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Microsoft Teams is a great product for communicating and collaborating with clients, partners and other external individuals. For this I use the chat feature, as I do not necessarily need to create a Team and invite them in, I am just looking for a quick and simple way to communicate without using email.  However, there has always been one major drawback which is that communication can only be with one external individual. In fact, I cannot even invite a colleague to join the chat let alone another individual from the external company. Teams Group chat with external users in Teams Well no more. Microsoft has recently announced that group chats can now be held with external individuals! MORE DETAIL
Group chat with external users in Teams Category Teams At the moment you can initiate a Teams Chat with an external person (providing they are also a Microsoft 365 user), which is a great way to keep in touch with clients or partners or other individuals. However, should you want to then open the chat to one of your colleagues or another individual in the external organisation, then this was not possible - chats with external individuals are currently only allowed on a one-to-one basis. The good news is that once the enhancement rolls out you will be able to hold group chats that involve external participants. Edit a SharePoint page or news post in Teams As Microsoft further bring together SharePoint and Teams, they have announced that soon you will be able to edit a SharePoint page or a news post from within Teams. So you no longer have to navigate to SharePoint to do this. MORE DETAIL
Edit a SharePoint page or news post in Microsoft Teams Category Teams SharePoint This new feature will allow users to edit modern SharePoint pages or news posts within Teams and to pin important pages or news posts to a Teams channel, ensuring that there is good visibility to the Teams members. All this without leaving Teams and navigating to SharePoint, thereby further harmonising the Teams / SharePoint experience. SharePoint SharePoint auto-news digest improvements The SharePoint auto-news digest feature sends an automated email to users about the latest news posts that are relevant to them, but that they may not have viewed yet. This is a great way for users to catch up on news that they may have otherwise missed. With the new improvements just announced you will be able to tailor the auto-news digest news email with company branding and a logo. Microsoft has also improved the look and feel of the email.  MORE DETAIL
SharePoint auto-news digest improvements
MC248207 Category SharePoint You may already know about and use the SharePoint automatic news digest, which is sent to users with news that is relevant to them. Well Microsoft is adding new features to enhance the experience:
Users who already receive the existing automatic news digest will soon start receiving this updated version. 
More details:
Sharing links for Microsoft Lists is now available In the same way we share documents and folders from SharePoint, you can now not only share an individual list item but also a whole SharePoint List.
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Sharing links for Microsoft Lists is now available
Category SharePoint Microsoft Lists This enhancement will allow users to now share Microsoft Lists using the same sharing links that they have been using for files and folders. With this enhancement you can now share entire lists using sharing links. The experience is identical to the sharing links experiences that are supported for files and folders. The same admin controls that apply to sharing files and folders will also apply to lists and list items. 
Search across images in SharePoint When searching in SharePoint you can currently scope the search results by file type. Now you will also be able to scope search results by image type if that is what you are searching for. MORE DETAIL
Search across images in SharePoint Category SharePoint Microsoft is rolling out image search. Image search in Microsoft 365 provides a new search vertical to provide better search capabilities for images in your organisation. After this change, a new image vertical will be available to allow for scoping your search results to images that satisfy the intent of the search parameters. Individuals in your organisation will now be able to search across images in addition to content stored in Microsoft 365. New capabilities to manage SharePoint pages When you want to change properties of your page such as rename the page or its URL, you must navigate down into the Pages library itself. With this enhancement you will be able to perform these management activities, and more, from the Page details pane that is accessible from the page itself, which will make it easier for page owners. MORE DETAIL
New capabilities to manage SharePoint pages Category SharePoint These updates will allow users to delete their page, edit the page URL, and copy a link to their page from within the page details panel. Users with permission to author SharePoint pages will now see the three new fields in the page details panel. This will provide greater flexibility to page owners and remove the need to dive into the SharePoint pages library to undertake these activities. PowerPoint Option to use 'Office Presentation Service' from desktop PowerPoint Do you use the Office Presentation Service in the desktop version of PowerPoint, allowing you to present your PowerPoint across the web? Well, this feature will soon be disappearing and will be replaced by the 'Present Live' feature of PowerPoint for the Web.  MORE DETAIL
Option to use 'Office Presentation Service' from desktop PowerPoint Category PowerPoint Office Microsoft has announced that it will be removing the ‘Office Presentation Service' option/button from the “Present Online” menu under the SlideShow ribbon in PowerPoint for Windows. Instead they recommend the utilisation of "Present Live" in PowerPoint for the Web which is where they will continue to invest. Once this change is implemented you will no longer be able to broadcast your presentation from the PowerPoint Windows application Using "Present Live" in PowerPoint for the Web (aka Live Presentations) will allow:
Microsoft 365 Bringing Visio free to Microsoft 365 users Visio has been a staple of flow charts and process maps for years but was never available as part of your standard Microsoft 365 subscription and Microsoft never built any of its capabilities into other office products such as Word. The good news is that Microsoft has announced that a new light version of Visio, suitable for most users needs, will now be available as part of Microsoft 365.  MORE DETAIL
Bringing Visio free to Microsoft 365 users Category Microsoft 365 Visio With the shift to hybrid work comes the need for business leaders to create a new, flexible operating model spanning people, places, and processes. Every business process will need to be transformed and diagrams are often the starting point for many process updates. They enable individuals across the organisation to improve and visually communicate processes to help employees adapt quickly to change. Visio has long been available only as a standalone app for purchase for people with specialised diagramming needs. But this is changing. Microsoft is recognising an increasing need for a diagramming solution for everyone to convey information more effectively, which is why it will be bringing core Visio capabilities to Microsoft 365 for all commercial license subscribers. This lightweight version of the web app will offer core Visio functionalities and allow business users to create, edit, and share professional diagrams. Microsoft Bookings A new, more powerful, and customisable Microsoft Bookings is here
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A new, more powerful, and customisable Microsoft Bookings is here
Category Bookings The new Microsoft Bookings experience is here, massively improving the current experience. Once you’re in the new Bookings view, you’ll see the new experience which introduces many new capabilities in Microsoft Bookings. 
Compliance, Privacy and Tighter Controls
Bookings now has stricter administrative controls, and each user within Bookings has varied levels of control over how calendars are created, edited, and shared as well as how appointments can be booked. Microsoft 365 Admins Admins can now control who has access to Bookings, whether external users can book appointments, and if staff details can be shared with customers. Admins can also control the privacy of the customers' booking appointments and can restrict what information can be collected when making a booking, like phone numbers, email, or contact address. Additionally, they can prevent staff members from requesting customer information by blocking the creation of custom fields. New tenant administrator controls.
Admins can control the information required in a booking and even block custom fields. 
Bookings Admins
Bookings admins have controls to ensure their organisation’s compliance and privacy standards. They can restrict appointments to users within the organisation and can also restrict search engine listings. Admins can also configure data usage consent with their own custom message, privacy policy link, as well as add terms and conditions information on the Bookings page. New Roles To ensure that the correct staff members have the adequate access to Bookings’ pages, two new roles have been created.
Customisation and Branding
Bookings allows organisations to customise their Bookings page with their own logo. A colour theme that best suits the organisation can be chosen as well. Confirmations, cancellations, and reminders can be customised using a rich text editor. 
Simpler Scheduling
Admins can add multiple staff members and get a unified view across all their calendars and availability. Switching between multiple calendars is made easier with an option to filter by staff members and services. There is also an option to pin a specific calendar for easier tracking. 
Admins can navigate to a staff member profile directly from the calendar and get a comprehensive view of their scheduled meetings, contact information, and services offered.
Custom availability can be set for each staff member with multiple slots in a day and certain days marked as non-available. This is synced with the staff’s Outlook calendar to avoid double bookings. Additionally, appropriate lead time can be configured for each service to ensure that staff members are well prepared before an appointment. There’s also an option to add buffer time before and after an appointment to provide sufficient breathing time. Author: Chris Kaye
SharePoint Auto versioning on SharePoint lists MC239092 Versioning is one of the most important features of SharePoint, enabling users to evidence changes, create audit trails and recover from mistakes. When a user creates a new Document Library versioning is automatically enabled, but when the same user creates a new SharePoint List then versioning is not enabled. This difference is not obvious and requires the user to go to the List 'backstage' and turn on versioning, a process I would guess most users are not aware of. With versioning off, a lot of the great audit and change management capabilities are lost.  Well finally, Microsoft have announced that versioning will be turned on by default for any new lists. Of course, the timing of the upgrade in your environment is down to Microsoft, so you will need to manually check if versioning is on or off for your lists until then. If you're not sure what versioning is or how to use it, then check out this link: Enable and configure versioning for a list or library Expand images in SharePoint pages MC239264 SharePoint pages provide you with the ability to create rich communication experiences full of images, text, news and videos. Currently the only way for a user to expand the size of an image on your page to see it more clearly, is to zoom in on the browser. Soon however, clicking on an image will result in the image expanding in an overlay. The underlying page will still be there and all the user will need to do is click outside the image overlay to return to the page. This will add further richness and usability to your communication hubs. Teams New file sharing in Microsoft Teams MC240303 If you are a regular user of Microsoft Teams for creating and managing documents in the Files area, then one of the annoying limitations is that you cannot share a document with either internal or external individuals that do not have access to the Team. You can copy a link to the document and send this, but the link will only work if the recipient is already a member of the Team. There is a workaround, but it requires you switching into SharePoint which is ultimately where Microsoft Teams stores your documents. Once in SharePoint, you have access to a really rich sharing experience. Well Microsoft is now bringing that rich sharing experience to Teams, and it is long overdue. If you are new to sharing documents then you can find more information here: Share SharePoint files or folders Outlook Outlook reactions and new notifications experience Just to show Outlook is still loved by Microsoft and not to be overshadowed by the new kid on the block, Microsoft Teams, you will now be able to use reactions to emails such as like, love, laughter, celebration, surprise, and sadness.
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Reactions and new notifications experience in Outlook
MC239090 Category Outlook Reactions to email messages is coming to Outlook on the web, Outlook for iOS, and Outlook for Android. With this release, Outlook for iOS and Outlook for Android will also add an in-app notification experience where users can view reactions from others, similar to what's seen in Outlook on the web today. Users will be able to react to email messages with like, love, laughter, celebration, surprise, and sadness. Apply reactions in Outlook on the web
Upon applying a reaction to an email message, the reaction will be visible in the reading pane for users with an Office 365 for work or school account within the same tenant on supported Outlook apps. When someone reacts to their message, users will see an indication on the existing bell icon in Outlook on the web.
Email message detailing which sent messages received a reaction
Reactions appear in Outlook for iOS
Word Text predictions in Microsoft Word Word will soon have text predictions turned on by default. As you type a sentence, Word will provide real-time predictive text which you can use by simply using the tab key. MORE DETAIL
Text predictions in Word for Windows
MC240605 Category Word When this feature rolls out, users will see text predictions when writing documents in English. When they see the suggested text, users can accept by tapping Tab or they can ignore suggestions by simply continuing to type. Text predictions help users write more efficiently by predicting text quickly and accurately. The feature reduces spelling and grammar errors and learns over time to give the best recommendations based on your writing style. Text predictions in Word for Windows
Microsoft 365 View all your recent files in one place MC242583 Microsoft is constantly looking to provide all users with a single view of all their recent and relevant files, no matter where they are stored, including any attachments sent to you via email, as well as documents in Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive. One place to view all of your documents is on the landing page when you sign into Microsoft 365 using the Microsoft Office Home link. The new 'All' files view on this landing page not only shows you your relevant files, but also has an improved search capability that enables you to find the document based on the name or even the sender of the document if it is an email attachment.  So if you're tired of looking everywhere for your recent files, then just head over to Microsoft Office Home, or if you are already in Microsoft 365 then open the App launcher and click the “office 365” link at the top. Upload even larger files to Microsoft 365 MC241870 Do you create or manage large media files or videos, or any other type of large file? Then you might now benefit from the increase to the size of a single file that can be uploaded to your OneDrive for Business or SharePoint site. The current size limit is 100GB, which should already meet most user’s needs, but soon this is increasing to 250GB. Author: SO365 Insights
Publish company-wide tasks
Although this new feature is built into the recently released Tasks for Teams App it takes the management and publishing of tasks to the company hierarchy level. What do we mean by this? Tasks in Teams is built around Planner which is designed for individual team or department task management. But what if there is a need to publish tasks across the whole company or across multiple departments and then track the completion of those tasks centrally? For example:
Well, with the new company-wide task publishing capability you can now achieve this. First you need to define within M365 your company’s hierarchy of teams including where applicable, department and then functional level teams, all of which map to the real-world company structure. Once the hierarchy is defined, you can then publish tasks to a large set of teams in accordance with the hierarchy. For example, if your company is part of a group consisting of multiple companies, and each company is broken down into divisions, and you personally are a member of a corporate team for Company A, then you could publish tasks to one or more teams within the Company A hierarchy, but not to any teams of sister Companies B or C. To publish to all individual company teams, you would need to be a member of a group level team that sits at the top of the tree. This is a great addition to the current task management capabilities of Teams and Planner. Teams Offline message capability If you find yourself offline and want to respond to conversations or post new updates, then previously you were notified that the message would not post and you would need to go back to the message(s) when you were next online and try again. With this update, Teams will queue the messages and automatically send them when you are next online, similar to the way Outlook behaves with emails. New history view Navigating back to a previous channel's tabs or files in Teams requires you to use the back button or search. When this new update rolls out, hovering over the back button will bring up a history view, enabling you to go straight to a recently accessed tab or file. SharePoint Support for "thousand" separator This small formatting change for “number” type columns in SharePoint Lists and Libraries allows you to control the display of a “thousand” separator, alongside the ability to control the number of decimal points. This can help improve the display of large numbers in your views for example, 10000.00 becomes 10,000.00. For existing number columns you will need to edit the column definition to select the new option. Column settings in grid view If you are a regular user of the SharePoint List grid view, then you will know that one of the annoying limitations is that once you select grid view, you cannot change the layout of the view or hide unnecessary columns. You need to exit grid view, amend the underlying view and then re-enable grid view. This enhancement will provide the same view formatting capabilities when in grid view. Governance and Adoption The M365 Admin Centre contains a number of useful reports that help designated administrators stay on top of the governance and adoption of M365. These reports enable you to answer questions such as:
Microsoft is adding more reports to the suite as summarised below: SharePoint site usage report This report is being enhanced to provide more visibility on how information is being shared across your company or externally. This will enable designated admins or information governors to obtain counts of files and folder shared anonymously with external participants for example and then be able to drill into this information. New usage report for Microsoft Teams This new report enables you to gain insights in to how Teams is being adopted across the company, such as the trend for using channel conversations, how has the number of active channel users grown, or how many Teams are Active vs Dormant, and is this changing overtime.
Company-wide task publishing feature
MC234234 Category Tasks Planner Teams Microsoft is introducing task publishing and reporting features within the Tasks app in Teams. This allows a company to define the tasks that need to be completed across their frontline locations, choose which locations need to complete those tasks, and track the progress of the work. Frontline managers and workers can use the desktop or mobile Tasks in Teams experience to see the tasks they need to complete, all in one place. Task publishing lets companies create tasks centrally at the corporate level and publish those tasks to different frontline locations like stores, factories, and clinics. You can publish to all teams or choose specific locations based on customisable characteristics like size or layout. For example, leadership for a nationwide retailer can create tasks for the reopening of their stores, send that list to only the affected store locations, and then track progress against the tasks at those locations. Managers on those store teams can easily assign tasks to individual employees. Meanwhile, the frontline workers at those store locations will see a simple list of the tasks assigned to them whether they log in backstage or use a personal or company-issued mobile device. More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoftteams/manage-tasks-app#task-publishing https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoftteams/set-up-your-team-hierarchy
Microsoft Teams will queue sent messages when offline
MC235369 Category Teams A new offline experience for Microsoft Teams for the web and desktop helps users be productive even without a network connection. Currently, should a user attempt to send or edit Teams messages while offline, Teams labels those messages as a failure. Once the device is reconnected, Teams prompts users to retry or delete the messages. In phase one of this update, Teams messages that are sent while a user is offline will be queued on the local device. Teams will automatically send the messages when the device resolves connectivity issues within 24 hours. However, if the message remains in an unsent state for more than 24 hours, the message will fail and Teams will prompt the user to resend or delete the message.
Introducing history menu in Microsoft Teams
MC234245 Category Teams Microsoft is introducing a history menu in the Microsoft Teams desktop clients that displays a user's recently visited locations. By hovering over the backward and forward navigation buttons, users will be able to see recently visited locations in Microsoft Teams. The history menu makes it easier to navigate to previous locations, such as nested tabs and documents. 
