This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The next step in the journey towards greater employee experience is here. Earlier this month, we announced that Microsoft Viva Connections would soon be available for desktop and today, we’re excited to share that you can now download and install the Viva Connections desktop app in your organization.
Watch this video and follow the instructions below to get started with Viva Connections.
Step-by-step guide to setting up Viva Connections desktop
Complete the following steps to enable Viva Connections desktop using SharePoint PowerShell:
Set up a SharePoint home site: We highly recommend that you set up a SharePoint home site and use that site as the default landing experience for your users in Teams.
Create a Viva Connections app package in PowerShell: The SharePoint admin needs to download and run the Viva Connections PowerShell script from the Microsoft download center to create the Viva Connections desktop package. Ensure that you are using the latest version of the SharePoint Management Shell tool before running the script.
Provide tenant and site information to create the package: For a detailed description of the information you’ll need to provide, reference this article.
Upload the Viva Connections desktop package in the Teams Admin Center: Once you successfully provide the details, a Teams app manifest, which is a .zip file, will be created and saved on your device. The Teams administrator of your tenant will then need to upload this app manifest to Teams admin center > Manage apps.
Manage and pin the app by default for your users: Once the Viva Connections desktop package is successfully uploaded in the Teams admin center, it can be managed like any other app. You can configure user permissions to make this app available to the right set of user who will then be able to find this app in the Teams app catalog.
Find more detailed instructions on getting started with Viva Connections for admins and end users.
Continuing the journey
We are excited for you to begin working with the Teams desktop experience of Viva Connections and look forward to hearing your feedback.
The mobile experience for Viva Connections will be available in Teams in the summer of 2021. Learn more what the mobile experience for Viva Connections can do for your employees, leaders, and IT.
In conjunction with the release of the mobile experience, we will also release an update to the desktop experience that will focus on improvements for IT administrators and deployment enhancements. This summer update will combine both the mobile and desktop configuration and deployment into the Teams admin console.
In this summer update we will also release web parts for the “dashboard” and “feed” to align with the mobile experience. These new web parts will enable the dashboard experience, authored in SharePoint, to be constant across all end points.
As web parts they will be available to add to any of your sites and allow you to leverage multiple columns and other advanced layouts on the desktop.
Stay tuned!
-Mike Holste Michael Holste is a senior product marketing manager for employee engagement at Microsoft
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
This post is co-authored with Lihui Wang, Gang Wang, Xinfeng Chen, Qinying Liao, Garfield He and Sheng Zhao
Neural Text-to-Speech (Neural TTS), part of Speech in Azure Cognitive Services, enables you to convert text to lifelike speech for more natural user interactions. Neural TTS has powered a wide range of scenarios, from audio content creation to natural-sounding voice assistants, for customers from all over the world. Today we are happy to announce that 6 new languages were added to the Neural TTS portfolio with 12 voices available, and the 10 voices in preview with 5 languages are now generally available.
Six new languages
12 voices from 6 brand-new languages, with one male and one female voice in each language are available now: Nia in ‘cy-GB’ Welsh (United Kingdom), Aled in ‘cy-GB’ Welsh (United Kingdom), Rosa in ‘en-PH’ English (Philippines), James in ‘en-PH’ English (Philippines), Charline in ‘fr-BE’ French (Belgium), Gerard in ‘fr-BE’ French (Belgium), Dena in ‘’nl-BE Dutch (Belgium), Arnaud in ‘nl-BE’ Dutch (Belgium), Polina in ‘uk-UA’ Ukranian (Ukraine), Ostap in ‘uk-UA’ Ukranian (Ukraine), Uzma in ‘ur-PK’ Urdu (Pakistan), and Asad in ‘ur-PK’ Urdu (Pakistan).
У Києві завершили реставрацію Андріївської церкви.
uk-UA
Ukrainian (Ukraine)
Male
uk-UA-OstapNeural
Загалом було оновлено 4 395 км доріг.
ur-PK
Urdu (Pakistan)
Female
ur-PK-UzmaNeural
واہ! کیا ہی خوبصورت نظارہ ہے۔
ur-PK
Urdu (Pakistan)
Male
ur-PK-AsadNeural
سورج گرہن پاکستانی وقت کے مطابق شام 6 بج کر 34 منٹ پر شروع ہو گا۔
With this update, Azure TTS now supports 60 languages in total. Check out the figure below for more details or see thefull language list.
