Forms – Office 365 Weekly

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-16

Welcome to the April 19 – 25, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Eighteen features added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Search, Azure Active Directory, and Microsoft Information Protection.

Several existing meeting series have had additional sessions listed, and there are two new event series – “Energize your Live Events with Microsoft Teams”, and “Empower your Frontline workforce to do more with Teams”. This week’s spotlight event is “Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams” on Thursday, April 29th at 1:00pm Pacific.

Blog posts from last week include information on Microsoft research regarding meetings, and new Outlook capabilities that can help, a detailed look at enabling modern authentication for Outlook, information on an upcoming change for the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center, and details on the new Email Entity Page in Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

Noteworthy item highlights include new Yammer training videos, several “One Stop Shop” resource pages for Microsoft 365 compliance solutions, the April 2021 updates for Microsoft Forms, and details on iPad support for Microsoft Lists for iOS.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Note: The Estimated Release dates listed below are subject to change. The direct link provided for each item can be used to determine if the estimated release date has been updated since the time of publication.

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Exchange and Outlook for Business: Ability to book time to travel and transportation on web	72231	August CY2021	Added: 19 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Exchange, Outlook Now when you need to go to a different building or place between meetings, Outlook will enable you to book travel time and way of transportation between the places you need to go.
Microsoft Teams: Teams Device Management in GCC-High	81503	June CY2021	Added: 20 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC-High Our customers who have tenants in the GCCH environment can also manage their Teams devices from the Teams Admin Centre. Admins can now control the entire lifecycle of their Teams devices which include an increasing variety of supported device types – IP Phones, Collaboration bars, Teams displays, Teams Meeting Room devices.
Microsoft Search: Attachment search	81922	June CY2021	Added: 21 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Search Include classic attachments from Outlook in search.
Microsoft Search: Azure Cognitive Search results in Microsoft Search	81928	November CY2021	Added: 21 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Search Azure Cognitive Search federation with Microsoft Search provides a cohesive search experience with Azure Cognitive Search to intelligently help business search user find, learn, operate, and navigate information enriched and indexed with Azure Cognitive Search.
Microsoft Search: Microsoft Search in GCC	81929	September CY2021	Added: 21 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Search, GCC Organization-wide Search via Search Box in SharePoint, Office.com, and on Microsoft Search in Bing. Customizable Bookmarks, Acronyms, and QnA Answers.
Microsoft Teams: Live Transcript for Teams Meetings for GCC-High	82230	October CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC-High Teams Meetings now have a real-time transcript during their meetings as well as a post-meeting transcript. This will help users in real-time recall what has been spoken during the meeting as well as review the meeting after the fact.
Microsoft Teams: Live Transcript for Teams Meetings for GCC	82836	May CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC Teams Meetings now have a real-time transcript during their meetings as well as a post-meeting transcript. This will help users in real-time recall what has been spoken during the meeting as well as review the meeting after the fact.
Outlook: Share photos through Outlook for Android	71403	May CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Android Choose how you’d like to share photos through Outlook for Android. Outlook makes it easier to send one or many photos from your gallery or cloud sources: as an attachment or embedded in your message.
Microsoft Information Protection: Teams location picker supports security groups and distribution lists (GCC-H)	72229	May CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP, GCC-High Data loss prevention (DLP) for Microsoft Teams will now support security groups and distribution lists as part of the Teams location picker, enabling more granular control of DLP policy scope (i.e. to include/exclude particular departments, business units, geo-specific security groups, etc.).
Azure Active Directory: GPS based named locations public preview	72238	May CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Azure Active Directory Now, admins will have the ability to create Conditional Access policies to allow/deny access using a new type of Named Location based off GPS data. When the policy is enabled, end users will need to share their GPS location from the mobile device on which Microsoft Authenticator is installed. The user’s mobile device is a good indication of the user’s actual location at the time.
Microsoft Teams: Live Transcript for Teams Meetings for DoD	82838	October CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, DoD Teams Meetings now have a real-time transcript during their meetings as well as a post-meeting transcript. This will help users in real-time recall what has been spoken during the meeting as well as review the meeting after the fact.
Microsoft Teams: Speaker Attribution for Live Captions for GCC	82849	April CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC Teams Meetings in GCC clouds will now have live captions utterances attributed to the speaker of the utterance.
Microsoft Teams: Speaker Attribution for Live Captions	82850	April CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC Teams Meetings in GCC clouds will now have live captions utterances attributed to the speaker of the utterance.
Microsoft Teams: AI-based noise suppression for MAC users	82826	April CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, macOS When your mic is turned on in a Teams meeting or call, background noise around you—shuffling papers, slamming doors, barking dogs, and so on—can distract others. Teams offers four levels of noise suppression (auto, low, high, and off) to help keep meeting participants focused. This feature is now available for all MAC users except for those with new MACs that have the M1 ARM processor.
Outlook: Intelligent Translation	81921	May CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Desktop, GCC, GCC-High Translation is coming to Outlook Desktop for GCC and GCC-H customers.
SharePoint: Admin center – Migration Manager: Google migrations	82014	April CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint With our recent Mover acquisition, we are excited to expand our capabilities to allow moving content from Google into Microsoft 365. When you’re ready to move your content, click on the Migrate tab in the SharePoint admin center to start scan discovery, assessment, and migrate. You’ll get detailed reports and the rest in a seamless transition of files and folders to Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and/or Teams).
SharePoint: Admin center – Migration Manager: Dropbox migrations	82015	May CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint With our recent Mover acquisition, we are excited to expand our capabilities to allow moving content from Dropbox into Microsoft 365. When you’re ready to move your content, click on the Migrate tab in the SharePoint admin center to start scan discovery, assessment, and migrate. You’ll get detailed reports and the rest in a seamless transition of files and folders to Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and/or Teams).
SharePoint: Admin center – Migration Manager: Egnyte migrations	82016	June CY2021	Added: 23 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint With our recent Mover acquisition, we are excited to expand our capabilities to allow moving content from Egnyte into Microsoft 365. When you’re ready to move your content, click on the Migrate tab in the SharePoint admin center to start scan discovery, assessment, and migrate. You’ll get detailed reports and the rest in a seamless transition of files and folders to Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and/or Teams).

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

Microsoft Teams can help your employees stay connected and collaborate with each other, especially in the current unprecedented time where remote work is a reality of employees around the world. Being able to chat, do video meetings and collaborate on Office documents within Teams can help companies stay productive. Whether you are a small business, a non-profit or a large organization, you can get started with Teams within Microsoft 365 or Office 365 suite – even before deploying any other Office app or service. Join Microsoft Teams experts as we review Teams implementation for collaboration, chat and meetings. We’ll share key configurations, considerations, best practices, and resources to get your users up and running quickly. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Recognize key success factors for technical and user readiness, (2) Identify pre-requisites and tenant setup for your environment, (3) Install the Teams clients appropriate for your organization, (4) Configure policies that enable your preferred user experiences, and (5) Leverage collaboration features to enhance remote work scenarios.

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

Working from home offers the opportunity to maintain your workflow while allowing flexibility in how and where you get your work done. Shifting to a remote worker status can be an adjustment as you look for ways to balance home and work life, maintain focus and be fully productive. Microsoft Teams can help you stay connected to your team while providing access to all of the tools and resources you need to get your work done. Join us to learn tips that can help set you up for success as you transition into a ‘work from home’ scenario. During this session, we’ll share: (1) Guidance for setting up your home environment for work, (2) Best practices for maintaining your workflow while working at home, (3) Tips for staying connected to your team while remote, and (4) Insights for effectively supporting a remote team.

On-Demand Session

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Do you want to get more done in Teams? Receive targeted and timely updates? Access services directly through Teams? Apps let you complete tasks, receive updates and communicate. This session introduces you to the key activities needed to get started with adding applications, bots and connectors in Microsoft Teams today. Through a series of live demonstrations and best practices, you’ll leave this session with everything you need to start using apps in Teams. After this session, you will be able to: (1) See how applications, bots and connectors can help you be more efficient while working in Teams, (2) Select an application, bot or connector for your workspace, (3) Install an application, bot or connector, and (4) Use an application, bot or connector in your workspace.

On-Demand Session

Use chat and calling features in Microsoft Teams

Join us to learn how to extend your circle of communication and collaboration with Microsoft Teams. Easily connect with your colleagues anywhere, anytime and manage all your conversations from one central platform. In this 1-hour training you will learn how to: (1) Send and reply to chat messages, (2) Use messaging tools to enhance your conversations, (3) Manage your chat conversations, and (4) Use calling features.

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Have you spent significant time and resources to prepare for a meeting and felt it wasn’t productive and not much was accomplished? Join us to learn how to make your meetings engaging, productive, and meaningful. Use Microsoft Teams for your entire meeting experience. In this training, you will learn how to: (1) Schedule and join meetings and initiate calls, (2) Use collaborative tools such as sharing, whiteboards, meeting notes, recording, and more, (3) Easily access important meetings and related content at any time, and (4) Assess which audio and video devices are best for your meeting needs.

Explore teams and channels in Microsoft Teams

Do you need to regularly collaborate with your workgroup where you need to access shared files, apps, and conversation threads? Join us to learn how to extend collaboration, provide visibility, and manage teamwork from a central space. Microsoft Teams is a robust collaboration tool, providing you anywhere, anytime access to your group projects, daily operations, knowledgebase resources, and large scope initiatives. Use teams and channels to collaborate in virtual workspaces with your entire group. In this 1-hour training, you will learn how to: (1) Join and organize your teams and channels, (2) Use channels to streamline projects and operations, (3) Collaborate with your team members, and (4) Create and manage teams as an owner.

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Do you use Microsoft Teams on a regular basis and want to learn more? Are you looking for ways to increase your efficiency and productivity in Teams? Join us to discover ways to enhance communication and increase your efficiency and productivity within Teams. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. In this training, you will learn how to: (1) Leverage formatting best practices to help get your messages noticed and responded to, (2) Integrate tools and best practices to streamline and collaboration process, and (3) Implement strategies to manage and organize your work.

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Are you looking to ensure users have optimal experiences with meetings and voice capabilities in Teams? During this session, we’ll discuss tools, reporting and best practices to help you manage service quality — from establishing a proactive strategy to resolving common quality issues as they arise. We’ll build upon best practices from Teams experts and make it real with examples of common scenarios that may arise as your organization embraces meetings and voice capabilities in Teams. Join us for an expert-led workshop for guidance on key resources and actionable insights to manage audio and video quality with Microsoft Teams. Your users will thank you for it! After this session, you will be able to: (1) Define key service metrics and user experience factors for quality, (2) Recognize concepts and metrics in core tools and resources that help you assess usage and quality, (3) Identify key indicators of poor experience in common scenarios and relevant actions to address, and (4) Establish a proactive quality management strategy to ensure optimal user experience.

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).

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Join us to learn how to accomplish the fundamental tasks in Teams. Learn how to easily communicate with your co-workers, save time while working and collaborating, and see how teamwork and projects can be managed in a central space. In this training you will learn how to: (1) Set up your profile and notifications, (2) Use chat and calling for 1:1 and group conversations, sharing and collaboration in Microsoft Teams, (3) Schedule and attend meetings, (4) Align your workgroup and projects, and (5) Collaborate on files and tools.

Energize your Live Events with Microsoft Teams

This 1-hour session will provide an opportunity to learn practical guidance about conducting engaging and energizing large, online virtual events using Microsoft Teams. This session is designed for anyone wishing to organize, produce or speak at a large, virtual event and is open to anyone. During this session, you will: (1) Understand best practices to ensure your large, online virtual event is successful using Microsoft Teams or Teams Live Events, (2) Gain practical, technical production knowledge to ensure your event is engaging, (3) Understand the Attendee experience, (4) Learn before-during-after tactics to build & continue your large, online event momentum with Webinar features, and (5) Leverage and understand step by step virtual event resources as found at aka.ms/virtualeventplaybook.

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

Join Microsoft Teams experts as we review how you can deploy commonly-used applications directly within Teams, enabling your users to work more efficiently and effectively by accessing everything they need in a single interface. This foundational workshop covers basic capabilities across app management and security. With over 400 out-of-the-box applications available (and growing), you’re sure to find an app, or two, that your team can begin using today in Teams. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Identify suitable apps to meet the needs for your organization, (2) Recognize common attributes of successful app deployment, (3) Navigate security and compliance considerations for Teams’ apps, and (4) Determine the next steps to deploy an app to your environment.

Teams Chalk Talk: So…you want to make calls with Microsoft Teams?

Are you ready to add PSTN calling capabilities to Microsoft Teams? Join Microsoft Teams Engineering subject-matter-experts as they demystify the options for adding PSTN calling to Teams, provide you with best practices for configuring calling options and show you how to monitor call quality. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Understand the history of voice services in Microsoft products, (2) Identify what calling options in Microsoft Teams are right for you, (3) Configure your calling options in the Teams admin portal, and (4) Monitor and use call quality tools in Teams.

Empower your Frontline workforce to do more with Teams

Do you need to rapidly onboard a large number of Frontline users to Microsoft Teams and configure a streamlined experience for them? Are you struggling with where and how to start? If yes, this is the clinic for you! Join Microsoft Teams customer engineering experts as we review how Microsoft Teams can accelerate your Frontline worker deployment. Featuring examples from manufacturing, retail, hospitality, and transportation industries, we’ll explore how Microsoft Teams provides a single experience for productive conversations, smooth flow of information, simplified schedule management in a compliant and secure environment for your Frontline workers. You’ll leave this highly interactive session with tangible next steps to accelerate your planning. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Identify scenarios that matter to your Frontline workers and the best approach to implementing Teams from pilot to scale across your entire organization, (2) Map scenarios to Microsoft Teams use cases, and (3) Craft the right experience for your Frontline workers in Teams by configuring 1P apps and policies.

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Protect Sensitive Information and Manage Data Risk

As people increasingly shift to remote work, protecting your organization’s information and managing risk should be a top priority. Microsoft Security Virtual Training Day: Protect Sensitive Information and Manage Data Risk teaches you how to take advantage of Microsoft technologies that identify and remediate risks that arise from creating, storing, sharing, and using sensitive data. In addition, you’ll learn how to protect that data throughout its entire life cycle—on-premises and across devices, apps, and cloud services. During this two-part training event, you will explore how to: (1) Understand, identify, and protect your most sensitive data, (2) Identify and take action on insider risks and code-of-conduct violations, and (3) Utilize information protection and governance.

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Join Microsoft Teams experts as we review high-value scenarios including incident management (help desk), employee engagement, and productivity that can be enhanced through simple integrations in Teams. We focus on popular enterprise applications your users may already be using every day. Come see how easy it is to connect your systems, increase automation, and deliver improved experiences by bringing the apps your organization relies on into Teams. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Understand common app integrations for Teams across multiple scenarios and user personas, and (2) Understand third-party apps available for key scenarios.

Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Do you need an online, collaborative workspace for your project or workgroup? Join us to explore effective, virtual workspaces for projects and workgroups. Microsoft Teams offer the flexibility to set up a workspace that suits your needs. In this training, you will learn how to: (1) Determine the best approach for your collaboration needs, (2) Create workspaces for your team to provide the best teamwork experience, and (3) Determine best practices in Microsoft Teams to enhance productivity.

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Enable Remote Work with Microsoft Teams

To be productive in a remote environment, your employees need to be able to safely collaborate from anywhere. Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams helps you provide a remote workforce with the tools, resources and solutions they need to stay connected and productive. Join us to learn how to get the most out of Microsoft Teams online meetings, calling, video and chat, and empower your workforce to work from any location on any device. During this two-part training event, you will explore how to: (1) Enable your people to meet and collaborate from home, (2) Make productivity applications available on any device, and (3) Deliver the best remote user experience.

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 15 participants, reserve your seat now.

Getting Started with Windows Virtual Desktop

Businesses are shifting to a desktop experience that empowers IT and enables employees to be more productive and secure, but not all employees sit in an office or always work from secure locations. With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can set up a scalable and flexible environment to unlock mobility, productivity and security. This new 2-hour session will give you the opportunity to get hands-on experience with Windows Virtual Desktop. During this session, you will explore how to: (1) Create your first Windows Virtual Desktop architecture, (2) Create images and assign them to users, (3) Operationalize the virtual desktop infrastructure with monitoring, scaling, and image management, and (4) Explore security best practices within Windows Virtual Desktop. Each session is limited to 15 participants, reserve your seat now.

Customer Immersion Experience: Integrate Your Business into Microsoft Teams

The workforce relies on Microsoft Teams to chat, meet, and collaborate. But that’s just the beginning. Microsoft Teams can bring the applications and tools you’re already using, into one universal hub your workforce needs to get things done. During this interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Integrate ready-to-use apps into the Teams experience, (2) Maintain control over which apps are accessible for your organization, (3) Create an App that embeds modern SharePoint pages in Teams using App Studio, (4) Manage permission and set up policies through the Admin Center, and (5) Scale business critical apps to your organization. Each session is limited to 15 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

When employees are confident in their ability to collaborate remotely and securely, they are free to achieve more without worry. Learn how to protect data, devices, and applications while simplifying IT and minimizing the impact on employees at Microsoft Security Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization. During this free two-part learning event and accompanying Q&A, you’ll form the foundations to safeguard your company’s digital footprint. During this training event, you will explore how to: (1) Craft identity synchronization, protection, and management, (2) Utilize security in Microsoft 365, and (3) Integrate cloud app security and device management plans.

