It has been going on from 2008 and it was the first event of its kind. Over the years I have enjoyed every single event, as there are many live tours of intranets, and you get to hear from many interesting people in the field. Actually, one interview inspired me to work six weeks from Spain some years ago, as my work can be done from any place. By now all of us know that, but at that time I still had to convince my then manager that working from another location would not make any difference to my contacts in China, the USA, Sweden or Brazil. 🙂
Why am I telling you this?
Because there will be a lot of real-life Microsoft365 in Digital Workplace 24 Live, whether it is SharePoint, Teams, Yammer or all of them. And you will see it from the business perspective, not “just” from the functionality perspective that we Microsoft365 geeks usually focus on. 🙂
Which tours to expect?
I do not have the full details for each tour, but you can expect Microsoft365 aspects in at least the following:
Oxfam
Velux who have an Office365 digital workplace. They have a lovely over the top introduction video!
Fidelity
KBC group
UPMC
Duke Energy
HAVI, who had a nice intranet introduction video in my collection, but that has been removed 😦
St. John Ambulance
ING
ZSL – Zoological Society of London
And I expect there will be more but those have not been published on the schedule yet.
Besides, Microsoft folks Morten Dal and Brad Grissom will also be studio guests. And if you need more reasons, this post lists twelve reasons to attend. Why not organize a viewing party for your team or be a Tweeter-in-residence? So, what’s keeping you? You can register here – and did I mention it is free?
Please note: I do freelance work for Digital Workplace Group. I have written this post because I genuinely love the event and would like to spread the word. I have not been been asked to do it, nor am I paid for it.
While I have been trying to adjust to the new vertical rail of apps (and I still do NOT like it) I came across something – which may be in the Roadmap but I have not seen it yet.
A line next to the app icon
Some apps get a vertical line next to them when you are on their landing page, to signify where you are. It is comparable to the line under open apps in your Task bar. I have seen it on Excel, Forms, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word, the Homepage itself and the All apps page.
Homepage
Forms
Word
Nice detail: The All apps icon changes colour when clicked and the Homepage icon turns black at that time – and the other way around.
“All Apps” changes colour when clicked
So, does this mean that this will be applied to all apps? Could that be the reason of the upcoming redesign of the SharePoint landing page – to make room for the app rail? The Lists app landing page appears ready for this, but Outlook, Planner and many more might be in for a redesign.
Other landing pages
I thought that the SharePoint landing page looked slightly different in the last few months, so I compared the image from my earlier SharePoint News posts with the current one, and it appears that the typeface has changed slightly – it is smaller, more condensed and bold. It looks very much like the letter used on the Forms landing page…so my guess is that this will be rolled out further until every app has a landing page like this.
SharePoint News looked like this in 2019SharePoint News looks like this in 2020And this is my Forms landing page in 2020
The “waffle” in Teams
But…there’s more!
When using the “Waffle” from the Teams web app, I noticed that the menu is different than other apps – there’s only limited apps, no documents and look what it says top right…
Over time I have captured the various appearances of the Office365/Microsoft365 Homepage. As you may know, I quite like this page as the page where I start work.
I have made all my updates in a post from 2016, which nobody sees, of course. There is a new version rolling out at the moment and I thought I’d update and republish this post. Please scroll down and get some nostalgic feelings. 🙂
Update August 2020 👇
The new design has finally arrived at my personal tenant, but it is still a bit wobbly (on and off) in my work tenant. In case you think you need to communicate this: a 3-part explanatory popup is part of the rollout, so it should not be too much of a surprise to users.
All icons have moved to a left-hand side rail and are much smaller.
There’s a new Home icon (not sure what that does) and the + icon to create a new document looks a bit different too.
There’s also a new “All Apps icon”. This “floats” on the bottom of the rail, so it is always visible. Screenshots are below as the new WordPress Block Editor does not allow me to add images in a list block. 😦
The app names are no longer displayed, unless you hover over with your mouse, which is OK for me but may be rather daunting for new users.
As I have rather a lot of apps it means I need to scroll down to open some, especially when using my laptop screen.
Apparently the focus is on documents even more, but I do not see that as a major benefit. However, I have always liked the “Recent” and “Pinned” tabs, and so do my colleagues as they tend to lose track of their documents.
Still hoping for badges with the icons telling me if and how many unread messages I have in Outlook, Teams and Yammer – I prefer that over an endless slice-and-dice of documents.
