The most useful and controversial changes in Office 365 (Part 1 of 2)

This is the first of a 2-part blog series highlighting the changes in Office 365 in the last 6 months (April 2016 to present).

When it comes to human attitudes toward change, I have found there are three types of people:

  • Those who embrace change
  • Those who resist change
  • Those who are indifferent towards change

This blog post (part 1 of 2) should satisfy those who embrace change, while my second post should intrigue those who resist change. Wait, why not a 3rd post for those who are indifferent towards change? People who are indifferent towards change are probably not reading this blog, as they would have read the title and sighed ‘meh’ before continuing on with their day.

  1. March 18th: Common Attachment Types Filtering for Exchange Online Protection (EOP)

    There is a new configuration setting in EOP feature that provides an easy-to-setup method of filtering out unwanted and potentially malicious attachments by their file types. This feature requires a single click to enable, and can be configured from a list of the file types commonly found to be dangerous. For more information click (here).

  2. April 19th: Office Deployment Tool allows Visio and Project (MSI) to be deployed

    alongside Click-to-Run versions

    This enables IT to deploy the the MSI versions of Visio and Project side-by-side with Office 365 ProPlus click-to-run, as long as they are deployed using the Office Deployment Tool. For more information click (here).

  3. April 14th: OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client (NGSC)

  • The NGSC is 4x faster than the old engine (groove.exe)
  • Includes the highly anticipated ‘Selective Sync’ where users can leave some content in the Cloud and only sync the folders they want
  • Large file limit increased from 2GB to 10GB
  • The sync engine now supports the ‘takeover’ feature, which eliminates the need to re-download all OneDrive content after the NGSC is installed
  • Note: The last feature we are still waiting for is the ability for the NGSC to sync SharePoint document libraries and Office 365 Groups. Until then, Groove.exe must run side-by-side with the NGSC OneDrive.exe

Honorable Mentions:

Flow, Planner, Gigjam, ASM, Bookings, & “Toll Free Numbers in Cloud PBX PSTN Conferencing”