by Contributed | Apr 12, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Getting an approval on your work items is an essential part of almost every workflow. The approval can be a written acknowledgement from your manager, a formal authorization from a diverse group of stakeholders, or an official signature from a customer. Regardless of the type of approval needed, it can be hard to track and manage the requests when many systems and people are involved, leading to unnecessary delays.
Approvals in Microsoft Teams enables everyone, from frontline workers to corporate headquarters employees, to easily create, manage, and share approvals directly from Teams.
We’ve been listening to your feedback and have added new capabilities to streamline your approval request and get faster results.
Create an approval request with an electronic signature
There may be times when you need a more formal attestation, requiring the approvers’ signatures. Now, key partners like Adobe Sign, DocuSign and other 3rd party providers allow you to create an electronic signature approval natively within the Approval app. With this new feature, approvers can add their signature without leaving Teams, enabling an efficient and faster approval process. Once the approval process is completed, the information is stored in Teams, and you can easily access the approval record and view the eSignatures.
To request the approver’s eSignature, choose eSign as your request type. Then choose your electronic signature provider, choose a file that needs to be signed, and add any additional details needed. Once submitted, internal signers are sent a notification via Teams and an email asking for their signature. If the signer is external to the organization, they will be notified with an email, in which they can easily review the details and sign. Approvals will keep track of the entire audit trail right in context of Teams, so you are able to track who already signed the approval and when. This feature will start rolling out at the end of April.
Create an approval template
To streamline workflows, new out of the box templates provide a repeatable structure for common approvals like filling out expense reports or requesting overtime. Admins and team owners can use these as is, customize or create new templates for their organization and teams.
Teams admins and teams owners can create approval templates by clicking on template management in the overflow menu and following the instructions. Enter the name of your template, select the approvers, add in the necessary form fields and the workflow settings. When done, hit publish.
Once you create your first organizational template, it will create a new admin team. From there, you can add additional admins that can manage the organizational templates, right from the Approvals App.
This feature will be rolling out in April.
Create an approval request with templates
Leverage the templates your admin/team owner enabled for you, making it easier to create an approval request. Use the structured form to input all the necessary information and eliminate back and forth on missing data for a faster approval.
New attachment capabilities
Approval hub enables you to attach files directly from OneDrive and SharePoint, as well as attach a generic link for content that is hosted outside of Microsoft 365. This will ensure your approval is connected to the latest version of the file, reflecting any changes. . This feature will be rolling out in April. This feature is available now.
Markdown support
We are also adding full Markdown support in both adaptive cards and the detail’s view, so you can ensure all your approvals are formatted correctly for all your approval processes. This feature is available now.
Approve or reject an approval request inline
Approvals role based adaptive cards enables you to quickly respond to an approval request right there from within the chat or channel without having to view the details. If you do not have permission to respond to the request, you will not see the “Approve” or “Reject” buttons on the card. This feature is available now.
Resources
Getting your request approved just got easier with the new features coming to approvals in Microsoft Teams. Learn more and get the most out of approvals in Microsoft Teams using these resources:
by Contributed | Apr 12, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Getting an approval on your work items is an essential part of almost every workflow. The approval can be a written acknowledgement from your manager, a formal authorization from a diverse group of stakeholders, or an official signature from a customer. Regardless of the type of approval needed, it can be hard to track and manage the requests when many systems and people are involved and often leads to unnecessary delays.
Approvals in Microsoft Teams enables everyone, from frontline workers to corporate headquarters employees, to easily create, manage, and share approvals directly from Teams.
We’ve been listening to your feedback and have added new capabilities to streamline your approval request and get faster results.
Create an approval request with an electronic signature
There may be times when you need a more formal attestation and require the approvers’ signatures. Now, key partners like Adobe Sign, DocuSign and other 3rd party providers allow you to create an electronic signature approval natively within the Approval app. With this new feature, approvers can add their signature without leaving Teams, enabling an efficient and faster approval process. Once the approval process is completed, the information is stored in Teams, and you can easily access the approval record and view the eSignatures.