The new Home icon:
Home and Create document icons
The new “All Apps” icon:
It’s the bottom one
Update July 2019 👇
The top part of the page has changed again, and now has more visibility of the + option to create a new document. I personally am not a fan of starting a document from the Office365 landing page. Navigating to the intended OneDrive or SharePoint location makes more sense to me, and is something I teach my users as they frequently complain of “losing documents”. The “Explore all your apps” link under the apps has been replaced by “All apps” next to the apps which makes sense. And…the “Good day” message is back! Which I know is calculated and nothing personal, but I like it.
Start a new document and the link to all apps are the changes for July 2019.
The bottom part of the page has not changed.
Update February 2019 👇
The new icons have arrived! The “Good morning” message has disappeared, which is a pity, especially as the words “Apps” does not really add much to the party. And the Search bar is now in the top middle. I think this is the reason that the company logo has moved from this position to the left some months ago. It breaks up the nice colour gradient of my pencils though 😦
The bottom part has not changed. I am still looking for non-document updates, such as emails or notifications from Teams or Yammer.
Please scroll down for older versions of the Office365 landing page.
Top part of the Office365 Homepage as per 23-02-2019. New icons and the search bar is top middle.The bottom part has not really changed with the changes in Feb 2019.
Update February 2018 👇
Microsoft has recently made some changes to the Office365 Homepage. You know you will never have a dull moment when you subscribe!
The landing page now looks like the screenshots below. Compared to the last version, it has more white space and the icons are less bulky and coloured (I hope you have not created custom icons in white 🙂 )
It is more gentle on the eyes than the previous design, although that may also have been my own choice of theme.
The profile photo is also better integrated into the design, and my name is displayed.
The new Office365 Homepage top part as from end 2017.
It now shows more than just “recent” documents, and it shows folders in OneDrive and your Frequent and Followed sites, meaning you will be able to access your favourite sites from this page. This means it is becoming more relevant as the landing page.
The new Office365 Homepage bottom part as from end 2017.
In my original post below you will find screenshots of the two most recent versions, as well as what I would like to see next.
Original post from June 2016 👇
Yesterday I logged in to my Office365 and I immediately thought : “Wow, that looks nice”. It is not often that I am struck by a beautiful page, so I decided to write about it.
This is the top of the page:
And this is the bottom of the page. You can decide to show more documents.
First good impressions:
The small top bar is much larger now and that really looks good. It must be my Raspberry theme, although it also looks cool with Cats 🙂
The welcome message is nice, although I know it is calculated from my time zone and my account. Still, it looks vibrant and cheerful.
Your most recent documents are displayed underneath.
You immediately see you can install software. On iPad, you can download Office apps.
This is the new Office365 Homepage on iPad
What would I like to see as improvements?
It would be nice if you could also search for other things than documents. I am trying to wean myself (and my colleagues) of documents where possible, and this does not help.
That also goes for the recent documents underneath the apps. I would like to see my unread email, or my unread Yammer messages, or the Tasks due today, as well as documents. If Office365 is going to be my Digital Workplace, it should display more than just documents.
A little badge on each app to show the number of unread messages, or new tasks, or something like that, would also be nice!
The coloured bar overlaps the profile picture a little, so that needs some tweaking.
And this is the page as it used to look (on a different tenant) or still looks, if you are not on First Release.
The “old” Homepage
All in all, I quite like this change and I think it can be made even better!
The other day I showed the Net Promoter Score question during a Forms webinar, told my audience how it worked and that “I honestly do not know if it is very useful” (as I hate it when I get an NPS question myself and I think I am not alone).
Immediately three people jumped in to say that it was very useful for student and intern evaluations and based on scientific evidence and that it has great predictive value. They were very interested in the results and were impressed with the fact that the calculation is built-in in Forms so you get the score without having to do any work.
So, from now on I will treat the NPS question option with a little more respect! 🙂
An example of an NPS score (and not a good one)
Closed form on a SharePoint page
By accident I recently opened an old SharePoint News item in which we advertised a (now expired) series of webinars. I had embedded the Form to make it easy for people to enroll.
To my delighted surprise I saw the “this poll is closed” message from the Form displayed on the page. Neat!
Pretty neat, so people do not submit their entry in vain.
That text comes from the message that you can enter when you uncheck the box “Accept responses”, in Settings.
Useful extra option for informing your audience. This message will also be displayed if people click the link to the Form.