Support for thousands separator in Number column
MC234416 Category SharePoint Lists Microsoft is providing Microsoft Lists and SharePoint lists owners and members with the ability to add a thousands separator to numbers. When Lists owners and members use the Number column, they can now choose whether or not to add a thousands separator (comma) to any number larger than 999. 
Column settings in Grid view
MC234414 Category SharePoint Lists Microsoft is providing Microsoft Lists and SharePoint lists owners and members with new capabilities in Lists Grid view (previously Quick Edit). The Lists "Grid" view (previously Quick Edit) will now allow users to pin a column to the filter pane, format the column, show/hide columns, and hide their column(s). Before this update, users were required to exit Grid view to accomplish these common tasks. 
SharePoint site usage report
MC234381 Category SharePoint Administration Governance Adoption Microsoft is making some updates to the SharePoint usage report within the Microsoft 365 admin center. In phase one, Microsoft is adding eight new metrics to the SharePoint usage report. In phase two, Microsoft is incorporating two of these new metrics - anonymous link count and company link count - into the definitions for active sites and active files. Thus the number of active sites and active files recorded in the usage report may change. Microsoft will also backfill the report with 180 days of data. When phase one has rolled out to your tenant, you will be able to add these metrics as columns to the report table, and as part of the Microsoft Graph reports API:
For phase two, anonymous link count and company link count will be added to the definition of active site and active files; Microsoft will then recalculate these metrics. They will update the active site chart and active file column in the SharePoint Site usage report to reflect anonymous link count and company link count metrics. They will also backfill the report with 180 days of data.
Usage report: the highlighted areas are where new data may change the counts.
New usage report for Microsoft Teams
MC234414 Category Teams Administration Governance Adoption The new Teams usage activity report shows tenant-level aggregates and per-team level details, providing an overall picture of how your organisation is using teams within Microsoft Teams. 
Author: SO365 Insights
December was a quiet month for Microsoft with only a few major changes to Microsoft 365 being announced. To start our Microsoft 365 Insights for 2021, we've picked our top three. There will be much more to come as we move into the new year.
Teams Changes to default settings for guest access The first announcement is less a change and more an alert that some of the default settings in Teams are changing and this may have an impact on you if you do not want to enable your staff to be able to invite external guests to any of your Teams. We know of clients that have specifically chosen this set-up. Access to Teams settings and controls are moving Starting this month, Microsoft is relocating certain Teams settings and controls to the “Me Menu” – the menu you can access in Teams by clicking your profile picture in the top right. Which controls are moving?
Forms If you use Microsoft Forms to create and publish internal or external surveys, quizzes or as a general data capture service, then as well as the additional branding capabilities that are now available, you will soon have greater text formatting capabilities to make your Forms more engaging and to help emphasise content where needed. We love Forms and have developed several solutions around the service for our clients, so this is yet another welcome addition to its capabilities.
Configuration change in guest access for Microsoft Teams
MC228482 Category Teams From February 8th, Microsoft will change the default setting to guest access enabled in your environment. Currently there are three admin settings to control guest access:
It is the “Service Default Off” setting that will automatically change to “On” from the 8th February. If this is your current setting and you want to continue to prevent guests being invited to Teams, then prior to the 8th February you will need to change the setting in the Teams Admin area from “Service Default Off” to just “Off” More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/set-up-guests
Microsoft Teams profile menu update
MC228368 Category Teams Access to Settings, Zoom Controls, Keyboard Shortcuts, About, and Check for Updates is moving from the Me Menu to a new menu in the title bar. The Me Menu will be focused on account management, where users can switch to another account or tenant through the first level of the Me Menu. The following links will be moved out of the Me Menu into a new menu in the title bar:
How will this affect me? The Me Menu will be focused on account management, with account and tenant switching moved to level one of the menu. 
Settings, Zoom Controls, Keyboard Shortcuts, About, and Check for Updates is moving from the Me Menu to a new menu in the title bar.
Text formatting available in Microsoft Forms
MC228897 Category Forms Text formatting (bold, italics, and underline) is coming to Microsoft Forms to help survey and quiz designers differentiate and emphasize content. How will this affect me? Consistent with Office 365 products, users can format text by using either a floating tool bar or keyboard shortcuts. In the editing canvas of the form, designers can use the text format toolbar inline whenever they are composing text content. 
Author: SO365 Insights
Teams
When talking about SharePoint and Teams, it is a bit like asking the Chicken or the Egg question, and which comes first. As Teams has becomes more prominent, we find that most people start by creating Teams without giving any thought to where the content really should exist. This often results in more Teams than are necessary for communication and collaboration needs, purely to give additional content a home. For this reason, we always start with SharePoint - to map out and implement a client’s content and then, where communication is required around the content, a Team can be created that pulls in relevant content across the SharePoint site libraries and lists when needed. Microsoft is now releasing an enhanced “wizard” for when you create a new Team based on an existing SharePoint site, so that it is easier to perform this action and to integrate content across the site. We think this adds extra validation to our Chicken or Egg approach! To add more credence to the Teams or SharePoint question, this next enhancement will make it easier in Teams to pin SharePoint document libraries to a channel, regardless of which SharePoint site those libraries reside in. So once again, make sure you focus on getting your SharePoint sites correctly identified and designed before going anywhere near Teams. There are three enhancements to the meeting experiences in Teams announced this month: 1. More support for switching between Full Screen and Focused (when you want to just focus on a presentation or screen share). 2. Changing the way participants access meeting chat messages both during and post the meeting. 3. Further integration between Teams and Microsoft Forms making it really simple for a meeting presenter to add a “poll” into the meeting to get participant feedback and then publish the responses to all meeting participants. SharePoint More great changes for SharePoint Lists. If you are a fan of SharePoint Lists (and who isn’t) and use the “Grid View” to perform editing tasks, then you will soon be getting the ability to “undo” and “redo” changes you have made. Without reverting to PowerApps, you currently, you have little control over the layout and format of a SharePoint List Form. Soon however, you will be able to configure each forms header, footer and body sections. Coming soon is the ability to create simple rules based on the contents of a SharePoint list enabling you to set reminders or send notifications. Microsoft is also improving the ability for you to brand your SharePoint sites by providing more flexibility, including a new “minimal” header size to reduce space and bring content such as News closer to the top, together with more control around site logos and the ability to hide the title of the site. OneDrive It is now easy to add shortcuts to folders with important documents, or just those you need to access regularly, from any SharePoint library and for those shortcuts to then appear in your OneDrive app so that they can be easily found. What is also fantastic, is that if you sync OneDrive to your device, then the folders and documents behind the shortcuts are also synced, so that they are always available. This means you do not need to sync the additional libraries where those folders exist. More and more, OneDrive can become your personal information manager where you can create your own view of the corporate world in which you work with quick access to the content you need. Microsoft Planner Although we're not convinced this will be a major “wow”, but a new feature of Planner will be the ability to add different backgrounds to each Plan. Backgrounds will be “recommended” based on the title of the plan - which could be interesting!
Add Microsoft Teams to your SharePoint team site
MC227312 Category Teams SharePoint When associating the Teams app with an existing SharePoint group, access a new wizard which make it easy for a group owner to select the lists, libraries, or pages to incorporate into Teams as tabs. Make the selection, then click the Add Teams button. 
Once in Teams, it is easy for group members to collaborate around existing SharePoint content. Users can select a list they had been just working on in SharePoint and then engage team members in chat alongside the list, directly in Teams.
Use SharePoint tab to add pages, lists or document libraries to a channel in Teams
MC227278 Category Teams SharePoint Microsoft has improved the SharePoint tab experience to now allow pinning of document libraries, by selecting from the backing team site, or by providing a link to any other document library to which the user has access. Also added is a new "Recommended" section in the SharePoint tab to help users easily find the most relevant content from their site to pin in their channels. Once available, Teams users will be able to pin their SharePoint content; pages, news, lists and document libraries using the SharePoint tab. 
More from Microsoft
Add a SharePoint page, list, or document library as a tab in Teams - Office Support (microsoft.com)
Full screen support in new Teams meeting experience
MC226680 Category Teams Microsoft is bringing Full Screen support back in the new meeting experience for Teams desktop applications. The feature is accessible via meeting controls under More options (…) > Full screen. On Mac OS, you can also access it by using the native “Full screen” control on the top left corner of the meeting window.
To focus attention on content that is shared during a meeting, use Focus mode, accessible via More options (…) > Focus mode. In Focus mode, content uses the entire meeting window. By removing other Teams elements from the window, this mode makes it easier to focus on content.
Updates to meeting chat membership in Teams
MC226407 Category Teams Microsoft is updating a meeting participant's access to meeting chat. These changes will manage a users access to a meeting chat based on how they were invited to the meeting. Once this has rolled out, the changes will apply to new meetings. These changes will not be applied to previously scheduled meetings. A participants access to meeting chat will be dependent on how they were invited to the meeting: Single meeting
Recurring - Single instance of a meeting series
Forms polls in Microsoft Teams meetings
MC225995 Category Teams Forms Any meeting presenter can add the Forms app as a tab in the Teams meeting. Before the meeting, the presenter can create draft polls. During the meeting, the presenter can create and launch polls that any attendee can view and answer. All attendees will be able to see the results in real time, and respondents can respond to a poll after the meeting if the poll has not been closed.
Attendee view of Teams meeting poll that has been launched.
After the meeting, meeting presenters can evaluate responses in the meeting tab, export responses to an Excel workbook, or review responses on the web in the Forms app.
Microsoft Lists undo and redo commands
MC226055 Category SharePoint Microsoft Lists With the release of undo and redo capabilities, users who edit their lists when in grid view will be able to retract any unwanted changes or bring back previously entered information. Two changes are part of this feature rollout. First, users will now be able see Undo and Redo commands as they modify lists, whether they are working on the list in SharePoint, the Lists app in Microsoft 365, or the Lists app in Microsoft Teams. 
Second, users will be able to use the following keyboard shortcuts to perform undo and redo operations while editing from grid view.
Configuring list or library forms for Microsoft Lists and SharePoint
MC227452 Category SharePoint Microsoft Lists With this update, anyone who can create and manage views in a list can configure the list or library form with header, footer, and body sections for both Microsoft Lists and SharePoint. Once available, list and library users with appropriate permissions will be able to configure an associated form to include a custom header, footer, and body with one or more sections. The form configuration doesn’t change the data in the list item or file; it changes only how the form is displayed to those who browse the list or library. More from Microsoft Configure the list form | Microsoft Docs
List rules make it easy to set up notifications of changes
MC227447 Category SharePoint Microsoft Lists With this update, SharePoint users with edit permissions on a list can create simple if / then rules, based on changes to list information, to set reminders and send notifications. Users with edit permissions on the list can create and manage rules. Users with read-only permissions can’t create or manage rules. Once the feature is available to your users, they’ll be able to create a rule by selecting Automate and then Create a rule in the list command bar near the top of the page. These notifications emails will be sent from Microsoft 365 to one or more users in your organization, as shown below. 
Once rolled out, the feature will be available to all list users in Microsoft Lists and SharePoint. Users will be able to create a maximum of 15 rules per list.
SharePoint site header updates
MC227307 Category SharePoint Microsoft is expanding the SharePoint branding options that make it easier to customise your site, including new header configurations for modern sites.
These updates will not impact existing sites and or any current site customisations.
You might want to notify your SharePoint site owners about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
Add to OneDrive is generally available
Category OneDrive Files are the building blocks of our work— helping us collaborate with others to construct the end results. Research documents, data spreadsheets, sales reports, presentations, product videos and other content-rich files are the components that hold up our final deliverable. "Where can I find that file?" It’s a question we’ve all asked our colleagues, our teams, and, most often, ourselves countless times but not anymore. Microsoft has now announced that the previously disclosed Add to OneDrive feature is now generally available. Now, instead of figuring out who sent us that file or remembering the original location of the shared content, we can swiftly get back to the files we need, directly within our OneDrive. Add to OneDrive makes it easy to add a shortcut to the shared folders directly to our OneDrive. Shared folders include content that others have shared with us through their OneDrive, which surfaces in the "Shared with me" view or content that is a part of a shared library in Microsoft Teams or SharePoint. 
Add to OneDrive makes it easy to add a shortcut to the shared folders directly to our OneDrive
With Add to OneDrive, not only can we bring all our shared content into one place, but we can also work with the shared content with the same power and flexibility as if they are files we own. This means we can easily sync and access these folders from anywhere on any device; securely share and co-author files in the added folder; and stay up to date with @mentions, activity, and notifications. Added folders respect all existing policies, compliance, and security settings, too.
Added folders can be synced to your device for anytime anywhere access.
Introducing smart backgrounds for Planner
MC227304 Category Planner Users will be able to add a relevant and unique background image to a Planner plan from a list of recommendations. This new Planner feature allows users to view smart image recommendations and add a relevant and unique background image to each plan, Powered by Designer. The image recommendations are based on the title of the plan. 
Author: SO365 Insights
Teams
There are two main improvements to Teams meetings announced this month, the most significant of which is the ability to create “breakout rooms ” during a meeting - a facility that has been available in competitor products such as Zoom for a while. Breakout rooms are useful when you are running workshops for example, and want to break the attendees into separate groups to hold discussions or to work together for a short period. The second meeting improvement is the ability to suppress background noise, which will be relevant as more of us move back to working from home, where it is more difficult to control the environment in which a meeting is held. Other changes to Teams include an update to the Teams App on iOS so that you can see more participants when joining via your mobile. And, if you ever override your Teams “presence” to enable you to concentrate on a piece of work, but then forget to reset it so you are stuck forever on “Do not disturb”, then this change will come to your rescue and enable you to set a duration for the override and then the presence indicator will reset. SharePoint Over the last few months, we have been extolling the improvements to SharePoint Lists and actively encouraging more of our clients to explore their power. This month, Microsoft have added the ability to add comments to list items which other colleagues can then view. This will add greater flexibility to Lists and introduce commenting features that we are familiar with in word or Excel. This month also sees the new “My feed web part” which can be added to modern SharePoint sites. This will provide your users with a mixture of content relevant to them, such as updated or changed documents, upcoming meetings, etc. Finally, the major investment across the whole of the Microsoft world is the integration of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) capabilities that can be used in a variety of ways. SharePoint Syntex is one such evolution of AI. It enables your non-technical users to build models to train SharePoint Syntex to better understand and tag your content, so that it is easier to find and retrieve later, or to automatically initiate a predefined process based on the tags. This might sound big company stuff, but it is worth reviewing the announcements and looking to see if there are ways that Syntex could improve your internal management of documents to increase productivity or even security or compliance with regulations. Office Apps The “Designer” feature that has existed in PowerPoint for a while is now coming to Word Online, enabling you to easily create documents with a consistent look and feel. As well as suggesting Themes that can be applied, Designer will also suggest formatting fixes where inconsistencies are identified. This is only available in Word Online and not the desktop version. In Word Online, Microsoft is also moving the “Open in app” command so that is under the “Mode” menu, where you can switch between Editing, Reviewing and Viewing modes. A minor change, but one that is sure to confuse a lot of people. Microsoft Forms If you use Microsoft Forms within your company, then you can now target Forms at specific staff or internal groups. Prior to this, a Form was either available to all staff or could be used anonymously outside of your company. Productivity Insights Microsoft Productivity Score provides insights about how your staff are using the Microsoft 365 platform, such as how people communicate and whether there is a visible switch from email to more chat-based services. Productivity scores are compiled and grouped into different categories and are based on the services you use. Categories include Communication, Teamwork, Meetings and Mobility. These insights can help you understand and improve the adoption of the Microsoft 365 services your company has selected or help you to make the changes to working practices that you are looking to implement.
Microsoft Teams - create Virtual Breakout Rooms
MC224343 Category Teams Breakout rooms allow meeting organisers to split main meetings into smaller sessions for focused discussions. To see the breakout rooms option within your meetings, you must turn on the new Teams meeting experience by:
You can double check that the setting is setup correctly by starting a meeting and verifying that the meeting opens in its own window. All participants must be using the latest version of Teams. As a meeting organiser, once you are in the meeting you should see the breakout room option next to the raise hand control.
Reducing background noise in Microsoft Teams meetings
MC224751 Category Teams Users can set the noise suppression level before a meeting. Once changed, the setting applies to the next call. The four settings are Auto (default), Low, High, and Off. They are accessible from the profile image > Settings prior to a meeting and from More options ... > Device settings during a meeting. 
