Office 365 Weekly Digest | December 8 – 14, 2019

Welcome to the December 8 – 14, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Twenty features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for OneDrive, Outlook, SharePoint, Stream, Teams, Excel and Office 365.

2020 sessions for existing event series are now available. The spotlight event of the week is the Customer Immersion Experience session “Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders” on Thursday, December 19th at 9am and 12pm Pacific.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include a summary of resources to help with the upgrade from Skype for Business to Teams, the announcement of the Teams Linux client, the OneDrive Roadmap summary for November 2019, updates to the Microsoft 365 Attack Simulator, and a look at how to support an internal campaign with video content via Yammer.

Noteworthy item highlights include the latest Microsoft 365 related updates on Microsoft Learn, how to automate the provisioning of selective Microsoft Teams with guest access, and new campaign views in Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week…

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Account manager ‘View account’ link change	57078	January CY2020	Added: 09 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 The ‘View account’ link in the account manager found in the header of Office 365 will now link to a new account management site called My Account. The site will include password reset, security information, privacy, and more.
Outlook for iOS: S/MIME automated certificate delivery	59404	Q2 CY2020	Added: 09 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – iOS Sign or encrypt messages in Outlook for iOS with company certificates issued via Microsoft Intune on enrolled devices.
3P apps in GCC tenants	55373	January CY2020	Added: 10 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams With this feature, GCC admins have the option to enable external third-party apps in Teams. By default, users in the tenant will continue to have the experience they have today. Admins must know that they take responsibility for compliance when enabling a Microsoft external app. Microsoft is compliant by disabling all external apps by default for users in the tenant.
Outlook on the web – Files view	59643	January CY2020	Added: 11 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Web Outlook on the web will release a view of all the files sent and received as attachments in your inbox. To access it, search for Files on the switcher bar that includes Mail, Calendar, People.
Outlook for Android: S/MIME with automated certificate delivery	59644	January CY2020	Added: 11 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Android Sign or encrypt messages in Outlook for Android with company certificates via mobile device management, enrolled devices.
Add participants to Teams Meetings chat	59664	December CY2019	Added: 12 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Today in private meeting chat threads, user don’t have functionality to easily add more participants to chat. This feature will add an entry point “Add participants” in the meeting chat header and users who are already part of the chat thread will be able to add more users to the meeting chat using this feature. This functionality currently exist in group chat and it will work exactly the same way as group chat.
Updates to Office.com and Office 365 App Launcher	59667	January CY2020	Added: 12 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 There are two changes coming for Office.com and the Office 365 App Launcher: (1) Admins will have the ability to pin applications to Office.com and the Office 365 app launcher through the Azure Active Directory admin portal. Global admins, App admins and Cloud app admin roles can be used to pin apps for users. (2) Office.com and the Office 365 app launcher will show the same set of apps. Recently used apps will now be pinned for users on both. We’ve removed the ability to self-pin apps because the system now pins recently used apps automatically. In both cases, users have the ability to unpin apps that have been pinned automatically from recent usage or manually by an admin.
