How to communicate in Teams: channels, or chats; standard, private or shared?

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Love it or loath it, over the last few years Microsoft Teams has emerged as the dominant collaboration tool for companies, large and small. But, let’s face it, how much has the typical organisation invested into getting the most out of Teams? The same can be said for most of Microsoft 365 – we buy the licences and expect people to just get on and use it.

I could, and probably should, write a post about technology adoption, but this one is about Teams. Specifically about when to create a chat and when to use a channel. And what sorts of channels to use when. And if you want a post about technology adoption, here’s one I wrote several years ago…

You see, a few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend the Commsverse conference. And one of the talks I found insightful was Robert Mulsow (in/robert-mulsow)’s “How to select the right communication in Teams: Feedback from the field”.

What’s the problem?

Teams has two forms of text-based chat:

  1. Chats, created from a conversation. Informal. Ad-hoc. No real management.
  2. Channels, created as a shared space within a Team. Designed to scale, supported by SharePoint.

My (organisational) team has both! And no-one knows where to post:

  • We have a “chat”, but that’s been problematic since one of the team (who probably created the chat) left the organisation. And there’s not much that an admin can do to support a chat – it’s all down to users.
  • We also have a Team, with some channels. But some people in the team prefer to use the chat (something to do with notifications). Oh yes, and we currently work across four Microsoft 365 tenants. That will change, but for now it’s not easy (that’s mergers and acquisitions for you…)

Which to use when – chat or channel?

It’s actually quite simple. Use chats for 1:1 or 1:few conversations. And then leave them behind, until you chat with that person or those people again. Chats are not intended to scale. They are for ad-hoc comms with small groups of people. They are absolutely not intended for groups of many people.

When you want to create a collaboration space, create a team. That team will have a “General” channel, and you can create more to suit the collaboration requirements of the team. 

Simple. All I need to do now is convince my colleagues to stop using the team chat. Hmm. Maybe not so simple.

But there are many different types of channel!

Channels inside teams can be standard, private or shared.

To understand these, it helps to understand the relationship(s) between Entra ID (ex-Azure Active Directory) and Teams. And that comes back to the concept of a tenant. I wrote about tenants a few years ago.

“[…] Each organisation has a Microsoft Online Services tenant […] each tenant has a single Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). There is a 1:1 relationship between the Azure AD and the tenant. […]”

Microsoft Online Services: tenants, subscriptions and domain names, markwilson.it, January 2020

Think of your tenant as an office block. When business partners visit from another office block, they come through the entrance area. If they have the wrong badge, they won’t get in. They are signed in as guest and escorted to a meeting space. That’s how it works in Teams when you are invited to a meeting.

Now, let’s go a bit further with this analogy. Regular guests may get their own badge and they can go directly to meeting without being escorted. They are not just authenticated but are authorised for access. Channels are the Teams version of rooms that guests can go in/out of.

Once upon a time, to switch tenants, we had to exit Teams and go back in with some different credentials. In our office block analogy that’s leaving the building and going into another. But now, it’s more like a bridge between (office blocks). You can access another tenant with your own “badge” – you don’t need guest access.

This is where Shared Channels work. It requires a trust to be established in Microsoft Entra ID and in technical terms it uses external identities and cross tenant access settings. This is more difficult to control as there are no specific badges to revoke – it relies on a trusted partner organisation to provide access. The key word here is “trust”.

In our analogy, shared channels really just show the corridor and the room, everything else in the office block is hidden from view (behind locked doors).

Confused?

All of this flexibility is potentially confusing so let’s bring it back a level – think about what you want to share. And it’s not as clear with external access and shared channels as it was when you had to exit/enter as a guest.

It gets even more complicated with sensitivity labels – they are inherited. You can’t drop down to a lower level of security later. Let’s just leave that to one side for a moment.

Which to use when?

Which to used depends whether you are collaborating or communicating.  

  • How many people are involved? You can add people to a chat but they don’t inherit the permissions on files. When you remove members they can access existing information but can’t add more.
  • Chats can get out of hand quickly so in most cases you’ll want to consider a team.
  • If you don’t already have a team, think about about future requirements and scope. You might just create a channel in an existing team!
  • If there is already a team in place, check if there is a channel for the topic and post there or create a channel as applicable. And what kind of channel will be driven by its intended use. And you must have policies to allow.

