Speaking at Microsoft Ignite the Tour Toronto

Published at December 19, 2019 ·  1 min read

Very pleased to be able to say that I’ll be speaking at Microsoft Ignite the Tour in Toronto on January 8th and 9th, 2020! If you are in the area, hopefully you are registered as the event is currently waitlisted. If you are registered and going, I hope you will try to find me and say hi! My sessions are: ADM20 - Addressing top management issues with user and groups ADM31 - Role-based access control in Microsoft 365: Improve your operations and security posture My sessions are both on January 8th but I’ll be at the event both days....

3PIP Phone and Online update required

Published at December 17, 2019 ·  2 min read

UPDATE 1/14/2020: Deadline extended to July 15th, 2020 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/skype-for-business-blog/oauth-2-0-and-third-party-application-id-timeline-extended-to/ba-p/482876 This is one of those posts that probably feels like it might be late. Microsoft announced way back in April that 3PIP phones would need to be updated due to a change in the Application ID because of the implementation of OAUTH 2.0. Everyone should be happy that Microsoft is focused on implementing new and improved security features. That said, this one has the impact that companies NEED to update the firmware of their handsets and take a specific action....

What's new in Microsoft Teams - 12/11/2019

Published at December 11, 2019 ·  2 min read

This week, if you weren’t paying attention (maybe you’re just trying to get all the year-end stuff done so you can have a restful holiday), you might have missed two big things from Microsoft Teams. First, Native Federation is now here! What is Native Federation you ask? It is the ability to have a chat with an external participant (think B2B) and have the same experience that you have with someone inside your organization....

Jabra Evolve 65t Tests

Published at November 20, 2019 ·  2 min read

In my contuation of testing Microsoft Teams devices, I am doubling down on the Evolve 65t’s. I am one of those people who truly wants to like every device I test. I want to see the manufacturers bring high-quality products to market that give end users options. After my last testing round https://cloudrenegade.us/2019/10/22/microsoft-teams-devices-comparison/ the one device that I just couldn’t get to test well was the Jabra Evolve 65t’s. I found that every time I would test them I would get a robotic voice or some other issue that arose as poor voice quality to the far end....

Speaking at Microsoft Ignite 2019

Published at October 24, 2019 ·  1 min read

In case you missed it, I’m speaking at Microsoft Ignite this year. First up is on Monday, November 4th at 2:15pm EST. I’ll be leading a conversation around starting your own community event. After starting the Colorado UC User Group and helping found Comms vNext, I want to help others get started with community events in their local areas. Search for UNC1003 in the session catalog or you can click: https://myignite....

Microsoft Teams Devices Comparison

Published at October 22, 2019 ·  3 min read

Today, we’re going to try and show the real world results of various headsets. Most of this is in the video as the setup for the video is pretty much a blog post. Before we get to that, I want to give a quick shout out to Tom Arbothnot who started the discussion on Twitter and has a blog post of his own coming out on this subject. If you aren’t following his blog, https://tomtalks....

Microsoft Authenticator for Android

Published at September 13, 2019 ·  1 min read

Nice little update today to the Microsoft Authenticator app for Android: the ability to backup your configuration! This has been something I have been wanting for the past month. Back in early August, an update dropped that created issues for me. I was experiencing high battery usage as well as apps such as Microsoft Teams and Outlook Mobile weren’t working properly unless I opened them and allowed them to re-authenticate. With the update that dropped today, the latter issues have disappeared thankfully!...

Outlook Meeting Setting

Published at September 6, 2019 ·  1 min read

This is just a quick tip of the day. Having just changed company’s, I was re-setting up my Outlook profile, you know, adding my signature, etc. when I remembered this setting about meetings that I believe everyone should set: We’ve all had it happen where we get booked in back to back to back to back meetings, right? No, just me? Anyway, by utilizing this setting, whenever I book a meeting that is 30 min, it only books for 25....

You Say You Want a Revolution

Published at September 3, 2019 ·  4 min read

Or maybe it should be “ch-ch-ch-changes”? Either way, it’s true. I’ve moved jobs. TL;DR - I, along with Chad McGreanor, have started Cloud Revolution. We’re a boutique, Microsoft focused cloud company with a desire to help companies revolutionize the way people communicate and collaborate! Now, on to the rest of the story: The past six years has been a whirlwind of change and adapt and I determined that it was time to move on....

New Beginnings

Published at August 29, 2019 ·  2 min read

Well, welcome to the home of my new blog. For the past 12 years (yeah, it’s been 12 years), I’ve blogged at https://phyler.wordpress.com. I never got into the branding thing too much besides representing myself well. There have been times where customers have shown me my own blog as a solution and I had to explain but overall, it was just a spot for me to vent. There has been a lot happening in my life and it seemed fitting to re-brand....

Microsoft Teams and Call-me Back Changes

Published at August 6, 2019 ·  3 min read

Was tipped off to this from a friend. For a long time, we’ve had the Call-me back feature as part of Teams. Microsoft has stated it would change several times over the past year or so, but it looks like it is finally going to happen: Customers have been provided a complimentary dial-out capability that will end on November 30, 2019. Beginning December 1, 2019, each Audio Conferencing subscription provides 60 minutes per user per month that can be used to dial out to non-premium numbers in ANY of the Zone A countries as described in this document....

CapitalOne, AWS and what we should learn (or really know) about Public Cloud

Published at July 30, 2019 ·  2 min read

I’m sure you’ve heard all about the CaptialOne hack by now. The interesting part is that the records were stored on AWS. You can read more about that here. Why is this interesting? Number one reason is that AWS wasn’t the issue but the hack has highlighted the fact that while AWS and other public Cloud providers (i.e. Microsoft and Google) provide the infrastructure, you still need to be responsible about the applications....

Microsoft Teams Adoption and the Impact of Emotions

Published at July 25, 2019 ·  3 min read

Lately, I’ve found myself studying the science of Adoption and Change Management (ACM). Mainly because Microsoft Teams is a pretty big foundational shift from how we’ve done things in the OCS/Lync/Skype world in some ways. In other ways, we’re faced with the same ACM struggles as OCS/Lync/Skype of simply getting the users to understand the software and how it can improve their lives. I had two things happen to me today that compelled me to write this article....

Resource Accounts in Microsoft Teams and how they affect Auto Attendants and Call Queues (new, maybe?)

Published at April 26, 2019 ·  3 min read

UPDATE 7/24/2019: The new license model has been released. Please reference https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-add-on-licensing/virtual-user for guidance. This might be one of those classic “Adam” moments. Maybe this has been this way and I’m only waking up to it now. That said, I have found in life, that if I have a question or a view, I’m usually not the only one who has it. So here goes. Had someone bring this link up to me recently (HT to Randy, he’ll know who he is): https://docs....

Speaking at ConvergeOne 2019 Iowa Tech Summit

Published at April 8, 2019 ·  1 min read

I’ll be speaking at the ConvergeOne 2019 Iowa Tech Summit in Des Moines on April 17th. I’m going to be talking on Microsoft Teams and it’s impact on Digital Transformation. Here’s a quick snippet on the topic: Microsoft Teams is impacting the way companies work. From the mindset of Cloud First, Mobile First, Microsoft has established Teams as the hub for Collaboration. In this presentation, we will look at five ways that Teams is enabling Digital Transformation and give some thoughts on how it could impact your organization....