To request the approver’s eSignature, choose eSign as your request type. Then choose your electronic signature provider, select the file that needs to be signed, and include additional details needed. Once submitted, internal signers are sent a notification via Teams and an email asking for their signature. If the signer is external to the organization, they will be notified with an email, in which they can easily review the details and sign. Approvals will keep track of the entire audit trail right in context of Teams, so you are able to track who already signed the approval and when it was signed. This feature will start rolling out at the end of April.
Create an approval template
To streamline workflows, new out of the box templates provide a repeatable structure for common approvals like filling out expense reports or requesting overtime. Admins and team owners can use these as is, customize, or create new templates for their organization and teams.
Teams admins and teams owners can also create approval templates by clicking on template management in the overflow menu and following the instructions. Enter the name of your template, select the approvers, add in the necessary form fields and the workflow settings. When done, hit publish.
Once you create your first organizational template, it will create a new admin team. From there, you can add additional admins that can manage the organizational templates, right from the Approvals App.
This feature will be rolling out in April.
Create an approval request with templates
Leverage the templates your admin or team owner enabled for you and make it easier to create an approval request. Use the structured form to input all the necessary information and eliminate back and forth on missing data for a faster approval.
New attachment capabilities
Approval hub enables you to attach files directly from OneDrive and SharePoint, as well as attach a generic link for content that is hosted outside of Microsoft 365. This will ensure your approval is connected to the latest version of the file, reflecting any changes. This feature is available now.
Markdown support
We are also adding full Markdown support in both adaptive cards and the detail’s view, so you can ensure all your approvals are formatted correctly for all your approval processes. This feature is available now.
Approve or reject an approval request inline
Approvals role based adaptive cards enable you to quickly respond to an approval request right from within the chat or channel without having to view the details. If you do not have permission to respond to the request, you will not see the “Approve” or “Reject” buttons on the card. This feature is available now.
Resources
Getting your request approved just got easier with the new features coming to approvals in Microsoft Teams. Learn more and get the most out of approvals in Microsoft Teams using these resources:
by Contributed | Apr 12, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Customers rely on Microsoft Data Loss Prevention(DLP) to enforce policies that identify and prevent risky or inappropriate sharing, transfer or use of sensitive information across cloud, on-premise and endpoints. Alerts, which can be configured as a part of the DLP policy authoring experience are an effective tool for customers to get notified whenever a DLP policy is violated.
Microsoft announces the General Availability of the Microsoft Data Loss Prevention Alerts Dashboard. This latest addition in the Microsoft’s data loss prevention solution provides customers with the ability to holistically investigate DLP policy violations across :
- Exchange
- SharePoint Online
- OneDrive
- Teams
- Devices
- Cloud apps
- On-premises file shares
Advance alert configuration options are available in the existing DLP policy configuration flow. These provide eligible DLP customers with the ability to tailor how they organize DLP policy alerts along with exhaustive information that they need to investigate and address DLP policy violations quickly. Historical workflow information for alerts is available in the Management log.
The alerts dashboard provides a list view of all DLP alerts and clicking on an alert will display the relevant details.
Figure 1 : Data Loss Prevention Alerts Dashboard
Clicking on ‘View Details’ will display the alert page with exhaustive information associated with the DLP policy violation, ability to change alert status (Active, Investigating, Dismissed or Resolved), include additional comments and define workflow actions such as assigning alerts to individuals for follow up.