Here’s a flow chart to help the decision!

As you can see, it’s too complicated really. People just want to send a message. But, if the necessary Teams and channels are in place, with guidance, then it should be straightforward.

I’ve added a little more of Robert’s guidance to consider in the table below:

When creating a…Remember to…
Group chatRename the chat so it makes sense in future
Pin the chat
TeamUse a clear name
Provide a description
Create tags
Channel (any type)Use a clear name
Provide a description
Post in a channelUse the subject line
Use tags (if applicable)

And, in addition to all of that, issue some clear collaboration guidelines for people to follow.

Conclusion

Chat or channel is simple – if you want to collaborate, or to communicate with more than a few users, choose a channel. The type of channel is less straightforward – but in most cases you’ll want a standard channel in your Team. Only when you start sharing information across organisational boundaries (between tenants) will you need to think about guest access, shared channels and private channels.

Featured image: Microsoft Image Gallery

Weeknote 2024/04: Coffees, and staying curious

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Another week, and lots of positive feedback from colleagues on these weeknotes, so they keep going. This time I’ve written it over the course of the week, rather than in one huge writing session at the weekend. I’m not sure it really helped… it’s still way too long. Anyway, here it is.

(I’m also slightly concerned that some people think I have too much time on my hands. I really don’t. I just stay up too late and don’t get enough sleep!)

This week at work

I struggle to write about work at the moment. I’m doing lots of cool stuff, but I don’t really want to tell competitors what Node4 is developing. Even so, it’s no secret that we’re driving forwards with our Digital delivery (that’s why Node4 bought TNP, risual, Tisski, and ThreeTwoFour) – and public cloud is a big part of that, particularly in the Microsoft space.

My presentation to the Node4 Go To Market community on our public cloud transformation capabilities seemed to go well. And it would be remiss of me not to say that, if you want to know more about how we can potentially help your organisation on its Microsoft Azure journey then I, or my colleagues, would be pleased to have a conversation. Feel free to get in touch on email, or book some time with me.

Beyond that, I joined an interesting call with IDC, looking at the European cloud market in 2024. And I’m just getting involved in a project with some cool tech to help address the ransomware challenge.

Most exciting though is that I’ve submitted a request to join Node4’s Innovate Leadership Development Pathway for 2024. This looks to be a great programme, run over several months, that results in an ILM qualification. The reason I’m excited is that, for the first time in a while, I feel that I’m in a role where I can exploit my leadership potential. I had a career diversion into management, because I thought I needed that experience. Then I got out of it, only to fall back into it (and was very unhappy for quite a long time). Management and leadership are very different things, and over the years I’ve learned that I want to be a leader, not a manager.

Coffees (virtual and IRL)

Much is made of “watercooler moments” as a reason to return to the office (RTO). Well, is there any reason that such moments can’t happen outside the office too?

In 2023, Matt Ballantine ran a “100 coffees” experiment to chat without any particular agenda. It was a big success so it’s rolled on into 2024, currently at around 138. (I was number 49.) Incidentally, you don’t have to drink coffee. It’s about taking the time to chat with people and other beverages are equally acceptable. Or, as Matt describes it in a post he wrote for his employer, Equal Experts, about the process and its benefits:

“Coffee here is a metaphor. A metaphor for being intentional about making space in our working days to create serendipity, build relationships, reflect, have new ideas, share old ideas and a wealth of other benefits that come from conversations without agenda.”

Matt Ballantine: “How to have coffee”

Earlier in the month I had some “coffees” with some colleagues I no longer work with on an daily basis. It was brilliant just to check in and see what they are up to, to keep myself in touch with what’s going on in a different part of the organisation. This week, in addition to some “quick chats” with a couple of my peers, I met several people outside the company for “coffee”. Their roles included: a Chief Evangelist; a Managing Director; and a Digital Transformation Consultant.

One I hadn’t seen since we worked together over a decade ago. Another is part of a “coffee club” that Matt set up to encourage us have a monthly conversation with someone we don’t normally talk to. And one has become a friend over the years that we’ve been catching up for coffee and occasional lunches. My own lack of confidence makes me think “what do I have to add to this conversation”, but invariably I learn things. And I assume that the value of meeting up with no agenda to “just have a chat” goes both ways.

