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Use Information Rights Management to protect data on Office 365
Office 365, SharePointIn the past few months we’ve put together a few Data Rooms for our clients – virtual places where internal and external parties can be invited to view confidential, or commercially sensitive data. One of the features of Office 365 that’s allowed us to protect these files is Information Rights Management.
What is Information Rights Management?
Information Rights Management is a feature that is only available on the Enterprise Office 365 Plans. It allows you control the security of your data, and prevent users from printing, marking up your documents or even accessing them after a specified period of time. When used in conjunction with the existing security features of SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business, Information Rights Management can be used to lock down your important and sensitive data quite comprehensively.
Who can use it?
In order to get this set up, you must be using an Office 365 Enterprise plan, like Office 365 E1, Office 365 E3, Office 365 E4 or Office 365 E5.
Office 365 Small Business, Small Business Premium, Midsize Business, Business Essentials, Business or Business Premium miss out on the extra security measures available in Information Rights Management.
How to set up Information Rights Management in Office 365
Information Rights Management is not enabled by default, it needs to be manually configured. Here’s how it’s done.
A note about Information Rights Management and PDF files
In our experience, Information Rights Management works best when working with Office documents, because they can be securely opened in the browser and don’t have to be downloaded to the computer. PDF documents can also have IRM policies applied to them, though since there is no way to open these in the browser, they must be downloaded and opened with a PDF reader that supports IRM. There are a couple of options for this, though the experience may not be ideal for the user who is accessing the data, since they may have to install a supported PDF reader.
For the best user experience, you may decide to secure PDF files using the dedicated PDF security features. You can still store these PDFs on SharePoint Online on OneDrive, though it is best to keep these in a separate document library without IRM applied.
Alternatively, you can convert your PDF documents to Word Documents, for consistent IRM policies and security for all of your files.
Secure the devices that access your Office 365 email
Exchange, Office 365One of the conditions of setting up an Exchange Account on a mobile phone or tablet is that the Exchange administrator has control over that device’s security features. If you’re new to administering Exchange, the level of control that you get over these connected devices may surprise you.
Here’s a few things that you can do.
To get this working, there are two main steps.
How to create your Mobile Device Mailbox Policy
How to assign your mobile device mailbox policy to users
To assign the new policy to users, use the Set-CASMailbox cmdlet. See this link for the complete documentation:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125264(v=exchg.160).aspx
To use this cmdlet, ensure you are connected to Exchange Online via Powershell
Assign the Policy to all users
Assign the policy to a specific user
Confirm that your policy was added correctly
To make sure your policy was applied successfully run this:
You should see the policy name next to ActiveSyncMailboxPolicy:
A few minutes after running the policy, you should see it take effect on the relevant devices:
Revert back to the default policy
You can revert back to the default policy by running the following:
Sample Policies
Use these sample policies or create your own. These sample policies only use one parameter eg. -AllowCamera $false, though you can add as many parameters to a policy as you like. See this link for the complete list of available parameters: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj218612(v=exchg.160).aspx
Disable a mobile device’s camera
Disable a mobile device’s WIFI
Disable Internet tethering on a mobile device
Disable the web browser on a mobile device
How to login to Office 365
Office 365When you’re getting started with Office 365, you might find our Office 365 for Beginners videos to be helpful. Feel free to watch the video and read the summary below.
Your Office 365 account = Your identity
Office 365 works best when everybody in the team has an Office 365 account – and your account is everything to you in Office 365, it’s your identity, and when it comes to working in the cloud, your identity and the security of that identity is really important. It doesn’t matter if you share mailboxes, or files, or responsibilities with another person, because that can all be accounted for and easily configured. The bottom line is, having your own Office 365 login is essential.
Portal.office.com
There are a few different ways to login to Office 365, though my personal favourite is via https://portal.office.com. Because that takes you to your Office 365 Portal and you can get to everything from here.
Personal vs Work or School?
