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 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  Some of these features are available today but others are due to roll out soon, so they might not be immediately available in your own Office 365 environment. Office 2013 Client Connectivity to Office 365 Services MC190854 From the 13th October 2020, Microsoft have warned that users accessing Office 365 services with older versions of Office products (e.g. Office 2013 or Office 2010) may suffer performance, instability or security issues. It is therefore critical that users of Office 365 ensure they are using the latest Office Products. This could impact clients with an Office 365 Business Essentials plan, who are using their own legacy office products or clients that are not upgrading to Windows 10. The other main Office 365 commercial products include the right to download and use the latest versions of Office so they should not be impacted. Use Tags in Microsoft Teams to organise and control large groups of users MC195755 Rolling out in Q1 2020 is the ability to tag users in a Microsoft Team – this is really applicable to Teams that have large memberships and you want to categorise or group individuals in the team so that you can target messages and conversations at them. Using tags, team owners can organise users based on a common attribute, such as role, project, skill, training, or location. After team members have tags, the team owner or a tagged team member can create a channel post, @tagName, that notifies only the users who have that tag (in this case @tagName). Tags are team-based; you have to a be a member of a team in order to use an associated tag. For example, you could send a message to all cashiers in a store or all developers in a software specific release stream. To manage tags, click on the Team name (not the general channel) and then select Settings. Tags should appear at the bottom of the list of settings once it has been enabled by Microsoft New Team Tag Settings Subscribe individuals in your company to be notified about Office 365 incidents MC196504 Microsoft is now rolling out the ability to subscribe up to 2 individuals to receive notifications of new incidents affecting you Office 365 service. Previously, only your admins could view incidents by signing into the Office 365 Health dashboard – often this would only occur after users started complaining that something was not working. To subscribe to the new service, you will need to sign into the Office 365 Admin service and then navigate to the Service Health Dashboard, then:
Add totals to your modern SharePoint views MC196871 Finally, a long-lost favourite has returned, column totals on modern SharePoint views. This allows you to specify different types of totals and calculations depending on the type of column you apply it to. For instance, you could sum the values in a number column or just count the number of rows in a view. A very simple feature that can add so much value to you SharePoint deployment. To add totals, simply edit or create a view and scroll down to the Totals section on the left. New OneDrive "Request Files" feature provides a secure area for external parties to submit documents MC194601 This feature allows you to ask another user to place files into a specific folder that you own. The folder must be in your own OneDrive for Business. To request files:
 After the recipient clicks on the invitation link, she selects her files to upload. You will be able to see all the collected files, but recipients will only be able to upload files. They won’t be able to access any contents within the selected folder and won’t be able to modify their own uploads once the upload is submitted. This is different to just sharing a folder in your OneDrive where the recipient can see and edit all documents in that folder. This could be useful if you are requesting suppliers to upload a tender proposal and you would not want suppliers seeing other supplier proposals or be able to modify their proposal once uploaded. More from Microsoft on creating a OneDrive file request https://support.office.com/article/create-a-file-request-f54aa7f8-2589-4421-b351-d415fc3b83af?storagetype=stage Greater control over presenter and attendee roles in Microsoft Teams meetings MC194602 Meeting organisers will now have an option to define presenter and attendee roles for meeting participants. Presenters will have full permissions in the meeting, whereas attendees cannot share content, take control, mute or remove other participants, admit people waiting in the lobby, or start/stop recording. Before or during the meeting, organisers can specify who is an attendee or a presenter through the meeting options panel. The available choices are as follows:
 To access the Meeting options panel:
The organiser and presenters will also be able to change the role of any individual participant (“Make an attendee” or “Make a presenter") during the meeting. Microsoft has backtracked on the future of OneNote 2016 MC194800 In 2018 Microsoft announced that it was no longer going to support the OneNote 2016 Windows App and removed it from the Office download centre in Office 365. However, and one can only assume that this is due to industry pressure, they have backtracked and confirmed that it will now be supported. From the 10th March 2020 it will once again be included in the Office download suite. Get more insights into your documents with File Hover Card extensions MC194911 When you hover over a document in a SharePoint library or the web portal for OneDrive for Business, you see a "File Hover Card" which provides insights into the document such as when it was last modified. Microsoft are now adding new features to show a Teams conversation or a meeting invite that references the document. The conversations displayed on the file card will only be visible to those users who took part in them. This means that you won’t see another person’s conversations that are not related to the file in question, and they won’t see yours.  