Some of the things we talked about

Our conversation topics were wide and varied. From family life to:

  • Recognising when to buy services vs. learning to do something yourself.
  • “Thought leadership” and qualitative vs. quantitative metrics – looking at the “who” not the size of the reach.
  • Next-generation content management systems.
  • How localisation is more than just translation – sometimes you might rearrange the contents on the page to suit the local culture.
  • How UK town centres seem to encourage chains to flourish over independent retailers.
  • The frustrations of being an end user in a world of corporate IT security (managed devices, classifying information, etc.)
  • Being proud of your kids.
  • What travel was like when we were young, when our location wasn’t being tracked, and when our parents must have been super-worried about where we were. (Is the world more dangerous, or just more reported?)
  • Finding your tribe by showing things in the background on virtual meetings.
  • Bad service and food vs. great coffee but no space. And on what makes a good English breakfast.
  • Parenting young adults and supporting their life decisions.
  • Publishing newsletters, weeknotes, blogs. Owning your own content, and why RSS is still wonderful.
  • Fountain pens, a place for everything (and everything in its place) – and why I’d like to be more like that… but have to accept I’m just not.
  • Four day weeks, balancing work, health and exercise (or lack of).

That’s the whole point. No agenda. See where the conversation leads. Get to know each other better. Learn new things. Build relationships.

And all three “coffees” ran out of time!

This week in tech

  • Here’s something I wrote a blog post about. I had intended there to be more posts, but I overestimated the amount of time I have for these things:
  • A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned I’d been looking at Calendly. It turned out to be a trial (I missed that) and I need to subscribe for some of the features that I set up. So, I guess that experiment didn’t work out…
  • I don’t understand why Google opening a new data centre in the UK this is news. All of the hyperscalers already have data centres in the UK. This is just another one. I’m not sure that they contribute much to the economy though, except maybe in construction and through services consumed (electricity, water, etc.). As for the PM’s statement that “Google’s $1 billion investment is testament to the fact that the UK is a centre of excellence in technology and has huge potential for growth”. Poppycock. It shows there is a demand for cloud computing services in the UK. It’s got nothing to do with excellence.
  • I found a new setting in Microsoft Teams that makes my video feed look like I’m using a decent camera! It’s so much better than the old background blur.

Some posts I liked elsewhere

  • On digital inclusion…
  • Of course, not everyone finds online easy. And we have to recognise that sometimes, for any age group, there’s a need for a human connection…

Life

Some readers may know that I have been using the Zoe personalised nutrition programme to see what insights I can get into my diet. I’ve tweeted a bit, and it deserves a longer blog post, but I found this article in the Times very interesting. Jay Rayner has a slightly less reverent view in The Guardian. (Kate Bevan shared both of these articles.)

And I have a holiday to look forward to… or at least a mini-break. Mrs W and I have just booked a long weekend in Tallinn for a few weeks’ time…

This week’s watching

After finishing our recent dramas, it was time to start something new. Several people had recommended Lessons in Chemistry (on Apple TV) and we’re really enjoying it. As an aside, we still have a long way to go on diversity, inclusion and equality but, oh my, we’ve come a long way since the 1950s.

This week’s listening

I listen to a lot of podcasts when I’m walking the dog, or when I’m driving alone. The Archers is the first on my list but please don’t judge me.

I also like to listen to The Bottom Line, though sometimes find Evan Davis’ views on modern work to be a little “traditional”. This week’s episode on e-commerce returns was fascinating, though I do wonder why no major UK retailers (e.g. Next, John Lewis) or online-only retailers like Amazon or even Wiggle wanted to take part…

I used to listen to The Rest Is Politics – it’s a great podcast but there is just too much of it – I found the volume of content overwhelming. But I did listen the Rest Is Politics Leading interview with Bill Gates. I was looking for a link to the podcast episode to share, but I found it’s available on YouTube too, so you can watch or listen:

Some of the things I took away from the interview were:

  • It’s well-known that Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, but it’s clear he was a very smart kid… he quietly mentions finishing his classes a year early.
  • I was interested in his responses to tough questions – like asking if his approach at Microsoft was “flattening competition not creating excellence”. And on monopolistic views of the world and how they needed to lower prices to gain market share. Remember the mission was to get a computer onto every desk and into every home.
  • On his position as a rich and powerful person, and why he follows the philanthropic path that he does of trying to kill malaria rather than direct giving to those in poverty.
  • On family, the impact he can have on his granddaughter’s future world, and the advantages/disadvantages of growing up with wealthy/famous parents
  • On the future of AI.
  • On politicians he admires (and giving very guarded responses!)
  • His rather odd (IMHO) views on climate change.
  • On learning from Warren Buffet, and on a lifetime of staying curious.