Microsoft provide two types of accounts. There’s Personal Accounts and there’s Work or School accounts. Unfortunately these aren’t the only two names that these accounts go by. Personal Accounts are also called Live IDs or Microsoft Accounts. Work or School accounts are also known as Office 365 accounts, Organisational accounts or even Azure Active Directory accounts. But basically, Personal accounts are accounts for consumers and you use them to log into consumer level services like the regular Skype, or Xbox Live or Outlook.com. Work or School accounts are accounts that are given to you by your work or school. And you’ll primarily use them to sign into the Office 365 services.
The tricky part is, these two accounts can be used to log into the same applications and services, and you can have the same email address associated with both types of accounts which is the case with mine.
I have signed up for a Microsoft account, or a Personal Account, with my Work or School email, and I also have an Office 365 account. So when I put my email address in, occasionally it will say Work or School, or Personal account? And If you’ve signed up for a Personal Microsoft account using your work or school email and you also have Office 365 for work or school, you’ll probably see this too.
So you need to pay attention, is this particular login screen asking for a personal account, or a work or school account, or is it asking for either. The general rule of thumb is, if you’re using Office 365 for work or school, choose a ‘Work or school’ account.
Inside the Office 365 Portal
Once you’re logged into Office 365, you can do quite a lot from inside the portal. Here’s what you get.
Install Office for PC or Mac
Install Office at the top of the portal – This one may not be common to most people, though if you’ve got an Office 365 account that gives you the desktop versions of Office, you can install it for PC or Mac by clicking ‘Install now’.
Mail, Calendar, People and Tasks
The first three tiles Mail, Calendar, People, and the one below called Tasks, are your email, your calendars, your contacts and your tasks. You can work with them from here through the browser, or through Outlook, or on your phone or tablet.
Yammer
Next is Yammer. This is a social network for your business. It’s just like an internal Facebook.
Sites
SharePoint Online is under Sites. SharePoint sites are places where your team can collaborate on projects and share information.
OneDrive
OneDrive for Business is your personal cloud file storage. It’s private to you, though you can share things from it.
Delve
Delve is your Office 365 search engine, it also helps you discover what’s everyone’s working on in Office 365.
Video
Think of Office 365 Video as an internal YouTube that you can use for training videos, meeting recordings or any video material that needs to stay internal.
Power BI
If you’ve signed up for the Power BI Add-on, you’ll see it in the portal too. Power BI Pro is costs extra, though if understanding data is important to your business, it’s absolutely worth it. The free version also lets you accomplish quite a bit.
Office Online
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote are the Online versions of the Office programs that you can use to work on your files over the internet, even if you don’t have Office installed.
Sway
Sway is pretty similar to PowerPoint, use it to present information in ways that look really nice on all devices.
So we’ve covered logging into Office 365, the difference between a Personal Account and a Work or School account, and we’ve touched on a few of the common Office 365 services. If you think that’s all you need to get started, you can go ahead and dive right in. But if you do want to dive a little deeper on some of these services you can go ahead and check out some of our other videos or articles.
Start getting excited about PowerApps and Office 365
Office 365A new way to build powerful business applications
If you think you haven’t got what it takes to build a mobile app for your business, think again. Microsoft PowerApps fill a huge gap in the development of business applications – and you can use them to automate your tedious manual processes.
Typically, If you need a custom app built for internal use, you’ll take this to your internal IT department, or outsource it to an external development team. Software developers will then use tools like Microsoft Visual Studio to build these apps to your requirements.
The process to take your app idea from concept to a finished product that can run on PCs and devices is extensive and expensive. So much so, that many teams will use a combination of existing tools like Excel, SharePoint or OneNote to achieve similar results. This can work well when you’re using a PC or Mac, though what if you really need to build an app that runs well on a mobile device? You use Microsoft PowerApps.
PowerApps allow you to uniformly design your own mobile applications and the logic behind them. These powerful applications run on Apple, Android and Windows devices and connect to almost any data-source imaginable.
So now, instead of approaching a software development team with a list of requirements, you open PowerApps and start building. Once you’ve created your application, you can share it with anyone on your team.
It’s important to note that PowerApps are for building internal tools only. Though, while you can’t share these with the public, they can be used in public facing scenarios, such as survey collection, or event signups.
