Tag: office 365

Teams: Showing video and a presentation at the same time

When doing lessons with students with Teams I found a couple of little issues which I didn’t like. In a Teams meeting the page divides based on each participant where I simply want students to see me when presenting to them. I also wanted to them to be able to see my content, for example presentations, videos, etc but also to see me at the same time.

I found a YouTube video which solved these problems and you can view this here.  Thanks to Matt Wade for this. So yesterday I set about trying it practically.

Now the main trick here is that we aren’t going to share our video feed directly from our camera via the Teams app, but instead are going to use another app to place our video feed on our screen, allowing us to layer other elements such as a presentation on top, then sharing the whole screen via Teams.

So what hardware was I using?
When I attempted the below, I was using a MS Surface attached to a dock and a 2nd screen with the display set to extent across the two screens. This for me seems the best setup as it provides a screen to allow you to manage the Teams app and any other apps you want to display. This is basically your staging area, while your other screen is the one you will share with meeting attendees and therefore the one used to show your video feed.

So where to start?
First, we need to grab our video feed. To do this I simply used the inbuilt Windows camera app set to video.

Next, I maximised this window so that it was full screen.

Following this I dropped any additional content on top of the camera app video. For example, I could open a PowerPoint in a window and then lay this window on top of the camera app window. This could however be any window and could potentially include things like OneNote or the Whiteboard App.

A key thing here, if using PowerPoint, is to set it to display in a window rather than pushing to full screen when presenting. To do this select the Set Up Slide Show option under the Slide Show menu.

And then select the Show Type as “Browsed by an individual in a window”.

Now start the slideshow; It will display in a window which you can drop in on top of your video feed.

All that is left to do is to start your teams meeting. You may get a warning regarding your video not working but this is due to Teams being unable to access your webcam as it is already in use by the windows camera app.

As such don’t worry about this. Once the meeting is started simply share the screen where you have the windows camera app maximised.

All the attendees will now be looking at your video feed maximised in the Teams window, with your other content overlaid on top.

An alternative approach may be to use split screen in Windows allowing you to have your video feed on half of the screen and your other app such as PowerPoint or OneNote, etc on the other half.    To do this simply dock your PowerPoint or other app against the side of the screen.

Next Steps

The next thing I am going to look at is how the above might work if I have multiple cameras attached; Will this allow me to use the camera app to switch between video feed sources which might be good in switching from teacher view to class view assuming two cameras were attached; I will let you know how I get on with this.

Teams: Creating meetings via Outlook

Up until recently I have been scheduling my Teams meetings via the Calendar option in Teams however I came across the ability to do this from Outlook or from Outlooks web equivalent which therefore allows you to use any personal email contact groups which I have created.   This makes it much easier to setup meetings with groups of people where a distribution list doesn’t exist and where adding the users individually to the meetings invitee list would be time consuming.

On Outlook assuming you have teams installed the Teams Meeting option should appear automatically in the ribbon when you are viewing you are viewing you calendar:

If it doesn’t you should be able to add it by customising your ribbon, plus if you want it to appear on your home page, when viewing your email, you can also do this.

In Web Outlook (e.g. via http://www.office.com) it is simply a case of going to your calendar and clicking where you want your meeting to occur.   Once the meeting details window appears click More Options in the bottom right of the window.

Now in the resulting window select the Add Online meeting option to the right of the Location section.   Here you can select Teams Meeting.

You have now created a Teams meeting which, once saved, all those invited will get an email invite for.   The only limitation I can see currently is I cant see a way to add the meeting to a channel if you need to do this.

For me this saves time as you can easily create personal email contact groups for those groups of people you frequently have meetings with then use this when you create the meeting so no longer need to type in the user names of each individual user.

 

EdTech: Supporting schools in a crisis

The current outbreak of the Corona virus has highlighted a particular educational need which I believe EdTech is well placed to fill;  the need for learning to continue when staff and/or students are unable to actually attend school either due to forced closures or individual illness or through forced isolation such as is required in relation to containing the Corona virus.

There are a wide variety of platforms in use in schools which can support remote learning plus platforms which can easily be put into place and even some companies offering their platforms free during this current crisis such as Centurys offer to Asian schools.    Sadly, as the list of options is very long plus I don’t personally have experience of all possible solutions and configurations, for the purposes of this post I am going to focus on the solutions I do have experience of.

