3 recommended updates for Microsoft & Office 365

Version 19.09.04 is now available.

In this bi-weekly blog series, Microsoft MVP Jasper Oosterveld turns his Dutch directness to up-to-the-minute industry news—bringing you honest content about the current and future state of Microsoft and Office 365.

Published on September 4, 2019.

Welcome back to 3 recommended updates, a new blog series where I bring you the latest and greatest from the world of Microsoft and Office 365.

I hope you enjoyed the last one—with comments in non-Office files, new web parts in modern authoring, and swap sites in SharePoint Online—and are ready for the fifth installment!

3 recommended updates series:

In this release you'll find my opinion on the "new" Yammer profile; OneDrive as the new default location for saved Office files, and the ability to quick-start a meeting un Microsoft Teams.

Without further ado, let's take a closer look at my 3 recommended updates you need to know about now.

Table of contents

Critical update: Yammer will use Office profiles
Updated feature: OneDrive to become default save location
New feature: Microsoft Teams - Meet Now

Yammer will use Office profiles

This might sound sarcastic, but I am losing my energy and interest in Yammer.

A long time ago, back in 2012, I did my first session about Social and SharePoint including Yammer. These were my concerns about a Yammer/SharePoint integration back then:

Yammer web part isn't that great (a bit of an understatement)
Documents are stored in Yammer, not SHarePoint
Two profiles: SharePoint and Yammer
SharePoint's Search integration is lacking

Since 2012, the first two concerns have been resolved. With this latest update and Microsoft Search, we can finally cross off that third point.

Yammer will now pull the profile fields from the Office profile to provide a simplified and more secure identity experience across the suite.
microsoft 365 roadmap, featured id: 53554

Users don't want to maintain two profiles within Office 365—that just doesn't make any sense. It's far from logical and user friendly. I'm happy to see that after nearly seven years, we can finally move forward with one profile.

Good to know:

If a Yammer user doesn't have a corresponding Office identity, they will not be affected by this feature.
For Yammer users who do have a corresponding Office identity, Microsoft will perform a sync so that your Yammer and Office profiles match. Going forward, Yammer users will need to contact their IT administrator, as with other Office 365 apps, in order to change their profile information.
Any Yammer profile files that can't be synced with an Office profile—such as a link to a Facebook profile—will be removed during the sync process.

Microsoft is gradually rolling out this feature in late September, with plans for completion by the end of October. Read more about the Office profile in the Microsoft support documentation.

OneDrive becoming the default save location

Microsoft introduced a new save dialog a while back, as seen below:

The default location is going to be set to OneDrive for Business.

I totally agree and understand this move—OneDrive is your online file storage. In the past, users saved their files by default in the My Documents folder. OneDrive took over this role, and that's a good thing!

This new experience allows users of Word, Excel & PowerPoint on Windows and macOS to save documents to OneDrive and SharePoint Online more easily.
microsoft 365 roadmap, featured id: 45063

OneDrive offers: versioning, easy file sharing with colleagues and guests, and many more important features.

Good to know:

You can control the save dialog experience via Group Policy or a registry key. Admins can read more about the new save experience in the Microsoft support documentation.

Users can control the new save experience by:
- Changing the default location. Right click any of the locations shown in the list and selec “Set as default location”.
- Set a default local location in File | Options | Save by checking the box to Save to Computer by default, and then specifying a default local file location in the appropriate field.
- Users can disable the new save experience by enabling the “Don’t show the Backstage when opening or saving files with keyboard shortcuts” option in File | Options | Save.

This change is already available for all Monthly Channel users, and will be part of the Semi-Annual (Targeted) Release in September. It should become available to all Office 365 organizations once that Targeted Release version becomes available in January 2020.

Microsoft Teams—'Meet now'

Not all meetings can be scheduled in advance.

With this update, when a user clicks on Meet now, Teams will launch a new meeting instantly where the user can add/drag in attendees.

This new feature for Microsoft Teams shows that, once again, the future and vision of Microsoft is focused on its most important tool. Teams is going to be the day-to-day work tool for business users. This is another step in that direction.

Select 'Meet now' to start a new meeting instantly—no calendar, no scheduling, no fuss.
microsoft 365 roadmap, featured id: 54028

Good to know:

The feature is enabled by default.
To disable this feature for a user (or users), change AllowPrivateMeetNow in TeamsMeetingPolicy from True to False.

Microsoft starts rolling this out to customers in mid-September, while GCC customers will see this feature by mid-October. Rollout should be completed worldwide by the end of November.

Better late than never!

Although I'm losing my patience with Yammer as a service within Office 365, I am happy to see the removal of the standalone Yammer profile. Finally, all my concerns from 2012 have been resolved.

Better later than never, right?

Upcoming webinar

With Microsoft Teams and modern SharePoint team sites being created at a record pace, how do you keep all of that content secured, protected, and retained?

Join Microsoft MVP Joanne Klein for our upcoming webinar, and learn how Office 365 features working together can help you breathe a little easier.

Thursday, November 21, 2019 @ 2:00 PM (ET)