When left on the default setting, Auto, the Teams app sets noise suppression based on ambient sound.
Improved Teams meeting experience on iPhone
MC225004 Category Teams Microsoft is improving the Teams experience on iOS devices with a new presentation mode, the ability to see more participants, and the ability to see shared content and a spotlighted participant concurrently. Scrollable participant tray Makes it possible to see more participants. The current default grid allows iPhone users to see up to 8 participants, and up to 9 participants on tablets. With the new scroll-able participant tray, phone users can see 15 participants, tablet users can see 20 more participants. 
See your audience while presenting from phone and tablet
Currently for mobile users in a meeting with shared content, only 1 active speaker is visible. With this update, users can now see both the shared content and participant tray at the same time. In addition, Microsoft has added a visual indicator around video active speakers, and made nameplate display more accessible.
Microsoft Teams - control the duration when overriding your presence status
MC223792 Category Teams If you occasionally manually override your presence status, then you will be able to define how long you want a presence state to remain active. This Teams setting overrides other events like calendar meetings or calls.
Access the duration option and then select a time
Add comments to your Microsoft Lists
MC224822 Category SharePoint Your users will soon be able to add and delete comments on list items. Users can view all comments on a list item and filter between views that show comments or activity related to an item. Users can see which list items have comments when they access the list home page. 
By default, users will see a new comments pane alongside the list item form when they access a custom list. Users can toggle the comment pane visibility by clicking or tapping the comments icon . When comments hide, the pane does not collapse.
The pane will be closed by default for lists enabled by Power Apps.
Personalised "My Feed" web part for SharePoint
MC223652 Category SharePoint SharePoint pages and sites can be more relevant to individual users by adding the My feed web part. The My feed web part will show as a new option in the web part toolbox. After it has been added to a SharePoint page, the My feed web part will show a mix of content from across Microsoft 365, based on what's likely to be most relevant to the current user at any given time. Only content that the user has permission to access will be shown. 
Benefit from Artificial Intelligence with SharePoint Syntex
MC223196 Category SharePoint Microsoft SharePoint Syntex uses advanced AI and machine teaching to amplify human expertise, automate content processing, and transform content into knowledge. SharePoint Syntex will deliver new user experiences to work with content through content centres and AI models. SharePoint Syntex mainstreams machine teaching, enabling your experts to capture their knowledge about content in AI models they can build with no code. Your experts train SharePoint Syntex to understand content like they do, to recognise key information, and to tag content automatically. For example, a contract processing expert can teach SharePoint Syntex to extract the value of contracts, along with the expiration date and key terms and conditions. SharePoint Syntex then uses your models to automate the capture, ingestion, and categorisation of content, extracting valuable information as metadata. Metadata is critical to managing content, and seamless integration with Microsoft Search, Power Automate and Microsoft Information Protection enable you to improve knowledge discovery and reuse, accelerate processes, and dynamically apply information protection and compliance policies. SharePoint Syntex also delivers new experiences for analysing, managing and deploying taxonomies and content types. More from Microsoft https://resources.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sharepoint-syntex
Automatically design your Word documents
MC223444 Category Office Products Microsoft is introducing Designer in Word for the web, a feature which offers formatting consistency and style variety for every document. Designer helps writers create documents with a consistent look-and-feel. It provides a variety of themes to help writers create documents that better communicate ideas visually. To access Designer, open a document in Word for the web and then select Home > Designer. 
Designer also detects formatting inconsistencies. Apply formatting fixes by clicking on a button at the top of the pane or allow formatting fixes to be applied automatically when selecting a theme.
In addition, Designer will improve Word document accessibility by using semantic styles (e.g., title and headings). Designer will eventually make additional suggestions as well.
The "Open in Desktop App" button is moving in Office online products
MC225213 Category Office Products The Open in Desktop App command is moving to the Mode menu (Editing, Reviewing, Viewing) in Office for the Web. A teaching callout from Microsoft will help people learn the new location of the Open in Desktop command.
The command in its original location
The command in its new location
Target Forms at specific users or groups
MC223656 Category Forms With this update, Microsoft Forms owners will be able to easily collect survey responses from specific users or security groups. Form owners will see a new response collection option when navigating to Share > Send and collect responses. When a Form owner selects Specific people in my organisation can respond, they can then specify one or more individuals or user groups by using their email address.
Forms on the desktop
Forms on mobile
Monitoring and measuring productivity across your firm
MC225209 Microsoft Productivity Score, a new analytics solution that helps you understand how work gets done in your organisation, is transitioning from preview to general availability. Users that have the Reports Reader role or higher permissions in the Microsoft 365 admin centre will see insights on the people experiences within your organisation as it pertains to communications, content collaboration, meetings, mobility, and teamwork. They will also see insights on technology experiences as they pertain to PCs, Laptops, Mobiles, network connectivity, and Microsoft 365 Apps health. 
More from Microsoft
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/admin/productivity/productivity-score How Microsoft Productivity Score can help you build a more resilient business Privacy controls for Productivity Score
Author: SO365 Insights
Something for everyone this month. There are more updates to the new Microsoft Lists functionality, with templates (yes!) and new formatting features for lists in SharePoint, and - long overdue - the ability to easily create calendar views from lists in modern SharePoint (yes again!). Microsoft also continues to enhance the meetings experience in Teams and we've also highlighted useful new features coming to the Teams Shifts app and to Microsoft Forms. Making it easier to share Teams meeting recordings with external guests MC222640 Category Teams What is this all about? Whenever you record a Teams meeting, the recording is automatically stored in Stream enabling it to be easily accessed and viewed by your internal staff. But if you have external participants in the meeting then they are not able to access the recording. With this change, you will have the option to save Teams recordings on your OneDrive or SharePoint, and then be able to easily share it with the external participants. How does this affect me? Meeting Storage Non-Channel meetings will be stored in the OneDrive of the person who clicked the record button in a special folder labelled “Recordings” – that sits at the top of the recorder’s OneDrive. Channel meetings will be stored in a folder labelled “Recordings” under a folder named after the channel, under the Team’s document library. Permissions All meeting invitees - except for external users – in non-channel meetings will automatically get a shared link to access the meeting recording. External users will need to be explicitly added to the shared list by the meeting organiser or the person that clicked the record button. For Channel meetings, permissions will be inherited from the owners and members list in the channel. Feature Gaps There are some feature gaps when compared to recordings stored in Stream. These gaps will be addressed in future releases:
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Early October (October 5, 2020) You can enable the Teams Meeting policy to have meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint instead of Microsoft Stream (Classic). End of October (October 31, 2020) Meeting recordings in OneDrive and SharePoint will have support for English captions via the Teams transcription feature. Early to mid-November (rolling out between November 1 -15 , 2020) All new Teams meeting recordings will be saved to OneDrive and SharePoint unless you delay this change by modifying your organisation’s Teams Meeting policies and explicitly setting them to “Stream” Q1 2021 No new meeting recordings can be saved to Microsoft Stream (Classic). All customers will automatically have meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint even if they’ve changed their Teams meeting policies to "Stream” More great features coming to Microsoft Lists MC222586 Category SharePoint Lists What is this all about? If you have read our previous Insights, then you will know that there has been a number of long awaited investments from Microsoft in enhancing the capabilities and use of SharePoint Lists. This latest set of enhancements adds more out-of-the-box formatting capabilities. So time to get formatting and bring your SharePoint lists to life. How does this affect me? The features apply to lists and libraries, both in and out of Quick Edit mode.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this change is rolling out during October and should be completed by early November. Create SharePoint Lists from pre-defined templates MC222600 Category SharePoint Lists What is this all about? List creation from SharePoint sites will get a visual refresh and you will get the additional capability to create lists from eight built-in templates. These updates are already part of the Microsoft Lists app and Lists in Teams rollouts and Microsoft are bringing the same goodness to SharePoint sites too. How does this affect me? Two changes are part of this feature rollout.
  When will this happen? This change is rolling out now and should be completed by the end of October. Teams meetings, end of meeting notification MC222346 Category Teams What is this all about? When you are in a Teams meeting, you will soon receive an alert when there are five minutes remaining in a scheduled meeting. How does this affect me? Once available in your tenant, Teams will alert you and other meeting participants when there are five minutes remaining during any scheduled private or channel meeting. The notification will appear on screen for 10 seconds and disappear without any user action.  When will this happen? This change is rolling out now. Microsoft Forms introduces a responder progress bar MC221880 Category Forms What is this all about? If you use Microsoft Forms to send your staff quizzes, then you now have the option to show them a progress bar when you create a multi-page (multi-section) form and quiz. The progress bar improves usability by providing responders with a visual indicator of their status within the survey, e.g. "Page 1 of 3".  How does this affect me? This feature is off by default on new forms and quizzes. However as a Form owner you can choose to enable / disable this optional setting. When will this happen? This change is rolling out now. Introducing shift conflict alerts in Microsoft Teams Shifts app MC221471 Category Teams Shifts What is this all about? If you use Microsoft Shifts, then soon you will see a new feature which will alert managers of scheduling conflicts. How does this affect me? If you are a manager that use shifts to manage the allocation of your staff, then today you must manually cross-check each shift to make sure the schedule is conflict-free. With Shifts schedule assistance, you will see an alert icon when there are conflicts anywhere in the schedule. You will also see conflict warnings when reviewing schedule change requests.  This feature will save you time and reduce inaccuracies that can lead to employees not showing up for their shift. When will this happen? This change is rolling out mid-October and should be completed by end of November. Obtain more information about meeting participants in Teams MC221432 Category Teams What is this all about? Since June you have been able to view a report listing the participants in your Teams meetings including join and leave times. This enhancement will provide improved functionality including additional participant data in the report. How does this affect me? There are two areas of improvement: Download point changed from roster view As a Teams meeting organiser, you can download the Attendance Report from the meeting chat once the meeting is over. Only the meeting organiser will see the Attendance Report. The recording, transcript and participant list will be grouped together in chat if the meeting is recorded. Otherwise, only the participant list will be available in chat.  New participant data The report will now include these data points: duration, email address, meeting start time, and meeting title. When will this happen? This change will be available in mid-October. New ability to print a blank Microsoft Form MC221300 Category Forms What is this all about? One of the great limitations of Microsoft Forms has been the ability to print a blank form. Either to keep the print as an audit trail or to provide it to people who do not have electronic access and need to complete the form manually. With this update, a Forms owner will be able to print a blank form for any respondent who is unable to complete the form online. How does this affect me? As a Forms owner, you can print any form or quiz on paper or as a PDF if you choose PDF printer using the browser print dialog. You can then distribute the printed version as needed. Perhaps you need to administer the form in an area with no computers / internet or to a student who can't use a computer for some reason.  When will this happen? By the time you read this Insight, the change should be available in your environment. Calendar view on Microsoft Lists and SharePoint Lists MC222826 Category SharePoint Lists What is this all about? One great feature that was lost during the SharePoint refresh to the modern look and feel was the ability to easily view list data as a calendar. Yes, you could use the classic calendar feature but this was not supported in SharePoint modern and therefore somewhat hidden and difficult to find. This enhancement will enable you to finally view list content in a modern calendar view. How does this affect me? The SharePoint "view" list has a new new option, Create new view, which gives users the option to view as a list or as a calendar.
 When will this happen? This new feature will be available during October. Add an Organisation web part to a SharePoint modern page MC223018 Category SharePoint What is this all about? Microsoft is introducing a SharePoint web part that allows you, as a page author, to generate an organisation chart centred on an individual. How does this affect me? When creating or editing a SharePoint page, the new Organisation web part can be accessed in the web part toolbox when a page is in edit mode. You will be able to determine how many levels of the hierarchy to display.  For this to work correctly, it will require you or your Administrator to correctly define your organisation in M365 Active Directory. When will this happen? This new web part is rolling out now and will be available by the end of October. Author: SO365 Insights The headline news for September is the launch of the new Lists App for Teams, which brings the benefits of SharePoint records management into the Teams collaboration space, and does so in a really accessible and compelling way. It supports - and comes with - templates too. We think it'll prove to be incredibly useful. This month we've also chosen to highlight some other updates to Teams, such as the attendee Spotlight feature for video meetings (which we'll be making full use of ourselves), and also have some news on useful updates to SharePoint and the Office Apps. Not forgetting a great update that we'll definitely be using here - the new Excel Online scripting. If you're a big Excel user, it could save you a lot of time and effort. Simplified way to manage your Teams notifications settings MC220702 Category Teams What is this all about? You have control over the number and types of alerts and notifications that you receive when using Microsoft Teams. These setting allow you to stay focused on things that are important to you. Microsoft has now simplified and streamlined the management of these notifications to make is easier to use. How does this affect me? If you do need to customise and manage the alerts and notifications you receive from Teams then the new enhancements will make that easier for you. The new settings can be accessed by selecting the profile picture at the top right corner of Teams, and then selecting Settings > Notifications.   What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this enhancement is rolling out in early September 2020 and should be completed by mid-September. Warning: Microsoft 365 support for Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) is being retired MC220490 What is this all about? If you are still using IE11 to access Microsoft 365 services then you should consider changing to a newer browser as Microsoft is stopping support for this release. Not only will there be no further security updates, certain applications such as Microsoft Teams will no longer work with this browser. How does this affect me? You will run increased security risks or find that you can access certain Microsoft 365 services if you continue to use IE11. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? To address these announcements, upgrade to the new Microsoft Edge prior to the dates indicated or the latest version of a Microsoft 365 compatible browser such as Chrome. The new Lists App for Microsoft Teams has launched MC220295 Category Lists Teams What is this all about? Microsoft Teams is great at managing documents and helping you to collaborate on them, but sometimes you also need to track and manage lists of data and doing this in an Excel spreadsheet is not always ideal. Microsoft has now launched the ability to create different lists within a Team for you to capture, organise and collaborate on such information. The new Lists App comes with prebuilt templates that you can use and customise or you can just start from blank and build your own lists. How does this affect me? If you are a member of a Team or Teams that need to track lists of records then you can now add the new Lists App to your Team and then configure the list to meet your Teams requirements. Maybe you need to track incidents or you have an HR team that needs to track new employee onboarding, then there might be an out-of-the-box template that you can use or you can simply build and customise your own.  When will this happen? This new feature ships default ON and will be pre-installed and made available directly in the tab gallery of every team and channel. The new feature is rolling out now and will be completed by the end of October 2020. More from Microsoft https://aka.ms/MSLists Move your SharePoint files and easily keep sharing MC220127 Category SharePoint What is this all about? If you share a file or document with a colleague or external party and then you need to move the document to a different SharePoint / Team site or to your OneDrive, the sharing link will break. With this enhancement you will have the option to keep sharing and existing links will still work. How does this affect me? Move and keep sharing is a new feature that allows you to easily re-share a file with all the direct collaborators (e.g., the users who had previously received a share for that file) should it be moved. If you choose to do so, Microsoft 365 will automatically provide direct collaborators with the new link or with direct permissions that match those that they had at the source location. Microsoft 365 will also send collaborators an e-mail that notifies them that the file has been moved should the owner reshare the file location. When you move files across site collection boundaries, you will see this new option. It is unchecked by default.  When will this happen? Microsoft began rolling this out to production in mid-August and expect to complete that rollout by early September. Receive automatic notification of comments added to your document MC221211 Category Office What is this all about? If someone else edits an Office document you created and leaves a comment, then you as the document creator will be automatically notified so that you can review and reply if necessary. How does this affect me? Once available, this update will notify you of new comments that other people have left in a document that you have created. The experience will match the current experience for @mention notifications in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as well as for notifications you receive when other people reply to your comments.  When will this happen? Microsoft will be gradually rolling this out in early September and the rollout will be completed by mid October. The feature when rolled out will be automatically available. Spotlight an individual video participant for all attendees in a Teams meeting MC221195 Category Teams What is this all about? If you hold Teams video meetings then you will be aware that the currently spotlighted individual is the person who is currently talking. This can sometimes be distracting if you have a main presenter and you want to keep the focus on the presenter rather than other attendees when they ask questions. With this new feature you will be able to spotlight a specific person and keep the focus on them. How does this affect me? Once available, as a Teams meeting organiser, you will be able to put someone in the spotlight:
