Managing access to other organisations
With Microsoft 365 many of us are collaborating via guest access to many tenants owned by clients, partners, communities or even family. Some of these will be following best practice and implementing additional security controls such as MFA. So what happens when you get a new phone or new authentication app and need to change all of those tenants to look at a new authenticator app? You may… Continue Reading Alan Eardley’s...
Start to build good habits
I went for a walk last weekend. A very long walk. As I sit here aching from the hills I climbed I look back on that walk and I think about what I achieved: Exercise – As well as a virtual commute around the local park for 30 mins every morning, I like to feel like I’ve pushed myself by walking up and down a lot of hills at the weekendRelaxation – I find walking in fields and woods and along… Continue Reading...
Managing Teams – Movers and Leavers
Whenever someone leaves an organisation or changes roles, the permissions of their user account should be checked to ensure that No Teams are left without an owner (every Team should really have two owners)Their access to Teams they no longer need access to is revoked. There are many ways to do this but most organisations will consider this when the need arises. I have published a… Continue Reading Alan Eardley’s Article...
How to respond to meeting requests
I organise a fair number of meetings and I am invited to a lot more meetings. I do have a Power Automate Flow in place to automatically respond based on whether I am available and whether there is an agenda (Link), however, most other people do not. This post is intended to help people understand what response they should provide. As a meeting organiser I identify people who “must”… Continue Reading Alan...
Configuration Settings for Sharing in Microsoft 365
The ability to share content rather than send copies of content is one of the main benefits of Office 365. There are many settings that need to be configured this ability and they are distributed through multiple interfaces. This article documents the settings and their locations. It is fair to say that these settings would be much easier to manage if they were all in one location, but… Continue Reading Alan...
Daily and Weekly Ceremonies for Productivity
I have been speaking at conferences on the benefits of daily and weekly ceremonies to help with building habits to increase productivity. I did blog about this very briefly a while back but this blog is expanding on the purpose and benefit of the ceremonies that I use to manage my tasks and my time. During one session I did there was a comment that read “Now I understand what you mean by… Continue Reading Alan...
Create a To Do Task from a Teams Message
Oh, how I have been waiting for this! As I successfully get more communications in Teams, unfortunately I pick up more tasks from Teams messages. But as Planner morphs to Tasks, I see more of my To Do tasks in Teams so yet again, I have less reasons to leave Teams. Now to the issue at hand – how do I create a To Do task from a Teams message? Well, actually, it is really… Continue Reading Alan Eardley’s Article on...
Looking Forward to Ignite 2020
First up, let’s get the disappointment out of the way: I’m really disappointed that I can’t meet up with people and network at Ignite. The benefits of speaking to attendees, vendors and Microsoft staff are immeasurable at the in person event. Also, it is far easier to avoid the inevitable distractions of work when you are there. That being said, Microsoft have proven themselves as… Continue Reading Alan...
My Meeting Manifesto
My Invite to You I will expect you to attend my meeting if: I provide you with the knowledge you need to make the meeting a success, which includes:What preparation do you need to complete to contribute to the meeting?What do I expect from you during the meeting?What do I expect from you following the meeting?I provide a clear agenda for the meeting?You do not have an existing meeting at… Continue Reading Alan Eardley’s...
Automating Responses to Meeting Invites
A while back I was involved in a discussion about the need for agendas when accepting meeting invites. The general consensus was that agendas are required to allow the attendees to be able to understand whether they can commit to the expected time commitments and, if there is a conflict, effectively prioritise meetings. See my blog on the subject for more information. Off the back of the… Continue Reading Alan...
Ceremonies for productive work
At CPS (www.cps.co.uk, @CPS_Solutions), we have been extremely lucky to have been able to adjust our ways of working to accommodate the restrictions that have resulted from the Covid 19 pandemic. As a consultancy with staff located all over England, we have worked and collaborated remotely for many years and so for most staff it has been a seamless transition. All in all, as an… Continue Reading Alan Eardley’s Article on...
Meeting Agendas – Essential or optional?
Last week I threw a question out on Twitter and I guess I hit a nerve! I have long been of the belief that if you want me to attend a meeting then you really need to let me know what you need from me so I can do you the courtesy of fully committing or letting you know that I may not able to meet your expectations. To do this I generally ask for information that sets out the… Continue Reading Alan Eardley’s Article on their...