A new Forms landing page!
I knew that the Forms top bar would be replaced by the Office365 bar, but there have been more changes. Let me show you:
The top part of the new Forms landing page
The following changes have been made:
There’s a new, smaller, button to create a new Form (1). If you click the arrow, you can also create a new Quiz.
New title font.
The cards are landscape now, and smaller.
You land on “Recent Forms” which includes Forms that have been shared with you. This is quite nice as those are now easier to reach and they display the number of answers on the card.
Clicking the … on the card does NOT allow you to copy or delete the Form, you can only Pin it or remove it from this page.
You can Pin forms you want to keep on top; they will show in the Pinned Tab. Interestingly, the empty Pinned page says: “No pinned Office documents”. I know a Form is a document but it is just strange. I still do not know why my Forms are not in my OneDrive, if they are documents!
You have the option to show Forms in Tiles (cards) or in a list.
At the bottom right, just behind that “Feedback/Need Help” buttons there’s a link to All My Forms (2), which shows all your Forms.
If you scroll down, you will see a list of Groups with the number of Forms, if you have any.
The bottom part of the new landing page
If you click on “All My Forms” you will get to a page where you can click the … (which is now next to the title, instead of top right on the card) where you can Open in Browser, Move, Copy or Delete your Form. Next to that you will see the Deleted Forms tab.
The “My Forms” page
The Forms themselves have not changed – you will see the green Forms bar when you open or create a Form, and Theme, Sharing or Settings are still what they were.
But the behaviour has changed – Forms no longer opens in a new window from your Office365 landing page. I do not like that, I prefer to have my Office365 landing page always available.
Other than that, I am quite happy with these changes, especially the integration with Shared Forms. I was grumbling when I saw it at work, though, as I had just renewed my Forms webinar deck the day before and now I have to do it again!!! 😭
Did you know you can Protect a document in SharePoint and OneDrive from being accidentally altered or overwritten? If that has been enabled you will need to take conscious action to edit the document. Very useful for Excel files, especially when “auto-save” is on! This has been around for a few months. Review mode is a relatively new option in SharePoint, allowing people to only make Comments in your documents, and not change the original text. Together they can be a good way to prevent accidents.
I guess you know me by now: I had to find out how these things work, also related to the permissions you have in the site.
How to protect a document
If you protect a document, you protect it against accidental changes. Go to the document, click File > Info and then you can select “Protect document”
This is where you protect a document. The yellow bar signifies it is protected.
When you open a protected document, you see this:
When you open the document, you will get a message.
When you want to add comments or edit the file, click on OK and then “Viewing” and you will see these options:
Now you can add comments or edit
How to share a document in review mode
When you want to allow people to give feedback, but as comments only, you can share in review mode. Select the document, click Share and then click on the “People you specify can edit” link on top. This will give you the advanced sharing options. Make sure the “Open in review mode only” is toggled (as in screenshot) and click “Apply”.
Here’s how you allow comments only
This option is only available if you allow editing. Recipients can only add comments, and can not edit the text itself, so this will keep your original text intact. This is especially helpful when many people may want to add feedback. If everyone is allowed to edit the original text, you may end up with something incomprehensible. When you write the message to the recipient, the sharing popup will show a little icon next to the “People you specify can edit” link.
This little icon will tell you that you share as “review only”
Test programme
In one SharePoint document library I created 4 new documents from the New button:
Plain document as is, shared as is
Document with protection, shared as is
Plain document, shared in Review mode
Document with protection and Review mode
I did that for each of the following apps, both online and desktop:
Word
Excel
PowerPoint
OneNote
I shared the documents with each of the following permissions:
Owner
Member (can edit)
Visitor (can read)
Someone with no access to the site
Afterwards, I repeated relevant experiments with documents in my OneDrive.
What do you need to know?
You can only protect individual documents, not a complete document library.
You can not protect OneNote documents, in desktop nor online nor that half-baked OneNote for Windows 10.
In the desktop apps you can protect Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents against overwriting. (You can also use other ways of protection, but that is out-of-scope for now)
In the online apps you can only protect Word and Excel, but not PowerPoint.
You can protect Word and Excel files in SharePoint and OneDrive.
You can only send with “review-only” in Word, not in Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote (I hope that will change).
You can only send with “review-only” when you share with “people you specify” or “people in [tenant] with the link”.