 When will this happen? The rollout will begin mid September and finish end of September. Automate repetitive Excel commands MC221139 Category Excel What is this all about? Microsoft is releasing a new feature in Excel Online that enables you to automate repetitive tasks. With this enhancement you will be able to record your actions, then replay them whenever you want. You can also edit your scripts as your workflow changes. Office Scripts are stored in the cloud, so once created they are available in any Excel workbook that you open. How does this affect me? If you use Excel Online (in a browser) and you regularly open Excel workbooks and then need to apply the same set of actions to the workbook, then now you can record your actions with the Action Recorder, and a script is created that is then available to you in any other Excel workbooks. These actions can include entering text or numbers, clicking cells or commands on the ribbon or on menus, formatting cells, rows, or columns, formatting data as Excel tables, and so on. What you see when you’re done is a clean task pane that displays a descriptive list of all the steps you just took. You don’t need any coding experience to record and run Office Scripts. If you choose to edit your actions, you can do so from the Code Editor, where you can edit the script’s TypeScript code. When will this happen? This enhancement is rolling out now and should be completed by the end of October. When available the feature will be switched on by default. Author: SO365 Insights This month we've highlighted some useful new features for Teams, SharePoint and Outlook, as well as the improved integration of To Do task management, including now with Teams. If you make use of any SharePoint 2010 Designer workflows then you'll want to take note - they are due for retirement at the end of October. Microsoft Teams - pin important channel posts MC215186 Category Teams What is this all about? Microsoft is making it easier for you to find and discover important news and posts in an individual Teams channel. You, or any member of a Teams channel, will be able to "pin" selected channel messages to the channel Information pane for all members of the channel to see, making it easier for you and other Team members to find important news and posts. How does this affect me? If you are a member of a particularly active Teams channel where there are lots of posts, then you might miss important news and announcements. Now you or your fellow team members will be able to pin those important news and announcement posts to the Information pane, making them easy to find. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this change is automatically rolling out during August. Outlook for Windows introduces roaming email signatures MC215017 Category Outlook What is this all about? Currently, if you use Outlook across multiple Windows devices (PC, laptop, etc.) then you need to configure and store your email signature on each device. This means every time you change your signature you have to apply the same change everywhere. With this new feature, your signature will be stored in your Microsoft 365 e-mail service instead of locally in Outlook and therefore you can have one instance of your signature available across multiple devices. How does this affect me? When the feature becomes available, Outlook will read your existing local Outlook signatures. Outlook will copy signatures selected as default for New messages or Replies/forwards to the account mailbox, making them available across all your devices. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this feature is rolling out during August and will be enabled by default. However, because this new feature is changing how Outlook manages signatures stored on a local drive, if you use third-party add-ins to provided similar functionality then they will no longer work when this feature is enabled. More from Microsoft https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/outlook-roaming-signatures-420c2995-1f57-4291-9004-8f6f97c54d15 SharePoint 2010 workflows are being retired MC217999 Category SharePoint What is this all about? Microsoft has evolved its workflow offering through Power Automate to not only encompass SharePoint, but all the productivity services you use with Microsoft 365 and beyond. With the continued investment in Power Automate as the universal solution to workflow, Microsoft is retiring SharePoint Designer 2010 workflows. How does this affect me? If you still use SharePoint Designer 2010 workflows, they will no longer function after November 1st, 2020. SharePoint 2013 workflows will remain supported. You will need to either accept that you no longer need these workflows or we recommend you replace your SharePoint 2010 workflows with Power Automate. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? If you identify that you have SharePoint Designer 2010 workflows that provide functionality that is still required, then you will need to plan to replace them with Power Automate by the end of October this year. See up to 49 participants in a Microsoft Teams meeting MC217716 Category Teams What is this all about? Microsoft has gradually been extending the number of participants that you can view in a Teams Meeting. This new Large Gallery view provides a new way to view video from up to 49 participants at once on a single screen. How does this affect me? You can now host video meetings with a larger audience and be able to see up to 49 participants at the same time. Similar to the normal Gallery view, Large Gallery automatically adapts the layout of participant videos in a Teams meeting into defined grids (e.g. 7x7) for optimal viewing. Large Gallery is an optional participant view that is turned off by default for each meeting, and each meeting user may switch in or out of Large Gallery view at any time. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, Microsoft began rolling out the feature to production with the new multi-window experience for desktop clients in early July and is targeting full availability, including mobile clients for iOS and Android, by the end of August. To Do is now integrated with the Microsoft 365 suite of applications Category To Do What is this all about? To Do is the single place to access and manage all of your tasks and is integrated into several Microsoft 365 services. Available as a standalone App on your PC or Mobile, with this update, Microsoft is integrating To Do into Teams so that you can access your tasks from within the Teams interface. How does this affect me? To Do is much more than a to-do list organiser. It’s an intelligent App that collects and connects tasks across the Microsoft 365 suite of applications. For example:
If you have not made the switch to To Do yet then now is the time to reconsider this and move away from Outlook task management and other task applications. And now, if you use Microsoft Teams, the case is even stronger. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, the integration to Microsoft Teams is rolling out now and will be completed by the end of September. More from Microsoft https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-to-do-blog/to-do-is-now-integrated-with-the-microsoft-365-suite-of/ba-p/1543999 Start sharing files externally from within Microsoft Teams MC218732 Category Teams What is this all about? Currently, from within the Files tab of a Teams channel you cannot share a document with anyone external to the Team, be that an internal colleague or an individual external to the company. All you can achieve at the moment is to copy a link to the document and send or post this to someone who already has access. With this enhancement, the full document sharing capability that is available from within SharePoint will now be available from within Teams. The sharing capabilities available from within Teams will adhere to any sharing policies set by your SharePoint administrator or any SharePoint site specific policies that have been set. How does this affect me? If you are working on a document within Teams and need to share the document or invite someone to collaborate on the document that is not a member of the Team, then you will now be able to easily generate the sharing link you need without having to open SharePoint or generate the sharing link from within one of the Office applications such as Word. This has been a major missing feature of Teams for sometime. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this change is rolling out mid-August and should be completed by mid-September. More from Microsoft https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-sharepoint-blog/rich-new-file-and-sharing-experiences-throughout-microsoft-365/ba-p/960129 New abilities to store images and photos in SharePoint lists MC219652 Category SharePoint What is this all about? Microsoft is introducing a new "Image" column type to lists and libraries. Using this column, list and library users will be able to add a single image file from their computer to an item in a list or a library. How does this affect me? If you build business process solutions for your firm using SharePoint then this new column type can add great functionality where you need to store an image, either uploaded from your computer or if you are used to building Apps in PowerApps, then storing a photo directly from a user's mobile phone camera. Examples where we will be using this feature for our clients include:
 What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Other than considering how this new feature could add value to your organisation's processes, there is nothing to do as this change is automatically rolling out now. More from Microsoft https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/list-and-library-column-types-and-options-0d8ddb7b-7dc7-414d-a283-ee9dca891df7 Using SharePoint Hub sites - centralise the management of visitor access MC218789 Category SharePoint What is this all about? If you are a SharePoint hub owner, you will be able to centrally control visitor access to all sites in the hub, to provide visitors to your hub with a common streamlined experience. Currently visitor access has to be granted on a site-by-site basis within the hub. How does this affect me? This is an optional feature for both hubs and associated sites which allows for greater viewer access to content and improved discoverability across sites. After enabling a hub to sync to associated sites, as a hub owner you can then specify visitor access by named individuals, security groups, or Microsoft 365 groups and the new visitor permissions will become activated the next time a visitor accesses the hub. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? You need to carefully consider if turning on this feature within a hub will suddenly grant your visitors access to private or confidential information in any of the connected sites. For example, you have a Human Resources hub with three connected sites. Two of these are public sites containing policies, forms and useful HR information and one site is confidential containing employment records. If you just turn on the new visitor sync capability, your visitors suddenly get access to the employment records site. You can opt-out individual sites from the visitor sync feature to retain the permission structure it has. So before using this feature, consider the impact and governance across your connected hub sites and make sure confidential and restricted sites are opted-out. This feature is rolling out during August and will be completed by the end of September. Author: SO365 Insights  This month there are some great new features being introduced across Microsoft 365 to help make your life easier and your time more productive. We've highlighted a few of the new features in SharePoint, such as dynamically linking webparts, the new "sticky column" in the Quick Edit view, and the new ability to easily share lists and list items. There are also new features in Forms, Teams and OneDrive, and a new and easier way to use Planner templates. We should also mention the ability to now use your own backgrounds in Teams meetings (although we think you may have discovered this feature yourself and are already using it to its full potential in your video calls). Suggested replies in the Teams mobile app MC215163 Category Teams What is this all about? If you use the Teams app on your mobile, then you will soon have the ability to quickly tap a suggested reply when someone posts a chat or message to you to save having to open the keyboard and type a reply. How does this affect me? When suggested replies are available in your tenant, you will be able to quickly reply to a given message by tapping on a suggested reply that Teams has generated based on the context of the message.  What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this feature is rolling out during July. Force all of your meetings to default to Online Teams meetings MC213856 Category Outlook Teams What is this all about? If you use Outlook on the web you will soon be able to configure Outlook to setup all your meetings as "online meetings" if you use Teams as your online meeting provider. How does this affect me? When this feature is enabled, you can update your Outlook settings so all meetings created through Outlook on the web and Outlook for iOS and Android will be created as online meetings and will contain the appropriate Teams information for joining the meeting. This feature is not compatible with third-party online meeting providers.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? When available in July, you should go to Outlook on the Web settings and decide on the best default experience for you. See the last option in the image below. 
Help employees find information by adding bookmarks to Search MC216108 What is this all about? A neat feature of the search engine in Microsoft 365 which is rolling out now, is the ability for you to define bookmarks to key internal / external resources or information. Yes you can use a Quick Links webpart or add items to the Quick Launch menu of a site, and this is fine if the bookmark is localised to a site, but if you need employees to easily find company wide resources no matter where they are, then take a look at adding bookmarks to the internal search engine. How does this affect me? We are all now conditioned to using Search in our day-to-day lives to find information. Yet within our companies we still try and build hierarchical fixed navigation menus and links to "help employees" find things. Navigation is fine to move around your intranet, but if I just need to know where to find a specific company policy, or even the answer to a policy question, then Search would be more effective. For example, a lot of firms have policies for implementing the "Bribery Act" and this maybe through a document called the "Gifts and Benefits Policy". Now I know the policy exists, but cannot remember if it is in the Compliance site or the General Policies site or somewhere else. However, if the link to the policy was defined as a bookmark with key words such as "Gifts, Benefits, Bribery, Policy" etc., then I could just use search and click on the bookmark that is returned to open the policy or be navigated to the page where I can find it. You could use bookmarks for external resources that employees access such as an HR platform. Microsoft search also has many other capabilities for you to customise to make life easier for everyone. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? This change is rolling out now and will be completed by the end of July. If you want to make use of this feature then you will need to be a search administrator. More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoftsearch/manage-bookmarks Auto Digest Email for company news and posts MC215356 Category SharePoint What is this all about? SharePoint provides a simple and effective means to curate and post easily digestible company news to keep everyone informed, especially relevant when a large number of staff are working remotely and far more effective than large wordy emails. However, until now the effectiveness of the news posts relied on staff looking at the news either through the browser or the SharePoint mobile app or someone deciding to manually send a "News Digest" email. This new feature now enables your firm to send automated News Digests via email to notify staff of the recent news posts that they have not read. Using Office 365 intelligence, a curated selection of News posts are shared with staff through an email that comes from SharePoint. This is a great way for staff to catch up on News that they may have otherwise missed. Only published news posts are sent in the digest, and staff will have access to all the news posts that they are sent, so rest assured that staff won't see news that they don't have permission to see. If staff want to opt-out of receiving the Auto-News Digest, they can click the unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email. How does this affect me? You will start to receive a weekly mail from SharePoint Online containing news that you have not yet read based on sites that you are following. If you are not happy with the emails, you can unsubscribe from the email by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. Navigation is fine to move around your intranet, but if I just need to know where to find a specific company policy, or even the answer to a policy question, then Search would be more effective. For example, a lot of firms have policies for implementing the "Bribery Act" and this maybe through a document called the "Gifts and Benefits Policy". Now I know the policy exists, but cannot remember if it is in the Compliance site or the General Policies site or somewhere else. However, if the link to the policy was defined as a bookmark with key words such as "Gifts, Benefits, Bribery, Policy" etc., then I could just use search and click on the bookmark that is returned to open the policy or be navigated to the page where I can find it. You could use bookmarks for external resources that employees access such as an HR platform. Microsoft search also has many other capabilities for you to customise to make life easier for everyone. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? This change is rolling out now and will be completed by the end of July. If you want to make use of this feature then you will need to be a search administrator.  Sample News Digest  User controlled Unsubscribe What do I need to do to prepare for this change? This change is rolling out now and will be completed by end July / early August. To benefit from this, you need to follow the sites from which you are interested in receiving news. Custom background in Microsoft Teams make video meetings more fun, comfortable and personal Category Teams What is this all about? When you join a Teams meeting by video, you can choose to use a background so other meeting participants cannot see the room or location you are in. The available backgrounds are set by Microsoft. Now, you will be able to upload your own custom background and use that. How does this affect me? You can now decide to upload your own background or select from an online collection that Microsoft has provided. Check out the link below for more information. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? This change is rolling out now. You might want to consider if this feature should be enabled for all participants or to control the use of custom backgrounds vs those supplied, or to turn off the capability altogether. Background effects can be controlled via the Teams admin centre. More from Microsoft https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/06/12/custom-backgrounds-microsoft-teams-video-meetings-fun-comfortable-personal/ New Employee Survey Microsoft Forms template Category Forms Teams What is this all about? Microsoft Forms is a powerful tool for quickly creating internal and external surveys that can be accessed via Teams, SharePoint or just a link. During this time many companies are working remotely and need to collect information from their employee base while planning for their eventual return to the office. Microsoft has received feedback that Teams users are looking for an app that enables them to push "employee pulse" surveys to their employees on a regular basis. Based on this feedback, Microsoft have designed several templates for common scenarios to help teams create and share surveys in their Teams channels. How does this affect me? When the new templates are available, you will be able to customise them to your needs and make then available to your teams. A nice new feature is that you will be able to set an automated recurrence so that the "employee pulse" surveys can be automatically issued on a set recurring frequency. The three templates that will be available for you to use are:
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Microsoft is rolling this change out to all customers during July. When available decide if these are useful to your business and if needed, customise the out-of-the-box forms. More from Microsoft https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-forms-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-forms-integrations-may-june-2020/ba-p/1472356 Upload even larger files to OneDrive and SharePoint MC217136 Category OneDrive SharePoint What is this all about? Currently the maximum file size you can upload to OneDrive and SharePoint is 15GB. Yes this is a large file, but for some companies, such as those in the media or graphic design sector, this limit could create issues which prevented the full adoption of Microsoft 365. How does this affect me? Microsoft is increasing the Max File Size from 15GB to 100GB for a single file. This change applies to OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online. For best performance, Microsoft recommend uploading very large files using the OneDrive Desktop sync client. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? You will no longer receive errors when trying to upload a file larger than 15GB, but less than 100GB. This will enable productivity, storage, and protection on large files in your organisation. This change is rolling out now. More from Microsoft https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/invalid-file-names-and-file-types-in-onedrive-and-sharepoint-64883a5d-228e-48f5-b3d2-eb39e07630fa?ui New capabilities to share SharePoint lists and individual list items MC217146 Category SharePoint What is this all about? Microsoft is currently making a number of significant changes (which we've previously highlighted in this series) to make SharePoint lists more useful to organisations. However, whereas it is now very easy and consistent to share documents, sharing lists or individual list items was either complicated or not supported. Microsoft is now addressing the sharing of lists and list items to make it a consistent experience. How does this affect me? This update brings the same "document" Grant Access experience to modern Lists. You will now see a Share command when viewing a list, even when you don’t have any list item selected. The Share button for a list will open the Grant Access dialog.  Site owners will be able to grant other users access to the list and are able to specify whether to give View-only, Edit, or Full Control permissions to the list. Other users (e.g. site members and visitors) cannot directly grant other users access to the list, but they can use the dialog to send an approval request to site owners if the site is set up to allow access requests (enabled by default). If the site does not allow access requests then non-owners will get a message letting them know they do not have permissions to share. This update also brings sharing links to list items. When you select a list item and click Share, you will see the same Send Link sharing dialog that exists today but new options will be available. Specifically, the “People in your organisation with the link” and “Anyone with the link” options will be available based on the policy that your organisation has configured.  All of the sharing policies you’ve configured for documents and files will apply to list items. For example, if you have set “People in your organisation with the link” as the default link type then that will also apply to list items. Similarly, if you’ve disabled or restricted Anyone links then those will also be disabled or restricted when users are sharing list items. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? This change is rolling out now. You should review the current sharing options in your SharePoint sites that contain lists, and decide on the list and document sharing capability that you as a site owner, want to give to other members and visitors to your site. You might consider updating your user documentation and training materials. More from Microsoft https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/share-lists-and-list-items-in-sharepoint-3af7efa5-c7fd-4239-b704-7dc3a3f8e508?ui=en-us&rs=en-gb&ad=gb Microsoft Teams - improvements in meetings experience for Mac users MC216823 Category Teams What is this all about? Participants joining your Teams meeting via the Safari browser on a Mac had a different experience to those using Chrome or Edge. Mainly the ability to use audio conferencing capabilities via the browser was disabled forcing them to join audio via a telephone or download and install Chrome. Microsoft are releasing improvements to the browser-based meetings experience for those who join Teams meetings with Safari browsers on Mac. How does this affect me? As a Mac user, you will no longer be required to use Audio Conferencing to dial into the meeting for audio needs, but rather, can use your Mac device to speak and listen. As already supported, you can continue to view meeting content being shared in their browser. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? The change is rolling out now. If you are a Mac user then you will benefit from the new Safari capabilities when joining other Teams meetings. If you host Teams meetings and your participants use a Mac, then the experience for them will be more seamless and they will no longer need to join the audio via a seperate conference number. Copy Planners between Teams and Groups Category Planner Teams What is this all about? If you use Microsoft Planner then sometimes you want to have a template plan that you can use in new Teams. Maybe a default project plan that should be used for all new clients. Although this capability exists, it was extremely inflexible in how you could use the feature. With this change, Microsoft is making it much easier to copy and re-use existing plans. How does this affect me? Consider if you would benefit from creating a template Plan or whether you need to copy a plan that has been previously created and then use the copy as the basis of a new plan in your Team. You might even want to create and make available a number of different template plans that your colleagues can use. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this change is rolling out now. Follow the link below to find out how you can copy and re-use plans More from Microsoft https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/planner-blog/expanding-the-copy-plan-and-filtering-features-based-on-your/ba-p/1483491 New task management experience available for Outlook on the Web MC217689 Category Outlook What is this all about? Microsoft will soon roll out the new tasks experience in Outlook on the web. The new tasks experience in Outlook is powered by To Do and will help you to plan better and get more done with smart lists like Important and Planned. The list sharing feature will enable you to collaborate with friends, family and colleagues. Your tasks sync across Microsoft 365 and Office 365 so you can also manage your tasks on the go, with the Microsoft To Do Android and iOS mobile applications. How does this affect me? If you use Outlook on the Web instead of the desktop version, you will be able to take advantage of the new features. With this change, Tasks will get all the collaboration and co-editing features of To Do. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? There is nothing you need to do for this update which is rolling out now and should be completed by the end of August. Link SharePoint webparts together with new Dynamic Filtering capabilities MC217382 Category SharePoint What is this all about? You can link two SharePoint list webparts together, so that when you select an item in the first webpart, the second is automatically filtered to show relevant information. This is Dynamic Filtering. How does this affect me? Dynamic Filtering will enable you to build richer user experiences without having to revert to PowerApps. For example, perhaps you want to show a list of projects on the home page of your project site and when the use selects a project they see a filtered list of tasks for that project. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, Dynamic Filtering is rolling out now and should be completed by the end of July. More from Microsoft https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dynamic-list-filtering-eed5f92e-1716-45d5-9a94-59decb930e42 SharePoint lists and libraries - sticky column in Quick Edit MC217379 Category SharePoint What is this all about? As you scroll horizontally across a list or document library in Quick Edit, the far left column will soon remain in place just like it does in Excel. How does this affect me? This interface change will make it easier for you to navigate and edit very wide lists.  What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this change is rolling out now and should be completed by the end of September. Add shortcuts to shared folders in your OneDrive MC217339 Category OneDrive What is this all about? You will soon be able to add shortcuts to shared folders in OneDrive and SharePoint shared libraries, and access those shortcuts from your OneDrive. How does this affect me? You will be able to add a shortcut to any folders or libraries shared with you from OneDrive or from SharePoint.  After you add a shortcut, it will appear in your OneDrive as a folder with a link icon at the OneDrive root. Owner information will be visible in the Sharing column to differentiate it from your own content. You will be able to access these shortcuts in OneDrive on the web, the OneDrive sync app, the OneDrive Android app, and Microsoft Teams. Support for additional products, such as the OneDrive iOS app, will be available in the next few months. When syncing OneDrive, these shortcuts will automatically appear in OneDrive across all devices. These shortcuts will respect all policy, compliance, and permission settings from the source. If you lose access to a shortcut, you will see an “Access Denied” error when you next navigate into that shortcut and will be prompted to remove it. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this feature is rolling out shortly. More from Microsoft https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/add-shortcuts-to-shared-folders-in-onedrive-for-work-or-school-d66b1347-99b7-4470-9360-ffc048d35a33?ui=en-US&rs=en-GB&ad=GB Author: SO365 Insights This month Microsoft is introducing new features across many of the Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, To-Do, OneDrive and Stream. As ever, there's a lot to take in, so we've chosen to highlight the most impactful for helping your productivity and improving the user experience. Pick of the bunch are the new screen recording features in Stream, the superb updates for task management in To-Do, and even more improvements to the calling and meeting experience in Teams. An honourable mention too for the updates to OneDrive's mobile scanning features, something that's super useful but often overlooked. Create internal training videos using the new Stream Screen Recording capabilities Category Stream What is this all about? Microsoft Stream is a powerful video streaming service that comes with your office 365 subscription that enables you to create, upload and share videos securely across your company. Do you record your meetings in Teams? If so then these recordings are also stored in Stream. Microsoft has now released an enhancement that enables you to create a video and at the same time capture whatever you are presenting on your screen. How does this affect me? The new screen recording tool in Microsoft Stream gives everyone a way to create videos for sharing knowledge, remote learning, leadership updates and other communications across your company. You can now easily create new videos with the web-based tool - no need to download anything to get started. Just open the latest version of Edge or Chrome and your Stream portal then, from the Create dropdown list, select Record screen. Perfect for internal company training videos when combined with a PowerPoint presentation or a demo of a new system. You have options to record any window or screen on your PC, add mic or system audio, and include webcam for a personal touch.  What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, the capability is already available. To access stream sign into office.com with your company account and locate Stream in your list of Apps. More from Microsoft https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-stream-blog/now-available-screen-recording-for-training-videos-and/ba-p/1362099 Task management and planning just got easier with Microsoft To-Do Category To-Do What is this all about? Microsoft To-Do had rapidly become the single task manager application that we have needed for a long time. Fully integrated into Outlook task management, Microsoft Planner tasks and the ability to create personalised lists. To-Do is available on all platforms so accessible when and where you need it. Now Microsoft have just released a whole bunch of useful features to help you get more organised and productive.
Updated Today and Week view One of our most exciting new updates is rolling out now, starting with Android this week and coming soon to other platforms. To-Do will now give you a Today, Tomorrow, and Week view in your Planned list. Our lives are complicated. We have work, home, that side project, and much, much more. It’s not always useful to see one long list of tasks, without any context. Now you can group by list, so you can see everything due today from each different list. If you don’t want to see your home tasks while you’re at work, then you can close that section, and reopen it when you get back home. Print your lists From this week, printing is now available on all platforms. So, if you prefer taking a paper list to your meeting or keeping a physical copy next to you while you work, now you can. Want to email a copy to someone? Save it as a PDF and add it as an attachment. You can print a list by clicking on the three dots next to the list’s name and selecting Print list.
See your completed tasks more easily Finally, Microsoft haven’t just given you a Completed smart list, they have also made it a lot easier to look at your completed tasks within your lists. Now you’ll find all your completed tasks at the bottom. So, if you like to mark your checked-off grocery items as incomplete for your next shopping trip, it’s now a lot easier to access them. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, these features should now be available. New ability to schedule the sending of emails MC212344 Category Outlook What is this all about? Many of us are adapting to different working patterns including the need to work around home life. This might result in you working unnormal hours such as late in the evening or early morning. Sending emails at this time to colleagues or even clients can cause unnecessary stress to the recipient. Receive an email from your boss at 23:00, then even if not urgent you might feel the need to reply to show you are committed to your job. If you use Outlook on the web as your email client, then you will have the ability to schedule emails to be sent at a later date and time. How does this affect me? When working unsocial hours consider if there is a need to send an email immediately, or to schedule it so that it sends during normal business hours the next day. This way the recipients will not feel pressurised to reply immediately or wake up in the morning with a full inbox. You will be able to delay the delivery of an individual message or use rules to delay the delivery of all messages using Outlook on the web. This feature is already available in Outlook for Windows and Outlook for Mac.  What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Look for the update to reach you during June and then when it arrives consider how you can best use it to minimise the impact on recipients when working unsocial hours. Consistent Outlook settings across all your machines MC214927 Category Outlook What is this all about? If you use Outlook for Windows on multiple machines, then you will know that you have to configure Outlook on each machine individually. So if you prefer your email font to be "Calibri 12pt italic" then you must make the change on every instance of Outlook. Well no more, soon your Outlook settings will automatically sync between your different Outlook installations - so make a change on one machine and it will automatically appear on your other devices. How does this affect me? When this feature rolls out, the following list of settings will roam across other computers running Outlook for Windows that you are logged in to using the same Office account.
Unless your administrators block this, you will be able can change your preferences via the “Store my Outlook settings in the cloud” checkbox under File > Options > General. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? This feature will be on by default however your administrator can override this. Microsoft have started rolling this out and expect it to be completed by late June. Organising a Teams meeting? Have greater control of the lobby MC214522 Category Teams What is this all about? When you organise a Microsoft Teams meeting, the use of the lobby is controlled centrally by your administrator, so maybe internal participants autojoin the meeting but external guests must wait in the lobby and be admitted when the organiser is ready. Well now the meeting organiser can decide on a meeting basis to make everyone wait in the lobby until they are ready to admit them. How does this affect me? After scheduling a new meeting, you as the organiser, will be able to configure meeting options so that only you can bypass the lobby. After changing the meeting option to Only me, you can then manage who is allowed into the meeting. So, if you are running an internal presentation and want to make sure you are fully set up and ready before colleagues join, then now you can.  What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this feature is automatically rolling out now and will be completed by the end of June. Quick Edit in SharePoint is now easier to use MC214047 Category SharePoint What is this all about? Quick Edit is a SharePoint facility that enables you to edit List and Library columns in an almost spreadsheet style mode. Microsoft are now updating two Quick Edit features to facilitate faster inline editing on SharePoint document libraries and lists.
How does this affect me?
You can now save your view in Quick Edit for any SharePoint list or document library. When you save a view in Quick Edit, the list or document library will always render in quick edit for easy inline editing. Currently you create a normal view and then have to click the Quick Edit button.
You will now see 100 items per page on your SharePoint document library or list when using Quick Edit. The current limit is 30 items. Great for when you need to bulk change a lot of information. Want to learn more? What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, Microsoft is rolling this change out now and should be completed by the end of June. Ability to once again edit OneNote in Teams MC214011 Category OneNote Teams What is this all about? Back in March, Microsoft announced that OneNote in Teams would be read-only, and users should use OneNote for the web or the OneNote desktop app. With this change, OneNote still opens in Teams as read only, but you can now click a button to go straight to Edit mode. How does this affect me? If you use OneNote in Teams, then rather than popping out to OneNote on the web or using the desktop app to Edit your OneNote you can now just click the "Edit Notebook" button. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this feature is automatically rolling out now and will be completed to all customers by the end of April.  What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this change has already rolled out. When sharing, block downloads of PDF and other file types MC213970 Category OneDrive SharePoint What is this all about? When you share documents from SharePoint or OneDrive, you can block the recipient of the link from downloading the document if it is an Office document (Word, etc.). Now you can block the download of other file types such as a PDF. How does this affect me? You can currently create SharePoint and OneDrive sharing links that block the download of Office files. This sharing link allows recipients to read the file but not download it. This update expands the list of supported file types to include PDF files, images, and audio files, for example. The experience of creating a read-only or download-blocked sharing link is unchanged. You must uncheck “Allow editing” for the “Block download” toggle to be accessible. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this change is rolling out now and will be completed by the end of June. Invite a group or distribution list to a Teams meeting MC213330 Category Teams What is this all about? Currently, when you schedule a meeting in Teams you have to individually add the participants even if all you want to do is invite everyone on a distribution list or an Office 365 Group. With this change, you will soon be able to invite a group (Teams and Microsoft 365 groups) or distribution list to a scheduled Teams meeting. This feature will be available with the Teams web app as well as the desktop app (Windows and Mac). How does this affect me? When scheduling a meeting in Teams, you will be able to invite both distribution lists and modern groups as well as individuals. After adding a list or group, Teams will:
Both distribution lists and modern groups will be discoverable within the people picker when scheduling Teams meetings.  What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this change is rolling out now. Microsoft Teams new calling and meeting experience MC212453 Category Teams What is this all about? Currently, when you join a meting or call through Teams, it takes over your whole Teams window making it difficult to get to other information or closing the document you were working on. Recently, Microsoft added the ability to pop out a chat into a seperate window which you can move around your desktop, and now they are adding the same capability to Teams meetings and calls. How does this affect me? Once available, you will be able to view meetings and calls in separate windows from the main Microsoft Teams client. Additionally, meeting and call controls such as mute, video, chat, leave and others will now be located at the top of the meeting window so that they are always available and never block the underlying content. This new experience will also include recently announced features such as 3x3 video, raise hands, and custom backgrounds.  New Teams meeting experience  New meeting / call control location
Step 2 - Check the Turn on new calling an meetings experiences check box and then restart the Teams client.  What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Initially, this change will roll-out "OFF" by default and you will have the ability to turn on the new experience via the user setting: General > Turn on new meetings and calling experiences (if you cannot see this then the change has not reached you yet). To get to User settings, click your picture or initials in the top right-hand corner of Teams. Note: In the future, Microsoft will enable this functionality by default, but they want to provide users extra time to become familiar with having meetings open in their own seperate window.
Multi-page scanning via your phone for everyone Category OneDrive What is this all about? With so many people now working from home, few of us have access to office equipment like printers and scanners. Scanning documents from home, or outside the office, should be easy. Microsoft OneDrive has long offered a free scanning feature from the OneDrive mobile app which lets you scan and digitise single documents, receipts and more. Up until now, scanning multiple pages and saving them as a single document was a premium feature that required a Microsoft 365 subscription. Today Microsoft are making multi-page scanning available for everyone using a OneDrive personal account. What is OneDrive scanning? With the OneDrive mobile app you can scan physical documents, business cards and whiteboards simply by opening the app and touching the camera icon. Once scanned, OneDrive digitizes the image into a PDF file, which you can then save, share or mark-up with text, pictures, or freehand drawing and writing. Once you scan items into OneDrive, you’ll be able to access them anywhere from any device. Tips for scanning with the OneDrive app The OneDrive scanning feature can help keep you organized, simplify tasks, and keep your digital files secured in one place. Here’s a list of some of the many ways you can use the OneDrive app to scan:
What you'll need to use multi-page scan Multi-page scan is rolling out now and will be available to everyone, everywhere OneDrive is available. Author: SO365 Insights 
Microsoft has rolled out a large number of feature enhancements this month, particulary for Teams which has new features for calls, meetings, chat and planning. Some of these features will significantly enhance the user experience for video and audio conferences and meetings, responding to the huge uptake by organisations in the use of Teams as a communication tool for remote working.
We've also highlighted a recent 'how to' post from Microsoft with guidance on creating a SharePoint communication site for crisis management, to help connect people and information to ensure everyone stays briefed during periods of disruption, like the one we are all experiencing now.
There are a large number of updates so if you want to jump straight to a topic of interest, use the links below.
