Blog Written By | Microsoft 365
We live and work in a time in which there is more change happening at a more rapid pace than ever before. The way in which organizations empower employees across all their devices is changing rapidly as they deliver work experiences that are more empowering and transformative for their users. Organizations desire to move to a consistent and unified way to enable their users across all their devices and are looking for guidance on the best way to do this that is both empowering and secure.
The core of modern management and security is delivering users the modern workplace that empowers them to achieve more across all their devices while providing the required security and protection of the organization’s assets. The modern workplace delivered through Microsoft 365 is loved by users, loved by IT, and trusted by everyone. Users love this experience because they can work how, when, and where they want without the reduction in functionality or experience. IT loves this experience because it provides a common and consistent method and tool to manage and enable users across all their devices while also delivering the security and protection they require. Users and IT trust this solution because both the user’s privacy and the organization’s data and assets are secure.
Microsoft shared some announcements to simplify IT management and bring this vision for the future to life:
- Embrace modern management to manage and secure your devices with the unified Microsoft Endpoint Manager
- Empower organizations with insights that transform how work gets done and drive impact with Microsoft Productivity Score.
- Simplify meeting room management with Managed Meeting Rooms service.
- Simplify administration with updates to the Microsoft 365 admin center and Office 365 Groups.
The future of management: Microsoft Endpoint Manager
System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) and Microsoft Intune provide integrated cloud-powered management tools, and unique co-management options to provision, deploy, manage, and secure endpoints and applications across an organization.
Microsoft Endpoint Manager is the convergence of Intune and ConfigMgr functionality and data – plus new intelligent actions – offering seamless. end-to-end management solution without the complexity of migration or disruption to productivity. Microsoft Endpoint Manager provides transformative modern management and security that meets customers where they are and helps them move to the cloud. In addition to Intune and ConfigMgr, Microsoft Endpoint Manager includes the Device Management Admin Center (DMAC) and Desktop Analytics.
Microsoft is also simplifying licensing, and they are making the licensing to Intune available to all ConfigMgr customers to co-manage your Windows devices. If you would like to manage non-Widows devices through Microsoft Endpoint Manager, you will need to purchase either an Intune license, and Enterprise Mobility & Security (EMS) license, or a Microsoft 365 E3 or higher license.
Insights that transform how work gets done: Microsoft Productivity Score
Every organization needs a way to determine success and business impact. However, translating productivity into measurable impact can be challenging. Organizations would like a better way to measure how they are doing – both in regard to how employees are getting work done more efficiently, as well as how technology is enabling them to save time and be more productive. Enter Microsoft Productivity Score to give you the insights that help you transform how your users get work done and drive greater business impact.
Productivity Score focuses on two areas, the Employee experience, and the Technology experience, which provides visibility into how your organization works, insights to identify where you can enable improved experiences, and actions you can take to update skills and systems so everyone can do their best work.
The Employee experience shows you how Microsoft 365 is helping to create a productive and engaged workforce. By quantifying how people are collaborating on content, working from anywhere, developing a meeting culture, and communicating with each other, you can see the different ways that work gets done. With advice on how people can work in new ways and training materials to help them learn, you can empower everyone to do their best work.
The Technology experience provides insights by assessing policies, device settings, and hardware and application performance within the organizational environment and recommends actions taken in Microsoft Endpoint Manager. Users receive the most up-to-date features, persistent security, devices with faster boot times, and increased battery life. You can improve their scores by identifying best practices and ideal configurations to ensure Technology and Employee experiences are mutually supported.
Simplifying meeting room management: Managed Meeting Rooms
Productive meetings are essential to success in the modern workplace. Coupled with the rise in remote collaboration, business leaders increasingly associate more effective meetings with having the right meeting room technology and environment. Microsoft announced a preview of Managed Meeting Rooms, a new offer for managing meeting rooms as a service. This service is a cloud-based IT management and security monitoring service that ensures that Teams meeting rooms are secured, up to date, and proactively monitored for a great in-room experience.
Security and productivity enhancements in the Microsoft 365 admin center and new management capabilities for Office 365 Groups
Microsoft has announced security and productivity enhancements for Microsoft 365 admin center and Office 365 Groups.
To begin, support for Global reader role in the Microsoft 365 admin center – a top request from customers – is generally available and rolling out to Microsoft 365 tenants right now. By using the Global reader role, you can improve your security posture by reducing the number of Global admins in your organization. Global readers can view all settings and administrative information across Microsoft 365, but they can’t make any changes. The global reader is especially useful for planning, audit, and investigation activities, and it can be used in combination with other roles, such as Exchange admin, to make it easier to get work done without requiring Global admin permissions.
Microsoft is rolling out new AI-powered recommendations in the Microsoft 365 admin center that help you identify potential areas of concern and quickly act to address them through guided experiences. Recommendations are based on admin activities and your organization’s current configuration settings, and they cover Microsoft Information Protection, Advanced Threat Protection, self-service password reset, and GDPR compliant data retention.
Finally, Microsoft has been working hard to enhance Ofice 365 Groups, which facilitates collaboration across more than 20 Microsoft 365 services. They added several highly requested customer features to the Groups service to make group management more efficient and secure, including support for naming policies, expiry, and auto-renewal based on activity, the ability to browse and restore deleted groups and rename group SharePoint URL’s, and the addition of the Groups admin role. Microsoft also added new features for Groups clients such as Outlook, Teams, Yammer, and Planner.
