Slack has announced a new ‘Schedule Send’ feature that allows users to queue up messages to send at specific dates and times.

Set to start rolling out on Thursday, the function will appear as a drop-down menu that pops up when users click on the ‘send’ arrow in the chat box.

Slack will offer both pre-filled options, like “tomorrow 9am”, as well as the ability to set a custom date and time to send the message. Users can schedule messages up to 120 days in advance and they can reschedule, edit, or delete them before they’ve been sent.

The feature will work in both channels and direct messages, and also for temporary groups and threads. It’s available for both the desktop service and the Android and iOS mobile apps, with users of the latter needing to press and hold the ‘send’ arrow to see the drop-down menu.

“Today we launched Scheduled Send to empower users to communicate and collaborate in a way that works best for them,” the company said in a statement, adding that “teams shouldn’t be obligated to sync their schedules in order to communicate effectively.”

The function will be important for large businesses with offices and employees in different time zones, but also for companies planning to mix in-office and remote working with various shift patterns. It will allow Slack users more opportunities to fully switch off by preventing out-of-hours notifications, but it also means that some messages won’t get buried by others before the recipient starts their shift.

Given accusations that apps like Slack contribute to an ‘always-on’ culture, some may question why it has taken so long to add a feature of this kind to the platform, particularly as a similar feature has been available on Gmail for some time. 

A message scheduling feature is also available on Microsoft Teams, although the Slack version appears to offer a slightly easier user experience.

Microsoft’s Windows 11 operating system has leaked online in full just days before developers were set to showcase its new look and key features in a reveal event. 

Screenshots of the in-development successor to Windows 10 show that the biggest aesthetic features include a centralised Start menu and taskbar, rounded corners for all windows and menus, as well as a light skin activated by default. 

Images were first leaked to the Chinese site Baidu, although a fully operational version of Windows 11 has since emerged online, according to The Verge.  

The user interface (UI) is altogether more reminiscent of macOS than classic Windows deployments, although activating a dark skin and shifting the Start menu to the left of the taskbar does make it resemble Windows 10. 

It’s also very similar in the layout of the UI for Microsoft’s Windows 10X, first developed for dual-screen devices but since abandoned and integrated instead into the broader Windows development cycle. The latest major Windows 10 update, for example, borrowed heavily on elements first devised to be included in Windows 10X.  

The Start menu included in this beta version of Windows 11 represents perhaps the most significant UI change against Windows 10. There’s a tiled layout to the apps in the menu, with a section for pinned and recommended services, alongside a prompt to view all apps.

Much of the leaked version remains completely unchanged, however, barring updated icons and the fact that windows are in keeping with the rounded edges aesthetic. The task menu as well as contextual menus and the file explorer all look much like they do in Windows 10, though it’s unclear whether these will change with the finished version.

Another significant addition is that of a Widgets button in the taskbar, which suggests the return of a widgets system that was included with Windows Vista and Windows 7. A screenshot shows a menu that slides out with tiles that show different pieces of information such as the weather, football scores, and news headlines.

Users can also snap windows far more effectively and micromanage the layout by clicking the maximise button in the top right corner. They can, at present, choose which half, or quadrant, of the screen in which to place their window.

Microsoft has strongly hinted at the existence of a successor to Windows 10 for some months, teasing various details about a Sun Valley build that promises to improve users’ workflow, according to Windows Central. 

The firm is due to discuss the build and detail its features for the first time on 24 June. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described this as “one of the most significant updates to Windows of the past decade”, and argued that it will unlock greater economic opportunity for developers and creators. 

“I’ve been self-hosting it over the past several months, and I’m incredibly excited about the next generation of Windows,” he said during his keynote at the Microsoft Build 2021 event. 

“Our promise to you is this: we will create more opportunity for every Windows developer today and welcome every creator who is looking for the most innovative, new, open platform to build and distribute and monetise applications.”

Microsoft has also announced in recent days that it plans to retire Windows 10 by 2025, again signalling that Windows 11 is on its way very soon.

IT Pro approached Microsoft for confirmation the leaks are genuine, and whether it’s considering taking any action.

Canonical has launched the premium version of the open source Ubuntu Linux kernel on Google Cloud, offering enterprise users a suite and new features and security capabilities for their deployments. 

Ubuntu Pro on Google Cloud is available to all Google Cloud users, with the deployment allowing for instant access to all security patches covering thousands of open source apps, as well as critical compliance features. 

This premium version of the free-to-use Linux operating system focuses on enterprise and production use, providing developers and admins with secured DevOps environments, as well as additional security tools. 