Figure 2 : Alert details with manage alert options
Clicking on the ‘Events’ tab will display the actual user activity along with details including :
- Source view (requires E5 or related subscriptions) : This will allow customers to view the email or the file involved in the DLP policy alert. Source view in the DLP Alerts Dashboard will be available for content(email/files) belonging to the following workloads :
- Exchange (Email body only)
- SharePoint Online
- One Drive
This feature is available only for licenses in the following subscriptions :
– Microsoft 365 (E5)
– Office 365 (E5)
– Advanced Compliance (E5) add-on
– Microsoft 365 E5/A5 Info Protection & Governance
– Microsoft 365 E5/A5 Compliance
- Matched sensitive terms and context : This will allow customers to view the sensitive terms in the content due to which the DLP policy was violated. You will also be able to view up to 300 characters surrounding the detected sensitive term. This information will be available for detections for the following workloads :
- Exchange (both email body and attachments)
- SharePoint Online
- OneDrive
- Teams
For both features : Source View and Matched sensitive terms and context, the role group “Content Explorer Content Viewer” should be assigned. This role group has the role “data classification content viewer” pre-assigned.
Figure 3 : Exhaustive metadata for each user event
Figure 4 : View the content of the email(body) or file
Figure 5 : View matched sensitive terms and surrounding characters
Get Started
Microsoft’s DLP solution is part of a broader set of Information Protection and Governance solutions that are part of the Microsoft 365 Compliance Suite. You can sign up for a trial of Microsoft 365 E5 or navigate to the Microsoft 365 compliance center to get started today.
Additional resources:
- For more information on DLP Alerts Management, please this
- For more information on Data Loss Prevention, please see this
Thank you,
The Microsoft Information Protection Team
by Contributed | Apr 12, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Want to get Started learning GitHub and DevOps?
Well look now further we have a dedicated rep to help you get skilled in DevOps using GitHub.
microsoft/DevOps-with-GitHub-Event-Learning-Path:The DevOps with GitHub Event Learning Path shows the DevOps journey using Azure and GitHub tools.
Explore overviews, tutorials, samples, and more
http://aka.ms/all-things-devops
Learning Path Description:
Tailwind Traders loves building software and working in the cloud. Their team is growing and becoming more specialized. In this learning path, you’ll work along with the Tailwind development and operations teams as they figure out how to work better together using DevOps patterns and practices.
Sessions:
Listed below are 5 sessions and all resources associated with them so you can redeliver them in your technical community
There are no demos, however video recordings of demos have been provided
[ADO10] Getting started with DevOps
Abstract:
As teams grow, finding ways to effectively work together is vital. Communication across teams is challenging. We need to enable discovery of conversations and related information. Source code, scripts, configuration files, deployment docs and other related content also need to be centralized and versioned. Finally, teams need tooling that not only works across multiple project types and languages, but also facilitates remote-first collaboration.
Attendee Takeaways:
- Make communication centralized and discoverable.
- Everything that can be versioned goes in source control.
- Pick tools that support your team’s workflow – including source control, remote collaboration, and language and project types.
Resources:
[ADO20] Managing the Flow of Work
Abstract:
DevOps is all about continuously delivering value. Before we can even begin thinking about CI/CD, we need to make sure we do the right work. Sprint after sprint, iteration after iteration, we need to plan our work and manage our workflows.
This includes planning and tracking all units of work for the project. With frequent small iterations, there is no time to waste. Careful planning needs to happen to ensure the correct work gets done for each iteration. With the compressed time frame for each iteration, team members must work and coordinate their activities. Thus cross (functional) team visibility of work becomes vital for that coordination and allocation of resources. Visibility also ensures problems or bottlenecks get surfaced and addressed quickly.
Managing source control changes are also important. We need to be in a deployable state at the end of every sprint. The main branch should be protected, yet changes being introduced should not be overly hampered and slowed down by the process. Being able to iterate quickly and safely is vital.
And Finally, we need automation surrounding all our workflows to help enable everything as well as add consistency in what we do.
Attendee Takeaways:
- Make work in progress visible with Azure boards.
- Use trunk-based development to keep integration pain down and master ready to ship.
- Automate your workflow to add consistency and remove drudgery.