Microsoft Teams – Phone System Additions for GCC	59663	Q2 CY2020	Added: 12 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams 6 additions for Phone System for GCC customers which helps enhance Teams Calling. These features were initially available in commercial and now are available to GCC customers. This includes (1) Teams users being able to screen share to SFB users, (2) Callers can transfer directly to voicemail, (3) GCC users can configure voicemail settings directly in the Teams client, (4) Reverse Number Lookup supported based on AAD or Telco provided data, (5) GCC users can use the power bar slash command to make PSTN calls, (6) and GCC users of Teams in Chrome can send and receive video.
Store recordings in-region storage when Stream is not available in Go Local	59665	Q2 CY2020	Added: 12 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Stream Teams meeting recordings are stored in Microsoft Stream cloud storage. Tenant admins have an option to go the admin center to turn ON/OFF “Allow cloud recording” setting for Teams meetings. Cloud recordings are currently not allowed/enabled for customers where Stream service is not available in the corresponding Go Local region. We are going to change the existing behavior by enabling “Allow cloud recording” and turning it ON by default. This change will store the recordings in the respective in-region data center. This change will take affect beginning February 3, 2020.
Outlook for Mac: Actionable Messages	45556	Q2 CY2020	Added: 12 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Mac Support actions in emails created with adaptive cards. Developers can use adaptive cards to create email message with actions such as Approve or survey responses.
Excel on mobile (iOS): XLOOKUP and XMATCH	54948	Q4 CY2019	Added: 12 December 2019 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Excel – iOS XLOOKUP and XMATCH are successors to the iconic VLOOKUP and MATCH functions.
Excel on Universal: XLOOKUP and XMATCH	54949	Q4 CY2019	Added: 12 December 2019 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Excel – Windows XLOOKUP and XMATCH are successors to the iconic VLOOKUP and MATCH functions.
Excel on Windows: XLOOKUP and XMATCH	54951	Q4 CY2019	Added: 12 December 2019 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Excel – Windows XLOOKUP and XMATCH are successors to the iconic VLOOKUP and MATCH functions.
Excel on Mac: XLOOKUP and XMATCH	54952	Q4 CY2019	Added: 12 December 2019 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Excel – Mac XLOOKUP and XMATCH are successors to the iconic VLOOKUP and MATCH functions.
Microsoft Productivity Score	46529	Q4 CY2019	Added: 12 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 Microsoft Productivity Score is an analytics service that gives you insights that transform how work gets done. It will provide you visibility into how your organization works, insights that identify where you can enable improved experiences so people can reach their goals, and actions to update skills and systems so everyone can do their best work.
SharePoint lists – Auto-save column operations (Show / Hide / Reorder)	59732	January CY2020	Added: 13 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint This allows people to view SharePoint lists as others intended, whether they reorder items, hide or show columns – without explicitly saving the current view or creating a new one.
SharePoint – Format list and library JSON using Monaco code editor	59733	January CY2020	Added: 13 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint This allows people formatting JSON scripting the ability to use Visual Studio code editor as their preferred coding tool; the “Monaco Editor” is what powers Visual Studio code.
View labeled & protected Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business using Office Online apps	49448	January CY2020	Added: 13 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Office Online Ability to open labeled and protected documents stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business using the Office Online apps.
Automatic sensitivity labeling in Office apps on Windows	49444	Q2 CY2020	Added: 13 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Office Automatic sensitivity labeling based on content inspection is built natively into Office apps (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook) on Windows (in the Office 365 subscription version of the Office apps).
Automatic classification and labeling of documents in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business	49446	Q2 CY2020	Added: 13 December 2019 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive, SharePoint Automatic classification and labeling of documents (based on content inspection) stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Microsoft Teams: Identify your upgrade approach