Five preview languages now GA
Last November, we released 5 languages in preview with 10 voices for European locales. Now these languages become generally available in all Neural TTS regions/datacenters. Azure TTS now has full support for all 24 European languages.
Locale code
Language
Gender
Voice name
Audio samples
et-EE
Estonian (Estonia)
Female
et-EE-AnuNeural
Pese voodipesu kord nädalas või vähemalt kord kahe nädala järel ning ära unusta pesta ka kardinaid.
et-EE
Estonian (Estonia)
Male
et-EE- KertNeural
Ametlikku meetodit sellise pettuse avastamiseks ei olegi olemas.
ga-IE
Irish (Ireland)
Female
ga-IE- OrlaNeural
Tá an scoil sa mbaile ar oscailt arís inniu.
ga-IE
Irish (Ireland)
Male
ga-IE- ColmNeural
Ritheadh próiseas comhairliúcháin faoin scéal sa bhfómhar.
lt-LT
Lithuanian (Lithuania)
Female
lt-LT- OnaNeural
Derinti motinystę ir kūrybą išmokau jau po pirmojo vaiko gimimo.
lt-LT
Lithuanian (Lithuania)
Male
lt-LT- LeonasNeural
Aišku, anksčiau ar vėliau paaiškės tos priežastys.
lv-LV
Latvian (Latvia)
Female
lv-LV-EveritaNeural
Daži tumšās šokolādes gabaliņi dienā ir gandrīz būtiska uztura sastāvdaļa.
lv-LV
Latvian (Latvia)
Male
lv-LV- NilsNeural
Aizvadīto gadu uzņēmums noslēdzis ar 6,3 miljonu eiro zaudējumiem.
mt-MT
Maltese (Malta)
Female
mt-MT-GraceNeural
Fid-diskors tiegħu, is-Segretarju Parlamentari fakkar li dan il-Gvern daħħal numru ta’ liġijiet u inizjattivi li jħarsu lill-annimali.
mt-MT
Maltese (Malta)
Male
mt-MT- JosephNeural
Anki tfajjel tal-primarja jaf li l-popolazzjoni tikber fejn hemm il-prosperità.
How to integrate with the new voices/languages
Azure TTS now covers more languages of the world. Applications using Azure TTS can be easily updated to support coverage of additional countries. All the voices are available in the same API and SDK. Developers can just edit the voice and locale list in their applications to use these new voices without code logic modifications.
For instance, Microsoft Teams auto attendants lets people call your organization and navigate a menu system to speak to the right department, call queue, person, or an operator. It uses Azure TTS to render customized prompts as a call response. To better localize audio prompts for different countries, Teams has been integrated with the new TTS languages to serve more customers around the world.
Want more languages or voices?
If you find that the language which you are looking for is not supported by Azure TTS, reach out to your sales representative, or file a support ticket on Azure. We’d be happy to engage and discuss how to support the languages you need. You can also customize and create a brand voice with your speech data for your apps using the Custom Neural Voice feature.
Tell us your experiences!
By offering more voices across more languages and locales, we anticipate developers across the world will be able to build applications that change experiences for millions. Whether you are building a voice-enabled chatbot or IoT device, an IVR solution, adding read-aloud features to your app, converting e-books to audio books, or even adding Speech to a translation app, you can make all these experiences natural sounding and fun with Neural TTS.
Let us know how you are using or plan to use Neural TTS voices in this form. If you prefer, you can also contact us at mstts [at] microsoft.com. We look forward to hearing about your experience and look forward to developing more compelling services together with you for the developers around the world.
How do IT organizations gain the technical skills needed to help power organizations’ cloud initiatives and digital transformation efforts? Microsoft recently sponsored a research study with IDC to help get the answers.