Resources:
[ADO30] Building in Security and Quality
Abstract:
Security and compliance are core concerns for organizations. Adopting DevOps practices and delivering software faster can increase those concerns. We can take steps to increase security and compliance as part of our DevOps lifecycle.
Attendee Takeaways:
- Shift security left by enabling security at the earliest possible point.
- Keep your container images current and be aware hidden dangers in base images.
- Use infrastructure as code and policy as code to provide consistency in environments.
Resources:
[ADO40] Delivering Change to the Cloud
Abstract:
The team at Tailwind Traders has a problem – they’re still too dependent on manual processes and key individuals to bring their ideas to customers! While they have successfully implemented a raft of practices that result in trusted builds ready for deployment to the cloud, actually delivering the changes in an effective, trustworthy way is the next challenge.
Tailwind Traders realises they need to automate their deployments, just as they automated their builds. It’s important that they can deliver value quickly, but just as important they catch issues before they get to production with robust pipelines that can deploy to the variety of services their projects require.
Attendee Takeaways:
- Deployment automation enables repeatability.
- ChatOps and similar patterns enable control and automation.
- Keep secrets in as few places as possible.
Resources:
[ADO50] Operating Software in the Cloud
Abstract:
DevOps doesn’t stop when you deploy. Incident response, identity management, and controlling access to production are all part of learning to run software well.
Attendee Takeaways:
- For incidents to be effectively managed, someone needs to be responsible for responding.
- No magic people or machines! Reduce the dependence on individual user accounts or environments with service principals and managed identities.
- Use automation to deliver change into the environment – remove manual steps.
Resources:
Certification Resources
Explore Microsoft Learn Content for the AZ-400 Certification
http://aka.ms/getting-started-devops
Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions
http://aka.ms/az400-cert
by Contributed | Apr 12, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Today, we continue to strike a balance between many of our current conditions, where most frontline workers are strained and socially distant, and tomorrow, where there is the possibility of a safe return to the more traditional ways of working. As we continue supporting frontline workers and organizations in this digital transformation balance, we are releasing new enhancements for frontline workers and corporate teams to continue to communicate more effectively, digitize processes and make data and workers more secure no matter the work conditions.
Richer communication and community
Coming soon, Teams for RealWear headsets will make it easier for workers to show what they see – with voice commands for using the device flashlight and adjusting zoom levels with their outgoing video. Learn more about RealWear and Teams here.
Coming soon: RealWear Camera Zoom & Flashlight
For organizations with thousands of employees scattered across different locations, internal communications can grow quite complex. Connect your entire workforce to drive deeper connection and insights across your organization while keeping everyone informed. Now you can share important community announcements for all members of your community and notify them to make sure they see the message, even if it’s outside of their preferred notification settings, with Yammer essential announcements.
Now Available: Yammer Essential Announcements
Manage and moderate content shared with your entire organization faster with Yammer community insights. These key metrics help admins and corporate teams measure activity, understand engagement, and find valuable insights about how frontline workers are engaging as a community.
Available now: Community insights
Dig deeper and see which conversations and content performs the best. Conversation insights provide real-time visibility into impressions, total views, click-through rate, and a break-down of reactions.
Coming soon: Conversation insights
Improve your live events viewership by monitoring attendance, to understand which audience has the greatest viewership, and see where those views are coming from with live events insights in Yammer. All geared to help you optimize your current and future events with your frontline workforce and entire organization.
Now available: Live event insights
Finally, improve the sense of community for your frontline workers with new suggested communities on the right rail of the Yammer homepage that will suggest relevant communities for frontline workers to discover and join.
Now Available: Yammer Suggested Communities
Learn more about all the new features coming to Yammer here.
Automated business workflows
As work conditions continue to fluctuate, it has become increasingly important to make sure repeatable but still critical processes are automated and have the right systems and owners connected to the workflow.