Determine the most suitable approach based on your current Skype for Business implementation and upgrade goals. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Understand common scenarios and upgrade approaches, (2) Visualize the user experience for each approach, and (3) Determine the optimal upgrade approach for your organization. IT Admins are the primary audience for this session.

Make the switch from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams: End User Guidance

Designed specifically for Skype for Business end users, this course offers everything you need to help make the transition to Microsoft Teams. We’ll focus on the core communication capabilities you use today, chat and meetings, as well as provide an orientation to additional collaboration functionality Teams has to offer. The session is also available on demand at https://aka.ms/fromskypetoteamsondemand.

Learn Tips for Taking Teams to the Next Level: Part 1 – Effective Workspaces

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips & Tricks sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. In Part 1 – Effective Workspaces, you will explore ways to determine the best approach for creating workspaces for projects and workgroups. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Decide if your team is best served by a team and channels or a group chat and meetings, (2) Create a workspace for your team to provide the best collaboration experience, (3) Use a personal team to simplify your productivity, and (4) Determine best practices for Teams. Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Have you spent significant time and resources to prepare for a meeting and still felt it wasn’t productive? Have you attended a meeting only to leave feeling like not much was accomplished? Join this class to learn how to make your meetings engaging, productive and effective. Microsoft Teams can help make your meetings worth showing up for. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Use Teams for your entire meeting experience, (2) Record your meeting, making it easy for those who couldn’t attend to get caught up, (3) Keep important meetings at your fingertips by pinning them for easy access, and (4) Assess which audio and video devices are best for your meeting needs. You can access the recorded version of this session on-demand at Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams – On Demand.

Microsoft Teams: Ready your end users

Design a user readiness strategy to help your users love and adopt Teams. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Recognize factors that influence user acceptance and adoption, (2) Define core value messaging for Teams in your organization, and (3) Outline your awareness, training and support activities. The audience for this session is: User Readiness/Change Manager.

Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

This 60-minute session introduces you to the key activities needed to get started with Microsoft Teams today. From setting your profile, to running a meeting, users will leave this session with the foundation needed to use Teams with confidence. The session is also available on demand at https://aka.ms/teamsgettingstartedondemand.

Microsoft Teams: Implement your upgrade approach

Execute your defined upgrade approach as part of your formal upgrade plan. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Recognize the upgrade settings in your O365 tenant admin portal, (2) Understand technical tips and considerations for a successful upgrade, and (3) Apply the appropriate settings in the Portal to execute your upgrade. The primary audience for this session is IT Admins.

Learn Tips for Taking Teams to the Next Level: Part 2 – Get More from Teams

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips & Tricks sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. In Part 2 – Get More from Teams, you will learn tips and tricks for managing and organizing work and communications in Teams. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Implement strategies to manage and organize your work, (2) Leverage formatting best practices to help get your messages noticed (and responded to), (3) Easily find files, chats and projects, and (4) Simplify your workday. Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Discover everything you need to facilitate a successful upgrade to Teams. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Understand why a formal plan is crucial for upgrade success, (2) Identify the steps to the upgrade success framework, (3) Recognize common attributes of successful customers, and (4) Create and implement their own upgrade plan. The audience for this session is All (Business Sponsors, IT Admins, User Readiness/Change Manager, Project Lead).

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Today’s workforce can work from anywhere, on any device, and on any app. Security teams need to understand threat signals from disconnected products and optimize security with minimal complexity. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Safeguard users from malware attacks such as phishing and spoofing with Office 365, (2) Use the Windows Defender ecosystem to proactively monitor and protect your users, (3) Utilize Office 365 ATP to help protect users from bad links and attachments, and (4) Let machine learning and automation protect users from threats. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft Teams: Seamless Collaboration with Microsoft 365

Are you still sending an e-mail with an attachment to your teammates when you want to collaborate on a file? How fast do they respond? How do you know if they are working on the file? How do you manage version control? With Microsoft 365 tools for teamwork, you can seamlessly collaborate on files with your team members. Using Microsoft Teams, you can invite your teammates into an environment where they can effectively collaborate and engage in a persistent conversation. Join us for this session and explore how to avoid productivity sinkholes and increase productivity. This interactive 2-hour session will give you the opportunity to test drive Microsoft Teams in a live cloud environment. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and experience how they can work for you. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Identity, Apps, Data and Devices

Identity is at the center of security: don’t compromise when it comes to your company’s valuable information. Join us to explore how to use secure authentication, govern access, get comprehensive protection and set the right identity foundation. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Enable password protection, (2) Bring multi-factor authentication to your Windows 10 users, (3) Protect your users and data through Office 365 multi-factor authentication, and (4) Use conditional access to protect across devices, locations and apps. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft Teams: Enabling Real-time Collaboration for Cross-functional Teams

