Office 365 Weekly

Office 365 Weekly Digest | June 30 – July 6, 2019

Welcome to the June 30 – July 6, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Six features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week with a split between Outlook (mobile) and Teams. One update of note is the upcoming shift to the new Outlook on the web experience as the default.

There are two new events, both Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) sessions – one for Yammer on July 10th and one for Education on July 16th. The spotlight event for this week is the “Driving Adoption with Microsoft 365 Integrated Services” webinars on July 8th and 9th.

The June 2019 look back are the focus of last week’s blog posts, including Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint. There are also more details on the new Outlook on the web, and significant improvements to the Office app experience in virtual environments.

Noteworthy item highlights include a Microsoft IT Showcase IT Expert Roundtable on Modern Meetings, the new Question and Answer features in Yammer, General Availability of the new Microsoft Hybrid Agent, and lots of new Office videos focused on recommended security actions in the first 30 days.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Microsoft Teams – Give Feedback	52884	August CY2019	Added: 01 July 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Do you have suggestions on how to make Teams better? Users will now be able to share feedback directly with Microsoft from the Teams app. Simply navigate to the “Help” menu and select “Give Feedback”.
Outlook for iOS – Discover Office files	45071	August CY2019	Added: 02 July 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook iOS Find Office 365 files that are connected to you based on ongoing collaboration activity within your company.
Microsoft Teams – @-less mentions	52966	July CY2019	Added: 03 July 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Get someone’s attention in a channel conversation or a group chat with @-less mentions. Simply start typing a person’s name and select the right contact from the list of suggestions. They will receive a notification, which they can click to go directly into the point in the conversation where they were mentioned.
Microsoft Teams – Channel Cross Posting	52393	July CY2019	Added: 03 July 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Do you need to share information with multiple teams simultaneously? You can now post a message to multiple channels in a single step. Channels can be part of the same team or a different one. Additionally, any edits that you make to the post will be reflected across all channels.
Outlook on the web – new experience GA	49202	July CY2019	Added: 03 July 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook Web The new Outlook on the web will become the default experience and we will remove the opt-in toggle. With this change users will not be able to move back or see the classic experience. This change will override the PowerShell command which previously blocked the opt-in toggle.
Microsoft Intune certificate delivery for S/MIME encryption in Outlook for iOS	52961	Q4 CY2019	Added: 03 July 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook iOS Microsoft Intune support for delivery of S/MIME signing and encryption certificates to iOS devices for secure mobile email. S/MIME for Microsoft Outlook on iOS can be configured and enabled using Microsoft Intune app configuration. Customers will be able use S/MIME with Outlook mobile on iOS to support email authenticity (signing) and data protection (encryption).

UPCOMING EVENTS

“HLS Show Me How” Webcast – Driving Adoption with Microsoft 365 Integrated Services

As organizations look to roll out various services from Microsoft 365 to their users invariably 2 questions consistently pop up. 1- How do I support and educate our users to help them adopt and improve their workstreams? 2- How do the services work together and when and where do we use what in order to provide a rich collaboration platform that abstracts complexity for users? In this two-part webcast “Show Me How” series Microsoft’s Michael Gannotti will walk attendees through the use of various Microsoft 365 services and solutions to create an end-to-end, scalable, solution for training and engaging organizational employees. Session attendees can follow along step-by-step and set up their own POC/Pilot environments for testing and use. | Note: There are .ics files available for download to add the events to your calendar.

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.

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 Tips and Tricks (Part 1)

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips and Tricks sessions offer insights, best practices and advanced functionality to help optimize how Teams can work for you. Each session will also include a few real-world examples of how customers are using Microsoft Teams today. Part 1 is focused on tips for conversations and meetings. Many of our interactions start as a simple chat. Learn how you can take those conversations to the next level, including: (1) Formatting messages to help increase response rates, (2) Managing conversations to easily track and follow-up, (3) Organizing conversations, keeping important and active chats front-and-center, (4) Expanding conversations into a full meeting experience, and more. Prefer to watch this session on your own time or simply want a refresher after attending the live training? Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks (Part 2)

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips and Tricks sessions offer insights, best practices and advanced functionality to help optimize how Teams can work for you. Each session will also include a few real-world examples of how customers are using Microsoft Teams today. Organizing your workflow and projects in Teams can really help simplify productivity. Join us for Part 2 of this series, where you’ll learn tips including: (1) Implementing effective strategies creating and managing teams and channels, (2) Leveraging best practices for channel-based conversations, (3) Utilizing a personal team to manage your own productivity, (4) Designing your workspace to quickly find relevant content in Teams, and more. Prefer to watch this session on your own time or simply want a refresher after attending the live training? Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Maximizing Teams Meetings

The average employee spends approximately 30% of their working life in meetings. But meetings in Microsoft Teams are designed to be flexible and enable different types of connections for all the ways that work needs to get done. For users who are familiar with Microsoft Teams but want to better understand and optimize the Teams meeting experience, this session provides guidance into how to create spontaneous and scheduled meetings, leverage the pre, during and post-meeting features, identifying supported devices, and more.

Upgrade 101: Managing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams (Part 1)

As an existing Skype for Business customer, we understand that upgrading to a new technology can be confusing and are committed to supporting you on your journey to Microsoft Teams. Through our two upgrade classes, you will find everything you need to plan and implement your upgrade. Part 1 is focused on upgrade planning and user readiness. Targeting project stakeholders with accountability for Skype for Business to Teams upgrade success and user readiness/change managers, this session serves as the foundation for your upgrade planning, including: (1) An overview of our proven, upgrade success framework, (2) Real-world customer examples, (3) Insights into facilitating user readiness and upgrade acceptance, and (4) Orientation to key upgrade guidance resources.

Upgrade 101: Managing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams (Part 2)

As an existing Skype for Business customer, we understand that upgrading to a new technology can be confusing and are committed to supporting you on your journey to Microsoft Teams. Through our two upgrade classes, you will find everything you need to plan and implement your upgrade. Part 2 is understanding coexistence and interoperability. Designed for the IT Pro/technical experts implementing the migration from Skype for Business to Teams, this session will arm you with the information you need to know before migrating your users, including: (1) End user experiences during the upgrade, (2) Available journey options an organization can take from online or on-premises as the starting point, and (3) Routing and federation experiences.

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Yammer

When: Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 9am PT | New capabilities and features such as Live Events, integration with SharePoint, question and answer, rich text formatting, and more are now available, and you might have questions and feedback about all things related to Yammer. An AMA is a live online event similar to a “YamJam” on Yammer or an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of the product teams who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback. Join in the Yammer AMA space, or add the event to your calendar. We look forward to seeing you there!

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Education

When: Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 9am PT | With the last school year coming to a close and the next school years preparation just beginning, you may have questions about Microsoft Education. We will have team members from Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft Teams and Windows to help with your questions about Education. An AMA is a live online event similar to a “YamJam” on Yammer or an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of the product teams who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback. Join in the Education AMA space, or add the event to your calendar. We look forward to seeing you there!