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 15 participants, reserve your seat now.

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Whether you are switching from Skype for Business or brand new, join us to learn the basics of how to use Teams to chat with your colleagues and collaborate on projects. Join us for this session and leave this with everything you need to start using Teams. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Set up your profile and notifications in Microsoft Teams, (2) Use chat and calling for 1:1 and group conversations, sharing and collaboration in Microsoft Teams, (3) Schedule and conduct meetings in Microsoft Teams, and (4) Align your team and teamwork in Microsoft Teams. Each session is limited to 15 participants, reserve your seat now.

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

To support your efforts to deliver and deploy updates to the Windows 10 devices being used by remote, onsite, and hybrid workers across your organization, and manage those devices effectively, we are continuing our series of weekly “office hours” for IT professionals here on Tech Community. During office hours, we will have a broad group of product experts, servicing experts, and engineers representing Windows, Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Microsoft Intune, Configuration Manager), security, FastTrack, and more. They will be monitoring the Windows 10 servicing space and standing by to provide guidance, discuss strategies and tactics, and, of course, answer any specific questions you may have. Office hours are text-based; there is no audio or virtual meeting component. To post a question, you just need to be a member of the Tech Community. Simply visit the Windows 10 servicing space and click Start a new conversation. At the start of office hours, we’ll pin a post outlining the individuals on hand, and their areas of expertise. Can’t attend at the designated time? Again, no problem. Post a question in the Windows 10 servicing space up to 24 hours in advance and we’ll make sure we review it during office hours.

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 15 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Building Microsoft Teams Integrations and Workflows

Remote work requires smarter workflows. Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Building Microsoft Teams Integrations and Workflows shows you how the Microsoft Teams developer platform makes it easy to integrate your apps and services to improve productivity, make decisions faster and create collaboration around existing content and workflows. Join us to learn how to build apps for Teams and create integrated, people-centered solutions that can transform productivity in your organization, whether you’re on-site or working remotely. During this two-part training event, you will explore how to: (1) Build modern enterprise-grade collaboration solutions with Microsoft Teams, (2) Transform everyday business processes with Microsoft 365 platform integrations for Power Platform, SharePoint and Microsoft Office, and (3) Use the wealth of data in Microsoft Graph to extend Microsoft 365 experiences and build unique intelligent applications.

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 15 participants, reserve your seat now.

BLOG ROUNDUP

Research shows your brain needs breaks—Outlook and Microsoft Teams can help

One thing is certain: hybrid work is the future of work. People want increased flexibility and a blended work model that grants them the freedom to work when and where it’s most comfortable for them. Hybrid work can deliver a future that people want—but that doesn’t mean the transition to this future will come without its challenges. Our latest Work Trend Index research shows that much of this digital overload is due to back-to-back meetings with no breaks in-between. Wall-to-wall meetings increase stress and make it harder to stay focused and engaged. And our research shows that even just a sliver of time between these meetings can help. So, we’ve created a simple remedy, and a new way to think about meetings, that will give you just a little bit of your time back—time to recharge, grab a glass of water, or simply transition more peacefully from one meeting to the next. | Related: New settings in Outlook give everyone a break between meetings

Enabling Modern Auth for Outlook – How Hard Can It Be?

Since we announced in 2019 that we would be retiring Basic Authentication for legacy protocols we have been encouraging our customers to switch to Modern Authentication. Modern Authentication, based on OAuth2, has a lot of advantages and benefits as we have covered before, and we’ve yet to meet a customer who doesn’t think it is a good thing. But the ‘getting there’ part might be the hard part, and that’s what this blog post is about. This post is specifically about enabling Modern Authentication for Outlook for Windows. This is the client most widely used by many of our customers, and the client that huge numbers of people spend their day in. Any change that might impact those users is never to be taken lightly.

Announcing redirect of compliance solutions from SCC to Microsoft 365 compliance center

The Microsoft 365 compliance center provides easy access to solutions to manage your organization’s compliance needs and delivers a modern user experience that conforms to the latest accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1). From the compliance center, you can access popular solutions such as Compliance Manager, Information Protection, Information Governance, Records Management, Insider Risk Management, Advanced eDiscovery, and Advanced Audit. Over the coming months, we will begin automatically redirecting users from the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center (SCC) to the Microsoft 365 compliance center for the following solutions: Audit, Data Loss Prevention, Information Governance, Records Management, and Supervision (now Communication Compliance). This is a continuation of our migration to the Microsoft 365 compliance center, which began in September 2020 with the redirection of the Advanced eDiscovery solution.

Introducing the Email Entity Page in Microsoft Defender for Office 365!

The new email entity page brings a comprehensive experience that provides an exhaustive view of details critical to investigation. The email entity page gives a 360-degree view of an email in one page, and helps security analysts save time and effort, leading to more effective threat protection. Curious why an email was delivered despite being marked as malicious? Or what the latest location of the email is? What are the rich set of details for a URL or file that was detonated? Was it sent to a priority account? The email entity page brings you the answer to these questions, and the details you need to investigate and analyze an email – overrides, exchange transport rules, latest delivery location, detonation details, tags and a lot more. The email page has information and capabilities for analysts to dig deeper into intricate email details, and headers, look at email preview or email download. The email page also builds on our promise to integrate Defender for Office 365 tightly with other Microsoft 365 Defender experiences like hunting, alerts, investigations and more.

NOTEWORTHY

New Yammer Training Videos & Resources

A lot has changed in Yammer over the past year and we continue to see new growth, new communities, and new users getting started with Yammer. With this in mind, we are excited to share training videos that you can use to share within your own organization. Use these training videos to build momentum in your Yammer communities. The videos include: (1) Microsoft Yammer conversations and discovery, (2) Microsoft Yammer notifications and announcements, (3) Microsoft Yammer communities overview, and (4) Microsoft Yammer network admin highlights.

Microsoft 365 Compliance Resource Pages

The following pages were built to help you easily find all relevant content and resources relating to the compliance solutions in Microsoft 365:

Three New Intelligence and Insights Features from Microsoft Forms | April 2021

Microsoft Forms aims to help you make better decisions with data. As we improve Forms’ intelligence service, we support you in not just creating surveys and polls more easily, but also in extracting key insights from data in an understandable way. Read on to learn about three of these improvements: Estimated Time, the Insights button, and Word Clouds. Estimated Time provides an estimated response time for longer surveys. Word Clouds provide a visual of the key phrases from the response to an open-text question in Forms.

iPad support now available in Microsoft Lists for iOS

Track what matters most from the comforts of a larger touch screen device. We’re pleased to share Microsoft Lists for iOS now supports iPad. AKA, no more lists at 2x. You’ll get a beautiful native experience to track, manage and share your information. We, too, have enabled Conditional Access to Lists for iOS, and updated an important fix when a list is deleted from your iPhone or iPad. The Microsoft Lists iOS app is now configurable as a public app in Intune app protection policy (APP) through the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center. This allows app to be targeted to ensure that the data accessed is protected by app protection policies. The app now also supports conditional access deployment through Azure admin portal. Please note that ‘Require app protection policy’ is supported which provides higher level of assurance. Lists app doesn’t currently support ‘Require approved client app’ grant access.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-15

Welcome to the April 12 – 18, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were eleven features added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, OneDrive, Forms, and Microsoft Information Protection.

More sessions for existing meeting series have been added, and the one new event is the Microsoft Federal Collaboration and Cybersecurity Summit on Tuesday, April 20th at 6am Pacific. The spotlight event of the week is Microsoft 365 Virtual Training, “Secure and Protect Your Organization”, scheduled for Wednesday, April 21st and Thursday, April 22nd.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include details on new frontline workers enhancements in Microsoft Teams, new approval features in Teams, information on dynamic groups in Azure AD and Microsoft 365, and the general availability of the Microsoft Data Loss Prevention Alerts Dashboard.

Noteworthy items from last week include the availability of email notifications in Project for the web, the latest “Inside Microsoft Teams” video focused on security in Teams, information on how Microsoft used location-based routing to enable Microsoft India to move to Teams, and the release of the iOS/iPadOS security configuration framework.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Microsoft Teams: Time Clock APIs	66317	April CY2021	Added: 12 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Now, with new Time Clock APIs, organizations can create rules such as how late someone can clock-in without requiring manager approval or requiring a health screening survey before clocking-in for the day.
Microsoft Teams: Customize your organization’s apps store in Teams for government clouds	81119	August CY2021	Added: 12 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC Now you can customize your organization’s apps store in Teams with your company branding by adding your logo, custom backgrounds, and custom text colors to make it more inviting to end users.
Microsoft Forms: Word Cloud data insights for open text question	81840	April CY2021	Added: 12 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Forms We are introducing new data insight type–Word Cloud–to the open text question in Forms. When users have collected responses for an open text question, word cloud data insight will be available to help them get a quick view on the top text phrases people answered.
OneDrive: Android – Outline for PDF viewing	81917	April CY2021	Added: 12 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive – Android Users of OneDrive for Android will be able to view an outline or table of content that they can use to navigate to.
OneDrive: iOS – Outline for PDF viewing	81918	April CY2021	Added: 12 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive – iOS Users of OneDrive for iOS will be able to view an outline or table of content that they can use to navigate to.
OneDrive: iOS – Jump to Page for PDF viewing	81919	April CY2021	Added: 12 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive – iOS Users of OneDrive for iOS will be able to move through PDF by typing the page number in Jump to Page.
OneDrive: Android – Jump to Page for PDF viewing	81920	April CY2021	Added: 12 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive – Android Users of OneDrive for Android will be able to move through PDF by typing the page number in Jump to Page.
OneDrive: Request Files for GCC High and DoD	72228	April CY2021	Added: 13 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive, GCC High, DoD The Request Files feature is now available for the GCCH and DoD environments.
Microsoft Teams: Templates for creation of a new Team	71635	May CY2021	Added: 14 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams With templates in Teams, users can choose from a variety of customizable templates when creating a new team, helping them get started quickly. IT Admins can also create custom templates for their organization, allowing them to standardize team structures, preinstall relevant apps, and scale best practices.
OneDrive: Android – Night time reading mode for PDF viewing	72230	May CY2021	Added: 15 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive – Android Users of OneDrive for Android will be able to change the appearance of PDFs in three main color modes which are day mode, night mode and sepia to enhance viewing.
Microsoft Information Protection: Teams location picker supports security groups and distribution lists (DoD)	72232	June CY2021	Added: 15 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP, Teams, DoD Data loss prevention (DLP) for Microsoft Teams will now support security groups and distribution lists as part of the Teams location picker, enabling more granular control of DLP policy scope (i.e. to include/exclude particular departments, business units, geo-specific security groups, etc.)

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

On-Demand Session

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

On-Demand Session

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Explore teams and channels in Microsoft Teams

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

Teams Chalk Talk: So…you want to make calls with Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Federal Collaboration and Cybersecurity Summit

When: Tuesday, April 20, 2021 from 6:00am – 9:30pm PT | In the face of unprecedented challenges today, leadership resiliency is paramount.  The high stakes of cybersecurity challenges continue to increase and evolve with no end in sight.  The frequency of cybersecurity threats and their level of sophistication have and will continue to grow and as the threat of cyber-breaches increase, so does the need for intergovernmental collaboration, communications, and data sharing. Please join us for our Federal Collaboration and Cybersecurity Summit, a half-day virtual event at no additional cost designed to advance U.S. Federal agencies collaboration and cybersecurity initiatives. Microsoft is bringing together executives and leaders from U.S. Federal agencies to deliver key insights, lessons learned, and practical guidance on: (1) Advancing Cybersecurity in the Federal Government, (2) Cultural transformations that drive new ways of working and digital modernization, (3) Breaking down silos to facilitate partnership with industry and academia, and (4) Connecting with people and information from the office or in the field to securely share and protect sensitive information.

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Use chat and calling features in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Protect Sensitive Information and Manage Data Risk

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Getting Started with Windows Virtual Desktop

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

With the dramatic shift to remote work, we all continue to seek creative ways to stay connected and productive in our jobs. How do we recreate those meetings, calls, and large events that previously brought us together and helped us achieve our business goals? Do we have the right tools and devices to do so? And how do we do all of this while keeping security top of mind? These aren’t easy questions to answer. This one-hour session will give you the opportunity to test drive Microsoft Teams, Yammer, and Power BI in a live cloud environment. A facilitator will guide you as you create a virtual company-wide meeting and explore how to: (1) Build a communication and collaboration hub, (2) Engage employees through chat and polls, (3) Set up automated meeting captioning, translation, and transcripts, and (4) Use analytical tools to make sense of data, categorize it, and make it easier to visualize. Each session is limited to 15 participants, reserve your seat now.

Tuesday, May 11, 2021 from 12pm – 1pm PT

Customer Immersion Experience: Integrate Your Business into Microsoft Teams

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

We designed Microsoft Teams to be a virtual office you can take anywhere you go. Work seamlessly and transparently with your remote team and discover greater collaboration and productivity. Join us for this session and explore how to avoid communication sinkholes and do more together, no matter where you are. Each session is limited to 15 participants, reserve your seat now. During this interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Work together as a team from anywhere and with more flexibility, (2) Connect instantly with team members for fast-paced decision making, (3) Meet with anyone, anywhere through audio, video, and web conferences, and (4) Boost team culture with the digital equivalent of an open office space.

Tuesday, May 25, 2021 from 12pm – 2pm PT

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Building Microsoft Teams Integrations and Workflows

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

BLOG ROUNDUP

New frontline worker enhancements in Teams to communicate, digitize processes and stay secure

Today, we continue to strike a balance between many of our current conditions, where most frontline workers are strained and socially distant, and tomorrow, where there is the possibility of a safe return to the more traditional ways of working. As we continue supporting frontline workers and organizations in this digital transformation balance, we are releasing new enhancements for frontline workers and corporate teams to continue to communicate more effectively, digitize processes and make data and workers more secure no matter the work conditions. These enhancements cover: (1) Richer communication and community, (2) Automated business workflows, and (3) More security with simple management. | Related: How Microsoft Teams is powering hybrid work and the frontline in manufacturing

Streamline requests with new approval features in Microsoft Teams

Getting an approval on your work items is an essential part of almost every workflow. The approval can be a written acknowledgement from your manager, a formal authorization from a diverse group of stakeholders, or an official signature from a customer. Regardless of the type of approval needed, it can be hard to track and manage the requests when many systems and people are involved and often leads to unnecessary delays. Approvals in Microsoft Teams enables everyone, from frontline workers to corporate headquarters employees, to easily create, manage, and share approvals directly from Teams. We’ve been listening to your feedback and have added new capabilities to streamline your approval request and get faster results. These new capabilities include: (1) Create an approval request with an electronic signature, (2) Create an approval template, (3) New attachment capabilities, (4) Markdown support, (5) Approve or reject an approval request inline, and more.

Microsoft Forms Powers Approvals Templates in Microsoft Teams, and other updates | April 2021

In this blog post, we are excited to share how Microsoft Forms powers Approvals templates in Microsoft Teams, an important product for frontline workers to do their job. As a joint effort between Forms and the Modern Workplace Transformation team, Approvals templates enable you to customize your approvals processes easily. From time off requests to overtime requests, templates provide a repeatable structure for common approvals—which includes a form. Additional updates in Microsoft Forms include the ability to enable Forms in PowerPoint without having to deploy Office add-ins, and the ability to send a form using a shortened URL.

Dynamic Groups in Azure AD and Microsoft 365

Using a query-based membership, when you update the attributes of a user or device they will be added to or removed from the dynamic groups that are now relevant to them, without you having to do any other steps. You might have a dynamic group for people who have the same department name or location specified in their user account. You can combine more than one attribute so, for example, the group members have to both be in the Finance department and be located in Brisbane, Australia. You can even create a “direct reports” dynamic group for people who report to the same manager. Devices can also be group members but you can’t mix both users and devices in the same group. You could create dynamic groups of devices with the same operating system version, Intune device property label or enrolment profile name, for example. Dynamic membership is supported in security groups and Microsoft 365 groups.

Announcing GA of Microsoft Data Loss Prevention Alerts Dashbo a rd

Customers rely on Microsoft Data Loss Prevention(DLP) to enforce policies that identify and prevent risky or inappropriate sharing, transfer or use of sensitive information across cloud, on-premise and endpoints. Alerts, which can be configured as a part of the DLP policy authoring experience are an effective tool for customers to get notified whenever a DLP policy is violated. Microsoft announces the General Availability of the Microsoft Data Loss Prevention Alerts Dashboard. This latest addition in the Microsoft’s data loss prevention solution provides customers with the ability to holistically investigate DLP policy violations across: Exchange, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, Devices, Cloud apps, and On-premises file shares. Advance alert configuration options are available in the existing DLP policy configuration flow. These provide eligible DLP customers with the ability to tailor how they organize DLP policy alerts along with exhaustive information that they need to investigate and address DLP policy violations quickly. Historical workflow information for alerts is available in the Management log.