I am going to start with Microsoft Teams as it is the one which immediately jumps to mind, in particular its “Meet Now” functionality.     The reason this functionality is first to my thoughts is my belief in learning as a social experience and therefore the need for interaction beyond simple file sharing, ideally in a video format complete with all the non-verbal cues present in our normal day to day interactions with others.   Via Meet Now lesson content can be shared as a live video stream including the ability to share desktop content such as presentations or worked examples, etc.   This is very useful for conducting a lesson remotely or allowing students to access a lesson remotely however it also includes the ability for the video stream to be automatically recorded so that students can also view it after the event, in an “on demand” basis.    Microsoft will also automatically transcribe the video making it easily searchable however I note that this very much depends on the quality of the audio within the video and the pace of speech, the accents of individuals speaking, etc so it isn’t full proof.

As well as in a class or group context Teams can also be used on a 1:1 basis to allow teachers to conduct video calls with students independent of the device they are using and their location.   Using the Chat facility, a video call can easily be started and again both student and teacher have the ability to share their desktop and/or share files as needed.    Where bandwidth is an issue, rather than using video, teachers and students can fall back to a text-based discussion albeit I believe video is generally preferable.  A student with a mobile phone and a cellular contract could therefore interact with their teacher from a quiet room at home or even while on a bus or train.

In relation to using Teams Microsoft have already shared some advice for where schools want to enable and use of Teams.  You can view this info here.     If seeking to setup Teams quickly, assuming an Office 365 tenancy is in place complete with student accounts, my suggestion would be to enable teachers to create teams for their classes and support them to use Team Codes to allow students to join the relevant class.  This means everything can quickly be put in place to allow for use of Teams.

In terms of more static content such as learning resources, worksheets, etc, which you might want students to access, this ideally could be delivered through whichever learning platform is in use within a school.   Teams can also provide this facility or a SharePoint site, another component of office 365, could be quickly created to host the relevant learning content files.    OneNote could also provide such static content however additionally OneNote can allow teachers to provide written and even verbal feedback to students on their work allowing a more realistic two-way communication and learning experience to be developed.    I suspect I could actually write a piece on OneNote on its own however for now the above will need to suffice.

Personally, I also think Flipgrid is worthy of mention as another possible video related solution which can be put in place quickly allowing teachers to share video content with students and students to reply again with video.  I think this could be useful for creating the feeling of group discussion where the students are in diverse locations and may not be able to access the video stream at a specified time.     Another app worthy of mention would be Wakelet in its potential use by teachers to collate resources quickly and easily ready for students to access as, when and where needed.

The options are many and I have barely scratched the surface.   I have focussed on the Microsoft solutions however Google offer similar functionality for those schools using G-suite rather than Office 365.    The reality is that there isn’t one correct solution, there are many possibilities and a schools chosen approach needs to fit the individual school.   I also think we need to share ideas and thoughts on this as situations like this may become more common either related to illnesses like currently, due to natural disasters or environmental conditions or due to other events, hence this post.   Mark Steeds comments are particularly useful as they come from actual experience of this rather than simply theory which I need to admit my views above are.    I also think we need to acknowledge that outside of dramatic events, the ability for remote learning to be possible and even encouraged is something we need to give more consideration to.   Using technology to enable and support remote learning is another tool in the teachers toolbox;  A tool which is particularly powerful in reaching individual students with individual needs.  Why, therefore, should it be restricted to use during special circumstances such as viral outbreak?

[Updated 06/03/2020]

A couple of additional Microsoft resources have been brought to my attention and are listed below (thanks to Ian Stuart, @IanStuart66 for highlighting):

Moving to the cloud

The cloud?

In what is my third post looking at aspects of IT Strategy I thought I would write a little about moving to the cloud.   I note that the ISC Digital group recommends schools move to using Office 365 or G-Suite, both of which are cloud based services, as part of their bursars 6 pack advice.

There has a long been worries about security and control over cloud-based solutions.   My feeling is that largely these concerns have decreased with time and as cloud services have matured.  Additionally, understanding of cloud services has developed however I note recently a conversation in relation to a school which hosted its data locally and was building its own solutions for reasons of data security, so the concerns haven’t gone away.    In discussing cloud services, I love the idea of the cloud simply equating to “someone else’s computer”.   This description works for me.  In using cloud services for your solutions you are simply replacing your on-site servers with servers someone else owns, located somewhere out on the internet.   The question though in using cloud services is one of asking whether the someone else you are using can offer something you cannot and whether or not you trust them.

