Lists – Office 365 Weekly

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-24

Welcome to the June 14 – 20, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Nineteen features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Viva, Outlook, Whiteboard, SharePoint, and Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

There are no new events, but a few of the existing meeting series have added a session or two for the remainder of June. The spotlight event of the week is the “Ask Microsoft Anything” (AMA) session for Microsoft Viva on Wednesday, June 23rd at 9am Pacific.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include details on new hybrid work innovations across several Microsoft 365 services, the OneDrive roadmap roundup for May 2021, information on new functionality in Teams to create trackable tasks from Teams messages, and an update on Basic Authentication in Exchange Online.

Noteworthy item highlights include the latest updates for Excel for the web, on-demand workshops for Microsoft Lists, details on automated diagnostics for troubleshooting various Office 365 issues, and the general availability of Essential Announcements in Yammer.

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
Microsoft Teams: Teams Meetings Auto Recording	83054	June CY2021	Added: 15 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams This feature allows users to auto record meetings by choosing auto record option in meetings options.
Microsoft Teams: RTMP Streaming Support	83562	July CY2021	Added: 15 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Enables support for your users to stream their Teams meetings to large audiences through RTMP, including endpoints outside your organization.
SharePoint: Migration Manager content discovery	82000	July CY2021	Added: 15 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint Before you move any file or folder from on-premises into Microsoft 365, you need to discover content and plan for the migration. The Migration Manager, from within the SharePoint admin center, will provide content discovery so admins can best understand what content they have, decide what to migrate and what to remediate.
Whiteboard: Web Templates	82030	June CY2021	Added: 15 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Whiteboard Participants in Teams and on Whiteboard for the Web can add a variety of built-in templates for meetings, workshops, decision making, planning, design thinking and more.
Whiteboard: User Experience	82034	August CY2021	Added: 01 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook Participants in Teams and on Whiteboard for the web will see a new, refreshed user experience.
Outlook and Exchange for Business: Microsoft Outlook browser extension for Edge	82036	July CY2021	Added: 15 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook The Microsoft Outlook browser extension brings you the power of mail, calendar, contacts, and tasks using an icon in Microsoft Edge. Quickly access your Outlook work account or your Outlook.com or Hotmail account without switching to another tab or app. The extension will be available in the Chrome Store soon as well.
Microsoft Viva: Control visibility of suggested topics	82050	July CY2021	Added: 15 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Viva This update will empower knowledge managers to enable or prevent general visibility of AI-suggested topics.
Microsoft Compliance center: Information governance – Retention policies for Yammer	82055	July CY2021	Added: 15 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance This update enables organizations to apply retention policies on Yammer messages.
Microsoft Teams: New default settings when opening Office files	82662	May CY2021	Added: 16 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Users can set a default of browser, desktop or Teams when opening Office files (Word, Excel, and Power Point) that are shared in Teams. The desktop setting can be selected, if the user has Office version 16 or newer installed and activated.
Outlook: Rich Auto Reply Toolbar for Android	83732	July CY2021	Added: 16 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Android Users will now be able to format the text in their autoreplies. Options include bold/italics/underline, numbered/unnumbered lists, font style and links.
Outlook: Rich Event Description Toolbar	83733	July CY2021	Added: 16 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook Users will now be able to format the text in their event descriptions. Options include bold/italics/underline, numbered/unnumbered lists, font style and links.
Microsoft Teams: Pin chat messages	82584	June CY2021	Added: 18 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Pin a Teams chat message to drive awareness and provide the chat members with quick access to important content. Pinning will help your team stay in sync on what’s and relevant in a timely manner.
Microsoft Teams: Fluid components in Teams chat	82779	June CY2021	Added: 18 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Fluid components in Teams chat allow end users to send a message with a table, action items or a list that can be co-authored and edited by everyone in line.
Microsoft Teams: Paging on Video Gallery	84464	June CY2021	Added: 18 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams When you choose Large Gallery, and there are more than 49 videos or in Gallery with more than 9 videos, navigation controls and now appear below the Large Gallery and Video Gallery. You can use these controls to view more video participants.
Microsoft Teams: Live Events in GCC-High, and DoD	82954	June CY2021	Added: 18 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC High, DoD Soon, you will be able to use Live Events in GCCH and DoD for your needs.
Microsoft Teams: Left navigation updates in Teams Admin Center	83320	July CY2021	Added: 18 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams To make it easier to find Team’s features and navigate your Teams organization, we reorganized the left navigation based on user studies and customer feedback.
Microsoft Teams: Teams Network planner for government clouds	83471	August CY2021	Added: 18 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, Gov Network Planner can help you determine and organize network requirements for connecting Microsoft Teams users across your organization. When you provide your network details and Teams usage, the Network Planner calculates your network requirements for deploying Teams and cloud voice across your organization’s physical locations.
Microsoft Teams: EDU tailored deployment plan in Teams Advisor	83509	July CY2021	Added: 18 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, EDU EDU IT Administrators can use a tailored plan to deploy Teams to their organization.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Investigation updates for improved email threats and actions	82056	June CY2021	Added: 18 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 We have new updates and improvements to the Automated Investigation and Response (AIR) playbooks to better capture the state of the emails and entities that are being investigated. This results in more accurate threat data and actions – which are better for security operations workflows.

