Microsoft are ending FindTime, the add-in for Outlook that allowed you to offer options for a meeting and have attendees vote for their preferred meeting option(s).
When?
With effect from 11 December 2023 you will no longer be able to create meeting polls using FindTime.
What do I do now?
Instead of FindTime you should use Scheduling Poll which is the new option for meeting polls.
Scheduling Poll is built into Outlook for the Web and Outlook for Mac. It is also available for Outlook for Windows, but may not immediately appear depending on the update channel to which you are subscribed. Monthly update channels will see Scheduling Poll with immediate effect. Semi-Annual Enterprise Update channel users may not see Scheduling Poll until after January 2024.
If you need to use Scheduling Poll but don’t see it in your Outlook for Windows then head to your Outlook on the web and create your scheduling poll there.
For more information and support articles on the change from FindTime to Scheduling Polls please visit Microsoft’s support pages at Scheduling Poll articles – Microsoft Support
What is Microsoft Copilot with Commercial Data Protection (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise) ?
Microsoft Copilot with Commercial Data Protection (MS Copilot) uses the Chat GPT 4 AI model to interrogate and deliver search results based on access to the data that you have. Your data is protected and the chat results are NOT saved or made available for Microsoft, so the data does not pass outside of the organisation.
MS Copilot is grounded in data from the public web and provides complete, verifiable answers with citations, along with visual answers that include graphs and charts.
MS Copilot is designed by Microsoft in line with Microsoft’s AI Principles.
MS Copilot has no access to organizational data in the Microsoft 365 Graph.
How do I use MS Copilot?
Head to https://www.bing.com/chat and sign in with your College ID (username@ic.ac.uk). NOTE Only Staff with an A3 or A5 license for Microsoft 365 services can access Bing Chat Enterprise at the present time.
Once signed in you will see a “Protected” flag beside your name indicating that you are using the secure version of Microsoft Copilot with Commercial Data Protection.
The font page will appear with options to select a particular style of conversation (Creative, Balanced or Precise).
Bing Chat Enterprise homepage
You can provide simple questions or more complicated multiple point paragraphs. MS Copilot will then interpret your request and deliver results which you can then refine as needed.
MS Copilot also incorporates DALL-E for image creation – this can take a little while to respond depending on how complicated your request is. You should also be careful to ensure that any image that you create correctly attributes any copyright for partial use from other published images. Failure to do so may result in image copyright infringement and subsequent demands for payments or charges being levied through legal action. If in doubt then adopt the premise of “don’t publish”!
Five Things to Try to Get Started
Summarise a long document or article. Navigate to a long article or document (PDF) on the internet, then use the Chat sidebar in Microsoft Edge to ask MS Copilot to summarise the document in 5 bullet points.
Draft emails and content that’s ready to send. Navigate to your Outlook on the web (https://email.imperial.ac.uk) then use the Copilot icon in Microsoft Edge to ask MS Copilot to draft an email, e.g. “Draft an email alumni students asking them to consider leaving Imperial a gift in their will”.
Create an image. In MS Copilot ask “Create an illustration of a shark jumping out of a coffee mug”. Try changing the shark to a dolphin.
Learn new and useful information easily. In MS Copilot ask “Explain how large language models work in simple terms”.
Get answers to complex and specific questions. Try “Give me a table that compares Imperial’s undergraduate Medicine course to that of UCL”
More information
You can find out more about MS Copilot and how it works with your data and information by watching the Microsoft Mechanics video (https://aka.ms/BCE/MechanicsVideo)
There is also a recording of the Imperial Ask Me Anything session where we looked at BCE (now MS Copilot). This is available from our AMA Video library (The Microsoft 365 Ask Me Anything Pages – Home (sharepoint.com)). This information is only available to Internal users in Imperial College London.
This page was updated on 1 February 2024 to reflect naming changes in the Microsoft estate.
Apple will shortly release iOS 17. This is expected to happen by the end of September 2023.
At this point Microsoft will cease issuing updates for Outlook running on iOS 15 systems. Outlook will continue to run on iOS 15 devices but will not receive any feature or security updates.
In order to remain secure and compliant, ICT recommends that you update your device to the newest available iOS release for your system.
If you continue to run iOS 15 on your device after the release of iOS 17, but then update your system to iOS 16 or 17, your version of Outlook will be updated to the latest release to include any new security or feature updates. Once using iOS 16 or 17 your Outlook for iOS will continue to receive new feature and security updates.
Microsoft supports Outlook for iOS for the current and one previous major version of the operating system. In order to maintain security and feature availability in Outlook and other Microsoft apps for iOS you should keep your device up to date with iOS updates.
After the finish of the 2022 / 23 Ask Me Anything sessions, we wanted to let you know that we will be back for the 2023 / 24 Academic Year.
Following on from the polls run during July 2023, we are continuing to run these, on the second Tuesday at 10.00 and the fourth Tuesday at 09:00, each month.
How do I join the sessions?
We’re making it simpler to get signed up for these sessions / add them to your calendar this year.
On the home page, scroll down until you see the “Ask Me Anything Sessions – 2023 / 24” section.
The section will display a message about the group being deleted – it hasn’t (it’s a SharePoint quirk!). Click on the link “The Microsoft Ask Me Anything Pages” to join the membership group …
Initial “deleted group” message
You will be automatically added to the group and see a page as follows …
Successful joining of the group
Now close the tab with the “You’ve joined this group” message and refresh the SharePoint page. You will then see the next 6 upcoming sessions.
Click on the title for a session and then in the window click on “Add event to your calendar” and choose whether you want to add the single occurrence or the series.