Maybe that’s what I should call this blog… “staying curious”.

This week in the press

On the PR front, I had a brief quote in Digitalisation World’s Tech Transformations for 2024 article.

…and not in the press

After initially being flattered to be contacted by a major UK newspaper for comment on the importance of public sector work to Fujitsu, I declined to comment. Not sure if it was my media training or common sense, but it feels right. I had already written a brief post on LinkedIn, but a lot will have changed in the time since I left and anything I can remember would already been in the public domain.

More thoughts on the Post Office Scandal

I was going to write about this last week, but I was still reeling from some of the comments I’d received on social media, so thought on for a bit more.

Understandably, this is a very emotive subject. Lives were ruined. Some who were affected took their own lives. It’s nothing short of a tragedy.

Even so, it was upsetting to be told last week on Twitter/X that anyone who has Fujitsu on their CV should never work again (or words to that effect). I was at ICL or Fujitsu for around 16 years over one internship and two periods of employment. In common with most people there, I had nothing to do with (or knowledge of) Horizon, other than knowing of its existence, in a separate business unit. And, in common with most people who saw the recent ITV Drama, I was shocked and appalled.

I can’t defend Fujitsu – but I am going to use someone else’s words, because they sum up the situation about their future in the UK public sector market perfectly for me:

“A lot of innocent people [may] lose work at Fujitsu. All of us who have worked for outsourcing partners will know the nature of contracts means many will know nothing of other ongoing projects. Today many workers at Fujitsu [may] be ‘at risk’ for something they had no control over.”

From a technical perspective, I found this video from Dave Farley to be an excellent explanation of the types of technical issues in the Horizon system that led to accounting errors. Then add in believing the computer over the humans, together with an unhealthy dose of corporate mismanagement (as is being uncovered by the ongoing inquiry), and you get the full horror of the Post Office Scandal.

This week in photos

Looks like I didn’t take many, but I did wrap up the week with a nice dog walk in the winter sunshine.

Featured image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay.

Weeknote 20/2021: Echo chambers

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 4 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

This week has been a bit flat. The weather is mostly awful, so I don’t much feel like riding my bike. I hurt my back exercising on Wednesday. And I have 5 weeks to get into shape for my ride across Wales.

This weeknote will be a short one. I can’t believe it’s Friday already…

This week I:

  • Desparately tried to bring some very dry design workshops to life with the inclusion of visual content, only to find that Microsoft Teams isn’t very good at sharing digital whiteboards, yet:
  • Was reminded that annual reviews are a good opportunity to take stock on what’s happened in the last 12 months.
  • Received my new UK (non-EU) driving licence:
  • Escaped from my home office and spent a few hours working inside a coffee shop, for the first time in months.
  • Learned that my social bubble is oh so echoey… when I stepped outside it I heard of people for whom the discomfort of taking a lateral flow test is some kind of hardship (Really? Spreading Covid is a lot worse, I’m sure!) and got called an idiot for not agreeing with conspiracy theories around government tracking of citizens.
  • Felt the need to remind people that there are two NHS Apps:
    • The NHS App (authenticated), which lets you access your own health record.
    • The NHS Covid-19 app (anonymous), which is used for test and trace purposes.

This week in pictures

Working out loud

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 4 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

For years, I’ve been active on social media. I’ve been blogging here even longer. Both of these are examples of working out loud, but they have their limits. I can’t talk specifics about clients – and it just wouldn’t be professional to say to my colleagues “read my blog” when they ask a question – but there really is a place for working out loud in business.

Collaboration in the enterprise

A decade ago, I would have been having conversations about enterprise social networks. The CIO would have been worried about people using Yammer (not owned by Microsoft at the time) in the way that we worry today about governance with groups using WhatsApp or Facebook. Meanwhile, those looking to drive innovation would be saying “hey, have you seen x – it looks like a great way to collaborate” (much like the conversations I’ve had recently around Altspace VR and Gather).

