What is Productivity score in Microsoft 365?

Productivity Score is a new feature of Microsoft 365 designed to let administrators monitor how productive your organisation is, and the extent to which staff are adopting the platform’s features.

It also lets you benchmark your organisation against others of a similar size. The idea is that you can take action where there has been limited take-up – ideally by taking steps to encourage user adoption, or alternatively by making a positive choice to disable a feature or tool.

Productivity Score is accessed via the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. It provides immediate information on how your organisation is using Microosft 365 via metrics including Communication, Meetings, Content Collaboration, Teamwork and Mobility. This data is gathered from across all your users from the last 30 days, and benchmarked against live data from peer businesses of a similar size.

Microsoft 365 Productivity Score

It also provides a small number of metrics relating to the technology side, such as internet connectivity, and whether users have the latest updates installed. This helps admins ensure users are getting the best possible technology experience.

Each of the eight categories is given a score out of 100, which also provides you an overall organisational score out of 800. Admins can use this data about how Microsoft 365 is being used to make better-informed decisions.

Privacy concerns quelled

Initially, Microsoft 365 Productivity Score included statistics for individual named users throughout your organisation. You could even download a spreadsheet showing precisely how much each individual, named user had used each Microsoft 365 feature in the last 28 days.

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What is SharePoint Syntex and how much does it cost?

Table Of Contents
  1. Document Understanding with Syntex
  2. Training a Syntex model
  3. Form Processing with Syntex
  4. SharePoint Syntex pricing
  5. Syntex administration and governance
  6. Let's talk

Microsoft SharePoint Syntex, the first product to come out of Microsoft’s larger Project Cortex, is now available under general release. But what is it, how does it work, and how much does it cost?

Syntex takes advantge of the advanced AI and machine learning coming out of Project Cortex to automatically categorise and classify documents based on models set up by the user. Using these models, Syntex can extract specific data and apply it as metadata to documents, as well as applying Sensitivity and Retention labels for information protection.

SharePoint Syntex lets users create two types of model: Form Processing and Document Understanding. The difference between the two is that Form Processing extracts values from a structured form, while Document Understanding is trained to pick out information from an unstructured document.

Document Understanding with Syntex

To implement a Document Understanding model, a you first need to provision a Content Center. A Content Center is a SharePoint site that’s used to create and store the different document models, as well as to apply those models to your Document Libraries.

SharePoint Syntex Content Center
SharePoint Syntex Content Center

When you have identified a document type you wish to model – such as Statements of Work, CVs/resumés or Purchase Orders – you can create the new model in the Content Center. On creation, the default action is to create a new Content Type; however, you can change this to use an existing Content Type if you have one already set up in your Content Type Hub.

Training a Syntex model

After creating the model, you need to train it by adding in some example files. Syntex only requires five positive examples and one negative example, but more is always better if possible. Once the example files have been uploaded, explanations need to be created alongside them to train the model. The model can then be tested within the Content Center.

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Changes to Microsoft Stream

Microsoft Stream
Microsoft Stream
Table Of Contents
  1. Classic Stream vs New Stream
  2. Why is it happening?
  3. When is it happening?
  4. What do I need to do?

Microsoft Stream was launched just over three years ago as the service to replace Office 365 Video, providing corporate video streaming and sharing video capabilities.

In October 2020, Microsoft announced that Stream would be much better integrated with Microsoft 365 to provide ‘fast, intelligent video’ capabilities for all users. So, what does this mean in practice?

Classic Stream vs New Stream

In terms of terminology there is now ‘Classic’ Stream, which is what every customer has now.  New Stream is the future service and there will be a transition period where customers are switched from Classic to New.

Although the user impact of New Stream may not be enormous, it is a large technical change from Microsoft’s point of view with a complete rebuilding of the Stream video service in aggressive timelines.

From a Microsoft 365 administration point of view, the primary change is that New Stream will use OneDrive or SharePoint to store videos (as an MP4 file) rather than the separate Stream service. A Stream video will therefore be treated in the same way as any other file being stored in SharePoint/OneDrive.

Changes to the Microsoft Stream landscape
Changes to the Microsoft Stream landscape

SharePoint will be used where a meeting recording is within a Microsoft 365 Group / Teams channel.  Where the recording is not linked to a group, the organisers OneDrive will be used.

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Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams

Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams
Table Of Contents
  1. Breakout rooms – a most-requested feature
  2. Set up Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams
  3. Managing Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams
  4. Using breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams
  5. Can't access breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams?
  6. Creating high user adoption of Microsoft Teams
  7. Let's talk

Microsoft has said Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams will finally be rolled out to all users during November 2020.

Breakout rooms let video call participants create separate ‘rooms’ for private discussion, before being brought back together into the main call. The meeting’s organisers or hosts can move between breakout rooms and even send messages to all participants.

Breakout rooms – a most-requested feature

Microsoft has taken its time rolling out breakout rooms. This is despite it frequently being used as an excuse for businesses to use competing video calling tools, like Zoom. The feature has been present in those apps for years, so it’s no surprise that it quickly became one of the most-requested features in Teams, even before so many of us moved to remote working. A request for the feature on Microsoft’s Feedback Forum, started two years ago, quickly gained more than 18,000 votes from users.

Breakout sessions will be enabled at the same time as Microsoft plans to drastically increase the number of participants you can have on a call. The limit of active participants is going to be raised from 300 to a massive 1,000, while ‘view-only’ participants in Teams Live Events will be doubled, from 10,000 to 20,000.

