October 2021 #M365AMA Summary

In this month’s Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) panel, I was joined by Eric Riz, MVP (@rizinsights), Mike Nelson, MVP (@mikenelsonio), Hal Hostetler, MVP (@TVWizard), expert Shari Oswald (@shortcutshari), and Microsoft’s Neil Hodgkinson (@nellymo). Questions were selected from various online community groups — but we also welcome questions during the live stream, so don’t be shy! Our next live broadcast will be November 10th at 9am Pacific, so join us!

Take note that I experienced a technical issue — I enjoyed a forced update to Streamlabs OBS this morning, which altered some of my camera and microphone settings on some (not all) of my scenes. I missed one setting…on my own mic. So you cannot hear me for the intro and each time I comment on Mike’s Message Center updates. At the 16:34 mark, I was alerted to the issue (thanks Ron!) and fixed the problem. Oh, the joys of being live!

Microsoft 365 Message Center topics covered:

  • Mike kicks off the Microsoft Message Center updates [5:48]
  • Join Teams meetings anonymously across tenants [6:15]
  • You will soon be able to restart (reboot) a Live Meeting event [8:18]
  • Creating collapsible sections in SharePoint [9:38]
  • In Teams, you can launch a whiteboard using your camera [12:07]
  • Azure cloud shell is now available through the Admin center [15:02]
  • Private drafts are now available in SharePoint pages and news posts [18:08]
  • The panel discusses the loss of User Voice, and the introduction of the Feedback Portal [19:34]
  • Microsoft stops the 2nd largest DDOS attack in history [24:30]
  • The session catalog for Ignite 2021 is now live, and people can register for free [28:13]

Community questions covered:

  • Is it possible to put a time on a Teams meeting for when people can join? [35:35]
  • Is there any way to mask the output from Azure DevOps pipeline? [38:03]
  • I’m having trouble with the chat function whilst in a Teams meeting and guests in the group can’t see the chat. Why is this happening? [42:31]
  • re: the superior user experience for multi-tenant access to Teams via the mobile app, Christian opines on wanting a mobile phone emulator on his desktop — and Shari mentions she has shared this exact tip on her blog [46:18] (and here’s her video tip)
  • As a Microsoft Azure partner, what benefits can we get? The panel expands on partner benefits, in general (not just Azure) [48:39]
  • Can we store heavy zip files (more than 50GB) in Azure blob storage and search the zip file later? [57:00]
  • Moving from years-long usage of Yammer free to business basic, I saw that M365 has an ‘All Company’ group, but do not see this group in Teams. Do I need to create a new group for all of our users to be in (organization-wide Teams group)? Mike shares his dislike of Yammer, and the panel gets into a brief discussion on “which tool do you use, and when?” [1:00:15]
  • We moved a hosted exchange environment to Microsoft 365 and have a local fileserver. Do I have to create a site for each fileshare? The panel has a great discussion on migration planning [1:06:34]
  • Does anyone know if we can share resources (conference room or an open office, for example) between two tenants? [1:18:01]
  • I have a client where he says we can connect ONLY if using a VPN. Is it possible to connect into SharePoint Online using a VPN (client-to-site)? [1:21:00]
  • Can anyone please suggest how can we can display SSRS reports on SharePoint Online? [1:24:25]

You can watch the entire recording here (audio begins at 5:48):

 

If you would like to watch our next live stream on November 10th, or watch past recordings (and many other community-focused interviews) be sure to follow the YouTube channel. Thanks!

Christian Buckley

Christian is a Microsoft Regional Director and M365 Apps & Services MVP, and an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, based in Silicon Slopes (Lehi), Utah. He sits on the board of TekkiGurus, is an advisor for both revealit.TV and WellnessWits, and provides channel and marketing services for Microsoft partners. He hosts the quarterly #CollabTalk TweetJam, the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.