Office 365 Updates, Rumors and Speculation

When we launched the CollabTalk show on IT Unity this past January, we knew that we’d have to tread lightly on some topics. As MVPs, we sometimes get a preview of forthcoming features and announcements….and then anxiously await the release of information embargoes so that we can talk, blog, and tweet about what we know. (Of course, if your name is Chris McNulty, you just talk about it in front of 1,000 people on a panel at Ignite) Planning out our topics for each month is a balancing act: we each suggest topics, and then there is some discussion about what we know, what we can talk about, and what will be interesting. It’s not always going to be perfect, and between the occasional technical issues or travel that may keep all four of us from fully participating, one or two topics may not get the full coverage they deserve. On the other side, we might select a topic in advance and add it to our agenda and to the website, only to find out that a delivery date has slipped. It all makes for some very entertaining moments on CollabTalk.

If you’re new to CollabTalk, it’s a monthly web show hosted by myself, Naomi Moneypenny (@nmoneypenny), Benjamin Niaulin (@bniaulin), and Marc Anderson (@sympmarc) where we discuss a wide variety of topics within the Office 365 and SharePoint ecosystem. There’s a reason why we assembled the team we did: these people are not only smart, but they also entertain. If you’ve never dialed into one of the CollabTalk webisodes, you’ll have a chance to see us live tomorrow (Tuesday, July 21st) at 10am PST, or, as always, you can watch a recording of our show or one of the many other unityVision programs by going here.

Within each episode, we talk technology, sure – but there is also a healthy dose of humor, and plenty of rumor and speculation about where the technology is going, how customers and partners are responding to the evolution of SharePoint and the Office 365 platform, and our opinions of where Microsoft hits and misses our perception of the market’s needs. The entire show is broadcast live, and is very interactive with questions from participants throughout, and links that direct you toward additional information on each topic.

As some of you are aware, I also host a monthly tweetjam (for almost 3 years now) that also uses the #CollabTalk hashtag, which you can follow at Twubs.com/Collabtalk. While they share the name, they are different shows that serve somewhat different audiences, as not everyone does The Twitter. Of course, if you’re looking for more information and opinions on the topics being covered, both provide a treasure trove of information.

For the July CollabTalk webisode #7, we will be covering the following topics:

• Workload-specific admin roles, which is just one aspect of the ever-expanding “management layer” on Office 365
• The future of unified tasking. This will be a lot of speculation, but we’ll discuss the recent acquisition of wunderlist + Groups tasks + what’s coming in MS Project
• The latest Yammer updates, where we’ll get into the new UI, integration of Office Online capability on June 26 should have rolled out everywhere by then, GFS migration, trust center, and I’ll even do some self-promotion for Beezy’s announcement last week of our 2-way integration between Yammer and SharePoint
• Office 365 change management. The gist of this is — Now that we’ve seen the pace for a while, how can orgs keep up and stay nimble?

Looking forward to chatting it up with Naomi, Ben and Marc once again. If you’d like to participate, please register for Episode #7 here.