And with the introduction of a larger 7×7 video grid, you will be able to see up to 49 people at once on your call, rather than nine on the current 3×3 grid.

Assigning users to breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams
Assigning users to breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams

Set up Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams

In order to use breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams, your tenant administrator will need to enable certain settings to allow users access to the feature. The features that must be enabled are:

  • Scheduling private meetings
  • Meet now in private meeting
  • Channel meeting scheduling
  • Meet now in channels

With these features enabled, users can now use breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams. All users who want to participate must switch to what Microsoft calls the ‘new meeting experience’. To ensure you have access to breakout rooms, in the Teams app, click your profile image, then ‘Settings’, and ensure ‘Turn on new meeting experience’ is selected. If it wasn’t already selected, you may need to restart Teams before it takes effect.

You can be certain that Teams is set up correctly with the new meeting experience if your meetings open in their own, separate, windows.

Once you’re in a meeting, it’s easy for meeting organisers to create breakout rooms. Look next to the ‘raise hand’ icon and you’ll see a new icon for breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams. Note that participants in the meeting who aren’t meeting organisers won’t see the option. Also note that you can only create breakout rooms on the desktop Teams app – it’s not yet possible to do from an iOS or Android mobile or tablet device.

Starting a Breakout Session in Microsoft Teams
Starting a Breakout Session in Microsoft Teams

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Introducing the New Yammer

Table Of Contents
  1. New Yammer, new features
  2. Microsoft committed to Yammer
  3. Gain insight on what's next for Microsoft 365 – Direct to your Inbox

A new-look Yammer with some useful new features is rolling out now. CompanyNet’s subject matter expert James Mackerness takes a look at what’s new.

The long-awaited new user experience for Yammer is rolling out worldwide right now. It’s the same Yammer functionality you already know and love, but with a fresh coat of paint to bring it up to a modern standard.

New Yammer, new features

Composing a message in the new Yammer

It brings a couple of changes that bring it into line with the ‘best practice’ role that Yammer should have in your organisation:

  • It’s cleaner and slicker, with praise, announcements, polls, and Q&A posts all looking visually distinct.
  • Posts can be pinned, and there’s also a new AI-based discovery feed which should help with engagement.
  • Groups have been renamed to Communities, and are now pinnable by each user.

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Migrating data to Office 365 – your options

Table Of Contents
  1. Leveraging Office 365 Cloud Storage
  2. Big improvements in Office 365 migration capabilities
  3. Migration as part of the SharePoint Admin Centre
  4. Migration Manager
  5. Mover
  6. SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT)
  7. Planning migrations

As CompanyNet’s migration subject matter expert Stuart McLaughlin explains, there are now more options than ever for migrating your data to Office 365.

Leveraging Office 365 Cloud Storage

For companies who are adopting Microsoft Office 365, one of the typical activities is to migrate their ‘on premise’ data from local file stores to the cloud.

Office 365 provides a large volume of storage as part of the subscription.  This is currently 1TB (as a minimum) for SharePoint Online in addition to licensed user’s OneDrive allocation.

Reducing the cost of ownership by removing file share infrastructure or additional cloud storage subscriptions is a key benefit.  Other benefits can be realised however, whether improving collaboration and secure sharing with third parties, or using the security and compliance features for information management and oversight.

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What’s New in Office 365 – August 2020

Find out what’s new and changing across SharePoint, OneDrive and the rest of Office 365 in August 2020. This month Microsoft are introducing an ‘evolution’ of SharePoint lists – Microsoft Lists – which offers a fantastic new way to organise and visualise lists. We also look at two upcoming product retirements – Skype for Business …

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Default page templates in SharePoint Online

SharePoint site owners will be able to set a default page template for editors adding new and content to a site. They’ll also be able to edit and delete templates from the Template Picker, rather than having to navigate to the templates folder for these actions. Why does this change matter? If you’re already using …

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Move a shared file on OneDrive

You’ll soon have the option to easily continue sharing files when you move them within or between OneDrive and SharePoint.

Reorganise without worrying about previously shared links

Move previously-shared files in OneDrive

Moving and reorganising files is a normal occurrence as we work and projects evolve over time, and we find better ways of organising our files.

Sharing files within Office 365 is helps prevent duplicates and different versions of the same file floating around. Until now, moving files would typically break the existing share links.

Soon you will have the option to easily re-share files with your colleagues by simply clicking a check-box when you move your files. They will receive the updated link with the same permissions they previously had.

This feature will be rolling out from mid-August 2020 and is expected to be completely rolled out by the end of September 2020.

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Retirement of SharePoint 2010 workflows: Don’t panic!

On 6 July 2020, Microsoft announced the retirement of SharePoint 2010 Workflows within Office 365. This is part of Microsoft’s drive towards encouraging use of Power Automate, part of the Microsoft Power Platform, which lets you connect Microsoft 365 services together (as well as many popular third-party services).

So what does this mean for people still using SharePoint 2010 workflows? Well, from 1 August 2020, no newly-created tenants will have SharePoint 2010 workflows switched on. So, if you had been planning to move any SharePoint 2010 workflows to a new tenant, as of now that won’t be possible.

Clock ticking on SharePoint 2010 workflows

For those who already have SharePoint 2010 workflows created within an existing tenant, you have until 1 November 2020 to recreate these workflows within Power Automate.

From the start of November, Microsoft will begin to remove the ability to run or create new SharePoint 2010 workflows. This suggests that, while you can’t run the existing workflows, they will still be accessible. Exactly for how long, though, we don’t know.

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