seven weeks per year searching for or re-creating information.

Viva Topics enables you to harness the knowledge of your organization, and connect people to that knowledge, in the apps they use every day. Think of Viva Topics as a Wikipedia with AI superpowers for your organization. It uses AI to automatically organize company-wide content and expertise into relevant categories like “projects,” “products,” “processes,” and “customers.” 

When you come across an unfamiliar topic or acronym, just hover. No need to search for knowledge—knowledge finds you. Viva Topics automatically surfaces topic cards as people work in apps like Office, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams. When employees click on a card, a topic page appears with documents, videos, and related people. Experts at the company can also help curate the information shown in Viva Topics by sharing knowledge through simple, highly customizable web sites called Topic Pages.

Along with content from the Microsoft Cloud, Viva Topics also surfaces information from third-party services like ServiceNow and Salesforce and builds on integrations made by partners like Accenture, Avanade, BA Insight, Raytion, and ClearPeople. And Graph connectors make it easy to connect to even more content that employees would find helpful. 

Together with our partners

Designed to be an open and extensible platform, with a strong and growing ecosystem of partners, Microsoft Viva is easy to integrate with the systems and tools a company already has in place. Integrations with Microsoft 365, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and third-party products and services will deliver a complete employee experience in the flow of work. In addition to our integration ecosystem, we’re joined in this mission by our global network of services partners who provide strategic guidance, advisory services, implementation, adoption and change management, and more.

You can hear from some of our partners in this video:

Just getting started

We all know that engaged, healthy employees who feel a sense of ownership, purpose, and belonging have a greater impact on our organizations. And at Microsoft, we’re committed to helping our customers empower all their people, whether they’re working onsite, in the field, at home, or on the go. Today, we begin the journey of creating an entirely new employee experience designed for the digital era.

With Microsoft Viva, we aim to make it easier and more natural for everyone to stay connected, access knowledge, learn on the job, and use privacy-protected insights—to enable individuals to prioritize wellbeing, empower managers to lead more effectively, and help leaders drive better decision-making across the organization. But while we’re so excited to introduce you to Microsoft Viva today, there’s so much more to come. We believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build people-centered experiences that help our customers drive extraordinary outcomes. And we’re just getting started.

Experience Microsoft Viva today

Want to help your people experience Microsoft Viva right away? As of today, Viva Topics is generally available. We’re also announcing the public preview of Viva Insights and a private preview of Viva Learning. And we’ll be announcing more innovations throughout 2021. To learn more and get started, check out the Microsoft Viva website.

The post Microsoft Viva: Empowering every employee for the new digital age appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Before I get to this month’s product news, I want to point out some new resources that support this effort. Recently, we published a webpage called Resilience at work to help demonstrate how Microsoft solutions can help you strengthen resilience in people, teams, and your broader organization. We also published a Remote teamwork guide to share how you can enable your people to be productive and secure from anywhere with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams. And earlier this week, we launched WorkLab, a digital publication devoted to illuminating the future of work, grounded in research and the lessons of the pandemic a year in. Be sure to check all three resources out and let us know what you think.

Okay, on to the news!

Breakout rooms, Tasks publishing, Approvals, and more in Microsoft Teams

New announcements in Microsoft Teams make it easy for everyone to engage in large meetings, help connect organizations, empower frontline retail workers, and more.

Help people to connect meaningfully in large virtual meetings—We’re excited to announce that one of our most requested Microsoft Teams features is now generally available! Breakout rooms make it easy to divide your meetings into smaller groups to facilitate discussions, brainstorming sessions, and learning groups. Organizers can easily jump in between breakout rooms, deliver announcements to all breakout rooms at once, and bring everyone back to the main meeting at any time. All meeting assets, including meeting files, whiteboards, recordings, and transcripts are available for the organizer to review and use.

Connect your organization from the corporate office to the frontlines with Tasks publishing—With the new publishing feature for Tasks in Teams, customers can now drive consistent execution of tasks at scale across all of an organization’s locations. Corporate and regional leadership can create and send tasks to configurable relevant locations—including specific retail stores—and track their progress through automatic real-time reports. Managers have tools to easily direct activities within their stores, and frontline workers have a simple prioritized list showing them exactly what to do next. Tasks targeting, publishing, and reporting are now generally available. To set Tasks up in your organization, visit our documentation page for setting up your team targeting hierarchy.

Unify workforce management in Microsoft Teams through our new partnerships—We are excited to announce new workforce management capabilities with our partners, Blue Yonder and Reflexis. With this new integration, Microsoft Teams can now provide a richer, more unified workforce management experience, enabling employees to see and swap shifts, review their schedules, make changes, and more, without ever having to leave Teams.

Track and manage approvals right within Microsoft Teams to get faster results—Now generally available, Approvals lets you easily create, manage, and share approvals right in Teams. Quickly start an approval flow from the same place you send a chat, in a channel conversation, or from the Approvals app itself. Just select an approval type, add details, attach files, and choose approvers. Once submitted, approvals can be reviewed and responded to as needed. Install the Approvals app today to get started.

Simplify tasks, lists, and functions

New capabilities help make it easier to prioritize and organize tasks, access lists on the go, and use custom functions in Microsoft Excel workbooks.

Take your lists anywhere with the Lists mobile app for iOS—A new Lists mobile app for iOS now provides you access to your lists with full functionality from your iPhone. This new experience makes it easier than ever to open an existing list for quick reference, add or edit list items as you think of them, or create a new list from scratch or a ready-made template. Download the app now from the Apple App Store.

Manage your tasks more easily with intelligence—Available to To Do web English users, Microsoft To Do will use AI to help you plan your day better and focus on tasks that matter to you. AI in To Do will help identify tasks that seem important based on keywords and deadlines and suggest them in My Day to ensure that you stay on top of your key tasks and get more done each day. Get started with Microsoft To Do today. 

Turn Excel formulas into custom functions: Our new LAMBDA function makes it easy to convert your formulas into re-usable functions. Turn formulas into custom functions with unique names that can be easily re-used throughout your spreadsheet. Join the Office Insider Program and choose the Beta Channel to get early access to LAMBDA in Excel.

Create beautiful diagrams

Visio capabilities bring new and familiar icons to your diagrams.

Insert icons into your Visio files and more—This month, we’re announcing a couple of updates you’ve been asking for! First, you can now access a rich content library of icons and images that you can easily insert directly into your Visio diagrams. Rotate, recolor, and resize the selected content with no loss of image quality. This feature is available in both Visio for the web and the Visio desktop app. Second, you can now easily adjust the size of a page to fit your Visio drawing. The Fit to Drawing feature is now available in Visio for the web.

Visually represent your Azure architectural diagram using the latest shapes in Visio—Representing your infrastructure architecture through a diagram can be invaluable to your team during redesigns, implementations, documentation, and more. Two years ago, we added Azure shapes in Visio, making it easy to build diagrams for network topologies, virtual machine configurations, operations, and more. We are excited to announce that we have now released more than 250 of the latest Azure shapes. These refreshed icons are better aligned with the Microsoft Fluent design and let you create IT diagrams that accurately represent modern cloud services, tools, and frameworks from Azure. To get started, go to the Visio web app homepage and select your preferred diagram template to quickly start visualizing your Azure infrastructure. In the desktop app, select File > New > Templates > Network > Azure Diagrams.

Also new this month

Application Guard, which helps desktop users stay safer and more productive by opening Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files in a virtualized container, is now generally available for everyone with Microsoft E5 or E5 Security subscriptions.

From helping everyone engage in larger virtual Teams meetings with breakout rooms to enabling a more unified workforce management experience with a new partnership to helping you stay focused and in the flow with AI in To Do, all of these experiences were designed to help empower your people for the new world of work. And stay tuned—we’ve got all sorts of exciting announcements coming your way in the next few weeks.

The post From breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams to AI in To Do—here’s what’s new to Microsoft 365 in January appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

This month, we’re thrilled to announce that many of your top requested features—like background noise suppression in meetings—are coming to Teams and other Microsoft 365 services. Read on for details on those, plus the highly anticipated Microsoft Endpoint Data Loss Prevention and other new features across Microsoft 365 to help make it easier to pick up where you left off, keep track of your notes and tasks more easily, sketch out Amazon Web Services (AWS) application architectures in Visio for the web, and more.

New apps, noise suppression, and more for Teams

This month, we’re announcing the general availability of Teams apps for meetings, expanded Forms integration, and new capabilities that make it easier to build apps and bots right within Teams.

Enrich your meeting experience with Teams apps—Typically, collaborating with an app during a meeting required someone sharing their screen while they updated tasks, set reminders, managed requests, and more. This month, we’re excited to announce that you can now bring the capabilities of many of these apps directly into the meeting experience for everyone to interact with, making the time your team spends together more effective and collaborative before, during, and after your meetings. Checkout the new Teams apps for meetings now available in the Teams app store, including Asana, HireVue, Monday.com, Slido, and Teamflect (with more on the way), as well as familiar apps built by Microsoft such as Forms. If you’re a partner or developer, learn more about creating Teams apps for meetings in our documentation.

Quickly gather feedback in Teams meetings with polls—Polls are a great way to turn passive listeners into active participants. Forms’ integration with Microsoft Teams now brings the power of polls to meetings, helping you conduct more engaging, informative, and productive meetings. Meeting presenters can prepare polls in advance and launch the polls during meetings that attendees can easily view and answer. The new Forms polls for meetings is currently rolling out and will reach you soon. You can get started by updating your Teams app and adding the Forms app to your meeting tabs.

Remove unwelcome background noise in Teams meetings—Earlier this year, we released the ability to minimize distracting background noise in videos on Microsoft Stream. We are excited to share that we’re bringing this technology to Teams meetings. This real-time noise suppression will help remove unwelcome background noise during your meetings, making easier to hear speakers in loud and distracting environments. Noise suppression is rolling out to all users now.

Automate routine tasks without leaving Teams—Also new this month is the Power Automate app for Teams. The app provides a lightweight designer experience and a number of templates to help you quickly get started building workflows right within Teams. This new app makes it even quicker and easier to automate routine tasks within Teams. To get started, make sure you’re running the latest version of Teams.

Easily build and deploy apps and intelligent chat bots in Teams—In September, we announced a new Power Apps and a new Power Virtual Agents app for Teams, running on a built-in low code data platform, now called Microsoft Dataverse for Teams— making it easy for creators to quickly build and deploy apps and bots for Teams—now those apps are generally available. Teams users can easily build applications and bots directly within Teams without needing to deal with connecting to storage, managing integrations, or switching applications. Dataverse for Teams makes the back-end tech logistics of creating and deploying business process solutions in Teams easier than ever. Built-in security and governance features provide seamless control of access to apps, bots, and flows, as well as their underlying data.