NOTEWORTHY

Email Notifications in Project for the web

Based on the many requests from you, email notifications are now available for you to connect directly with coworkers on the work being tracked in Project. Your team members will get a notification once they have been assigned a task or have been added to a project. To enable notifications, go to Project Home, click on the Settings icon, and then click Notification Settings to select the desired configuration.

Your questions from the Microsoft Ignite Ask the Experts sessions about Microsoft Teams…answered!

Last month many of you joined our Ask The Experts (ATE) sessions at Microsoft Ignite, specifically ATE-FS191 – Ask the Expert: Microsoft Teams Manageability and ATE-FS191-R1 – Ask the Expert: Microsoft Teams Security and Compliance. We promised that we would pull together the questions and answers and post them in a blog post, so here we are making good on that promise.

Inside Microsoft Teams: Let’s talk about security in Microsoft Teams

Format: Video (31 mins) | Inside Microsoft Teams is a live Microsoft Teams webcast series for IT professionals hosted by Stephen Rose. Season 3 is focused on the voice of the IT Pro, which will include shows that focus on real-world customers like Lego, Envision Technologies, and more, to discuss the tips, tricks, and lessons learned on how they deployed, managed, and secured Microsoft Teams. In addition, viewers will get to see the latest innovations for Teams rooms and devices. In this episode, the show dives into the security announcements from Microsoft Ignite March 2021.

Inside Track: Location-based routing enables Microsoft India move to Microsoft Teams

Location-based routing is helping Microsoft overcome the challenge of finally moving its employees in India from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams. Made more challenging by the outbreak of COVID-19 and by India’s strict telecom regulations, the now-complete shift is the last large group of employees at Microsoft left to move to Microsoft Teams. The daunting task entailed upgrading Skype for Business enterprise voice-enabled employees in India to Microsoft Teams while also enabling location-based routing—all while maintaining compliance with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Announcing the iOS/iPadOS Security Configuration Framework

As mobile usage becomes more prevalent, so does the need to protect your work or school data on those devices. In March 2020, we introduced the App Protection Policy Data Protection Framework to help organizations determine which Intune app protection policy settings they should deploy to protect work or school account data within the apps. In June 2020, we expanded the framework by including recommendations for enrolled Android Enterprise devices by introducing the Android Enterprise Security Configuration Framework to manage device compliance and device restriction settings. Now, we are happy to announce that we’re expanding the framework to also include recommendations for enrolled iOS/iPadOS devices. iOS/iPadOS supports several enrollment scenarios, two of which are covered as part of this framework: (1) Device enrollment for personally owned devices – these devices are personally owned and used for both work and personal use, and (2) Supervised automated device enrollment for corporate-owned devices – these devices are corporate-owned, associated with a single user, and used exclusively for work and not personal use.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-10

Welcome to the March 8 – 14, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were nineteen features added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Forms, OneDrive, Planner, SharePoint, Microsoft Information Protection, and Yammer.

There aren’t any net new events for this week’s post, but there are additional sessions now listed for several existing meting series. This week’s spotlight event is the “Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA)” session for Microsoft App Assure on Tuesday, March 16th at 9am Pacific.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include the launch of Microsoft Whiteboard for Microsoft Teams channels and chats, a Project Accelerator tool that extends Microsoft Project, and the general availability of Azure Active Directory External Identities.

Noteworthy item highlights include the public preview of Out of Office scheduling in Microsoft Teams, a recap of what’s new in the Microsoft 365 admin center, granular conditional access for sensitive data and actions, and the introduction of a Microsoft 365 Solution for Legal.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Microsoft Information Protection: Configure external sharing for sensitivity labels in Teams and SharePoint sites	70735	March CY2021	Added: 09 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP With this update, you can set controls on external sharing while configuring a Team or site protection policy. For example you can set a very restrictive one for a Team or site labeled ‘confidential’—restricting sharing with people outside the organization or set a very relaxed one for a Team or site labeled ‘general’—allowing anyone with a link to access without requiring sign-in.
Microsoft Information Protection: Migrate legacy exchange DLP policies to the M365 compliance center	70790	April CY2021	Added: 09 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP The Exchange DLP migration wizard will enable you to seamlessly migrate the exchange DLP policies managed in the exchange admin center to the compliance center. M365 compliance center provides access to advanced classification capabilities like EDM, ML etc. along with rich alerts, incident management features and more.
Microsoft Teams: Availability of Praise for GCC	80913	April CY2021	Added: 09 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC GCC support for Praise.
Microsoft Teams: Tasks and Task publishing for GCC	80914	April CY2021	Added: 09 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC GCC support for Tasks and Task Publishing.
Microsoft Teams: Walkie Talkie on iOS (Preview)	80915	June CY2021	Added: 09 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Walkie Talkie, a push-to-talk experience that enables clear and secure voice communication over the cloud, enables teams to communicate instantly and always stay on the same page. This native built-in app in Teams turns employee or company-owned iOS smartphones and tablets into a walkie-talkie, reducing the number of devices employees must carry and lowering costs for IT.
Yammer: New Yammer experience as default for all users	70689	March CY2021	Added: 10 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Yammer Default to new Yammer experience for all users on web.
SharePoint spaces: Embed Web Part and Annotation	70732	March CY2021	Added: 10 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint Show SharePoint pages or HTML embed content as an interactable overlay on a SharePoint space.
Microsoft Teams: Get Template Graph API	70793	April CY2021	Added: 10 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Get team templates list and team template details via Graph API.
Microsoft Teams: Customized Website Tab Apps in Team Templates	70794	April CY2021	Added: 10 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams This feature enables Admins to add customized website tab apps in custom team templates.
Forms: Forms response receipt – GCC/GCC High/DoD support	70803	March CY2021	Added: 10 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Forms, GCC, GCC-High, DoD A new approach for form responder to get their response receipt in GCC/GCC High/DoD environment.
Forms: Forms Design Page Printing – GCC/GCC High/DoD support	70804	March CY2021	Added: 10 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Forms, GCC, GCC-High, DoD This feature allows form designer to print a blank form/quiz to responder who cannot fill the online form.
Microsoft Teams: Policy package assignment to groups	80241	March CY2021	Added: 10 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Streamline assignment of policy package with group assignment. Group assignment empowers admins to assign a policy package to a group instead of individual users.
Microsoft Planner: Move tasks to any of your plans	70738	April CY2021	Added: 12 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Planner You can now move tasks to any plan you’re a member of. Comments cannot move to a plan in a different group, and labels do not move across plans.
SharePoint: Focus mode for modern SharePoint pages	70800	March CY2021	Added: 12 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint SharePoint page authors and viewers will be able to focus on page content by using the Expand content button on the command bar to hide the site header, site navigation, and global navigation bar. Focus mode will persist when page viewers select links to pages within a site, but not when they select links to pages outside of the site (even if they are within a hub site).
OneDrive: Quickly change permissions in OneDrive/SharePoint share controls	70806	March CY2021	Added: 12 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive Users can now have the ability to change permissions more easily from the OneDrive/SharePoint share controls.
Microsoft Teams: Manage meeting options for GCC-High	72168	April CY2021	Added: 12 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC-High Organizers will now be able to modify the user experience, or customize the safety and security settings for their meetings using the new “Meeting Options” feature.
Microsoft Teams: Manage meeting options for DoD	72169	April CY2021	Added: 12 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, DoD Organizers will now be able to modify the user experience, or customize the safety and security settings for their meetings using the new “Meeting Options” feature.
Microsoft Teams: Improvements for managing attendee audio permissions in Teams Meetings	80261	April CY2021	Added: 12 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Meeting presenters and organizers can manage attendee audio permissions with greater flexibility. Attendees no longer must request to speak for the organizer or presenters to allow them to unmute, and presenters and organizers can prevent individual attendees from unmuting instead of all attendees at once.
Forms: Poll in teams meeting support 1k meeting/webinar	80619	April CY2021	Added: 12 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Forms For the large meeting, Forms poll will support the overall user experience and to help presenter could improve the meeting engagement.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

On-Demand Session

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

On-Demand Session

Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Teams Cha l k Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft App Assure

When: Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 9:00am PT | We are very excited to announce a Microsoft App Assure ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ (AMA)! The AMA will take place on Tuesday, March 16th, 2021 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT in the Microsoft FastTrack AMA Space. 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 engineering team who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback. Be sure to add the event to your calendar!

Teams Chalk Talk: So…you want to make calls with Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams Summit: March 2021 | Online Event

In 2020, remote and hybrid working became the new normal. Through Microsoft Teams, we came together; connecting, collaborating – and keeping our teams productive, creative and secure. Microsoft is hosting a three-day digital event, The Microsoft Teams Summit, commencing the week of March 22, 2021. It’s an event you won’t want to miss. You’ll hear from experts on how Teams can supercharge the way you and your organization work and discover best practices from customers who’re using Teams to achieve amazing successes. To make sure you’re getting information tailored to your needs, each of the three days will be dedicated to a different group of Teams users: Business leaders, IT professionals, and our everyday users.. So, however you’re using Teams, join us to discover new ways to enhance your skills, and bring your teams closer together to achieve more.

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Building Microsoft Teams Integrations and Workflows

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

Getting Started with Windows Virtual Desktop

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

Customer Immersion Experience: Integrate Your Business into Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

BLOG ROUNDUP

Introducing Microsoft Whiteboard for Android and Whiteboard for Microsoft Teams channels and chat

We are pleased to announce the Public Preview of the Microsoft Whiteboard app for Android and the launch of Microsoft Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams channels and chat. For projects and longer-term discussions, you can now create a whiteboard associated with a Teams channel or chat. Members of the channel or chat can iterate and collaborate on the whiteboards over time. Leveraging the completely rebuilt Whiteboard for Web and Teams experience we announced in 2020, Whiteboard for Android moves us one major step closer to achieving our vision of a collaboration space for ideation that is accessible from any device and integrates seamlessly into the collaboration workflows teams already use. Whether on Teams, Web, Windows 10, iOS, or now Android, Microsoft Whiteboard provides an infinite canvas where imagination has room to grow. You can draw, type, add a sticky note, stack things up, and move them around.

Introducing the Project Accelerator

For a lot of people, a project is more than a set of tasks with the team members assigned to work on them. You may need to track issues or risks or a process to decide which projects even get funded. This all can be done by extending Project for the web through Power Apps. To make it easier for you to get started, we are providing the Project Accelerator, which builds out these kinds of scenarios for you. The Project Accelerator enables several scenarios in Project: (1) Proposals, (2) Programs, (3) Risks, (4) Issues, (5) Changes, and (6) Status.

Label and Protect your sensitive information: discover, classify and deploy policy

Microsoft Information Protection and Microsoft Cloud App Security are a dynamic duo, here to protect data wherever it resides in your applications. If you’ve never been introduced, Microsoft Information Protection gives you the ability to take your files through the many stages of your workloads: Google Drive, Workday, Salesforce, Box, Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and more. Regardless of your platform, we’ve got you covered. Information protection is a key component of a CASB, and should deliver an integrated, nuanced understanding of your organization’s sensitive-labeled data as it’s leveraged in your cloud environment.

Azure Active Directory External Identities is Generally Available

Last Spring (2020), we shared our vision for Azure Active Directory External Identities and encouraged customers to preview self-service sign-up, our first step toward unifying Microsoft’s identity offerings for employee, partner, and customer identity. During the past year, we’ve made significant improvements to Azure AD External Identities with the help of our preview customers, who view this work as critical to making their workflows more flexible, secure, and scalable. We are now taking additional steps on this journey with the general availability (GA) of several External Identities features and a few new previews for B2B and B2C scenarios.

NOTEWORTHY

Bring your ideas to life with new capabilities in Visio for the web

At Visio, we are constantly working on new features to enhance the Visio for the web experience. In this blog, we provide a step-by-step guide on how to design a flowchart leveraging some of the latest capabilities in Visio for the web. Learn how to create and coauthor professional-looking flowcharts for effective decision making and process execution.

Now in Teams public preview: Out of Office Scheduling

Out of Office scheduling in Teams is now in public preview! Set up a message to let others know you’re on vacation or not available to reply. Your out of office status will also sync with your Outlook calendar, your presence and contact card information. This feature is rolling on Desktop and Web, starting March 14, 2021. This feature is supported on Windows, Linux, macOS, Edge, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

What’s new in the Microsoft 365 admin center

Updated: March 10, 2021 | This update covers a few of the things talked about at Ignite 2021: (1) We’ve revamped the Message center to help you discover relevant messages and added a more flexible reading experience. We’ve added a new Service column to help you scan which Service a message applies to and filter messages by Service and other metadata. You can favorite a message to mark it for follow up, choose which columns appear in the message list, and navigate between messages with the back and next buttons. We’ve also improved the process to make it easier to give feedback on Message center posts. To learn more about the new features, check out Manage messages in Message center. (2) We’ve made improvements to how you view the “What’s new” features for users in the Office apps. You can now see the rich content in the What’s new pane that your users can see. You can also learn more about the feature before you decide to let your users know about the feature. For more info, check out Manage which Office‎ features appear in What’s New.

Azure AD: Granular Conditional Access for sensitive data and actions

We are incredibly excited to introduce Conditional Access authentication context, because it really empowers you to apply policies in exactly the ways you’ve told us you want to. Your HR handbook and secret plans in SharePoint can have different access policies, and your company’s financials app can apply a different standard between reading balances and wiring funds. Conditional Access authentication context lets you target policies for data and actions within an app so you can refine your Zero Trust policies for least privileged access while minimizing user friction. With the public preview, which will start soon, we are adding support to several Microsoft services as well as support for SaaS apps and line-of-business apps. Look for the public preview in April!

Law Firms We Hear You! Introducing Microsoft 365 Solution for Legal

At Microsoft, we understand the importance of data privacy. Law Firms have the additional burden of protecting Client Matter Data as a commitment to the customers that they serve. At Microsoft, our mission is “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more”. The goal of Microsoft 365 Solution for Legal is to address the concerns over blind subpoenas while helping Law Firms realize their full potential using the most secure cloud and leverage Microsoft Teams in a way that is curated and configurable to meet those requirements. For as long as Microsoft has had a cloud offering, it may have felt like we were ignoring these concerns that law firms have. In many ways, we lacked some of the controls that were needed. Indeed we are listening! We recognize the value of Document Management Systems (DMS) providers and are working with many of the core software solution providers in this space to guide Client Matter Data to the DMS and keep it out of SharePoint and OneDrive when necessary. If data accidentally lands in SharePoint or OneDrive, we can leverage our file encryption technology to ensure that it is illegible to Microsoft (rendering it worthless to the blind subpoena) and only usable by you. The solution recognizes that each Law Firm is unique and have their own level of comfort with the cloud. So we also created an approach that can be modified to accommodate the needs and unique requirements that each Law Firm feels ready to adopt. We have developed a 4-phased approach to 1) Enable, 2) Empower, 3) Differentiate, and 4) Transform your journey to Microsoft Teams leveraging Microsoft 365 security and compliance tools.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-09

Welcome to the March 1 – 7, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Last week everyone was focused on Microsoft Ignite March 2021. There’s a ton of content in this week’s digest, so the intro will be short. You can find recordings, and related content at Microsoft Ignite On-Demand.

Note: Lots of new dates for existing events have been added since last week. There are also a couple of new events – the “Ask the Expert: Microsoft 365 Networking” session at 10am Pacific on Wednesday, March 10th, and an “Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) for Microsoft App Assure” on Tuesday, March 16th at 9am Pacific.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

With Ignite March 2021, there were lots of updates to the Office 365 Roadmap last week – 63 new features to be exact! Microsoft Teams had the highest number of features by far with 35 total, followed by Microsoft 365 Compliance (9) and Microsoft Lists (6).

In order to keep the length of the blog post to a minimum, the roadmap updates for last week are available via download as listed below:

Excel: O365-Roadmap-2021-09-Ignite Download

PDF: O365-Roadmap-2021-09-Ignite Download

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

On-Demand Session

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

On-Demand Session

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: So…you want to make calls with Microsoft Teams?

Ask the Expert: Microsoft 365 Networking

When: Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 10:00am PT | Network connectivity in the Microsoft 365 admin center includes aggregated network connectivity metrics collected from your Microsoft 365 tenant and measurements from Office desktop and web clients that use Microsoft 365. Informed network routing enables third-party SD-WAN solutions to receive application-level feedback on network quality to make better decisions about the best routing path to use. Come learn about these new network-related features from the engineering teams that built them. Be sure to add the event to your calendar!