Live kernel patching, for example, offers virtual machine (VM) instances increased security, while users can benefit from ten years of mission-critical support for 18.04 LTS onwards. The maintenance period of Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS is eight years.

“Enterprise customers are increasingly adopting Google Cloud to run their core business-critical and customer-facing applications,” said VP and GM for Compute at Google Cloud, June Yang.

“The availability of Ubuntu Pro on Google Cloud will offer our enterprise customers the additional security and compliance services needed for their mission-critical workloads.” 

With Ubuntu Pro, alongside all standard optimisations and security updates in Ubuntu, users can also utilise certified components to allow operating environments under various compliance regimes, including GDPR and PCI. 

Later in the year, additional features will be added such as certified FIPS 140-2 components, a security dashboard, managed apps, and more that haven’t yet been defined.

Google Cloud has partnered with Canonical in some capacity for many years, and the standard iteration of Ubuntu has been available to Google Cloud customers since 2014. 

The two platforms have worked together on Ubuntu Pro on Google Cloud, which serves as a more secure, hardened and cost-effective DevOps environment that aims to boost customers’ cloud transformation efforts.

“Since 2014, Canonical has been providing Ubuntu for Google Cloud customers. We continuously expand security coverage, great operational efficiency, and native compatibility with Google Cloud features,” said VP of Cloud GTM at Canonical, Alex Gallagher. 

“I’m excited to witness the collaboration between Canonical and Google Cloud to make Ubuntu Pro available. Ubuntu Pro on Google Cloud sets a new standard for security of operating systems and facilitates your migration to Google Cloud.”

Customers can purchase these premium images directly from Google Cloud by selecting Ubuntu Pro as the operating system directly from the Google Cloud Console. 

Laura Dawson, CIO at the London School of Economics, has spent the past 12 months establishing a range of collaborative systems and services to help people login and carry on learning from home. It’s been a challenging 12 months, but it’s also been an intense learning period for Dawson and her team.

In just a matter of days last spring, Dawson and her IT colleagues secured remote links, sent out Windows 10 laptops, and established cloud-based services such as Zoom for the provision of online education. Twelve months on and these technologies are helping Dawson, her colleagues in the IT department and the educators and students they serve to work productively and effectively.

So how did Dawson support her organisation during its shift to online learning and what are the key issues that academic organisations will need to consider as they use digital technology to help shape the future of education? In many ways, she says LSE was in a fortunate position – while COVID-19 undoubtedly accelerated digitalisation, the process was already underway.

Internal expertise

Dawson also says LSE is lucky to be able to draw on the experience of Dilly Fung, a forward-thinking pro-director of education who is keen to explore new and engaging approaches to teaching. Fung’s research around the connected curriculum aims to find ways to foster strong relationships between students and educators. 

“So that whole-of-life learning approach was very much the kind of thing we were looking at when we were exploring the future of education,” says Dawson. “We were already thinking about, ‘What does digital education look like? What does research-based education look like, how will we service that and how will that look in the longer term?’” 

When lockdown came, Dawson and her senior colleagues had the opportunity to answer some of those questions. “That was all about getting the teaching going as quickly and effectively as possible,” she says, reflecting on the rapid adoption of online learning methods. 

Once again, she says LSE had a number of advantages: the institution had already established VPN connections to support secure remote access. LSE had also implemented the collaboration platform Microsoft Teams. Two weeks prior to lockdown, the IT team was able to ask every department to work at home as a beta test for socially distanced working. 

“We asked everybody to go and test it and come back to us and tell us what they thought: How did it work, what worked, what didn’t? That gave us quite a lot of insight into the sort of things that we’d need,” she says.

“There was a weird moment days before lockdown where just about everyone in the IT department was updating Windows 10 machines and getting them sent out to staff. But we managed to work very well with our third-party partner; we managed to get the machines that we needed, and we dished them out.”

Choosing the right software

The second key element of technology provision involved the establishment of the online-learning environment. Cloud technology played a crucial role here: While the institution was already using Teams for collaboration, it decided to use Zoom as its video-conferencing platform for online lessons.  

“We did that because we brought the right people into the room within the first week of the pandemic,” says Dawson. “We went with Zoom because that is the best way for us to get our students online and give them a great experience. So we’d done the due diligence, but we did it really quickly – and that just freed up the discussion.”

LSE also used the online-learning platform Moodle to help deliver assessments. Once again, the team took a similar approach – they made a decision to move the assessment process into the cloud and brought key people together to make decisions and implement systems.

