Effective March 15, 2021, Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes Antivirus management and Universal Print capabilities.

Microsoft Defender Antivirus provides your PCs with robust antimalware protection. The new Active Threats page of that antivirus management experience has been rolling out for the past few months and is now available to all customers worldwide.

Universal Print is a Microsoft 365 subscription-based service that allows IT to manage printers directly through the Universal Print portal, without the need for on-premises print servers. For organizations that are committed to Microsoft 365, it replaces the Windows Server print server functionality.

For the announcement, please visit: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/small-and-medium-business-blog/new-in-microsoft-365-business-premium-antivirus-management-and/ba-p/2212333.

For more information on Microsoft Defender Antivirus, please visit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/threats-detected-defender-av?view=o365-worldwide.

For more information on Universal Print, please have a look at this article: https://www.schneider.im/microsoft-universal-print/.

Effective May 1, 2021, Microsoft 365 Scheduler Per User is available.

Scheduler enables users to delegate their scheduling tasks to a digital personal assistant – Cortana, including scheduling appointments and meetings with internal and external attendees.

To use Scheduler, cc: Cortana in an email with other people and ask to schedule a meeting by letting Cortana know your meeting needs in the body of the email. You can tell Cortana the duration, timing, or location, or simply say “Find a time for us.”, and since Cortana understands natural language, there are no special commands to use.

Scheduler service is available worldwide, but language support will be limited to English.

Microsoft 365 Scheduler can be licensed through Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) and Volume License (VL).

For more information on Microsoft 365 Scheduler, please visit: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/scheduler.

Effective May 1, 2021, Microsoft 365 Career Coach is available for Microsoft Teams for Education.

Career Coach is a Microsoft Teams app, powered by LinkedIn, that provides personalized guidance to higher education students on navigating their career journey. Institutions can offer a unified employability solution to help every student discover their path, identify and acquire skills, and build their network.

Microsoft 365 Career Coach can be licensed through Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) and Volume License (VL).

For the announcement, please visit: https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/2021/03/introducing-career-coach-in-microsoft-teams-for-education/.

For an informational eBook on Career Coach, please visit: https://edudownloads.azureedge.net/msdownloads/Career_Coach_eBook.pdf.

For a demonstration of the usage of Career Coach, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd5R7HmVcJQ.

On April 22, 2021 from 6 to 9pm Luxembourgish time, you may join the free virtual event: “Higher education Reimagined”, during which Career Coach will be presented: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/training-and-events/events-calendar#/events/HigherEducationReimagined.

Prior to Smart Provisioning, Microsoft provided customers with licenses that were not purchased. This was done to avoid interruptions in Microsoft 365 services as the customer stepped up and assigned licenses. These unused overages caused a compliance risk, so they’re being removed from the system to protect the customer and help them return to parity with what they have purchased. To avoid programmatically unintended license consumption, an updated License Overallocation process, formerly referred to as Smart Provisioning, was introduced in October 2019.

Beginning April 1, 2021, Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers with agreements created prior to October 25, 2019 will see the removal of unused overages made available prior to the updated overallocation process.

For customers who haven’t transacted a qualifying license transition order, any existing (fixed-value) unused overallocation will be reset to zero from early April 2021. Customers need to do the following to prepare for the change:

• If customers only assign licenses using the Microsoft 365 Admin Center user interface, this message is for awareness only.
• If customers use license assignment workflow automation, for example via PowerShell scripting, and their automation logic permits assigning more licenses than they own, they’ll need to update the automation logic to avoid an overallocation.
• To avoid potential process failure, customers should update the automation logic before early April 2021.
• Note that already licensed users won’t see any loss in or impact on their service.
• If customers use group-based licensing, they should periodically verify that the available licenses are adequate for their group membership counts.
• If customers anticipate having an insufficient number of licenses to meet their needs, they might be able to place a license reservation on the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center or place an order though their reseller.

For more information on licensing, including license reservations, please visit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/license-faq.

Please contact us for more information.

Effective February 18, 2021, Microsoft 365 E3 offers a variety of new features combining best-in-class productivity apps with core security and compliance capabilities.