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft App Assure

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Microsoft Teams Summit: March 2021 | Online Event

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Building Microsoft Teams Integrations and Workflows

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

Getting Started with Windows Virtual Desktop

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

Customer Immersion Experience: Integrate Your Business into Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

BLOG ROUNDUP

Flexible work is here to stay: Microsoft 365 solutions for the hybrid work world

Note: If you’re looking for one post to summarize Ignite 2021, this is it. | For some people, 2020 felt like the year work and learning moved home. For others, work continued to happen on-site—with the added challenges of staying safe on the job and learning new ways to connect to remote colleagues. But the reality is: 2020 is the year work and learning moved to the cloud. And it’s clear that flexible work is here to stay: According to research conducted for Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, over 80 percent of managers say they expect more flexible work from home policies post-pandemic, and more than 70 percent of employees say they expect to take advantage of them. So we can anticipate some pretty significant changes in the weeks and months to come. To thrive in this new hybrid world, people and organizations need solutions that are fluid, dynamic, and cloud-powered. At Microsoft, we’re building experiences to help everyone thrive in this new hybrid world of work and learning. At Microsoft Ignite March 2021, we announced new features designed for a hybrid world. From new digital event experiences in Microsoft Teams designed for internal and external attendees to new availability announcements about Microsoft Viva, there’s so much to share. | Resource: Microsoft Ignite 2021 Book of News

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Ignite 2021

We announced innovation coming to Microsoft Teams to help people connect, collaborate, and accomplish more together! This blog post provides details for all the Microsoft Teams announcements from Ignite March 2021. This post outlines what’s new in: (1) Meetings, (2) Webinars, (3) Chat and collaboration, (4) Security, compliance, and privacy, (5) Calling, (6) Devices, (7) Power Platforms and custom development, (8) Management and more.

In the recent months, we’ve witnessed sophisticated attacks, like the recent SolarWinds incident, as well as the devices and online experiences have become more central to the way we work, learn, and live. Working alongside customers and partners, Microsoft takes cybersecurity, privacy, and compliance to the next level with innovation and a unique comprehensive approach. At Microsoft Ignite Spring 2021 we are excited to announce the following new security and compliance capabilities in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams that help you to secure and govern your data holistically in this remote work era. Here is what’s new in: (1) Secure external collaboration, (2) Securing access with contextual and conditional policies, and (3) Comprehensive compliance. | Related: OneDrive Roadmap Roundup – February 2021 | SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop – February 2021

What’s new for Microsoft Lists – Microsoft Ignite 2021 [Mar.2-4] announcements

Microsoft completed rolling out Microsoft Lists in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams last year (2020) – along with the release of Microsoft Lists for iOS earlier this year. We have received a lot of positive feedback and usage is growing fast. We are pleased to share future Lists innovation, as announced at Microsoft Ignite March 2-4, 2021.

Microsoft Viva announcements at Microsoft Ignite

Last month (February 2021), we announced Microsoft Viva, the first Employee Experience Platform for the digital era. At Microsoft Ignite March 2021, we are pleased to share a set of exciting news and updates across the four Viva modules (Connections, Insights, Learning & Topics), summarized in this post.

The past year has led to an evolution in not only how we think about work, but more importantly, where work gets done. Arguably, gone are the days that your organization’s data is limited to the protected confines of your corporate network as your people continue to work remotely, return in some capacity to the office, or even adopt some hybrid of the two. With your people working across networks, devices, clouds, and apps, how do you ensure your data remains not only secure but compliant? A culture of security starts by securing data where people get work done. We have been investing in innovation to make this easier, and we’re sharing with you some additional capabilities that enable you to extend data protection and governance across apps, clouds, endpoints, and on-premises file repositories that keep your people collaborative and productive while ensuring your most valuable asset—your data—remains secure and compliant wherever it lives.

More than ever, organizations need to strengthen their defenses to give employees, partners, and customers the flexibility to work from anywhere using apps that live inside and outside the traditional corporate network perimeter. That’s why Zero Trust, a security strategy that combines maximum flexibility with maximum security, is so crucial. For IT pros and security professionals, the implementation of Zero Trust should be simple and straightforward. For users, it should never get in the way, and it should fit into familiar workflows and habits. This week, on the virtual Microsoft Ignite stage, we announced several Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) innovations that will help make life easier for you and your employees now—and help you stay prepared for whatever comes next.

Related:

NOTEWORTHY

The Next Phase For the New Version of Stream

In the past year, we’ve seen explosive growth for video in the workplace. Video has become central to engagement, communication, and productivity as more organizations than ever before embrace asynchronous work. Leading the evolution of workplace video, the Microsoft Stream team embarked on a journey to integrate fast, intelligent video across Microsoft 365. We announced a new vision for Stream—one in which users can create, share, discover, and manage video —just as they would any other file in Microsoft 365. We’re glad to announce we’ll be entering the next phase of our journey to the new version of Microsoft Stream in Q3 2021. In this phase, we’re on track to start bringing new experiences for sharing, discovery, and video playback on top of the Microsoft 365 file experience.

What’s New in Excel for the web

Delighting our customers with faster, smoother, and richer experiences in Excel for the web is an uncompromised goal across our Excel team. Recently we shared how we’ve continued to improve performance to make opening workbooks, navigating a workbook, and other interactions faster and smoother for you. We’re introducing several additional features to help you better navigate and manipulate your Excel files in a browser: (1) Easier worksheet navigation, (2) Multiple range selection, (3) Zoom in/out, (4) Excel keyboard shortcuts by default, (5) Version history, and (6) Regional settings.

Everyone needs some extra time

In July last year we mentioned that time is one of the most precious and scarce resources we have, and 9 months later that still seems to hold true with people still struggling to effectively prioritize and organize their time, manage meetings, and find time to focus. Almost 2/3 of information workers have had their typical work routines highly affected, add to that how their personal space has also been disrupted and so makes sense why people are struggling to organize their time. To help you organize your time and meetings, we are bringing 2 new capabilities to Outlook – (1) Organize everything your way with the new Outlook calendar board, and (2) Get intelligent scheduling assistance for your meetings.

Windows release health coming to the Microsoft 365 admin center

To help you keep your devices protected and productive, in the coming weeks, Microsoft is launching Windows release health on Microsoft 365 admin center. Microsoft 365 and Windows administrators will now benefit from an expanded version of the Windows release health hub, with more in-depth information about Windows updates, known issues, safeguards, lifecycle updates, and related news. With life and business more virtual than ever and dependent on healthy large-scale environments, it is essential to make IT administrators’ work easier. Windows release health in the Microsoft 365 admin center will be available for organizations with applicable Microsoft 365 and Windows subscriptions. Windows release health will appear as a new menu item (image below) under the Health section.

Adding more cloud-based Microsoft 365 Apps admin capabilities

In May and September 2020, we announced new cloud-based capabilities in the following three areas: intelligent insights, servicing automation with controls, and Microsoft 365 Apps health. Since then, we’ve seen over 11 million devices running Microsoft 365 Apps onboard to Inventory. We’ve also provided IT admins with over eight million app health metrics and delivered servicing updates to over 500,000 devices with our new Servicing Profile, keeping them continuously secure with the latest security improvements and up to date with improvements for collaboration and remote work. We are excited to announce improvements and more new capabilities to keep devices up to date, give you greater control and enable you to more easily manage Office as a service: (1) New in Microsoft 365 Apps Inventory and Servicing Profiles, (2) General availability of Skip and Rollback, and (3) General availability of Microsoft 365 Apps health.

Help employees transition to hybrid work using a new SharePoint site template and end-user training

As we return to the workplace, moving to a hybrid work model will not just be about continuing the great work-from-home experiment many of us have been participating in for almost 12 months now. We will need to change our behavior by developing new skills and habits to help us stay healthy, finding new ways to engage and stay connected as we adopt this new way of working. It is going to take a collective effort for organizations to make a successful transition to a hybrid workplace. There are big changes ahead for those of us moving to a hybrid work model. Like any organizational change initiative, we must be thoughtful about how we guide people through the journey. If not, organizations face risks such as decreased productivity, increased turnover, or employees that are just not engaged. To help our customers lead their organization’s transition to a hybrid workplace we have launched a SharePoint site template on the SharePoint look book called the Workplace transformation site as well as new end-user training to help employees learn new habits and skills that support hybrid work.

Azure AIP Portal Label & Policy Management Admin Experience – Post March 31st Deprecation

To provide a unified and streamlined customer experience, the Azure Information Protection labeling and policy management in the Azure Portal, and the AIP classic client, will be deprecated on March 31st, 2021as announced in our previous blog. We highly recommend customers on classic AIP labeling to migrate to unified labeling before this sunset timeline for a seamless transition to unified labeling. Note: This deprecation does not apply in the following scenarios: (1) For customers who have already been approved for extended support. Customers with extended support will continue using the AIP area in the Azure Portal with no impact until the end date of their extended support, and (2) For GCC/GCC-H/DoD customers. Support is extended for GCC/GCC-H/DoD customers until the end of September 2021. The deprecation does not affect the Azure Information Protection areas in the Azure portal related to the on-premises scanner and analytics. AIP analytics is still available in the Azure Portal, but we encourage customers to start using the Microsoft 365 Compliance center Activity Explorer.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-08

Welcome to the February 22 – 28, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Twenty-four features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Forms, Exchange Online, SharePoint, Microsoft 365 Compliance Center, and Yammer.

An “Ask Microsoft Anything” for Microsoft Teams Virtual Events is the only brand new event over the last week. Note: Some of the existing meeting series only have on-demand sessions listed. It’s possible that there is a pause in activity due to Microsoft Ignite and the list of events for later in March hasn’t been published yet. Speaking of Microsoft Ignite, it’s the spotlight event of the week!

Highlights from last week’s blogs include published Ignite guides for several services, such as Teams, Microsoft 365 Apps, and Security, as well as a look at how to accomplish more during your day with Microsoft Teams and OneDrive.

Wrapping up the post are noteworthy items such as the latest updates for Visio for the web and Microsoft To Do, information on upcoming changes to mailbox receiving limits in Exchange Online, a look at Business email compromise phishing attacks, and details on the launch of new industry clouds.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Forms: Split sending and sharing entry point	79450	March CY2021	Added: 24 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Forms To remove the confusion between collecting response from others and collaborating with others, we decouple entry point of sending and sharing into separate paths. In future iterations, more sending options and effective channels will be added to keep improving the detailed sending experiences.
Microsoft Teams: AI based poll question suggestion for Teams meeting	79493	March CY2021	Added: 24 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams When user wants to create poll for their Teams meeting, Forms intelligence service will suggest some polls based on their meeting purpose.
Microsoft Teams: AI based historical poll suggestion for Teams meeting	79494	March CY2021	Added: 24 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams When user wants to create poll for their Teams meeting, Forms intelligence service will suggest this user’s historical polls based on their meeting purpose.
Microsoft Teams: AI based option suggestion for Teams meeting polls	79495	March CY2021	Added: 24 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams When user is creating poll for their Teams meeting, Forms intelligence service will suggest some options for their question when applies.
Microsoft Teams: Data reports for polls after Teams meeting	79498	March CY2021	Added: 24 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams If user has used Forms poll in a Teams meeting, a summary report for all the polls used in this meeting will be generated and shared with meeting organizer and presenters.
Microsoft Teams: Data reports after Teams meeting class	79499	March CY2021	Added: 24 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams If a teacher has used Forms polls in a Teams meeting class, a summary report for all the polls used in this meeting will be generated and shared with teacher.
Microsoft Forms: Correct Answer choice feature added to Microsoft Forms Poll in Teams Meetings	80519	April CY2021	Added: 24 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Forms This feature introduces the concept of a Correct Answer choice to Polls within Teams meetings. Correct answer choices can be selected on multiple choice questions only. Correct answer can be a single option, or multiple if “multiple answers” is enabled. Correct answer choice will be shown after voting in the Results card. This feature exists for: Teams Meeting polls (that pop up as a window on the screen) and Polls used within Teams Chat both inside and outside of meetings. It also will be displayed if you open these polls on your Forms site (read only mode).
Microsoft Teams: Polls in Teams Meetings for GCC	70727	March CY2021	Added: 25 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC Forms polls for Teams meetings provides an easily discoverable and seamless experience that will help you conduct more engaging and productive meetings. With Forms polls, meeting presenters can prepare, launch, and evaluate polls before, during, and after meetings, respectively, all from one place under a tab in the Teams meeting.
Microsoft Teams: Forms Polls in Teams Meetings Improvements	79448	March CY2021	Added: 25 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Admin Center A set of top asks will be addressed with this general release. Polls in Teams Meetings now support guests and an optimized mobile experience.
Microsoft Teams: Support open-text question poll for Teams meeting	79464	April CY2021	Added: 25 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams For Microsoft Forms poll in Teams meeting, there is a new question type – open text. You can use this question type to collect attendees’ open-ended information before/during/after the meeting.
Microsoft Teams and Forms: Word Cloud for Polls in Teams meeting and Forms Surveys	79497	April CY2021	Added: 25 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, Forms When users have collected responses for an open text poll / question in a Teams meeting or in a regular form, word cloud data insight will be available to help them get a quick view on the top text phrases people answered.
Exchange: Exchange Admin center	80626	April CY2021	Added: 25 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Exchange The new Exchange Admin Center is a modern and a performant portal. The EAC will be available to all the customers from April 2021. This new portal has all the functions that were available in Classic EAC portal and a lot of other value additions like T2T Migration, Automated G-Suite Migration etc. A personalized dashboard with reports and insights is also available that makes the user more productive.
Exchange: Exchange Admin center for GCC	80627	April CY2021	Added: 25 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Exchange, GCC The new Exchange Admin Center is a modern and a performant portal. The EAC will be available to all the customers from April 2021. This new portal has all the functions that were available in Classic EAC portal and a lot of other value additions like T2T Migration, Automated G-Suite Migration etc. A personalized dashboard with reports and insights is also available that makes the user more productive.
Microsoft 365 compliance center \| Advanced eDiscovery: Discover only the document version that has been shared	70718	June CY2021	Added: 26 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance Many customers often consider shared documents or cloud attachments as a form of communication, and therefore are required to preserve and make that content discoverable. While end users benefit from quickly sharing files for visibility and collaboration, this practice has been challenging for eDiscovery and legal professionals. To help customers efficiently meet their regulatory obligations for discovery, Advanced eDiscovery plans to support the ability to discover the version of the document at the time that it was shared. This helps ensure that the correct document information is available to eDiscovery processes.
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Ability to delete a record label	70723	March CY2021	Added: 26 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance With the update, you will be able to delete unused record labels within Microsoft 365 Records Management.
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center \| Records management: Increased file plan import limits	70724	March CY2021	Added: 26 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance This update will allow an unlimited number of characters in the description for file plan imports.
Office App: All files list for Office.com	70728	February CY2021	Added: 26 February 2021 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Office App The “All” list is a comprehensive list of the files and content you have access to or have been shared with you, and gives you NEW filtering tools to narrow or group that list in a really fast way with a real-time “filter as you type” and filetype filters! This is an update to the existing Recent list on Office.com.
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Information barriers for GCCH and DoD	70729	June CY2021	Added: 26 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance, GCC-High, DoD Information barriers is a compliance feature to restrict communication and collaboration between two groups to avoid a conflict of interest from occurring in your organization.
SharePoint: Immersive reader is coming to modern SharePoint pages and new posts	70737	March CY2021	Added: 26 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint The Microsoft Immersive Reader, which is currently built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft apps, will be available for SharePoint pages and news posts. The Immersive Reader uses proven techniques to improve reading and writing for people regardless of their age or ability.
Exchange Admin Center: Another User Feature in New EAC	70739	March CY2021	Added: 26 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Exchange Another User feature is now available to the users that will help the admins adjust rules and out-office messages on other user’s behalf.
Exchange: Exchange Admin Center supports Delegated Admins	70740	April CY2021	Added: 26 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Exchange Delegated admins, with necessary permissions, can now open the mailbox, and view, add and remove the contents of the mailbox they have access permissions for.
Yammer: Essential Announcements	70741	March CY2021	Added: 26 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Yammer This feature allows Yammer community admins to achieve a guaranteed distribution of important community announcements via email for all members of that community, even if its outside of their preferred notification settings.
SharePoint: Events web part will display event images	70791	March CY2021	Added: 26 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint Page authors in SharePoint who use the Events web part will be able to turn on an option to show event images within the web part. When the option is on, each Event shown in the web part will display the image used in the title area of the Event page. Existing Event web parts will not be updated, but new web parts added to pages will show images by default.
Microsoft Teams: New Teams Live Events eCDN – Ramp	80825	March CY2021	Added: 26 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams We will be enabling a new eCDN provider, Ramp, for live events. You will be able to use this new eCDN for your live events needs.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

On-Demand Session

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

On-Demand Session

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

On-Demand Session

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

On-Demand Session

Teams Chalk Talk: So…you want to make calls with Microsoft Teams?

On-Demand Session

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Whether you are switching from Skype for Business or brand new, join us to learn the basics of how to use Teams to chat with your colleagues and collaborate on projects. Through a series of live demonstrations and best practices, you’ll leave this session with everything you need to start using Teams. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Set up your profile and notifications in Microsoft Teams, (2) Use chat and calling for 1:1 and group conversations, sharing and collaboration in Microsoft Teams, (3) Schedule and conduct meetings in Microsoft Teams, and (4) Align your team and teamwork in Microsoft Teams.