Find and share information more quickly

New capabilities help make it easier to find notes while working across Microsoft 365, capture and share content, and pick up where you left off.

Easily reference your notes when working on a OneNote page—Last month, we announced the OneNote feed for Outlook on the web, which conveniently combines your notes across Sticky Notes, recent OneNote pages, and even Samsung Notes so you can easily reference them while composing your mail. This makes it easy to reference your notes when working in a OneNote page and capture any new thoughts you have by creating a Sticky Note in your feed without having to leave OneNote. The OneNote feed is available in OneNote, OneNote on the web, OneNote for Windows 10, Outlook on the web, and Outlook.com. To get started in OneNote, click the Open feed icon in the top right corner of the OneNote app window to display the feed pane.

Capture and share web content and more in Microsoft Edge—This month, we released two new features to help make you more productive and find information more easily. First, Web capture in Microsoft Edge lets you easily capture and mark up web content, and then save or share it—simply drag a box to select what you want to capture even if you need to scroll. Second, we’ve added news and information from your favorite content providers in a new “My Feed” section within the enterprise new tab page. This customizable feed sits alongside your Office 365 content and is designed to keep you connected to information most relevant to your industry or your company.

Quickly pick up where you left off on recent files and more in OneDrive for iOS—A new home experience on the iOS mobile app for OneDrive will help you quickly pick up where you left off on recent files and easily re-discover memories from the past. Plus, you can now add a OneDrive widget to your iPhone home screen that displays your photo memories on this day across previous years. See your recent files and On This Day photos as soon as you open the OneDrive app. To get started, update your OneDrive iOS app.

OneDrive family and group sharing now available

OneDrive family and group sharing now available—OneDrive has always made it easy to share docs, photos, videos, albums, and folders. But until now, sharing to a group of people meant typing in the names of all the people you wanted to share with. Last month, we simplified the process with one-click sharing to family and groups. Once you predefine your family or friend group, you’ll be able to share a photo, album, or important document to your group with one click. Family and group sharing are available in OneDrive for the web and included in all free and paid OneDrive consumer plans, as well in Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans.

Hear Office documents read aloud to you on Android phones—As you move through your busy day, sometimes it’s easier to hear your document read aloud to you. Now you can use Read Aloud to do exactly that in Word for Android phone and in Word on the Office app for Android. New voices offer a more natural and pleasant listening experience. You can easily pause and resume Read Aloud as well as adjust the voice speed. To get started, open the Word or Office app on your Android phone, go to the Review tab, then tap Read Aloud.

Get Yammer notifications in your Teams activity feed and more—This month, we’re announcing several new and upcoming features in Yammer. Coming soon, notifications from your Yammer announcements and mentions will show up in your Microsoft Teams activity feed if you have the Communities app installed. We’re also now rolling out an updated experience in the Yammer Tab for Teams that brings modern capabilities like pinning, cover photos, live events, and more. Finally, also released this month is support for Yammer Q and A insights in Microsoft Productivity Score, an interactive guide to get the most out of Yammer, and an updated experience for topics and hashtags in Yammer.

Prevent data loss and diagram your IT solutions

New capabilities make it easier to prevent data loss on endpoints and sketch out IT solutions build on ASW.

Protect sensitive information on your endpoints—In July, we announced the public preview of Microsoft Endpoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP) which extends our data protection capabilities to devices. Now generally available, Endpoint DLP enables organizations to enforce policies that identify and prevent risky or inappropriate sharing, transfer, or use of sensitive information consistently across cloud, on-premises, and endpoints. We’re also adding new capabilities to a public preview based on feedback from customers—such as adding enforcement actions and locations-based sensitivity, a new dashboard in Microsoft 365 compliance center to manage DLP alerts, and more.

Watch this mechanics video or visit our documentation to learn more.

Sketch your Amazon Web Services (AWS) architecture in Visio for the web—Diagrams are a great way for cloud architects to visualize the design, deployment, and topology of IT solutions built on AWS. We’re excited to announce that we’ve added support to build AWS diagrams for various topologies and service interactions in Visio for the web. More than 400 shapes are available to help architects redesign existing infrastructure diagrams, conceptualize application architecture, or visualize the current state of your cloud environment and plan for the future. To help you get started easily, we’ve provided a few starter diagrams using various AWS services. Go to the Visio web app homepage and select your preferred diagram template to quickly start visualizing your AWS infrastructure.

As you continue your navigation to a more sustainable, hybrid workplace, we are committed to developing technologies that help your people and teams thrive. From building low code apps right within Teams to new AI capabilities to help you manage tasks more easily, all of these updates are aimed at enabling your people to collaborate productively, securely, and safely from anywhere.

The post From new apps in Microsoft Teams meetings to Endpoint DLP—here’s what’s new to Microsoft 365 in November appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

本題に入る前に開発者の皆様にお伝えしたいことがあります。独自のアプリを開発するときも、Microsoft Teams または Outlook での使用を目的としたソリューションを作るときも、今回発表する多数のイノベーションがお役に立ちます。今週の Build で発表する多数の機能は、皆様のアプリをさらに統合しやすく、パワフルに、そして直感的にするのにご利用いただけます。また、今回発表する開発と管理のための新しいツールで作成と検出がさらに簡単になります。Build で発表した Microsoft 365 プラットフォームを使用することによって開発者の皆様が手にする新しい機会の説明もぜひご覧ください。それでは始めましょう。

Build 2020 の最新情報

Microsoft Teams

Teams は、チームワークのハブとして会議、通話、チャット、コラボレーションを 1 つに集約したものであり、チーム全員が状況を常に理解し、最新の情報を入手することができます。

生産性

カスタマイズ可能なテンプレートやタスク関連の新しい機能など、生産性を維持するための新しい方法を Teams に導入しています。

チームをすばやく作成するための、カスタマイズ可能なテンプレート: 新しいチームを作成するときに、カスタマイズ可能なさまざまなテンプレートから選択できるようになります。イベント管理や危機対応などの、ビジネスにおける一般的なシナリオ向けのテンプレートだけでなく、病院の病棟や銀行の支店など、業種固有のテンプレートも用意されています。各テンプレートには、チャネル、アプリ、ガイダンスがあらかじめ定義されています。管理者が新しいカスタム テンプレートを作成して組織内の既存のチームをテンプレート化することもできるので、チーム構造を標準化し、関連するアプリを提示し、ベスト プラクティスを広めることができます。Teams のテンプレートのロールアウトは今後数か月にわたって行われ、自動的に表示されるようになります。

自動化

Teams との統合と規模の拡大を容易にする Power Platform の機能拡張を発表します。

Teams でのチャットボットの作成と管理を簡単に: Teams との統合も、これまで以上に簡単になります。使いたいボットを選択して [Teams に追加] をクリックするだけです。さらに利便性を高めるために、Power Virtual Agents でシングル サインオン (SSO) がサポートされるようになりました。これで、ユーザーが Teams を初めて使用するときに再認証する必要はなくなります。

カスタム アプリや自動化ワークフローを Teams にすばやく追加: Power Apps で独自開発したアプリケーションを、[Teams に追加] ボタンを 1 回クリックするだけで Teams に追加できるようになります。この機能を使用するには、make.powerapps.com を開き、公開したいキャンバス アプリの横にある […] をクリックし、[Teams に追加] を選択します。

また、Teams 向けの新しい Power Automate ビジネス プロセス テンプレートも提供されます。この作成済みのテンプレートを使用してワークフローを効率化することも、これをベースとして自由にカスタマイズすることもできます。最後は、Teams 専用の新しいトリガーとアクションです。独自のメッセージ拡張機能を作成するのに利用でき、他にも @メンションとチャネルへのメッセージ投稿の自動化や、ボット名のカスタマイズなどが可能になります。これらの機能はまもなくリリースされる予定です。

Power BI レポートを Teams で共有: Power BI で作成したレポートやレポートの中の特定のグラフを Teams で共有するための、新しい [Teams で共有] ボタンが追加されました。受信者の注意を特定のレポート内の特定のグラフに向けさせることや、チーム全員と共有することもできます。この機能を利用するには、Power BI ポータルで [Teams で共有] を選択し、共有相手となるチームの名前を入力します。

会議とイベント

組織の活動では、タイム ゾーンの違いを越えて、そしてソーシャル ディスタンスを取りながら、大小さまざまなグループでつながり、コラボレーションすることが必要になります。Teams の新しい機能は、どのような場面でも最高のエクスペリエンスを設計するのに役立ちます。

バーチャル面会のスケジュールを Teams の Bookings で予約: B2C (企業と消費者の間) のバーチャル面会のスケジュール設定、管理、実施に、新しい Microsoft Teams での Bookings アプリ統合を利用できるようになりました。1 つのスケジューリング アプリで複数の部署や場所を管理でき、人事採用面接や学生の相談受付から、資産コンサルティングや医師の診察に至るまで、どのような面会もセキュリティを維持しながら実施できます。Teams は HIPAA コンプライアンスをサポートしており、HITRUST 認証済みです。医療の分野だけでも、この 1 か月間の Teams での会議は 3,400 万件を超えており、これにはオンライン診察も含まれています。本日発表する Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare がどのように、医療機関の俊敏性を維持するとともにその得意とする領域、つまりより良い体験、インサイト、ケアの提供に集中するのに役立つかを、ぜひご覧ください。

イベントの配信やスタジオ制作を可能にする Teams のバーチャル ステージ: 多くの組織がリモート ワークに移行し、出張の数は記録的な少なさを見せていますが、対面でのプレゼンテーションや面談の魅力を完全リモートでも再現するには、どうすればよいでしょうか? Teams での NDI (Network Device Interface) のサポート開始と、Skype TX との相互運用をご紹介します。パブリックでもプライベートでも、独自の大規模な映像配信のための、より本格的な制作方法を選択できるようになります。

近日公開予定の NDI for Microsoft Teams で、Teams での会議がバーチャルなステージに変身します。各参加者の映像がそれぞれ独立したビデオ ソースに変換されるので、これを好みの制作ツール (OBS、Wirecast、Xsplit, StreamLabs など) で利用できます。この機能を使用すると、Teams 会議を他の方法で、たとえばプロの番組配信にも利用できるようになります。