How do you bring various stakeholders together across multiple teams to achieve your goal? Do you wish you could reduce the number of meetings or e-mails while still being able to solicit feedback, keep everyone informed, and get consensus? Join us to explore how to bring everything together in a shared workspace with Microsoft Teams. Learn how to chat, meet, share files, and work with other business applications to effectively engage others. This interactive 2-hour session will give you the opportunity to try it for yourself and test drive Microsoft Teams in a live cloud environment. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and experience how they can work for you. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft IT Showcase: IT expert roundtable – Modernizing our SharePoint experiences

When: Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at 10:00am PT | In this webinar, experts from both the product group, and the IT side of Microsoft will share candid insights and best practices around modernizing employee experiences including Enterprise Search, Microsoft’s home site (MSW), and the latest on how we manage our authoritative portals. Our experts will also take your questions about our strategy for delivering targeted communications and enabling employees to find the content they need.

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

Your business needs to control how sensitive data is managed. Join us and explore how to assess your compliance risk, protect sensitive and business critical data, and respond efficiently to data discovery requests. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Simplify assessment of compliance risk, (2) Integrate protection and governance of data, and (3) Intelligently respond to data discovery requests. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Data needs to be protected wherever it’s stored and whenever it travels, and you need the tools to monitor policy violations and risky behavior. Join us to explore how to implement a comprehensive and integrated approach across devices, apps, cloud services, and on-premises. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Identify, monitor and automatically protect sensitive information across Office 365, (2) Help classify and protect documents and email, and (3) Use policies to enable BYOD scenarios by protecting data at the app level. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft IT Showcase: IT expert roundtable – Transforming how employees collaborate on files

When: Wednesday, February 26, 2020 at 10:00am PT | For today’s mobile workforce, providing users with access to the content they need at any time, from any place, and on any device is important. During this webinar, experts from the Microsoft Core Services Engineering and Operations (CSEO) team answers audience questions about our strategy for file management across mobile web, sync and sharing using OneDrive, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.

BLOG ROUNDUP

Resources to help customers with upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams

Welcome to the first in a series of blog posts focused on successfully upgrading from Skype for Business to Teams. In this series, we will share resources, best practices and highlight success stories of customers to help you identify the most suitable path and develop user readiness strategies for your organization. November was an eventful month for Microsoft Teams. During Microsoft Ignite at Orlando and Microsoft Ignite the Tour event in Paris, we shared Skype for Business to Teams upgrade guidance during numerous sessions, workshops, and 1-1 conversations. It’s been great to hear feedback from customers about their Teams experience and the upgrade resources they’ve found most helpful.

Microsoft Teams is now available on Linux

Microsoft Teams is now available for Linux users in public preview, enabling high quality collaboration experiences for the open source community at work and in educational institutions. Users can download the native Linux packages in .deb and .rpm formats here. We are constantly improving based on community feedback, so please download and submit feedback based on your experience. The Microsoft Teams client is the first Microsoft 365 app that is coming to Linux desktops, and will support all of Teams’ core capabilities. Teams is the hub for teamwork that brings together chat, video meetings, calling, and collaboration on Office 365 documents and business processes within a single, integrated experience.

OneDrive Roadmap Roundup- November 2019

As we wrap up an exciting quarter filled with innovations and announcements, we have some great features to share with you. Here is the latest and greatest that landed in production in the month of November 2019: (1) Save for Later – ability to bookmark files and folders across OneDrive and SharePoint for later access, (2) Request files – you can create special links to request files from others, and (3) Language localization for OneDrive emails.

Announcing Updates to the M365 Attack Simulator

The Microsoft 365 Attack Simulation team is pleased to announce the release of several new features in our phish simulation tool. This includes: (1) an attachment-based phishing attack, (2) the ability to filter your simulation user targets by directory metadata like title, city, and department, (3) the inclusion of IP addresses and client data in the simulation detail report, (4) Simulation phish message simulations are included in your user phish submission reports. We know that phishing attacks that use attachments are very popular and an effective way for attackers to get malicious code to run on your endpoints. Teaching your users to be wary of attachments can reduce your overall risk. To help you educate your users of this risk, we’ve added a new type of simulation attack called Spear Phishing (Attachment) to the catalog.