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

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.

On-Demand Session

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.

On-Demand Session

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Viva

When: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 from 9:00am – 10:00am PT | Join this Microsoft Viva ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ on Wednesday, June 23, 2021, 9:00-10:00 AM PT! Microsoft Viva – the first Employee Experience Platform (EXP) built for the digital era – brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources and insights into an integrated employee experience that empowers people and teams to be their best, from anywhere. Post questions and feedback about Microsoft Viva, and the four Viva Modules (Viva Learning, Viva Connections, Viva Topics and Viva Insights) during this AMA. Members of the Viva team will be on hand to respond. An AMA is a one-hour online forum similar to “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. There is not an audio or video component included. To post a question or comment, click on ‘Start a New Discussion’ in the Microsoft Viva AMA Space. Be sure to add this event to your calendar – we hope to see you there!

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: 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.

Teams Chalk Talk: 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.

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.

Thursday, June 24, 2021 from 12pm – 2pm PT

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.

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.

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.

Monday, June 28, 2021 at 12:00pm PT

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.

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: 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.

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.

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.

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.

BLOG ROUNDUP

New hybrid work innovations in Microsoft Teams Rooms, Fluid, and Microsoft Viva

At Microsoft, we believe that hybrid work is the future of work and that to empower their people to succeed in hybrid work, business leaders will need to reimagine their organizations with a new operating model for people, places, and processes. We’re also committed to building experiences that put everyone on equal footing—whether they’re together in a conference room in Atlanta, presenting remotely from a home office, or catching up with a meeting recording once the workday begins in Sydney. Microsoft Teams is mission-critical to this vision for a more flexible world of work. Teams is unique in that it brings together meetings, chat, calls, collaboration, and business process automation in a single app. Since COVID-19 spurred office workers around the world to work from home, we’ve been innovating in Teams to do things like create more natural and engaging meeting experiences—enable people to connect seamlessly with those inside and outside of their organizations and provide ways to make remote presentations richer and more impactful. And as we emerge into this new hybrid reality, we are focused on building experiences in Teams that are designed to ensure all voices are heard including the people not in the room—empowering everyone to connect and engage, from anywhere and at any time. And to make it easier to collaborate synchronously and asynchronously, we’re also announcing new Microsoft Fluid canvas innovations—in Teams and beyond. But COVID-19 also taught us that meeting fatigue and digital overload is real, and remote work has challenged our wellbeing. To help, Microsoft has built Microsoft Viva—our integrated employee experience platform—into Teams, so that employees can find ways to protect time and preserve their wellbeing right in the flow of their work. We are announcing new innovations—in Microsoft Teams Rooms, Fluid, and Microsoft Viva—all designed to empower your people for hybrid work. Let’s have a look.