IT leaders reported that the key to success is having the right skills in-house. To meet an organization’s strategic goals, technical workers in particular need the right training. Digital transformation is moving business forward so fast that upskilling and reskilling at the same rate are essential to keep up with IT requirements.
In short, Microsoft Learning Partners can play a key role in delivering learning results that make a measurable difference in organizations. Our community of Learning Partners knows how to advance employees to their learning goals using Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC) taught by Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs).
How Learning Partners can help you achieve your learning goals
To stay up to date, IT pros are constantly learning and adding skills. The IDC study concluded that Microsoft Learning Partners are well positioned to help organizations achieve their business and learning goals. The IT leaders who were surveyed found the most value from a Learning Partner that provides:
An end-to-end solution which starts with identifying skill gaps, simplifies the learning experience, and finishes by evaluating how well the Learning Partner met the organization goals.
Scale, flexibility, and speed to train teams of any size, in any location, amid changing circumstances.
Value-added services, such as hands-on labs, classroom training, and custom content that help the skills development program succeed.
High-quality content and delivery, meaning accurate, relevant courseware, top-notch instructors, and a path to certification, if needed.
According to those surveyed, Learning Partners with the scope to deliver in these four areas make a difference in helping organizations meet their digital transformation goals.
The IDC study also assessed eight common use cases for IT skill development, comparing Learning Partners to other providers and internal training teams.
IT leaders selected Microsoft Learning Partners more often than other training providers in upskilling people in digital literacy, especially in analytics and cloud-related topics.
IT leaders also chose Learning Partners more often for training in new product deployment and processes. Learning Partners were also rated comparable or better for reskilling, skill maintenance, attracting and engaging workers, career development, and compliance.
IDC researchers found that high-quality training programs help ensure that IT teams meet their learning objectives. That, in turn, helps accelerate the achievement of an organization’s business goals, including digital transformation.
Authorized Microsoft Learning Partners specialize in helping organizations reach their training goals. MCTs are experts in technology and instruction who know how to guide organizations to measurable results. MOC provides relevant, accurate training content reviewed by Microsoft product teams. It’s also aligned with the industry-recognized Microsoft Certification objectives, for those who want to go that route.
Next step: Get help from an expert
In a digital-first world, instructor-led training and customized learning plans from the experts can give your organization’s IT workforce the edge it needs.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Small and medium businesses (SMBs) continue to embrace remote work, putting IT partners at the forefront of rolling out their customers’ digital transformations and opening new opportunities to integrate voice services into Microsoft Teams.
With Microsoft 365 Business Voice, partners have an all-in-one communication solution that brings together calling, chat, and meetings into a single app – Microsoft Teams. Business Voice is a cloud-based phone system specifically designed for businesses with 1-300 employees, which provides SMBs with secure, reliable, and rich calling capabilities, simplified management, and reduced costs.
The Microsoft 365 Business Premium Partner Playbook is a one-stop content and training hub to assist IT partners in building a profitable managed services practice with Business Voice. It includes practical, step-by-step guidance and enablement resources across all phases of the partner journey, from understanding the opportunity, sales and technical training, to marketing and deployment tools.
The playbook includes:
Practical guidance on developing profitable managed services offers
Technical enablement and checklists from Microsoft experts
Sales guidance and tools to help partners drive customer conversations
Handy IT checklists and deployment guidance
On-demand readiness webinar with recommended practices from Microsoft experts
Microsoft 365 Business Voice product licenses now available for partners
Microsoft 365 Business Voice product licenses are now included for partners with the Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions competency, Office 365 services option, in the markets where Business Voice is available. Learn more about your Internal Use Rights (IUR) benefits and how to activate them in Partner Center.
We believe these resources will help our IT partners in their journey to build a managed services practice with Business Voice. If you have any recommendations or needs for additional enablement and training, please share them with us.
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
March was a month that brought more Viva goodness, refined SharePoint and Lists experiences, and a few gems for your content migrations. Blink and it’s April, but first, let’s review March.
