Given the widespread adoption of Microsoft Teams in the past few years, Microsoft Teams Chat has become a key component of Microsoft 365 tenant-to-tenant migrations. As a Microsoft 365 technical consultant who performs hands-on-keyboard work and speaks with business stakeholders, I’ve found that most clients are not prepared for the nuances of chat migrations and assume that they can be migrated like any other workload in Microsoft 365; this is not the case. Whether you’re a technically minded stakeholder who is seeking clarity on the impact that a Teams Chat migration will have on your busin ..read more

Microsoft 365 migrations can be complex. With so many vital business applications in use—like Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint and Outlook along with the sheer volume of data stored on each of these—there is a lot that can go wrong. I’ve had several discussions recently with customers whose entire migrations came to a screeching halt because they were migrating 500 versions of the same file or a Teams channel with over 100,000 messages. Both of these scenarios could have been avoided. How can you configure your Microsoft 365 migration to run as fast as possible? Everyone asks how fast Microsoft 36 ..read more

As the baby boomer generation approaches retirement age, organizations across various industries are starting to feel the effects of a skills shortage. Nowhere is this shortage more prominent and critical than in the Microsoft Active Directory (AD) field. The prevalence of Active Directory Active Directory is a vital component of the Microsoft Windows Server operating system, providing a centralized database of user accounts and network resources. It is used by organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises, to manage user access, permissions, and other network resourc ..read more

Physical whiteboards were a staple when employees met and collaborated in-person in office spaces. All that has changed with the shift to remote work and reliance on collaboration technology like Microsoft Teams. For companies that now rely on Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Whiteboard has emerged as a solution which allows teams to work together in real-time in a digital space replicating a traditional in-person whiteboard collaboration experience. What is Microsoft Whiteboard? Microsoft Whiteboard simulates a virtual whiteboard, providing a space that can be used for projects, brainstorming, wor ..read more

Working from home led to a significant increase in the use of collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams. It also led to a steady stream of exciting new feature releases to meet the needs and workstyle of its diverse user base. An area that Microsoft has put significant investment recently in is Microsoft Teams’ accessibility features to support neurodiverse workers—an area near and dear to my heart. This blog post will outline some Microsoft Teams accessibility features and settings that are designed to help neurodiverse users reduce stress and distractions and be more successful in their dail ..read more

What is a cyber kill chain, and how can it help you enhance your organization’s cybersecurity posture? This blog post provides all the details, including the seven stages in the original cyber kill chain model, as well as how the MITRE ATT&CK knowledgebase fits into the picture. Then it provides a deeper dive into one of the key stages of the Microsoft 365 cyber kill chain, privilege escalation, and explains how attack path management and monitoring can help you prevent adversaries from gaining control of your Active Directory. What is the cyber kill chain? While “cyber kill chain” sounds ..read more

Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Group migrations are critical projects for many organizations in the middle of a merger, acquisition, and/or divestiture. Microsoft Planner tasks are a key collaboration feature that helps teams identify and manage their work. Even during a migration, the flow of work must continue without obstruction or critical data loss. This blog post reviews the top Planner considerations when migrating Microsoft Planner. 1.    Where are the Planner Plan Tasks? When preparing for a Planner migration, it is important to note that not everything in a Plan is ..read more

Email archive migration is often overlooked — or even deliberately excluded — during migration planning. After all, understaffed IT teams know that a migration to Microsoft 365 is already a complex undertaking with many moving parts, so it’s understandable that they might be eager to move anything considered “non-essential” out of the initial scope. But is it really wise to simply focus on getting users’ active mailboxes into Exchange Online and put off thinking about the email archive migration until later? The reality is, failing to make email archive migration an integral part of your broa ..read more

Microsoft Planner is a mobile and web-based visual task management and collaboration application that is available to premium, business and educational subscriptions of Microsoft 365. With Microsoft Planner, users can create plans, assign tasks, chat about tasks, share files and see charts of their team’s progress. This blog post reviews the key features in Microsoft Planner with tips on when and how it’s best to use them. What is Microsoft Planner used for? Although it has become a major player in the task management software space, Microsoft Planner is more of a simplified Microsoft Project ..read more

A Power BI migration is a complex task, and there are no native or third-party tools to facilitate the process. To help, I posted an article on Practical 365 that offers a framework for migrating Power BI from one tenant to another. It involves a 10-step workflow grouped into four phases: analysis, planning, migration and remediation. Today, I’m going to flesh out the planning phase. Planning a successful Power BI migration involves the following steps: Scope the Power BI migration. Determine the migration paths. Batch the workspaces for migration. Schedule the Power BI migration jobs ..read more