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our ‘Go Deeper’ sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. Learn tips and tricks for managing and organizing work and communications in Teams. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Leverage formatting best practices to help get your messages noticed (and responded to), (2) Easily find files, chats and projects, (3) Implement strategies to manage and organize your work, and (4) Simplify your workday.

Microsoft Ignite – March 2021

When: Tuesday, March 2, 2021 – Thursday, March 4, 2021 | Join our digital experience on March 2–4, 2021 to learn, connect, and explore new tech that’s ready to implement. All skill levels welcome. Save the date! Registration is now open.

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our ‘Go Deeper’ sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. Explore ways to determine the best approach for creating workspaces for projects and workgroups. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Determine the best approach for your collaboration needs (chat versus teams & channels), (2) Create workspaces for your team to provide the best teamwork experience, and (3) Determine best practices in Microsoft Teams to enhance productivity.

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.

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Teams Virtual Events

When: Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 9:00am PT | We are very excited to announce a Microsoft Teams ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ (AMA) for Virtual Events in Microsoft Teams! The AMA will take place on Tuesday, March 9, 2021 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT in the Microsoft Teams AMA Space. 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 engineering team who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback. Be sure to add the event to your calendar!

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Microsoft Teams Summit: March 2021 | Online Event

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Building Microsoft Teams Integrations and Workflows

BLOG ROUNDUP

Your Guide to Microsoft Teams @ Spring Microsoft Ignite 2021

Microsoft Spring Ignite is just around the corner and we’d like to share a preview of what you’ll see from Microsoft Teams at this event. This spring we will be focused on external collaboration, meetings, and digital events and webinars. We’ve created sessions that span the breadth of Teams to give you a view into our product capabilities, answer your questions, and provide insights into how your organization can create an even better hybrid workplace with Microsoft Teams.

In May 2020, we discussed how to modernize servicing by introducing a new Monthly Enterprise Channel, and in September, we introduced new cloud-based admin capabilities to help IT admins service Microsoft 365 Apps for their organizations. This time at Ignite, we’re bringing you more! Learn what’s new and ask our Microsoft 365 Apps deployment experts any questions you have during one of our Office Hours Q&A sessions, or head over to the Microsoft 365 Apps discussion space and post your question there. Be sure to also check out the on-demand sessions, blogs, and Microsoft Docs articles below to learn more. | Related: Windows & Devices at Microsoft Ignite 2021: March edition

Microsoft Ignite 2021 Tech Community Blog for Security, Compliance, and Identity

We are so excited to have you virtually joining us either live or catching the event on-demand. Our product and engineering teams have been working hard over the past six months to bring you the latest product news and announcements that will be shared during the event. Below is a comprehensive list of all sessions and opportunities to engage with Microsoft experts. There is a lot to explore during Microsoft Ignite, so we hope you take some time to watch, participate and learn!

Better together: Accomplish more during your day with Teams + OneDrive

For most people, remote work—whether part-time or full-time—is the new way of working. That’s why over 115 million daily users rely on Microsoft Teams to connect and collaborate, and also why Teams was recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service. We designed Teams, your digital hub for teamwork, and OneDrive, your personal cloud storage that lets you access your files from anywhere, to work seamlessly and securely together. You can use Microsoft 365 Apps including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or OneNote notebooks to create your work, store those files using OneDrive, and share them securely with colleagues in Teams, where you can co-author documents, meet with your teammates, and chat or meet with people inside or outside organization, all in one place. Let’s walk through a day of using OneDrive and Teams together for work.

NOTEWORTHY

Bring your ideas to life with new capabilities in Visio for the web

Introducing list sharing from personal accounts to work accounts in Microsoft To Do

Microsoft To Do gives you a personal and intuitive way to stay organized and make the most of every day. Today, most of our tasks involve collaboration with multiple people – something that list sharing can make easier. Whether you want to share a list of work items with your colleagues or a grocery list with a loved one, To Do makes it easy to collaborate and get things done together. List sharing in To Do was originally restricted to sharing between personal accounts and sharing between work (or school) accounts within the same organization. However, many of you wanted to be able to share between personal and work accounts. We listened to your feedback and are pleased to announce that you can now share lists from personal accounts to work accounts in Microsoft To Do.

Upcoming changes to mailbox receiving limits: Hot Recipients Throttling

To ensure optimal mail flow performance for all customers and protect the health of Exchange services, Microsoft is updating the way in which we enforce our mailbox receiving limits. With the growth of digital transformation and remote work, having access to emails is more critical than ever. Microsoft is committed to delivering a safe and reliable email experience for all customers, which requires us to balance our service across mailboxes. If a mailbox or tenant is allowing extremely high message volume, this can negatively impact other customers and cause email delays. Mailboxes that exceed our thresholds will consume resources from other mailboxes. As a large and global platform, we must enforce these limits to provide an equal experience for customers. Starting in April 2021, we will progressively roll out the new enforcement, starting at a higher threshold and incrementally lowering it until we arrive at our established limit of 3600 messages per hour, per mailbox.

Business Email: Uncompromised – Part One

Business email compromise (BEC) is a type of phishing attack that targets organizations, with the goal of stealing money or critical information. BEC has become a top-of-mind concern for CISOs – according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 2019, BEC was the costliest type of cybercrime, accounting for 50% of all losses worldwide. Since 2016, BEC has accounted for more than 26 billion dollars in losses. Large corporations to small businesses, all have fallen victim to these attacks. At Microsoft we have been actively working to block these attacks and working to disrupt attacker networks that look to propagate such crime. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 provides industry leading capabilities to protect against these sorts of attacks. So how do these attacks work? How can organizations best protect themselves? In this blog series, we will explore the evolution of BEC attack tactics, provide a refresher on existing and new capabilities in Defender for Office 365 that help detect these attacks, and best practices that customers should follow to secure themselves against BEC attacks. | Related: Business Email: Uncompromised – Part Two

New industry clouds offer launchpad for innovation

Over the past year, we have experienced dramatic disruption around the world. Companies in every industry have turned to digital technologies for the resilience and agility necessary to survive. The urgency for entire industries to transform at scale has never been greater. In response, we have accelerated our efforts to support and co-innovate with customers and partners — both now and long term — with industry-specific cloud offerings that can provide a launchpad for further innovations. We’re announcing another milestone in those efforts with three new industry-specific cloud offerings: Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services, Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, and Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit. We are also announcing the first update to Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, and the public preview timing for Microsoft Cloud for Retail, introduced in January at NRF. We created the Microsoft industry clouds by bringing together common data models, cross-cloud connectors, workflows, APIs, and industry-specific components and standards, with the breadth of Microsoft’s cloud services, including Microsoft 365 and Teams, Azure, Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365 and security solutions. Through these industry clouds, we aim to empower everyone to deliver value faster, adapt quickly to changing conditions, build for the future and do all of this with security at the core.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-05

Welcome to the February 1 – 7, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were twenty-five additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Microsoft 365 Compliance Center, Outlook (Web, iOS), Word and Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

The customer immersion experience sessions for Microsoft 365 and for Teams are back with new dates. Registration for the Microsoft Ignite (digital) experience is now open – the conference is scheduled for March 2 – 4, 2021. This week’s spotlight event is the “Ask Microsoft Anything” (AMA) for Microsoft Lists on Thursday, February 11th at 9am Pacific.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include lots of information on Microsoft Viva, details on an upcoming change to the default setting for Guest access in Microsoft Teams, a look at what rolled out for SharePoint in January 2021, and the announcement of Windows 10 in cloud configuration.

Noteworthy item highlights include information on Microsoft Edge Legacy and the April 2021 Windows Update release, an update on the timeline for disabling Basic Authentication in Exchange Online, a reminder that Skype for Business Online retires on July 31, 2021 with available assistance/resources, and details on the ability to edit Microsoft Lists in grid view.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Outlook for iOS: Conversational AI with Cortana	79865	February CY2021	Added: 01 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – iOS Ask Cortana to provide assistant to schedule meetings, compose short email messages, and find files, emails, and people that are relevant to you, all using your voice and natural language.
Outlook for iOS: Expandable new message and event buttons	79866	February CY2021	Added: 01 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – iOS The button for new event and message buttons on your Calendar and Inbox hat will expand to provide quick actions that are available in Outlook. By long pressing these new buttons, you’ll have easy access to commonly needed email and calendaring capabilities.
Office 365: Office is now available on iPad	60685	February CY2021	Added: 03 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 With this release, we are bringing the Microsoft Office app to the iPad, combining the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps you know, plus additional tools to keep you more productive than ever. Optimized for iPadOS, use your keyboard, mouse, and trackpad to create and collaborate on Office documents, or create using your camera, sign PDFs, jot down notes, and more.
Office 365: Intelligent Suggestions	70597	March CY2021	Added: 03 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 Intelligent Suggestions will help you quickly find, work on, and collaborate on the files that matter most to you.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Hunting for Impersonated domains and users	70613	February CY2021	Added: 03 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 We are adding new filters called Impersonated user and Impersonated domain to enable Security Operations teams to explicitly hunt for specific users or domains within their organization that are targets of impersonation attacks. This additional information related to Impersonated domain(s) and Impersonated user(s) will surface in existing Impersonation insight pages and our new Email Entity page.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Updates to post-delivery detections and investigations	70614	February CY2021	Added: 03 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 We are rolling out updates to alerts and investigations including new alert policies and post-delivery detections related to Zero-hour auto purge (ZAP). There will also be updates and improvements to the AIR playbooks for the post-delivery detections to capture the state of the emails and entities that are being investigated.
Outlook: on the web – React to an email message	70615	March CY2021	Added: 03 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Web Compliance Manager is the next generation of the existing Compliance Manager and Compliance Score solutions, which have been in commercial public preview since November 2019.
Microsoft Project: API Support for extensibility	70618	June CY2021	Added: 03 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Project API support to create, update and delete Projects, Tasks, Task Dependencies, Resource Assignments, Team Members and Project Buckets.
OneDrive: Updates to the sync app on Mac available in .pkg format	70693	March CY2021	Added: 03 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive – Mac Updates to the sync app on Mac will be available in the .pkg format which allows for faster updates and better security.
Word: Better collaboration with modern comments for Mac	76166	May CY2021	Added: 03 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Word – Mac Share your comments with co-authors only once they’re complete, enjoy improved @mention notifications, and be more productive with a consistent commenting experience between Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Word: Better collaboration with modern comments	76186	March CY2021	Added: 03 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Word Share your comments with co-authors only once they’re complete, enjoy improved @mention notifications, and be more productive with a consistent commenting experience between Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Microsoft Teams: Branded Lobby	79957	March CY2021	Added: 03 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Admins will now be able to add a custom logo to the Teams experience, for display in the lobby and meeting pre-join experience. The logo will be displayed for meetings where the organizer has the Advanced Comms SKU.
Microsoft Search: reports in modern sites	70616	June CY2021	Added: 04 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Search Microsoft Search reports in modern sites will allow for site administrators to view usage analytics related to Microsoft Search in modern sites in SharePoint Online.
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Communication Compliance can now leverage optical character recognition to extract and evaluate messages	70622	March CY2021	Added: 04 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance Introducing the ability to extract printed or handwritten text from images using Azure’s Computer Vision Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Text extracted will then be evaluated against Communication Compliance policies conditions.
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Communication Compliance now support 7 languages for the Threat, Targeted Harassment and Profanities classifiers	70623	March CY2021	Added: 04 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance Communication Compliance can now detect threat, targeted harassment, and profanities in the following languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese.
Microsoft Teams: Together mode for DoD	70625	March CY2021	Added: 04 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, DoD Together mode uses AI segmentation technology in meetings to digitally place participants in a shared background, making it feel like you’re sitting in the same room with everyone else.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Audit retention dashboard for government clouds	70627	March CY2021	Added: 04 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance Create and manage audit log retention policies within the new Audit retention dashboard in the Microsoft 365 compliance center.
Forms: New Forms Start Page in GCC, GCC-High and DoD	80044	March CY2021	Added: 04 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Forms, Gov This update replaces the existing Forms Portal page with a new Forms Start page on Office.com (Office.com – Forms). Users who access forms via Office.com will get this experience first, then users accessing forms via the Forms website will get the experience soon after.
Azure Active Directory: Authenticator Code Match for MFA	70617	March CY2021	Added: 05 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Azure Active Directory Admins will be able to turn on code match for MFA notifications in Authenticator and apply the behavior by user/group.
Microsoft Teams: New file sharing experience	70629	February CY2021	Added: 05 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Streamline sharing with Microsoft Teams. You can now create a shareable link for any file stored in Teams and directly set the appropriate permissions. Additionally, you can also set permissions for files stored in SharePoint or OneDrive while composing a private chat or starting a channel conversation.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: “Watch-the-watchers” audit trail for Insider Risk Management	68921	March CY2021	Added: 06 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance Audit and review activities of IRM Analyst, IRM Investigator, and IRM Admin roles within the Microsoft 365 Insider Risk Management solution. The audit trail will be available for a new role (IRM Auditor) to maintain integrity of an independent audit control.
Microsoft Teams: Integrated CART Captioning in Meetings	70588	July CY2021	Added: 06 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Users will now be able to view captions coming from a CART provider (real-time captioning) within the Microsoft Teams meeting window. Meeting organizers and participants will be able to ask their captioning providers to stream captions to Microsoft Teams.
SharePoint: Company-Branded Auto News Digest	70606	March CY2021	Added: 06 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint For SharePoint news users, we are launching an update to the Auto-News Digest feature. Now users will receive a company branded Auto-News Digest.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Potential Nation State Activity Alerts	70624	February CY2021	Added: 06 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Nation state threats are defined as cyber threat activity that originates in a particular country with the apparent intent of furthering national interests. These attacks represent some of the most advanced and persistent threat activity Microsoft tracks. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center follows these threats, builds comprehensive profiles of the activity, and works closely with all Microsoft security teams to implement detections and mitigations to protect our customers. We’re adding an alert to the security portal to alert customers when suspected nation-state activity is detected in the tenant.
Outlook: on the web – New location for Outlook modules	70628	March CY2021	Added: 06 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Web We are changing the way you access Mail, Calendar, People, To Do, and other Outlook experiences. We are adding a way to easily access additional Microsoft 365 applications that are available to you.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our ‘Go Deeper’ sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. Explore ways to determine the best approach for creating workspaces for projects and workgroups. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Determine the best approach for your collaboration needs (chat versus teams & channels), (2) Create workspaces for your team to provide the best teamwork experience, and (3) Determine best practices in Microsoft Teams to enhance productivity.

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: So…you want to make calls with Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Securing Your Organization

In this training, you will learn how to protect your organization’s identities, data, applications, and devices across on-premises, cloud, and mobile – end to-end using the latest tools and guidance. This event covers intermediate to advanced content (level 200-300) and includes the following technologies: Threat Protection, Information Protection, Identify and Access Management, Security Management. In this workshop you will: (1) Increase level of understanding on how Microsoft delivers security across Microsoft 365, (2) Increase knowledge of security features and solutions, and (3) Connect with local technical experts and FastTrack resources.

Wednesday, February 10, 2021 from 10am – 2pm PT

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Lists

When: Thursday, February 11, 2021 at 9:00am PT | Please join us for an ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ (AMA) on Microsoft Lists – Your smart information tracking app in Microsoft 365 – has several new updates and resources to help you track information, organize work and get things done. An AMA is a one-hour online forum similar to “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of the product engineering team who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback. Post any questions or feedback you have about Microsoft Lists for this event in the Microsoft 365 AMA space. The Microsoft Lists experts will be available during the hour to respond. Be sure to add this event to your calendar!

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Building Microsoft Teams Integrations and Workflows

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Office Scripts

When: Tuesday, February 16, 2021 at 9:00am PT | We’re so excited to announce our first-ever Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) for Office Scripts! The AMA will take place on Tuesday, February 16, 2021, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT in the Excel AMA space. Add the event to your calendar and view it in your time zone here. During this AMA, you will have the opportunity to share your questions and feedback about Office Scripts and receive responses directly from our product team. Facing trouble with automating on Excel for web? Have an idea that would make our feature better? Let us know- we’re eager to hear and learn from you! Looking forward to seeing you at the AMA.

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements

Leverage the intelligent and integrated Microsoft solutions to help your organization achieve its compliance goals by joining the Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements free one day online training session. Level 200-300 (Intermediate to Advanced) content. Technology covered: Data classification, labeling, governance, policy violation remediation, eDiscovery, audit, risk assessment. In this session you will: (1) Learn to use intelligence to identify, protect and govern your important data, (2) Learn to intelligently identify and remediate critical insider threats and risks, (3) Learn how to use the latest eDiscovery and audit capabilities to find relevant data and respond efficiently, and (4) Learn how to simplify and automate IT risk assessment.