Support your next campaign with video content via Yammer

Yammer can empower employees at every level to engage with video. Depending on the audience, message and timeline there is a video option for almost every initiative. Whether your team has the budget, equipment and experience of a highly professional video production or your organization has enabled employees to broadcast from their webcams, each has unique opportunity to support your core messages. We’ve seen some best practices from our own experiences as well as our customers when it comes to video and campaigns. Some organizations use the high-end production event to kick off an organizational wide event. Employees can ask questions before, during and after this event. And even if they miss the live streaming the recording is there for them to watch at their convenience. Following the large gathering, local groups or departments can host specific broadcast type of live events. And then as the employees are participating within the campaign can join in by themselves via their own recording devices.

NOTEWORTHY

Microsoft Office 365 now available from new Swiss datacenter regions

Microsoft Office 365 is now available for organizations and enterprises from our new cloud datacenter regions in Switzerland making it the third new geography launched in 2019. Earlier this year, Microsoft became the first global provider to deliver cloud services from datacenter regions in Africa and the Middle East by opening new geographies in South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. In 2020, we’ll continue to expand by delivering Office 365 from new datacenter regions in Germany and Norway. The new datacenter regions offer the same reliability and performance as our globally delivered Office 365 service combined with data residency in Switzerland. This provides our customers trusted cloud services that help them meet local compliance and policy requirements. In addition, replication of data in multiple datacenters across Switzerland gives customers reliable in-country protection for business continuity in both pure and hybrid scenarios.

What’s new for Microsoft 365 on Microsoft Learn

Since our previous post, where we introduced Microsoft 365 as being available on Microsoft Learn, there has been a lot going on in the learning space! An incredible week of Microsoft Ignite 2019 wrapped up in Orlando, Florida, while our Microsoft Ignite The Tour has officially kicked off across the globe – look for a city near you! We launched five new learning paths at Microsoft Ignite aligned to some of the most critical items IT is facing today – organizational security, upgrading to Microsoft Teams, and upgrading to the latest version of Office. Another announcement we’re extremely excited to make is that we have now localized twelve of our Microsoft 365 learning paths in six different languages – French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Chinese (Traditional)! At Microsoft we’re always committed to making learning more accessible by helping scale it across the world.

Automating the Provisioning of Selective Microsoft Teams with Guest Access

Microsoft’s Michael Mukalian is an architect in the Philadelphia MTC (Microsoft Technology Center). In his role Michael engages a number of large enterprise customers in regulated industries. A frequent request that has been sent to Michael is the ability to automate the provision of selective Microsoft Teams with guest access. Michael has helped customers to achieve this using services that come with Microsoft 365. To help spread the word on approaches that customers can look at as they consider their Teams guest access options Michael has published a series of posts detailing the approach and services leveraged to attain selective Teams provisioning with guest access.

Introducing campaign views in Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection

We’re thrilled to announce the public preview of campaign views in Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection. The additional context and visibility available in these campaign views provide the full story of how attackers targeted the organization and its users and how their defenses held up (or not). Security teams can quickly: (1) See summary details about the campaign, including when the campaign started, the sending pattern and timeline, how big the campaign was and how many users fell prey to it, (2) See the list of IP addresses and senders used to orchestrate the attack, (3) Assess which messages were blocked, ZAPped, delivered to junk or quarantine, or allowed into the inbox, (4) See all the URLs that were manifested in the attack, and (5) Learn if there are users that have fallen prey to any attacks and clicked on the phish URL. | Related: Introducing the integrated Microsoft Threat Protection solution (public preview)

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

UPCOMING EVENTS

BLOG ROUNDUP

NOTEWORTHY

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