You can use “review-only” in Word in SharePoint and OneDrive.
When you share the document from SharePoint with an external person who has no access to the site, they receive a code via mail as soon as they try to open the document. Not sure if that is a tenant setting, but I thought I’d mention it.
How does a Word-document open, and which options do you have when you share the document with or without protection, with our without “review-only” and with people with various roles in your SharePoint site? See the table below. The first word is the option that the document opens with.
Full Control
Edit
Read
No access
Plain document
Editing
Editing
Editing
Editing
Protected document
Viewing
Viewing
Viewing
Viewing
Plain document “review-only”
Editing
Editing
Reviewing, can view, editing greyed out
Reviewing, can view, editing greyed out
Protected document “review-only”
Viewing
Viewing
Viewing, can review, editing greyed out
Viewing, can review, editing greyed out
Various sharing options – the first word in the cells shows the “landing” option.
What do I think?
Protecting a document can be a good way to avoid accidental changes, as it opens the document consistently in “Viewing” mode, regardless of your own role in a SharePoint site. 👍 It also works on OneDrive. 👍 It is not available for PowerPoint Online. 👎 It is per document only, while per document library might be nice as well.
The “Review Only” mode is disappointing as you can only use it on Word files. 👎 Additionally it allows site users with Full Control and Edit permissions to edit the original text, even if you ask for comments only. 👎 However, this is a useful option for sharing with people who have no access or who can only Read in your site, as they will have no permissions to Edit the original text. 👍 It is also useful for sharing files on your OneDrive as everyone will be unable to edit the original text. 👍
I hope there will be some developments in both functionalities, so it can be used with more file types and “people with existing access”.
Are you using this in your organization? Do you have any additional tips or lessons to share?
Forms may not be as hip as Teams at the moment, but it sure is a cool tool, sometimes even cooler than I thought!
Something relatively new is the option to add a Poll in an email. It is a nice option to quickly add a Choice question to your message. There is some support information out there but let me show you the full picture.
1. Create and send
When you open a new email and click on the … on the bottom of the mail (in the toolbar) you will see an option called “Poll”.
Click on the bottom of the new mail for the option to insert a poll
Click that and you will get a sidepane with a Choice question.
Enter your question and answer
Enter question and response options and click “Insert Poll into email”.
The poll will be inserted in the mail; the title of your question will be the subject line of your email (you can change that) and in the email body and you are added in the cc. If you change the name of the poll before you send it updates in both places! 💪
This is the email; you will get title and the link to the poll, but you can add explanatory text.
You can now type the rest of your mail and send it to your audience.
TIP: If you want to have that poll option always available in your toolbar just click the gear wheel top right > View all Outlook settings > Email > Customise actions and then scroll down to Toolbar. Check the Poll box and Save.
How to make the Poll-icon always visible at the bottom of your mails
2. Receive
So what happens when you receive an email? The question will be displayed on top of the mail, with the options visible. This makes it easy to respond, but if you have many options in your answer, you will need to scroll to see the rest of the email.
You can see all options and vote immediately
When you have cast your vote, you will immediately see the result. You do not have to reply as your vote has been saved.
You can see if you have picked a day that others selected as well
If you happen to click the “View/vote in browser” link you will be taken to the Form in its regular format.
3. View results in email
As an owner, you can view the results from that mail. That’s why you are in the CC!
4. View results in Forms
The sender of the email is the owner of the Form, and when they go to their Forms page, they will see the Form with a poll-icon to distinguish it from a regular Form.
You can see this is an in-email poll by the poll icon
If you open it, you will see a message that you can not edit the poll.
Apparently this is called a Quick Poll and it is read-only
Limitations
You can only add one question
You can only add a Choice-type question
You can not edit the Form on your Forms page
Everyone sees the results immediately – that may be good or bad, just be aware.
People may forget to scroll down to see the rest of the mail 😁
According to the support information, this should not work well with people outside your organization, but it worked perfectly well between my Microsoft365 and private Outlook or Gmail accounts.
I can imagine this could be a good option for a quick question, without having to go and create a complete Form with all the trimmings.
Most of all, I like the integration of Forms and Outlook. It is smooth, clever and elegant.
It is also available in the Outlook desktop app but I am no fan of that.
Have you used it yet? And have you encountered a scenario where it did not work with “externals”? Let me know!