セキュリティを維持しながらリモートでスケジュール設定

シフト アプリを利用すると、現場の最前線で働く従業員とそのマネージャーがモバイル デバイスでスケジュールを管理し、連絡を取り合うことができます。

Teams のシフト アプリを拡張: 新機能が追加されて、シフト アプリでできることがさらに拡大し、既存のシステムとの統合も可能になりました。まず、シフト アプリ用の Graph API の一般提供が開始し、他の外部従業員管理ツールとの統合ができるようになりました。もちろん、独自開発された従業員管理システムとの統合も可能です。さらに、Power Automate の新しいアクションでシフト アプリから情報を取得できるようになりました。他のアプリとのワークフローをカスタマイズする、あるいは大規模なオペレーションを実行するときに利用できます。最後に、新しく追加されたトリガーとテンプレートが、時間の節約とプロセス最適化のさまざまなシナリオのサポートに役立ちます。たとえば、シフトのリクエストについてマネージャーの承認が必要ない場合に自動承認を有効にすることができます。

流動フレームワーク

Ignite 2019 で、Microsoft 流動フレームワークのパブリック プレビューを発表しました。このフレームワークを構成する新しいテクノロジと一連のエクスペリエンスは、アプリ間の障壁をなくすことによってコラボレーションをシームレスにすることを目指しています。

コラボレーションのための流動コンポーネントとワークスペースを Outlook と Office.com で: 流動フレームワークが目指しているのは、仕事の適応性と集中を高めることです。Microsoft 365 での最初の流動フレームワーク統合は、Outlook と Office.com を予定しています。動的なコンテンツでの共同作業が可能になるほか、接続されたコンポーネントを作成して複数のアプリで同時に、シームレスに共有することができます。表、グラフ、タスク リストを簡単に Outlook on the web に挿入できるので、売上の数値、プロジェクト タスク、調査レポートなどを常に最新の状態に維持することができます。Office.com の中では、流動ワークスペースを作成して管理することができます。たとえばドキュメントのアクティビティ フィード、おすすめリスト、@メンションの中に作成できます。あるいは、Office.com 全体で検索することもできます。流動フレームワークのコンポーネントは軽量であるため、編集は瞬時に反映され、このことはすばやく柔軟に仕事するための力となります。これらのエクスペリエンスは、Microsoft 365 エンタープライズ ライセンスのお客様を対象として次の数か月の間に提供を開始する予定です。

流動フレームワークの主要インフラストラクチャ (現在はオープン ソース) をアプリケーション開発に使用: “流動” の Web ベースのフレームワークを使用して、アプリを瞬時にコラボレーション可能にすることができます。このフレームワークに含まれるデータ構造は低待機時間の同期を実行し、リレー サービスがエンドポイントを接続します。開発するアプリの静的データ構造を “流動” のデータ構造で置き換えると、リアルタイムのコラボレーションをサポートできるようになります。

流動フレームワークの可能性を完全に引き出すには、多様性に満ちた、オープンで活気のある開発者コミュニティを作ることが不可欠です。そのような理由から、Microsoft は流動フレームワークをオープンソース化します。これで、流動フレームワークの主要インフラストラクチャを独自のアプリケーション開発にご利用いただけるようになります。開発者のための追加のドキュメントとツールのリリースと併せて、このオープンソース化で開発者の皆様を流動フレームワークの構築とリリースのための Microsoft との共同作業にお招きする準備が整うことになります。

Project Cortex

Project Cortex を Ignite 2019 で発表しましたが、この一般提供を 2020 年初夏に開始することになりました。この強力な新しいサービスは、人工知能 (AI) と Microsoft Graph を応用して知識ネットワークを構築します。このネットワークが、Microsoft 365 の中のお客様のコンテンツを接続し、さらに外部のソースも組み合わせて、コンテンツと専門知識を複数のシステムやチームにまたがって組織化します。これで、お客様の情報の管理とプロセスの合理化ができるようになり、セキュリティとコンプライアンスの高度なコントロールも適用され、さらにワークフローの自動化も可能です。

新しい開発者ツールのプライベート プレビューを開始: 本日、Microsoft Graph の新しい開発者用 API を Project Cortex と Managed Metadata Services (MMS) 向けに発表します。併せて、Azure の Language Understanding サービスとの新しい統合も発表します。現在、このプライベート プレビュー プログラムは参加組織数が 75 を越えるほどに拡大しており、Unilever、Arla Foods、Siemens Healthineers などから無数のドキュメントや動画からの知識を提供していただいています。今後も新しいマイルストーンに到達するたびに情報をお届けします。

Outlook

世界中のお客様が Outlook で日々のスケジュールを管理し、連絡を取り合っています。新しく追加された機能で、このアプリの中でより多くのことができるようになり、お客様の生産性をさらに高めます。

Outlook でのキーボード操作を減らす: Outlook on the web でメール メッセージを作成するときに予測入力を使用できるようになりました。インテリジェントなテクノロジが意味と意図を推測するので、Outlook でのメール メッセージ作成時間を短縮し、誤字脱字を防ぎ、洗練されたメッセージを作り上げることができます。

Yammer の最新情報を Outlook で見る: Outlook for Windows、Outlook for Mac、Outlook モバイルの受信トレイの中で、Yammer の会話、投票、質問、称賛を読んで返信できるようになりました。この機能は、ユーザーが Yammer からのメール通知をオンにしていれば自動的に使用できるようになります。

Microsoft Edge

今年の Build では、Microsoft Edge についても多数の新機能を発表します。Web 開発者によるカスタマイズのオプションが増え、ツールの機能も向上しています。

関連する Pinterest コレクションをすばやく探索: Pinterest からのおすすめをコレクションの一番下に表示できるようになりました。追加の類似コンテンツを見つけるのがさらに簡単になります。おすすめの 1 つをクリックすると、類似の、トレンドのピンを集めたボードが開くので、自分に関係するアイデアをすばやく見つけて追加することができます。コレクションでは、”OneNote に送る” のサポートも間もなく開始し、コレクションを OneNote ページにエクスポートするのが簡単になります。

検索するときの時間を節約: 今回発表するサイド バー検索を利用すると、何かを探すときに新しいウィンドウやタブを開く必要がなくなります。また、Microsoft Edge を仕事とプライベートの両方に使用している方のために、プロファイルの自動切り替えをご紹介します。ユーザーが開こうとしているリンクが職場の資格情報を必要としている場合に、そのことを自動的に検出して、認証済みの仕事用プロファイルに切り替えることができます。

プレビュー段階の開発者オプションを拡張: 開発者の皆様は私たちにとって大切です。そのため、プレビューを拡張して .NET と UWP (WinUI 3.0) での開発のための新しいオプションを追加することにしました。これを利用すると、Chromium ベースの Edge WebView を WinForms、WPF、UWP/Win UI 3.0 のアプリケーションに埋め込むことができます。さらに、DevTools に 3D ビューを追加しました。ドキュメントと入門ガイドをご覧ください。Visual Studio を開いて WebView2 パッケージをダウンロードすると、使用を開始できます。

Microsoft Lists

Microsoft Lists は、Microsoft 365 全体にわたって情報をスマートに追跡するアプリです。Lists を利用すると、常に最新情報を把握するためのデータと情報の追跡が簡単になります。

Microsoft Lists で情報を追跡: 問題追跡やステータス報告などのデータと情報の作成、共有、追跡を、Microsoft Teams、SharePoint、そして近日リリース予定の Lists モバイル アプリから直接実行できるようになりました。誰でも簡単にリストを作成してカスタマイズできるように、テンプレート、色分け、If/Then ワークフローなどの機能を備えています。Microsoft Lists の詳細については、こちらをご覧ください。

前例のない変化が起きている今、私たちは皆、新しい時代の働き方にすばやく適応しようとしています。ソフトウェア開発者から、医療従事者、警察と消防、そして多国籍企業の経営幹部に至るまで誰もが、仕事を共にするときでも離れてするときでも生産性を維持して常につながるための、新たな方法を探し求めています。本日発表した新しい機能はどれも、世界中のお客様のすばらしい成果の達成を支えることを目的としています。私たちはこれからも、世界中の人々の仕事を前進させるためのツールを作ることをお約束します。それはこの危機的な時期だけでなく、これを乗り越えた後も続けていきます。

The post Microsoft Teams から流動フレームワークまで – Microsoft 365 の新機能と近日リリース予定の機能のご紹介 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

今月お届けする新しい機能は、新型コロナウイルス感染症 (COVID-19) の流行が続く間、そしてその後も、ビジネスを動かし続けるのに役立つように設計されています。たとえば、Microsoft Teams の新機能は、オンライン会議を効果的に実施し、よりインクルーシブで、集中できるようにするのに役立つとともに、1 対 1 のコンサルティングをバーチャルで実現します。SharePoint で作成できる危機管理サイトは、緊急時に組織内ですばやく情報を共有するのに役立ちます。また、Outlook の検索エクスペリエンスが向上し、必要としているものをメールや予定表の中からすばやく見つけることができるようになりました。

Microsoft 365 の今月の最新ニュースをお届けする前に、毎月の Modern Workplace ポッドキャストを改めてご紹介したいと思います。この回では、ホストの Alex Bradley と私が、リモート ワークについて学んだことを Microsoft での経験とお客様の経験の両方からお話ししています。ぜひお聞きください。

インクルーシブな、集中できるオンライン会議を開催する

今月、Teams の新しい機能を多数発表しましたが、これらは 2 つのことへの私たちのコミットメントを反映しています。1 つはお客様のために最高のオンライン会議エクスペリエンスを構築すること、もう 1 つは現場担当者と医療従事者に技術ソリューションを届けることです。

リモート会議に参加したときに、他の参加者がたたくキーボードの音や、すぐ後ろから聞こえる掃除機の音がうるさいと思ったことがあるかもしれません。リアルタイムのノイズ抑制機能は、気になる周囲の雑音を最小限に抑えて、発言内容を聞き取るのに役立ちます。

大規模な会議では、リモート参加者が発言したくてもその意思表示が難しいこともあります。挙手機能を使用すると、会議参加者はだれでも、発言したいときに視覚的な合図を送ることができます。

産業労働者は、効果的なコミュニケーションやコラボレーションと安全の維持を両立する必要があります。Teams と RealWear ヘッドマウント型デバイスの新しい統合で、現場担当者はハンズフリーで情報にアクセスし、現場にはいないエキスパートとコミュニケーションを取ることができるようになります。

仮想会議が求められる場面としては、医療機関の患者診察、顧客との打ち合わせ、求職者との面接などがあります。今月発表した Teams の Bookings アプリを使用すると、バーチャル面会のスケジューリング、管理、実施を簡単に行うことができます。

Teams では間もなく、チャットを独立したウィンドウで開くことができるようになります。ワークフローの効率化に役立ち、進行中の複数の会話を切り替えるのも簡単になります。

オフラインと低帯域幅のサポートにより、チャット メッセージを読んで返信を書く作業が、インターネットに接続していないときでもできるようになります。自分がすべきことを、どこにいても進めるのがさらに簡単になります。

また、Teams 認定デバイスが新たに追加されます。一般提供を開始した Yealink VC210 は、小さな会議室での会議に適しており、設置と管理が簡単です。さらに、Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 UC も、今春中に発売される予定です。

