Microsoft Compliance Manager (MSCM) Ninja Training: Q1 2022

by Contributed | Feb 18, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Does achieving your organization’s regulatory and compliance requirements keep you up at night?  Do you wonder how you will ever be able to adhere to all the controls and ensure your companies compliance with required regulations?  Do you want to ensure that you are on top of your compliance game and that the appropriate policies and guidance are followed and enforced?  Look no further, Microsoft Compliance Manager (MSCM) is the tool to help you achieve these goals and more.  This training is designed to help guide you from fundamental concepts on your MSCM journey to Advanced concepts.  Once completed you will have a firm understanding of the tool, its capabilities, and use.

Microsoft Compliance Manager has a ton of data, tutorials, videos etc. that can sometimes be overwhelming.  Leaving you asking questions such as “where do I start”, “how do I achieve compliance”, “how do I recognize when my organization falls out of compliance”.  We’ve sifted through the vast resources Microsoft has to offer for MSCM and developed this training to guide you – all in one location, in a simple easy to follow format!  If there is anything we can do to improve this training, please do not hesitate to leave a comment below and we will be sure to review it.

The overall structure of this training is split into 3 main knowledge levels.  They are:

After each level, we will offer you a knowledge check based on the training material you have just finished! Since there’s a lot of content, the goal of the knowledge checks is to help ensure understanding of the key concepts that were covered. Lastly, there’ll be a fun certificate issued at the end of the training! Disclaimer: This is not an official Microsoft certification and only acts as a way of recognizing your participation in this training content.

We plan to update this training on a quarterly basis to ensure that you all have the latest and the greatest training materials.  Please do check back often for new training content.  The newly added training content will be tagged with “[New!]” at the end of the training title.  For those of you who have already gone through the training before, you can view those [New!] training contents directly. 

Docs on Microsoft	Blogs on Microsoft
Product videos	Webcast recordings
Tech Community	Interactive guides
⤴ External Sites	GitHub

Module 1. MSCM – Fundamentals [Beginner Level]

Training Title	Description	Resources
MSCM Overview:  Introduction to Microsoft Compliance Manager	In this track we will show where MSCM fits in the overall M365 ecosystems and discuss its high-level components.	MSCM Introduction Video   MSCM
Getting started with MSCM	In this track we will go over best practices and pre-deployment planning considerations to include key MSCM service features and capabilities.	Introduction to MSCM   Compliance Manager Quick Start   Deployment Acceleration Guide
Assessment Types and working with assessments (workflow and tracking)	In this track we will discuss the different assessment types in MSCM, how you can use them to help your organization succeed and use MSCM for continuous monitoring / assessment.	Build and Manage Assessments in MSCM
Automated Compliance Scoring	In this track we will discuss your overall scope, setup / run automated testing, evaluate your automated score (understanding it), and gain a firm understanding of improvement actions, user history and automated testing.	Compliance Score Calculation
Assigning Improvement Actions  & action types (RBAC)	In this track we will discuss how you assign remediation and score improvement tasks to different personnel within your organization.	Assign and complete improvement actions in MSCM  MSCM Interactive guide, review from 2 minutes 12 seconds to 38 seconds
MSCM Recommendation Wizard	In this track we will give you a good starting place to understand your organization’s regulatory and compliance requirements.  By asking a few brief questions we can show you the templates that may apply to your organization!	MSCM Recommendation Wizard Tutorial
Automation with MSCM	In this track we will explore how you can automate your MSCM capability and ensure you have up to date knowledge of your current regulatory compliance status.	Material for this track is currently in development – stay tuned!

