News in Microsoft 365

April will be an eventful month in the Microsoft 365 world with many news and name changes. In this blog post, we briefly review some of the news that Microsoft is releasing during the month of April. 

In order to bring greater clarity to the Office 365 Business and Microsoft 365 Business plans, some will be renamed on 21 April. The Office 365 Pro Plus plan (local Office installation only) will also be renamed. These changes will happen automatically and you don't have to do anything in your Office 365 tennant. Only the names of the plans will change, no prices or features will be affected.

The Office 365 Business plans will be renamed Microsoft 365 Business to complement Microsoft 365 Business Premium (formerly Microsoft 365 Business).

In Microsoft 365 Business we will now work with Basic, Standard and Premium plans. The name change being made will help customers get a clearer logic in the different plans based on the names. Today, Business Premium can be interpreted as a higher plan than Business which is not quite in line with reality. With Basic-Standard-Premium, the staircase or ladder if you like becomes much clearer.

Microsoft 365 F1 and Office365 F1 become F3

Microsoft is renaming Microsoft 365 F1 and Office365 F1 as Microsoft 365 F3 and Office365 F3. All features remain the same and prices are unchanged. It is doing this in order to launch a simplified Microsoft 365 F1 which has the Team features but lacks, among other things, an email account. With Microsoft 365 F1, Microsoft wants to be able to offer in particular Teams functionality further out in organisations at a low cost.

7 Team news in Microsoft 365 F1/F3

In conjunction with the name changes, Microsoft is also launching 7 Team News.

• Walkie Talkie in Teams
• Manage data (publish and manage)
• Integrations with staff/schedule management applications

• SMS login
• Easy logout on shared devices
• Restrict the Teams app to working hours
• Delegated user management

If you want to know more about the new features of the simpler Microsoft 365 Fx plans, we recommend this page.

Azure Active Directory Plan 1 included in Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Microsoft has announced that this spring it will add full Azure AD Premium P1 functionality to Microsoft 365 Business Premium. This addition provides powerful new features that help employees in smaller organizations maintain secure access to the applications they use using Cloud App Security, Application proxy, dynamic groups and passwordless authentication - whether in the office or in the field.

This will be launched to new subscribers in the coming weeks and existing active subscribers will have access to it in the coming months.

Microsoft Cloud App Security - helps to maintain control over company resources/files in cloud applications such as OneDrive, SalesForce, etc.

Application proxy - Provides easy and secure remote access to local applications via Azure AD.

Dynamic groups - Create rules to determine group membership based on user or device properties. Users and devices are added or removed if they meet the conditions of a group. Read more here

Microsoft Defender ATP for servers

Another long-awaited news is that we get access to Microsoft Defender ATP for server. This has previously only been available via Azure Security Center as a capacity service.

Now customers with at least 50 Microsoft 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E3 + Microsoft E5 Security can add Microsoft Defender ATP for Server. This allows us to have intelligent antivirus protection even on our server environments at a low cost.

Some long-awaited Team News

The usefulness of Teams has been well demonstrated lately and some new features are coming soon to further enhance our meetings. Works on both PC and MAC.

We can already add our own background images to give our Team Meetings an extra dimension, plus we don't have to see how we're doing at home in the kitchens etc.

Paste this string (%AppData%MicrosoftTeamsBackgroundsUploads) into Windows Explorer (PC) and start adding your favourite images. Don't forget to choose high resolution images and check that they don't affect your image negatively.

The next new feature coming in early May is that we can see nine windows at the same time instead of the current four. Will be a nicer experience to see more colleagues etc at the same time in our meetings.

If you have any questions about the changes in Microsoft 365 or want to know about AddPro's offer, don't hesitate to contact us!