Customer Immersion Experience: Communicating more effectively & working better together

During this session, you will have the opportunity to experience Windows 10, Office 365 and Microsoft’s newest collaboration tool: Microsoft Teams. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they work for you. During this interactive session, you will explore how to use Microsoft Teams and Office 365 to: (1) Create a hub for team work that works together with your other Office 365 apps, (2) Build customized options for each team, (3) Keep everyone on your team engaged, (4) Coauthor and share content quickly, and (5) Gain skills that will save you time and simplify your workflow immediately. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Customer Immersion Experience: Hands-on with security in a cloud-first, mobile-first world

This 2-hour hands-on session will give you the opportunity to try Microsoft technology that secures your digital transformation with a comprehensive platform, unique intelligence, and partnerships. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they work for you. During this interactive session, you will: (1) Detect and protect against external threats by monitoring, reporting and analyzing activity to react promptly to provide organization security, (2) Protect your information and reduce the risk of data loss, (3) Provide peace of mind with controls and visibility for industry-verified conformity with global standards in compliance, (4) Protect your users and their accounts, and (5) Support your organization with enhanced privacy and compliance to meet the General Data Protection Regulation. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Thursday, July 18, 2019 from 12pm – 2pm PT

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying your data privacy & compliance journey

Join us for a hands-on introduction to Microsoft 365 Compliance features and an opportunity to experience powerful solutions across the data lifecycle of assess, protect and respond. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Understand your compliance from a single pane of glass, (2) Make identity the new perimeter, (3) Discover and govern sensitive data across clouds, devices and apps, (4) Recognize attacks, detect breaches, and recover quickly using automation, and (5) Streamline your operational processes and understand your security posture. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Thursday, July 25, 2019 from 12pm – 2pm PT

BLOG ROUNDUP

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | June 2019

It is officially the summertime in Seattle, and Microsoft Teams is celebrating by continuing to release a ton of exciting and important features for Microsoft Teams’ users and organizations. Highlights include: (1) To enable an easier installation process Microsoft Teams desktop app coming to existing installs of Office 365 ProPlus and Microsoft/Office 365 Business/Business Premium, (2) Avoid conflicts of interest with Information Barriers, (3) Introducing Announcements in Team channels to help you make your point, (4) Add up to 100 people to a Group Chat, (5) Manage the discovery of Private Teams in the way that works best for your organization, and many more.

OneDrive Roadmap Roundup – June 2019

As we wrap up an exciting quarter filled with innovations and announcements, we have some great new features to share with you. Here are the latest and greatest features that landed in production in the month of June 2019: (1) Password protected Anyone sharing links, (2) New files experience in Outlook mobile, (3) External sharing with AAD B2B (Preview), and (4) OneDrive sync client B2B sync across organizations.

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: June 2019

We’ve got a lot of change management info to share with you from this last month. This is the all-inclusive recap for all things SharePoint and related technology. Features that inform and engage with dynamic employee experiences include Yammer Q&A features, Yammer files in Office 365 Groups are now stored in SharePoint, and the SharePoint hub sites limit was raised to 2000. There are also teamwork updates across SharePoint sites, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams including the ability to configure OneDrive to automatically sync SharePoint team site shared libraries, Microsoft Search comes to OneDrive, etc. All the features listed in this post began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of June 2019 (possibly early July 2019). | Resource: Planning your SharePoint hub sites

Faster, with a modern design, and new features – the new Outlook on the web is here

During Ignite 2018 we announced an opt-in experience so you could try the new Outlook on the web, give us feedback, and help us shape the changes in one of the most used productivity apps in the world. To those who tried the new experience during this opt-in period and submitted feedback and suggestions, thank you! During the last 8 months, thanks to you, we’ve made many improvements throughout the product and today we are excited to announce the new Outlook on the web is ready. Email is the heart of Outlook and where people spend a significant part of their day. We have designed the new mail experience around you and the people that are important to you – You can personalize your experience, have a little fun, do things faster, and keep those people front and center with new and updated features such as: (1) Categories, (2) Dark mode, (3) Favorites, (4) Calendar search, (5) Snooze an email, and more. Note: Starting in late July, Targeted Release customers will notice that the opt-in toggle has been removed and they can only see the new experience.

Improving the Office app experience in virtual environments

Microsoft 365 is designed to help organizations digitally transform workplace collaboration. Many customers use virtualization, and they’re always looking for ways to cut costs and improve the user experience. To help, we acquired FSLogix last November, and now we’re pleased to announce four new capabilities to further improve the user experience in virtualized environments: (1) FSLogix technology, which improves the performance of Office 365 ProPlus in multi-user virtual environments, is now available at no additional cost for Microsoft 365 customers, (2) Windows Server 2019 will add support for OneDrive Files On-Demand in the coming months, (3) Office 365 ProPlus, our flagship Office experience, will be supported on Windows Server 2019, and (4) We’ve added new capabilities to Outlook, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams in Office 365 ProPlus to improve the user experience in a virtualized environment.

NOTEWORTHY

Microsoft IT Showcase: IT Expert Roundtable – Modern meetings with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Teams Rooms

Format: Video (60 mins) | At Microsoft, modern meetings give employees the right tools to share ideas and make decisions across locations, environments and devices. In this webinar you will learn about our modern meeting strategy and how Microsoft Core Services Engineering and Operations (CSEO, formerly Microsoft IT) deploys, manages, monitors and supports services for the collaboration application Microsoft Teams and the smart meeting-room solution Microsoft Teams Rooms.

Announcing question and answer in Yammer

Capturing and disseminating knowledge is crucial to organizations and a key area of development for Yammer. We’re excited to announce that question and answer in Yammer is rolling out to all Office 365 tenants. We announced this at the SharePoint Conference in May, and the experience will become available to all groups and live events in Yammer over the next few days. A large number of questions get asked in Yammer, meaning it can be hard to distinguish requests for help from general conversations. Question and answer in Yammer enables you to start a conversation in the question format from the browser or mobile app. Unique styling helps everyone identify which posts need answers. In the coming weeks, you’ll also be able to filter to see only questions and unanswered questions.

The Hybrid Agent is now GA!

We’re delighted to announce that Microsoft Hybrid Agent has reached General Availability! We first talked about this agent nearly two years ago at Ignite and we’re very happy to have reached this important milestone. The Agent has been available in Preview for quite some time as you probably know, and in that time over 250,000 mailbox moves have been initiated through the Agent. That’s amazing to us, given we often hear customers are hesitant to use Preview code in production. Well, with this Preview we’ve proven it works (honestly, you’ve all proven it works by setting it up and moving mailboxes with it), so anyone who was holding out, now’s the time to start using the Agent.