Recently I “produced” my first Live Event in Teams: a symposium with the project presentations of three of our students. The organisation expected around 100 attendees, so I tried to push them towards the regular Teams Meeting with some extra control measures (see my earlier post). But they really liked the moderated Q&A, so a Live Event it had to be. As I need to learn to work with this anyway, I suggested to be the producer, so I could create procedures and scripts so they know how to do this themselves afterwards.
How a Live Event works
Scheduling a Live Event is easy, however I find being a producer quite some work. Tracy’s video makes it all appear fairly simple, but to be honest, I have been struggling a bit with this tool and needed a number of tests to get to grips with it. Perhaps it was our complex setup, perhaps I need more practice.
What have I learned?
1. Give your event a good title
When your audience is entering the event, and the event has not started, all they see is the title of the meeting. Make it a clear one.
2. The producer should just produce
Although you can be producer AND presenter, I would advise against mixing these roles unless you are an experienced one-person-show. If there is a welcome or break slide to be shared, leave it to someone else. When you (producer) share content or your desktop you do not see your dashboard, which makes it hard to do your work as a producer. And when you go back forgetting to stop sharing you will end up with a very annoying caleidoscope effect. If you do stop sharing there will be an annoying message that the Event will continue soon. You can not win.
I am sure an experienced producer/presenter can avoid this but I still do not know how – I can share a presentation but sooner or later this shows.
3. Keep the # of presenters to a minimum
When I did my first Live Event, a number of people were interested to see how it worked so I added them as a presenter. That provided some challenges as I could not see them all on my 13″ laptop screen, hence I could not select their video to show. Additionally, during one of the breaks one of the “curious extra’s” decided to move to another room, accidentally sharing her screen. 😱 She did not have her earbuds in, nor was she looking at the chat, so we could not warn her that her living room was visible for all to see. 😉
The presenters are shown bottom right and on a smaller screen, you can not see them all, and therefore you can not select their video!
4. Schedule a separate Live Event as a test run
As this was new to everyone we decided to do a test-run a few days before the meeting. You need to create a new Event for that, as you can only “use” a Live Event once.
5. Have as few transitions as possible
Transitions are a bit of a logistical nightmare. I had expected that when the next presenter shares their screen, that would pop up in the Queue, so I could add the speaker’s video and set it all Live at the right moment. But it does not happen that way – presenters generally override their predecessor’s screen during the event, causing a need for the producer to frantically switch to the correct presenter. Or, they stopped presenting and then their face filled the screen. So try to limit the number of transitions to keep your producer’s sanity 😉
6. Test starts, stops and transitions
We really needed this as presenters had no clue as to what to expect. So we went through the programme of welcome talk, first speaker, etc. People could practice how to share their screen, when to stop, how transitions worked, what they had to look out for, what not to do, etc.
7. Invite an attendee to ask questions
It helps to have an attendee in the test run to ask a few questions, so new presenters can learn how to handle the Q&A’s.
8. Use “desktop” rather than “content” for sharing (depending on setup)
We found that the following combination resulted in “flickering tabs” which is a major distraction:
Using Google Chrome as a browser
Using PowerPoint Online for your presentation
Selecting “content” rather than “desktop” for sharing
So: ask people to present with PowerPoint desktop app (if they have that) or ask them to share their desktop. Or use Microsoft Edge, of course.😁
9. Create a script
It may be good to have a timetable with who does what when and the timing of the breaks. It was good for the presenters but also for the producer, as I could then check when I needed focus and when I could relax a bit.
10. The “crew” needs the Teams Desktop App
One of the presenters logged into the test meeting via the web app and she entered the meeting as an attendee. Fortunately all our employees now have the Teams desktop app so all of us can produce or present Live Events (despite the fact that 90% of my colleagues have an F3 license, which is web + mobile apps only).
11. Make sure the producer has a large screen or monitor
As mentioned in item 3, I needed a larger screen to see all presenters, but also to see the Live result better. If your screen is too small, you will get prompts to expand your screen. Fortunately, I have an extra 23″ monitor.
Suggestion to change my screen.
12. Teach presenters how to unmute
EVERY presenter forgot to unmute themselves, so I had to jump in and ask them to unmute. 🙁 It was nerves, I get that, but I did not like having to intervene. However, I later heard people actually appreciated me jumping in, as it showed that someone was noticing, saving a lot of questions in the Q&A.
