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 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 |
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