March 2021 brought some great new offerings: Microsoft Viva Connections, SharePoint app bar, Focus mode for SharePoint pages and news, images in SharePoint Events web part, SharePoint page analytics, Integrate menu for Microsoft Lists, Graph-based people picker for Person columns, Box migration into Microsoft 365, guest access in Yammer, and more. Details and screenshots below, including our audible, “groundhog, shadow-casted” companion: TheIntrazone Roadmap Pitstop: March 2021 podcast episode – all to help answer, “What’s rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?”
In the podcast episode, I chat with Melissa Torres (LinkedIn | Twitter), principal program manager at Microsoft focused on all things SharePoint hub sites and intelligent intranet. This month we chat with Melissa beyond hubs about the new SharePoint app bar, what it is and its new role in Microsoft Viva Connections.
Melissa Torres, principal program manager at Microsoft [Intrazone guest], with little Mark Kashman [co-host] in the bottom right corner during our interview over Teams.
All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of March 2021 (possibly early April 2021).
Inform and engage with dynamic employee experiences
Build your intelligent intranet on SharePoint in Microsoft 365 and get the benefits of investing in business outcomes – reducing IT and development costs, increasing business speed and agility, and up-leveling the dynamic, personalized, and welcoming nature of your intranet.
Microsoft Viva Connections for Microsoft Teams (desktop and web)
This enables people to discover and search intranet content, sites, and news from across the organization right in Microsoft Teams (both desktop and web). Viva Connections for Teams, formerly known as the Home site app, brings communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights together into a new, integrated experience.
For Viva Connections deployment, we recommend you configure a SharePoint home site with global navigation in the SharePoint app bar (we’ll talk about that item next). To do this, you can grab the PowerShell script from the Microsoft download center.
SharePoint app bar that features global navigation
Your SharePoint modern communication and team sites will soon feature the SharePoint app bar which provides quick access to customizable global navigation as well as other intranet resources – all accessible for users wherever they might be in SharePoint.
The SharePoint app bar gives you access to global site navigation, your sites, your new and your files – from wherever you are in SharePoint.
We’re excited to share this one. It enables SharePoint page authors and viewers to focus on a greater amount of page content by hiding the site header, site navigation, and global navigation bar with one click. Another click brings back all when you ready to un-focus and move on.
Make all your cares, and navigation elements, disappear with Focus mode, on the left. And on the right when you click out of Focus mode.
SharePoint Events web part will display event images
SharePoint page authors who use the Events web part can enable an image to show per event. The image is derived from the image used in the title area of the Event page.
If you have images in the header of your event, they will now come thru into the Events web part.
Note: Existing Event web parts will not be updated. However, new web parts added to pages and news will default to show images.
It’s always important to know more about your readers – to refine how and what you post in the future. We’re introducing analytics for SharePoint pages and news articles. You’ll be able to see the number of viewers, in addition to seeing information about how users interact with your page or news.
See the number of viewers and how users interact with your SharePoint pages or news.
Teamwork updates across SharePoint team sites, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams
Microsoft 365 is designed to be a universal toolkit for teamwork – to give you the right tools for the right task, along with common services to help you seamlessly work across applications. SharePoint is the intelligent content service that powers teamwork – to better collaborate on proposals, projects, and campaigns throughout your organization – with integration across Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Yammer, Stream, Planner and much more.
Microsoft Lists | New Integrate drop-down menu
As part of updating the command bar at the top of Microsoft Lists, we are introducing a new top-level menu item labeled Integrate. This is the home for features that help extend list experiences. The existing command buttons for Power Apps and Power Automate will move into this new top-level drop-down menu.
The new Integrate drop-down menu provides unified access to Power Platform app integrations for Power Apps and Power Automate, and soon Power BI.
Once the new experience is available, the Power Apps menu option will disappear. People will need to navigate to the Integrate menu option to access both Power Apps and Power Automate, and coming in the future, the newly announced Power BI integration (Microsoft Lists: Visualize with Power BI) ID: 72175.
This is a great one to see the tangible benefits from Microsoft Graph. We are improving the behavior of Person columns in lists by making the suggestions that appear when you type more relevant. When you type in the people picker, the autofill suggestions come from Microsoft Graph. This makes the people picking experience more personalized based on who you work with most often.