13. Avoid having an audience in the same room as the presenters
Our students really wanted to have some family in the room, so they would not have to talk into a void, but it posed extra issues:
Due to the delay that a Live Event has (about 1 minute) in image and sounds it was impossible to project the Live Event in the room with the presenters.
Therefore we needed an extra person to click through the presentations from a separate laptop in the room. We could perhaps have duplicated the laptop screen but it would have to be changed between speakers and I know that some situations/laptops do not support duplication.
I was producing from home, and I did not exactly know what tech was available in the convention room, which made it difficult to explain to the presenters what to do in the room (which was not my responsibility anyway – that was producing this Live Event)
Presenters got easily distracted by the audience so the MC’s had to make sure everyone was back at their laptops in time for the next presentation – while this will also happen in a physical-only situation it is less annoying there as everyone can clearly see what is going on. People online do not see that.
Your laptop’s microphone is not good enough in this situation – it usually sounds rather tinny and will pick up sounds from the surroundings and that can cause an annoying reverb – so your producer must mute you. Presenters, use a headset and keep it plugged into your computer at all times!
The presenters also had to find a good position in the room with a good background, which needed time during set-up.
Questions from the room could not be heard and needed repeating by the MC, which they sometimes forgot. Which led to Q&A’s.
14. Learn basic sign language
This may seem silly, but as everything the presenters and producers say when you are Live is audible for everyone online, you can not really talk about things, and not everyone was watching chat all the time. So sometimes I wished I know sign language to tell people “get ready to present the break slide” or “unmute”.
15. Producer, mute yourself when going live
Do not say “Here goes” or something similar when you Go Live, because it will be recorded in the video. Guess how I know this? 😂
16. Download the attendance report during or immediately after closing the event
When someone from the “crew” enters the Event after it has closed, it will overwrite the attendance report. By the way, the official word is “Attendee engagement report”.
17. The “crew” can only view the recording from the web app, even when they use the Attendee link
If they click the Attendee link and select the desktop app, they go into the “back end” of the meeting, overwriting the attendance report. See item 15.
18. The video lives in Azure, not in Stream
Do not look for the video in Stream – it is not there. You can download it from the meeting information and upload to Stream if you want to make it available for longer term. (It is available on Azure for 180 days)
19. You can produce and present with the F3 license, but not organize.
OK, this is not exactly a lesson from my event, but I just found this out and I thought I’d warn you.
Last week I “produced” my first Live Event in Teams: a symposium with the theses of three of our students, with two MC’s in charge of welcome, introductions, Q&A’s and a closing message.
Until now these events have always been organized as a face-to-face event in one of our larger convention rooms, with about 100 colleagues and family and friends of the students. This generally involves a 10-minute refreshment break after each speaker while the next speaker makes preparations.
However, in the Corona universe, even our largest convention room can hold only 18 people, so our organizers had to move to an online solution. The convention room was used for the MC’s, students and 4 members of family each, while other people would watch the Live Event.
Having a physical room AND a digital place provided some challenges with the programme. In a physical room, you know where you are, you see the people involved so you know you are in the right place. You can talk to others, get a coffee or tea, or watch the preparations. In a Live Event, you enter a sort of void, hoping you are on the right screen in the right meeting, and you have no option to ask anyone if this is the symposium.
So, we decided on starting the Live Event 5 minutes early with a slide showing the programme. That way people would know they were in the right event and could see which speaker would be on when.
We used the same slide before and during the meeting but I think you can do more. This can also be a nice way to brand your event.
Welcome slide
You use this to welcome people in the meeting well before it starts. Make sure you post the name of the meeting, the programme, perhaps how to handle the Q&A and anything else that is relevant. You may even rotate two slides or use an animation to inform people their screen is not frozen 😄
Example of a welcome slideYou could alternate the programme with this speakers’ slide
Break slide
A 10-minute break can be quite a long time for an online audience, so you may want to share a slide with some of the conclusions of the earlier presentation, and a preview of what is coming.
Example of a slide for the break, showing the upcoming presentations
Repeat for each break, so in this case the 2nd break slide would look like this:
The 2nd break slide
End slide
You can use this to inform the audience of contact details, of the next symposium, and how they can access the presentations, as “sharing a file” is not available in Live Event. (Of course you can share a link via the Q&A if the presentations are online for everyone)
You could use this slide during the closing remarks and/or while attendees are leaving
Presenter background
This week I also saw the option to upload your own background image to Teams easily and that can help with a consistent look-and-feel of your event. You can upload it when you select a background. It will be added to the bottom of the pane. I have already seen some “company backgrounds” when talking to other people.