1. Override locked files when trying to delete them Can’t delete a file because “you” or a colleague have it locked – well now you can override the lock. 2. New editing capabilities in Outlook on the Web If you use Outlook on the Web, then you now have improved spelling, grammar and general communication improvements. 3. Add Polls and Checklists to your Teams conversations Microsoft Teams - easily send your Team a quick poll or a checklist of activities for them to complete. 4. Build a crisis management site to connect people and information How to build a crisis management site to connect people and information. 5. Teams Meeting experience improvements When in a Teams Meeting, you can now choose your background – from an office meeting room to the beach. 6. New feature: Review mode in Word for the web prevents unintended edits When you share a Word document with colleagues or guests, stop them unintentionally editing the document, but still be able to leave reviews and tracked changes. 7. Microsoft Teams meeting and chat improvements Lots of Microsoft Teams meeting and chat improvements, read on to find out more. 8. Increased number of video attendees visible in Teams meetings Need to see more faces in your Teams video calls? Microsoft have increased the number from 4 to 9 with more to come. 9. New rich-text editor capabilities for text fields with SharePoint lists SharePoint “multi-line” text columns now have improved rich text formatting capabilities to bring your lists to life. 10. Raise a Virtual Hand in Teams Meetings How to control Microsoft Teams meetings with “Raise a Virtual Hand”. 11. Microsoft Teams group chat now with up to 250 people Do you need to connect with and engage large numbers of employees? Microsoft Teams group chat now supports up to 250 people. 12. Conditionally show or hide columns in a SharePoint list or library form Do you create SharePoint lists where not all columns should be editable all the time? Discover new SharePoint conditional “Show / hide” column formatting capabilities. 13. New PowerPoint Live Presentations Introducing PowerPoint Live – new features that enable you to live present. Your audience will see the presentation and a live transcript on any device in any location. 14. The Planner app in Teams will be renamed with an updated experience powered by Planner and To Do Planner Activities and To-Do Tasks now combined into a single personalised “Task” view in Microsoft Teams. No more switching between applications. 15. New SharePoint "Saved for later" web part available New webpart for SharePoint that you can configure and add to modern pages to enable your team to easily get back to their saved documents or news posts. 16. Microsoft Teams 1:1 Convenience Recording is now available As well as recording Microsoft Teams meetings, you can now record the 1:1 calls you have through the Teams Chat service.
Override locked files when trying to delete them
MC208414 What is this all about? Have you ever tried to delete a file only to find someone has it locked, even yourself! Maybe you had left it open in another tab on a different computer, or because someone else had it open and forgot about it, either way the document is locked and there is nothing you can do about it until it is closed in the other applications. This feature allows you to override that lock and delete an Office file (such as Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) when you or someone else has it open, whether intentionally or not. The new functionality will be available to people who want to delete items from their own OneDrive, and to all members of a document library who already have permission to delete files. How does this affect me? When you try to delete a file that is open in another location you will see a message asking you if you are sure you want to delete the file even though someone else may be editing the file. 
You may then proceed with the delete action, or close the message and allow other users to continue editing uninterrupted.
People who are actively editing a file when someone else deletes it will see a message explaining that they no longer have access to the file, and in some cases, advising them to save a copy of the document so that work isn’t lost. 
Example of the error banner in PowerPoint.
Example of the error banner in Word on the web.
Remember, the deleted documents can always be restored from the Recycle Bin of the site or the OneDrive where it was deleted from.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this change is automatically rolling out now and should be generally available to everyone by the end of April. More from Microsoft https://support.office.com/article/93a14d34-88e3-4a91-9eef-58cc541d31f8
New editing capabilities in Outlook on the web
MC208308 Category Outlook What is this all about? If you enjoy Outlook on the web, you will soon have new tools to help refine your email messages such as recommended spelling or grammar suggestions similar to those in Word. How does this affect me? When you are composing an email message in Outlook for the web, you will see suggestions to help you communicate better, such as recommendations for spelling, grammar, and refinements to communicate more concisely. This new feature in Outlook is powered by Microsoft Editor. You can turn off the feature if you like when you are composing an email message. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this feature is automatically rolling out now and will be completed to all customers by the end of April.
Add Polls and Checklists to your Teams conversations
MC208306 Category Teams What is this all about? Soon you will be able to add a checklist of tasks to a team conversation, perhaps to ask the team to confirm a list of activities have been completed, and for all members of the Team to be able to update the checklist and respond. In addition, you will be able to embed a Poll into a Team conversation, perhaps asking the members of the Team for their opinion on a project related matter. How does this affect me? Once rolled out, you will be able to easily access and install Checklists and Polls by clicking on “…” at the bottom of the Teams composition box and then selecting the Poll or Checklist. 
After adding the Poll or Checklist, you can access them at the bottom of the Teams composition box in both chat and channels.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? The new feature is rolling out now and should be completed by the end of April. Should you not want your end users to find Polls and Checklists, you can turn off their availability by using the blocked app search in the Admin Center. Visit Teams Permission Policies in the Microsoft Teams admin center.
Build a Crisis Management site to connect people and information
Category SharePoint What is this all about? Change agents, from virus outbreaks like COVID-19 to unexpected weather emergencies, highlight the importance of establishing and keeping open the lines of communication. The goal: to ensure everyone stays briefed on the situation and any business impacts. To address crises, meetings move online, daily guidance email updates get sent, and dedicated sites emerge to consolidate news, related resources and topical Q&A. The ‘how to’ post in the link below addresses the latter, to guide you through simple steps and configuration to establish a crisis management site based on a SharePoint communication site. You will also find additional links to helpful guides and videos at the end. More from Microsoft https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-sharepoint-blog/build-a-crisis-management-site-to-connect-people-and-information/ba-p/1216791
Teams meeting experience improvements
MC208577 Category Teams What is this all about? When joining a Microsoft Teams meeting you are able to blur your background, which is especially useful when conducting so many meetings from home. With this new feature, you will be able to select a background image such as an office meeting room. How does this affect me? You will be able to select Microsoft provided background images prior to or during a video call.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change?
Nothing, this feature is rolling out now and should be available by the end of April.
New Feature: Review mode in Word for the web prevents unintended edits
MC209728 Category Office Products What is this all about? Your end users will soon be able to share Word for the web documents in Review mode, which limits recipients to adding comments or leaving tracked changes in the document. How does this affect me? When people share documents with Open in review mode only selected, recipients who open the document in Word for the web will be limited to adding comments or leaving tracked changes in the document. This can help prevent unintended edits to the document. 
People who open the document in the Word desktop app instead of on the web will only be able to view the document. They will see a notification to switch to Word for the web if they want to make changes.
With this feature, file owners can have more control over new edits, and only file owners can accept or reject changes made by other people. If someone else leaves suggestions in the document, they will be able to reject their own changes but can’t accept or reject someone else’s changes. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this feature will be automatically made available during May.
Microsoft Teams meeting and chat improvements
MC209710 Category Teams What is this all about? Microsoft is releasing a number of updates to improve the Teams meeting and chat experience. How does this affect me? 1. Easily access meeting options from within a Teams meeting in progress. Microsoft is making it easier for meeting organisers to quickly and easily change their presenter and lobby settings once a Teams meeting starts by providing an easy to access link directly in the participants pane. This new functionality will be present for both scheduled and "Meet Now" meetings. 
2. Download a participant report in a Teams meeting.
Meeting organisers, especially teachers, often need to know who joined their Teams meetings. Soon you will be able to download a participant report, found in the roster view, that includes join and leave times for participants. Available in the roster view, meeting organisers can download the report that includes those users who joined while the organiser was present. This feature is only available with the meeting while the meeting is active. Available on desktop (Windows and Mac) and the web. The default for the feature is Disabled. The Admin will need to turn this on through a PowerShell cmdlet to be able to utilise this feature:
3. Audio playing on presenter device will be shared in the live event.
Today, if you are screen sharing content with audio in a Live Event, attendees will not be able to hear the audio of that content. With Share System Audio in Live Events, your live event attendees will now be able to hear the audio of the content that you are screen sharing. This feature works just like share system audio in Teams Meetings. Once enabled, any audio that is playing on the user's machine will be shared in the live event for participants to hear. Note: This feature will only be available for Presenters/Producers in a Live Event joining from the Windows Desktop Teams Client with ScreenSharingMode set to "Single application" or "Entire screen". 
4. Screen share from chat.
The option to start a screen share from a 1:1 or group chat will now be governed by the ScreenSharingMode policy. Further, the ability to "add audio" to a screen share from chat session (if you want to talk to someone while screen sharing) will be governed by a user's AllowPrivateCalling setting. This ensures that users who have AllowPrivateCalling disabled cannot start audio calls via screen share from chat. 
Starting a screen share from chat.
Setting the ScreenSharingMode policy in Teams Admin Center under Meeting Policies.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change?
There is no preparation required. Microsoft will be gradually rolling these changes out during May. You should consider if these will be useful to you and your colleagues to help improve your overall Teams experience.
Increased number of video attendees visible in Teams meetings
MC209274 Category Teams What is this all about? Microsoft has announced that the number of participants that can be viewed simultaneously during a Teams meeting will increase from 4 to 9. Additionally they are working on increasing this limit even further so that more participants can be viewed simultaneously. How does this affect me? It will improve your meeting experience as Microsoft increase the number of participants shown on the stage to 9 and make it video optimised. For more than 9 participants, they will prioritise those with video on and show them on the stage. Participants with audio will be shown below the meeting stage. To provide a high audio and video quality experience, the layout logic will consider user bandwidth and alter the number of videos shown to provide the best meeting experience. 
What do I need to do to prepare for this change?
Nothing, this feature will be automatically rolling out soon.
New rich-text editor capabilities for text fields with SharePoint lists
MC209530 Category SharePoint What is this all about? You will soon have access to a new rich-text editor (RTE) on multi-line text fields when editing a SharePoint list or library. How does this affect me? You will be able to easily add more rich formatting to text columns in SharePoint by enabling the RTE on any multi-line field. Once enabled, the Notes field will display a pencil icon in the list form. Click the pencil to edit text and adjust appearance, such as font, size, colour, highlight, bold, italics, underline, and bulleted or numbered lists.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change?
Nothing, this change is automatically rolling out now.
Raise a Virtual Hand in Teams meetings
MC209022 Category Teams What is this all about? The new raise hand feature in Teams allows meeting attendees to identify that they wish to speak by toggling the hand icon in the meeting control bar, making it easier to actively participate in meetings. How does this affect me? This enhancement will make Teams meetings more effective, especially when there are multiple attendees, and will reduce the instances of attendees speaking over each other. When a meeting participant has raised their hand, an icon will appear next to their name in the roster view as well as their profile picture or video on the main meeting stage. Participants can lower their hand, and any presenter can lower individual hands in the meeting. 
What do I need to do to prepare for this change?
Nothing, this change is automatically rolling out now.
Microsoft Teams group chat now with up to 250 people
MC211658 Category Teams What is this all about? Microsoft are increasing the maximum chat size from 100 to 250 individuals. How does this affect me? Private chats groups that you create can now accommodate up to 250 people, so a great way for small to medium sized companies to keep everyone in the company informed and up to-date. However, note that if you have more than 20 people in a chat, the following chat features are turned off: Outlook automatic replies and Teams status messages; typing indicator; video and audio calling; sharing; and read receipts. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, this change is rolling out now.
Conditionally show or hide columns in a SharePoint list or library form
MC211640 Category SharePoint What is this all about? You will be able to show or hide columns in a SharePoint list or library form based on a value in another column. How does this affect me? When you design SharePoint lists and libraries and add columns, you sometimes do not want people to change column data if the record is not at the correct state. For example, certain columns cannot be edited until the status of the record is "Completed". This new conditional expression capability for configuring list or library forms will enable you to do this. It builds upon the existing ability to show or hide columns in a list or library form. As soon as the feature is rolled out to your organisation, you will be able to begin editing conditional formulae to show or hide columns in the list or library form. The formula is made up of equations that perform conditional checks on values in a list or library. The new option, Edit conditional formula, will be available from the more options menu (...) in the Edit columns list form pane. 
What do I need to do to prepare for this change?
Nothing except think about how you could design more intuitive and intelligent forms to improve data capture.
New PowerPoint Live Presentations
MC211518 Category Office Products What is this all about? Microsoft will soon release Live Presentations for PowerPoint for web, which allows audience members to see slides and a live transcript of the presenter’s spoken words (including live translation) on any of their devices. How does this affect me? If you need to present to people online using PowerPoint, then this new feature will make it easier for them to access the PowerPoint and if needed to see live captions of the presentation audio. On the day of a presentation, the presenter selects “Present Live” either from within the Slide Show tab (in case of the Simplified ribbon) or from the View tab:
Before starting live presentation, the presenter can choose who will be able to access the session:
A live presentation allows each audience member to follow a presentation on their own device, whether laptop, tablet or phone. They can also choose live subtitles from more than 60 languages, navigate between slides, send real-time reactions, and provide feedback to the presenter. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? You need to decide if this feature should be enabled for your organisation, especially the "Anyone" option. The default, when this rolls out by the end of June, is that all options are enabled but you can change this if needed.
The Planner app in Teams will be renamed with an updated experience powered by Planner and To Do
MC211421 Category Teams What is this all about? The Planner app in Teams will become the Tasks app. You will now be able see your individual tasks and team tasks in a single app. Microsoft are also introducing both a list view and a new mobile tasks experience within the Teams app for mobile devices. The Planner app will be renamed after the rollout is complete. How does this affect me? You will see personal tasks powered by To Do (which also powers Outlook tasks) and team tasks powered by Planner. Existing Planner tabs will behave the same as they do today but will show an additional list view. You will be able to add new Tasks tabs to the channels in teams they belong to. You can also access the Tasks app in the same ways they previously accessed the Planner app. 
What do I need to do to prepare for this change?
Nothing, this change is rolling out now and should be completed by mid July.
New SharePoint "Saved for later" web part available
MC211364 Category SharePoint What is this all about? Microsoft is adding a new "Saved for later" web part for SharePoint modern pages. With the Saved for later web part, you can see the content you have saved when you view your page. Page authors can determine the source of Saved items that will show on the page:
How does this affect me? The Saved for later web part will show as a new option in the web part toolbox and will provide an easy way for you and visitors to your site to access any documents or new articles they have saved. 
What do I need to do to prepare for this change?
Consider if this new web part would add value to any SharePoint sites you own or manage.
Microsoft Teams 1:1 Convenience Recording is now available
MC210451 Category Teams What is this all about? Microsoft have officially announced the release of Microsoft Teams 1:1 Convenience Recording. You will now be able to record your 1:1 calls, just like meetings and group calls. How does this affect me? You can now initiate recording on 1:1 Teams calls by:
Both persons in the call will receive a notification that the call is being recorded. To stop the recording:
The recording is then processed and saved to Microsoft Stream. An email will be sent to the person who started the recording once the recording is available and a link to the recording will be posted in the 1:1 chat. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, unless you wish to restrict or turn-off this capability in which case your Teams admin will need to create the appropriate policy in the administration centre.
Author: SO365 Insights
Microsoft is rolling out some great new features this month. But before we give you our thoughts on some of the most useful, it's important to note their announcements on temporarily reducing services during this period of exceptional demand and usage. Reduced features due to excess demand during this period MC207439 Category Administration Please be aware of the following announcement from Microsoft as it affects all Office 365 users (although some features are running normally for Education customers). "As a part of our commitment to customers and Microsoft cloud services continuity during these unprecedented times, we're making temporary adjustments to select capabilities within Microsoft 365. Last week, we shared details about adjustments in Microsoft Teams, such as how often we check for presence, the interval in which we show when the other party is typing, and reduced video resolution. We are sharing a few other temporary changes you can expect. OneNote:
SharePoint:
Stream:
We will continue to monitor our Microsoft 365 services on an ongoing basis and share any further updates here." Greater integration between Teams and Skype Consumer rolling out now MC205801 Category Teams What is this all about? Microsoft is providing greater integration between Microsoft Teams and consumer or personal Skype users. How does this affect me? Post this change, Teams users in your company can chat with and call Skype users by using their email address and vice versa.