“We created a small sub-team and they went off and did it,” she says. “They got the technology implemented by almost working like a start-up. There’s still more work to be done around honing our approach, but they did it and we were able to deliver assessments.”

Taking the next steps

This rapid but successful digital transformation process has helped LSE and Dawson to develop a much stronger sense of what the future of higher education might look like. What she envisages is a hybrid form of teaching that’s different to before the pandemic. Yes, face-to-face learning will remain but the use of online lessons will also rise.

“What we’ve proven is that education can take place online – what we maybe need to think about now are our skills for maintaining that,” she says. “I think hybrid just needs to be really good. And a successful hybrid is where you are bringing people into the classroom with people who are not in a classroom together in a really equitable way.”

It’s also important to recognise that online learning remains a constant work in progress. During the first lockdown, Dawson’s team had to pivot to provide socially distanced IT support to people who weren’t in the same location and who were trying to deliver online learning. 

As social-distancing restrictions eased, conversations turned to the hybrid teaching environment and the blend of offline and online teaching methods. There was a significant piece of work around turning physical teaching spaces into COVID-safe spaces with fewer seats. For those who were still unable to attend in-person, the IT team has continued to provide online teaching.

Dawson says it’s important to recognise just how far the move to online learning during the coronavirus pandemic has helped to boost the electronic educational experience, particularly in the case of asynchronous teaching, where teaching materials are posted online and learners work through them in their own time.

The future of education, says Dawson, might involve a whole range of emerging technologies, from virtual reality through to even more advanced forms of educational engagement. She refers to an example from the Imperial College Business School, which became the first institution to deliver live lectures via hologram.

Dawson says this technology is “really cool” and provides a way to get more people together when international travel is impossible. Yet it’s also important to recognise that these technologies are at the cutting edge and are far from replacing traditional forms of learning or even video-conferencing systems. 

For many institutions, such as LSE, the coronavirus pandemic has represented a burning platform for the adoption of e-learning. For Dawson, the priority now is to make the most of the technology that’s been implemented and to build on those gains.

“I don’t necessarily think there’s any special magic technology that we need in order to create fantastic online learning. I think confidence is the key thing; people now know that they can actually deliver education online,” she says.

Google is aiming to broaden the appeal of its online productivity suite, Google Workspace, by making it free to anyone that has a Google account. 

This means that all of the company’s three billion users, from enterprise to education, can access the full Google Workspace platform, and apps like Gmail, Chat, Docs and more, without the need to pay for a subscription. Some paid-for tiers will remain, however, along with a new tier designed exclusively for sole traders.

There are also new features for the free tier that address specific challenges workers will face with the switch to hybrid working, These include updates to Google Chat, new subscription offers and greater security across the platform. 
 
“Collaboration doesn’t stop at the workplace – our products have been optimised for broad participation, sharing and helpfulness since the beginning,” said Javier Soltero, VP and GM, Google Workspace. 

“Our focus is on delivering consumers, workers, teachers and students alike an equitable approach to collaboration, while still providing flexibility that allows these different subsets of users to take their own approach to communication and collaboration.”

The biggest change for free users is that Google Rooms has evolved into ‘Google Spaces’. This is effectively a private chat area, similar to those found Slack or Microsoft Teams, where groups of users can chat and collaborate via text or video call.

There are a range of new functions within this, such as ‘threads’ and presence indicators that let users know if participants are free or available to talk. Users can also pin messages to Spaces so that important announcements don’t get lost amongst the general chatter. 
 
Google is also adding a Companion Mode to Google Meet which it claims allows everyone to continuously contribute to meetings, no matter if they are in the office or at home.

For the paid-tier, Google has added client-side document encryption which will allow businesses to use their own encryption keys.

A number of major firms are participating in Vodafone’s project to deliver the first commercial deployment of Open Radio Access Network (RAN) in Europe. 

Dell, Samsung, NEC, Wind River, Capgemini and Keysight will contribute their technologies and expertise to Vodafone’s efforts to build on the Open RAN lab in Newbury, in England, as well as digital skills hubs in Malaga and Dresden in Spain and Germany. 

Open RAN is a networking concept that allows mobile network operators to use equipment from multiple vendors to form key components of a mobile network. Current RAN technology takes the form of a hardware and software integrated platform. 

The alternative, spearheaded by the O-RAN-ALLIANCE, allows for disaggregation between hardware and software with open interfaces and virtualisation, alongside software that controls and updates networks through the cloud. 