Data that PowerApps can work with so far:
Some PowerApps you can build:
How to get started with PowerApps
If you’re interested in getting started with PowerApps and Office 365, you might have to wait for your invite. PowerApps are currently in private preview, though you can sign up for your invitation here.
Office 365 apps for Windows Phone
Office 365Office 365 Apps for Windows Phone
Office 365 is a powerful productivity platform that allows you to get more done from any device. Here’s a list of apps from Microsoft that help you make use of Office 365 while you’re on the go.
Mail and Calendar
The new Mail and Calendar app for Windows Phone is an updated version of the earlier built-in mail app. It’s a Universal Windows App, so it runs on all Windows devices, including PCs. It doesn’t have the same Focused Inbox as the iOS/Android versions, though it does have some cool swipe functionality.
OneNote
OneNote is the one place for everything in your life. Use it to plan projects, keep meeting minutes, take notes, organise trips and keep track of important info. Spend a few moments with OneNote on any of your devices and it will quickly become your favourite app. We cannot speak more highly of OneNote, it’s a must have for any Office 365 user.
Word
Create, Edit and Share Word documents on the Microsoft Word App for Windows phones and tablets. Microsoft Word is one of the top rated productivity apps on the Google Play Store due to its rich feature-set, ease of use and ability to open documents from various cloud services and locations.
Excel
Excel has made the transition to mobile devices with style. The new dedicated Excel App lets you create, edit and share Excel Documents. The new Excel app on Windows Phones and tablets is a huge improvement over the converged Office Mobile app that was previously available.
PowerPoint
Create, Edit and Share PowerPoint presentations from your Windows phone or Tablet. The new PowerPoint app for Windows Phones and Tablets is a big step up from the combined Office Mobile App.
OneDrive
The OneDrive app lets you add both consumer and business OneDrive accounts, and work with your files from anywhere. Browse your files, and those shared with you. Quickly access recent documents, or search your entire OneDrive. Open your OneDrive files in your Office Apps, and automatically save them back to OneDrive.
Skype for Business
Skype for Business, formally known as Lync, does exactly what the name suggests – it gives you Skype for your business. Use the mobile app to stay in touch with your team members and regular Skype contacts from your Windows Phone.
Yammer
Yammer is a social network for your business. Post announcements, share praise, run polls and gather feedback. Yammer is a great alternative for group conversations via email, is integrated across Office 365, and has a great Windows Phone app.
Outlook Groups
Outlook Groups are the new way to work as a team in Office 365. Create an Outlook Group to get a group email address, feature-packed newsfeed, OneNote notebook and document storage. Outlook Groups for Windows Phone gives you that functionality on the go.
Office Lens
Office Lens is a cool app that lets you take photos, or use existing ones, and convert them into PDFs, editable Word Documents, OneNote Pages or PowerPoint Presentations. Take photos of Documents and Whiteboards, and let Office Lens do the rest.
Office Remote
Office Remote for Windows Phone lets you control your PowerPoint presentations from your Phone. You can start or stop presentations, advance slides, view speaker notes and more. You also get to control your Word and Excel documents remotely while you present them on a screen or your computer.
Power BI
The Power BI for Windows devices app lets you view and interact with your Power BI dashboards from anywhere. You can set alerts on important data, and get notified when targets are hit or not met. If you’re not familiar with Power BI, check it out now. We think it’s the most exciting addition to Office 365 available.
Office 365 Admin
This is a must have app for any Office 365 Administrator. Use the Office 365 Admin app to add, edit, block or delete users, reset passwords, assign licenses, check on the Office 365 service status and much more. You can also log support requests and sign into multiple Office 365 organisations from the same app.
Office 365 apps for Android
Office 365Office 365 Apps for Android
Office 365 is a powerful productivity platform that allows you to get more done from any device. Here’s a list of apps from Microsoft that help you make use of Office 365 while you’re on the go.
Outlook
We recommend the Outlook for Android app when using Office 365 on an Android Phone or Tablet. It gives you an awesome feature called Focused Inbox, allows you to reschedule email for later reminders, and customise simple swipe shortcuts to better organise your inbox.