Back in the more mundane reality of the tools we have available to us, there are some pretty common factors:

  • Most organisations use email.
  • Quite a lot have some form of instant messaging.
  • Many have deployed chat-based collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams. (Many more have accelerated their deployments of these tools over the last 12 months.)

As for enterprise social networks. Well, Yammer is still there, in the melee with SharePoint and Teams and other Microsoft 365 tools… maybe I’ll write about that one day too…

Wearing many hats

For the last couple of months, I’ve been juggling my normal role as Principal Architect with some Project Management. It’s tempting to say it’s only highlight reporting and resource booking (that’s how it was positioned to me) but there’s far more too it than that. I’m now handing over to a real Project Manager, because the project really deserves more than I can give to it.

I also have a team to manage. It’s not a big team. I like to think it’s small but perfectly formed. Most of the time, my direct reports (who are all experienced) don’t need a lot of input but, when they do, they can (and should) expect my full attention. Added to which, I am actively working to grow the team (from both the perspective of impact and headcount), so there’s a lot of planning going on. Planning that needs space to think.

And I deliver some consulting engagements myself. Typically that’s working with clients on strategies or forward plans but sometimes getting involved in the delivery.

I also work part-time. So all of the above has to fit into 4 days a week.

This is where working out loud helps.

You see, there is no way I can keep everything in my head. Tools like Microsoft To Do might help me with the daily/weekly/monthly task lists but there’s lots of surrounding minutiae too. Open loops need to be closed… I need a trusted filing system (see Getting Things Done).

When I’m not at work, or not available because I’m consulting, or because I’m working to support one of my team, things need to carry on happening. I don’t want things to stop because I haven’t responded. For those who have read The Phoenix Project, I don’t want to become Brent.

Working out loud is the answer.

Working out loud

At risual, when we start working with a client, we create a Microsoft Teams team. Inside that team, I create a channel for each project. Each channel will have a wiki (or similar) that describes what we’re doing for that client, what the expected outcomes are, and any key milestones. I also include standard text to use to describe the client or their project. And I include details of nearby hotels, car parks, public transport and anything else that might be helpful for our Consultants (or at least I did in The Before Times – when we used to travel).

When I manage a project, I post in the channel each week who’s working on what. I didn’t think it made much difference until, one week when I forgot, I was asked for the missing post!

I also encourage project team members to communicate with me in the open, on Teams. Sure, there are some conversations that happen on email because they involve the client but, in general, a message on Teams is better than one stuck in my Inbox. If I’m not available, someone else can help.

I do the same for my organisational team. Of course there will be some confidential messages that may happen over email (and I prefer to speak if there’s anything sensitive). But, in general, I don’t want things getting lost in my Inbox. Got an announcement? Teams. Need to bounce some ideas around? Teams. Let’s collaborate in the open. There’s no need to hide things.

Is that all?

This might not sound like much, but it’s a real mind shift for some people, who work in isolation and who rely on email for communication.

But I am not done. There’s always more to do. New tools come and go. My life doesn’t get any less busy. I am as stressed and anxious as always. And one of my sons told me that he doesn’t want to do my job because “it just involves getting annoyed with people”. Hmm… it seems I have more work to do…

“Perfection is the enemy of good” is a phrase often attributed to Voltaire, and my next step is to get more comfortable with sharing early drafts. I will generally share a document or a presentation for feedback when it’s nearly done, but I really must start sharing them when they’re barely started.

Do you have some ideas for working out loud? I’d love to hear more examples of how I can make this way of working more common. What do you see as the advantages? Or are there any disadvantages? Comments are open below.

Featured image by Harsh Vardhan Art from Pixabay.

Tweaking audio and (webcam) video quality in Windows 10

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 4 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Back in the spring (whilst I was on Furlough Leave and had time for weeknotes), I wrote about some upgrades to my home office. The LED lights didn’t work out (battery life was too short – I need to find something that works from mains power) so they went back to Amazon but the Marantz MPM-1000U microphone has been excellent.

I’ve seen a few tweets and videos recently about using software to use a smartphone camera as a webcam. Why might you do that? Well, because many laptop webcams are a bit rubbish (like the one in my Apple MacBook) or poorly placed, giving an unflattering view from below.