Looking at G-Suite and Office 365 as cloud hosted productivity suites I can see a number of things which are being offered which aren’t available in a locally hosted solution.    Both Microsoft and Google have significant technical support teams plus resiliency and redundancy capabilities way beyond what is possible with a schools IT support staff and on-prem solutions.   They are able to collate threat intelligence from vast numbers of systems and users to help protect all those using their services.      They offer a consistent revenue based costing model rather than the capital heavy costing model associated with on-premise data centres and servers, plus they offer easy scalability in terms of adding users, storage, services, etc.

As with most things this isn’t however a one-sided argument and there are other considerations which need to be taken into account.   The need for internet access is one of the key considerations as if your internet connectivity is unreliable or if your bandwidth is limited then deciding on cloud hosting is likely to be a bad idea.    Access to data may be another concern, as with locally hosted solutions you will have full unfettered access to the databases containing your data whereas in the cloud you may have limited access, through APIs for example, or may have no access other than that provided by a solutions user interface.    Sharing of data may be a concern as your third party, such as Google or Microsoft in the above case, will have access to your data so we must consider how much we trust them to not misuse this access.    Another consideration might be in relation to solutions which don’t need internet access, only requiring local network access, which therefore may be safer kept locally hosted.   It isn’t simply a case of just jumping to the cloud, there are considerations and concerns which need to be weighed up.

One of the main concerns in relation to cloud services is the terms and conditions and understanding your rights and responsibilities under these terms.   The terms and conditions should identify the overall approach to security which a vendor takes including how they may or may not share data, what happens should you cease using the vendor, their approach to breach and vulnerability notification, and any provision allowing for you to audit a vendors activities. Now I am not going to write much on this here as I will share some thoughts on this specific issue in a future post where I can explore it in more detail.  What is key however is the need to carefully check the terms and conditions especially in relation to complying with your data protection/GDPR obligations and also in relation to business continuity and disaster recovery.    It is important to take a risk based approach and weigh up the benefits and potential risks and assure yourself and your organisation that risks are acceptable and that benefits are worth any risk.

I continue to view the use of cloud based solutions or the use of the cloud to host an organisations own solutions positively.   I can see lots of advantages and benefits.  I also so more and more of our systems, data and services moving to the cloud in the coming years however I am also conscious that the cloud is not a silver bullet and is not necessarily appropriate for all situations.   We need to consider moving to the cloud or cloud based solutions carefully.   That said, I am not sure how that is different from normal behaviour as any change or introduction of new solutions should be considered carefully with a view to advantages, drawbacks and risk management.

Did you know?

Following on from the #DigiLearnSector twitter chat last night I thought I would share some of the Did you know tips which we have been sharing within our school.

We currently share Did you know tips weekly in an IT Services section within the whole school bulletin.   Each tip is designed to a be simple idea, tool or piece of functionality which is easy to use and easy to explain, leading to what we hope are simple bite sized tips.   We have now been doing this for a couple months, since shortly after the bulletin document was introduced and as a result there are around 9 tips in the document currently.

You can access the consolidated Did you know tips here.    I will hopefully update this periodically given we will continue to add a new tip to our list each week.

I hope you find this useful.

 

MS Forms: File Upload Questions

Microsoft recently introduced the ability to upload files as part of MS Forms, or at least it only just started appearing in UK tenants.   This is functionality I had been waiting for as it makes MS Forms so much more flexible and useful especially for situations where you might want users to upload a document or image as part of a form return.  I therefore thought it might be useful to blog a little about this new functionality in use.

Adding a form upload to a form is almost as easy as adding any other question type.   Simply click the Add new option then use the arrow to the right of the question types to then allow you to select the File Upload question type.

You can now enter the question which will be associated with the file upload.   This might be as simple as “Upload your file(s) here” or might state the type of files you want people to upload such as “Upload your images”, etc.    Each file upload question also comes complete with the ability to adjust the number of files that can be uploaded up to a maximum of 10 or you can also add more than one file upload question to a single form.   This provides flexibility in how you want users to upload their files, either uploading all relevant files in a single upload question or uploading each required file to a different question.