There are some restrictions when comparing a Teams to Teams call as follows:
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? This change will be disabled by default and therefore your Administrators will need to turn this feature on if this is something you want your company to benefit from. The change will be gradually rolled out towards the end of March 2020 and the rollout will be completed by the end of April. More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/teams-skype-interop View and manage OneDrive document versions from File explorer MC205517 What is this all about? Unknown to most users who only access OneDrive through File Explorer, OneDrive does version control all files and therefore it is possible, through the OneDrive browser interface, to view version history and, if necessary, to restore a previous version. This change will enable users to view and manage version history through File Explorer on both Windows and Mac devices. How does this affect me? You will see a new entry in the context menu in Mac Finder, Windows File Explorer, and OneDrive Activity Feed. Version history will allow you to download previous versions of a file as well as restore or delete previous versions without needing to access this feature via the browser.  What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing. Simply look for this new feature to be available when it starts to roll out in April 2020. Outlook Mobile updates the Search experience MC208100 Category Office Products What is this all about? As well as the enhanced corporate security controls that Outlook on your mobile provides over the standard iOS or Android mail apps, Microsoft is now rolling out more of the familiar browser and desktop Outlook features to its Mobile App making it more efficient to find information and to respond to contacts, email and events. How does this affect me? If you spend a lot of time managing emails or your diary on a mobile, then the following new features might just make your life easier. 1. The keyword search experience in Outlook now includes information from the deleted folder, so if you have accidentally deleted that email and need to find it, use search.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Once this feature is available in your Office 365 environment, you should review your sites and decide if audience targetting should be turned on and then who the audience should be. This feature is rolling out now and should be completed by the end of May. Edit metadata from within the SharePoint Document Library and List View web parts MC206010 Category SharePoint What is this all about? SharePoint pages enable you to embed a view of a list or library as a "Web part". However, the ability to change any of the columns of data or "metadata" associated with the list item or the document has required you to leave the page and to navigate directly to the underlying list or library view. This enhancement will let you modify metadata directly from within the web part. How does this affect me? You will now have the ability to open and edit file or list item properties directly from the document or list view web parts on a SharePoint page and therefore no longer need to navigate to the List or Document Library to update the metadata. To edit the metadata directly from the webpart, either click on the:  or click “More” under item properties.  More from Microsoft • Customise permissions for a SharePoint list or library • Use the Document Library web part • Use the List web part Add a survey or response "Poll" to your Outlook emails MC205124 Category Outlook What is this all about? You will soon be able to embed a quick poll or survey in an Outlook email and sent it to your intended recipients. This takes the existing ability to add response buttons to a whole new level. Perhaps you need to survey staff about an upcoming event and want to provide 4 options for them to choose from, or you want to provide a client with a choice of options relating to a project. Easy, just insert a Poll. How does this affect me? Regardless of whether you use Outlook for Mac, Outlook for Windows or Outlook on the web you will soon be able to create a poll within Outlook without needing to find-and-install an add-in. Simply create a new email and then click the "Poll" icon, add your questions and send. Depending on the Outlook app, the Poll icon will appear in different places, see below. User access to the Poll add-in Outlook for Mac  Outlook on the web  Outlook for Windows
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Unless you are a Mac user there is nothing you need to do. This enhancement is rolling out now and should be completed by the end of April. If you are a Mac users and have previously downloaded the old Quick Poll add-in, you will need to uninstall it at https://outlook.office365.com/ecp/ in order to use the new pre-installed Poll add-in. More from Microsoft https://support.office.com/article/create-a-poll-in-outlook-46893563-ab12-4bd0-aff7-26f5a488fea0 Author: SO365 Insights Configure Microsoft Teams to provide your users with quick access to the apps they need MC202761 Category Teams What is this all about? When you open Teams, the left rail App bar has a standard set of quick access icons such as Activity, Chat, Calendar, etc. Any Apps not showing are accessible by clicking the three dots under the last icon. Microsoft has now provided each user with the ability to pin and unpin the Apps they need access to. So, for example, Shifts might be a standard App on the rail bar, but not all departments use Shifts. Users in those departments can now individually decide to unpin Shifts so it does not clutter the bar. In the same way, they may decide to pin Planner as this is an App they use daily. How does this affect me? You will be able to personalise the left rail App Bar in their Teams clients should your admin choose to leave the feature enabled. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? This feature is turned On by default so you will want to review your settings to ensure they are appropriate for the experience you require. If you wish to turn this feature Off, visit Teams Setup policies in the Microsoft Teams admin centre and change the "Allow user pinning" toggle from On to Off. More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/teams-app-setup-policies New capabilities in Teams Shifts app MC204292 Category Teams What is this all about? As part of building scheduling capabilities into Microsoft Teams, they are adding three new capabilities to the Shifts app for Teams on the desktop and online. How does this affect me? The following three new features make it easier for everyone to better manage schedules.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Microsoft's Shifts documentation will be updated as the features become available to help you become acquainted with the new features and update your user training and documentation. Microsoft will begin rolling these features at the beginning of March and the rollout will be completed by the end of March. New single mobile app to access all Office features MC204208 Category Office Products What is this all about? On Android and iPhones, Microsoft has released a new combined Office app, which bring together Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other productivity features into a single app. How does this affect me? Anyone can download the Office app and connect to Office 365 just as they would with the existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint mobile apps. The new Office app has all the capabilities of the existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps and requires significantly less phone storage than installing all three apps. In addition, the Office App:
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Let your users know about the release of the combined Office App so that they can benefit from the new features and at the same time clean up clutter on their phone and release space. If your IT department manages your company mobile, then discuss and coordinate the release of the new feature with them. More from Microsoft https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/mobile?rtc=1 Feature Update: Tasks powered by To-Do generally available MC203853 Category Outlook, To-Do What is this all about? As announced in July 2019, the new Outlook on the web is generally available. As Microsoft continue to evolve the experience they are announcing that the new Tasks experience powered by To-Do is now generally available. As part of this change they will be retiring the opt-in toggle for classic Tasks. How does this affect me? When this change is implemented, users will no longer be able to see the classic Tasks experience in Outlook on the web. The new Tasks experience is powered by To-Do, so users will see all their tasks as well as lists of tasks they have created, any flagged emails, and tasks and lists the have created in the To-Do app. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Consider updating your documentation and training as appropriate. More from Microsoft https://support.office.com/article/Use-Tasks-in-Outlook-on-the-web-f8d35330-64e4-4a7b-bcdc-8d85906e7a24 Improved SharePoint Tab and new SharePoint Pages Tab in Teams MC204986 Category Teams What is this all about? Microsoft are making improvements to the "SharePoint tab" in Teams to help users easily find the pages and lists that they want to easily access or make available to other Team members. You can also paste a link to a page or list from any team-site to tab it in your channels. This will help Team Owners and Members to provide quick and easy access to specific news pages or lists right from within a specific Teams Channel. Microsoft are also introducing a new "SharePoint Pages" tab in Teams specifically focused on allowing users to find pages and news posts or paste a link to them from any team-site in order to tab them in Teams. This feature has no impact on page or list permissions. Users who did not have access to that page/list before it was added as a tab will continue to be unable to access it in Teams. How does this affect me? Using the original SharePoint app that is available by clicking the "Add a tab" in any Teams Channel you can now create a tab that references a page or list from any team site. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing except communicate the availability of the feature to your other colleagues. Microsoft will be gradually rolling this out in early March 2020 and the rollout will be completed by early April. More from Microsoft https://support.office.com/article/add-a-sharepoint-page-or-list-to-a-channel-in-teams-131edef1-455f-4c67-a8ce-efa2ebf25f0b Improved management of unhealthy sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive MC205044 Category SharePoint, OneDrive for Business What is this all about? It is possible for end users to unknowingly break sharing links so that the links no longer grant access to the files that were originally shared (causing broken, "unhealthy" links). Individuals attempting to access these files would then encounter errors because the links would not work. However, these errors did not show up in Manage Access. How does this affect me? Microsoft are now including these "unhealthy" links in Manage Access. In addition, they are informing the user that the link is broken and must be deleted and recreated. This change applies to files shared from both SharePoint and OneDrive. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Nothing, Microsoft will be gradually rolling this out to Targeted Release customers in early March 2020 and the rollout will be completed by the middle of April. Author: SO365 Insights  Do you need your Office 365 data to be based in the UK? MC190854 Category Administration What is this all about? Microsoft has had UK Office 365 data centres since September 2016, prior to that, UK based businesses probably selected an EU based data centre (typically Ireland). Given that the UK is now leaving the EU and with other data privacy concerns you may have, you can now request at no cost, that Microsoft moves your data at rest to a UK data centre. How does this affect me? There is no impact on your business, apart from being confident that your core business data is stored in your preferred geographic location and that you are complying with regulations such as GDPR or meeting customer contractual commitments regarding data you control or process. If you take no action, your core customer data may still be moved to a United Kingdom datacentre over time as part of Microsoft's service management and optimisation as the United Kingdom is the default datacentre geo for all customers with a UK signup address associated with their Office 365 tenant. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? You need to review the location of your core Office 365 data - you can do this through the Office 365 Admin centre or ask your IT service provider. If your data is located outside of the UK, and your environment was created prior to September 2016 and your business preference is to have all your data within a UK data centre, then you should request early migration of your Office 365 data to a UK data centre. Your Office 365 Administrator can submit the request through the Office 365 Admin centre. But hurry, Microsoft are only offering this free service until July 1, 2020. Once you have submitted your request, Microsoft will complete the migration of your core "Customer" data to a United Kingdom datacentre by July 1, 2022. Core customer data is a term that refers to a subset of data including:
More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/Office365/Enterprise/request-your-data-move Greater control managing the "Lobby" in Microsoft Teams meetings MC199245 What is the Lobby? When you use Microsoft Teams to schedule meetings, you can choose to have the attendees to wait in a virtual "Lobby" until you, as the meeting organiser, admit them. This can be useful when sharing your screen to ensure no one joins and views your screen until you are fully ready. The use of the Lobby can be controlled per meeting - i.e. Lobby is on or off. How does this affect me? Currently, the only control is to switch the Lobby on or off for everyone regardless of whether they are joining by phone or the Teams client. With this change, anyone who uses a phone to dial in to a meeting will now bypass the lobby by default. The default for users attending via the Team client is to wait in the Lobby, but the meeting organiser can override this. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? This will be the new default when it is rolled out to your environment. If you do not want the default for those joining by phone to bypass the lobby, then your Administrator can change this for everyone. Microsoft will gradually roll this out in early February 2020 and it is expected to be completed by mid-February. More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/meeting-policies-in-teams Control announcements when dial-in users join/leave a Teams meeting MC19924 Category Teams What are Announcements? Microsoft Teams allows you to globally configure if an announcement should be made to all attendees when someone joins or exits the Meeting by telephone. How does this affect me? Currently this is a global setting and individual meeting organisers cannot override this. So, say you have organised a meeting with a large number of optional attendees who may join or leave during the meeting, then the constant announcements are disruptive to the main meeting attendees. With this change, tenant admins will continue to configure the default sound made when telephone dial-in users enter or leave a meeting. However, meeting organisers can now decide whether or not to play a sound on a per-meeting basis. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? If you have not already done so, consider asking your Teams Administrator to customise the default announcement sound when telephone dial-in users enter/exit a meeting and the inform the meeting organisers in your company, that after the roll-out they will be able to turn the announcement on or off on a per meeting basis. Microsoft will be gradually rolling this out in mid-January 2020. The rollout will be completed by the end of January. More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/MicrosoftTeams/turn-on-or-off-entry-and-exit-announcements-for-meetings-in-teams New Global Reader Administrator role MC198602 Category Administration What is a Global Reader? There are several Office 365 Administrator roles, which provide powerful access to the services and features available. As such, it is recommended best practice that these Administrator roles are not assigned to a day to day users account. This means that individuals often have two accounts, one their normal account and the other an administrator account with greater security switched on. The SharePoint admin centre will soon support the global reader admin role. Users who are assigned this role will have read-only access to all info and settings in the new SharePoint admin centre. How does this affect me? If you are someone in the company who often wants to check certain settings in the Administrator centre, but is fining it cumbersome to keep signing in and out with your Admin account, then this new Global Reader role will safely give you the access you need from within your normal business account. If you then do need to change anything then you will need to sign in using your dedicated Admin account. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? To get the most value from this new feature, we suggest that you identify the admins in your company who should have the global reader role assigned to them. Assign the global reader role to individuals in your company who don't have admin centre access today and are either dependent on co-workers or their IT service provider for getting the administrative information they need for their work, or need to sign in and out of their dedicated admin account. Microsoft will be gradually rolling this out to Targeted Release customers in early March 2020. The roll out will be complete by the end March 2020. Combine work and personal calendars in Outlook on the web MC201582 Category Outlook What is this about? Quite simply, your end users will soon be able to add a personal calendar to Outlook on the web providing a single view of business and personal commitments. Currently you cannot easily connect a personal calendar through Outlook on the Web.  How does this affect me? By adding your personal calendar, it will "block out time" in your calendar so other people can see you are not available. However, as this is a personal calendar it will not let other people see the title or details of the event. Personal events will show as tentative, busy, or away in a work or school calendar. No details will be shared from a personal event, even if you have your work or school calendar set to "share all details" and even if a user has a personal event set to "public" rather than "private." This will stop you having to constantly replicate events between your personal and business calendars. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? This feature will be On by default, but can be disabled by your Office 365 Administrator. Microsoft will begin gradually rolling this out to all customers in April 2020, the rollout will be completed in July 2020. More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/powershell/module/exchange/client-access/set-owamailboxpolicy Improved capabilities when scheduling meetings in Teams MC200243 Category Teams What is this all about? Microsoft Teams has overtime provided more and more outlook style capabilities to manage and schedule meetings. This enables individuals to stay within Teams if this their default collaboration tool. However, there has still been several deficiencies in Teams compared to Outlook and this change seeks to address a number of these. The new features rolling out to Teams are:
How does this affect me? This change provides your employees with greater choice as to which product they want to use and when, knowing that whichever they chose they will have access to similar functionality to manage and schedule their meetings. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? There is no action you need to take to prepare for this change, but you might consider communicating the new features to your employees. Microsoft will roll this feature out during February 2020. More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/meeting-policies-in-teams Greater control over default sharing option in SharePoint MC200127 Category SharePoint What is the change? Your SharePoint administrators can set the global default "sharing" option for all new SharePoint sites. These are currently: "Anyone", "People in my organisation", or "Specific People". Post this change, your SharePoint Administrator will have another global option available which is "People with Existing Access". How does this affect me? Your staff can self-service create sites that may hold sensitive or confidential information. They then selectively add members to the site so that only people that should have access can see the information contained within the site. When they create a site, it inherits the default global sharing option set by your Administrator. If you then look at the need to share a document or folder within the site even to existing members, the default sharing option becomes important. For example: a member of the site wants to share a new document with all members of the site and so clicks the share button. If the default is "Anyone", then although they might only send the link to the existing site members, there is nothing to stop a member accidently forwarding the email, even to people external to the organisation, who will suddenly get access to that confidential or sensitive document. If they choose "People in my organisation", then again you have just opened the security of the document to anyone in your company. That leaves them with "Specific People". But now, I must type everyone's name and I cannot be bothered with that, so I will choose one of the other "open" and less secure options. The new default setting, "People with Existing Access" should always have been the default setting as this the most secure method and the option most people want to use. Remember, the default sharing option can be changed per site by a SharePoint administrator. Also, members when sharing a document, can select one of the other options if these are available within that site. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? You might want to discuss with your Administrator the current global default and when this change is released, decide to make this the new default. Microsoft will be rolling this out during Q1 2020 and will be completed by the end of March 2020. More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/powershell/module/sharepoint-online/set-sposite New ways to empower and transform first line workers Category Teams What are First Line Workers? First Line Workers are typically the first person a customer deals with at a company. You will see First Line Workers in sectors such as retail, manufacturing, healthcare, construction, travel & hospitality and government. Traditionally, First Line Workers have limited access to company technology, often being limited to receiving occasional emails and announcements via their personal email address. This causes barriers to communication, collaboration and productivity, and can make First Line Workers feel alienated from the core company and the brand. What is Microsoft changing? Microsoft has positioned Teams as a hub for First Line Workers. It provides First Line Workers with chat and communication capabilities and also online access to their "Shifts" with the ability to request time-off and changes to their schedule. This year, 2020, Microsoft is introducing greater capabilities to Teams to help company engage, communicate and manage First Line Workers, here are the headlines:
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? Most of these new features are expected to roll out by the middle of 2020. Ask your Office 365 Administrator to check for updates and then plan how your company can use and take advantage of these if you have First Line Workers. More from Microsoft https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/01/09/8-new-capabilities-microsoft-365-empower-firstline-workers/ Keep control of Office 365 groups Category Administration What is this all about? First, what is an Office 365 Group? A Group is a set of connected Office 365 services that enable members of the group to securely access those services and the owners of the group to control membership. For example, when you create a new Team in Microsoft Teams, in the background a suite of connected Office 365 services are enabled that have the same permissions and security access. One such service is a connected SharePoint site that has the same Members and Owners as the Team, additionally you might create a Planner within the Team and again access to the plan is governed by the same Owner and Member model. Now, the issue has been that most companies do not lock down the creating of Groups and as well as creating a Group and connected services via Teams, you can also create a Group via Outlook, SharePoint, Planner and Yammer. It is therefore very easy for staff to create lots of groups either in a planned or unplanned way and this can cause an explosion in SharePoint sites, plans etc. How does this affect me? If you are responsible for the governance and control of your Office 365 environment, and concerned that there are too many groups getting created, or redundant / historical groups are never deleted, then you now have two options:
Of course, you can implement both options. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? You need to consider if the creation and use of Groups is an issue for your company, and if so talk to your IT / Office 365 Administrator to consider how you can use these new features to implement policies and controls that are right for you. More from Microsoft https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/office-365-blog/user-activity-based-expiration-policy-for-office-365-groups-is/ba-p/942877 Meet Edge Chromium - the new Microsoft browser Category Office Products What is Chromium Edge? Microsoft Edge was hailed as the best browser for Windows 10 – by Microsoft at least! However, it has never really taken-off and development of apps and new features for Edge by 3rd parties have been limited. Issues with Edge and its lack of compatibility with 3rd party apps, has also restricted companies moving from Internet Explorer which is now reaching end of life and becoming a potential security risk. For this reason, Microsoft has completely rebuilt Edge and based it on the same open source platform that Google Chrome uses. How does this affect me? If your company is currently restricted to Internet Explorer, then the new Edge might be the way forward. Also, if you are currently a Chrome user then the new Edge should be a viable alternative, and over time you can expect to see greater productivity, collaboration and security integration to Windows 10 and Office 365. What do I need to do to prepare for this change? At this stage, it looks like the new Edge will be rolled out in the spring of 2020 as part of a Windows 10 update and will more than likely simply replace the current version of Edge on your machine. You might want to look at the new features available and decide if this should be the company default browser. More from Microsoft https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge?form=MO12GE&OCID=MO12GE Are you using the compliance features of Office 365 to secure your business? MC202599 Category Security and Compliance What is this all about? Office 365 has always had an incredibly powerful Compliance and Security centre that enables you to protect your environment from external threats (Security) and to implement controls and policies to ensure your information is only accessible by those who need it and is only retained for as long as needed to meet you record keeping rules or external regulations (Compliance). However, having one single centre for managing all of this was confusing and not always aligned to the structure of the business. IT are typically responsible for Security and the Management \ Data Protection Officer \ Compliance individuals for internal governance of the company's information. This change splits the security and compliance centre into two separate centres, and access to each can be allocated to different individuals or departments. How does this affect me? Currently, the "Security & Compliance" link in the left navigation bar of the Microsoft 365 admin centre connects customers to the Office 365 Security & Compliance Centre. Microsoft are changing the Admin Centres links in that left navigation bar.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change? There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. However, if you are not aware of the capabilities of the compliance centre (compliance.microsoft.com) or if you click the link and cannot access it, then talk to your Office 365 Administrator to find out more about its capabilities and how it can help your company to stay compliant and better manage risk. More from Microsoft https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/compliance/microsoft-365-compliance-center Author: SO365 Insights  Some of these features are available today but others are due to roll out soon, so they might not be immediately available in your own Office 365 environment. Office 2013 Client Connectivity to Office 365 Services MC190854 From the 13th October 2020, Microsoft have warned that users accessing Office 365 services with older versions of Office products (e.g. Office 2013 or Office 2010) may suffer performance, instability or security issues. It is therefore critical that users of Office 365 ensure they are using the latest Office Products. This could impact clients with an Office 365 Business Essentials plan, who are using their own legacy office products or clients that are not upgrading to Windows 10. The other main Office 365 commercial products include the right to download and use the latest versions of Office so they should not be impacted. Use Tags in Microsoft Teams to organise and control large groups of users MC195755 Rolling out in Q1 2020 is the ability to tag users in a Microsoft Team – this is really applicable to Teams that have large memberships and you want to categorise or group individuals in the team so that you can target messages and conversations at them. Using tags, team owners can organise users based on a common attribute, such as role, project, skill, training, or location. After team members have tags, the team owner or a tagged team member can create a channel post, @tagName, that notifies only the users who have that tag (in this case @tagName). Tags are team-based; you have to a be a member of a team in order to use an associated tag. For example, you could send a message to all cashiers in a store or all developers in a software specific release stream. To manage tags, click on the Team name (not the general channel) and then select Settings. Tags should appear at the bottom of the list of settings once it has been enabled by Microsoft New Team Tag Settings Subscribe individuals in your company to be notified about Office 365 incidents MC196504 Microsoft is now rolling out the ability to subscribe up to 2 individuals to receive notifications of new incidents affecting you Office 365 service. Previously, only your admins could view incidents by signing into the Office 365 Health dashboard – often this would only occur after users started complaining that something was not working. To subscribe to the new service, you will need to sign into the Office 365 Admin service and then navigate to the Service Health Dashboard, then:
Add totals to your modern SharePoint views MC196871 Finally, a long-lost favourite has returned, column totals on modern SharePoint views. This allows you to specify different types of totals and calculations depending on the type of column you apply it to. For instance, you could sum the values in a number column or just count the number of rows in a view. A very simple feature that can add so much value to you SharePoint deployment. To add totals, simply edit or create a view and scroll down to the Totals section on the left. New OneDrive "Request Files" feature provides a secure area for external parties to submit documents MC194601 This feature allows you to ask another user to place files into a specific folder that you own. The folder must be in your own OneDrive for Business. To request files:
 After the recipient clicks on the invitation link, she selects her files to upload. You will be able to see all the collected files, but recipients will only be able to upload files. They won’t be able to access any contents within the selected folder and won’t be able to modify their own uploads once the upload is submitted. This is different to just sharing a folder in your OneDrive where the recipient can see and edit all documents in that folder. This could be useful if you are requesting suppliers to upload a tender proposal and you would not want suppliers seeing other supplier proposals or be able to modify their proposal once uploaded. More from Microsoft on creating a OneDrive file request https://support.office.com/article/create-a-file-request-f54aa7f8-2589-4421-b351-d415fc3b83af?storagetype=stage Greater control over presenter and attendee roles in Microsoft Teams meetings MC194602 Meeting organisers will now have an option to define presenter and attendee roles for meeting participants. Presenters will have full permissions in the meeting, whereas attendees cannot share content, take control, mute or remove other participants, admit people waiting in the lobby, or start/stop recording. Before or during the meeting, organisers can specify who is an attendee or a presenter through the meeting options panel. The available choices are as follows:
 To access the Meeting options panel:
The organiser and presenters will also be able to change the role of any individual participant (“Make an attendee” or “Make a presenter") during the meeting. Microsoft has backtracked on the future of OneNote 2016 MC194800 In 2018 Microsoft announced that it was no longer going to support the OneNote 2016 Windows App and removed it from the Office download centre in Office 365. However, and one can only assume that this is due to industry pressure, they have backtracked and confirmed that it will now be supported. From the 10th March 2020 it will once again be included in the Office download suite. Get more insights into your documents with File Hover Card extensions MC194911 When you hover over a document in a SharePoint library or the web portal for OneDrive for Business, you see a "File Hover Card" which provides insights into the document such as when it was last modified. Microsoft are now adding new features to show a Teams conversation or a meeting invite that references the document. The conversations displayed on the file card will only be visible to those users who took part in them. This means that you won’t see another person’s conversations that are not related to the file in question, and they won’t see yours.  In addition, the new File Hover Card feature will show you who has viewed your files. When someone views a file you own, SharePoint displays the people information and profile image of the viewer in the file hover card. Combined, you can now easily and quickly get real insights into your documents. Replace your classic SharePoint root site with a modern communication site MC196377 Until recently, your Office 365 environment had its main SharePoint root site (which should form the natural landing page for your company intranet) stuck in old classic SharePoint mode and therefore could not benefit from all of the new great features that SharePoint modern sites offer. Well no longer. Now you can create a new modern communication site and then ask your IT Admin to promote that as the new root site. Your root site is https://contoso.sharepoint.com (where contoso is replaced by your domain name. If you have data in your existing root site then do not worry. The old root site in not overwritten, it is simply given a new URL. More from Microsoft on modernising your root site https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/modern-root-site Bookmark and save files for later With this feature you will now be able to bookmark files and folders across OneDrive and SharePoint for later access. To bookmark a document, just select it in the SharePoint library or through the OneDrive web portal and on the Ribbon click the new "Save for Later" icon. You will then see an aggregate of everything you have saved in the "Saved for later" section in the left-hand menu of your OneDrive web portal, making it easy for you to quickly get back to your important documents that you did not have time to read or those you regularly need to access. Easily add and share emails from Outlook to a Microsoft Teams channel MC198124 New integration between Outlook and Teams makes it easy to collaborate no matter where the conversation is taking place. Teams has always allowed you to forward an email to a Teams channel so that it can be visible to all members of the channel and also to enable internal channel discussions related to the email. For example, you receive an email from a client related to a project you are working on and you need to share this email with the project team. Previously, the only option was to forward the email to everyone "who might be interested". With Teams, you could forward the email to the correct project channel and then start a conversation with the specific project team members who need to be engaged, whilst making it visible to any other project team members to keep them informed. Much more efficient for everyone, reduces email clutter and makes the email and surrounding conversation discoverable both during and after the project closure. With this new enhancement rolling out in 2020, rather than forwarding the email to the channel, you can move and share the conversation from Outlook, including attachments, into a Teams chat or channel conversation simply by clicking on the ‘"Share to Teams" button in Outlook. However, this is not just a one way process, you will also be able to take a Teams conversation and share this as an Outlook email by clicking on the more options ("…") icon in a conversation. As mentioned, these changes will start rolling out early next year, however there is nothing to stop you preparing for this improved way of working by planning your use of Teams and how you can use the current "forward an email" feature. More from Microsoft on what's new in Microsoft Teams https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-teams-microsoft-ignite-2019/ba-p/937025 Microsoft again recognised by Gartner as a Leader in Content Services Platforms Concerned about the future of SharePoint as your companies central document store? Then, for the 3rd year in a row Gartner has identified SharePoint as the leading content management platform. Gartner measures and compares the leading platforms using the following characteristics:
More from Microsoft on Gartner's report https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/12/12/microsoft-again-leader-2019-gartner-content-services-platforms-magic-quadrant-report/ Simplify access to key applications from within Office 365 MC198313 The Office 365 app launcher (the 9 dots in the top left when signed into Office 365) provides each user with access to all the applications they are licenced or authorised to use. Your users can also access the list of applications from the Office 365 home page. Currently, your users can pin their favourite applications via the Office 365 app launcher by viewing all apps and then clicking the three vertical dots to open the sub-menu against a specific application. The pinned applications always appear at the top of the Office 365 app launcher and the remaining applications will be shown for each user in the order in which they have been most frequently accessed by the user. In addition, a feature that has existed in Office 365 for a while, allowed administrators to create company specific items on the Office 365 app launcher that could open other line of business applications or external websites. However, there was no way to control where these appeared on each individual user's Office 365 app launcher and therefore could disappear off the initial view and be "hidden" behind the "All apps" menu. This could cause confusion and training issues as each user may have a different view and not easily know where to find the key company applications. With this change, only administrators can pin applications (maximum of 3) and this will apply to all users, who will no longer be able to override this. So, what are the benefits? You company now selects and pins the three key applications to everyone's Office 365 app launcher, and this will consistently show no matter if the user uses the Office 365 app launcher or the Office 365 Home page. Secondly, administrators can now make better use of creating company specific "apps" to open other line of business applications or resources. Together, these should simplify the training of users on the use of the Office 365 app launcher and provide for a more consistent implementation. More from Microsoft on customising the app launcher https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/manage/customize-the-app-launcher?view=o365-worldwide Outlook on the web - improved access to attachments MC198342 This change only applies to your users who use Outlook on the web and not the desktop version. The change will allow your users to quickly and easily see all files they have sent and received as attachments.  Once this change has been rolled out, a new paperclip icon will appear at the bottom of the left navigation column in Outlook. When users go to the Files view, they'll see all the files they have sent and received as attachments from their inbox without having to filter emails for those with attachments and then open each email to see if it contains the correct attachment. More control over your intranet pages with modern SharePoint image resizing MC198528 SharePoint enables great intranets to be built using out-of-the-box features and now Microsoft is introducing, from February 2020, the ability to resize an image from within the modern page.  The modern SharePoint site is comprised of web parts, the building blocks of the page. The Image web part lets an editor insert an image on a page, whether from their SharePoint site, their computer, or an external web location and with this update, page editors will also be able to resize images in the image web part. Powerful addition to the comments capability in Word, Excel and PowerPoint MC198554 The ability to add comments within the Office Product suite has come a long way from those early days. Comments are now threaded allowing greater collaboration and Microsoft then introduced the ability to "@mention" a colleague from within the comment, and this would send them an email with a link to open the document to view and respond to the comment. With this change, when a user gets an email notification that someone has @mentioned them or who has replied to their comment, the email may now show both the comment thread and the surrounding document context, without requiring them to open the document.  In addition, users who receive the email will be able to reply to the comment without needing to open the document. However, please note that this capability will roll out to the web version of Word, Excel and PowerPoint first and then the windows desktop versions later in the year. More from Microsoft on using @mention in comments https://support.office.com/article/use-mention-in-comments-to-tag-someone-for-feedback-644bf689-31a0-4977-a4fb-afe01820c1fd Integrate Office 365 To-Do with Siri shortcuts During the last few months of 2019, Microsoft launched a suite of new To-Do features for iPhone and iPad users. To-Do is the Office 365 all-in-one task management app that consolidates your tasks from Outlook, Planner and personal tasks you enter directly into the app. Microsoft has now integrated To-Do into the Siri shortcut capability available on iOS. Not familiar with Siri shortcuts? Siri shortcuts are designed to take the normal actions you use in various apps and allow you to add them to Siri. Through the Shortcuts app you can also run a variety of automations, such as "open a list when I get to a particluar location". More from Microsoft on how Siri shortcuts can be integrated to the Office 365 To-Do app https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-to-do-blog/discover-all-our-latest-features-on-ios-siri-shortcuts-share/ba-p/1082376 Author: SO365 Insights Outlook on the web - Meeting Insights MC191699 Meeting Insights makes it easy to prepare for meetings. When you click on a meeting event in Outlook on the web calendar, Outlook will suggest content (like emails and files) that it feels is related to the event or the attendees. Content is tailored for each user and users will only see content they are authorised to see. Therefore, meeting participants may not see the same suggested content. This is a nice feature as it may suggest content you are not aware of or provide quick access to related content. The limitation is that the feature will only be useful to those individuals who use Outlook on the web instead of the Outlook desktop app or even Teams Calendar! Sharing Reports for OneDrive MC191782 We all know how difficult it is to keep track of which of your documents in your OneDrive for Business have been shared externally. This change enables you to generate a report that shows how your OneDrive for Business content is being shared outside the organisation and therefore be able to take action should any of the content sharing need to be cancelled. You can generate the report from the OneDrive Settings -> "More Settings" page. OneDrive Settings is the cog icon in the ribbon when you open OneDrive via a browser. The report outputs a CSV file that contains a row for every unique user, permission, link, and item on that site. Microsoft To-Do - Notifications for shared lists MC195304 Microsoft To-Do has supported the ability to create a task list and then share it and all the tasks within with other people. More from Microsoft on creating and sharing lists: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/create-and-share-lists-4e5aeac6-8649-4813-aae5-2c2ddea2f292 This is a great additional feature that enhances the usability of To-Do. One drawback however was that when someone you shared the list with updated a task, you were not notified. Well this is all changing, during December 2019 Microsoft is rolling out automatic push notifications informing you of any changes in any of the task lists you share. Form customisation in SharePoint lists and libraries MC192839 You can now customise the order and visibility of fields on SharePoint forms in lists and libraries without the need to convert the form to a PowerApp. To use this new feature, click "Show/Hide Fields" in the "Edit Form" menu on the Form details pane - if you cannot see the "Edit Form" option and instead just see "Customize with PowerApps" then your Office 365 tenant has not been updated yet. Why is this useful? Overtime you may have columns on SharePoint lists and libraries that you no longer need, but you do not want to remove them from the List or Library as they contain useful legacy data. This new feature allows you to easily hide the redundant columns on the Form and also change the order of the remaining columns to make it more efficient for users to capture and edit information. Although this could be achieved by converting the Form to a PowerApp, this was a daunting process for many site owners and members.  Guest access to Microsoft Teams using a Gmail address MC194386 You will now be able to invite new external guests to your Team who only have a Gmail email address without needing them to create a Microsoft Account or an Office 365 Account. This will greatly increase the flexibility of teams when working with external guests. This change does require your IT department to change the settings in the Admin Center to enable this. More from Microsoft on Google federation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/active-directory/b2b/google-federation Author: SO365 Insights |
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