Capture and analyze customer and employee feedback with Microsoft Forms Pro, now generally available

Microsoft Forms Pro is a simple to use, yet robust enterprise-survey solution that integrates with Office 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform. It’s built on Microsoft Forms for Office 365 with new, advanced survey capabilities to further support business survey solutions, including point-and-click simplicity to create and send custom surveys, integration with your business processes, and AI-assisted features that provide a deep-level of insights across transactional and behavioral data. Microsoft Forms Pro is included as part of the Dynamics 365 Enterprise license, providing up to 2,000 survey responses per month per tenant with additional capacity available for purchase. Forms Pro is also available to users who do not have Dynamics 365 Enterprise and users in an Office 365 tenant.

Newly Released Videos!

A new series of videos has been added to our Office Videos channel. These videos are focused on recommended actions for the first 30 days from the Security Adoption Roadmap:

Office 365 Planned Service Changes for September 2019

The goal of this post is to compile all publicly announced Office 365 service changes per month in 2019, especially those that may require admin action. These changes are listed below in chronological order, based on the “Action Required” or “Effective” date. Additional information and resources related to these changes are provided where applicable. Updates will be made to this post as new service changes are announced, or updates to announced changes are provided.

Note: All changes may not have been communicated to your tenant / environment.

We’re removing Visio Web Access from SharePoint Online

Action Required By: September 29, 2019

Details: Last September, we announced that we would be removing Visio Web access from SharePoint Online. Since then we have listened to your feedback and are extending the timeline to September 2019 to allow more time for the migration of your existing Visio content to the newer platforms.

Beginning September 30, 2019, Visio Web Access (Visio Service) and its Web Part for SharePoint Online will no longer be available. Instead of Visio Web Access you can now use Visio Online and migrate your organization’s web parts to a newer experience with the new Javascript (JS) APIs for Visio Online. Visio Online enables high fidelity viewing, sharing, and collaboration in your favorite browser, without installing the client for all Office 365 licenses. It supports embedding Visio diagrams in SharePoint Online using a modern file viewer web part and with IFrame along with JS API programmability.

Beginning September 30, 2019, users in your organization will only be able to view Visio diagrams in their browser, but not create or edit. Visio Online viewing is available to most Office 365 subscriptions.

Additional Information: Migrate from Visio Web Access to Visio Online

Office 365 Planned Service Changes for October 2019

Note: All changes may not have been communicated to your tenant / environment.

Microsoft StaffHub Retirement

Action Required By: October 1, 2019

Details: Effective October 1, 2019, Microsoft StaffHub will be retired. We’re building StaffHub capabilities, including schedule and task management, into Microsoft Teams. The Teams mobile app now includes shift management and a home screen experience. Additional capabilities for firstline workers will roll out to Teams over time. These changes are part of our continued efforts to empower every employee with Microsoft 365. With capabilities for firstline workers now in Teams, every employee in your organization will be able to use Teams to streamline their workday, collaborate with coworkers, and access information and expertise to help them do their best work.

Additional Information: Microsoft Teams for firstline workers

Office 365 Planned Service Changes for December 2019

Note: All changes may not have been communicated to your tenant / environment.

Discontinuation of support for Session Border Controllers in Exchange Online Unified Messaging

Action Required By: December 1, 2019

Details: In July 2017, we announced that support for Session Border Controllers (SBC) that connect third party PBX systems to Exchange Online Unified Messaging (UM) would be discontinued as of July 2018. After feedback from customers and partners concerned about this change, we are announcing additional time for customers to prepare. The new date for discontinuation will be December 1, 2019. Customers with existing deployments remain fully supported until this date. However, Microsoft strongly advises all customers to begin their voicemail transition now.

There are different alternatives for customers currently using an on-premises PBX system that connects to Exchange Online. We recognize that customers may also choose a combination of these options for their organization.

Office 365: We believe the best option for customers is to transition to the cloud and use Office 365. This would include the enterprise voice workload and Cloud Voicemail. Customers would use Microsoft Teams for collaboration and voice services.
Skype for Business Server: In this configuration, customers would deploy an on-premises Skype for Business server and take advantage of the services for voicemail supported by the server.
Third-Party Voicemail System: With this approach, the customer acquires a third-party voicemail system that provides all the capabilities required to process voicemail and then place it in the user’s Exchange mailbox.

Please review the information linked below for more guidance details.

Additional Information:

Retirement of Skype for Business app on Windows 10 Mobile

Effective: December 2019

Details: The Windows Phone app for Skype for Business is being retired. After this change takes effect, new users will no longer be able to download the app from the Microsoft Store, and the app will no longer be supported. Although Microsoft continues to support Windows 10 Mobile, we are not focused on building new features for the system. We will continue to invest in Skype for Business mobile apps for iOS and Android and also in desktop apps for Windows and Mac.

Existing users of the Windows Phone app for Skype for Business will continue to be able to use the app. Moreover, they will continue to be able to re-download the app from the Windows Store.

Beginning in December 2019, Skype for Business on Windows 10 Mobile, will no longer be available for download.

The Skype for Business app may continue to work after this date, but this is not guaranteed. This app will no longer receive updates or support. If you need to continue using Skype for Business on Windows Phone, we recommend that you install the app before the date cited above.

Additional Information: Windows Phone app for Skype for Business is being retired

Office 365 Planned Service Changes for July 2019

Note: All changes may not have been communicated to your tenant / environment.

Update Log:

2019-07-03:

Added Outlook on the web – New experience roll out – effective July 22, 2019

Retirement of 3DES in Office 365

Action Required By: July 9, 2019

Details: Starting July 10, 2019, Office 365 will begin retiring the 3DES cipher. This means that all connections to Office 365 using the cipher 3DES will not work. TLS 1.0/1.1 connections without the 3DES cipher will not be affected. Client software and devices that rely on the 3DES cipher to connect to Office 365 should be updated or replaced prior to July 10, 2019.

By going to http://securescore.microsoft.com, you can find the overview of your TLS 1.0/1.1 and 3DES usage for Exchange.

Click on ‘Score Analyzer’ and scroll to the – Remove TLS dependencies tab.
Here you will see a summary of your TLS 1.0/1.1 and 3DES usage.
If you want more details on which devices or clients are connecting using these weaker ciphers and protocols – click on the ‘Get Details’ button that will launch a flyout where you can click on ‘Launch now’.
This will take you to the Service Trust Portal where you can download your user and agent information.

Please review the information linked below for more guidance details.

Additional Information:

Microsoft Teams coming to existing installs of Office 365 ProPlus and Office 365 Business / Business Premium (Monthly Channel)

Effective: July 9, 2019

Details: Starting July 9th, the Teams client will be added to existing installations on the Monthly Channel, and as a modern online service, Teams will continue to auto-update on a regular cadence.

As part of the Teams deployment, admins now have the ability to disable the initial auto-start of Teams. Teams starts automatically by default.

Note: If you decide to change this behavior, you must do it before Teams is deployed.

If Teams is already installed in a user’s machine, they are not impacted by this change.