I had a play with the Iriun webcam software recommended in this video from Kevin Stratverdt and it worked really well, with the phone on a tripod, giving a better angle of view.

Ultimately though, the Microsoft Surface Pro 6 that I use for work has a pretty decent webcam, and my Nokia 7 Plus was no better quality – all I was really gaining was a better camera position.

I do still have a challenge with lighting. My desk position means that I’m generally back-lit with a north-facing window to my left. Some fill-in light in front might help but I also wanted to adjust the settings on my webcam.

Microsoft Teams doesn’t let me do that – but the Camera app in Windows 10 does… as described at Ceofix, there is a “Pro mode” in the Windows 10 Camera app that allows the brightness to be adjusted. There are more options for still images (timer, zoom, white balance, sensitivity, shutter speed and brightness) but the brightness option for video let me tweak my settings a little.

The next challenge I had was with audio. Despite using the volume controls on the Surface Pro to knock the volume up to 100% whilst I was presenting over Teams earlier, everyone else on the call sounded very quiet. It turned out that 100% was not 100% – there is a Realtek Audio Console app on my PC which, as well as letting me adjust the speaker and microphone settings, including volume, balance, Dolby audio, sample rate and depth. Finding this revealed that my volume was actually no-where near 100% and I was quickly able to increase it to a level where I could hear my client and co-presenters!

Weeknote 22/2020: holidaying on the Costa del Great Ouse (plus password resets, cycling performance, video-conferencing equipment and status lights)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 5 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

In the last few hours of 2019, my family planned our holiday. We thought we had it all sorted – fly to Barcelona, spend the weekend sight-seeing (including taking my football-mad son to Camp Nou) and then head up the coast for a few more days in the Costa Brava. Flights were booked, accomodation was sorted, trips were starting to get booked up.

We hadn’t counted on a global pandemic.

To be clear, I’m thankful that myself, my family and friends, and those around us are (so far) safe and well. By April, I didn’t much like the prospect of getting into a metal tube with 160+ strangers and flying for 3 hours in each direction. We’re also incredibly lucky to be able to access open countryside within a couple of hundred metres of our house, so daily exercise is still possible and enjoyable, with very few people around, most of the time.

I still took the week off work though. After cancelling my Easter break, it’s been a while since I took annual leave and even my Furlough period was not exactly relaxing, so I could do with a rest.

The weather has been glorious in the UK this week too, making me extra-glad we re-landscaped the garden last year and I’ve spent more than a few hours just chilling on our deck.

Unfortunately, we also got a taste of what it must be like to live in a tourist hotspot, as hundreds of visitors descended on our local river each day this weekend. It seems the Great Ouse at Olney has featured in a list of top places to swim in Britain, which was recently featured in The Times. It may sound NIMBYish, but please can they stay away until this crisis is over?

As for the holiday, hopefully, we’ll get the money refunded for the cancelled flights (if the airlines don’t fold first – I’m sure that if they refunded everyone they would be insolvent, which is my theory for why they are not increasing staff levels to process refunds more quickly); FC Barcelona contacted me weeks ago to extend my ticket and offer a refund if we can’t use it; and AirBnB had the money back in our account within days of us being forced to pull out due to cancelled flights.

(I did spend a few weeks effectively “playing chicken” with easyJet to see if they would cancel first, or if it would be us. An airline-cancelled flight can be refunded, but a consumer-cancelled flight would be lost, unless we managed to claim on travel insurance).

Even though I’ve had a week off, I’ve still been playing with tech. Some of my “projects” should soon have their own blog post (an Intel NUC for a new Zwift PC; migrating my wife’s personal email out of my Office 365 subscription to save me a licence; and taking a look at Veeam Backup for Office 365), whilst others get a brief mention below…

Please stop resetting user passwords every x days!

Regularly resetting passwords (unless a compromise is suspected) is an old way of thinking. Unfortunately, many organisations still make users change their password every few weeks. Mine came up for renewal this week and I struggled to come up with an acceptable, yet memorable passphrase. So, guess what? I wrote it down!

I use a password manager for most of my credentials but that doesn’t help with my Windows logon (before I’ve got to my browser). Biometric security like Windows Hello helps too (meaning I rarely use the password, but am even less likely to remember it when needed).