Knowledge Check – Microsoft Compliance Manager Fundamentals

Module 2. MSCM – Intermediate [Associate Level]

Training Title	Description	Resources
Introduction to Templates:  Template library, premium templates, and universal templates	In this track we will show you the various types of assessment templates are available to you whether included in your licensing or requiring an additional purchase including templates that can cover non-Microsoft services giving your broader tracking capabilities in your compliance journey.	Learn about assessment templates in Compliance Manager     Simply Compliance and reduce risk with our 150+ assessment templates or bring your own assessment   MSCM Interactive Guide, review from 16 minutes 58 seconds
Creating an Assessment from a template	In this track we will upon the knowledge gained in the previous track to show you how to create an assessment for both Microsoft and non-Microsoft products.	Create an assessment template in Microsoft Compliance Manager     MSCM Interactive Guide, review from 15 minutes 40 seconds to 5 minutes 42 seconds  Creating an Assessment in MSCM
Importing Templates	Don’t see a regulation assessment you need to help your organization? Create your own assessment template that can be used over and over again based on your needs.	Create an assessment template in Microsoft Compliance Manager   MSCM Interactive guide, review from 10 minutes 10 second to 3 minutes 58 seconds
Regulatory and Compliance updates	With MSCM we are constantly monitoring and evaluating regulatory and compliance requirements.  When updates occur, we update our assessment templates to account for such changes, and put you in control of when to update your in progress assessment to match.	MSCM Updates to templates tutorial
Improving Compliance Score	In this track we will look at improving your compliance score by looking at your current configurations in your tenant and validating them against Microsoft 365 best practices.	MS Compliance Configuration Analyzer for MSCM   MSCM Interactive Guide go to 19 minutes, 37 seconds

Knowledge Check – Microsoft Compliance Manager Intermediate

Module 3.  Microsoft Compliance Manager – Advanced [Expert Level]

Training Title	Description	Resources
Extending Templates	In this track we will take the knowledge on templates previously covered and expand.  We will show you how you can take templates and expand them to meet your regulatory and compliance needs.	Extend assessment templates in Microsoft Compliance Manager   Extend Templates in MSCM  MSCM Interactive Guide review from 3 minutes 58 seconds to 2 minutes 55 seconds
Integration of Excel into MSCM and how to use it to modify templates	In this track we will discuss how you can use MS Excel to update and modify your templates.	Format assessment template data in Excel for Microsoft Compliance Manager   Using MS Excel to Manipulate and or Create templates in MSCM
MSCM Scenario	In this track we will create a brief scenario to show how to meet a specific regulatory compliance requirement.	⤴ MSCM Scenario
Microsoft Compliance Manager Considerations & Wrap Up	In this final track we will cover common questions asked, provide some useful tips and wrap up this training!	Material for this track is currently in development – stay tuned!

Knowledge Check – Microsoft Compliance Manager Advanced

Once you’ve finished the training and the knowledge checks, please go to our attestation portal to generate your certificate –  you’ll see it in your inbox within 3 to 5 business days.  Attestation Portal Link

We have a great lineup of updates for the next rendition (next quarter).  If you’d like anything covered, please comment below.  In addition, please reach out to us if you have any content that you would like to include as well. 

We hope you all enjoy this training! 

Feedback

Let us know if you have any feedback or relevant use cases/requirements for this portion of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps by emailing mipcompcxe@microsoft.com  and mention the core area of concern.

Learn More

For further information on how your organization can benefit from Microsoft Compliance Manager:  

New tools to create and customize professional looking diagrams in Visio for the web

by Contributed | Feb 17, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

During our Microsoft Ignite session last fall, we recapped some of the latest features in Visio for the web. In that session, we also announced several upcoming features and improvements that will help you create better looking diagrams faster and new tools to help you add some personalization. This blog post covers the details of those features, which are currently rolling out to Visio for the web users—including Visio in Microsoft 365, Visio Plan 1, and Visio Plan 2—unless otherwise noted.

New and improved diagramming tools in Visio for the web

Format Painter (currently rolling out): We are excited to introduce the Format Painter tool in Visio for the web. Using Format Painter, you can quickly copy the fill and formatting of one shape to a single shape or to multiple shapes in your diagram with a few clicks. Format Painter can be accessed from the Home tab or from the floating context menu, as you’ll read about soon, which appears when you right-click or select an object. Please note that copying the format of grouped shapes is not currently supported. Visit our support article to learn more about the Format Painter tool in Visio for the web.