While we strongly encourage you to adopt Teams, we enable you to deploy at your own pace. If you wish to exclude it from your installation or disable auto-start of Teams, you are fully in control. You can find guidance on deploying Teams as a part of Office 365 ProPlus: Deploy Microsoft Teams with Office 365 ProPlus.

Retirement of Public website 3rd party link from the M365 Admin Center

Effective: July 15, 2019

Details: Once the link within the Admin center is removed, administrators should work directly with their Microsoft partner or a 3rd party website provider to create and host a public website. We’ll be gradually rolling this change out starting on July 15, 2019 and the change will be complete by the end of August.

Additional Information: Use a public website with Office 365

Outlook on the web – New experience roll out

Effective: July 22, 2019

Details: Starting on July 22, 2019, the new Outlook on the web will become the default experience for Mail, Calendar and People and we will remove the opt-in toggle. With this change users will not be able to move back or see the classic experience. This change will override the PowerShell command which previously blocked the opt-in toggle.

Note: The toggle removal does not affect Tasks. If you blocked the opt-in toggle using PowerShell, you won’t see any changes in Tasks. If you have not blocked the opt-in toggle, then users will continue to see the opt-in toggle.

We will start rolling out the new Outlook on the web as the default experience on July 22, 2019 to Targeted Release customers, and following with non-Targeted Release customers on August 3, 2019. The roll out will be completed for all customers by the end of September 2019.

This enhancement is related to Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 49202.

Additional Information: Faster, with a modern design, and new features – the new Outlook on the web is here

Support for Data Privacy communications in Message Center

Action Required by: July 26, 2019

Details: Message Center is being updated to support the communication of messages related to the privacy or security of the Microsoft 365 service to a restricted set of recipients. Once implemented, only the Global Admin and newly added Message Center Privacy Reader role will have access to these messages.

The new Privacy Reader role is available now. Starting July 26th, privacy/security communications in Message Center will only be available to the Global administrator or individuals assigned to the Privacy Reader role.

Global admins or users assigned the new Message Center Privacy Reader role will be able to filter the view in Message Center to see Data Privacy messages and configure data privacy specific email preferences. Due to the potential sensitivity of the information being communicated in posts related to privacy or security, related email notifications and API content will contain general information with a link back to the Message Center to view the relevant details.

Note: Email notifications are not available within GCC at this time.

If your organization needs to comply with GDPR or HIPAA regulations, we recommend that the person assigned to this Message Center Privacy Reader role also be responsible for overseeing your organization’s data protection strategy and GDPR/HIPAA compliance implementation.

Please review the links below to learn more about communications in Message Center.

Additional Information:

Office 365 Weekly Digest | June 23 – 29, 2019

Welcome to the June 23 – 29, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were seventeen features added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week – Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, and Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection comprise the majority of the updates.

There are no new events for this week’s post. This week’s spotlight event is “Make the switch from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams: End User Guidance” with two sessions on Tuesday, July 2, 2019.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include a summary of what’s new in June 2019, information on Teams coming to Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus monthly channel, an update on Kaizala becoming part of Microsoft Teams, and the new Export to Excel feature in Microsoft Planner.

Wrapping up the post are noteworthy items including the “What’s New in Microsoft 365” video for June 2019, new Microsoft 365 data reporting white papers, new guides and resources for Yammer, and several new videos from the Office channel.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Note: The Microsoft Roadmap Team is looking for your feedback!

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details

Outlook on the web – New 3rd party storage providers	52597	July CY2019	Added: 24 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Web We are adding more online storage providers to Outlook on the web and making it on by default. This update will bring two changes: 1. More providers, including personal OneDrive, Google Drive, and Facebook. 2. We are making this in-by-default.
SharePoint Recommendations available on SharePoint Pages and SharePoint News Posts	52604	July CY2019	Added: 24 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint SharePoint Recommendations help you discover new SharePoint Pages and News post in your company. At the bottom of SharePoint News Posts and Pages, you will see the SharePoint Recommendations which are most applicable to you powered by machine learning.
Updated feature: Manage admin roles in the Microsoft 365 admin center	52624	June CY2019	Added: 24 June 2019 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Office 365 We’re improving how you manage admin roles in the Microsoft 365 admin center. It will be easier to see who has admin access and to assign roles that grant the right level of access to your admins. We are rolling out this feature to Targeted Release customers and will begin rolling it out to worldwide production in July. Today, you can view, add, or remove admin roles for a specific user from the Active users page. We’re adding a Roles page accessible from the left navigation pane in the new admin center to extend your capabilities. With this experience you can export a list of all admins in your org who are assigned Azure Active Directory roles that apply to Microsoft 365 services. You can view all admins assigned to a specific role, add or remove admins from a specific role, search for roles by name and keyword, and learn more about what each role allows a user to do.
Outlook for Android – Calendar category colors	51164	July CY2019	Added: 26 June 2019 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Outlook – Android View the colors of your calendar categories set in Outlook for Windows, Mac and on the web in Outlook for Android. Available only to customers on the updated architecture using the Microsoft sync technology (Office 365 Message Center post ID 165218).
New Outlook on the web – S/MIME availability	52727	July CY2019	Added: 27 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Web Support for S/MIME is coming to the new Outlook on the web. If you have been using S/MIME in classic Outlook on the web, you will need to update your S/MIME control by going to: Settings – S/MIME
Improving performance for office.com users by removing portal.office.com redirect	52644	July CY2019	Added: 27 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 We’re updating and Improving performance for office.com users by removing portal.office.com redirect. We are aiming to improve page loading performance for our office.com and portal.office.com users by removing any special redirection from portal.office.com and simply land users on the new and improved office.com experience. We’ll begin rolling this feature out soon.
Synchronous URL detonation in Office 365 ATP	52683	July CY2019	Added: 27 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 ATP Today, when a user protected by Office 365 ATP Safe Links policy clicks on a suspicious link in an email, they may get a notification that the link is being scanned. Some users are not used to seeing this page, or would rather have the entire message to be scanned before receiving it, therefore we’re introducing a new setting in the Safe Links policy where admins can turn on Synchronous URL detonation. With this setting on, suspicious URLs and URLs that would lead to downloadable contents in emails are scanned before the email is delivered to users, eliminating the chances of users seeing the URL being scanned notification. If any URL in the message is determined to be malicious, the email will land in the Junk Folder (or other folders based on your policy) instead of their inbox.
Improvements to Threat Explorer for better hunting experience	52595	Q4 CY2019	Added: 27 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 ATP We’re making significant improvements to the Threat Explorer for better manual threat hunting experience. Based on common hunting scenarios and customer feedback, we’re introducing following updates: (1) Clarity on delivery status of an email : Today in Explorer/ Real-time detections, we show the delivery status of an email which could be delivered, delivered to junk, blocked, replaced and removed by ZAP. The status doesn’t help paint a complete picture of where the email actually landed and where is it at a given point of time. We’re going to split the existing delivery status into more accurate values and simpler relatable names to define it. Delivery status is renamed to “Delivery action” and “Delivery location” is another column which is added to indicate the location of an email. There might be events which occur post-delivery of an email, they are captured under the column “Special action”. All these values combined would help the admin understand what action(s) were taken on an email and the location of that email. (2) Timeline view for an email: Email timeline is a new feature underway to make hunting simpler for admins. In case of multiple events occurring on the same email, that would be shown in a timeline view so the admin won’t have to hunt down at different places to understand the email events. (3) Ability for admins to view and download malicious emails for analysis: Email preview and download option will allow the admins to better analyze bad emails. We’ll be rolling out these features in the order above.
Activity Highlights in the File Hover Card	52721	July CY2019	Added: 28 June 2019 Status: Rolling out App / Service: SharePoint This feature shows relevant activities related to the files you’re working on. If someone you work with edits, comments, or @mentions you, that activity is displayed in the File Hover Card with a link to the relevant activity.
Ability to create custom phish alerts for customers with Office 365 ATP P1	52769	July CY2019	Added: 28 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 ATP We are releasing the ability to create a custom phish alert to customers with the ATP P1 add-on subscription. This feature is already available to E5 customers and those with ATP P2. This change will add the ability to create alerts with activity type ‘Phishing email detected at time of delivery.’ The alert can be created and viewed using the PowerShell cmdlet or through the Alerts portal in the Security and Compliance Center. This type of alert fires when a mail is detected to be phish by Office 365 filters during mail flow. It can also be scoped down to fire in specific scenarios using available configurable conditions. We’ll be gradually rolling this out to customers with the ATP P1 add-on beginning July 1, 2019. The roll out will be completed worldwide by the July 19, 2019.
Meeting Recording in Government Community Cloud	52814	July CY2019	Added: 28 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams This feature enables US Government Community Cloud (GCC) users to record GCC meetings and save in Microsoft Stream.
Live Events admin usage report	52815	July CY2019	Added: 28 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams The live events usage report in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center shows admins the activity overview for live events held in their organization. Admins can view usage information, including event status, start time, views, and production type for each event. Admins can also gain insight into usage trends and see who in the organization schedules, presents, and produces live events.
Live captions, translation and transcription in live events	52816	July CY2019	Added: 28 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams This feature enables live event producers, presenters and attendees to view captions during a Teams live event. Organizers can download the transcription once the live event has concluded. Supported spoken languages in 1st release: English, German and Simplified Chinese.
Microsoft Teams – Auto-updates will use lower network bandwidth	52820	July CY2019	Added: 28 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Based on your feedback, we are making improvements to the update process of the Teams desktop app to help you provide the latest capabilities to your users while significantly reducing the impact on your network bandwidth.
Bulk Approvals	52716	June CY2019	Added: 28 June 2019 Status: Rolling out App / Service: SharePoint In both the modern and classic UX, you can select multiple items and approve or reject them at the same time.
Improved user experience for the Admin Center Message Center	52833	Q4 CY2019	Added: 28 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 We are updating the Message Center page to have an improved user experience. The new experience will offer a new clean UI as well as performance improvements.
Live captions in Teams meetings	52817	Q4 CY2019	Added: 28 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams This feature enables meeting participants to view captions during a Teams meeting. Supported spoken languages in 1st release: English.

