Tag Archives: Microsoft 365

Focused Inbox

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Microsoft introduced “Focused Inbox” for Outlook. The idea of “Focused Inbox”, is that Outlook will “learn” to automatically sort emails into two “tabs” in your inbox: “Focused” and “Other.” “Important” emails will be sorted into the “Focused” tab of your Inbox. Less important emails will be sorted into the “Other” tab of your Inbox.

Full documentation about Focused Inbox can be found at the link below:

Microsoft Focused Inbox documentation

A previous version of this feature, named “Clutter”, should be turned off. Steps to turn off “Clutter” can be found at the link below:

Microsoft documentation for turning off “Clutter”

Using Microsoft 365 for Shared UW NetIDs

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Unless there is a specific reason not to, we recommend that all Shared NetIDs use UW Microsoft 365 (Office 365) for email. Some of the reasons are HIPAA and FERPA compatibility and the ability for us (or even you) to manage who has access to the email for this account. Here is how to make that happen.

  • Contact the iSchool IT Help Desk and tell us what your Shared NetID is and that you want to change the email forwarding to UW Microsoft 365 (Office 365).
  • We will then endorse this NetID for an UW Microsoft 365 (Office 365) license.
  • We will then ask you to make us an Admin for this NetID so that we can change the UW Email Forwarding.
  • Once the email forwarding has been changed, we will grant you access to the Exchange Online Mailbox for the NetID and walk you through the process of adding this account to Outlook or accessing it via OWA.

Office 365 SLA (Service Level Agreement)

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Many of us expect email to be delivered instantly. Although it is usually very fast, there are many factors that affect the delivery time and most of us have unreasonable expectations based on the service that we use. This article will hopefully explain some of the things that can affect the delivery of email and spell out the level of service guaranteed by Microsoft.

In summary.

  • The service design goal of Exchange Online is the delivery of email in less than one minute, but this is an average over a month and not for any one email message.
  • Broken is considered an average delay of greater than 10 minutes over a month, again this is an average and does not apply to any individual email message.
  • Any one message is considered delayed after three hours at which point the sender should get an information email.
  • Any one message that is not delivered in three days is failed and the sender will get a NDR (Non-Delivery Report).

There are also other factors that affect the delivery of email.

  • Exchange on-premise adds additional delay for Exchange Online users, this is usually under one minute (20-30 seconds seems normal) but can be up to five minutes. Currently, because of a requirement of a small number of users, all Exchange Online email is routed through an on-premise Exchange server. If there is a delay, this is usually where it occurs rather than with any Microsoft infrastructure.
  • That said, routing email through an on-premise Exchange server has mitigated numerous other risks with corresponding cost reductions that would have been incurred by addressing them. It also lets the UW comply with ISO 27001, ISO 27018, Safe Harbor, SSAE16 SOC1 Type II, SOC2 Type II and FISMA. Very few cloud-only (or even any) email providers can claim this.

Display People images on the iSchool SharePoint Intranet

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Sometimes when you browse to one of the “People” links on the iSchool SharePoint Intranet all the image links are broken like this.

people

The reason for this is our Intranet and your Office 365 Profile (where your picture and bio live) are on different servers and you need to authenticate to both.

The easiest way to do this is to right click any of the broken images and select Open image in new tab. Once you see the picture (or the generic buddy icon in the case of a person who has not uploaded a picture to their Office 365 Profile) you can refresh the SharePoint page and you will see all the pictures.

Edit your Office 365 Profile

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SharePoint has many social features. Ever since the iSchool decided to adopt SharePoint as our collaboration tool we decided to make our Intranet as personable as possible to facilitate said collaboration.

As iSchool Staff, here is what we would like you to do.

1) Browse to here:

https://portal.office.com/Home

and log in.

2) Click on the picture (or buddy icon if there is no picture) in the top, right corner.

3) Click the “About me” link.

4) Upload a picture of yourself (you can use your iSchool staff picture if you like).

5) Optionally, you can also edit your Profile to add additional information.

Being able to put a face to a name goes a long way toward achieving the goal of making our Intranet more personable. Your picture, and any information you add to your Profile and make viewable by everyone, will be displayed under the “People” links on our Intranet.

How to share your Outlook (read: Exchange) Calendar with others at the UW and with External Users

How to share your Outlook (read: Exchange) Calendar with others at the UW and with External Users

Posted on by • Posted in Microsoft, Outlook, Software • Tagged , , , , , , , •

Before you proceed, note that by default everyone at the iSchool (and everyone else at the UW that uses the UW Microsoft 365/Office 365 service) can already see the default free/busy info of everyone else. This means people can already see when you are free, when you are busy, what your working hours are and when you are out of the office.

“Advanced” sharing options are possible, for example, if you want to give someone access to more details, if you want to give someone outside of the UW a view to your calendar, or if you want to give someone “delegate” (edit) rights to your calendar.

It is recommended that you configure “advanced” sharing options using the Outlook Web App. Detailed directions from Microsoft are available on this web page:

Advanced Microsoft 365 Calendar sharing directions