You can also set the limitations in terms of file size with options for 10Mb, 100Mb and 1Gb.     My advice here would be to limit to smaller file sizes just to avoid potential upload issues where users have limited bandwidth however I haven’t personally tested uploading 1Gb files so it may work perfectly well.

Once you have setup the above and shared your form the next bit is being able to review submitted files.   For my example I setup a form from my own user account meaning that Forms automatically created a folder in my OneDrive to store the files.  I assume if a form was setup in Teams it would equally create a file store in teams and store the uploaded files there.  The files are basically stored in the Microsoft Forms subfolder within the Apps folder which will appear in your OneDrive.   Inside this folder a new folder titled to match the forms title will appear.  This allows you to easily identify which files relate to which of your forms.

Files uploaded retain their original file name based on the file being uploaded by users however this has the name of the user appended to it.  This highlights one limitation of MS Forms in that you need to be a user within the Office 365 tenant to upload files, so you can’t create a publicly accessible form which allows unauthenticated users to upload files.  Although a limitation, I see this as only a minor issue as I can see potentially significant risk if unauthenticated uploads were supported.

If a user uploads the same file more than once Forms simply enumerates the filename appending 1, 2, 3, etc to it to identify each separate upload of the file.

One feature I particularly like is when you export the responses from your Form to excel.     For each file upload the URL link is provided in the resultant spreadsheet with this link taking you to the relevant file in OneDrive with multiple file uploads listed in a cell but separated by a semi-colon.   This will mean that for multiple file upload questions you may need to do a little processing on individual cells if you want to separate each link into a different cell however this is relatively simple to do.

Overall, I love this additional functionality in Microsoft Teams and look forward to making increasing use of it going forward.

Banning Office 365 in schools?

A German state have announced that they are banning the use of Office 365 in their schools citing GDPR reasons (read article here).   The issue arose, according to the article in the Verge, following Microsoft closing their German data centre resulting in a potential risk where German personal data may be accessed by US Authorities.

My view on this is that there has been a certain amount of overreaction on the part of the German state where viewed as a GDPR related action.   I can understand their concerns in relation to unauthorised access to data by US authorities.  This would represent a GDPR risk however it takes a very narrow view of the situation.

A broader view would include the implications for not using Office 365 to store data.   This means that schools are now storing their data locally on servers most likely within individual schools.   I would suggest that the ability of individual schools, school groups or local authorities to secure their local data including appropriate monitoring and patching of servers, etc is likely to be far short of what Microsoft provide in their data centres.  They are unlikely to have the resources, both technology and staffing, or the skills and experience.    As such removing one GDPR risk in relation to potential unauthorised access by US authorities has simply replaced it with another risk being a reduced level of security for data in each school.    I would suggest that the new risk is higher than the risk they have mitigated in banning Office 365.

In all this discussion there is a wider, more important, question;  who has my data including any telemetry data resulting from system usage?     The answer is sadly that this is very difficult to identify.   Every time we use an Android phone, do a google search, order from Amazon, access Office 365 or do any manner of other things using Internet connected technologies data is being generated and stored.   It is also often shared and then combined with other datasets to create totally new datasets.   Consent for data gathering is clear in very few sites/services.   In most it is buried in detailed terms and conditions written in complex legal’eese.    In some cases the terms and conditions are clearly excessive such as in the recently trending FaceApp where use of the app grants the company a perpetual license to display “user content and any name, username or likeness providing in connection with your user content” (see a related tweet here).   Basically when you provide your photo to the app they can keep it and use it as they see fit from now until the end of time.  There is also the use of tracking cookies as well, where I have large number of websites seeking permission to use cookies but without any real details as to what data is being stored or why the data is needed.

It is the wider question for which I applaud the German state as they are helping to raise the question of data, how it is gathered, used and shared.   The waters are incredibly murky when it comes to how the big IT companies, such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft, manage data.  We all need to stop and examine this situation however not as individual states or countries but on a global and societal level.    As to Office 365 being a GDPR risk;  I suppose it is but then again there are very few, if any systems which do not represent some sort of risk and I doubt we are going to put down our phones, stop searching google, buying for amazon, etc.

