Microsoft Announces Office 365 January Updates

Microsoft Announces Office 365 January Updates

It’s a new year and a new month of updates for the many products and services that make up Microsoft’s Office 365.

“We’re kicking off 2017 with updates to OneDrive, the Activity feed within the Office apps, Microsoft StaffHub and more,” Microsoft’s Kirk Koenigsbauer explains.

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Here’s a quick rundown.

OneDrive for Business. As Brad outlined earlier today, Microsoft has finalized its all-in-one sync client for OneDrive, which now works with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint Online team sites (commercial customers on Windows desktops and Macs). There’s a new Mac client, too, (for commercial customers) and simplified sharing (OneDrive on the web).

Activity feed. The activity feed view is now available in Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Windows desktops for commercial Office 365 customers and for consumer Office 365 subscribers in the Office Insider program. This feed provides a view of the recent documents accessed through SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, or (for consumers) OneDrive.

Office Lens integration. Office Lens integration in Word and PowerPoint on Android helps you capture, crop, straighten and enhance pictures of whiteboards, Microsoft says, without leaving the app you’re working in. This will come to Excel in the future and will add more Office Lens capabilities, including document capture, Optical Character Recognition, and more.

Office Insider for iPhone and iPad. Announced previously, the Office Insider program is now available (with limited capacity) for iPhone and iPad, providing early access to builds of Word, Excel and PowerPoint at the Insider Fast level.

Microsoft StaffHub. Also announced previously, a new Office 365 web app called StaffHub is now generally available. This tool is available to Office 365 subscribers with a K1, E1, E3 or E5 plan (including the Education version of these plans).

 

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Conversation 11 comments

  • 120

    Premium Member
    24 January, 2017 - 3:23 pm

    <p>Any word on whether or not Access&nbsp;is included in today’s update for Office 365 Business Premium users?</p>
    <p>They originally said it would be coming in December 2016 or January 2017.</p>
    <p>https://blogs.office.com/2016/11/04/microsoft-access-now-included-in-office-365-business-and-business-premium-with-new-enhancements/</p&gt;

    • 1475

      24 January, 2017 - 8:18 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#38585">In reply to </a><a href="../../../users/MattHewitt">MattHewitt</a><a href="#38585">:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>It is. Reinstall from the Portal and it’ll be there.</p>

  • 442

    24 January, 2017 - 3:53 pm

    <p>Biggest problem I have with Lens is that it’s not "Insanely usable"&nbsp; I say that, because there are so many scanning apps on the market already, many of them free, that are so much easier to use and quite frankly do a better job.&nbsp; Not that Lens is not usable, it is.&nbsp; But I found I can often make mistakes in it far too easy.&nbsp; Like scanning another page into a document that I wanted to have finalized and saved before anything new.&nbsp; Nice to see the power they are adding, now they need to make it more human usable and easy to understand the process as you use it.&nbsp; It’s just too quiet as it works to know what exactly is happening as you use it.</p>

  • 5234

    24 January, 2017 - 4:12 pm

    <p>Mac mice suck.</p>

    • 1753

      Premium Member
      25 January, 2017 - 2:44 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#38597">In reply to </a><a href="../../../users/Waethorn">Waethorn</a><a href="#38597">:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>My first thought as well, when the article opened. Why a picture of an Apple mouse and MacBook for an Office story, the MacOS version of Office 365 wasn’t even explicitly. mentioned.</p>

      • 1816

        25 January, 2017 - 10:34 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#38656">In reply to </a><a href="../../../users/wright_is">wright_is</a><a href="#38656">:</a></em></blockquote>
        <p>My first thought was "nice looking mouse".</p>

  • 5553

    24 January, 2017 - 4:26 pm

    <h1 class="amp-wp-title" style="font-size: 24px; padding-top: 15px; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.258; font-weight: 300; color: #2e4453; font-family: ‘Segoe UI’, Frutiger, ‘Frutiger Linotype’, ‘Dejavu Sans’, ‘Helvetica Neue’, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">Surface VP Brian Hall leaves Microsoft for a startup</h1>

    • 5592

      25 January, 2017 - 8:51 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#38599">In reply to </a><a href="../../../users/Joe_Blo">Joe_Blo</a><a href="#38599">:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>Big win for Doppler Labs. Brian’s a great guy.</p>
      <p>&nbsp;</p>

  • 289

    Premium Member
    24 January, 2017 - 5:12 pm

    <p>Keep the updates coming! &nbsp;</p>

  • 5539

    24 January, 2017 - 7:49 pm

    <blockquote><em><a href="#38585">In reply to </a><a href="../../../users/MattHewitt">MattHewitt</a><a href="#38585">:</a>&nbsp;</em>The portal doesn’t show that it is at this point. Waiting for this myself.&nbsp;Even did a chat with&nbsp;support last month to confirm this was the plan. They said it was.</blockquote>
    <p>&nbsp;</p>

  • 4801

    Premium Member
    25 January, 2017 - 12:15 pm

    <p>be nice if they had an update on Outlook Customer Manager (for commercial users), OneDrive update looks very nice and ability to share files via SharePoint is a nice update</p>

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