最後に、Teams の Microsoft 365 Business Voice の提供を米国内で開始しました。中小企業が電話の発信と受信をどこからでもできるようになります。また、Microsoft 365 Enterprise プランのラインアップが新しくなり、現場の最前線で働く従業員のためのライセンス オプションが追加されています。

中小規模企業のための新しい Microsoft 365

今月、Microsoft 365 Personal と Family が登場しました。個人と家庭のための Office 365 からの進化です。さらに、中小企業向けと大企業向けのプランの多くについて、名前を変更することも発表しました。Office 365 Business Essentials は Microsoft 365 Business Basic になり、Office 365 Business Premium は Microsoft 365 Business Standard に、Microsoft 365 Business は Microsoft 365 Business Premium になりました。Office 365 Business と Office 365 ProPlus は Microsoft 365 Apps となります。本日お知らせするのは名前の変更だけですが、この数年間に新しいアプリやサービスがサブスクリプションに追加されており、今後数か月のうちに新しいイノベーションも追加する予定です。これらの変更は、Microsoft 365 のイノベーションをこれからも推進していくという私たちの強い思いを反映しています。それは、これまでイメージされていた Office をはるかに超えるものとなるでしょう。

緊急事態への対応

人や情報をつなぐ緊急事態管理サイトをすばやく構築: COVID-19 のような予期しない出来事が起きると、コミュニケーションの手段を確立していつでも連絡を取れるようにすることの重要性が浮き彫りになります。SharePoint で新しい危機管理サイトを作成すると、緊急事態の発生時に組織内で共有するためのニュース、関連リソース、よくある Q&A を 2 時間以下でまとめることができます。SharePoint のスタート ページで [サイトの作成] > [コミュニケーション サイト] を選択し、ニュース、リンク、Q&A、サイト ナビゲーション、注目の人物などを構成します。

つながってコラボレーションするための新しいアプリ機能更新

今回発表する新しいアプリ機能更新は、会話を効率化し、プロフェッショナルにふさわしいコンテンツを作成し、生産性を最大化するのに役立ちます。

Yammer の会話に受信トレイから直接参加: Outlook on the web の新しい対話型 Yammer メール機能を利用すると、Yammer での会話、投票、質問に参加することや称賛を送ることができます。Yammer のスレッド全体が表示され、返信、いいね、投票、ファイルの添付、GIF の共有、さらにはビデオの閲覧も受信トレイから直接できるようになりました。これらの機能は、すべての Enterprise テナントでの提供を開始しており、Outlook for Windows、Outlook for Mac、Outlook for iOS/Android でのリリースは次の四半期となります。

プロフェッショナルにふさわしいコンテンツを Office モバイルで作成するのがさらに簡単に: Excel でのデータの表示と編集をシンプルな、わかりやすいカード形式でできるようになりました。横に並んだ列が多すぎて画面に収まりきらないときに便利です。Office モバイルのもう 1 つの新機能、PowerPoint デザイナーは、プロフェッショナルらしいプレゼンテーション作りに役立つように、コンテンツのデザイン、書式、アイコンを提案します。これらの機能は、Android 用と iOS 用の Office アプリに今後数か月以内に追加されます。

ドキュメントでの共同作業とタスクの割り当て: Web 版の Word と Excel で、ドキュメントを共同編集する他のユーザーに簡単にタスクを割り当てることができるようになりました。オンラインの Word または Excel のドキュメントのコメントでチームメイトを @メンションし、割り当てのチェック ボックスをオンにします。そのユーザーには、タスクが割り当てられたことを通知するメールが送信され、その中のリンクから直接そのドキュメントにアクセスできます。この機能の提供は 4 月を予定しており、PowerPoint for the web の [タスク] でも 6 月から使用できるようになります。

Visio for the web の新しい接続エクスペリエンス: Visio for the web の新機能で、図形上の接続ポイントを動かしてきれいに配置できるようになります。また、図形間に複数の矢印を追加することも簡単にできるので、to-and-from の関係を明確に表すのに役立ちます。この機能を使用するには、図形の縁にマウス カーソルを合わせます。接続ポイントの候補を表す緑色の円が表示されたら、使用したいポイントをクリックし、コネクタを接続先のポイントまでドラッグします。この機能は、Visio Plan 1 と Plan 2 のすべてのユーザーを対象として提供を開始しました。

メールと予定表の検索がさらに簡単に

今回発表する Microsoft Search の新しいイノベーションで、自然言語の認識が可能になります。必要としているものを見つけるのに役立つこの機能は、iOS 版と Android 版の Outlook で利用できます。メール、予定表のイベント、連絡先情報、ファイルを見つけたいときに、日常的に使っている言葉で検索対象を絞り込むことができます。話しかけることも、キーボードから入力することもできます。詳細については、こちらのブログをご覧ください。

一般的な IT タスクを効率化する

今月、IT 担当者向けの一般的なリソースを効率化するのに役立つ 2 つの新しいサービスを発表します。

印刷インフラストラクチャをモダン化するクラウドベースの印刷ソリューション: ユニバーサル印刷のプライベート プレビューを発表します。これは、シンプルで安全に印刷できる、クラウドベースの新しい印刷インフラストラクチャです。オンプレミスの印刷サーバーを保守することや、プリンター ドライバーをデバイスにインストールすることは不要になるため、IT 担当者が印刷環境を維持するために必要な時間と労力を削減できます。ユーザーの印刷操作もシンプルであり、近くにあるプリンターを簡単に見つけて印刷することができます。ぜひ、プライベート プレビューに登録して参加してください。

クラウドにあるファイルをシームレスに OneDrive や SharePoint に移動: このたび発表する Mover は、クラウド対クラウドのファイル移行ツールです。全世界の Microsoft 365 のお客様を対象として一般提供を開始しました。Box、Dropbox、Egnyte、Google ドライブなど、多数のクラウド サービス プロバイダーから OneDrive と SharePoint への移行をサポートしているので、Microsoft 365 のさまざまなアプリやサービスでのシームレスなファイル コラボレーションが実現します。Mover を利用すると、現在 Microsoft 365 の外部にある、他社のクラウド サービスで保存しているファイルを簡単に、コストをかけずに (無料です) 管理できます。利用を開始するには、Office 365 の資格情報を使用してサインインし、画面の表示に従ってください。

Teams での会議の新しい機能から、クラウドでのファイルの保存を容易にする機能更新まで、ここで紹介した発表には、お客様に頼りにされているツールをこれからも改善し、進化させていくという私たちのコミットメントが反映されています。しかし、この危機的な時に多くの組織がフルタイムのリモート ワークに対応しようとしているなかで、お客様の力になりたいとも思っています。毎月の更新情報に加えて、このブログをリモート ワークのヒントや情報、お客様の事例を紹介するスペースとしても活用していきますので、たびたびご覧いただければ幸いです。

The post 仮想会議の向上とコンサルティングのオンライン化 – Microsoft 365 の 3 月の新機能 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

これは自然な進化といえます。Microsoft 365 は 2017 年に、大企業のお客様向けに Windows、Office、Enterprise Mobility and Security (EMS) を組み合わせたライセンス バンドルとしてスタートしました。それ以来、長い道のりを歩んできました。今では、私たちはこれを “世界の生産性クラウド” と呼んでおり、Microsoft の生産性向上ツールの未来に対する私たちのビジョンを体現するものとなっています。そのビジョンとは、さまざまなアプリやサービスを統合して人工知能 (AI) やその他の最先端のイノベーションをお客様のお役に立てることです。そして中小規模企業向けには、Microsoft Teams の新しい充実した機能が会議やイベントをオンラインで開催するのに役立ち、クラウド ファイル ストレージと共有の機能でコラボレーションがどこからでも可能になり、セキュリティとアイデンティティのソリューションがビジネスを安全に守ります。企業が健康と経済の尋常ならざる課題に直面している今、コンシューマーと中小規模企業のお客様にも、この成長を続ける Microsoft 365 ファミリーをご利用いただけるようになったことをたいへん嬉しく思います。

新しい製品名

新しい製品名は 2020 年 4 月 22 日から有効になります。これは製品名のみの変更であり、現時点で価格や機能の変更はありません。

• Office 365 Business Essentials は Microsoft 365 Business Basic になります。
• Office 365 Business Premium は Microsoft 365 Business Standard になります。
• Microsoft 365 Business は Microsoft 365 Business Premium になります。
• Office 365 Business と Office 365 ProPlus はどちらも Microsoft 365 Apps になります。この 2 つの区別が必要な場合は、”for business” と “for enterprise” を付記します。

これらの製品についての変更はすべて自動的に行われます。 

本日お知らせするのは名前の変更のみですが、これらの変更は、Microsoft 365 のイノベーションをこれからも推進していくという私たちの強い思いを表しています。それは、これまでイメージされていた Office をはるかに超えるものとなるでしょう。皆様がよくご存知の使い慣れた Office は引き続きご利用いただくことができますが、この数年の間に新しいアプリとサービスがサブスクリプションに追加されており、今後も新しいイノベーションが追加される予定です。ご不明な点がありましたら、以下の「よく寄せられる質問」をご覧のうえ、「Microsoft 365 とは」のページで詳しい情報をご覧ください。

よく寄せられる質問

Q. Office 365 のプラン名のうち、変更されないのはどれですか?
A. 以下の Office 365 プランについては、変更はありません。

• 大企業向け Office 365
  • Office 365 E1
  • Office 365 E3
  • Office 365 E5
• 現場の最前線で働く従業員向け Office 365
  • Office 365 F1
• 教育機関向け Office 365
  • Office 365 A1
  • Office 365 A3
  • Office 365 A5
• 政府機関向け Office 365
  • Office 365 G1
  • Office 365 G3
  • Office 365 G5

Q. このような変更を行う理由は何ですか?
A. まず、製品名には、そのサブスクリプションに含まれる機能と利点の範囲を反映したいと考えています。Microsoft 365 は、さまざまなアプリとサービスを統合した製品であり、AI やその他の最先端のイノベーションをお客様に役立てるように作られています。そして中小規模企業向けには、Microsoft Teams の新しい充実した機能が会議やイベントをオンラインで開催するのに役立ち、クラウド ファイル ストレージと共有の機能でコラボレーションがどこからでも可能になり、セキュリティとアイデンティティのソリューションがビジネスを安全に守ります。2 つ目は、私たちは何事もシンプルにしたいからです。製品の名称に対するこの新しいアプローチは、お客様が必要なプランをすばやく見つけて本業に戻るのに役立つことを目的としています。

