Microsoft has been fielding comments about the issues large companies have with monitoring deployment of cloud services like Microsoft 365 and has responded with a new Experience dashboard rollout. The problems that were described related to data not being available, or being housed in different locations. The objectives of the new dashboard are to highlight metrics like in-product feedback, Net Promoter Score values, and usage, with a main goal of identifying “areas where users may need assistance.”
About the New Microsoft Dashboard
The new dashboard was available for public preview on July 22, 2022, and you can log into your Microsoft account to have a look. It’s designed to show the health status of your cloud services, along with a complete picture of the overall health of your environment. It can be used to check if software is up to date, how paid products are being used, and whether your organization is following best security practices.
Access to the improved Experience insights dashboard is restricted to Global admins, Global readers, and Reports readers only. This is limited in order to protect service-level user privacy.
Authorized users can gain wider, more comprehensive overviews of all tools and analyze individual apps so they can better understand support that has to be deployed. And to monitor service health, they can look at general, recent incidents and advisories that have been highlighted as “critical alerts.” Billing issues that could lead to problems (if not addressed) like soon-to-expire credit cards are also emphasized.
Digging Deeper into the Dashboard
In the middle of the dashboard, you will be able to find current service health status for Microsoft 365 services and apps that you or your company owns. This abbreviated list only shows selected ones; but you can see the entire list on the full-service health page; that includes a view of license utilization and average daily usage figures for each product.
There’s also a section for app updates, and this is critical for product and system security. You can see what is up-to-date and which ones may have expired. Anything that has fallen out of warranty or is otherwise outdated poses significant security and productivity risks. There’s also a Software Updates page that has all of the information in one place.
What Should I Do With the Dashboard Information?
You’ll want to make those updates as soon as possible to shield your company from security threats and to prevent incompatibilities with other devices and systems. You will also see recommendation cards and suggestions at the bottom, with detailed instructions for improving your organization’s IT health. Here are three of them, and they are all actionable from the dashboard.
The Share OneDrive training card encourages users to store files within OneDrive, as this offers better recovery against device failure and ransomware attacks. There’s a link to a video overview; this can be sent to colleagues as well.
Another card helps you set up and activate multifactor authentication (MFA), a crucial security feature for individuals and organizations. This recommendation summarizes how many admin accounts are MFA-enabled and provides a link to a setup wizard to enable ones that are not. The monthly updates card shows the company’s Office update feature settings, along with the frequencies that Microsoft recommends.
You can also see user feedback from your organization via Microsoft 365 apps, services, and NPS surveys through the dashboard’s Experience insights. These can be used to improve user experiences and to create action plans for the company. The help tab also has new information; like the other feature, this is constantly being worked on and improved. To find out more about the dashboard update, visit Microsoft’s TechCommunity webpage.
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