The new people picking experience in Microsoft Lists is now based on Microsoft Graph making is more relevant to who you work with most often.
This new feature gives SharePoint and Microsoft 365 admins streamlined support to migrate content from Box into Microsoft 365; that’s Box files and folders as well as conversion of Box notes into Word documents – to where you choose as destination into OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams.
Start your Box content migration into Microsoft 365 directly from within the SharePoint admin center Migration Manager console.
When you connect to a Box enterprise account, the service discovers users and their files. The service will automatically map to an individual’s OneDrive accounts, and you can manually map to a specific OneDrive user account, or route to SharePoint sites or a Teams channel for content meant to be in shared spaces.
We also want to highlight two related migration webinars from Microsoft:
FIXED | Rename a channel in a Teams team and gets updated properly in the corresponding SharePoint folder
Note: if a folder is being synced via OneDrive sync, the new channel/folder name will not yet update through to the synced desktop folder with OneDrive shared folders. It is known and being addressed.
Related technology
Guest Access in Yammer is now Generally Available
We know organizations need to engage with vendors, partners, customers, consultants, and other stakeholders while adhering to privacy and security policies that keep your business running smoothly. This new feature is powered by Azure B2B – which enables you to share your company’s applications and services with guest users from any other organization, while maintaining control over your corporate data.
Yammer support for guests is now at general availability.
So, invite with confidence. And note, Yammer communities with external members are denoted by a globe icon.
This has some amazing resources, guest blogging opportunities, and community engagement. This is for more than MVPs – it’s a great place for new/aspiring community members. The initiative is being driven by community members Luise Freese, Vesa Juvonen, and Waldek Mastykarz. There’s a lot of great content already – and maybe yours soon – if you have something to share and are looking for a blog vehicle to get the word out to the community.
Sample content published within the new Microsoft 365 PnP forum space in the Microsoft Tech Community.
We will fully retire Delve mobile apps for iOS and Android on June 1, 2021. Going forward, we recommend using Outlook Mobile instead. With Outlook. you’ll find profile information and relevant files on individual’s profile cards, and recommended documents appear in Outlook’s Search tab.
Two key dates to know about the Delve mobile apps retirement milestones:
On and after March 1st, 2021 – we’ll remove the ability to install Delve mobile apps from App Store and Google Play
And then on June 1st, 2021 – existing Delve mobile installations will stop getting insights on June 1, 2021.
EVENT RECAP | SharePoint’s 20th birthday party
Last Saturday, March 27, 2021 marked SharePoint’s 20th birthday. What a great day, and a collective wild ride over the last two decades. What started on-premises, moved to the cloud, and exists as a core platform and service to so many apps and services… now lives on in infamy with loads of stories, videos, timelines, and more – loads of new assets: a retrospective blog, a new “SharePoint: 20 years young” episode of The Intrazone and more, lots more. The history of SharePoint, the technology it spawned, the industry it helped shape, and the collective community – the best community in tech.
The history of SharePoint viewed via Visio timeline, from 1998 – 2021.
Follow me to catch news and interesting SharePoint things: @mkashman; warning, occasional bad puns may fly in a tweet or two here and there, plus my new blog on Substack: The Kashbox.
Thanks for tuning in and/or reading this episode/blog of the Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – March 2021 (blog/podcast). We are open to your feedback in comments below to hear how both the Roadmap Pitstop podcast episodes and blogs can be improved over time.
Engage with us. Ask those questions that haunt you. Push us where you want and need to get the best information and insights. We are here to put both our and your best change management foot forward.
Stay safe out there on the road’map, and thanks for listening and reading.
Thanks for your time,
Mark Kashman – senior product manager (SharePoint/Lists) | Microsoft)
The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – March 2021 graphic showing some of the highlighted release features.
![Melissa Torres, principal program manager at Microsoft [Intrazone guest], with little Mark Kashman [co-host] in the bottom right corner during our interview over Teams.](https://www.drware.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/large-2026 "IZRP_Mar.2021_001_Melissa.jpg")
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