Q. Microsoft 365 における Office の位置付けを教えてください。Word、Excel、PowerPoint を引き続き使用できますか?
A. Office スイートは Microsoft の生産性エクスペリエンスの中核となるものであり、変更はありません。ただし、この数年の間に、Microsoft のクラウド生産性向上サービスはこれまでの “Office” のイメージをはるかに超えて進化しました。 Word、Excel、PowerPoint はこれまで以上に重要になっていますが、Microsoft 365 ではこれらのアプリに、クラウドと AI の力で新しい生命が吹き込まれています。さらに、クラウドで生まれた新しいエクスペリエンスである Teams、Stream、Forms、Planner などが追加されています。このすべてを下から支える一連の共通サービスが、お客様のデータを安全に守ります。Office はそのままで、他にもさまざまな機能をご利用いただけます。

Q. Microsoft 365 Apps for business または Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise のプランには、Office 365 Business または Office 365 ProPlus のプランになかった新しい点や違いはありますか? 新しい機能はありますか?
A. 現時点では、プランの価格や機能に変更はありません。

Q. Microsoft 365 Business と Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise のプランは、いつ購入できるようになりますか?
A. すべてのプランは、2020 年 4 月 22 日からご購入いただけるようになります。

Q. Office 365 のすべてのプランがなくなるのですか? 変更されないものはどれですか?
A. なくなるプランはありません。同じプランを引き続きご利用いただけます。更新されるのは名前だけです。Office 365 Enterprise については、名前はそのままで変更の予定はありません。

Q. 現在 SMB または ProPlus を使用している場合は、自分で何かを行う必要がありますか?
A. Office 365 Business、Office 365 Business Essentials、Office 365 Business Premium、Microsoft 365 Business のプランについては、特に何かをしていただく必要はありません。前述の変更は自動的に行われます。

Q. 会社で Office 365 ProPlus を使用していて、この変更について質問があります。詳細情報はどこで手に入りますか?
A. Office 365 ProPlus プランをご利用中の場合は、こちらのサイトで詳細情報をご覧ください。

The post 中小規模企業向けの新しい Microsoft 365 プラン appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

その前に、私たち全員が置かれている状況について触れておきたいと思います。また、世界中の組織、従業員、学生の皆様が突然リモート ワークや遠隔学習に移行することになり、ご自身と周りの人々の健康と安全を保つ努力をされていることに、感謝の思いを伝えたいと思います。

リモートでの仕事や学習に適応する

世界中で、多くの人々が新型コロナウイルス感染症 (COVID-19) アウトブレイクの影響を受けています。その影響は私たちの仕事のしかた、人との付き合い、家族との暮らし、コミュニティでの生活に及んでいます。ここピュージェット サウンド (米国ワシントン州) の Microsoft では、50,000 人の従業員に対して出勤しないよう求めました。今では、世界各地で何万人もの Microsoft 従業員が同じようにリモート ワークをしています。簡単なことではありませんでした。まったく方向性が定まらないこともありました。しかし、私たちのチームは、それでもつながっています。一緒に仕事をしています。すべき仕事をこなしています。

COVID-19 に向き合う中で、Teams を使ってつながり、前進しているお客様の事例は数え切れないほど届いており、どれも勇気づけられるものです。イタリアのボローニャ大学の教授が Twitter でシェアしていますが、この大学では講義の 90% を Teams によるオンライン方式に移行するのを 4 日で完了しました。間違いなく、900 年を超えるこの大学の歴史上、初めてのことでした。米国ペンシルベニア州の St. Luke’s University Health Network の医師は、Teams を使って患者とのビデオ会議を行う予定です。特にコロナウイルスに感染すると重症化のおそれが高い患者が対象であり、患者と医療提供者の両方を守る手段となっています。日本では大阪市が、Teams を使って数百人の新職員のオリエンテーションと研修を 4 月に実施する予定です。

このような事例は、世界中の国々から聞こえてきます。今回の突然、世界中を巻き込んだリモート ワーク化の動きは、仕事や学習の方法におけるターニング ポイントになると信じています。既に私たちは、リモートでの仕事や学習を実現するチャット、ビデオ、ファイル コラボレーションのソリューションが、仕事のしかたの中心になっていることを目の当たりにしています。Teams の利用量は前例のない急激な増加を見せており、今では 1 日あたりのユーザー数*が 4,400 万人を超えています。その前の 7 日間で 1,200 万人も増えているのです。そして、これらのユーザーが今週行った会議や通話の時間は、1 日あたり 9 億分を超えています。

リモート ワークを実現することの重要性が、これまでにないほど高まっていることは明らかです。そしてその価値は、COVID-19 のアウトブレイクが終息した後も続くでしょう。私たちはこれからも、組織、チーム、個人が互いに離れて仕事をせざるを得ないときでも生産性とつながりを保つのに役立つツールを作っていきます。

人々の働き方を変える

この 3 年間で、大小を問わず数千もの組織が (これには Fortune 100 企業のうち 93 社も含まれています)、Teams をチームワークのハブとして利用するようになり、つながりとエンゲージメントの維持に役立てています。業界をリードする数々の企業が、Teams を全社に展開しています。それだけでなく、従業員数 10 万を超える企業 20 社が Teams を積極的に使用しています。Ernst & Young、SAP、Pfizer、Continental AG がその例で、Accenture では 44 万人の従業員が Teams を積極的に使用しています。

Teams の新機能

私たちはこれからも、チームでのコミュニケーションとコラボレーションをさらに簡単にするエクスペリエンスに投資していきます。本日発表する新しい機能は、2 つのことへの私たちのコミットメントが反映されています。1 つはお客様のために最高のオンライン会議エクスペリエンスを構築すること、もう 1 つはこれまであまりテクノロジを利用できていなかった職種、たとえば現場担当者や医療従事者のためのソリューションです。

• リモート会議に参加したときに、他の参加者がたたくキーボードの音や、すぐ後ろから聞こえる掃除機の音がうるさいと思ったことがあるかもしれません。リアルタイムのノイズ抑制機能は、気になる周囲の雑音を最小限に抑えて、発言内容を聞き取るのに役立ちます。
• 大規模な会議では、リモート参加者が発言したくてもその意思表示が難しいこともあります。挙手機能を使用すると、会議参加者はだれでも、発言したいときに視覚的な合図を送ることができます。

• 産業労働者は、効果的なコミュニケーションやコラボレーションと安全の維持を両立する必要があります。Teams と RealWear ヘッドマウント型デバイスの新しい統合で、現場担当者は情報にアクセスし、現場にはいないエキスパートとハンズフリーでコミュニケーションを取ることができるようになります。

• B2C のバーチャル面会が求められる場面としては、医療機関の患者診察、顧客との打ち合わせ、求職者との面接などがあります。今月発表した Teams の Bookings アプリを使用すると、バーチャル面会のスケジューリング、管理、実施を簡単に行うことができます。
• Teams では間もなく、チャットを独立したウィンドウで開くことができるようになります。ワークフローの効率化に役立ち、進行中の複数の会話を切り替えるのも簡単になります。
• オフラインと低帯域幅のサポートにより、チャット メッセージを読んで返信を書く作業が、インターネットに接続していないときでもできるようになります。自分がすべきことを、どこにいても進めるのがさらに簡単になります。
• また、Teams デバイスのエコシステムがさらに拡大し、Teams 認定デバイスが新たに追加されています。一般提供を開始した Yealink VC210 は、Teams 認定を受けた初のコラボレーション バーであり、スピーカー、マイク、カメラと Teams のネイティブ エクスペリエンスを一体化した製品です。小さな会議室に適しており、すぐに設置できて管理も簡単です。さらに、Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 UC も、今春中に発売されます。
• Microsoft 365 Business Voice の提供を、米国で中小企業向けに開始します。Teams を完全な電話システムとして使うことができます。また、Microsoft 365 Enterprise プランの新しいラインアップに、現場担当者向けライセンス オプションが追加されます。
  

上記の新機能は、特に明記されていない限り、年内に提供を開始する予定です。

3 年前のスタート以来、Teams はチームワークのハブへと進化しました。会議、チャット、通話、コラボレーションのすべてをこの 1 つの場所で行うことができます。私たちはこれからも、働く人すべてが可能なかぎり生産性とつながりを高めていけるように、エクスペリエンスを改善し、拡張していきます。COVID-19 のアウトブレイクが続く中で、世界中の人々がリモートでの仕事や学習にやむなく移行していますが、リモートでの仕事と学習がこれほどまで重要に感じられたことはありません。私たちはこのような特別な時に、お客様に寄り添うことができる機会を得たことに感謝しています。

*1 日あたりのアクティブ ユーザー数とは、24 時間という期間の中でデスクトップ クライアント、モバイル クライアント、または Web クライアントで意図的なアクションを実行したユーザーの最大数です。意図的なアクションとは、Teams でのチャットの送信や返信、会議への参加、ファイルを開くことなどです。受動的なアクション、たとえば自動起動、画面最小化、アプリを閉じることなどは含まれません。

The post Microsoft Teams 3 周年: チームメイトとつながり、生産性を高めるのに必要なものすべてがここに appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

その前に、お知らせがあります。COVID-19 のアウトブレイク発生以来、このスペースを使ってヒント、お客様事例、情報をお伝えしてきました。今回の投稿は、Microsoft Teams でリモート ワークに移行するためのヒントを詳しく取り上げた先週の投稿の続編です。これまでには他にも、ライブ イベントをオンラインに移行するためのガイダンスも紹介し、その中で Microsoft ツールの使い方の詳細情報に加えて、Microsoft のイベント リーダーからのインサイトをお届けしました。さらに、企業の IT 部門や CISO の皆様に向けて、同じ立場のリーダーからのアドバイスも紹介しました。今後もリモート ワーク関連のコンテンツをここで投稿していきますので、ぜひご覧ください。では、ここ 2 週間で私たちが得た教訓に進みましょう。

1. 在宅勤務ガイドを共有する

多くの組織には、従業員がオフィス環境でどのように仕事をするかについてのトレーニング マニュアルがあります。リモート ワークに移行したとき、すぐに気付いたのですが、この種の働き方についても従業員のためのガイダンスは必要です。私たちの多くが、リモート ワークを経験するのは初めてであり、この変化に向けて準備する時間もほとんどありませんでした。チーム メンバーからはこのような質問が寄せられました。仕事に集中できるスペースをどうやって用意するのか? 顔を合わせることができない中で、どうやってつながりを保つのか? どういうタイミングで休憩を取ったらよいのか? さらに困難を増すのは、子どもなどの、世話が必要な家族が家にいる場合です。このアウトブレイクの中、私たちの多くにとって現実のことであり、苦戦を避けて通れない従業員もいます。

