Blog

Policies to Safely Enable External Sharing & Guest Access in Microsoft 365

External sharing and guest access in Microsoft 365 is a great collaboration capability that helps us to reduce duplicating content, have more visibility on content which is shared externally, helps us get to the content we need more quickly and helps us work together more efficiently. There are of course inherent risks, but Microsoft has built significant controls and capabilities to help reduce those risks. Understanding and utilizing those capabilities to reduce those risks can help us to safely and confidently enable external sharing and guest access in Microsoft 365. In this blog I’m sharing some of my common recommendations for safely, securely and confidently enabling external sharing and guest access in Microsoft 365. 

Demo #2 – Configure and Run an Azure Synapse Data Pipeline

for Project Archimedes & Microsoft Graph Data Connect

This video is the second in a series which demonstrates Big Data Analytics in SharePoint Online using Project Archimedes and the Microsoft Graph Data Connect service. It demonstrates configuring and running a data pipeline in Azure Synapse, through Microsoft Graph Data Connect, to retrieve data sets from SharePoint Online.

Demo #1 – Setup Prerequisites in Microsoft 365 & Azure

for Project Archimedes & Microsoft Graph Data Connect

This video is the first in a series which demonstrates Big Data Analytics in SharePoint Online using Project Archimedes and the Microsoft Graph Data Connect Service. It demonstrates how to setup all the prerequisites you’ll need in Microsoft 365 and Azure.

Field Notes: Implementing Microsoft Purview in the Real World

(ARMA Canada)

I was kindly invited by Microsoft to speak during their full day workshop at the ARMA Canada 2023 Conference in Toronto. The workshop was titled Pre-Conference Workshop: Microsoft 365 Purview or Data Security, Information Governance, and Risk Mitigation and it was held on Sunday July 16, 2023.
They asked me to talk about what I have seen in the real world, when helping our customers implement Microsoft Purview. These are my notes from that session for both the attendees and anyone else that might be looking for recommendations or suggestions on how we implement Microsoft Purview.

Protect your Microsoft 365 Collaboration Spaces with Sensitivity Labels

We often think of applying Sensitivity Labels to content we work with every day like emails and documents to both protect those items as well as to inform recipients of their sensitivity and care with which they should be handled.

We’ve also been able to apply Sensitivity Labels to collaboration spaces such as Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Sites, and more recently as a default to SharePoint Document Libraries. Many are still discovering this is an option – they’re learning about how Sensitivity Labels on Teams, Sites and Libraries are different and how they can help automatically enforce data protection policies. Lets look into how we can better protect our collaboration spaces in Microsoft 365 with Purview Sensitivity Labels.

Prepare for Sensitivity Labels in Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Sites

When you configure a Sensitivity Label in Microsoft Purview Information Protection, you can select to apply them to Microsoft Teams or SharePoint Sites in order to automatically enforce Data protection policies on those collaboration spaces. Today we’re going to look at the steps you need to take for this option to be available when you want to apply Sensitivity Labels to your Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Sites.

Microsoft Syntex – Big Data Analytics for SharePoint & OneDrive with Project Archimedes

Have you ever worked in a very large enterprise scale SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business environment?  I mean a Microsoft 365 tenant that contains 10,000 or 20,000 sites, or 50,000 sites or even 100,000 sites? An environment with 10 Million + files? 50,000+ users?

If you have, you understand some challenges in trying to get detailed & timely analytics on the current state, including permissions for all files across all sites, the storage info for all those sites, or which groups are consuming all your space.

Microsoft recently announced that Syntex will provide some exciting new capabilities with Project Archimedes (code name) which will help to get us this data quickly and in a form that we can easily report on, across very large enterprise scale environments. Lets see what Project Archimedes is about!

Govern and Secure SharePoint and OneDrive with Microsoft Syntex – SharePoint Advanced Management

Microsoft has recently added to the Microsoft Syntex product family with a feature set called SharePoint Advanced Management. We’ll use the acronym SAM throughout this blog.  This feature set is specifically targeted at SharePoint Online environments and its designed to give SharePoint Administrators capabilities to better govern SharePoint and OneDrive, and to enhance secure collaboration within Microsoft 365. Lets take a look at the powerful feature set.

When to Use Microsoft Azure Services

It’s important for organizations to identify where in their journey to the Cloud they might take advantage of Azure IaaS and PaaS services, as well as when they will take advantage of Azure AD beyond just to authenticate and secure Microsoft 365. When such initiatives are undertaken, key decisions are required to be taken in order to move forward. This blog includes some key use cases that might help you decide when to look at Microsoft Azure Services as the right solution for moving a particular application or system to the Cloud.