Each month we like to keep you updated with the latest updates and developments within the Microsoft 365 suite. This month we present Viva Sales, Topics in Teams and new security measures to keep your company’s data safe.
We hope you find these interesting.
Viva Sales
The Viva suite is expanding with a new product – Viva Sales. It has been designed to increase time spent talking to customers and reduce mundane tasks. The new product brings your CRM into the wider Microsoft suite and utilises AI to help you close a sale quicker.
For example; a salesperson can mark a contact as a customer in Outlook, allowing them to connect them to the Dynamics CRM easily. The AI can also record a transcript of your sales calls call and mark out specific highlights to send to key stakeholders. Viva Sales will also be able to recommend follow-up actions such as further calls or bringing in related colleagues.
However, this is only a preview as Viva Sales will be released in Q4 2022. We will keep you updated as to when it gets released to the Public.
Viva Topics
Topics has been slowly rolling out since it’s go-live and this month it has become available within Teams. So if you are having a conversation with a new start and you mention a project name, the corresponding Topic will attach itself to the term for the new start to get background and a more robust understanding without you needing to explain it. This is helping employees to work more efficiently, share knowledge and collaborate easier.
To tag a topic in Teams simply use the # character and type your topic and once posted the user will be able to read the associated topic page and files.
Have you started making use of Topics yet?
Share with External Participants
If your organisation is collaborating with a partner company on a project, it can be useful to include them within a Teams Channel. You will need to enable B2B direct connect as part of your Azure AD which can be made specific to an organisation via their tenant ID.
Once set up, you invite external organisations to participate in shared channels and access apps within these channels. This enables effective and secure collaboration within an app your employees are comfortable with. Learn how to configure cross-tenant access for your projects.
Chat to yourself
Now this feels like an unusual solution, but it could come in handy to keep notes to yourself as we try and drag ourselves away from paper notebooks!
Create a new chat and add your full name to it and pin it. Now you can access all the usual Teams Functionality but just to yourself. Use it as a digital notebook to keep track of tasks and thoughts you are not ready to share yet. Utilise Loop to create a list ahead of collaboration and share the link to it within a group chat to start the conversation. Add files you regularly use or add your Viva Learning tab to remind you to keep on top of your learning journey.
It is currently being rolled out publically so if you don’t have it yet, you will soon.
Planner cards in SharePoint activity feed
Not a groundbreaking update but can be a real help when keeping track of your tasks. When a team member assigns you a task, the planner card will show up on your activity feed. And so that you are not overwhelmed with tasks, only those which are within two days of the due date will be included.
A bonus tip for you if you use Planner daily, pin it to your taskbar and set it to open on start-up. We have found this to be a useful reminder of upcoming tasks across different teams.
Outlook
Bookings
The Outlook Bookings app is being expanded to directly integrate with your Outlook Calendar. With Bookings you can customise your own page to send to external stakeholders to schedule a meeting with you – avoiding the to-ing and fro-ing of meeting scheduling. Previously a separate online app. Now you can integrate this with your Outlook so you can manage all meetings in one place.
This integration is available publically and being rolled out however it needs to be enabled by your administrator with the Microsoft Bookings App (service plan).
Security
Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Microsoft Endpoint brings together Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune into the same solution. With Bring-Your-Own-Device policies now growing in popularity, use Endpoint Managers zero-touch provisioning to manage company-owned and employee-owned devices easily. The Zero Trust Security policies allow you to securely manage your data in its most vulnerable locations – end-users devices.
If you have an E3 or E3 license, you already have a version of Endpoint so ensure it is properly set up to keep your business secure.
Tenant-wide Time Out Policy
Security training only gets you so far. Employees can have the best of intentions but then leave their desk for a coffee while their screen is left on containing sensitive data on screen. An innocent mistake but can be costly. Now Microsoft has released idle session timeout for web apps. You can now create a policy, tenant-wide, to automatically sign users out after a period of inactivity on web apps. This functionality is currently being rolled out and will be complete by September. Keep an eye out for this in your tenant and implement suitable policies as they arise to keep your data safe.
We hope this new update was useful and you can utilise some of the above features to improve useability and employee experience. We regularly share tips on how to make the most out of your Microsoft 365 investment on LinkedIn and Twitter, you can follow us here or you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter to get these tips directly in your inbox.