This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Wouldn't your coworkers already know you're working from home by, you know not seeing you at the office?
When I worked in an office, most of my team was in other offices across the world. But we had to be in the office for that TEAM BUILDING
> Go to the office
> All meetings are on teams because half the team works on other offices.
Yup.
Daily stand-up meeting
On the phone because we're decentralized
Everyone's actually sitting + hardly anyone's even paying attention because they're at their computers
Even if the whole team is actually in the conference room…it’s one dude with a laptop who struggles to get the display working for 10 min then proceeds to just read the PowerPoint out loud.
None of this required me putting on pants or being part of traffic.
That's... incredibly dumb.
Even worse, it's completely real. It was the common situation for me before corona. Also driving an entire day for a 1 hour meeting.
If your company is nationwide and has offices all over the country and you work on a distributed team where some people are on the west coast, some are central, and some are on the east coast. In this such event, none of your teammates will physically be able to tell if you are in the office. That’s what this feature is for.
So we can all continue to work from home, from a prescribed office of our employers choosing.
Ahhh the gigantic benefit of seeing a cubicle in the background of your zoom. Thanks Microsoft
We’re concerned that your home doesn’t look soul crushing enough. Please upgrade your home office by installing fluorescent tube lights and covering your walls with rough faded blue grey cloth, or we’ll need you to come into the office.
What? How would this change anything in that scenario? You're still doing a video call if you want to talk to them.
Welcome to the nonsense that is corporations.
My “office” is a network of interconnected multi-story buildings. It’s actually really convenient for me to know if I need to go meet someone in person or just use video.
Sometimes we have a room booked ahead of time and I learn they are wfh when I get to the empty room.
That's just poor common courtesy by your coworker. If you have a physical room booked and they are WFH they need to tell you so you don't waste your time. You shouldn't be relying on teams status
Sounds like all the meetings should just be done by video and nothing would be lost.
Boy I hate MS, and I hate Outlook, and MS Teams, and offices, and companies, and work..
Yet, I'm failing to understand what I'm supposed to be angry about here, can someone help?
From what I understand, you set the work hours and people will know if you're working or not based on that..? It doesn't sound too controversial to me.
Do people stay home without telling anyone and they wont be able to do that anymore? Or what?
It very clearly says it'll be using your work hours and location information. MS is turning your hardware into a GPS tracker for your company.
Except since there’s no actual GPS tracker, it uses your IP address. Microsoft thinks I live in either Virginia or North Dakota or Florida, depending on which part of the company’s VPN I connect to.
I am in the middle of trying to get e911 functional for Teams direct route calls, based of lis data, my Teams can't correctly determine the state I am in, much less my current address. It took multiple tickets to get our corporate headquarters to show up correctly instead of an address a half-mile away.
I forsee getting a lot of tickets from this feature.
It's already started for me today. Teams now snitches on those who are remote and there's no way to shut it off. My status is no longer just "Available", it's now "Available, Out of office". Fuck Microsoft!
soon "Available, Out of office, Single, Virgin, Allergic to milk"
This is because you’ve accepted a meeting that happens at a location not in the building; for example, someone else’s PTO reminder that they’ve invited you to. Decline that invitation, and you’re fine.
Fuck the technocrats.
Do you not have a work VPN?
Outlook will soon know if you're properly dressed for work while you're WFH in case you're not. They will detect pink pixels on your camera. They will detect gurgling noises, thuds, clapping noises, spitting, long wave vibrations such as fun chair bouncing and short wave vibrations such as clipping your hair sounds. The future is worthless! I mean endless!
So what if my boss knows when I'm fapping. Why else would they have scheduled an "all hands"?
Soon Microsoft full body detection (including feet)
"Those loafers sure don't look like heels Jenny! I expect you to be in your office attire at all times during work hours."
I don't get the problem. Isn't this the entire point of registering your work location in outlook? Why would you add it and be surprised if others can see it?
The update will use the Work Hours and Location information stored within Outlook to offer up this information, meaning there may be some awkward conversations if your colleagues believe you to be in the office.
Microsoft 365 can help you manage and share your work schedule. New features allow you to specify more details about your work schedule: from where you’re working (remotely or in the office) and whether you work different hours on different days. In addition, you can schedule meetings with others based on their work location, view the work location on people’s profile card, and see your out of office time reflected in your location.
The upcoming update even allows you to not share your location (Again not sure why you wouldn't share your location since that's the entire point of adding your location but whatever): https://windowsreport.com/outlooks-work-hours-and-location-statuses-will-become-optional/
Am I completely crazy or is the article from tech radar complete bullshit?
Complete nothing burger
Interesting. Teams has been doing this for a few years now, so I assume it's the same functionality just transferred over to Outlook (which has been going through a massive overhaul recently). For anyone in an MS-based company with Teams being actively used, this is not a new thing.
How does Teams give away your location? I've used it extensively, but I've never seen someone's location unless the enter it manually.
It can be turned on by the IT dept in a large office. It has a different icon for in office network connection vs not. Not every IT dept uses it. Some treat other employees like adults, for instance.
Having my status turn yellow when I so much as look away from my screen is bad enough. I really hope this "feature" stays off.
And this is why I haven't installed Teams on my personal computer. If it was less invasive, I would, but it's just potential bossware masquerading as "productivity tools."
That shit stays on my work computer, and I just VPN into it.
I'm not putting any work stuff on by home computer. I'm not giving work admin rights to that.
At a lower level your IT dept logs the IP address you’re accessing m365 resources from.
Yes the security logs absolutely log that, but I haven't heard of HR forcing IT to actually use those logs for discovering where people work.
We don't give a shit and have better things to do.
And your VPN connection to work knows your endpoint...
Interestingly, there's another way of finding out if your coworker is in the office
just walk over to their desk.
Your M365 admin can already tell by your IP address. Just like they know when you're looking at porn when your IP randomly hops states for a little while.
Who be looking at porn on the work PC lol. For me I have to give a ' reason' to disconnect form the work VPN. I do do anything on work PC besides work tbh
Yeah, never use a work device for anything you're not actually getting paid to do. To do otherwise is just stupid. Save non-work stuff for your own devices.
I use my personal computer as a work PC. But I run a VM for the work stuff. It's great.
You don't have to make things complicated here. If you want to tell people that you use Linux, just say that.
Look. You are incapable of doing work anywhere but the office. Your collaborations severely lack. Somehow tho, when the executive class spends 10 hours in email it's innovation. When you do it, you're unproductive.
OK, easy solution: don't open outlook.
Most of the time that I'm in the office, my laptop is closed anyways, you know, for collaboration.
So they are using the information they have in Azure/Entra about where you login from and presenting it to other users through Outlook/Teams?
Seems fine as long as they don't include your exact address.
