Archive: November/December 2016
New and Improved Features for Office 365
Learn more about Microsoft Office 365 features that are being added this year, and get links to additional content to help you take advantage of these improvements and additions.
Updates: December 2016
Updates to the OneNote Class Notebook Add-In — Read/Unread Indicators in Review Student Work and More
December 14, 2016 - Since the school year started, we’ve been making improvements to the Class Notebook add-in for OneNote on the desktop. Here is a summary of the highlights—as well as details for the update releasing today. To update your OneNote Class Notebook add-in, just click the Update button on your toolbar to download and install the latest version. If you’ve never installed the Class Notebook add-in, you can get it from the OneNote Class Notebook website.
Improvements to Review Student Work
The most exciting new feature is being released today. Teachers now can quickly and easily see updates made by students in the Review Student Work pane.
Some common requests from teachers have been to:
- Easily see when students have started their work in a distributed page or assignment.
- Quickly see which pages you, the teacher, have already reviewed.
- See if a student added any new content after a teacher has already reviewed or graded a page.
These requests are all now possible with the new OneNote Class Notebook add-in (version 1.4.5.0) and use the familiar bold convention to denote the unread status.
Read/unread support in the Review Student Work pane.
Improvements to Notebook and Student Mapping
- Notebook mapping—If your notebook name and LMS/SIS course name match, the Class Notebook add-in will automatically map the two together.
- Student mapping—If the format of your students is <LASTNAME>, <FIRSTNAME>, the student names will be automatically mapped.
Visio is Coming to the Web and iOS
December 8, 2016 - Visio has been a trusted tool in diagramming for more than a decade. And we know its visual communication in the form of diagrams will become more powerful when anyone in the company can consume—regardless of their location or device. So, today we’re excited to announce Visio Viewer for iPad and Visio Online Preview, enabling users to share or access diagrams from nearly anywhere, gain operational insights and explore real-world diagrams easily.
Back to the Basics — Ubiquitous Sharing and Access with Visio Online and iPad App
As one of the most widely adopted process mapping tools, Visio helps thousands of organizations blueprint the business processes that drive their desired transformation. Using Visio Online Preview and Visio Viewer for iPad, you can securely store your diagrams in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online and easily share them with anyone as a link—allowing your colleagues to view and interact with diagrams effortlessly across devices.
Visio Online Preview — Gain Operational Insights from Anywhere
The Visio desktop has always been a powerful tool for creating network maps, organizational charts, business processes and more. Visio Online Preview amplifies the power of visual communication by helping teams glean real-time information from diagrams with just a browser—turning your data-linked diagrams into an operational dashboard that more employees can access.
Picture a network map that the IT department uses to manage the company’s global datacenters. As a static diagram, the map is perfect for understanding how different servers interact and show the location of those servers. Now, pairing that map with real-time data, IT admins can see things like server outages as they happen. You can use hyperlinks to bring in additional documentation, such as policy guidance created in Word. Or, moving from the network dashboard to the rack dashboard for a specific server performance, IT admins are able to drill down to the root cause of the outages and take the appropriate actions to keep the business up and running.
See the Visio Online Public Preview FAQs to learn how to access the preview.
Visio Viewer for iPad — Explore Real-World Diagrams in High-Fidelity on the Go
Visio diagrams often comprise details that customers could miss on smaller screens. Built for iPad Retina display, Visio Viewer for iPad brings high-fidelity viewing of real-world processes and plans on the go. With the new exploration experience, plant managers can zoom in to production line issues from remote facilities, financial advisors can examine detailed workflows of a loan approval process while visiting clients around the world, retail district managers can conduct store management trainings with associates using detailed CAD-based store layouts and much more.
Using the Find pane, you can pinpoint all occurrences of a shape name, text or data—eliminating the need to sift through countless shapes. After you locate the shape with your desired metadata, smoothly navigate through your diagrams and zoom in and out with intuitive Pan and Zoom features. You can even reveal different visualizations of the same diagram by adjusting the visibility of certain layers. For example, an architect can share the same building layout with Facilities and HR, who can then visualize the respective layers which contain only the electrical map or personnel location for their own functional need. Operations managers can add an inventory visualization layer on top of a production line with throughput information to understand the root cause of a station breakdown.