UPCOMING EVENTS

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

Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks (Part 1)

Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks (Part 2)

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips and Tricks sessions offer insights, best practices and advanced functionality to help optimize how Teams can work for you. Each session will also include a few real-world examples of how customers are using Microsoft Teams today. Organizing your workflow and projects in Teams can really help simplify productivity. Join us for Part 2 of this series, where you’ll learn tips including: (1) Implementing effective strategies creating and managing teams and channels, (2) Leveraging best practices for channel-based conversations, (3) Utilizing a personal team to manage your own productivity, (4) Designing your workspace to quickly find relevant content in Teams, and more. Prefer to watch this session on your own time or simply want a refresher after attending the live training? Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Maximizing Teams Meetings

Upgrade 101: Managing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams (Part 1)

Upgrade 101: Managing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams (Part 2)

As an existing Skype for Business customer, we understand that upgrading to a new technology can be confusing and are committed to supporting you on your journey to Microsoft Teams. Through our two upgrade classes, you will find everything you need to plan and implement your upgrade. Part 2 is understanding coexistence and interoperability. Designed for the IT Pro/technical experts implementing the migration from Skype for Business to Teams, this session will arm you with the information you need to know before migrating your users, including: (1) End user experiences during the upgrade, (2) Available journey options an organization can take from online or on-premises as the starting point, and (3) Routing and federation experiences.

“HLS Show Me How” Webcast – Driving Adoption with Microsoft 365 Integrated Services

Customer Immersion Experience: Communicating more effectively & working better together

Customer Immersion Experience: Hands-on with security in a cloud-first, mobile-first world

Thursday, July 18, 2019 from 12pm – 2pm PT

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying your data privacy & compliance journey

Thursday, July 25, 2019 from 12pm – 2pm PT

BLOG ROUNDUP

New to Microsoft 365 in June—updates to Microsoft Cloud App Security, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more

In June 2019, we’re announcing updates to Microsoft Cloud App Security and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Conditional Access policies that help you improve your organization’s security posture, updates to Microsoft Teams and Yammer that help you meet compliance obligations, updates to PowerPoint Designer that help you build visually impactful presentations, and updates to Outlook that help keep you in your workflow.

Teams is coming to Office 365 Business & Office 365 ProPlus monthly

As the communication and collaboration hub in Microsoft 365, Teams is now in use in more than 500,000 organizations. So far, Teams has been included in new Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Premium, Microsoft 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus monthly installations with positive customer feedback. Now, we’re including Teams in the Monthly builds for existing installations. Starting on July 9, 2019, Click-to-Run will install the Teams client for all PCs on the monthly channel, and the client will update itself regularly from that point onward. This will be a gradual rollout over several weeks, so not all existing installations will immediately get Teams added when Office is updated. Since everyone in the organization needs to communicate and collaborate, it’s important to make Teams available to all end users. If you have devices on multiple update channels, you can proactively add Teams to all your devices. We’ve published guidance to help you plan your rollout. While we strongly encourage customers to adopt Teams, we also want to enable them to deploy at their own pace. If they wish to exclude Teams from your installation or disable auto-start on user PCs, they are fully in control. Teams starts automatically by default. If you decide to change this behavior, you must do it before Teams is deployed. | Resource: Deploy Microsoft Teams with Office 365 ProPlus

Update on Microsoft Kaizala becoming part of Microsoft Teams

We are providing an update on bringing Microsoft Kaizala capabilities into Microsoft Teams. In April 2019, we announced plans to bring Kaizala together with Teams, enabling customers to use Teams to connect and coordinate with their extended networks – such as partners, suppliers, customers, and citizens – whether or not they are managed in your Azure Active Directory (AAD) environment. We will be adding Kaizala Pro capabilities to Teams over the next 12-18 months, ultimately replacing the Microsoft Kaizala service and making Microsoft Teams the primary client in Office 365 and Microsoft 365 for communication with both internal employees and people in your extended networks. The first set of Kaizala Pro capabilities will be available in Teams by the end of calendar year 2019 and includes Kaizala Actions as built-in apps in Teams, such as checklist, training, and quiz. By the end of calendar year 2020, additional capabilities will be added to Teams, including custom apps, flexible group types, and open directory capabilities for identity and authentication, which enables communications with anyone on Teams, whether or not they are managed in your Azure Active Directory. Once these new capabilities are part of Teams, Kaizala customers will be able to start transitioning to Teams. Meanwhile, Kaizala will continue as a standalone service, which we will continue to support and update. The free Kaizala app is available through the Android and iOS stores, and Kaizala Pro is available in eligible Office 365 and eligible Microsoft 365 service plans.