Here’s the National Cyber Security Centre (@NCSC)’s password guidance infographic (used with permission) and the associated password guidance:

This list of 100,000 commonly used passwords that will get blocked by some systems may also be useful – from Troy Hunt (@TroyHunt) but provided to me by my colleague Gavin Ashton (@gvnshtn).

Performance analysis for cyclists, by cyclists

I’ve been watching with interest as my occasional cycling buddy (and now Azure MVP) James Randall (@AzureTrenches) has been teasing development on his new cycling performance platform side project. This week he opened it up for early access and I’ve started to road test it… it looks really promising and I’m super impressed that James created this. Check it out at For Cyclists By Cyclists.

Podcasting/video conferencing upgrades in my home office

With video conferencing switching from something-I-use-for-internal-calls to something-I-use-to-deliver-consulting-engagements, I decided to upgrade the microphone and lighting in my home office. After seeking some advice from those who know about such things (thanks Matt Ballantine/@ballantine70 and the WB-40 Podcast WhatsApp group), I purchased a Marantz MPM-1000U microphone, boom arm, shock mount, and a cheap rechargeable LED photography light with tripod.

It’s early days yet but initial testing suggests that the microphone is excellent (although the supplied USB A-B cable is too short for practical use). I had also considered the Blue Yeti/Raspberry but it seems to have been discontinued.

As for the photo lighting, it should be just enough to illuminate my face as the north-facing window to my left often leaves me silhouetted on calls.

Smart lighting to match my Microsoft Teams presence

I haven’t watched the Microsoft Build conference presentations yet, but I heard that Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) featured Isaac Levin (@isaacrlevin)’s PresenceLight app to change the lighting according to his Windows Theme. The app can also be used to change Hue or LIFX lighting along with Teams presence status, so that’s in place now outside my home office.

It’s not the first time I’ve tried something like this:

One particularly useful feature is that I can be logged in to one tenant with the PresenceLight app and another in Microsoft Teams on the same PC – that means that I can control my status with my personal persona so I may be available to family but not to colleagues (or vice versa).

One more thing…

It may not be tech-related, but I also learned the differences between wheat and barley this week. After posting this image on Instagram, Twitter was quick to correct me:

As we’re at the end of May, that’s almost certainly not wheat…

Weeknote 20/2020: back to work

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 5 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Looking back on another week of tech exploits during the COVID-19 coronavirus chaos…

The end of my furlough

The week started off with exam study, working towards Microsoft exam AZ-300 (as mentioned last week). That was somewhat derailed when I was asked to return to work from Wednesday, ending my Furlough Leave at very short notice. With 2.5 days lost from my study plan, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that I ended my working week with a late-night exam failure (though it was still a disappointment).

Returning to work is positive though – whilst being paid to stay at home may seem ideal to some, it didn’t work so well for me. I wanted to make sure I made good use of my time, catching up on personal development activities that I’d normally struggle to fit in. But I was also acutely aware that there were things I could be doing to support colleagues but which I wasn’t allowed to. And, ultimately, I’m really glad to be employed during this period of economic uncertainty.

Smart cities

It looks like one of my main activities for the next few weeks will be working on a Data Strategy for a combined authority, so I spent Tuesday afternoon trying to think about some of the challenges that an organisation with responsibility for transportation and economic growth across a region might face. That led me to some great resources on smart cities including these:

  • There are some inspirational initiatives featured in this video from The Economist:
  • Finally (and if you only have a few minutes to spare), this short video from Vinci Energies provides an overview of what smart cities are really about:

Remote workshop delivery

I also had my first experience of taking part in a series of workshops delivered using Microsoft Teams. Teams is a tool that I use extensively, but normally for internal meetings and ad-hoc calls with clients, not for delivering consulting engagements.

Whilst they would undoubtedly have been easier performed face-to-face, that’s just not possible in the current climate, so the adaptation was necessary.

The rules are the same, whatever the format – preparation is key. Understand what you’re looking to get out of the session and be ready with content to drive the conversation if it’s not quite headed where you need it to.

Editing/deleting posts in Microsoft Teams private channels

On the subject of Microsoft Teams, I was confused earlier this week when I couldn’t edit one of my own posts in a private channel. Thanks to some advice from Steve Goodman (@SteveGoodman), I found that the ability to delete and/or edit messages is set separately on a private channel (normal channels inherit from the team).