Benefits of the technology include diversifying the supply chain, raising flexibility, as well as adding new capabilities and services to networks. Operators, for example, could easily introduce AI functionality to optimise the network for specific use cases, such as large crowds at a football match.

“Open RAN provides huge advantages for customers,” said Vodafone CTO, Johan Wibergh. “Our network will become highly programmable and automated meaning we can release new features simultaneously across multiple sites, add or direct capacity more quickly, resolve outages instantly and provide businesses with on-demand connectivity.

“Open RAN is also reinvigorating our industry. It will boost the digital economy by stimulating greater tech innovation from a wider pool of vendors, bringing much-needed diversity to the supply chain.”

Allowing for a mix and match of hardware and equipment would also allow governments to move away from a reliance on technology provided by Huawei, over security concerns, as well as Ericsson and Nokia. Encouraging smaller companies to enter the market would, in theory, enhance competition. 

For this reason, the project is also backed by the European Commission, with the EU hoping that developments in Open RAN will bring more European companies into the emerging market. Vodafone and other major EU telecoms firms hope these networks architectures will help to build a broader ecosystem.

The initial focus will be on the 2,500 sites in the UK that Vodafone committed to Open RAN in October 2020. Described as one of the largest deployments in the world, it’ll be built jointly with Dell, NEC, Samsung and Wind River.

Vodafone also projects to use new radio equipment defined under the Evenstar programme, which the firm contributes to. Capegemini and Keysight will provide support to ensure there’s interoperability between all the components that make up the infrastructure.

From this year, the six vendors will work together to extend 4G and 5G coverage to more rural places across the South West of England and most of Wales, shifting to urban areas at a later stage of the programme.

Google has launched the second build of the Android 12 Public Beta with participating Pixel users able to make use of a swathe of widely-anticipated privacy features.

Android 12 Beta 2 adds several features that were announced at the Google I/O developer conference in May but weren’t included with the first beta. 

Chief among these is a privacy dashboard that gives users insights into the various permissions that apps request, including access to location, the microphone, and the camera.

“Today we’re releasing the second Beta of Android 12 for you to try. Beta 2 adds new privacy features like the Privacy Dashboard and continues our work of refining the release,” said Android’s VP of engineering, Dave Burke.

“End-to-end there’s a lot for developers in Android 12 – from the redesigned UI and app widgets, to rich haptics, improved video, and image quality, privacy features like approximate location, and much more.”

The dashboard, accessible from the settings menu, also comes packaged with quick toggles so users can cut an app’s access to hardware components. There’s also an indicator in the status bar to show when either the microphone or camera are being accessed.

The latest beta version also adds functionality to manage network connections, replacing the Wi-Fi widget in the notifications centre with the Internet panel. This panel helps users switch between providers and troubleshoot connectivity issues.

Much of the changes with Android 12, in this latest beta as well as the last, aren’t set in stone and are subject to change based on feedback from Pixel users testing the operating system. There’s set to be at least one more beta release before Android 12 achieves ‘platform stability’ in August. There may then be one final beta release ahead of the final release later this year.

Android 12 will instigate a complete refresh of the UI, bringing a new set of colours, shapes, and animations to the way that users navigate the system. The design language, dubbed Material You by developers, will make Android more “expressive, dynamic and personal”.

As detailed at the I/O conference, the development team has made significant investments in upgrading performance in the new operating system. These comprise improvements to foundational system performance, battery life efficiencies, changes to foreground services, media quality, as well as new tools to optimise apps.

Zoom has unveiled a new range of desk phones fit for the office and the home that includes high-definition video and built-in collaboration software.

These are the first two products to come from the firm’s ‘Zoom Phone Appliance’ programme, which combines its conferencing software with hardware from electronics specialists Poly and Yealink.

Both are fairly traditional-looking desk phones, but also feature a large touch screen and webcam, though the Yealink version also comes with physical keys. Zoom suggests these devices are a “new category of hardware”, optimised for the so-called hybrid workforce that mixes home and office working.

“The traditional workplace is evolving and adapting, and our goal is to empower the workforce to accomplish more by blurring the lines between voice and video,” said Graeme Geddes, head of Zoom Phone and Zoom Rooms. “The new Zoom Phone Appliance program boasts a selection of purpose-built Zoom Phone hardware from Poly and Yealink, streamlining communications, removing friction, and enabling a powerful communications experience.”