Wednesday, February 17, 2021 from 10am – 2pm PT

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Ignite – March 2021

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

Customer Immersion Experience: Integrate Your Business into Microsoft Teams

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

BLOG ROUNDUP

Microsoft Viva: Empowering every employee for the new digital age

Today, organizations spend over $300 billion a year on employee experience. That number includes employee development and training, benefits and wellbeing, and a whole host of employee experience technologies. But too often, these technologies are fragmented, hard to find, and disruptive to the flow of work. As digital tools become more crucial to a great employee experience, business leaders across every industry are embracing the opportunity to learn, and they’re re-evaluating both their spending and their approach. We believe what’s needed is a new approach and a new category of technology solutions called employee experience platforms (EXP). We’re introducing Microsoft Viva, the first EXP built for the digital era. Microsoft Viva brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights into an integrated experience that empowers people and teams to be their best, from anywhere. Powered by the full breadth and depth of Microsoft 365, it is experienced through Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps that people use every day.

We want to make everyone aware of an upcoming change to the default setting for Guests in Microsoft Teams. With the large increase in organizations looking to use Teams to expand collaboration beyond the boundaries of their tenant, we want to make it easier for customers to get started. This has also been announced in Message Center post MC234252. As a result, starting on February 8th we are turning on Guest access in Microsoft Teams by default for any customers who have not already configured this setting. This will bring the control for Teams Guest capability into alignment with the rest of the suite, where the setting is already on by default. When this change is implemented, if you have not already configured Guest access capability in Microsoft Teams, that capability will be enabled in your tenant. With guest access enabled, you can provide access to teams and other resources to people outside your organization while maintaining control over your corporate data. Prior to this change taking effect beginning on February 8th, if you want Guest access to remain disabled for your organization, you will need to confirm that the Guest access setting is set to “Off” instead of “Service default”. Instructions for how to configure the Teams guest access settings can be found here: Teams guest access settings.

This post includes all the SharePoint and related tech updates that rolled out in January 2021. This is the all-inclusive roadmap release recap for all things SharePoint and related technology. To start the year, January 2021 brought many new offerings: Yammer notifications in Teams, inclusive Yammer reactions, OneDrive settings in SharePoint admin center, 250GB file uploads, Microsoft Lists app for iOS, Lists rules, Lists forms customization, task publishing, and more. All the features listed began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of January 2021 (possibly early February 2021). | Related: Designing SharePoint sites with beautiful headers

Windows 10 in cloud configuration: The cost-effective, secure, and simple solution for the new digital workforce

Every day, Windows helps millions of people around the world get their work done. Now, more than ever, Windows is critical to keeping business moving, as organizations look to empower their people by enabling them to work from anywhere. It’s clear that customers need to equip people with devices that enable everyone, across every role in the organization, to do their best work. To do that, we need to empower them to deploy and update from a single dashboard, deliver essential apps to every user, provide secure access to corporate networks and resources, and get the necessary data storage to make it easy for users to access their data from any device. And given their many competing demands, customers need this solution to be cost-effective, secure, and simple to deploy. They need it to work seamlessly with Windows and other tools and experiences—including Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Edge, and OneDrive for Business—that people know and want. And they need it today. That’s why we developed Windows 10 in cloud configuration. Cloud config is a set of recommended configurations that uses the technology infrastructure you already have—Microsoft Endpoint Manager, Windows 10, and apps—to save you time and money while getting your people the right device to get their work done. With cloud config, your users get a familiar Windows interface and productivity apps while your admins get a familiar management experience. All it takes is a Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise PC, Endpoint Manager, and to apply the cloud configuration apps and settings. And in addition to Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Edge, and OneDrive for Business, cloud config gives you the flexibility to securely deploy Win32 and critical line-of-business (LOB) apps either directly to the device or via virtualization.

NOTEWORTHY

New Microsoft Edge to replace Microsoft Edge Legacy with April’s Windows 10 Update Tuesday release

In August 2020, we announced that support for the Microsoft Edge Legacy desktop application ends on March 9, 2021. After this date, Microsoft Edge Legacy will no longer receive security updates. To replace this out of support application, we are announcing that the new Microsoft Edge will be available as part of the Windows 10 cumulative monthly security update–otherwise referred to as the Update Tuesday (or “B”) release–on April 13, 2021. When you apply this update to your devices, the out of support Microsoft Edge Legacy desktop application will be removed and the new Microsoft Edge will be installed.

Basic Authentication and Exchange Online – February 2021 Update

We previously announced we would begin to disable Basic Auth for five Exchange Online protocols in the second half of 2021. Due to the pandemic and the effect it has on priorities and work patterns, we are announcing some important changes to our plan to disable Basic Auth in Exchange Online. Please read this post carefully, as there’s a lot of detail. The first change is that until further notice, we will not be disabling Basic Auth for any protocols that your tenant is using. When we resume this program, we will provide a minimum of twelve months notice before we block the use of Basic Auth on any protocol being used in your tenant. We will continue with our plan to disable Basic Auth for protocols that your tenant is not using. The next change to the previously announced plan is that we are adding MAPI, RPC, and Offline Address Book (OAB) to the protocols included in this effort to further enhance data protection. | Related: Application Access Policy Support in EWS

Skype for Business Online retires in six months – what you need to know

Eighteen months ago, we announced the July 31, 2021 retirement of Skype for Business Online. With six months until the service ends, we’re focused on helping each of our customers upgrade to Microsoft Teams and enabling more ways to come together and get things done. Skype for Business Online has been a critical communications tool for millions of organizations across the globe. Once customers experience the way Teams brings together chat, calling, meetings and more, they realize the amazing potential to collaborate seamlessly and simplify work in a secure and compliant way. Regardless of where you are on the journey from Skype for Business to Teams, this is an important checkpoint to make sure your organization is on track to upgrade to Teams before Skype for Business Online retires and access to the service ends.

Microsoft Lists: Update information at the speed of type – Edit in grid view

The new Microsoft Lists grid view is now available worldwide, including SharePoint lists and libraries that share the same technology platform in Microsoft 365. With simple, inline experiences, you can quickly update your information or add new items easily. Features like drag to fill, undo/redo, new field editors (text, date, people, yes/no, choice), and copy/paste make grid view the best place to get your information, quickly and organized. We’ll cover all new features and capabilities in this post – including screenshots and links to learn more, starting with an in-depth demo video to showcase all the goodness our Lists engineers have been working on and refining.

The evolution of mobile productivity, even when we’re a little less mobile

What’s the one essential you’d go back home for if forgotten? Maybe it’s your mask. But also, your mobile phone, right? Your personal organizer, your digital wallet, your instant camera—your mobile device has become the most essential tool you use to stay connected to the people and things that are important at home, at the office, and everywhere in between. It has evolved from being a companion to your desktop computer to being your personal, daily companion. We’ve explored the evolving needs of people’s mobility and connectivity and we are announcing a number of new Microsoft 365 mobile-first capabilities that help people bring balance to their day. This includes organizing and transforming their physical world such as documents, photos, and live-action video into digital assets, and offer secure ways to help protect sensitive information. | Related: Start a conversation with your personal productivity assistant in Outlook with Cortana

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2020-51

Season’s Greetings and welcome to the December 14 – 20, 2020 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were thirty-one additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Outlook (web), Microsoft 365 Compliance, Forms, Excel, and Microsoft Information Protection. Due to the large number of items, all of the roadmap items are in a separate post this week, Office 365 Roadmap Update | 2020-51.

A few pre and post holiday sessions have been added for a few of the Teams related event series. One brand new event has also been added have been added, the “Getting Started with Windows Virtual Desktop” customer immersion experience. This week’s spotlight event is the “Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams” webinar on Monday, December 21st at 2pm Pacific.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include the general availability of breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams, information on the launch of the Microsoft Teams preview experience, details on new ways to celebrate holiday festivities with Microsoft Teams, and an update on the name changes for the Planner app in Teams.

Wrapping up the post are noteworthy items details on changing to search in SharePoint Online, a recap of what’s new in Teams phones for December 2020, information on securing remote work by embracing Zero Trust, and recommendations for delivering a productive and seamless user experiences with Azure Active Directory.

NOTE: Typically there isn’t much content published during the holiday week. As a result, there will not be a weekly digest posted on Monday, December 28, 2020. I am going to take a little extra time and spend it with my family. Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday season!

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Thirty-one features were added to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap last week, so for this week the roadmap updates are detailed in a separate post, Office 365 Roadmap Update | 2020-51.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our ‘Go Deeper’ sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. Explore ways to determine the best approach for creating workspaces for projects and workgroups. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Determine the best approach for your collaboration needs (chat versus teams & channels), (2) Create workspaces for your team to provide the best teamwork experience, and (3) Determine best practices in Microsoft Teams to enhance productivity. Note: This session was previously called ‘Learn tips for taking Microsoft Teams to the next level – Part 1’.

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Getting Started with Windows Virtual Desktop

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Securing Your Organization

Wednesday, January 6, 2021 from 10am – 2pm PT

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Building Microsoft Teams Integrations and Workflows

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements

Tuesday, January 26, 2021 from 10am – 2pm PT

BLOG ROUNDUP

Get the most from your meetings and calls with Microsoft Teams | Part 2: Re-setting the bar for meeting and call quality

This is the second in a series of blog posts focused on helping you get the most out of your meetings and calls with Microsoft Teams. Millions of people around the world rely on Teams to collaborate via meetings, calls, and chat. In this series, we share best practices and highlight new features in Teams and the Microsoft 365 service designed to help your teams achieve more together. As many of us have experienced, meetings often get derailed by unintentional distractions. An echo or unidentifiable background noise cuts in. Someone’s audio breaks up while they’re making an important point. A person suddenly gets booted off the call. Poor audio and visual quality can hijack a meeting, inhibiting focus, wasting time, and in the long term, causing meeting fatigue. However, in the moments when technology fails us, it seems there’s nothing we can do but keep going and hope the problem resolves quickly. With Microsoft Teams, we want to give people more control over the digital quality of their meetings. Born in the cloud and built with Microsoft AI at its core, Teams uses AI to remove unwanted sounds, monitor quality and adapt as needed, give users more information and proactive actions, and provide insight into issues before they disrupt meetings.

Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) is a built-in, intelligent, unified, and extensible solution to protect sensitive data in documents and emails across your organization. MIP provides a unified set of capabilities to know and protect your data and prevent data loss across Microsoft 365 apps (e.g., Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook), services (e.g., Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Exchange, Power BI), on-premises locations (e.g., SharePoint Server, on-premises files shares), devices, and third-party apps and services (e.g., Box and Dropbox). We are excited to announce availability for new MIP capabilities: (1) General availability of Exact Data Match user interface in Microsoft 365 compliance center and configurable match, (2) External sharing policies for Teams and SharePoint sites, in public preview, (3) Customer key support for Teams, in public preview, and (4) Expansion of MIP sensitivity labels support to Power BI desktop application (PBIX), in public preview.

Announcing Power BI Search in SharePoint home, Office.com, Microsoft Bing, and Windows

Power BI is the Magic Quadrant Leader among analytics and business intelligence platforms and over 200,000 customers around the world use Power BI and bring 40 petabytes of data into Power BI every month 1 and now, we’re building on that momentum with Power BI in Microsoft Search. Microsoft Search transforms the way people in your organization find the info they need—no matter where you are in your cloud journey. Either integrated with Microsoft 365 or as a standalone solution, Microsoft Search is a secure, easily managed, enterprise search experience that works across all of your applications and services to deliver more relevant search results and increase productivity. With Power BI search in Microsoft Search we’re making it easier to find Power BI artifacts such as reports and dashboards, by expanding the ability to search across these artifacts in your favorite productivity apps including , Office.com, Microsoft Bing, and the search box in.

4 ways Microsoft 365 is improving the experience for Mac users

In this atypical year, many of us have discovered a new sense of appreciation for our computers as critical tools to get work done. Now more than ever, we are all looking for new ways to be productive on our laptops and desktops. At Microsoft, we are committed to delivering great Microsoft 365 experiences that help our customers work easier and faster on their favorite devices. With this in mind, we want to share some of the latest Microsoft 365 innovations that can make you even more productive on a Mac. We are excited to announce that we are releasing new versions of many of our Microsoft 365 for Mac apps that run natively on Macs with M1. Over the past months, we have redesigned the experiences in our flagship apps for Mac with a focus on simplicity to improve ease of use. Another area of focus is to make our Microsoft 365 apps work the way you do. Through many new innovations on our Mac apps, our goal is to help you get work done in more simple and intuitive ways. The shift to remote work highlights the need for teams to collaborate with agility, while ensuring sensitive data stays secure and meets compliance requirements. Our Microsoft 365 app teams have been busy getting modern collaboration and compliance capabilities ready so you can work from home more effectively on your Mac.

NOTEWORTHY

Microsoft’s digital security team answers your Top 10 questions on Zero Trust

Our internal digital security team at Microsoft spends a fair amount of time talking to enterprise customers who face challenges similar to the ones we do when it comes to managing and securing our globally complex enterprise using a Zero Trust security model. While every organization is unique, and Zero Trust isn’t a “one size fits all” approach, nearly every CIO, CTO, or CISO that we talk to is curious to learn more about our best practices. We thought it would be useful to share our answers to the Top 10 Zero Trust questions from customers across the globe.

Simplified Ribbon is now available in Excel for the web

We are excited to announce that the Simplified Ribbon is now Generally Available in Excel for the web. The Simplified Ribbon has a refreshed modern design which makes it easy to use while retaining all the functionality and power of the classic Excel Ribbon. Going forward both the Simplified and Classic ribbon are available, and you can choose your preferred experience with a single click.

Now Available: Improved Embed Video Experience & Webcam-only Recording

Microsoft Stream (Classic) now includes new features that deliver better video experiences across all of Microsoft 365. The Microsoft Stream team has replaced our old embed player with an improved version called Fast Embed. This means users will experience faster-loading times for all Stream videos embedded across Microsoft 365 applications. We’ve rolled out webcam-only recording to Stream (Classic) customers. This update gives everyone an additional way to create videos for training, knowledge sharing and communications across the organization without downloading additional tools or software.

Protecting Microsoft 365 from on-premises attacks

Many customers connect their private corporate networks to Microsoft 365 to benefit their users, devices, and applications. However, there are many well-documented ways these private networks can be compromised. As we have seen in recent events related to the SolarWinds compromise, on-premises compromise can propagate to the cloud. Because Microsoft 365 acts as the “nervous system” for many organizations, it is critical to protect it from compromised on-premises infrastructure. This document will show you how to configure your systems to protect your Microsoft 365 cloud environment from on-premises compromise. We primarily focus on Azure AD tenant configuration settings, the ways Azure AD tenants can be safely connected to on-premises systems, and the tradeoffs required to operate your systems in ways that protect your cloud systems from on-premises compromise. We strongly recommend you implement this guidance to secure your Microsoft 365 cloud environment.

99.99% uptime for Azure Active Directory

Because our identity services are vital to keep customer businesses running, resilience and security are and always will be our top priority. In the last year, we’ve seen a surge in demand as organizations moved workforces online and schools enabled study from home—in fact, some national education systems moved entire student populations online with Azure AD. We are pleased to announce that we are taking the next step in our commitment to the resilience and availability of Azure AD. On April 1, 2021, we will update our public service level agreement (SLA) to promise 99.99% uptime for Azure AD user authentication, an improvement over our previous 99.9% SLA. This change is the result of a significant and ongoing program of investment in continually raising the bar for resilience of the Azure AD service. We will also share our roadmap for the next generation of resilience investments for Azure AD and Azure AD B2C in early 2021. In conversations with our customers, we learned that the most critical promise of our service is ensuring that every user can sign in to the apps and services they need without interruption. To deliver on this promise, we are updating the definition of Azure AD SLA availability to include only user authentication and federation (and removing administrative features). This focus on critical user authentication scenarios aligns our engineering investments with the vital functions that must stay healthy for customers businesses to run. | Related: A “quick wins” approach to securing Azure Active Directory and Office 365 and improving your security posture

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2020-50

Welcome to the December 7 – 13, 2020 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Twelve features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Planner, Forms, Yammer, Outlook (Android, web), and Microsoft Information Protection.

Several new events have been added, as the January 2021 dates for the customer immersion experience sessions are now available. The spotlight event of the week is the “Learn Together: Developing Apps for Microsoft Teams” training on Wednesday, December 16th from 9am – 1pm Pacific.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include the general availability of breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams, information on the launch of the Microsoft Teams preview experience, details on new ways to celebrate holiday festivities with Microsoft Teams, and an update on the name changes for the Planner app in Teams.