Meeting Chat in Microsoft Teams
Challenge Within Microsoft Teams meetings, there is a chat capability visible to all attendees (those invited to the meeting) and participants (those added to an instance of a meeting). After a meeting has ended, participants can still see the meeting chat Roles There are three roles in a meeting Organiser The person who creates the meeting. They have full access to edit the… Continue Reading Alan Eardley’s Article...
Thoughts on MBAS 2020
The Microsoft Business Applications Summit is THE conference for Power Platform and Dynamics enthusiasts. This year, like many other conferences it had to adapt to the current global situation and go online. The format that they went for was different from many other conferences and I think it worked exceptionally well! Each session was 30 minutes long, and included 5 minutes to address… Continue Reading Alan...
Carry out a Quick Poll in Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is being used for a lot of meetings at the moment and depending on the number of attendees there are a few features that may be missing or not obvious to use. Following on from a thread on a community forum I wanted to share the solution to a couple of features: Raise HandQuick Poll Raise Hand This is a feature that is coming to Microsoft Teams. It is currently in… Continue Reading Alan...
Pre-Requisite Questions for Power Platform
I was with a client this week and we were discussing the Power Platform and identifying potential projects that would be both beneficial to the business and that would demonstrate the power of the platform. Finding the scenarios to automate was not a challenge. The primary challenge that we identified was preparing the organisation and the production tenant so that Power Apps environments… Continue Reading Alan...
Why use the Common Data Service?
Last week I was asked rather late in the day (over dinner the night before actually) to contribute to the introduction to a hackathon at the Scottish Summit on the subject of de-mystifying the Common Data Service. As a subject, it is a fantastic area to talk about, but it is also critically important that it is understood. I had the honour of participating with the other hosts, Lucy Bourne… Continue Reading Alan...
Site Design Deployment Made Easy
Site Designs have made the deployment of repeatable customisation of sites much easier, and in my opinion are the starting point for any SharePoint deployment for communication or collaboration. While the capabilities of Site Designs are well documented and continue to evolve, I see many environments where the deployment of the Site Scripts and Site Designs has been done in a way that… Continue Reading Alan Eardley’s...
Installation of Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways
Microsoft recently launched Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways as a solution that will allow an organisation to provision a learning site into their tenant which can then be used by their employees to learn about Microsoft 365. To quote Microsoft, the solution will provide A fully customizable SharePoint Online communication site – The learning pathways training portal can be customized to… Continue Reading Alan...
End of Year Task Tidy Up
It’s the end of the year, you’re on annual leave to enjoy the holidays, rest, recharge your batteries and then get back to work in January with a tons of energy and enthusiasm, and no outstanding tasks. Wait a minute. That last part! That’s not true, I have a ton of stuff left in To-Do and Planner plans, and those emails I received in the last week, well they haven’t all been dealt… Continue Reading...
Rename a Microsoft Team and the associated SharePoint site
There are many situations where a Teams site and the underlying SharePoint site may need to be renamed: Created in errorOrganisational restructureIntroduction of naming policies This has been a challenging goal to achieve but it is now relatively straightforward when you combine the SharePoint and Teams PowerShell commandlets. Objective Starting with a SharePoint site and Team that… Continue Reading Alan Eardley’s Article...
Ignite 2019 – Summary
This has been my 4th Ignite and I have to say, this year has been the best, not because of the announcements – there are always announcements – but because it has been building on what has been achieved over the last five years. One of my biggest complaints in previous years has been the expected date that the features will roll-out to General Availability as showing me cool things I won’t… Continue Reading...
Ignite 2019 – Day 5
Day 4 concluded with the obligatory celebration at Universal Studios. As if 10,000 steps a day were not enough an additional 10,000 steps and 8 rollercoaster rides were heaped on top of a full-on week. That was not to stop Day 5 being productive! Common Data Model (CDM): All you need to know about CDM Link to recording As the Common Data Model underpins many of the services and… Continue Reading Alan Eardley’s Article on...
Ignite 2019 – Day 4
Extending the new Microsoft Project with the Power Platform Link to recording The second session on Microsoft Project and this one was focused on how to leverage the Power Platform that the product is built on to increase and customise the capabilities of the tool. This is definitely one of the key benefits to moving away from Project Online to Project for the Web. As with… Continue Reading Alan Eardley’s Article on...
Ignite 2019 – Day 3
PL900 Link to exam page On Monday 4th November, Microsoft released new exams including PL900 – Power Platform Fundamentals. As part of Ignite it is possible to take an exam, I figured it would be a good opportunity to take this beta exam. As I booked it in the evening to take it at 07:15, there was no time to revise other than reviewing the syllabus. The exam isn’t massively… Continue Reading Alan...