Here’s where you add a new background
Please take note of the specifications:
Max 2048 * 2048 px
Min 360 * 360 px
.jpg, .bmp or .png
Aspect ratio > 4
Please note that your image will appear reversed for you (mirrored) but for others it will look OK.
Use a patterned background (a photo or another image) for the best results – a plain colour block does strange things to your hair 🙂
The text will appear in mirror image for yourself, but OK for others.
Conclusion
Making use of programme slides during a Live Event is nice for your online audience. It also gives you an opportunity to brand your event. Providing branded background slides for the speakers can also help make your event look streamlined, and it saves a fuss checking out your physical background.
It is fairly easy – I have used the standard Atlas theme in PowerPoint as a quick option, but you can also have things professionally designed of course. (That will look much better! 😁 )
Just curious – are you “branding” your Live Events currently? I would be interested to learn what you do and how it works out. Please let me know in the comments!
We always think very carefully if and how we communicate changes to our Microsoft365 environment. Generally, changes that affect all users, and may lead to questions or confusion, will be posted on the intranet. We do this for about 2 or 3 changes a year. Think about “the new Outlook on the web” last summer, and the new design of the SharePoint homepage earlier this year. Changes with a lesser impact are communicated through our dedicated Yammer group for people who take an interest, and during webinars. Additionally we regularly revise our training and webinar materials.
So, we were a tad worried when we found that some new functionality that had been in our tenant, and had been communicated, suddenly disappeared. In one case we found out that the functionality had been retracted, but we have no clue about the others.
Perhaps one of my readers can help?
1. The SharePoint start page
A few months ago we published an article on the intranet that there would be a new SharePoint start page. The column on the left hand side would be removed and some of the info there would move to below the site cards. We prepared the communication and an explanatory screenshot. When we could finally confirm that also our non-targeted release users had it, we published the article.
Around March and the start of the Corona-crisis, I noticed that my SharePoint start page had reverted back to the old setup, both at work and in my own tenant. I checked the Roadmap, the tenant Message Center, the internet, but nothing came up.
Only half May I found out that I had missed this article, which has a small paragraph on this topic.
As the article above is quite long, this is the message.
Well, thanks for that. And I could not find the #192001 in my Message center, nor in that from my work tenant. 😦
2. Save documents for later in SharePoint
I was already aware of the Save for Later options in SharePoint News, but I was happily surprised to find that this function would also be available for regular documents in SharePoint sites. I saw it a few months ago, immediately saved a few documents and told our Yammer group.
I still have them saved on my SharePoint page. But the functionality is gone in both my private and my work tenant!
I have not imagined it, as this SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop from November 2019 shows. It points to a Roadmap #49095 which mentions the functionality for OneDrive…with a launch date of Q4, 2020.
What has happened in the mean time? What retraction or delay announcement have I missed?
BTW, this blog shows the Saved for later files on the new SharePoint home page.
3. Files tab in Outlook
Some time ago, my colleague and I noticed a paperclip icon in the bottom left of our Outlook-on-the-web app.
The paperclip
When clicked, it would give you a page with all attachments in your mailbox. Very convenient for cleaning up! However, it has not been seen for several months.
The files tab in Outlook is back! I just received a comment from Eric (see below) and I immediately checked. I wish I could sort them on file size, but it is already a big plus that I can see how many files live in my Outlook!
Does anyone know?
You know I like to play the detective, but I could not find the answers this time 😉
Now that the initial shock of working from home, and learning to work with Microsoft365, has been absorbed, I notice that my colleagues are quickly trying to get their work done “with the new tools”.
My organization is also a research and education institute for nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists and other therapists, so we have a lot of research, knowledge sharing and training going on in our core business.
Suddenly I am being called frequently by colleagues who are used to organize face-to-face events, but want to set up a webinar now.
For the larger and more formal events we advise Live Events (which I am currently trying to get proficient in), but for smaller and less formal events a regular Teams Meeting can be used as well.
My own experience
My colleague and I are still giving webinars on the various aspects of Teams almost every week, using a Teams Meeting.
These take an hour, have up to 10 people, can also be taken in the evenings, and we make sure everyone can ask their questions. They fill up rather quickly!
We generally do a personal introduction round for all, then present a few explanatory slides, give a demo, recap what we have shown, and ask for final questions.