You can download Visio Viewer for iPad today. We’ll bring Visio to the iPhone in the coming months.
Updates: November 2016
A Deeper Look at Skype for Business Integration with iOS CallKit
November 28, 2016 - We recently announced deeper integration of Skype for Business with iOS devices using Apple’s CallKit framework, which enables a better experience for Skype for Business calls on the iPhone. The CallKit API with iOS 10 enables Skype for Business calls to work the same way as the native calling experience on iOS, allowing you to seamlessly extend your personal device as a business phone.
Answer Skype for Business Calls from Lock Screen
Now, iPhone users can accept an incoming Skype for Business call right from the lock screen. There is no need to unlock the phone or launch the Skype for Business app to receive the call. Skype for Business calls will appear and behave just as regular cellular calls do—including being able to see the caller’s name on the lock screen. When you need to, you can also get to the app from the calling interface with just one touch.
Handle Skype for Business Calls Like Any Other Call
This integration also allows you to switch between calls across Skype for Business, your personal cellular line and other VoIP applications supporting CallKit. If you are in an important Skype for Business conversation and receive an incoming cellular call, you can send the second call to voicemail or put the Skype for Business call on hold to accept the incoming cellular call. You’ll also see Skype for Business calls in your phone’s call history.
Built-In IT and User Controls
These new features are enabled by default for all iOS app users. In scenarios where you may not want the Skype for Business calls to appear in the native iOS call log, the built-in IT and end-user controls allow you to disable the CallKit integration altogether. IT admins can disable this integration for their users through a policy, and app users can also control it in the settings.
Try the New Calling Experience
To try the new calling experience, update your iOS app today. If you haven’t yet checked out the Skype for Business mobile app for iOS, you can download it at Skype for Business Apps & Downloads.
Introducing a New File Experience for Groups in Outlook on the Web
November 17, 2016 - We’ve recently announced a number of enhancements to Office 365 Groups, such as the ability to collaborate via email with external team members and the new Outlook Groups iPad app.
Today, we are announcing a new file experience for groups in Outlook on the web. People frequently rely on email to edit and share documents with their teams, and this new experience makes it easier to collaborate on documents in Outlook on the web.
Here’s a Look at the New Experience:
Access all your group documents — A new file view gives you access to all the documents shared with the group, including files shared as email attachments, files stored in the group’s SharePoint document library and files shared from OneDrive or other SharePoint document libraries.
Co-author and communicate updates quickly — Now you can edit a document and reply via email side-by-side, so no need to switch contexts to update a document and communicate about the changes with your colleagues.
You can access the new Files view from the group’s header (next to Conversations) in Outlook on the web. From there, you can create new Office documents (such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint), view, edit or download files. You can also easily track who has updated the file and reach out to them using Skype for Business.
In addition, you can edit files sent as email attachments to the group, send a reply to the group and store a copy in SharePoint to maintain version control going forward. When you click Edit and reply, the file is automatically added to a new folder in the SharePoint document library called Email attachments, creating a single version for the file, enabling co-authoring for the group and making it very easy to track changes.
In addition to the new Files experience described above, you can easily navigate to the group’s SharePoint document library to access all the files stored online and leverage SharePoint’s rich content management capabilities, such as track the activity on a file, create custom views, share files or folders with others or sync files with OneDrive for Business, to name a few.
We see groups in Outlook as the modern version of distribution lists (DLs)—so we’ve made it very easy to upgrade DLs to a group inbox in Outlook with one click via the Exchange admin center.
The new groups in Outlook on the web file experience is available to Office 365 First Release customers this week. Try it out and provide your feedback in our technical community, and submit your ideas to our UserVoice page. For more information, see the user documentation.