New APIs for Time Clock will notify your organization’s Time & Attendance system and determine if the clock in/out is valid and prevent it if it is not. This helps organizations create rules for how early or late someone can clock-in/out without requiring manager approval. It can also enable new business workflows around clocking in/out such a health screening survey that must be completed before clocking-in for the day. All these clock-ins will be automatically shared to your existing payroll system to provide even more visibility and alignment. Learn more about frontline relevant APIs here.
Now available: Time Clock APIs
With the schedule owner permission setting on TeamsShiftsPolicy, the organization can identify which users should be able to modify a Shifts schedule while still protecting the ownership of Teams that they are members of. It allows users who aren’t the owner of a Team to be able to edit and manage Shift schedules, approve swaps and authorize time off requests. This enables users such as managers and supervisors to have schedule ownership without having to be the owners of the entire Teams, reducing instances of accidentally deleting or modifying the Team without realizing the effects it has on other users. Learn more about how to set up Shifts here.
Now available: schedule owner permissions
Approvals are a critical component of how frontline workers get the right permissions for anything from delivering fast customer service to making speedy repair decisions on the factory floor. To streamline workflows, new Approvals templates provide a repeatable structure for common approvals such as when employees are reporting leave, filling out expense reports or requesting overtime. Admins and Team owners can use these as is, customize, or create new templates for their organization and teams.
Now available: Approvals templates
Often frontline processes need more formal attestation and require the approvers’ signatures in the process. Now, key partners like Adobe Sign, DocuSign, and other 3rd party providers allow teams to create an electronic signature approval natively within the Approvals app. With this new feature, approvers can add their e-signature without leaving Teams, enabling an efficient and faster approval process. Once the approval process is completed, the information is stored in Teams, and you can easily access the approval record and view the eSignatures.
Now available: Approvals with electronic signature
Finally, we have enhanced our task publishing feature in Tasks in Teams so operations and corporate teams can more clearly manage their Task lists and drive alignment with frontline locations. A member of a publishing team can now see separate Drafts, Published, and Unpublished sections to easily see which task lists are at which stage of their lifecycle. We’ve also made it easier to see the impact of publishing tasks at a glance. Teams will see an updated summary that prominently displays the number of tasks and the number of recipient teams, so they can easily confirm that everything looks right. Learn more about task publishing here.
Now available: Publish list confirmation screen summary & unpublished lists section in task publishing
More secure with simple management
Like frontline workers day-to-day job, we know their roles, tasks and devices can vary. Whether your organization empowers workers to bring their own devices or provides shared devices, we have you covered with secure and simple tools to make sure the experience is seamless.
You can now provision shared devices at scale with Microsoft Intune and Configuration Manager now a part of a unified management platform known as Microsoft Endpoint Manager. IT admins can choose to enroll their organization’s Android Enterprise (AE) dedicated devices into Microsoft Intune with Azure AD shared mode automatically configured, making it easier to set up and customize how frontline workers use shared devices.
Now Available: Identity – Provisioning Shared Devices at Scale
IT admins can now enforce Zero Trust security policies such as device-based Conditional Access, using device compliance to secure corporate data for shift-based frontline users signing in and out of apps on shared devices. These policies enable organizations to secure their frontline workers and organizational data from identity risk with powerful, adaptive risk detection.
Now Available: Identity – Device Based Conditional Access for Shift Workers
Now, IT admins can now use Managed Home Screen to create a customized sign-in and sign-out experience across all apps, including Microsoft Teams, that participate with shared device sign-out. Improve user experience by customizing a single screen for frontline users to easily sign-in, configure a session PIN for the duration of the shift, and configure timers for automatic sign-out for added security during shift handovers. To see the full list of configurations available with Managed Home Screen, see the documentation.
Now Available Identity – Customized Sign-in Experience with Microsoft Managed Home Screen
Frontline workers are the backbone of the world’s economy, and in today’s rapidly evolving landscape, yesterday’s tools are often not enough to get today’s job done. Don’t wait for the future with yesterday’s tools, innovate today with Microsoft Teams and bring all the tools your entire workforce needs into one platform.
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