Noteworthy item highlights include details on changing to search in SharePoint Online, a recap of what’s new in Teams phones for December 2020, information on securing remote work by embracing Zero Trust, and recommendations for delivering a productive and seamless user experiences with Azure Active Directory.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Microsoft Teams: Touch Bar Meetings Controls for Mac	68906	January CY2021	Added: 08 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Teams Meeting controls for MacBooks with Touch Bars that allow users to mute/unmute, start/stop video, open sharing tray, open the view participants panel and raise or retract their hand.
Microsoft Teams: Sensitivity Labels for GCC, GCC-H, and DoD Clouds	68907	January CY2021	Added: 08 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC, GCC High, DoD Regulate who can access teams in your organization. Sensitivity labels created in the security and compliance admin center can now be used to control the privacy and guest access settings of the team. Users can select the appropriate label when creating a new team.
Yammer: Azure AD B2B guest support in Yammer (Public Preview)	73902	December CY2020	Added: 08 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Yammer AzureAD-B2B guest support in Yammer communities will be available in public preview. Invite guests to your Yammer community and facilitate rich conversations between members and guests of a Yammer community.
Microsoft Teams: GCC support for devices management in Teams Admin Centre	70660	December CY2020	Added: 09 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC Teams Admin Centre enables effective management of Teams. Now, our customers who have tenants in the GCC environment can also manage their Teams devices from the Teams Admin Center. Admins can now control the entire lifecycle of their Teams devices which include an increasing variety of supported device types – IP Phones, Collaboration bars, Teams displays, Teams Meeting Room devices.
Microsoft Teams: Education Policy Wizard	70661	December CY2020	Added: 09 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams A dedicated Education policy package that easily apply policies for a safe learning environment.
Outlook for Android: Sync contact sub folders as category labels	71507	January CY2021	Added: 09 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Android Your Outlook contacts and subfolders in Outlook for Windows or on the web will labeled with a contact category based on the name of your contact sub folder and synced to Outlook for Android.
Microsoft Information Protection: Office 365 Advanced Message Encryption – Email revocation by end user	68908	January CY2021	Added: 10 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: MIP As part of Office 365 Advance Message Encryption, we are extending the email revocation capabilities to the end user. Previously, you had to be an admin to revoke an already sent message; with this update, end users will have this capability as well.
Microsoft Teams: Share System Audio on Mac	70662	January CY2021	Added: 10 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams This will allow Mac desktop users to include audio when sharing their Desktop or Window during a Teams meeting. Once enabled, any audio that is playing on the user’s machine will be shared in the live event for participants to hear.
Microsoft Planner: Sync Message Center posts to Planner – Government Clouds	77441	February CY2021	Added: 11 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Planner, Government Clouds Microsoft is introducing Planner integration for the Message Center to help with workflow management. Lots of information arrives in the Message Center, and you need to decide whether to act on it or not. And if an action is needed, who performs that action, and how do you track that task to completion? Or maybe you want to make a note of something and tag it for later. You can do all of this and more when you sync your Message Center to Microsoft Planner.
Outlook: Outlook on the web – Share to Microsoft Teams	68909	March CY2021	Added: 11 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Web Send a copy of email messages or conversations, including attachments, into Teams chats and channels or start a Teams chat related to a specific email message. When sharing to Teams from Outlook on the web, a popup window will appear to confirm to which channel or person you want to share, you can also select whether you want to include attachments or not.
Microsoft Teams: Simplified Global Notification Settings for GCC-High and DoD	70663	March CY2021	Added: 11 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC High, DoD Government users can now configure and customize their notification settings through a newly designed notification settings section.
Forms: Default alert policies for phishing activities added to Microsoft 365 security and compliance center	76911	January CY2021	Added: 11 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Forms We are now adding Microsoft Forms’ phishing activities alert (for blocked forms and users due to confirmed and suspicious phishing) to the default alert policies in Microsoft’s Security and Compliance Center (SCC). If there is any user restricted from sharing forms and collecting responses from Microsoft Forms because of confirmed phishing activities, or any form identified/detected as phishing form, IT admins will receive an alert in the SCC Alert center.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

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.

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.

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our ‘Go Deeper’ sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. Explore ways to determine the best approach for creating workspaces for projects and workgroups. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Determine the best approach for your collaboration needs (chat versus teams & channels), (2) Create workspaces for your team to provide the best teamwork experience, and (3) Determine best practices in Microsoft Teams to enhance productivity. Note: This session was previously called ‘Learn tips for taking Microsoft Teams to the next level – Part 1’.

Teams Chalk Talk: So…you want to make calls with Microsoft Teams?

Wednesday, December 16, 2020 at 8am PT

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Learn Together: Developing Apps for Microsoft Teams

When: Wednesday, December 16, 2020 from 9:00am – 11:00am PT | Millions of new Microsoft Teams users are looking to you, the developers, to create engaging and unique application experiences on Teams. In this two-hour livestream on Learn TV, you’ll learn: (1) Why you should consider building apps for Teams, (2) How to get started building apps for Teams in VS Code, and (3) Where you can integrate your apps in the Teams user experience. Quickly get started learning how to build these apps and stick around for some fun trivia and prizes.

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Securing Your Organization

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.

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Building Microsoft Teams Integrations and Workflows

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 9am PT

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

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

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements

Tuesday, January 26, 2021 from 10am – 2pm PT

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

BLOG ROUNDUP

Breakout rooms generally available in Microsoft Teams

Creating meaningful connection can be difficult in larger group settings. Breakout rooms allow organizers to divide the meeting into sub-groups to facilitate discussions and brainstorming sessions. We are excited to share that Breakout rooms are now generally available in Microsoft Teams today. The meeting organizer can create up to 50 breakout rooms and choose to automatically or manually assign participants into rooms. The organizer can start a breakout room in a Teams meeting or a Teams channel meeting, allowing greater flexibility on how you want to meet. Using the breakout room settings, the meeting organizer can choose to allow participants to come back to the main meeting at any time, then return to the assigned breakout room. This way participants can ask a clarifying question without disturbing the breakout room discussions. Also, organizers can use the setting to re-create breakout rooms in the same meeting. This allows them to assign participants into new room setups. Once the breakout rooms are open, meeting organizers can join any of the breakout sessions. And should the need arise, you can quickly switch attendees in between breakout rooms.

Launch of Microsoft Teams preview experience and alignment with Microsoft 365 deployment channels

We are announcing a change in how customers can preview upcoming Microsoft Teams features. This includes adopting pre-release channel names like Office and Windows Insider programs, as well as a new broadly available Public Preview channel. With this change, Insiders will find similar names and expectations for similar channels across Windows, Office, and Teams programs. As mentioned in the Windows Insider blog post, our goal is to not only make it clearer for existing Insiders to choose the experience that’s right for them, but also for new Insiders to pick the right channel as they join. The Insider community is important to us due to their early actionable feedback and we are working to align how all our Insider programs work better together across Microsoft. Read on to learn more about the Public Preview channel and why we are launching it. Note: This only applies to commercial and education tenants.

New ways to celebrate holiday festivities with Microsoft Teams

Office holiday parties and team celebrations look a bit different this year. I’ve heard from customers that you’re looking for new ways to connect as a team and celebrate in the holidays, even if you can’t be together in-person. To make virtual office holiday parties and meetings more festive, we’re announcing new experiences in Microsoft Teams including new holiday-themed Together mode scenes and custom backgrounds. We’re also announcing the availability of breakout rooms, which make it easy to mix and mingle during a virtual holiday party, and sharing our tips for making virtual holiday gatherings more fun. | Related: Holiday parties & background fun with Microsoft Teams

The “Planner” app name in Teams has changed to “Tasks by Planner and To Do”

When we first announced the public preview of Tasks in Teams, we also announced a three-stage naming sequence for how the app name would appear in Teams. The timing of that original sequence has since changed, which we noted in an Oct. 30 update to the general availability blog. We’re very pleased to announce that we’ve hit Stage 2 in the sequence. This changes the Tasks in Teams app name to Tasks by Planner and To Do from Planner, the original app name, for all non-government users. The app icon has changed to its final form, too. Both changes also apply to the Planner tab in Teams channels. When adding that tab, you can search “Planner,” “To Do,” or “Tasks” to find it. The goal of this sequence is to help all customers easily find the new hero task management app in Teams. We believe Tasks by Planner and To Do better reflects the app’s functionality—it combines team tasks from Planner and individual tasks from To Do—so that customers who don’t closely follow Microsoft news will start (or continue) using the app with confidence.

NOTEWORTHY

We’re making changes to search in SharePoint Online

In November 2020, we announced improvements coming to search in SharePoint Online. As we continue to innovate across Microsoft Search to bring you a better, more precise search experience – we’re making some changes and improvements to search in SharePoint Online. No matter where people work or what kind of device they use, they need the ability to quickly and easily find the information that will help them be more productive. As part of our continued effort to bring Microsoft Search to all your favorite productivity apps and services we’re making changes and improvements to several classic search experiences in SharePoint. These changes include: (1) Updates to Fast Query Language (FQL), (2) Search Query Rules, (3) Changes to Authoritative Pages, and (4) Improvements to Personal Favorites.

What’s new in Teams Phones | December 2020

The Teams devices portfolio strives to give users options based on the space they use for work, the kind of collaboration they engage in, and their personal preferences for when and how they choose to get things done. We are constantly working to provide an intuitive and familiar experience for Teams on every device type, and this means carrying over the great features we have for meetings and calling into the phone experience as well. This month we’ve got some great updates that bring together the features users love in Teams meetings into the Teams phone app and more to keep users productive and secure.

Mission Security: Enabling Secure Remote Work by Embracing Zero Trust

Enabling secure remote work has never been as vital as it is today. This past year, the Microsoft Teams Engineering team, helped customers with a record number of net new deployments in the Microsoft Cloud. With the inevitable need to have end-users collaborate with agencies, partners, and customers remotely, security became paramount. Moving beyond reliance on simple allow/deny access controls towards continuous monitoring of activities and contextual risk is a proven Zero Trust methodology that has been quintessential to Microsoft commitment towards the right security strategy, needed to enable and empower new ways to work. View this on-demand round table of Security and Teams experts as they converse on how Microsoft Teams is enabling the future of work, remotely and securely for private and public sectors. | Related: Building a Zero Trust business plan

Deliver productive and seamless user experiences with Azure Active Directory

In our interconnected world, relying on the old paradigm of corporate firewalls and VPNs isn’t an effective approach to enabling and securing remote work. That’s why many organizations accelerated their digital transformation plans once COVID-19 hit. For organizations like these, Zero Trust—with identity as the foundation—represents a stronger security strategy, as well as a worldview more in line with current times. It replaces the assumption that everything behind the corporate firewall is safe and trustworthy with three simple principles: verify explicitly, use least-privileged access, and assume breach. A Zero Trust approach validates all touchpoints in a system—identities, devices, and services—before considering them trustworthy. A good first step away from traditional perimeter-based defenses and toward an identity-based security framework is connecting all your apps to a single cloud identity solution like Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). This allows your employees to sign in to all their work apps with one set of credentials using single sign-on (SSO). Through centralized experiences like the My Apps portal, they can easily discover and access all the applications they need, including Office 365 apps; SaaS apps, including Adobe, Service Now, Workday; on-premises apps; and even custom-built lines of business apps.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2020-49

Welcome to the November 30 – December 6, 2020 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were eighteen additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Exchange, SharePoint, Forms, Outlook (Windows, iOS), Microsoft 365 admin, Microsoft 365 Compliance, Azure Information Protection, and Azure Advanced Threat Protection.

One new event has been added – “Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Building Microsoft Teams Integrations and Workflows” with Part 1 on Thursday, December 17th and Part 2 on Friday, December 18th. This week’s spotlight event is the “Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements” session on Wednesday, December 9th from 9am – 1pm Pacific.

Highlights from last week’s blog posts include what’s new in Microsoft Teams and SharePoint for November 2020, the general availability of the “Add to OneDrive” feature, and the introduction of the SharePoint Success Site, which helps drive adoption and users get the most out of SharePoint.

Noteworthy items from last week include the “What’s New with Microsoft 365” video for November 2020, the November 2020 update for Project for the web, the “Admin Simplified View” for the Microsoft 365 admin center, and information on changes to Microsoft Productivity Score to further bolster privacy for customers.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Azure Information Protection: Microsoft 365 Groups – support for Sensitivity Labels in Government Community Clouds	67158	December CY2020	Added: 30 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: AIP, M365 Groups, GCC Microsoft 365 Groups will soon support Sensitivity Labels to help you manage privacy and external access. When an admin creates a sensitivity label in the Microsoft 365 security center or Microsoft 365 compliance center, a new site and groups settings page will allow the admin to specify privacy settings for Microsoft 365 Groups and group-connected team sites and whether or not groups created with the label can have external users. Once the labels have been configured published by the admin, users can apply them to groups they create.
Azure Advanced Threat Protection: Microsoft Defender for Identity – Auditing capabilities	68885	June CY2021	Added: 30 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: AATP Defender for Identity will offer audit logs for most activity types, allowing administrators to track changes to administrative settings and configurations. These activities will be published to the audit log accessible from the Microsoft 365 security & compliance center.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Third-party data connectors	68896	March CY2021	Added: 30 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance, GCC Use data connectors to import and archive third-party data from social media platforms, instant messaging platforms, document collaboration platforms and more, to mailboxes in your Microsoft 365 organization where you can then apply various Microsoft 365 compliance solutions to the imported data. This helps you ensure that your organization’s non-Microsoft data is in compliance with the regulations and standards that affect your organization.
Microsoft Compliance center: Information barriers for GCC	68898	January CY2021	Added: 30 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance, GCC Information barriers is a compliance feature to restrict communication and collaboration between two groups to avoid a conflict of interest from occurring in your organization.
Microsoft Teams: Tasks publishing and reporting for Firstline Workers	59719	January CY2021	Added: 01 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams The Tasks publishing and reporting features will include several manager and team member experiences specific to targeting, assigning and completing activities, in addition to features for Headquarters for reporting and audit trails. Task publishing experience for central offices include: Corporate audit view to track tasks across FLW locations, Firstline manager desktop view with reporting and filters, and Firstline Worker mobile view to review tasks assigned.
Access: Dataverse and Microsoft Teams Connector	68897	June CY2021	Added: 01 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Access We are providing a collaborative platform for you to integrate your data and applications into the cloud/mobile-based world through Dataverse as well as Microsoft Teams, while continuing to preserve the Access Desktop value. This opens a realm of opportunities to share and collaborate on your apps & data in our consistently growing Teams and Power Apps/Dataverse ecosystems.
Exchange: Application Access Policy Support in EWS	68901	January CY2021	Added: 01 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Exchange We will be introducing support for Application Access Policy in EWS. Application Access Policy enables an administrator to access control an AppOnly app to a specific set of mailboxes by specifying an inclusion or exclusion list. Administrators who want to limit the 3rd party app access to a specific set of mailboxes can use the ApplicationAccessPolicy (AAP) PowerShell cmdlets to configure access control.
Outlook for Windows: Every meeting online	66021	January CY2021	Added: 01 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Windows Update your settings to make every meeting you create a Teams Meeting by default so you no longer need to remember to click the Teams Meeting option.
Microsoft 365 admin center: Feedback from your organization coming to the admin center	68899	December CY2020	Added: 02 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: M365 admin This feature enables admins to view feedback submitted to Microsoft by organizational users about their experiences with Microsoft 365 applications. The new feedback view will be under the Health node in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Microsoft 365 admin center: Aggregated views of Service Health across partner-managed tenants	68900	January CY2021	Added: 02 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: M365 admin Partner admins with delegated administration privileges relationships for managing multiple tenants can see aggregated views of service health incidents and advisories affecting all managed tenants. The new views are targeted at admins to draw actionable insights and proactively support their customers. The multi-tenant Service Health view pulls together all incidents and advisories affecting your managed tenants so you can constantly monitor the health of your services.
SharePoint: Updated Tag column for images	68902	March CY2021	Added: 02 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint Image tags are automatically created and includes descriptive labels when they are uploaded into SharePoint within Microsoft 365. This improves Microsoft Search results. With the new update, people will be able to manually add or remove tags from this column using freeform text or from the managed metadata service (your company taxonomy). Additionally, we are designing a new flow trigger in Power Automate that will allow programmable actions based on these tags.
Microsoft Information Protection: Manual sensitivity labeling available in Office apps for DoD	76504	February CY2021	Added: 04 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: MIP, DoD Sensitivity labels, part of the Microsoft Information Protection framework, are used to classify and protect your organization’s data. Applying sensitivity labels is easy — keeping customers productive and protected. You can now apply sensitivity labels to important documents and associate the labels with protection policies within the Outlook and Word / Excel / PowerPoint applications. The labels can also be associated with actions like encryption and visual marking.
Microsoft Information Protection: Sensitivity labels extend to assets in Azure	68889	December CY2020	Added: 04 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: MIP With the new Microsoft Azure Purview, you can now extend the reach of your MIP sensitivity labels and the value from built-in sensitive information types to a much broader set of data locations and data types. Use existing sensitivity labels or create new sensitivity labels via the Microsoft 365 compliance center to extend security and compliance intent to data assets in Azure.
Microsoft Teams: Presenter View in Teams Meetings	68903	January CY2021	Added: 04 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Presenters can view slide notes and upcoming slides helping the presenters keep the meeting on track, discuss meeting notes as needed and navigate to meeting slides quickly.
Forms: Email Receipt and Download Response Options Now Available	68904	December CY2020	Added: 04 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Forms In the form settings, Forms designers can now enable the function for respondents within their organization to get an email confirmation that they completed the form. Within this email, there will a link to their response to the form. This function also enables respondents both within and outside of your organization to download (and thereby print) their responses to the form on the “Thank you” page of the form (after they submit the form).
Microsoft Teams: Live reactions in Teams Meetings	68905	February CY2021	Added: 04 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams React during a meeting using emojis that will appear to all participants.
Outlook for iOS: format options for signatures	74940	February CY2021	Added: 04 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – iOS The text box to create a signature for your mobile email messages will support HTLM format if you cut and paste from another source as well as provide bold, italics, underline, links and images formatting options.
Microsoft Information Protection: Automatic and recommended sensitivity labeling available in Office apps for DoD	76502	February CY2021	Added: 04 December 2020 Status: In development App / Service: MIP, DoD Automatic and recommended sensitivity labeling, based on content inspection, is natively built into Office apps within Outlook and Word/Excel/PowerPoint applications on Windows (in the Office 365 subscription version of the Office apps) and Office Online.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

Microsoft Teams: Identify your upgrade approach

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Microsoft Teams: Ready your end users

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: So…you want to make calls with Microsoft Teams?