Microsoft Forms and Live Spreadsheets

I used to use Google Forms and as such when Microsoft introduced Forms I was very excited about being able to use the Office 365 platform for my form based needs however I quickly found one big limitation.

In google I could create a form which for example gathered budget requests.  I could then make this available to all staff.    I could then create a spreadsheet into which the data went but into which I then started to add my own comments regarding each request indicating whether I felt they should be accepted, declined or needed further discussion.  This spreadsheet was then shared with other budget decision makers for their comments.    As such the budget decision makers were able to make notes on a live spreadsheet which instantly updated with new requests as and when they were submitted.    It sped the whole process up significantly.     The issue was the in Microsoft Forms when you accessed the data in a spreadsheet format this was via download facilities meaning the resulting data spreadsheet did not update as new requests came in, and therefore couldn’t be used to keep running notes.

Thankfully, thanks to twitter and my PLN, I have now found that Microsoft have built the exact functionality I need, it is simply that the process is a little different.

Now I need to create a spreadsheet which can be stored in either OneDrive, Teams or Sharepoint.    The spreadsheet just needs to be blank.     Once the spreadsheet has been created you then need to open it up in Excel Online, the web version of Excel rather than the desktop application.    Easiest method to do this is to visit Office.com in a web browser and open the file from the appropriate OneDrive, Teams or SharePoint app.

Once in Excel Online simply go to Insert > Form and select the New Form option.

You should now be presented with the familiar MS Forms interface where you can build the form you want, adding whatever questions you need.     Once you have your form completed try the Preview option, enter and submit some sample data.    Now revisit your online spreadsheet and the data you have entered should now be visible.   You have now created a live spreadsheet which updates as data is submitted via the form.   You can also easily add your own additional comments to the spreadsheet as needed.

For me Microsoft Forms has now become a much better resource and I am looking forward to sharing the above info with colleagues over the coming week so that they too may start making greater use of Forms.

 

Stream Transcripts (Updated)

It was recently brought to my attention that the transcript files in Steam had changed and therefore the code I previously created for extracting the text from these files no longer works (You can read my original posting and code here).     As such I had another look and updated the code so that it would work with the new format.

The issue was that the new format includes additional lines of data which I needed to strip out plus also supports double and single line groups of text.    It didn’t take too long to write a new macro which would support this new format.

You can see the new Macro code below:

Sub Macro1()

Dim introw As Integer
Dim intcount As Integer

‘Delete first 10 rows
For intcount = 1 To 5
Rows(1).EntireRow.Delete
Next

introw = 1
Do While Cells(introw + 1, 1).Value <> “”

‘ delete the five rows preceeding text
For intcount = 1 To 5
Rows(introw).EntireRow.Delete
Next

‘ deal with blocks of 2 or 1 line of text
If Cells(introw + 3, 1).Value <> “” Then
introw = introw + 2
Else
introw = introw + 1
End If

Loop

End Sub

If using the above take care in the way that WordPress converts the minus ( – ) character in my code to a similar looking character in the above.   As such you may get a syntax error if copying and pasting.  If so just delete and replace the minus with the correct character in your code.  If you have any other issues with the above please let me know.

 

Stream Transcripts

Have played around with Microsoft Stream a little recently but only briefly, when I spotted someone having issues exporting the automatically created transcripts.     The issue is the transcripts are formatted with time codes and the person wanted only the text of the transcript without all of the timecodes.   Removing manually was a pain but thankfully the format of the transcript files appeared uniform in nature…….time to roll out the Macro code and some VBA

As such I put together the below simple VBA code to delete the timecode lines and leave only the text.   Will admit the code isn’t particularly tidy but my intention was to simply hack together a solution as opposed to creating elegant code.

The Code:

Sub Macro1()

Dim introw As Integer

introw = 7

Do While Cells(introw, 1).Value <> “”

Rows(introw – 2).EntireRow.Delete
Rows(introw – 2).EntireRow.Delete
Rows(introw – 1).EntireRow.Delete
introw = introw + 1

Loop

End Sub

Now I will admit that I havent tested the code on more than a basic level, having run it on a couple of transcripts I have.   Please let me know if you have issues with it.

*Update: It would appear WordPress converts the minus ( – ) character in my code to a similar looking character in the above.   As such you may get a syntax error if copying and pasting.  If so just delete and replace the minus with the correct character in your code.