 Animated demonstration of the Format Painter tool

Shapes in the Document stencil (currently rolling out): Previously available only in the Visio desktop app, the Shapes in the Document stencil is rolling out to Visio Plan 2 subscribers in Visio for the web. With the Shapes in the Document stencil, you can now quickly access and use shapes that exist in your Visio file. The stencil will always be pinned to the shape panel—whether you start from a new blank drawing or a template. If starting new, you will need to add shapes to the canvas before they appear in the Shapes in the Document stencil.

 Example of the Shapes in the Document stencil within the Shapes panel

Enhanced floating context menus (currently rolling out): We are adding common user actions and formatting options in the floating context menus, so you can quickly access the necessary tools needed to complete your diagram faster. Simply right-click or select the appropriate object in your diagram and choose the desired action from the context menu. Newly added commands enable you to quickly rotate text, change the shape outline weight and style, edit connector lines, arrows, or points, make connectors curved, angled, or straight, and—speaking of Format Painter—apply the same formatting to multiple objects in your diagram.

 Example of user options available on the floating context menu, such as copy, paste, delete and more

We’ve also enhanced this experience to support the press-and-hold method on a touchscreen device.

 Example of user options on the floating context menu on a touchscreen device

Snap experience improvements (currently rolling out): We’ve addressed one of your topmost concerns—aggressive snapping to objects in Visio for the web—and made the snap experience more user-friendly. This means when you draw, resize, or move a shape in your diagram, you will notice a smooth experience when snapping or aligning to other shapes or objects in your diagram. You can also turn the snap-to shapes capabilities on or off by selecting or deselecting the new Dynamic Grid checkbox available from the View tab in the ribbon.

 Example of snapping to objects by selecting the Dynamic Grid checkbox

New customization tools in Visio for the web

Draw Shape tool (now available!): Visio for the web now supports drawing shapes, including rectangles, squares, lines, circles, and ellipses of the desired dimensions. The new Draw Shape tool can be accessed from both the Home tab and the Insert tab on the ribbon. To create a shape in your diagram from the Insert tab, go to the Draw Shape drop-down, select the shape you want, click anywhere on the canvas, and then drag the mouse pointer to draw the selected shape. Visit our support article to learn more about the Draw Shape tool in Visio for the web.

Example of the Draw Shape tool – Shapes include rectangles, squares, lines, circles, and ellipsesMore Colors, Recent Colors (now available!): Create flowcharts and diagrams that match your brand guidelines. Choose from a full spectrum of colors or customize the text color, shape fill, and shape outline for objects in your diagram with More Colors. If you know the HEX or RGB values, you can type them into the appropriate boxes in the Custom Colors panel. Then, quickly access recently used colors in your diagram with Recent Colors. More Colors and Recent Colors can be accessed from the Home tab, the Shape tab, or from the floating context menu, which appears when you right-click or select an object.

Example of the Custom Colors panel, including Hex and RGB values

*Bonus announcement for desktop users of Office*

Modern landing page for Visio in the Office desktop app (now available!): We have recently added Visio’s modern landing page to the Office desktop app, providing users with a familiar and collaborative start experience similar to other Office apps, like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Visio users will now get access to a powerful set of Office features, such as improved file discovery, better template categorization, and quick access to Visio files that have been recently edited, accessed, and reviewed by colleagues directly in the Office desktop app.

Example of the modern landing page in Visio in the Office desktop app – Showing template options and a Recommended section

To try the new experience, search for and open the Office app on your Windows device. Click on the Visio icon in the side navigation bar or search for “Visio” in the Search box. This will launch the modern landing page for Visio in the Office environment where you can quickly create new diagrams, and access Visio files, including Recommended, Recently opened, Shared, and Favorites to quickly pick up where colleagues left off.

Give us your feedback! Please tell us what you think of the new diagramming and customization tools in the comments below or send feedback via the Visio Feedback portal. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay informed with the latest updates for Visio.

Want to know what other Visio features have been released recently or what’s coming soon? Check out these Visio updates on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap to learn more!

Continue the conversation by joining us in the Microsoft 365 Tech Community! Whether you have product questions or just want to stay informed with the latest updates on new releases, tools, and blogs, Microsoft 365 Tech Community is your go-to resource to stay connected!