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements

Wednesday, December 9, 2020 from 9am – 1pm PT

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our ‘Go Deeper’ sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. Explore ways to determine the best approach for creating workspaces for projects and workgroups. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Determine the best approach for your collaboration needs (chat versus teams & channels), (2) Create workspaces for your team to provide the best teamwork experience, and (3) Determine best practices in Microsoft Teams to enhance productivity. Note: This session was previously called ‘Learn tips for taking Microsoft Teams to the next level – Part 1’.

Microsoft Teams: Implement your upgrade approach

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Learn Together: Developing Apps for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Securing Your Organization

Wednesday, December 16, 2020 from 9am – 1pm PT

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Building Microsoft Teams Integrations and Workflows

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 9am PT

BLOG ROUNDUP

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | November 2020

This blog post outlines all the great Teams features released in November 2020, including AI-based noise suppression, polls in Teams meetings, the ability to start an instant meeting from your mobile device, call merge, Microsoft Teams displays devices, pinned posts, set presence status duration, general availability of the Power Apps app for Teams, and many more!

This post includes all the SharePoint and related tech updates that rolled out in November 2020. This is the all-inclusive roadmap release recap for all things SharePoint and related technology. November 2020 brought some great new offerings: SharePoint site performance page, ‘My Feed’ web part, Lists undo and redo, at-a-glance and key points in sharing emails, an updated SharePoint tab app in Teams, new Microsoft Graph connectors, and more. All the features listed began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of November 2020 (possibly early December 2020).

Add to OneDrive is generally available

“Where can I find that file?” It’s a question we’ve all asked our colleagues, our teams, and, most often, ourselves countless times but not anymore. We are happy to announce our previously disclosed feature Add to OneDrive is now generally available. Now, instead of figuring out the who sent us that file or remembering the original location of the shared content, we can swiftly get back to the files we need, directly within our OneDrive. Add to OneDrive makes it easy to add a shortcut to the shared folders directly to our OneDrive. Shared folders include content that others have shared with us through their OneDrive, which surfaces in the “Shared with me“ view or content that is a part of a shared library in Microsoft Teams or SharePoint. With Add to OneDrive, not only can we bring all our shared content into one place, but we can also work with the shared content with the same power and flexibility as if they are files we own. This means we can easily sync and access these folders from anywhere on any device; securely share and co-author files in the added folder; and stay up to date with @mentions, activity, and notifications. Added folders respect all existing policies, compliance, and security settings, too. | Resource: Add shortcuts to shared folders in OneDrive for work or school

Introducing the SharePoint Success Site – Drive adoption and get the most out of SharePoint

To help our customers drive adoption and get the most out of SharePoint, we are launching the new SharePoint Success Site. The SharePoint Success Site is a ready to deploy and customizable SharePoint communication site that helps your colleagues create high-impact sites to meet the goals of your organization. The SharePoint Success Site builds on the power of Microsoft 365 learning pathways which allows you to train end users via Microsoft-maintained playlists and custom playlists you create. To help your colleagues get the most out of SharePoint, the SharePoint Success Site comes pre-populated with site creation inspiration and training on how to create high quality and purposeful SharePoint sites. The SharePoint Success Site is not just about creating high impact sites – organizations need users to meet their responsibilities as site owners and to adhere to your organization’s policies on how SharePoint is to be used. The SharePoint Success Site includes a page dedicated to site creation and usage policies that should be customized to fit the needs of your organization. | Resource: Introduction to the SharePoint Success Site

NOTEWORTHY

What’s New with Microsoft 365 | November 2020

Format: Video (8 mins) | This month, we cover the availability of Polls in Microsoft Teams to help conduct more engaging and informative meetings, Noise suppression in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Endpoint Data Loss Prevention which lets organizations enforce policies to identify and prevent risky sharing of sensitive information, how to use web capture in Edge to easily capture what’s on your browser, OneNote feed, and more!

Project for the web – November Update

Many features that are requested through Microsoft UserVoice appear on the Microsoft 365 Public Roadmap when they are in development and within months of being rolled out. New features include Export to Excel, Quick Look Column, and Customization in Project. Coming soon you will be able to configure custom email notifications and attach files to tasks so you can link your tasks to the relevant documents. | Related: Export your entire project to Excel

Introducing the Admin Simplified View

While organizations of all sizes use Microsoft 365, very small businesses (VSBs)—those with 10 or fewer people—have very different needs from medium and enterprise customers. When it comes to using cloud services, VSBs tend to focus on the productivity essentials like using Office to share information, using calendars and email, and using Teams to communicate with their customers. To help VSBs also focus on the administrative essentials, we are introducing a new experience in the Microsoft 365 admin center called the admin simplified view. This experience can be used by Global admins in any organization that has Microsoft 365, but it is designed primarily for VSBs. The experience provides you with access to users, teams, and billing information in one view, and it guides you through simplified flows of top actions to take, such as adding users, installing Office, and enabling Teams, email, and calendaring. To revert to the complete admin center experience, you can click Dashboard view.

November 2020 – M365 US Public Sector Roadmap Newsletter

There’s been a lot of conversation about Microsoft Productivity Score—a tool that helps organizations measure and manage the adoption of Microsoft 365. We’ve heard the feedback, and we’re responding by making changes to the product to further bolster privacy for customers. This post outlines the changes we’re making to protect individual privacy, while still giving organizations the data-driven insights they need to manage their digital transformation. We recognize that the shift to remote work this year has brought new challenges and stresses to employees across the world, and there’s a clear need to help people learn how to use technology to navigate the new normal. Productivity Score gives IT administrators the insights they need to help their people get the most from Microsoft 365. Old habits die hard, but even small changes can make a big difference. For example, research has shown that when people collaborate and share content in the cloud (instead of emailing attachments), they can save up to 100 minutes a week. At Microsoft, we believe that data-driven insights are crucial to empowering people and organizations to achieve more. We also believe that privacy is a human right, and we’re deeply committed to the privacy of every person who uses our products. As part of that commitment, we’re making the following changes to Productivity Score: (1) we’re removing user names from the product, and (2) we’re modifying the user interface to make it clearer that Productivity Score is a measure of organizational adoption of technology—and not individual user behavior. | Resource: Productivity Score Overview

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2020-48

Welcome to the November 23 – 29, 2020 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Twelve features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Microsoft 365 Compliance, To Do, and Azure Advanced Threat Protection.

There are no new events for this week, and it seems that all of the December sessions for existing event series have now been listed. The spotlight event of the week is the “Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders” customer immersion experience sessions on Thursday, December 3rd at 9am and 12pm Pacific.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include Gartner’s recognition of Teams as a leader in the Unified Communications as a Service and Meetings Solutions Magic Quadrant, new features for Azure Active Directory B2C user flows, and information on how to customize and configure shared devices for Firstline Workers at scale.

Noteworthy item highlights include a reminder about the timeline when the Teams app will no longer support Internet Explorer 11, some tips to make the most of Microsoft To Do on Android devices, and a sampling of the latest videos from the Microsoft 365 YouTube channel.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Microsoft Teams: Live Event Presenters can now present from their iPad to the audience	68867	February CY2021	Added: 24 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Live Event Presenters can now present from their iPad to the audience.
Microsoft Compliance Center: Compliance capabilities for card content generated through apps in Teams messages	68875	January CY2021	Added: 24 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance, Teams We are extending Microsoft 365 compliance capabilities to content generated through Teams apps.
Azure Advanced Threat Protection: Microsoft Defender for Identity – Administrative functions in Microsoft 365 security center	68886	March CY2021	Added: 24 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: AATP Defender for Identity’s administrative functions will be available to view and edit within the Microsoft 365 security center. This will include the ability to create your initial Defender for Identity instance. This rollout sees all settings made available except for tagging and exclusions. Administrators will also be able to monitor sensor health from within this view.
Azure Advanced Threat Protection: Microsoft Defender for Identity – Full alert experience in Microsoft 365 security center	68887	March CY2021	Added: 24 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: AATP Defender for Identity will offer its full alert and investigation experiences natively within the Microsoft 365 security center.
Azure Advanced Threat Detection: Microsoft Defender for Identity – New Detection – Golden ticket using AES encryption	68888	March CY2021	Added: 24 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: AATP An alert already exists to detect instances where an attacker downgrades the encryption level of the ticket-granting ticket (TGT) field, but this new alert introduces detection capabilities for when an attacker uses the KRBTGT AES hash to generate the ticket. This alert will find cases where the AES TGT is used for Kerberos TGT, where we don’t see a Kerberos authentication request with the previous service request.
Azure Advanced Threat Protection: Microsoft Defender for Identity – Detection improvement – Netlogon	68890	March CY2021	Added: 24 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: AATP An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when an attacker establishes a vulnerable Netlogon secure channel connection to a domain controller using the Netlogon Remote Protocol, also known as Netlogon Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability. Defender for Identity already has a detection for this, but this improvement adds capabilities to determine potential encryption and null source account logic detection to the alert, improving accuracy and potential for false positives.
Azure Advanced Threat Detection: Microsoft Defender for Identity – Detection improvement – Suspicious additions to sensitive groups	68891	March CY2021	Added: 24 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: AATP New logs are being added to the detection logic for what is “normal” in a particular environment. This will remove an initial dependency on establishing a baseline so that detection is available to use immediately for known sensitive groups. In other words, this eliminates the need for a learning period to conclude before you can take advantage of this alert that may indicate signs of an attack, or potential insider threat.
Microsoft Teams: Multi-Window Meetings and Calling experiences for GCC-High and DoD	68892	December CY2020	Added: 24 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC High, DoD Multi-window experiences are coming to Teams meetings and calling. Users will have the ability to pop out meetings and calling into separate windows to help them optimize their workflow in the GCC-High and DoD Clouds. These experiences can be turned on directly within Teams for PC and Mac clients.
Microsoft Teams: Meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint for GCC	76074	December CY2020	Added: 24 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC Ability to save Microsoft Teams meeting recordings to OneDrive and SharePoint for improved sharing capabilities, basic governance, automatic retention labels, go local, bring your own keys and, more that comes from recording video files and storing them in SharePoint and OneDrive.
Microsoft To Do: New sharing experience – Invite-Less Sharing	68893	February CY2021	Added: 24 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: To Do We are revamping the list sharing in To Do to facilitate an in-app mechanism to add users to shared lists using their names/email-ids.
Forms: Text Formatting (Bold, Italicize, and Underline) in Forms and Quizzes	68894	December CY2020	Added: 25 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Forms Bold, Italics, and Underline (text formatting) in Forms are now available to help survey/quiz designers emphasize and differentiate content with hierarchy. Consistent with Office 365 products, users can select the text format in a floating tool bar or use shortcuts (e.g. control/command).
Azure Active Directory: Application Proxy – Header-based authentication apps	68895	March CY2021	Added: 25 November 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Azure AD App Proxy Application Proxy now natively supports applications that use header-based authentication. Customers can use their existing Application Proxy connectors and no changes to their apps are needed. All header values available are based on standard claims that are issued by Azure AD. All attributes and transformations available for configuring claims for SAML or OIDC applications are also available to be used as header values.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

Microsoft Teams: Identify your upgrade approach

Microsoft Teams: Ready your end users

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: So…you want to make calls with Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams: Implement your upgrade approach

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our ‘Go Deeper’ sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. Explore ways to determine the best approach for creating workspaces for projects and workgroups. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Determine the best approach for your collaboration needs (chat versus teams & channels), (2) Create workspaces for your team to provide the best teamwork experience, and (3) Determine best practices in Microsoft Teams to enhance productivity. Note: This session was previously called ‘Learn tips for taking Microsoft Teams to the next level – Part 1’.

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements

Wednesday, December 9, 2020 from 9am – 1pm PT

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

Learn Together: Developing Apps for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Securing Your Organization

Wednesday, December 16, 2020 from 9am – 1pm PT

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 9am PT

BLOG ROUNDUP

Microsoft Teams recognized as a Leader in Gartner UCaaS and Meetings Solutions Magic Quadrants

Microsoft Teams has become the new way to work for over 115 million daily users who come together every day to meet, call, chat, and collaborate. We are honored to be recognized by Gartner as a Leader for both Meeting Solutions and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) in their latest Magic Quadrants. Microsoft was positioned highest among all vendors for ability to execute in both reports. This is Microsoft’s second consecutive year as a Leader for Unified Communications as a Service and the 14th time in which Microsoft has been recognized as a Leader for Meetings Solutions.

Simple and secure customization with B2C user flows

In this unusual year, organizations have doubled down on digital engagement with their customers and are prioritizing the security and customization of their user experiences. We’ve kept this top of mind as we evolve our vision for Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) External Identities, making customization of identity experiences easier than ever. At Ignite, we announced a step forward in our Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) External Identities journey with the addition of Conditional Access and Identity Protection to Azure AD B2C, extending Microsoft’s world-class security to help you protect customer and citizen identities. We are excited to announce two more features that make it easier to design secure and seamless customer-facing experiences in Azure AD B2C: API connectors, and phone sign up and sign in for user flows.

Customize and configure shared devices for Firstline Workers at scale

Firstline Workers have been at the forefront of our economy over the past several months as they perform critical jobs like maintaining critical supply chains, serving as first responders, and caring for the most vulnerable. It is more important than ever to empower these workers with tools and technology designed to support their unique scenarios. One example of a specific Firstline scenario is the need be able to share tablets or mobile devices between shifts while maintaining security and compliance. In April, we announced the preview of shared device sign-out for Android and iOS. Once a device is provisioned into a shared device mode, Firstline Workers can sign out of all web browser sessions and applications that have been configured to support this feature, such as Microsoft Teams, with a single click. We are now excited to announce three new preview capabilities that make it easier to set up and customize how Firstline Workers use shared devices – (1) Provisioning shared devices at scale with Microsoft Endpoint Manager, (2) Device-based Conditional Access for shift workers, and (3) Customized sign-in experience with Microsoft Managed Home Screen.

NOTEWORTHY

Reminder: Microsoft Teams App will no longer support Internet Explorer 11

Beginning November 30, 2020, the Microsoft Teams web app will no longer support IE 11. This means that after this date, customers will have a degraded experience or will be unable to connect to Microsoft 365 apps and services on IE 11. For degraded experiences, new Microsoft 365 features will not be available or certain features may cease to work when accessing the app or service via IE 11. While we know this change will be difficult for some customers, we believe that customers will get the most out of Microsoft 365 when using the new Microsoft Edge. We are committed to helping make this transition as smooth as possible. Customers have been using IE 11 since 2013 when the online environment was much less sophisticated than the landscape today. Since then, open web standards and newer browsers—like the new Microsoft Edge—have enabled better, more innovative online experiences. We believe that Microsoft 365 subscribers, in both consumer and commercial contexts, will be well served with this change through faster and more responsive web access to greater sets of features in everyday toolsets like Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and more.

Six tips to make the most of Microsoft To Do on your Android device

With a diminishing boundary between work and life, it becomes more important to keep a track of things to do! Microsoft To Do helps you in managing all your work and personal tasks in one place, while ensuring proper syncing across all devices in an intelligent way. As a part of our “six tips on To Do” series, in this article, we will focus on the exclusive To Do features available on Android. These features include: (1) Reminders to plan your day, (2) Drag and drop between apps on Android, (3) Home screen shortcut, (4) To Do widget on Android, (5) Swipe actions for tasks – delete or add to My Day, and (6) Quick Add.

Videos: Microsoft 365 (YouTube)

Last week, as well as the week prior, lots of videos have been uploaded to the Microsoft 365 YouTube channel. The topics covered range from Teams, Planner, Security/Compliance, Microsoft Endpoint Manager, Intune, Outlook, Microsoft 365 Groups, SharePoint, Search, and Microsoft 365 Apps. Some sample videos are linked below, but be sure to check out the full page for all uploaded videos.

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