このようなニーズに応えるために、先週、在宅勤務総合ガイドを従業員に配布しました。皆様にもお役に立つかもしれないと考え、お客様向けバージョンを作成しましたので、よろしければ組織内で共有してください。物理的・仮想的なワークステーションのセットアップから、自分が今コミュニケーションを取れるかどうかをチームメイトに知らせることについてのベスト プラクティスまで、具体的なヒントが満載です。

2. 連続する会議をうまくこなす

オフィスでは、連続する会議の間に自然と小休止が入ります。廊下を歩いて移動し、テーブルについて全員がそろうのを待つ間、到着したチームメイトとあいさつを交わして、軽い近況報告をするなどのくだけた会話をしています。往々にして、仕事の毎日の中の、このような小さな息抜きの存在に気付くことはあまりありません。そして、リモート ワークに切り替えてから気付くのです。会議がいくつも入っている一日の慌ただしさに区切りを付けるために、そのような小休止がどれほど必要なものだったかを。

チームメイトとの会議を必要なだけ行うと同時に、その合間に確実に休憩を取るにはどうすればよいでしょうか? 私たちが従業員に推奨しているのは、1 時間または 30 分の会議を、本来の終了時間の 5 分前に締めくくるようにスケジュールすることです。このようにすると会合の時間は短かくなりますが、長い目で見れば、休憩なしの連続する会議による燃え尽きの可能性を避けることができます。

3. 仕事から離れられるスペースを作る

ふだん仕事をしているときは、毎日何らかの方法で仕事から離れています。多くの場合は、意図せずにそうしています。家族の夕食を作る、仕事帰りに通っているエクササイズ クラスで友人と会う、あるいは毎日帰宅のバスの中でぼうっとすることは、その日のできごとから気持ちを切り替えて次の日に備えるのに役立ちます。最高の条件がそろっていたとしても、リモート ワークのときは仕事から離れるのは難しいかもしれません。Microsoft では、バーチャル瞑想セッションを始めました。従業員は、仕事の緊張をほぐす時間が必要なときに参加できます。

同じことをしてみたいという方のために、実用的なヒントをいくつか紹介しますので、オンライン瞑想クラスが初めての方と共有してください。まず、邪魔が入らない静かな場所を見つけます。次に、マイクをミュートします。他の人が静けさを味わえるようにするためです。最後に、カメラを使って、セッション リーダーに呼吸法を指導してもらいます。コツをつかんだら、カメラをオフにして、自分の心を穏やかにすることに集中します。

4. チーム文化の推進を続ける

全員参加のミーティングから小さなマイルストーンのお祝いまで、健全なチーム文化の鍵は頻繁に集まることです。リモート ワークに突然移行することになった私たちの多くは、”どうしても必要なことだけ” モードに入りがちです。つまり、重要なイベントもチームとの楽しいひとときも、通常に戻れるまで延期しようとします。

私たちが気付いたのは、可能な限り、チーム文化作りを互いに離れていても続けることが最善であるということです。チームメイトの誕生日パーティーを予定していた場合は、Teams で会議を作成してハッピー バースデーの GIF を飾り付けましょう。大規模な販売会議の日程が迫っているときは、代わりにバーチャルで開催する方法を考えましょう。四半期ごとの社外チーム ビルディングのイベントも、ぜひ開催しましょう。チーム メンバーは喜んでアイデアを発表し、つながろうとするでしょう。チーム文化を促進するのに役立つ会合をリモートでも実現するのは、最初は難しく思えるかもしれませんが、全員のつながりを維持して前進を続けるために、一層の努力を払うに値します。

5. 鍵となるマネジメント スキルを実践する

従業員がマネージャーに期待しているのは、チェックインし、変化が起きたときにコーチングし、問題解決や創造を手伝うことへの好奇心を示すことです。チーム メンバーは、まったく新しい働き方でうまく仕事を進めようとすると同時に、世界的な健康の危機をうまく切り抜けようとしていますが、マネージャーからのサポートをこれまで以上に必要としています。しかし、互いに離れて仕事をしているときに、適切にマネジメントするにはどうすればよいのでしょうか?

私たちがリモートでのマネジメントについて学んだことを在宅勤務ガイドで紹介しています。具体的には、インクルージョンの強化、頻繁なチェックイン、そしてチームメイトがリモート ワークの自分自身のベスト プラクティスを見つけられるようにするためのコーチングです。今は従業員の誰もが、それぞれの課題に直面していますが、この状況に対応する方法は全員同じではありません。マネージャーにとって重要なことは、可能な限り、一人一人のニーズを理解して対応しようとすることです。

これらの教訓には、私たちが 2 週間のリモート学習から得た、最初の気付きのいくつかが反映されています。会議のスケジューリングから、休憩の取り方、そしてリモート チームの効果的なマネジメントまで、この新しい働き方について多くのことを発見しました。これらの教訓は、COVID-19 のアウトブレイクが終息した後も変わらない価値を持つと確信しています。世界中の組織が今後もリモート ワークを優先していくからです。しかし、皆様とそのチームが何について考え、学んでいるかをお聞きしたいとも思っています。ぜひ、Enabling Remote Work コミュニティでの会話にご参加ください。

The post 2 週間経過: リモート ワークについて学んだこと appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

中小企業の経営者は、単に引きこもっているわけにはいきません。既存の顧客に引き続きサービスを提供し、新しいビジネスを売り込み、従業員とのミーティングをしなければなりません。そして、会社を存続させるために何でもしなければなりません。これが理由で、私たちは Microsoft Teams をすべての人に利用していただけるようにしています。組織として Office 365 を使っていなくてもかまいません。ここでは、Teams について詳しく説明するとともに、今すぐ使用を開始する方法を紹介します。

Microsoft Teams とは

Microsoft Teams は、中小規模ビジネスに必要不可欠なタスクの多くをリモートで実行することを可能にするソフトウェア ソリューションです。Teams を利用すると、従業員、顧客、サプライヤー、パートナーとのチャット、共同作業、会議をバーチャルに行うことができます。Microsoft Office のアプリが Teams に直接組み込まれているので、Word、Excel、PowerPoint、Outlook で作成したファイルを Teams の中で使用し、共有することができます。先日の投稿で、Teams を使ってリモート ワークを始める方法についての私のチームへのヒントを紹介しました。Teams やリモート ワークが初めての方が、この両方に慣れるのに参考になれば幸いです。

Microsoft Teams をすべての人が利用できるように

Teams は Office 365 の一部です。所属する組織が Office 365 のライセンスを保有していれば、こちらからログインしてご利用いただけます。私たちは、Office 365 をお持ちかどうかを問わず、すべての人がこの困難な時に Teams にアクセスできるようにしたいと考えています。ここでは、皆様の会社のすべてのユーザーが今すぐ Teams を利用できるようにするシンプルな方法を紹介します。Office 365 をお持ちでなくてもかまいません。

個人や企業で Microsoft.com から直接購入する場合

Teams を Microsoft から直接入手することをご希望の場合は、次の方法で入手してください。

• Office 365 Business Premium の無料試用にサインアップします。これに Teams のフル機能バージョンが含まれています。
• Gmail や Outlook のようなコンシューマー用メール アドレスを使用する場合は、フリーミアム版の Teams にこちらのリンクからサインアップしてください。

企業でパートナーのサービスをご利用中の場合

Microsoft の製品を使うのが初めてであるか、既にお使いであってもライセンスに現在 Microsoft Teams が含まれていない (たとえば Exchange Online や Office 365 Business) 場合は、ご利用のパートナー企業に連絡して 6 か月間無料の Teams 試用版をお受け取りください。新たにパートナー企業との契約をご希望の場合は、Microsoft Teams のエキスパートであるパートナーをこちらのリンクで検索できます。この方法は、ユーザー数 1,000 人以下の企業に適しています。

非常に多くの人々がリモート ワークに切り替えている今、Teams が皆様のビジネスを前進させ続けるためにお役に立てば幸いです。次に紹介するのは、中小規模企業で Teams の使用を開始するにあたってよく寄せられる質問とその回答です。使用を開始した後も、ぜひこのブログをご覧ください。リモート ワークに適応していくのに役立つヒント、お客様事例、記事を随時お届けしています。私たちは一丸となって、すべてのお客様がこの困難な時もビジネスの運営を続けていけるように、お手伝いすることをお約束します。

Teams についてよく寄せられる質問

Q. 個人が職場の資格情報でサインインすると、どうなりますか?
A. 個人で Teams のライセンスを保有している場合は、この製品に自動的にログインします。Teams のライセンスを保有していない場合は、製品に自動的にログインして Teams の無料ライセンス (2021 年 1 月まで有効) を受け取ります。このライセンスには、最大 250 人が参加できるビデオ会議や最大 10,000 人が参加できるライブ イベント、録画、画面共有が含まれており、チャットとコラボレーションも可能です。IT 担当者のための詳しい情報は、このドキュメントをご覧ください。

Q. フリーミアム版の Teams には何が含まれていますか?
A.  無制限のチャット、組み込みのグループ、1 対 1 での音声/ビデオ通話、10 GB のチーム用ファイル ストレージ、ユーザー 1 人あたり 2 GB の個人用ファイル ストレージを利用できます。リアルタイムでコラボレーションするための、Word、Excel、PowerPoint、OneNote などの Web 版 Office アプリも利用できます。期限はありません。詳細については、こちらをご覧ください。

Q. フリーミアム版にはユーザー制限がありますか?
A. いいえ、ユーザー制限についての制約はありません。

Q. フリーミアム版でも会議のスケジュールを設定できますか?
A. 将来的に、会議のスケジュール設定機能もご利用いただけるようにする予定です。それまでは、即時開始する形でビデオ会議や通話を実施してください。

Q. 自宅で仕事をすることについて、どのようなヒントがありますか?
A. 前述のとおり、私たちのチームの Teams のヒントを先日公開しました。また、シニア テクニカル ライター Lola Jacobson が 4 つの追加のヒントを先週投稿しました。「Microsoft Teams を使用してリモート ワーカーをサポートする」という docs.Microsoft.com のページも更新しました。他にもさまざまなコンテンツを紹介する予定です。ご期待ください。

The post 中小規模企業のリモート ワークを Teams でサポート appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Lily の手紙への皆様からの反応を読み進めるうちに、皆様の頭の中には 2 つの大きな疑問があることが明らかになりました。1 つは、Lily の言う無料の Teams にはどのようにしてアクセスするのかということで、2 つめは、使用量が増加する時期にサービスを中断させないために、どのような計画があるのかということです。この両方について、以下で詳しくお答えします。また、今後の数日間にわたって、リモート ワーク関連のその他のヒントや最新情報をお伝えしていきます。ぜひご覧ください。