Related:

OneDrive Roadmap Roundup – May 2021

Here are the latest functionalities that rolled out to production in the month of May 2021 – (1) Updated file picking experience for Yammer, (2) Immersive reader in OneDrive and SharePoint, (3) Link settings to Quick Permissions, (4) Expiring access for external users, (5) Exclude specific files from sync on macOS, (6) PDF viewing updates on iOS and Android, and (7) Request files for GCC High and DoD. | Resource: OneDrive release notes

Create trackable tasks from your ad hoc Teams messages

Tasks happen everywhere. They can pop up in an email thread, working file, or team chat—really, wherever you work most often. But ad hoc tasks like this are disruptive and often forgotten. We’ve all been there: you promise yourself (maybe even out loud) that you’ll definitely remember so-and-so’s request only to forget it a minute later. That’s why one of our goals at Microsoft is to help you quickly capture those kinds of informal tasks the moment they happen. We’ve done this for emails in Outlook and comments in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs—and starting today, you can create tasks from Microsoft Teams messages on desktop and web. This update also addresses one of the most requested asks from customers. Before, lots of people were using third-party apps or creating Power Automate flows to convert Teams asks to tasks; now, that conversion is natively built into the Teams experience. This new way to capture tasks is perfect for tracking requests that come out of informal Teams messages and gives your team additional control and confidence over ad hoc requests. Tasks from Teams messages automatically appear alongside your other tasks in the Tasks app and To Do or Planner, so you can nix the sticky notes and instead manage all your tasks together. Plus, creating tasks out of ad hoc requests relieves the stress of trying to remember (or find) what was asked of you—all those requests are in one place. Bonus coverage! Creating tasks from Teams messaging isn’t the only Tasks app news this month. You can now delete and rename any task from Planner and To Do directly in Tasks. Before, you had to do this from each standalone app.

Basic Authentication and Exchange Online – June 2021 Update

It’s been a few months since our last update on Basic Authentication in Exchange Online, but we’ve been busy getting ready for the next phase of the process: turning off Basic Authentication for tenants that don’t use it, and therefore, don’t need it enabled. We have millions of customers who have Basic Auth enabled in their tenant, but only use Modern Auth. Many of them don’t know Basic is enabled, and the risks that it presents – so we are going to do our bit to help secure their data by turning it off for them. Over the last few months, we have been building the supporting process and tools we need to do that at scale, and now we’re ready to start rolling it out. As we’ve said before, we’re only currently planning to turn off Basic Auth for those customers who are not using it. For customers that use still Basic for some or all the affected protocols, we are not touching authentication settings for those protocols (for the time being). We have been busy analyzing Basic Auth usage data for our customers and now have a solid understanding of who uses it and who does not. And we’re going to start turning it off for those who are not using it. The process is: We’ll randomly select customers with no usage in any, or all affected protocols, send them a Message Center post informing them that in 30 days we’re going to turn off Basic Auth. 30 days later, we’ll turn it off and send another Message Center post to confirm it was done. Just to reiterate – the program for disabling Basic Authentication for active in-use protocols has been paused for the time being, but will be coming back.

NOTEWORTHY

What’s New in Excel for the web

Delivering rich, delightful experiences to our customers continues to be a top priority for our Excel team. A few weeks ago, we shared how to easily format your data with color and style, and more. Now we bring you a set of new features and improvements to help you better analyze your data, specifically: (1) Text to columns, (2) PivotTable improvements, (3) Sort improvements, (4) Interactive charts, and (5) Additional keyboard shortcuts. These are just some of the latest improvements, many more are coming soon!