In addition, the new File Hover Card feature will show you who has viewed your files. When someone views a file you own, SharePoint displays the people information and profile image of the viewer in the file hover card. Combined, you can now easily and quickly get real insights into your documents. Replace your classic SharePoint root site with a modern communication site MC196377 Until recently, your Office 365 environment had its main SharePoint root site (which should form the natural landing page for your company intranet) stuck in old classic SharePoint mode and therefore could not benefit from all of the new great features that SharePoint modern sites offer. Well no longer. Now you can create a new modern communication site and then ask your IT Admin to promote that as the new root site. Your root site is https://contoso.sharepoint.com (where contoso is replaced by your domain name. If you have data in your existing root site then do not worry. The old root site in not overwritten, it is simply given a new URL. More from Microsoft on modernising your root site https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/modern-root-site Bookmark and save files for later With this feature you will now be able to bookmark files and folders across OneDrive and SharePoint for later access. To bookmark a document, just select it in the SharePoint library or through the OneDrive web portal and on the Ribbon click the new "Save for Later" icon. You will then see an aggregate of everything you have saved in the "Saved for later" section in the left-hand menu of your OneDrive web portal, making it easy for you to quickly get back to your important documents that you did not have time to read or those you regularly need to access. Easily add and share emails from Outlook to a Microsoft Teams channel MC198124 New integration between Outlook and Teams makes it easy to collaborate no matter where the conversation is taking place. Teams has always allowed you to forward an email to a Teams channel so that it can be visible to all members of the channel and also to enable internal channel discussions related to the email. For example, you receive an email from a client related to a project you are working on and you need to share this email with the project team. Previously, the only option was to forward the email to everyone "who might be interested". With Teams, you could forward the email to the correct project channel and then start a conversation with the specific project team members who need to be engaged, whilst making it visible to any other project team members to keep them informed. Much more efficient for everyone, reduces email clutter and makes the email and surrounding conversation discoverable both during and after the project closure. With this new enhancement rolling out in 2020, rather than forwarding the email to the channel, you can move and share the conversation from Outlook, including attachments, into a Teams chat or channel conversation simply by clicking on the ‘"Share to Teams" button in Outlook. However, this is not just a one way process, you will also be able to take a Teams conversation and share this as an Outlook email by clicking on the more options ("…") icon in a conversation. As mentioned, these changes will start rolling out early next year, however there is nothing to stop you preparing for this improved way of working by planning your use of Teams and how you can use the current "forward an email" feature. More from Microsoft on what's new in Microsoft Teams https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-teams-microsoft-ignite-2019/ba-p/937025 Microsoft again recognised by Gartner as a Leader in Content Services Platforms Concerned about the future of SharePoint as your companies central document store? Then, for the 3rd year in a row Gartner has identified SharePoint as the leading content management platform. Gartner measures and compares the leading platforms using the following characteristics:
More from Microsoft on Gartner's report https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/12/12/microsoft-again-leader-2019-gartner-content-services-platforms-magic-quadrant-report/ Simplify access to key applications from within Office 365 MC198313 The Office 365 app launcher (the 9 dots in the top left when signed into Office 365) provides each user with access to all the applications they are licenced or authorised to use. Your users can also access the list of applications from the Office 365 home page. Currently, your users can pin their favourite applications via the Office 365 app launcher by viewing all apps and then clicking the three vertical dots to open the sub-menu against a specific application. The pinned applications always appear at the top of the Office 365 app launcher and the remaining applications will be shown for each user in the order in which they have been most frequently accessed by the user. In addition, a feature that has existed in Office 365 for a while, allowed administrators to create company specific items on the Office 365 app launcher that could open other line of business applications or external websites. However, there was no way to control where these appeared on each individual user's Office 365 app launcher and therefore could disappear off the initial view and be "hidden" behind the "All apps" menu. This could cause confusion and training issues as each user may have a different view and not easily know where to find the key company applications. With this change, only administrators can pin applications (maximum of 3) and this will apply to all users, who will no longer be able to override this. So, what are the benefits? You company now selects and pins the three key applications to everyone's Office 365 app launcher, and this will consistently show no matter if the user uses the Office 365 app launcher or the Office 365 Home page. Secondly, administrators can now make better use of creating company specific "apps" to open other line of business applications or resources. Together, these should simplify the training of users on the use of the Office 365 app launcher and provide for a more consistent implementation. More from Microsoft on customising the app launcher https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/manage/customize-the-app-launcher?view=o365-worldwide Outlook on the web - improved access to attachments MC198342 This change only applies to your users who use Outlook on the web and not the desktop version. The change will allow your users to quickly and easily see all files they have sent and received as attachments.  