Planner: Export your entire plan to Excel for powerful analysis, sharing, and more

Planner comes with some pretty cool out-of-the-box tools for keeping your team on track. In-app features like red highlights for late tasks and color-coded labels provide visual cues for quickly finding tasks that need attention. There’s also the Charts view, which gives you different visual representations of progress, especially now with charts filtering. But there may be times when the simplicity of these tools—and simplicity is our goal with Planner—isn’t quite enough. For more robust plan options, you can now export your entire plan to Microsoft Excel. From conducting more detailed analysis to sharing your plan’s status, Export to Excel gives you a broad range of additional capabilities for keeping your plan on schedule and your plan’s stakeholders up to date.

Workplace Analytics – June 2019: Feature updates

The Workplace Analytics team is excited to announce our feature updates for June (see past blog articles here). In this update, you’ll discover the latest, including: (1) Organizational effectiveness analyses, and (2) Parallelize HR upload. By using the Organizational effectiveness feature, an analyst can find answers to the question of how the most effective people collaborate differently than their peers. The immediate goal of this kind of analysis is to help uncover the unique workplace-collaboration traits that help these people succeed. A larger goal would be to use these insights to spread these behaviors. We have streamlined the procedure for setting up Workplace Analytics so that Workplace Analytics admins can accomplish it in a single uninterrupted sequence. Previously, the Workplace Analytics admin would verify licenses and roles, create privacy settings, and then wait to upload organizational data until after the extraction of collaboration data from Office 365. This waiting step has been removed; the admin can now start the upload of HR data right after confirming privacy settings, while collaboration-data extraction happens in the background. Although the organizational-data upload steps remain the same, the concurrent collaboration data extraction lets admins complete setup more efficiently.

4 Recent Office Innovations that Were Born on the Web

The web has become an integral platform for Office and how we at Microsoft serve our customers. We fundamentally believe that Office is way more than just the desktop apps and that each of our platforms is critical to our long-term success. We’ve come a long way with our web solution over the past few years and we will continue to invest aggressively to make Office on the web the best productivity experience it can be. Today, the web is at the forefront of innovation for Office. Our engineering teams have found that using the web to quickly land and refine new features based on user data is helping us respond to customer demands and deliver better experiences. As a result, many of the most important recent innovations for Office have been born on the web. Here are four recent examples of Office capabilities that came first to the web that are now helping shape the Office experience across each of its platforms: (1) Ideas, (2) New Collaboration Capabilities, (3) Office start experience, and (4) Simplified ribbon. | Related: Recommended Documents in Office apps and Version History in Office for the web

NOTEWORTHY

Video: What’s New with Microsoft 365 | June 2019

Format: Video (8 minutes) | This month, we’re announcing updates to Microsoft Cloud App Security and Azure AD Conditional Access that help you improve your organization’s security posture, updates to Microsoft Teams and Yammer that help you meet compliance obligations, updates to PowerPoint Designer that help you build visually impactful presentations, and updates to Outlook that help keep you in your workflow. Also new this month: Vivian and Arthur! As you noticed last month, we’re working to transition this series to a different format. Thanks for bearing with us! This June episode isn’t perfect, but we wanted to make sure you got the information you need. We’re listening and would love your feedback as we continue to evolve the series. Learn more about what’s new in June 2019 at http://msft.social/4jX3FQ.

Microsoft IT Showcase: IT Expert Roundtable – SharePoint and OneDrive for Business at Microsoft – file management

Format: Video (61 mins) | 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 answered audience questions about our strategy for file management.

New Microsoft 365 Data Reporting White Papers

NEW! Check out our latest white papers to help you learn how to use Microsoft 365 and SharePoint to transform your organizational data, analytics and reporting. The new whitepapers are: (1) Using SharePoint and Teams as a Modern Dashboarding Platform, (2) Using SharePoint as a data source for Modern Reporting, and (3) Using Power BI with Complex SharePoint Field Types.

New guides and resources to promote Yammer at your company!

Need some cool new Yammer resources to help with the launch or adoption of Yammer at your organization? Look no further. We’ve recently published loads of new content for you, including resources for employee engagement, leadership engagement, a new employee onboarding playbook, a live events playbook, a guide on hosting a “YamJam” event, “superpower” gifs, new Office 365 product logos, and more.

Newly Released Videos!

There are several new videos added to our Office Videos channel:

Azure AD Mailbag: Conditional Access Q&A

One of our most popular features in Azure Active Directory is Conditional Access which provides the flexibility to enable additional security controls before granting access. It is typically deployed first with Azure multifactor authentication (MFA). Then customers take a deeper look at some of the more advanced controls such as device type, client app, and session controls. Once users become members of several policies, it begs the question which controls are applied first. Which one wins? Read on as Andres from our Get to Production team answers the most common set of questions to help you understand how Conditional Access works under the hood.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | June 16 – 22, 2019

Welcome to the June 16 – 22, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Sixteen features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week – nearly half of those for Teams, with SharePoint, OneDrive, PowerPoint, Outlook on the web also included.

The only net new event is a 2-part webcast on July 8th & 9th to provide guidance on driving adoption with Microsoft 365 integrated services. The spotlight event for this week is “Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks” with four total sessions – two for Part 1 and two for Part 2.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include a look at calendar updates in Outlook for Windows, an updated Office 365 Network Onboarding Tool, a guide to creating a Live Event in Yammer, guidance on securing Microsoft Teams, and enhancements to PowerPoint AI and Designer.

