Microsoft Ignite 2019 - Day 2 wrap up

Today was a little slower in the information dump then yesterday. I spent more time with the product teams in the hub discussing the new products and solutions.

Here are a few of the updates from the sessions.

Insider Risk Management, this new service uses the Microsoft Graph, security services and connectors to other systems like SAP, to obtain real-time native signals such as file activity, communications sentiment, abnormal user behaviors and resignation date (If connected to HR). You can then track, report or get alerts on what people are doing. For example, if someone inserts a USB disk to a computer then downloads several files and then hands in their resignation. An alert would be created.

https://aka.ms/insiderriskblog

Azure Firewall Manager provides a management service that works across region and subscriptions. It provides a central point to manage your Azure Firewall configuration. So now like management groups, you can have a primary or global policy control and let DevOps create addition polices at the local level.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/firewall-manager/overview

OneDrive changes.

OneDrive has had some significant updates. The first one is support for 100GB files. Also with the increased size is support for file delta changes. Updating a 100GB file but only replicate the delta change (AKA Differential). So, if you make small changes, only that change is replicated. In the past this was just for MS Office document types, now it includes any file type that can be upload to SharePoint Online.

As well as the new sync, Microsoft also showed off the hover over cards. This feature shows the metadata for the file and details about the records.

New Yammer, well I did think this product was on the slow path to death, but it seems to be making a come back this year. The New Yammer is just the old Yammer with new ways to consume. Most IT people that use Microsoft 365 do use Outlook, SharePoint and now more are using Microsoft Teams. This is now a focus on getting Yammer back into the flow by integrated into these services.

Yammer was always the communication platform for an organisation. You would target company anonymous style messages and information out via Yammer. It was a replacement for mailing lists, company notifications and discussion that went pass your current team.

Yammer will still remain in the current services, the web portal will be there, but there are a few new interfaces to the services, which is what people are calling the New Yammer.

Outlook Integration

The integration with Outlook places the yammer message or thread directly inside the email. The users will see the content not like before where it was just message saying go to yammer. The new email form will allow users to view and respond directly to Outlook. No need to leave Outlook to update or view the thread.

SharePoint Integration

The SharePoint web parts have been rewritten to the same style as the Outlook integration. Users will be able to view and respond directly from inside SharePoint.

Microsoft Teams integration

In the past, we would add Yammer as a channel or tab in a team. The new version will add directly into the sidebar on Teams. This new interface allows yammer notification, and updates to go directly to where the users are now working, that is teams. Talking with the product team, there will be filtering on the types of notifications but don’t expect them day one. The goal is to make the information meaningful to the user and not flood them with information that they don’t need.