Renaming URLs in a SharePoint Online site

One of the questions I’ve grown to dread in my years of working with SharePoint is “can we change the URL of my site?” Up until now, the answer was pretty much no, unless you wanted to go through major hassles to create a new site, copy over content, etc. However, Microsoft has finally rolled out a feature to allow you to truly rename a URL, *and* it handles automatic redirects if someone uses the old URL. There are some caveats that I’ll point out at the end of this tip, but here’s how it works…

Using the new File Upload question in Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms is a great survey tool, but a number of people were wanting to have a question type that would allow people to upload files when responding to a Forms survey. Microsoft listened, and now Forms will allow for people to create File Upload questions as part of their survey response experience. Here’s now that works…

Using the My Day feature on Outlook in the browser

Microsoft’s been doing a good job in getting the web-based Outlook client to feature-parity with the Outlook client. One of the latest additions to web-based Outlook is the My Day feature, which easily allows you to see your to-do and calendar in the main email page. Here’s how it works…

Meeting Insights in Mobile Outlook

If you live off your mobile device, you know it’s not very easy to look at a meeting on your calendar and find any related information that might help you prepare. Now in the mobile version of Outlook on iOS and Android, there’s a new feature called Meeting Insights, and it will gather any documents or emails that might be relevant for you. It’s a great example of how Microsoft is using machine learning to make you more efficient. Here’s what it looks like…

Using the Meet Now feature in Microsoft Teams

If you’re like me, there are many instances during the day when you’re in Microsoft Teams and you want to have a quick meeting with a group. However, it’s a pain to have to schedule the meeting first, and then hope that everyone can join. Now, you can just use the Meet Now option in Teams to create an ad-hoc meeting without the hassle of setting things up first. Here’s how that works…

Trimming videos directly in Microsoft Stream

While Microsoft Stream is a great video content delivery system, it really doesn’t have much in the way of tools to manipulate the video once it’s recorded. That’s starting to change now with the new ability to trim a video directly from within Microsoft Stream. Here’s how that works…

Adding Comments to non-Microsoft files in SharePoint Online and OneDrive

One of the many benefits of storing files in SharePoint Online or OneDrive as opposed to file shares is the ability to add comments to the file for additional context and collaboration. However, until recently that was only allowed for Microsoft files (such as Word, Excel, etc.) Now the ability to add comments has been extended to non-Microsoft files, such as PDF files. Here’s how that works…

Dark Mode in the Outlook mobile app

It seems like 2019 has been the year of “Dark Mode” when it comes to having black background and white text on various applications and web sites. If you’re a regular user of Outlook on your mobile device, you can take advantage of that feature now. Here’s how to set it up…