Noteworthy item highlights include the release of Microsoft To-Do for Mac, new updates to Adobe Document Cloud integration with SharePoint and OneDrive, and the PowerApps Center of Excellence Starter Kit.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Outlook on the web – Receive the emails you sent to a group in your inbox too	52391	July CY2019	Added: 16 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Web We’re introducing a new setting for groups in Outlook. Currently when you send an email to a group in Outlook that you’re a member of, you currently do not receive a copy of that sent email back in your inbox. With this new setting, you can start receiving a copy of the emails you send to the group in your Inbox (as long as you are following that group in inbox). This is particularly helpful for those users who have workflows that get triggered basis receiving a copy of their sent emails in Inbox.
Microsoft Forms Pro	51331	July CY2019	Added: 17 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Forms Forms Pro is a simple, yet comprehensive enterprise survey solution for businesses to capture and analyze feedback to improve how they engage across their business. With Forms Pro, you can get actionable feedback from customers in real-time at every stage of their journey, improve organizational health with real-time feedback, build the products customers want, and leverage the data and tools you already use from Dynamics 365, Common Data Services (CDS) and Power Platform. Forms Pro will adhere to the compliance, security, and privacy levels you’ve come to expect from Forms and other Office 365 apps. Companies can collect information without users having to go to non-secure solutions, and there isn’t a need to build and maintain custom surveying tools.
Microsoft Teams: Partner Provided Calling Plans for Japan	52282	Q4 CY2019	Added: 17 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams SoftBank is working with Microsoft to deliver their UniTalk calling plans to Office 365 customers in Japan. This collaboration enables SoftBank to provide and sell PSTN calling services specifically for the Japanese market. Prerequisites for this service include that the Office 365 tenant is based in Japan and customers will need to acquire Phone System. Customers interested in this offer should contact Softbank directly to learn more.
Enhancements to SPO Preservation Library	52431	July CY2019	Added: 17 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint This update will introduce a 30-day grace period for the release of SharePoint Online holds, and in the Preservation Hold Library items are now moved to the second stage recycle bin before being purged.
Office 365 Groups – Updates to welcome emails to guests	50027	Q2 CY2019	Added: 18 June 2019 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Office 365 Groups We are updating the welcome email that guests receive when invited to an Office 365 Group. With the update guests will now see your organization’s privacy policy link, group SharePoint site & OneNote. This will only affect organizations who have guest access enabled.
OneDrive & SharePoint integration with Azure AD B2B \| Public Preview	33415	July CY2019	Added: 18 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive, SharePoint Integration of external sharing in OneDrive and SharePoint with Azure AD B2B. This includes external sharing of files, folders, list items, document libraries and sites.
MyAnalytics add-in coming to more Microsoft 365 and Office 365 Suites	48497	July CY2019	Added: 20 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: MyAnalytics The MyAnalytics add-in for Outlook will be made available to everyone using Office 365 and Microsoft 365 EDU suites that include Exchange Online, specifically Microsoft 365 A3 for Faculty and Students, Office 365 A3 for Faculty and Students.
Designer for branded templates	51006	July CY2019	Added: 20 June 2019 Status: Rolling out App / Service: PowerPoint Now large enterprises, SMBs, universities can utilize Designer recommendations in their own branded templates. This allows people to stay on-brand.
Micosoft Teams – Native Federation for 1:1 Chats	52394	July CY2019	Added: 20 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Have richer conversations with people outside your organization with Microsoft Teams. Users in TeamsOnly mode can now enjoy the same familiar chat experience whether they are communicating with a colleague or an external user.
Microsoft Teams – Real Time Presence	52395	July CY2019	Added: 20 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Stay focused throughout the day with Microsoft Teams. Whether you are free for a quick chat or presenting in a meeting, real time presence increases the accuracy of your status so others know when to reach out.
Microsoft Teams – Self-Service Sign-up for hybrid environment customers	52416	July CY2019	Added: 20 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Want to enable all users in your hybrid environment to try Microsoft Teams? Users in hybrid tenants who are not in AAD will soon be able to sign-up for Teams using their organizational email address, which in turn will create an AAD identity and enable them to use the Teams Commercial Cloud Trial.
Teams EDU messaging policies migration	52517	June CY2019	Added: 20 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Currently about 300 tenants have their messaging policies in the O365 portal, but all of their other policies are on MoPo. We want to move these customers over to MoPo so they have a consistent admin experience and so they can leverage all of the new messaging capabilities that can only be managed in MoPo.
MyAnalytics Email Digest is coming to more Microsoft 365 and Office 365 Suites	52277	Q4 CY2019	Added: 20 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: MyAnalytics MyAnalytics Email Digest will be made available to everyone using Office 365 and Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Business suites that include Exchange Online, specifically Microsoft 365 E5, E3, Business, Office 365 E5, E3, E1, Business Premium and Business Essentials.
Microsoft Teams Education – Redesigned UI	51407	July CY2019	Added: 21 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Teams (EDU) The improved Teams UI enables teachers and students to focus on one course at a time with minimal distractions from other teams. In addition, the new Assignments experience makes it easier to view existing and create new assignments.
Outlook on the web – browse rooms with filters	52546	June CY2019	Added: 21 June 2019 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Web Outlook will offer an additional way to filters rooms based on features like capacity, building floor, and AV equipment. Those filters are possible thanks to a new Set-place cmdlet available in Exchange Online to add new properties to rooms.
Planner: Export to Excel	52585	June CY2019	Added: 21 June 2019 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Planner Export the tasks in a Planner plan to an Excel file.

UPCOMING EVENTS

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

Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks (Part 1)

Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks (Part 2)

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips and Tricks sessions offer insights, best practices and advanced functionality to help optimize how Teams can work for you. Each session will also include a few real-world examples of how customers are using Microsoft Teams today. Organizing your workflow and projects in Teams can really help simplify productivity. Join us for Part 2 of this series, where you’ll learn tips including: (1) Implementing effective strategies creating and managing teams and channels, (2) Leveraging best practices for channel-based conversations, (3) Utilizing a personal team to manage your own productivity, (4) Designing your workspace to quickly find relevant content in Teams, and more. Prefer to watch this session on your own time or simply want a refresher after attending the live training? Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Maximizing Teams Meetings

Upgrade 101: Managing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams (Part 1)

Thursday, June 27, 2019 at 11am PT

Upgrade 101: Managing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams (Part 2)

As an existing Skype for Business customer, we understand that upgrading to a new technology can be confusing and are committed to supporting you on your journey to Microsoft Teams. Through our two upgrade classes, you will find everything you need to plan and implement your upgrade. Part 2 is understanding coexistence and interoperability. Designed for the IT Pro/technical experts implementing the migration from Skype for Business to Teams, this session will arm you with the information you need to know before migrating your users, including: (1) End user experiences during the upgrade, (2) Available journey options an organization can take from online or on-premises as the starting point, and (3) Routing and federation experiences.

“HLS Show Me How” Webcast – Driving Adoption with Microsoft 365 Integrated Services

Customer Immersion Experience: Communicating more effectively & working better together

Customer Immersion Experience: Hands-on with security in a cloud-first, mobile-first world

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying your data privacy & compliance journey

BLOG ROUNDUP

Calendar updates in Outlook for Windows gives you time back

We’ve made updates to the Calendar in Outlook for Windows to help you effectively manage your most valuable resource, your time. We listened to your suggestions and made improvements so you can schedule meetings faster and easier and better personalize your experience. For example, there is a new Meeting form where you can now choose Required or Optional attendees, so you no longer need to switch to Scheduling Assistant or open the Address Book, so it’s faster to create a meeting invite. Another example, is that we’ve enhanced the capability to reserve multiple rooms multiple locations in Room Finder. There are additional enhancements such as default duration, time zones, attendee tracking, response options, and more. All the enhancements are available today to Monthly Channel Office 365 subscribers!