We have found that people like to sign up, because not only does it give them an opportunity to learn new things, brush up their skills, or allows them to ask their questions, but also because they like to connect with their colleagues, who they have not seen for more than two months by now. So it is fulfilling a social need, too!
For those situations a regular Teams Meeting does the work, so here’s how to organize that.
1. Create a Form to collect submissions
We have a professional tool available for the larger and more complicated events, but for smaller and impromptu webinars you can use a Form.
Just create one and share it with a colleague (as a back-up).
If you have internal attendees only, collect names and emails automatically.
For internal purposes, this is the quickest option
If you have externals joining too, please make sure you use the setting “Anyone with the link can respond” and ask for (at least) their email address.
This is the option if you also have externals joining. Remember to add a field to collect the email address!
2. Communicate your event in the regular way
If you are sending emails, publishing on internet or intranet, you can add the link to the Form (or to the formal system) to collect responses.
If you are using printed materials (wall posters, flyers) you can add the QR code to the Form.
The Form will give you a spreadsheet with email addresses.
3. Schedule the Teams meeting
You can do this from Outlook or from Teams.
If you want to send the standard invitation to everyone, you’d better use Outlook as I have found this works better with contact persons, email distribution lists or Excel files with email addresses. Also, if you want to hide people’s email addresses, use Outlook.
You can add an attachment with meeting instructions – I liked this one for external users. How to join a Teams Meeting – as a guest
If you want to use another way of communication (e.g. an email with instructions and some more information), you can best use Teams, invite your presenters only and then add the link to the meeting to the rest of the information.
Just hover over the Join-text, rightclick and Copy Link to get the link to the meeting.
This post will tell you more on the pros and cons of Teams or Outlook when scheduling.
For a presentation for a large audience including external attendees I would suggest to add a lobby for externals, and make sure everyone except the presenter(s) enters the meeting as an attendee.
Arrange the lobby and presenter settings as explained in my earlier post.
5. Send links and instructions
If you have used Outlook, you will have done this already, but in case you want to send a different email than the standard invitation, you can add the link as grabbed under 3 and add instructions. For internals it may not be necessary (although it may not hurt) and for externals you can use something like these: a link or as a PDF: How to join a Teams Meeting – as a guest
6. Prepare and rehearse
In most cases presenters will share a PowerPoint presentation, and it is a good idea to make a PDF version as a handout. We usually share these via the chat during the webinar. Be aware that external attendees can not access the chat when they have logged off, so tell them when you are sharing it.
If presenters are giving a web demo, it helps to have a script, so they know what they are going to show. They should keep the script visible.
Making screenshots of the screens they plan to show (in case the internet or wifi drops, or the website is suddenly unavailable) is always a good idea.
It is always a good idea to practice a presentation a few times, but if the presenter is new to Teams it is essential that (s)he also does a “technical” test run to find out how to
share a screen or a presentation and switch between them
blur or change backgrounds
manage attendees
use the chat and the “raise hand” option
include system sounds like the sound from video’s, etc.
Make sure you check the “include system audio” box when you want to play a video or other sound.
If you have externals joining, invite one or two along for the test to see if it all works for them.
On the day of the event, the presenter clicks the link to the meeting well before time.
The Teams app has a Test call option, to check if audio has been set up correctly. Type /testcall in the Command bar and you will be taken to that old test call we know and ❤ from Skype. You will even receive a report!
So happy to have that Test call option back! You can do this from anywhere in Teams.
Of course the presenters have also turned off all kinds of sounds and on-screen notifications. You don’t want to know the email previews I have seen arriving while people were presenting. 😜
Please also ask presenters to check their hair, clothes and background before people enter the meeting. Of course they can blur or select a background, but it helps if they know they are not sitting in front of that flipover with the upcoming reorganisation or divestiture written out.
Ask them to close all tabs and programmes that they do not need today, so they do not run the risk of accidentally sharing something confidential or embarrassing.
When the webinar starts, organizer or presenter gives everyone access from the lobby.
Once everyone is in, you or the presenter may want to instruct attendees on using the mute buttons and the chat and the “raise hand” function, if you are not using that Help background.
Tell people when you share the handout.
The organizer may want to download the attendance report during the webinar.
Now that the initial shock of working from home, and learning to work with Microsoft365, has been absorbed, I notice that my colleagues are quickly trying to get their work done “with the new tools”.