The Microsoft Office app

Thanks to Alun Rogers (@AlunRogers), I discovered the Microsoft office app this week. It’s a great companion to Office 365 (or , searching across all apps, similar to Delve but in an app rather than in-browser. The Microsoft Office app is available for download from the Microsoft Store.

Azure Network Watcher

And, whilst on the subject of nuggets of usefulness in the Microsoft stable…

A little piece of history

I found an old map book on my shelf this week: a Halford’s Pocket Touring Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland, priced at sixpence. I love poring over maps – they provide a fascinating insight into the development of the landscape and the built environment.

That’s all for now

Those are just a few highlights (and a lowlight) from the week – there’s much more on my Twitter feed…

Opening up the “Virtual Boozer” #vPub

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 5 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

With social distancing in effect here in the UK and all pubs, bars, cafés and restaurants closed for the foreseeable future, we need to find new ways to socialise.

So, Friday night saw the opening of the “Virtual Boozer”, with me in my Man Cave and my mates James, Pete and Phil all on a video conferencing link. I have to admit it was a little odd, but it worked… and, as we couldn’t meet in person, it was a good way to hook up – even if most of the conversation was COVID19/Coronavirus-related.

I’ll admit the idea is not my own:

  • For a while now, Matt Ballantine (@ballantine70) has been running a “Global Canteen” on an ad-hoc basis for some of us on the WB-40 Podcast WhatsApp group to meet virtually. Last week, the idea of a “Global Boozer” was suggested as a natural extension of this.
  • And Sharon O’Dea Tweeted about using Zoom to meet up with her friends:

So, how can you set up your own Virtual Boozer (a virtual pub for the lads – I should note that our more sophisticated female partners have asked for a virtual wine bar”)?

I thought quite hard about the platform to use:

In the end, I went with Microsoft Teams. Mostly because it’s a tool that’s familiar to me (I use it every day at work) and because it works cross-platform but partly because I have an Office 365 E1 subscription and it’s included. There is a free tier for Microsoft Teams too…

These are by no means all of the tools available though – there’s a huge list that’s been collated in the Remote Work Survival Kit.

I tried creating a Team for the Virtual Boozer and inviting external recipients. In the end, it was just too complicated – with six steps to ensure that external access was granted (and still failing to invite external people). So I fired up Outlook, created a meeting, used the Teams add-in to drop in some meeting details, and emailed my friends.

It worked, but as Matt Ballantine highlighted to me, using the same tools for work and home is perhaps not the best approach to take (he equated it to going for a drink with my mates in the office!). Next time I’ll be seriously considering using Google Hangouts, which seems to work as a mobile app or a browser add-in – and is perhaps a little more consumer-friendly than Microsoft Teams. Everyone has their own preferences – just go with what works for you!

Postscript

The Virtual Boozer opened again last night (27/3/2020); this time using Google Hangouts. It seemed to work well, in a browser or in-app but it does require that you have a Google Account. Much like Teams, scheduling involved creating a calendar appointment (which, for me, meant re-activating my dormant GMail/Google Calendar). Also, it jumps around to show you the person who is talking at the time – some of my friends would have prefered to have all faces on the screen together (which is one of the advantages of Zoom).

Another option, which my youngest son has been using with his mates is Houseparty.

Microsoft Teams: General channel syncs files by default

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 8 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

One of the projects I’m working on is using Microsoft Teams (and the underlying Office 365 Groups functionality) to collaborate. Teams is a new experience for me – I’ve played around with it a little but not had a lot of time to get to grips with it – though I have to say I find the whole Office 365 collaboration story a little disjointed at the moment. More on that in another post in a few days’ time (I hope…).

One thing I have found though, is that the General channel (created by default in Teams) will sync files to every team member’s device. I learned this to my cost when suddenly I found I had no disk space left. Other channels/folders in the associated SharePoint site will sync using OneDrive – i.e. only when sync has specifically been requested – but it’s worth knowing about the “General” sync. I added an empty text file to send a message to others not to save files in the General folder…

Microsoft Teams General Document Library

Teams is currently in preview and this behavior may change before release. I certainly hope so because the new OneDrive client, which finally supports SharePoint, is a much better way to sync files between Office 365 and a desktop device.