New management capabilities are:

• Microsoft Tunnel virtual private network (VPN) capabilities, extending Conditional Access to workers to use Android and iOS devices to remotely access on-premises data – a key principle of Zero Trust security.
• Broadened endpoint management, including adding support for virtual desktops and kiosks and shared devices, in addition to Windows PCs, Macs, and mobile devices.
• Expanded MacOS management to deliver more apps securely, collect better telemetry to improve management decisions, and improve security with enterprise Single Sign-On (SSO) and file encryption.
• Endpoint analytics to help you understand how performance and health issues with your organization’s hardware and software may be impacting your end-user’s productivity. Further, Endpoint analytics connects insights from Productivity Score with Microsoft Endpoint Manager to ensure everyone can do their best work with Microsoft 365.
• Unified endpoint security management that reduces the friction between end-user computing teams and security operations by providing deep integration between Microsoft Endpoint Manager and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as well as enabling specialized security roles for security managers to view and manage their day-to-day tasks within the Configuration Manager Console.
• Modernize your IT by bringing intelligent security value to all endpoints, whether managed on-premises or as managed service.

Effective July 1, 2021, the prices of Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) E3 and of Intune increase. The price for Microsoft 365 E3 remains the same.

For the announcement, please visit: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/enabling-remote-work-and-new-scenarios-with-microsoft-365-e3/ba-p/2118541.

Effective February 18, 2021, extended offline access and device-based subscriptions are available for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (previously called Office 365 ProPlus). Those features remove critical blockers and enable customers to deploy Microsoft 365 across their entire environment, streamlining deployment and administration.

Workers in secure or remote environments who are offline for long periods of time can continue using Microsoft 365 Apps to stay productive on-the-job, now being provided with extended offline access to enable devices to stay activated without connecting to the internet for up to 180 days.

In device-based subscriptions for Microsoft 365 Apps the license is assigned to the device, hence workers aren’t required to have their own Azure Active Directory identity. To deploy a device-based subscription, you simply purchase the required number of Microsoft 365 licenses and assign a license to a device group in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

For the announcement, please visit: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/enabling-productivity-for-everyone-with-microsoft-365-apps-for/ba-p/2111517.

For more information on device-based licensing for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, please visit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/device-based-licensing.

Effective September 2020, Microsoft 365 F1 does not include rights to a Microsoft Exchange mailbox. In order to enable a full Microsoft Teams experience, Microsoft 365 F1 licenses may come with an additional Microsoft Exchange Online Kiosk (K1) license. Although the Microsoft Exchange Online K1 license will provision a mailbox for the user, it is important to notice, that Microsoft 365 F1 users are not entitled to use the mailbox. Microsoft recommends disabling Microsoft Outlook on the web via these steps: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/recipients-in-exchange-online/manage-user-mailboxes/enable-or-disable-outlook-web-app and asking affected users not to access the Microsoft Exchange mailbox via any other methods.

For further information on Microsoft 365 F1 User Mailbox Use Rights, please find the Microsoft Product Terms here: https://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/Downloader.aspx?documenttype=PT&lang=English.

Effective April 1, 2020, Microsoft 365 Compliance conditions change. The former components Microsoft Office 365 Advanced Compliance and Microsoft Azure Information Protection Premium Plan 2 are being replaced by three new smaller suites:
– Microsoft E5 eDiscovery and Audit
– Microsoft E5 Information Protection and Governance
– Microsoft E5 Insider Risk Management
These suites add some new functionality and can be added on to any Microsoft 365, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business plan license.
For further information on Microsoft 365 Compliance changes, please visit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/microsoft-365-service-descriptions/microsoft-365-tenantlevel-services-licensing-guidance/microsoft-365-security-compliance-licensing-guidance.

The Microsoft 365 E3 Unattended License enables the use of Office applications with service or other non-user accounts, as is typical during automation process execution. Microsoft still recommends that automation processes should leverage product APIs like Microsoft Graph when possible. However, this new license can provide a new option for working with productivity data and tools.

For further information, please visit: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/new-licensing-options-for-microsoft-365-for-unattended-scenarios/