Microsoft

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | June 2020

July 2, 2020 Paul Dredge Comments 0 Comment

Microsoft announced what’s new in Microsoft Teams this week, here are my top picks. What’s New: Large gallery view Being able to see all of your colleagues’ faces at the same time makes a big difference in engagement and connection. Coming to preview this month with general availability coming soon, large gallery view expands the Teams grid view to 7×7, which will accommodate up to 49 participants at once on a single screen. Virtual Breakout Rooms Announced earlier this month, Breakout Rooms…

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Microsoft Teams Raise Hand

May 22, 2020 Paul Dredge Comments 0 Comment

Over the past few weeks Microsoft have released the ability to raise your hand during Microsoft Teams meetings. This was a much-anticipated feature that I am sure many will take advantage of. The raise hand feature allows you to notify the host and other attendees that you have something you want to say, whether that is something to add to what is being discussed or maybe a question. When the raise hand button is pressed, the person who is currently…

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Microsoft Teams: App Templates

February 19, 2020 Paul Dredge Comments 0 Comment

Microsoft have kindly announced that they have released open source app templates for Microsoft Teams. These templates are available via GitHub and come with everything needed to get started – documentation and a deployment guide. This morning I’ve scanned through the list of app templates that are available and the stand out ones for me are: FAQ Plus Conversational Q&A bots are an easy way to provide answers to frequently asked questions by users. However, most bots fail to engage…

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Channel Moderation in Microsoft Teams

September 12, 2019 Paul Dredge Comments 0 Comment

As some of you may be aware, Microsoft recently announced that channel moderation was coming to Microsoft Teams. Well, guess what… it’s now here! This means you can now specify who you allow to post new messages to channels, giving you the ability to create channels or even whole Teams without the worry of what messages might be posted. It will enable companies and institutions the opportunity to setup organisation-wide Teams where only a select few users can post, keeping…

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Introducing Microsoft Teams Grid View

August 1, 2019 Paul Dredge Comments 0 Comment

Today sees the official launch of the new Microsoft Teams grid view. It gives users an overview of the Teams that they are a member of in a nice organised view. But what else does the new grid view give us? Filtering Teams One new feature that I’m really liking is the ability to filter the Teams that are displayed in your All Teams view. This is a great way to differentiate the types of Teams you are a part…

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Why is OneDrive Important?

July 19, 2019 Paul Dredge Comments 0 Comment

As training consultants, we are often asked what is OneDrive and why do we need it? Before I go into why I think it’s essential in our everyday lives – both working and personal – I think we need to understand what OneDrive is. For me, OneDrive is your My Documents but deposited in the cloud on Office 365. It offers a simple, single way to store, share and synchronise files of different types. The files stored within OneDrive are…

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Latest feature in University Business magazine

January 22, 2017 Paul Dredge Comments 0 Comment

Well, January is nearing a close and I’ve just had my first article of 2017 featured in a magazine called University Business. This article tells the story of why we should use Office 365 in education. This is my 3rd article to be featured by Wildfire publications and this one was my most enjoyable to write as Office 365 plays a major part in my working day and is something that I feel really helps in education. To read the article…

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The Microsoft Educator Community – Get Trained

March 22, 2016 Paul Dredge Comments 0 Comment

This week celebrates #MECWeek so it only seems right to write a blog entry about the training aspect of the Microsoft Educator Community. When your asked to access training resources online, and then sit a short exam, you always think the worst, a boring text and multiple choice questions set to catch you out! The ‘Get Trained’ section on the MEC makes the learning enjoyable and is aimed at educators and teachers so you don’t have to have a degree…

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Why Office 365?

October 11, 2015 Paul Dredge Comments 0 Comment

When talking about moving over to the cloud and using cloud services I usually get ask “But WHY?” You may be sitting there thinking “the way I use IT in my school works and meets the needs for the curriculum so why should I move over to using the cloud and Office 365?” Really the question you should be asking yourself is “why am I not using Office 365 and the cloud?” There are many advantages of using Office 365 and…

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Windows 10 – First Thoughts

August 7, 2015 Paul Dredge Comments 0 Comment

Well I haven’t done a blog for a while as I’ve been busy with other things but with Windows 10 now out, I thought I should give my first opinions on it. I have been running Windows 10 on my Surface Pro since the first technical preview and have loved it. People are saying its the best operating system that Microsoft have ever released and I think they could be right. Since the early previews it has come on a long way…

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