Sonitlo Consultancy Services

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Sign-in to your Microsoft Account more securely without using a password

That's right! Now you can sign-in to your Microsoft Account more securely and it does not require you to enter your password. How is this more secure you may ask. First of all this will only work if you have enabled MFA (Multi-factor Authentication) on your Microsoft Account. If you have not already done this, please do this on all your Microsoft as well as any non-Microsoft account as this is a must to keep your account secure. Password-less sign-in is also secure because you no longer have to risk typing your password into a web browser. Your machine maybe infected with keyloggers that will record everything you type. Especially if you are signing in to your account on a public computer. Let's take a look at what you need to get this working. You need 3 things: A Microsoft account (Obviously) Have enabled MFA (Multi-factor authentication) on your Microsoft account. Have installed and configured Microsoft Authenticator App on your smart phone to work with your Microsoft Account. Unfortunately I will not be showing you how to enable MFA on your Microsoft Account but you could visit Microsoft Support Page here to learn how to enable this on your account. I will show you how this works in action. Once you are at the Microsoft sign-in page, please enter your email address as usual.

Microsoft Sign-in page Now click Next and stop! Now check what it says at the end of the little pop-up box under the password section: "Use the Microsoft Authenticator app instead".

Use the Microsoft Authenticator app instead of password Now click on "Use the Microsoft Authenticator app instead" and then you will see that it waits for you to approve the sign-in on your mobile phone.

Microsoft Sign-in page waiting for approval via Authenticator app You should see the approval request on your mobile phone and simply click "APPROVE" to sign-in.

Approval request on Authenticator app Once you click Approve, your phone might confirm your identity once more by asking you to use the biometric sign-in option on the phone itself. Once completed you will be signed in to Microsoft account. This encourages users to use stronger and more unique passwords on their accounts as now they no longer have to enter it all the time. This feature is meant to come soon for Azure AD sign-in as well. Strong passwords and Multi-factor authentication all the time!! Stay secure.   Read the full article

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Configuring Skype for Business PSTN Conferencing Feature in New Zealand

I've been looking into Skype for Business PSTN conferencing and I am pretty amazed how much easier it is to setup. I remember one place I used to work and the whole dial-in functionality for a conference with their traditional phone provider was an unpleasant experience for me as an IT professional. These days most companies have a subscription to Office 365. This feature is absolutely fantastic for those companies but most of the time they are not aware of it. I will show you how easy it is to get this setup for your company so you could use Skype for Business for your meetings and still allow those non-skype users to dial in with a traditional phone line. So I have created two Skype for Business "Meeting Organizers" in my Office 365 tenancy. I have named them "Bill Gates" and "Mark Zuckerberg" (Great for SEO of this site!!). So what license do they need to be able to organize Skype for Business meeting? They only need Skype for Business Plan 1 or Plan 2. What if they need PSTN conferencing? They will need an "Audio Conferencing" license as well. I believe the name of this license might vary according to the country of your tenancy. This might be called "PSTN Conferencing" as well in some other countries but in New Zealand we see it as "Audio Conferencing". Let's start configuring things in Skype for Business Admin Center. Go to "audio conferencing" and then check "Microsoft bridge" tab. As soon as you have added a license that gives you the capabilities of Skype for Business Plan 2 into your tenancy, you will start seeing this tab populated with many service numbers. I already have a dedicated number setup in Wellington, New Zealand:

Service Numbers in Skype for Business admin center Let's see how we can add a new Service Number. Service numbers can be used by external parties to dial-in to join a Skype for Business meeting. Go to "voice" and then under "phone numbers" click the + sign and choose "NEW SERVICE NUMBER":

Adding a new service number in Skype for Business admin center Then select the Country/Region and City in New Zealand. Also you need to put the Quantity you need. I will put 2 for two new meeting organizers Bill and Mark.

Add new service number in Skype for Business admin center Once you have added the numbers, you need to acquire them by clicking on "acquire numbers":

Acquiring the new service numbers in Skype for Business admin center Now you can see the two new numbers you acquired under "phone numbers". They should say "Activated" under "Number Status" and "Unassigned" in "Assigned" column:

Skype for Business - Unassigned numbers Go to "audio conferencing" and "users" tab. You should see that Bill and Mark are already assigned with the default dedicated service number:

Audio Conferencing users with their default numbers Read the full article

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How to attach an email to your Microsoft Teams Channel #SonitloOffice365Tips #MicrosoftTeams

I've been using Microsoft Teams since the first day of its official launch and it has become my favourite collaboration tool for work. It is simply a great tool to stay productive while having fun with your co-workers as well as your clients. No matter how often you try to avoid emailing when you are working in a team environment, but there are still times you have to go to outlook to email a group of people about some work related to a project or an issue you are working with your team (both internal MS teams members and guests users). So how can you make sure that email is saved to the Team Channel for future reference? It is actually easy. All you have to do is find the unique email address for the MS Teams Channel and make sure it is included in the recipients of the email. For example I have created a MS Team called "A+ Team" and I have two channels in the team. Built-in "General" channel and one I created called "Project Work". Let's see how I can find the email address for the Project Work channel. First open up Microsoft Teams and go to your Channel. Then click on the ellipsis menu (or 3 dots) next to your MS Teams Channel name:

This will expand the menu and out of the many choices, please click on "Get email address" in the menu:

Get email address option in MS Teams Channel Clicking on this will generate the unique email address for the channel you have selected. You could easily copy this to your email recipients in outlook and send the email.

Email address generated by Microsoft Teams Channel

Sending an email to Microsoft Teams Channel in Outlook Desktop App It's all done. Now let's go back to Microsoft Teams Channel and see how this looks.

How the email looks in Microsoft Teams Channel Now you could click on "See more" to see the whole text of the email body. Or you can even download the email and open in outlook by clicking on "Download original email". But that is self explanatory. I want to show you another way to find out all the emails sent to the Teams Channel. Remember Microsoft Teams is actually a SharePoint site. So this needs to be saved somewhere in that site. Click on "Files" tab in the channel and notice that there is a new folder called "Email Messages".

Email Messages folder in Microsoft Teams default Document Library Now what do you see if you open this folder. Voila!! You can now see both the email and the attachment.

Email attachments in Email Messages folder Now you know all about emailing to Microsoft Teams Channel. Give it a try so you can make sure those important emails relevant to a whole Team is shared in the channel they belong. If you have any questions about this or anything else in Microsoft Teams, please feel free to send me a message via the contact form or in twitter. Always happy to help. Read the full article