Microsoft Lists workshop – now available on-demand

Go further with Microsoft Lists. You know you want to. And now you can – on-demand. We recently delivered five live workshops across multiple time zones – and we learned a lot. We’ve refined the content based on feedback and tightened up a few additional things – mindful of your time and ease of consumption. The result: We’ve got a great two-part, on-demand workshop – two videos wrapped in a single page with additional resources. Dig in and learn how you and your team can best utilize Microsoft Lists. We teach you how to use and create views, configure conditional formatting, adjust forms, use rules, and more. Plus, we highlight no-code and low-code solutions leveraging integrated tools from the Power Platform. You’ll also find materials to deliver the Lists workshop to your organization (PowerPoint, speaker notes, demo materials).

Did you know? Automated diagnostics are available to troubleshoot various Office 365 issues

Seeing that this is a relatively new development, I wanted to share information about automated diagnostics that customers can run inside of the Microsoft 365 admin center. The goal of these is to help you to solve various support-related issues that you might encounter, without having to open a support ticket. Currently, the way to interact with available diagnostics is via the Need help? button in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Seeing that this is the Exchange blog, here is the article that lists currently available related diagnostics. But wait, there is more! Various other teams (including SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams) have also created diagnostics and documents listing what is available.

Essential announcements in Yammer are now generally available

Keeping your employees informed and engaged is critical in today’s rapidly changing workscape. Over the past 18 months, we’ve continued to build capabilities in Yammer to help corporate communicators and leaders share their message at scale. Some announcements are crucial to keeping employees up to date – whether it’s regarding safety, protocols, policies, or other priority news. In these instances, corporate communicators and leaders need ways to guarantee that messages are delivered to every employee. This feature allows Yammer community admins to set an announcement as ‘essential’ to ensure that it’s delivered via email to every member of that community, even if it is outside of their preferred notification settings. By sending an announcement in Yammer, it will appear as an interactive conversation in Outlook. This helps accelerate the time to consumption and drive engagement, so members can see, react, and comment on the post right from their Outlook inbox. This works for desktop, web, and mobile experiences. And for those that have the Yammer Communities app for Teams installed, announcements and @mentions made in Yammer will also appear in your Microsoft Teams activity feed.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-23

Welcome to the June 7 – 13, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were forty-six additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Microsoft 365 Compliance, Exchange, Planner, OneDrive, Stream, Lists, and Viva.

No new events have been listed, but there are additional sessions for most of the existing event series. There are some event series that only have on-demand sessions available, and these are all listed at the top of the section. This week’s spotlight event of the week is the “Empower your Frontline workforce to do more with Teams” session on Tuesday, June 15th at 11am Pacific.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include an inside look at how Microsoft is reimagining meetings for a hybrid work world, information and resources to get started on Microsoft Viva Learning, the announcement on bringing Visio to Microsoft 365, and details on how Microsoft is working to ensure a great OneDrive experience on Apple products.

Wrapping up the post are noteworthy items such as the June 2021 feature updates for Workplace Analytics, the announcement of the ability to import Project desktop files into Project for the web, a look at three new voice features for Outlook mobile on iOS, details on Scheduler, a new Microsoft 365 service, and the public preview of Azure AD access reviews for service principals.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

There were forty-six additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Microsoft 365 Compliance, Exchange, Planner, OneDrive, Stream, Lists, and Viva.

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-2021-23 Download

PDF:

O365-Roadmap-2021-23 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

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

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Explore teams and channels in Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Empower your Frontline workforce to do more with Teams

Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Energize your Live Events with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

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.