OneNote
OneNote is the one place for everything in your life. Use it to plan projects, keep meeting minutes, take notes, organise trips and keep track of important info. Spend a few moments with OneNote on any of your devices and it will quickly become your favourite app. We cannot speak more highly of OneNote, it’s a must have for any Office 365 user.
Word
Create, Edit and Share Word documents on the Microsoft Word App for Android phones and tablets. Microsoft Word is one of the top rated productivity apps on the Google Play Store due to its rich feature-set, ease of use and ability to open documents from various cloud services and locations.
Excel
Excel has made the transition to mobile devices with style. The new dedicated Excel App lets you create, edit and share Excel Documents. Use it in conjunction with the Keyboard for Excel to really up your Excel productivity while mobile.
PowerPoint
Create, Edit and Share PowerPoint presentations from your Android phone or Tablet. Presenter view, an exclusive feature for Office 365 subscribers, allows you to check your speaker notes on your phone or tablet, and control the presentation running on your PC. The new PowerPoint app for Android is a big step up from the combined Office Mobile App. After 100 000 reviews, it’s sitting at 4.4/5.
OneDrive
The OneDrive app lets you add both consumer and business OneDrive accounts, and work with your files from anywhere. Browse your files, and those shared with you. Quickly access recent documents, or search your entire OneDrive. Open your OneDrive files in your Office Apps, and automatically save them back to OneDrive.
Skype for Business
Skype for Business, formally known as Lync, does exactly what the name suggests – it gives you Skype for your business. Use the mobile app to stay in touch with your team members and regular Skype contacts from your Android phone or tablet.
Yammer
Yammer is a social network for your business. Post announcements, share praise, run polls and gather feedback. Yammer is a great alternative for group conversations via email, is integrated across Office 365, and has a great Android app.
Outlook Groups
Outlook Groups are the new way to work as a team in Office 365. Create an Outlook Group to get a group email address, feature-packed newsfeed, OneNote notebook and document storage. Outlook Groups for Android gives you that functionality on the go.
Sunrise
Microsoft bought Sunrise, the best calendar app for Android, in Feb 2015. Sunrise combines calendars from Office 365, Outlook.com, Google, Facebook, your TV show schedules, your favourite sport teams schedule, and much more. Sunrise also provides an easy way to decide on a time to meet people via your phone.
Office Lens
Office Lens is a cool app that lets you take photos, or use existing ones, and convert them into PDFs, editable Word Documents, OneNote Pages or PowerPoint Presentations. Take photos of Documents and Whiteboards, and let Office Lens do the rest.
Delve
Delve uses your Office 365 data and machine learning to help you discover what your team members are working on across Office 365. You can use Delve to search for people, projects and documents across Office 365.
Office Remote
Office Remote for Android lets you control your PowerPoint presentations from your Phone. You can start or stop presentations, advance slides, view speaker notes and more. You also get to control your Word and Excel documents remotely while you present them on a screen or your computer.
Power BI
The Power BI for Android app lets you view and interact with your Power BI dashboards from anywhere. You can set alerts on important data, and get notified when targets are hit or not met. If you’re not familiar with Power BI, check it out now. We think it’s the most exciting addition to Office 365 available.
Office 365 Admin
This is a must have app for any Office 365 Administrator. Use the Office 365 Admin app to add, edit, block or delete users, reset passwords, assign licenses, check on the Office 365 service status and much more. You can also log support requests and sign into multiple Office 365 organisations from the same app.
Microsoft Send
Microsoft Send is a project by Microsoft Garage, a community within Microsoft that turns ‘wild ideas into real projects’. Microsoft Send feels like texting and works like email, stripping back subjects, signatures and greetings, to give you quick simple messaging with anyone who uses email. This app is great for teams.
Keyboard for Excel
Here’s another app from the Microsoft Garage team. Keyboard for Excel adds a number optimised keyboard to your Android Device. It prioritises the characters that you use the most in Excel (including a TAB key!) and is designed to give you greater speed and efficiency for data-entry on your phone.
Office 365 apps for iPhone
Office 365Office 365 Apps for iPhone
Office 365 is a powerful productivity platform that allows you to get more done from any device. Here’s a list of apps from Microsoft that help you make use of Office 365 while you’re on the go.