Microsoft Teams を誰でも利用できるように

Teams は Office 365 の一部です。組織が Office 365 のライセンスを保有していれば、既に利用できる状態になっています。ただし、現在の状況が続く間は、誰でもアクセスできるようにしたいと考えています。ここでは、Teams をすぐに入手できる簡単な方法を紹介します。

個人の場合

Teams の使用を今すぐ開始する方法をご用意しています。

• 職場または学校のメール アドレスを使用する場合は、このリンクを使用してサインインしてください。Teams に直接移動できます。
• Gmail や Outlook などのメール アドレスを使用する場合は、フリーミアム版の Teams にこのリンクからサインアップしてください。

IT 担当者の場合

上記のセルフサービス リンクは個人向けです。IT 担当者として Teams を組織全体に導入することをご検討中の場合は、次の方法をお使いください。

• 現在 Teams のライセンスを所有していない組織には、Office 365 E1 プランを 6 か月間無料でご提供します。今すぐ使用を開始するには、マイクロソフト パートナーまたは販売担当者にお問い合わせください。(注: 同様のオファーが Government Cloud にもありますが、GCC High および Department of Defense では利用できません。)
• 教育機関で教職員や学生が Teams を使用できるようにするには、Office 365 A1 をお使いください。この無料版の Office 365 は、すべての教育機関が利用できます。 このリンクからサインアップしてください。

Teams の常時稼働を続ける

Microsoft のツールは、お客様のチームが常につながって仕事を完了するために頼りにされています。私たちはこの責任を真剣に受け止めており、今回のような甚大な影響を与える事態が続くなかでもサービスが確実に稼働を続行できるようにする計画は策定済みです。私たちの事業継続計画では、サービスの中核的な面への影響は次の 3 種類があると考えています。

• システム:  使用量が急激に増加するとき。たとえば、最近中国で見られたような急増です。
• 場所:  地域限定の、予期しない事象が発生したとき。たとえば地震や激しい暴風雨です。
• 人:  システムを維持管理するチームに影響を与える可能性のある事象が発生したとき。たとえば、ピュージェット湾地域での COVID-19 アウトブレイクです。

私たちは最近、中国での使用量急増が発生したときにサービスの継続性をテストしました。1 月 31 日以降、Teams 会議、通話、カンファレンスは 500% 増加し、モバイル デバイスでの Teams の使用量は 200% 増加しました。このように使用量が増加していても、サービスはこのアウトブレイクが継続する地で円滑に提供されています。可用性と回復性がきわめて高いサービスを提供するためのアプローチの中心にあるのは、次のような事項です。

アクティブ/アクティブ設計: Microsoft 365 では、設計し運用するすべてのサービスについて、回復性を高めるアクティブ/アクティブ設計を目指しています。つまり、1 つのサービスについて常に複数のインスタンスが稼働してユーザーのリクエストに対応できる状態となっており、これらのインスタンスはそれぞれ地理的に離れたデータセンターでホストされているということです。すべてのユーザー トラフィックは Microsoft Front Door サービスを通じて到着し、そのサービスのインスタンスのうち最適な場所にあるものに自動的にルーティングされます。サービス障害が発生しても回避できるので、お客様への影響が軽減されます。

インシデントのスコープを縮小: インシデントの回避が第一ですが、それでも発生してしまったときは、すべてのインシデントのスコープを限定的にするよう努めています。そのために、各サービスの複数のインスタンスを互いに完全に分離しています。これに加えて、監視能力を自動化によって継続的に向上させており、より迅速なインシデントの検出と対応が可能になります。

障害の分離: サービスをアクティブ/アクティブ方式で設計して運用し、互いを完全に分離するという方法で、あるサービスでの障害の影響が他に及ばないようにしているのと同様に、サービスのコード ベースについても類似の分離原則を使用して開発されており、これを障害の分離といいます。障害の分離は、コード ベースそのものの中で実行される、漸進的な保護対策です。このような対策は、ある領域で発生した問題が別の部分の運用に波及することを防ぐのに役立ちます。この具体的な方法と、サービス継続計画の詳細については、こちらのドキュメントで紹介しています。

リモート ワークへの適応は、簡単ではないこともあります。私たちはそのことを理解しており、その困難にお客様のチームが立ち向かうのに必要なツール、ヒント、情報を提供していきます。COVID-19 の影響を受けている学校、病院、企業が見せている俊敏さと創意工夫に私たちは感銘を受けており、この困難な時期に各地の組織が常につながって生産性を発揮できるように、お手伝いしていくことをお約束します。

よく寄せられる質問

Q. 個人が職場または学校の資格情報でサインインすると、どうなりますか?
A. 個人で Teams のライセンスを保有している場合は、この製品に自動的にログインします。Teams のライセンスを保有していない場合は、製品に自動的にログインして Teams の無料ライセンス (2021 年 1 月まで有効) を受け取ります。このライセンスには、最大 250 人が参加できる Web 会議や最大 10,000 人が参加できるウェビナー、録画、画面共有が含まれており、インスタント メッセージングとコラボレーションも可能です。IT 担当者向けの詳しい情報はこちらをご覧ください。

Q. フリーミアム版の Teams には何が含まれていますか?
A. 無制限のチャット、組み込みのグループや 1 対 1 での音声/ビデオ通話、チーム用ファイル ストレージ 10 GB、個人用ファイル ストレージ 2 GB (ユーザー 1 人あたり) を利用できます。リアルタイムでコラボレーションするための、Word、Excel、PowerPoint、OneNote などの Web 版 Office アプリも利用できます。期限はありません。詳細については、こちらをご覧ください。

Q. フリーミアム版にはユーザー制限がありますか?
A. 3 月 10 日から順次、無料版 Teams に更新を反映しており、この更新の中でユーザー制限を解除しています。

Q. フリーミアム版でも会議のスケジュールを設定できますか?
A. 将来的に、会議のスケジュール設定機能もご利用いただけるようにする予定です。それまでは、即時開始する形でビデオ会議や通話を実施してください。

Q. IT 管理者が Teams for Education にアクセスするにはどうすればよいですか?
A. 学生と教職員の皆様には既に、Teams を Office 365 A1 の一部として無料で提供しています。こちらからアクセスしてください。

Q. 自宅で仕事をすることに関するヒントはありますか?
A. シニア テクニカル ライターの Lola Jacobson が、いくつかの基本的なヒントを先週投稿しました。また、「Microsoft Teams を使用してリモート ワーカーをサポートする」という docs.Microsoft.com のページを昨日更新しました。他にもさまざまなコンテンツを紹介する予定です。ご期待ください。

The post COVID-19 の影響が続くなかでのお客様へのお約束 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Lily Zheng は、良い友人であり同僚であり、上海に住んでいます。中国で直接会って仕事をしたこともありますが、たいていは Microsoft Teams で顔を合わせています。Lily は最近、地元のお客様に宛てた手紙の中で、自らのチームがアウトブレイク (感染症の急激な拡大) に耐えるなかでリモート ワークしたことから何を学んだかを伝えています。その手紙に触発され、私たちのチームは、この困難に立ち向かう時にリモート ワークに切り替える人々のために Microsoft Teams を無料で提供することにしました。上海チームの経験が役に立つかもしれませんので、その手紙を世界中の人々と共有したいと思います。私だけでなく、皆様のお役に立つことを願います。

Lily からのメッセージです。

お客様へ

私は Lily Zheng と申します。Microsoft の従業員で、上海に住み、ここで働いています。新型コロナウイルス感染症 (COVID-19) のアウトブレイクが続き、ここ中国でも多くの人々が影響を受けているため、リモート ワーク人口が急激に増えています。中国の学校、病院、企業は、一時的にではありますが、今は分散型組織となっています。COVID-19 のようなウイルスによる感染症の大流行から、予期しない天候変化による緊急事態まで、さまざまな理由でリモート ワークが突然必要になることがあります。そこで、ここ数週間で私が得た教訓を 3 つお伝えするとともに、私たちのお客様がリモート ワークに適応していくなかで得られた教訓を 3 つ紹介したいと思います。

多くの人と同じように、私がこのウイルスのことを耳にするようになったのは 1 月で、主にソーシャル メディアからでした。これほど大ごとになるとは、旧正月の直前までは考えてもいませんでした。そのときには、春節で多くの人が移動したことが原因で、感染者の数が急激な増加を始めていました。1 月 23 日、中国政府はウイルス拡大を抑えるために湖北省を封鎖しました。その翌日は旧正月前日で、私は家族で映画館に行くつもりでした。ニュースで市内すべての映画館が閉鎖されたと知ったときに、このアウトブレイクの深刻さを心から実感することとなりました。2 日後、中国政府は春節行事の異例の中止を発表し、私はずいぶん前から予定していた家族との休暇をキャンセルしました。子供たちはショックを受けていましたが、健康と安全が第一でした。

今の中国で仕事をするのはどのような感じかを聞かれたら、私はこう答えます。リモート ワークのおかげで通勤時間が不要になり、何を着ていくかを心配する必要もなくなりました。多くの飲食店が休業しているので、誰もが料理の腕を磨いています。ただし、子供たちは学校に行けず、ベビーシッターも自宅から出られないので、生産性を維持するのは簡単ではありません。

リモート ワークから学んだこと

私たちのチームがリモート ワークに慣れるまでのここ数週間で、リモート ワークの成功と持続には何が必要かがはっきりしました。私が得た教訓トップ 3 です。

健康を維持する。

このリモート ワーク移行の目的は、私たちの身体の健康を守るためにウイルスとの接触を最小限に抑えることです。これは、すべての人が理解しています。あまり知られていないことですが、生活する場所で仕事することが、特有のストレスを生み出すことがあります。時間を取って体を動かし、よく食べ、画面から離れてしっかりと休憩することはどれも、在宅勤務中の心の健康を維持するために不可欠です。

全員で力を合わせる。

リモート ワークのときは、人との接触を先延ばしにしたくなることもありますが、リモートでもうまくいくチームは、あらゆることをオンラインで行う方法を見つけています。1 対 1 ミーティングをスケジュール済みの場合は、約束を守りましょう。大人数の会議を計画済みの場合は、予定どおりに開催しましょう。次のプレゼンテーションを検討するブレーンストーミングの準備ができている場合は、ビデオ通話で行いましょう。

チームメイトをサポートする。

今回の経験でもう一つ学んだのは、他の人たちをサポートすることが、前向きでエネルギッシュでいるための一番良い方法だということです。オンライン ツールを使うのは、仕事のためだけではありません。家族やペットの写真をインスタント メッセージングで共有して、一日中連絡を取り合っています。励まし合うことは、意欲を保つだけではなく、チームが離れて仕事をしているときでも一つにまとまるのに役立っています。