Once this change has been rolled out, a new paperclip icon will appear at the bottom of the left navigation column in Outlook. When users go to the Files view, they'll see all the files they have sent and received as attachments from their inbox without having to filter emails for those with attachments and then open each email to see if it contains the correct attachment. More control over your intranet pages with modern SharePoint image resizing MC198528 SharePoint enables great intranets to be built using out-of-the-box features and now Microsoft is introducing, from February 2020, the ability to resize an image from within the modern page.  The modern SharePoint site is comprised of web parts, the building blocks of the page. The Image web part lets an editor insert an image on a page, whether from their SharePoint site, their computer, or an external web location and with this update, page editors will also be able to resize images in the image web part. Powerful addition to the comments capability in Word, Excel and PowerPoint MC198554 The ability to add comments within the Office Product suite has come a long way from those early days. Comments are now threaded allowing greater collaboration and Microsoft then introduced the ability to "@mention" a colleague from within the comment, and this would send them an email with a link to open the document to view and respond to the comment. With this change, when a user gets an email notification that someone has @mentioned them or who has replied to their comment, the email may now show both the comment thread and the surrounding document context, without requiring them to open the document.  In addition, users who receive the email will be able to reply to the comment without needing to open the document. However, please note that this capability will roll out to the web version of Word, Excel and PowerPoint first and then the windows desktop versions later in the year. More from Microsoft on using @mention in comments https://support.office.com/article/use-mention-in-comments-to-tag-someone-for-feedback-644bf689-31a0-4977-a4fb-afe01820c1fd Integrate Office 365 To-Do with Siri shortcuts During the last few months of 2019, Microsoft launched a suite of new To-Do features for iPhone and iPad users. To-Do is the Office 365 all-in-one task management app that consolidates your tasks from Outlook, Planner and personal tasks you enter directly into the app. Microsoft has now integrated To-Do into the Siri shortcut capability available on iOS. Not familiar with Siri shortcuts? Siri shortcuts are designed to take the normal actions you use in various apps and allow you to add them to Siri. Through the Shortcuts app you can also run a variety of automations, such as "open a list when I get to a particluar location". More from Microsoft on how Siri shortcuts can be integrated to the Office 365 To-Do app https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-to-do-blog/discover-all-our-latest-features-on-ios-siri-shortcuts-share/ba-p/1082376 Author: SO365 Insights  Outlook on the web - Meeting Insights MC191699 Meeting Insights makes it easy to prepare for meetings. When you click on a meeting event in Outlook on the web calendar, Outlook will suggest content (like emails and files) that it feels is related to the event or the attendees. Content is tailored for each user and users will only see content they are authorised to see. Therefore, meeting participants may not see the same suggested content. This is a nice feature as it may suggest content you are not aware of or provide quick access to related content. The limitation is that the feature will only be useful to those individuals who use Outlook on the web instead of the Outlook desktop app or even Teams Calendar! Sharing Reports for OneDrive MC191782 We all know how difficult it is to keep track of which of your documents in your OneDrive for Business have been shared externally. This change enables you to generate a report that shows how your OneDrive for Business content is being shared outside the organisation and therefore be able to take action should any of the content sharing need to be cancelled. You can generate the report from the OneDrive Settings -> "More Settings" page. OneDrive Settings is the cog icon in the ribbon when you open OneDrive via a browser. The report outputs a CSV file that contains a row for every unique user, permission, link, and item on that site. Microsoft To-Do - Notifications for shared lists MC195304 Microsoft To-Do has supported the ability to create a task list and then share it and all the tasks within with other people. More from Microsoft on creating and sharing lists: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/create-and-share-lists-4e5aeac6-8649-4813-aae5-2c2ddea2f292 This is a great additional feature that enhances the usability of To-Do. One drawback however was that when someone you shared the list with updated a task, you were not notified. Well this is all changing, during December 2019 Microsoft is rolling out automatic push notifications informing you of any changes in any of the task lists you share. Form customisation in SharePoint lists and libraries MC192839 You can now customise the order and visibility of fields on SharePoint forms in lists and libraries without the need to convert the form to a PowerApp. To use this new feature, click "Show/Hide Fields" in the "Edit Form" menu on the Form details pane - if you cannot see the "Edit Form" option and instead just see "Customize with PowerApps" then your Office 365 tenant has not been updated yet. Why is this useful? Overtime you may have columns on SharePoint lists and libraries that you no longer need, but you do not want to remove them from the List or Library as they contain useful legacy data. This new feature allows you to easily hide the redundant columns on the Form and also change the order of the remaining columns to make it more efficient for users to capture and edit information. Although this could be achieved by converting the Form to a PowerApp, this was a daunting process for many site owners and members.  Guest access to Microsoft Teams using a Gmail address MC194386 You will now be able to invite new external guests to your Team who only have a Gmail email address without needing them to create a Microsoft Account or an Office 365 Account. This will greatly increase the flexibility of teams when working with external guests. This change does require your IT department to change the settings in the Admin Center to enable this. More from Microsoft on Google federation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/active-directory/b2b/google-federation Author: SO365 Insights |
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