How to add the occurrence or series to your calendar
If you add the series then you need to just go to one entry for each series (2nd Tuesday vs 4th Tuesday) and add that series.
You will get an ICS file downloaded which will either be for the single date or the session depending on your choice in step 3.
Open the ICS file that has downloaded and accept the invitation to add the event or series into your calendar. Repeat for the second series or for as many sessions as you wish to join individually!
Once you’ve done that check your calendar for the entries to the meeting including the join link for Teams.
We look forward to welcoming you in September 2023 and, in the meantime, you can check out recordings from some of the sessions run during 2022 / 23 on the same pages. See Recordings by Subject Area (sharepoint.com) for a listing of recordings by subject area covered.
This will add you to the group which has the preview policy applied. Once available on our tenant you will be able to switch to Preview mode using the toggle switch on the main title bar in the Teams client for Windows.
Please note that this applies to both Windows and Mac OS clients (as of 01/09/2023).
The “Present in Teams” button in the PowerPoint app is being extended to PowerPoint files that are not stored in Microsoft 365 Clouds.
You will be able to use the “Present in Teams” button in the PowerPoint for Window app to present via PowerPoint Live in your Teams meetings, even if your file is not stored in Microsoft 365 Clouds. This is a new PowerPoint Live entry point for those files, in addition to the “Browse my computer” button in Teams Share tray. Clicking the “Present in Teams” button first leads you to the Save As dialog to store the file to the Microsoft 365 Cloud. Once the file is saved, we’ll automatically trigger PowerPoint Live to present your file in your current Teams meeting.
Image of the “Present in Teams” button in PowerPoint
Image showing the save to cloud function
For whom?
This update is only available currently to the PowerPoint app for Windows and is not available in the Mac app yet.
ICT are introducing changes to ASK (ServiceNow) to improve how our staff, students, and external customers interact with the ICT Service Desk.
From Monday 26 June, the following changes will be implemented:
Emailing service.desk(at)imperial.ac.uk will no longer automatically create new tickets in ASK.
Improvements to ASK, our online service portal including a new general ICT enquiries form used to access general IT support.
New service status on ASK, displaying ICT services that are unavailable.
New customer facing ASK portal for prospective students and suppliers to submit IT enquires.
Why are ICT making these changes?
This work will reduce the reliance on email, providing an efficient, more seamless user experience, with tickets going directly to the right team. It also sets the foundations towards ICT’s vision of a simple, user-friendly portal where staff and students can benefit from knowledge articles, live service status updates and quicker resolution time using automated forms.
ICT’s vision is to continue to improve ASK so that it is a useful resource for all staff and students to find solutions and seek ICT support. You can follow our progress by reading our Cross Functional Product release notes.
Visit ICT’s changes to how you contact ICT Service Desk web page for the latest information including how this change impacts you, the benefits, how you can help and an FAQ section which will be updated in line with feedback from our user testing group.
Yammer will be rebranded to Viva Engage. Microsoft are beginning the web rebranding exercise in late June and expect it to be complete by mid-July.
Rebranding has already completed for the mobile apps – so if you had the Yammer app on your phone or tablet then it will already have been updated and rebranded to Viva Engage.
When you sign in to Yammer following the completion of the rebranding exercise you will see a notification like this …
Yammer to Viva Engage message that will be seen on completion of the rebranding.
There is no work required by users for this to happen – it will automatically update. All the existing Yammer features will continue to work in Viva Engage.
Integrations with other ares of Microsoft 365.
If you are looking to utilise Yammer in Teams then you may need to look for Viva Engage instead.
The Power Automate integration to Yammer will soon be updated to reflect the rebranding to Viva Engage,
While reviewing a Yammer (soon to be Viva Engage) community that I am involved in, I came across the following actions that you can take when hosting or participating in meetings to make them effective Hybrid meetings that work like “charms” …
The six CHARMS to making Teams meetings effective
When you join a Teams meeting whether you are joining in person or remotely, use a personal device to join the meeting (ensuring that you are muted if in a meeting room). This will allow you to then …
Join in small talk
You can use the chat function on your personal device (laptop, tablet or phone) to directly engage with others in the meeting using the chat function.
Participate via chat or by using the hand raise feature
Ask questions or post suitable information using the chat, or “raise your hand” and when called upon, provide a verbal update.
Pin a participant
Not so that you can throw darts at them! Rather to keep the participant in focus – especially useful in a large meeting.
Recognize who is talking
Transcription will detect who is speaking – so if you use your device it will correctly attribute your comments in the transcription and live captions to you.
Turn on Live captions
Live captions provide a brilliant way to keep up with who is saying what in a meeting, and for those with accessibility issues they provide a vital additional means of knowing what is going on.
React using emojis
Emojis add fun and also provide a great way to show recognition, appreciation and engagement.
Setting your Work Hours and Locations for “Hybrid Working”
Did you know that you can now set your work hours and location (Office vs Remote) in Outlook on the web?
This can be really helpful for your colleagues who when organising meetings will be able to see whether you are working remotely or in the office and plan accordingly.
To set your hours and location head to Outlook in a web browser (Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge give the best experience). Once in Outlook on the web click on the cog wheel near your profile photo or initials and choose “View all Outlook Settings”.
In the resulting settings box choose Calendar and at the bottom of the Calendar options you will find Work Hours and Locations. Click on this and then you can set your work hours and locations. You can even set up “split days” with part remote and part office based locations.
How to set your work hours and locations
Once you have set your options and clicked Save, your location will appear beside your name in the Scheduling Assistant in Outlook on the Web. There are plans to roll this out to Outlook Desktop and Mobile clients in the future, but for now it just shows up in Outlook on the Web.
How work locations show up in the scheduling assistant in OWA