お客様から学んだこと

数週間という短い時間で、中国国内のお客様の働き方はすっかり変革しました。成功に向けて組織の体制を整える方法として、お客様から学んだことを 3 つ紹介します。

いつでも連絡を取れる方法を今すぐ用意する。

リモート ワークをしているときは、従業員全員に業務の指示を確実に伝えることが、これまで以上に重要になります。あるお客様は、アジアに拠点を置く大きな保険会社ですが、全員が最新情報に確実にアクセスできるようにと、ビデオ メッセージをスタッフに一斉配信することを開始しました。誰もが、自宅での仕事と子供の世話などとのバランスを取らなければなりませんが、ビデオが録画されていれば、ライブの会議やブリーフィングに参加できなかった人もその内容を知ることができます。

前進を続ける。

全員が集まれるようになるまで計画を先延ばししようと思いがちですが、中国国内の企業は前進を続けるための方法を見つけています。政府の後押しもあり、多くの学校が、すべてをオンライン化することによって学期を予定どおり開始できています。学校は生徒をサポートするために、明確なスケジュールを作成し、意欲を維持するためのイベントとして料理コンテストなどを開催し、課題などの情報をていねいに伝達しており、こうして生徒たちの困惑を防いでいます。

大人数の会議もオンラインで開催できる。

私たちの多くは、少数のチームメイトとの短い通話やビデオ チャットはよく行っていますが、大規模の公式な会議であってもオンラインで問題なく開催できます。中国国内の病院も、働く人々の多くがリモート ワークを選んでいることから、スタッフの会合をリモートで行っています。たとえば、大連のある病院では、大規模なスタッフ会議 (ウェビナー) を Teams で開催しています。Web 会議を成功させるための鍵としては、議題を明確にすることや、インクルージョンの観点から音声の問題は会議の開始までに解決しておくこと、そして後でフォローアップとして共有できるように明確なメモを取っておくことなどがあります。もう一つ覚えておきたいのは、参加できない人たちのために会議を録画しておくことです (ただし、所属組織が許可していれば)。

私も、世界中の多くの人々も、このような形で旧暦の新年を迎えるとは想像していませんでした。しかし、多くのことを学びました。そして Teams は、すばらしく強力なツールとして、この困難に立ち向かう時に私たちを支えてくれています。あまり知られてはいないようですが、Teams は既に無料でご利用いただけるようになっています。詳しくは、こちらをご覧ください。どのようなツールを使うにしても、これらのヒントがお役に立てば幸いです。そして皆様とご家族の健康をお祈りします。

Lily Zheng

Microsoft China ディレクター

The post 困難に立ち向かう時のリモート ワーク appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

今月ご紹介する機能で、外出先でも仕事をしやすくなり、コンテンツの共同作業がより簡単になり、アプリとの相互作用の方法が増え、生産性向上エクスペリエンスをカスタマイズできるようになります。新しい Office アプリは、Android と iOS での一般提供が始まりました。PowerPoint のコメントにコラボレーション機能を追加し、共同編集機能と Microsoft Teams 統合を Visio に導入しました。Word では音声テキスト変換機能が向上して対応言語が増え、OneNote for Android では手描き入力機能やダーク モードが追加されてノートの記録と読み取りが簡単になりました。さらに、組織の従業員の生産性エクスペリエンスをカスタマイズできるようになりました。たとえば、検索結果ページと Yammer の [会社全体] フィードや、新しい Microsoft Fluid Framework のプライベート プレビューなどがあります。

今月の Microsoft 365 の更新について、以下で詳しく説明していきます。ニュースのさらに詳しい説明については、Modern Workplace ポッドキャストの 2 つめのエピソードをお聞きください。今月は、ホストの Alex Bradley と私がチームワークについて、そして新しい Microsoft Fluid Framework について語っています。

生産性を外出先でも発揮

仕事をどこでもできる、新しい Office アプリ: まったく新しい設計の Office アプリが、場所を問わず生産性を向上するのに役立ちます。Word、Excel、PowerPoint を 1 つのアプリにまとめて新しい機能を追加したこのアプリでは、モバイルならではの方法でコンテンツを作成することができ、統合されている “アクション” がモバイルでの一般的なタスクの実行に役立ちます。その結果、シンプルながらもパワフルな、モバイル デバイスのための Office エクスペリエンスが完成しました。こちらのブログ投稿で、新しい Office アプリについて詳しく説明しています。このアプリは既に、全世界で Android と iOS での一般提供を開始しています。

お気に入りのアプリでのコラボレーションを向上

PowerPoint と Visio の新しいツールで、チームの共同作業がさらに簡単になります。

PowerPoint でのコラボレーションをより円滑に: 来月から、PowerPoint の新しいコメント機能のロールアウトを開始します。チーム メンバーは、コメントをオブジェクトに関連付けることや、@メンション通知を使用することができ、コメントの検出と追加もさらに簡単にできるようになりました。この新しいコメント エクスペリエンスは、最新の更新プログラムですべての Office 365 ユーザーが利用可能になります。

Visio 図面をさまざまな方法で共同編集: Visio for the web で複数の人が図面の作成、編集、コメントを同時にできるようになりました。ライブ共同編集機能やシンプルなプレゼンス インジケーターを利用して、チームがシームレスに共同作業しながらブレーンストーミングし、アイデアを発展させることができます。Visio Plan 1 と Plan 2 のユーザーは、visio.office.com にアクセスすると、Visio ファイルの作成と共有を今すぐ行うことができます。

チーム メンバーは、これらの機能を Teams で直接使用することもできます。自分の Visio 図面を同僚と共有できるようになりました。Teams のファイル ライブラリに保存されたファイルにはメンバー全員がアクセスできるので、自分の作業の成果を同僚が編集したりコメントを付けたりするのも簡単です。開始するには、Teams チャネルの会話ウィンドウの上にある [ファイル] タブをクリックして、[新規] > [Visio 図面] を選択します。

作業方法をパーソナライズ

Word と OneNote が更新されて、ユーザーは好みの方法で作業できるようになりました。

時間を節約して作業をシンプルにする、向上した音声テキスト変換: Word で自分の声を使ってコンテンツを簡単に作成できるようになりました。新しいディクテーション ツールバーが追加され、提案を利用でき、自動句読点もサポートされています。また、新たに 6 つの言語でのプレビューを開始しました。デンマーク語、オランダ語、フィンランド語、スウェーデン語、ノルウェー語、日本語です。Word for the web の新しい音声ディクテーション機能は、現在すべての Office 365 ユーザーを対象としてロールアウト中です。

ノートへの書き込みを簡単に: Android スマートフォン/タブレット用 OneNote でダーク モードがサポートされるようになりました。明るい白から、淡い黒、濃い灰色までの間で、読み取りやすい配色に切り替えることができます。また、手描き入力機能を一新して、新しい明るい色をサポートするようになりました。各種ペン、蛍光ペン、消しゴムも引き続き利用できます。なげなわツールを使って、ページ上のオブジェクトのサイズや位置を変更することもできます。これらの更新は、OneNote を Android スマートフォンやタブレットで使用しているすべてのユーザーを対象としてロールアウト中です。

ユーザーのコラボレーション エクスペリエンスをカスタマイズ

社内で使う生産性向上ツールを、企業ブランドや環境に合わせてカスタマイズするのに役立つ新しい機能が追加されました。

Microsoft Search の独自の検索結果ページを作成: 独自の検索結果ページを SharePoint Online で作成できるようになりました。この新しい機能を使って、検索結果のレイアウトやデザインをコントロールし、SharePoint Online エクスペリエンスを自社の環境に合わせて調整します。この新しい機能は、すべての SharePoint Online サブスクリプションで利用できます。使用を開始するには、どのサイト領域で独自の結果ページを構成するかを選択し、[サイト コレクションの設定] > [検索の設定] を選択します。

“新機能” のどの機能をユーザーに表示するかを管理者が選択: Office デスクトップ アプリの “新機能” のどの機能をユーザーに表示するかを管理できるようになりました。このコンテンツは、新しい機能の一覧をまとめたものであり、その機能の使用に役立つように説明やガイダンスも付属しています。この管理ツールには、Microsoft 365 管理センターと Office 365 クライアント構成サービスを使用してアクセスできます。

円滑な共同作業エクスペリエンスの作成を今すぐ開始: Microsoft Fluid Framework は、コンポーネントベースの新しいドキュメント モデルであり、コンテンツ作成における新しいコラボレーションの方法を可能にするように設計されています。Office 365 Enterprise サブスクリプションをご利用中のお客様は、早期プレビューを利用できます。使用を開始するには、組織のアカウント ID で fluidpreview.com にサインインしてください。

Yammer でのエンタープライズ ブランディングを強化: 最新の Yammer エクスペリエンスの新しい機能によって、[会社全体] フィード名のカスタマイズ、コミュニティ カバー写真のアップロード、主要メッセージの掲載、新メンバーの歓迎、組織的な取り組みの促進、会社価値の強調を行うことができます。これにカスタム アバターを組み合わせると、会社のブランディングと文化を [会社全体] フィードに取り入れることができます。これらの管理者向けの新しい機能は、まもなく利用可能となります。

Yammer 電子情報開示を Microsoft 365 管理センターの中で管理する: Yammer で、ネイティブ モードのネットワークに対する電子情報開示がサポートされるようになりました。管理者は、Yammer ネットワークに投稿されたすべてのメッセージとファイルにアクセスできるようになりました。これに使用するのは、Office 365 スイートのその他の製品でのデータ管理に使用されているのと同じ電子情報開示ツールです。これにより、電子情報開示のタスクがシンプルになり、コンプライアンス義務が合理化されます。開始するには、Yammer ネットワークがネイティブ モードで稼働していることを確認してから、セキュリティ/コンプライアンス センターの電子情報開示モジュールに移動してください。

加えて、Office 365 に接続された Yammer コミュニティにアップロードされたすべての新しいファイルは、SharePoint に保存されることになりました。この変更によって、ファイルは、SharePoint に対して実施されているセキュリティとコンプライアンスの機能のポリシーに準拠することになります。たとえば、電子情報開示、データ損失保護、指定した地域へのファイルの保管などです。

今月のその他の新機能

• 新しい Microsoft Edge を社内に導入するときのサポートを、新しい FastTrack と App Assure サポートで受けることができます。
• Office 365 をドイツの新しい地域データセンターから利用できるようになりました。

現代社会で仕事と生活をうまくこなすためには、進化と向上を続ける優れたツールが必要です。私たちの目標は、お客様の組織を成功に導く生産性向上エクスペリエンスを構築することです。これは、お客様の存在なくして達成することはできません。ぜひこちらからフィードバック、リクエスト、ご質問をお寄せください。お待ちしています。

The post さまざまなアプリでのコラボレーションを向上し、エクスペリエンスをカスタマイズ—Microsoft 365 の 2 月の新機能のご紹介 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.