January 22, 2020

Microsoft Teams, Poly Devices and Remote Packet Capture

This is one of those posts where I’m sharing more for me to come back and find later. I was working with a customer and got asked about QoS and ports. I had previously looked into this and then as one does, let life get in the way (evidently starting a business takes effort, who knew?) and I never got around to doing the network traces. So, today, I fired up my trusty old friend, Wireshark in order to watch was happening.

December 19, 2019

Speaking at Microsoft Ignite the Tour Toronto

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.

December 17, 2019

3PIP Phone and Online update required

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. This will be enforced starting January 15th, 2020. Yes, you read that right, that’s less than a month away.

December 11, 2019

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

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. That means you get persistence of the chat from both sides. In addition, you can send emoji’s, Giphys, stickers and more! This has been a long time coming and it’s great to see that it’s here.

November 20, 2019

Jabra Evolve 65t Tests

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. It was interesting as I had been using this device as my mobile device for several months with no complaints from my wife or kids when I would either call them via Teams (I have an MTR in the house in which I call home to in order to maintain contact with the family) or via the PSTN. My wife would not put up with poor quality knowing I have many other devices to choose from so it was really bothering me that these tested so poorly.

October 24, 2019

Speaking at Microsoft Ignite 2019

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.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/78939?source=sessions

October 22, 2019

Microsoft Teams Devices Comparison

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.uk, go do that right after watching this video.

September 13, 2019

Microsoft Authenticator for Android

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! Time will tell if the battery issue is gone but I suspect it has.

September 6, 2019

Outlook Meeting Setting

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:

Outlook Meeting Setting

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. Instead of an hour, it’s only 45 minutes. This allows for some margin in my day which is critical to maintaining balance. It provides me a quick break between meetings to stand up and stretch, make a coffee, whatever else might be needed.

September 3, 2019

You Say You Want a Revolution

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. Over the past six years, I got to experience working alongside some of the best teammates I will probably ever have the pleasure of joining forces with. As a team we were bought and sold twice in two years which brings with it it’s own stresses and challenges. Throughout it all we triumphed in face of adversity. People moved on as they are apt to do and that change finally came to me.