COVID-19 pandemic: Microsoft makes temporary adjustments in Office 365 features

With more and more people continuing their daily routine by staying at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft is introducing news ways to help in mobilization of the remote workforce. According to a ZDNet report, Microsoft, which had earlier introduced temporary adjustments to select non-essential capabilities, has now made temporary adjustments to OneNote, SharePoint and Stream video conferencing features to Office 365 services.

Microsoft has made temporary adjustment to download limit of file attachments in OneNote in order to support the Office 365 users during these unprecedented times. A post on Microsoft’s Tech Community has revealed that the tech giant will restrict the download of file attachments to 100MB for OneNote. According to the post, “Most OneNote clients limit file uploads to 50MB, so this shouldn’t impact most attachments.” However, the post also revealed about scenarios do deal with larger files that will no longer successfully download without one of the following workarounds:

1. If you are using OneNote for Windows 10, you could attach as a cloud file by following this path. Go to Insert > File > Upload to OneDrive and insert link. Attaching as a cloud file enables others with access to the notebook view your attachment without any size restrictions. If you don’t have access to the original file, use either of the two workarounds listed below to obtain the file, and then attach it as a cloud file.
2. Secondly, you could open your notebook in OneNote for the web and then go to https://www.onenote.com. Once the website opens, you click the purple Sign in button and save the attachment by right-clicking the attached file.
3. You could even use OneNote 2016 or another desktop version of OneNote to download the attachment. The post reveals that the officials did not expect these changes to have significant impact on users’ experiences. Among the examples of the types of changes Microsoft might take would be things like how often its services check for presence; intervals in which other parties typing are displayed; and video resolution.

As far as SharePoint is considered, Microsoft is rescheduling specific backend operations to regional evening and weekend business hours. This move creates an impact on capabilities like migration, DLP and delays in file management after uploading a new file, video or image. Besides, it also reduces video resolution for playback videos.

Now moving on the Stream, people timeline has been disabled for newly uploaded videos. However, the videos which have been uploaded earlier will not be impacted. Also Microsoft has adjusted meeting recording video resolution to 720p.

Microsoft is also helping millions of people adapt to remote work. The company is ensuring that the government and organisational functions can continue while keeping safe distances is critical to our society today.

“As demand continues to grow, if we are faced with any capacity constraints in any region during this time, we have established clear criteria for the priority of new cloud capacity. Top priority will be going to first responders, health and emergency management services, critical government infrastructure organizational use, and ensuring remote workers stay up and running with the core functionality of Teams. We will also consider adjusting free offers, as necessary, to ensure support of existing customers,” said Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365.

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