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 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 Microsoft Planner is a great tool. But, for those of us that would like to create a template plan that can be reused across project or client teams then it is painful. However, a recent Planner update now enables you to take any plan and to create a copy. For those in the know, this also creates a new Office 365 Group.  OK, that's a good start. But, I still cannot go to an existing or new Team and import that plan as a template. Microsoft say they are working on this, but as usual there is no commitment on delivery date. The only way to currently create a new client or project Team using a “template plan” is as follows. Beware, this needs some careful coordination and planning!
A somewhat painful exercise, but it does achieve the desired outcome. We really need Microsoft to provide a better way to achieve this.  You might be thinking that in Teams you have the option to create a Team from an existing Team, so perhaps I create a template Team, with my Planner and default tabs and then use that when creating a new Team. Well, guess what, although your Planner tab appears in the new Team, there is no Planner behind it, and you have to start from scratch. If you want to follow Microsoft’s progress with template plans, or post your own comment to them, then go here and vote: https://planner.uservoice.com/forums/330525-microsoft-planner-feedback-forum/suggestions/11332998-provide-the-ability-to-create-plan-templates-with Author: Chris Kaye 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 |
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