Microsoft Ignite 2019: lots of news for Cortana, Office, Bing and Teams

At Microsoft Ignite 2019 in Orlando, the Redmond giant has announced several innovations for Microsoft 365, with particular attention to six different areas: productivity, knowledge (knowledge), workflow, security, compliance and management. The common theme is the use of artificial intelligence to make available new experiences that allow to maximize productivity, with optimization and efficiency of processes.

Productivity: improved collaborations thanks to Teams and Cortana, and mobile work with the new Office Mobile App

The productivity tools of Microsoft 365 make use of the potential of Artificial Intelligence to help users create documents, collaborate, analyze data, organize and manage the work.

In particular, there are two opportunities on which Microsoft innovations in the field of productivity focus: on the one hand, creating new experiences that take advantage of the latest innovative paradigms, on the other, bringing new lifeblood to apps known thanks to the power of the cloud.

The news of Microsoft Teams passes from the introduction of functionalities (private channels, multi-window chat, finned channels, integration of tasks with ToDo Planner) to the better cooperation with Outlook, so that it is easier to send email communications to a Teams channel for further comparisons.

Microsoft is also working to introduce more specific features for the healthcare world and for operators in the field: for example, healthcare providers can now conduct virtual consultations through Teams with the new Consult feature. There are also new security options such as SMS Sing-in and Global Sign-Out to make it easier to securely access Teams from mobile devices.

Cortana‘s personal assistant now focuses on productivity, thanks to the use of Artificial Intelligence and integration into Outlook. The new PlayMyEmails function in Outlook for iOS helps manage emails even hands-free, thanks to a new natural language recognition system and improved speech synthesis (which now also includes the possibility of choosing a male voice).

Using the synergies between Outlook and Cortana, it will be possible to delegate the planning of meetings and appointments to the virtual assistant, in a flow of emails that will be managed automatically and in natural language by Cortana.

And soon the virtual assistant will also help prepare for the working day, by sending an email that includes a list of appointments, the relevant documents and reminds you to keep faith with the commitments made by email.

On the Office Mobile front, the combination of the three best-known apps in the suite (Work, Excel and PowerPoint) is recorded in a single app for mobile productivity. The new Actions panel allows you to easily complete a series of tasks on the move, such as creating and signing PDF, sharing files between devices, taking a photo of a document to transform it into an editable Word file or a table to fill in a spreadsheet.

As far as Office is concerned more generally, it is worth mentioning the possibility for Excel to support requests in natural language, so that the user can request further information on the data of a spreadsheet without having to set up a formula.

Particular attention also to time management, especially that far from the office: MyAnalitics allows you to better prepare for moments of ” detachment “, automating notifications, sending reports to collaborators and concluding meetings and discussions left behind.

The integration within the Outlook Insight panel allows to support best practices such as the anticipated scheduling of meetings, the addition of an agenda and to easily carry out follow-up activities.

Finally, it is interesting the new automated management of e-mails that allow you to delay the sending of messages when preparing communications outside the recipient’s working hours.

The new version of Microsft Edge based on Chromium is then scheduled for January 15, 2020. Among the news, the tab page should be mentioned, where you can have direct access to Microsoft 365 files, websites, Internet search, making each tab a portal for productivity.

The integration of Microsoft Search into Bing also allows you to search for information inside the organization exactly like a web search. Microsoft Edge will be available for Windows 10, Windows 8x, Windows 7, macOS, iOS and Android, allowing for seamless availability of passwords, history and favorites.

Knowledge: Collective and shared knowledge to improve results with Project Cortex

This is a new area of investment for Microsoft 365 following the move of the productivity infrastructure to the cloud.

Exploiting the cloud means not only saving resources and making operations more efficient, but also accessing new scenarios: the Microsft 365 AI now allows you to identify, organize and share relevant information within a company, with the aim of making available the right information at the right time.

Productivity not only means being more efficient, but also aggregating and applying collective knowledge so that together it is possible to achieve higher results and objectives.

The first novelty in this area is the Microsoft 365 Knowledge Network (Project Cortex), a service that leverages artificial intelligence to identify and manage company information, automatically organizing it into thematic speeches. The ultimate goal is to access and make available that valuable information that too often remains buried in documents, conversations, meetings and videos.

When it comes to information, one cannot help but think of the way it is sought. Here also Microsoft Search is subject to renewal, with features that improve the retrieval of information of any kind.

It is now possible to develop applications focused on research and to extend the potential of Microsoft Search even outside of Microsoft 365.