Outlook
We recommend the Outlook for iOS app when using Office 365 on an iPhone. It gives you an awesome feature called Focused Inbox, allows you to reschedule mail to be reminded later, and customise simple swipe shortcuts to better organise your inbox.
OneNote
OneNote is the one place for everything in your life. Use it to plan projects, keep meeting minutes, take notes, organise trips and keep track of important info. Spend a few moments with OneNote on any of your devices and it will quickly become your favourite app. We cannot speak more highly of OneNote, it’s a must have for any Office 365 user.
Word
Create, Edit and Share Word documents on the Microsoft Word App for iOS. Microsoft Word is one of the top rated productivity apps on the App store due to its rich feature-set, ease of use and ability to open documents from various cloud services and locations.
Excel
Excel has made the transition to mobile devices with style. The number of features they’ve packed into this iOS app is amazing, and the users agree – after 13000+ ratings, the Excel App for iOS is still over 4.5 stars.
PowerPoint
Create, Edit and Share PowerPoint presentations from your iPhone or iPad. You can also use Apple Airplay to project your presentation onto a large screen, and control it from your phone or Apple Watch.
OneDrive
The OneDrive app lets you add both consumer and business OneDrive accounts, and work with your files from anywhere. OneDrive for iOS lets you upload, share, and save your files for offline use.
Skype for Business
Skype for Business, formally known as Lync, does exactly what the name suggests – it gives you Skype for your business. Use the mobile app to stay in touch with your team members and regular Skype contacts from your iPhone or iPad.
Yammer
Yammer is a social network for your business. Post announcements, share praise, run polls and gather feedback. Yammer is a great alternative for group conversations via email, is integrated across Office 365, and has a great iPhone app.
Outlook Groups
Outlook Groups are the new way to work as a team in Office 365. Create an Outlook Group to get a group email address, feature-packed newsfeed, OneNote notebook and document storage. Outlook Groups for iOS gives you that functionality on the go.
Sunrise
Microsoft bought Sunrise, the best calendar app for iOS, in Feb 2015. Sunrise combines calendars from Office 365, Outlook.com, Google, Facebook, your TV show schedules, your favourite sport teams schedule, and much more. Sunrise also provides an easy way to decide on a time to meet people via your phone.
Office Lens
Office Lens is a cool app that lets you take photos, or use existing ones, and convert them into PDFs, editable Word Documents, OneNote Pages, PowerPoint Presentations and even contacts. Take photos of Documents, Whiteboards and business cards, and let Office Lens do the rest.
Delve
Delve uses your Office 365 data and machine learning to help you discover what your team members are working on across Office 365. You can use Delve to search for people, projects and documents across Office 365.
Sway
Sway is like PowerPoint for any device. Create Sways to share ideas, information and presentations in a format that displays beautifully on any device. It uses an intuitive design engine to layout your Sway with minimal input, and lets you share it with anyone, whether they’re using Sway or not.
Power BI
The Power BI for iPhone app lets you view and interact with your Power BI dashboards from anywhere. You can set alerts on important data, and get notified when targets are hit or not met. If you’re not familiar with Power BI, check it out now. We think it’s the most exciting addition to Office 365 available.
Office 365 Video
Office 365 Video for iOS gives you access to your Office 365 Video Portal, formatted for your mobile device. You can use Office 365 Video to store and share training videos, your company’s mission and vision, recorded meetings and more.
PowerApps
Microsoft PowerApps are coming soon, and they’re a fantastic way for anyone to build powerful business apps using their existing data. Use PowerApps to access any datasource, including SharePoint, Excel, SQL Database, custom APIs and more. Next create simple logic flows to automate business processes and present important information. Once you’re done, you share your apps with the team.
Microsoft Send
Microsoft Send is a project by Microsoft Garage, a community within Microsoft that turns ‘wild ideas into real projects’. Microsoft Send feels like texting and works like email, stripping back subjects, signatures and greetings, to give you quick simple messaging with anyone who uses email. This app is great for teams.
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