The devices have been designed for simple installation and low maintenance, so that they are just as easy to use at home as they are in the office. The desk phones also feature ‘Zero-touch provisioning’, which Zoom claims minimises the need for IT support with a centralised management system and regular updates. What’s more, the phones will work with your regular Zoom account, so no additional licensing is required.

Both the Poly and Yealink devices include ‘always-on’ Zoom capabilities, where meetings can be scheduled and joined instantly, and more traditional desk phone functions such as audio calls and voicemail.

The touch screen display also includes an interactive whiteboard that can be shared with colleagues and exported to other devices. The system can also be synced with the user’s calendar – which includes Google Calendar.

These are the “inaugural class” of Zoom Phone Appliances, the firm said, with other products and features to follow, potentially from other partners.

Cisco has unveiled an all-new suite of services for its Webex platform with features it hopes will serve as the foundation for “inclusive” hybrid work environments.
 
The cloud firm’s research estimates that 98% of future meetings will include at least one remote participant and that this requires more broad investment into non-traditional conference rooms. 

Its new suite of services, which also sees the introduction of a new Webex logo, includes an end-to-end events platform, an analytics tools to track audience engagement, speech optimisation, machine learning software to improve video quality, data-loss prevention and collaborative hardware to enable use either in the office or at home. 
 
“Cisco’s collaboration business is incredibly essential to our customers,” said the company’s CEO, Chuck Robbins. “With all the integrations the team has added – 800 new features and devices since September – we truly have the most comprehensive meetings, calling, messaging, and event management solution on the market powering the future of hybrid work.
 
The analytics tools will include functions for polls, Q&As and an audience engagement service which Cisco calls an “industry first”. This will be integrated across all collaboration experiences with the polling feature available now in Meetings.
 
The Camera updates include a “People Focus” function whereby machine learning and AI technology is used to individually reframe meeting participants who are spread across a room. This will remote participants to feel more connected, according to Cisco, with everyone in the meeting able to benefit from seeing body language, facial expressions and more. 
 
The suite will also come with security features to prevent loss of data for Webex, which automatically blocks and removes confidential information and prohibits users from posting classified content rather than redacting or deleting content after it is posted. Additionally, European Webex customers will be able to host and process their content within the EU.
 
The new suite is available now and is priced at 40% lower than “a-la-carte”, according to Cisco. Webex Desk, a desktop video device option for home offices and small meeting spaces, will be made available for order later in June for $1,249.

Digital transformation should be a constant process, not just a project to get your business through the pandemic, according to Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The tech giant has released a report into cloud adoption ahead of its 2021 AWS Summit event, which suggests that pandemic has accelerated organisations’ digital transformation plans by an average of two years and five months. 

The firm surveyed 10,000 senior business and IT decision-makers across France, Germany, Israel, Spain, and the UK, with the aim of understanding digital transformation at speed and how it could continue beyond the pandemic. 

IT Pro spoke to the company’s head of operations in the UK and Ireland, Darren Hardman, who joined the tech giant not long after the outbreak of COVID, about the post-pandemic businesses that we can expect to see. 

“I think the key thing that I’ve learned is that a new breed of enterprises is emerging post-pandemic that is confident about responding to change, more agile in managing that change, and more secure and resilient,” Hardman told IT Pro. 

Enterprises that have experimented during the COVID pandemic are experiencing a “reinvention dividend”, according to Hardman, with these organisations now more resilient and better placed to succeed in the so-called ‘new normal’. 69% of the business leaders surveyed said they have a clear strategy to seize opportunities, and 60% agreed they will need to adjust their business model again once lockdown measures lift.

“It has been interesting actually trying to understand which of the companies were reacting to a short term issue with no intention to carry on, versus those that were actually just accelerating their strategy, because in the data 64% of them have told us that they intend to adopt more cloud technologies post-pandemic,” Hardman explained. 

“And 54% of them are now dependent on their cloud to service their customers. Which is interesting, isn’t it? Because it shows that their journey to the cloud, even if it started during the pandemic, is something they expect to continue.” 

However, the report also suggested that there were plenty of warning signs when it comes to sustaining agility and transformation, including internal challenges. Half of the decision-makers said their organisations still lack an understanding of how to link business problems to technical solutions, 47% said employees were resistant to change, and 42% said a lack of skills could hold them back.

“It’s about having the leadership and the leadership muscle to drive this culture of change in your organisation,” Hardman added. “So constantly, as a leader, am I relentlessly trying to seek out the truth to see what competitors are doing in my space to see what customers think about my product or my service, and am I creating the right culture to challenge my own organisation to continually reinvent?”