Updated Office 365 Network Onboarding Tool POC with new network design recommendations

We’ve just released an updated Office 365 Network Onboarding Tool which includes additional recommendations based on tests that you run from a Windows 10 application. It can now make perimeter network design recommendations related to proxy servers, firewalls, DNS, and we have added the first tests for Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Online to the existing Exchange Online tests. The Office 365 Network Onboarding Tool uses testing you run to make specific network design recommendations for enterprise organizations who are seeking to get optimal performance for Office 365. It highlights common large enterprise network perimeter design choices which are useful for Internet web browsing but impact the performance of large SaaS applications such as Office 365. | Related: Office 365 Connectivity Guidance – Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

A guide to creating a Live Event in Yammer – before, during and after

We’ve been making a lot of noise about Live Events in Yammer as we strive to modernize the employee experience. With live events now generally available, you can now bring this type of event to your organization. This post is a guide to creating an engaging live event in Yammer and what to do before, during, and after the event to maximize the value, keep momentum going, and build reach. Keep in mind, to create a Live Event, you’ll need to be a Yammer group admin and create the event in an Office 365 connected Yammer group. For Live Events, a Yammer moderator is a good idea to keep conversation flowing and connecting back to the presenters and content teams. Depending on how large the event is and how much the conversation is flowing, you may need 1-2 people. A Yammer moderator, Yammer champion, the event executive sponsor or a presenter could participate in any of these recommendations.

Getting Started with Securing Microsoft Teams

Let’s talk about how you can secure your Teams environment. We can focus this conversation in 3 main areas; ensuring your users’ identities are secure to access Teams, protecting the Teams application and securing the data in and out of Teams. Microsoft Teams uses Azure Active Directory as the identity and access management platform so you can take advantage of many security features to secure access to Teams. The first step is to plan a good Conditional Access strategy. Since Teams is accessible from anywhere, you want to ensure that you can verify your user’s identity using Azure Multifactor Authentication (MFA). You can also use Hybrid Azure Active Directory Domain Join in order to define corporate owned PCs. By defining a device identity, you will be able develop rules around the device types that people are using; corporate, personal or mobile. Many customers take advantage of the Intune integration to look at device compliance as well. So you can create a rule that states not only should access to Teams be on a corporate managed PC, but the PC must meet your compliance standards. If the device isn’t compliant, like BitLocker is disabled, the end user would not be able to access Teams until BitLocker ins enabled.

PowerPoint AI gets an upgrade and Designer surpasses a major milestone of 1 billion slides

A few years ago, the PowerPoint team took a bet on artificial intelligence (AI) and started the PowerPoint Designer effort. We aspired to help our customers overcome some of the fear around building an effective slide by offering up suggested slide designs. We started with making photo slides compelling, eventually adding capabilities around transforming text slides into their more visual—and hopefully impactful—counterparts like process diagrams and timelines. More recently, we started complementing text with iconography. We’re now excited to share that not only have we hit a major milestone in PowerPoint Designer usage, we’re also announcing new Designer capabilities that suggests high quality content to jumpstart authoring and provides perspective suggestions for quantitative content. And yes, in a “but wait, there’s more” moment, we’re ready to share that our AI effort is moving beyond Designer—with our new Presenter Coach—intended to help our users build confidence in their presenting abilities.

NOTEWORTHY

Microsoft To-Do for Mac is here!

We’d like to announce the arrival of a new family member—that’s right, the moment many of you have been waiting for is here—say hello to the Mac app. If you’ve already been using our app on Android, iOS, Windows, or web, then the Mac app will feel very familiar. Sign in and all your tasks will be waiting for you, ready to be checked off. You can work offline, add tasks to My Day, see your flagged email in your Flagged email list, and share your lists with colleagues or friends and family. The Planner integration isn’t available yet, but we’re already working on bringing the Assigned to Me list to you.

Announcing availability of Microsoft cloud datacenter regions in the Middle East

Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Azure are taking a major step together to help support the digital transformation of our customers. Both Azure and Office 365 are now generally available from our first cloud datacenter regions in the Middle East, located in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, offering the next generation of intelligent business applications and tools, are anticipated to be available from the cloud regions in UAE by the end of 2019. The opening of the new cloud regions in Abu Dhabi and Dubai marks the first time Microsoft will deliver cloud services directly from datacenter locations in UAE and expands upon Microsoft’s existing investments in the Gulf and the wider Middle East region. By delivering the complete Microsoft cloud – Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365 – from datacenters in a given geography, we offer scalable, highly available, and resilient cloud services for organizations while helping them meet their data residency, security, and compliance needs.

New updates to Adobe Document Cloud show the power of integration with SharePoint and OneDrive

Microsoft 365 is designed to be tailored with web technologies to make every experience fit your team workflows. Well-integrated tools save you time by avoiding distracting context switches and providing tools right where you need them. Applications like SharePoint feature many ways to extend many user experiences, including file handlers and SharePoint Framework Extensions. For example, Adobe Acrobat is perhaps best known as a powerful Windows and MacOS application for working with PDF files. Through an updated web application and many integrations with SharePoint, Adobe Acrobat on the web brings these PDF tools to where your files are – in SharePoint and OneDrive. In the newest set of updates to PDF tools designed to deepen integrations with SharePoint and OneDrive, Adobe Document Cloud has improved the user experience for its web tools, ensuring that you have all of the major capabilities to work with PDF files on the web and in the context of SharePoint. New inline commenting and drawing capabilities keep feedback close at hand. Adobe Document Cloud also now supports single sign-on with Azure Active Directory, dramatically simplifying log-in and avoiding the need to manage multiple account sign-ins. Taken together, common tasks for working with content and PDF files are just a click away, saving you time, and extending the power of your Microsoft 365 investments.

Introducing the PowerApps Center of Excellence Starter Kit

A Center of Excellence (CoE), as talked about in this blog post, refers to an entity that is responsible for nurturing the growth of PowerApps and Microsoft Flow in their organization, while applying the right administrative guardrails. The responsibilities of a CoE typically fall into these four buckets: (1) Administration & Governance, (2) Nurture, (3) Support, and (4) Operations. The Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit is a collection of templatized best practices, that are designed to help organizations get started with tools needed to set up a CoE. Today the starter kit focused specifically on the Administration and Governance function of the CoE, but we do plan to grow it over time to be more encompassing of all the CoE functions listed above. For a more detailed explanation of the functions and best practices to establish a CoE – see the talk titled “Tried and tested techniques for establishing a CoE”, that was presented at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit in June 2019. The PowerPoint for this session is also available for download.

Welcome to (the new) Office 365 Weekly!

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Office 365 Weekly brings the following:

Items added to the Office 365 Roadmap over the previous week
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