Even Microsoft’s corporate social network, Yammer, is being redesigned with new features designed to facilitate the connection between people, the construction of communities and the sharing of relevant information. Homogeneous user experience between various devices and integrations with Team, SharePoint and Outlook.

Yammer can now be used to perform live broadcasts and on-demand events, with video and desktop sharing. And on the video front, there are also news for Microsoft Stream, which now includes new automatic transcription features of the audio of the meeting recordings, in addition to the vocal improvement to highlight speech compared to background noise.

Last but not least, new Workplace Analytics features that allow company managers to quickly and comprehensively monitor the way in which people work and their impact on results, faster understanding on which aspects to operate to improve the various facets of the company reality, such as the culture of meetings, management practices, organizational networks and customer relations.

Workflow: optimize processes to save resources thanks to Power Platform and Scripting

The innovations that Microsoft presents in this area aim to optimize and improve business processes without getting lost in the compilation of code. The approach saves time and resources, while ensuring that process automation is accomplished by those who are in the closest contact with the way work is actually done.

From this point of view, for example, the integration of Power Platform with Teams allows you to automate routine tasks and create customized apps to interact more easily with company information.

These tools are more accessible to users of Teams, unlocking a conversational approach for optimizing productivity scenarios, for example: managing approvals directly in chat. From today the creators of Power App can publish their apps as Teams apps, and users will be able to pin these apps in the left bar of Teams.

Very interesting is the new Scripting functionality present in Office, which simplifies those cumbersome processes and automates repetitive tasks. Scripting is present in Excel, and allows you to record actions within a ” workbook ” and save them as a script that can be used with Power Automate and integrate into a wider workflow.

Security: Protect your company’s valuable assets with Authenticator

Among the new features of Microsoft 365, it should be noted that all customers who subscribe to an Azure AD plan (even free of charge) can now use the Microsoft Authenticator app for ” passwordless ” access to Microsoft and non-Microsoft apps. Companies can thus implement a secure and easy-to-use access system, further strengthened by a two-factor authentication mechanism.

Providing Azure AD Clod now makes it easier to manage identities in the cloud, eliminating the need for synchronization with an on-premise server, simplifying the management of complex organizations and reducing implementation costs.

Microsoft then announces the availability, in preview, of Microsoft Defender ATP EDR (Advanced Persistent Threar Endpoint Detection and Response) for mac OS devices, and in the near future for Linux servers. It is a commitment to extend cross-platform coverage in security solutions.

Finally, also available in preview, Application Guard for Office provides container-based protection at the hardware level for threats against Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. The feature makes use of Office 365 ATP to determine if a document is dangerous or trusted.

Compliance: AI for the simplification and automation of risk management with Insider Risk and Compliance Score

Microsoft today announces Insider Risk Management in Microsoft 365 to help companies quickly identify internal threats, risks, and violations of code of conduct on Office, Windows, Azure and third-party apps such as human resources systems.

The new system leverages Microsoft Graph and other services to implement signals and identify hidden patterns and potential risks, and offer a real-time picture of file activity, communication sentiment and anomalous user behavior.

Again: among today’s news, the Redmond company announces Microsoft Compliance Score, which allows you to simplify and automate risk assessment procedures. It now becomes possible to verify and monitor these aspects continuously, and to have clear indications on how to improve the score in order to adopt a structure that is increasingly compliant with regulations and standards.

The important aspect is that Microsoft Compliance Score also allows those who are not adequately trained on the GDPR or ISO 27001 regulations to be able to quickly learn the necessary corrective operations for compliance with the standards.

Management: cloud and AI together to configure, monitor, manage and secure devices with Endpoint Manager

Endpoint Manager is an integrated solution to securely and centrally manage all company endpoints. The new Endpoint Manager integrates Intune and System Center Configuration Manager, plus a new analytics system, to allow the management of Windows, Android and Apple devices in a simple way, and without the risk of interrupting productivity.

Microsoft Productivity Score is instead of a service that focuses on two areas: employee experience and technology experience. In this way, it is possible to have a framework to verify how the organization is actually operating, identify where it is possible to quickly enable an improvement of the experience and what actions to take to update skills and systems.

Other news announced by Microsoft include the availability of new administrative roles (Global reader) in Azure AD to reduce the number of Global Admin within the company: this in order to conduct checks and schedules without having privileges greater than necessary.

Then there are tools for managing meetings within Teams, the new Onboarding Hub for a global vision of the company’s security structure and Office 365 groups for collaboration in Microsoft 365.

For further information on the many innovations presented by Microsoft at Ignite 2019, we point out the accessible content starting from this official post on the Microsoft blog.