Thursday, June 17, 2021 at 9:00am PT

Use chat and calling features in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Viva

Customer Immersion Experience: Integrate Your Business into Microsoft Teams

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

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

Thursday, June 24, 2021 from 12pm – 2pm PT

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

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

BLOG ROUNDUP

Inside Track: How Microsoft is reimagining meetings for a hybrid work world

One of the most challenging aspects of leading the Employee Experience team at Microsoft is the deployment, maintenance, and support of thousands of conference rooms around the globe. Since employees often encounter different conference room technology—even within the same building—it can lead to frustration, delay, and even support calls. As a result, employees have consistently identified that experience as an area for improvement. With the advent of Microsoft Teams and the amazing innovation being driven by the product team, we saw an opportunity to transform Microsoft employee and customer meetings from a weakness to a strength. By investing in the meeting experience with Microsoft Teams and by reimagining the physical and virtual spaces where meetings take place, we’re laying a foundation of innovation that will help Microsoft employees and our customers thrive in the emerging hybrid world of work. We’ve already seen satisfaction with meetings increase, while also making the migration to hybrid work more seamless for Microsoft and for our customers. How are we doing it? Read on to find out!

Get started on Microsoft Viva Learning with Microsoft Mechanics

In May, we launched a new Microsoft Mechanics series on Microsoft Viva with an introduction to the employee experience platform (EXP), followed by deep dive videos on Viva Topics and Viva Connections. On the latest episode of Microsoft Mechanics, Jeremy Chapman, our Microsoft Mechanics host, and Swati Jhawar, Senior Product Manager, are excited to dive into Viva Learning to cover the personal and social learning experiences, as well as the IT admin experience for set up and configuration. Viva Learning is currently in preview, with general availability coming later this year. | Resource: Microsoft Mechanics – Microsoft Viva Learning | Personalized learning experience through Microsoft 365

Bringing Visio to Microsoft 365: Diagramming for everyone

Visio has long been available only as a standalone app for purchase for people with specialized diagramming needs. But this is changing. We are recognizing an increasing need for a diagramming solution for everyone to convey information more effectively, which is why we’re excited to announce that we’ll be bringing core Visio capabilities to Microsoft 365 for all commercial license subscribers. In July, we’ll start rolling out a lightweight version of the Visio web app in Microsoft 365 to bring visual diagramming and collaboration to all teams—both of which are especially important in this hybrid work environment. But the best part? It’ll be available, at no additional cost, for all commercial license subscribers. This lightweight version of the web app will offer core Visio functionalities and allow business users to create, edit, and share professional diagrams. While users with more specialized diagramming needs will continue to derive value from the standalone plans—Visio Plan 1 and Visio Plan 2—the web app in Microsoft 365 subscription is intended to be a powerful tool for essential needs. It will soon be available in your Microsoft 365 suite, but if you can’t wait to get started, then we invite you to sign up for Visio in Microsoft 365 early access. Let’s take a closer look at how this Visio web app in Microsoft 365 can help teams everywhere create professional diagrams effortlessly, collaborate with others and share diagrams seamlessly, and create diagrams from data to make decisions quickly.

Microsoft works to ensure a great OneDrive experience on Apple products

As hybrid and remote work continue, many organizations are giving employees flexibility to choose not only where they work but also the devices they use to get work done. We have been working closely with Apple to ensure we’re providing a great user experience in OneDrive on Apple products, whether people are using OneDrive to keep their work files synced and protected or to store and share their personal files and photos in the cloud. We’re excited to share some of the updates and improvements we’re in the process of making to OneDrive running on Apple products to help people be more productive no matter where they are. These updates and improvements include: (1) OneDrive support for M1-powered Macs, (2) Known Folder Move (KFM) support for macOS, (3) Updates to Files On-Demand and Finder on macOS, (4) Sync Admin Reports support for macOS, (5) Exclude syncing of specific file types, and more.

NOTEWORTHY

Workplace Analytics June 2021 feature updates

The Workplace Analytics team is excited to announce our feature updates for June 2021. This month’s update describes the following features: (1) Expanded support for plans, (2) Updated wpa R package, (3) Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) updates, (4) Organization data uploads for licensed employees, and (5) Expanded support for mailboxes in datacenters globally.

Import your Project Desktop files to Project for the web

The Project team is excited to announce that you can now import your Project Desktop files to Project for the web. Once imported, your .mpp files will act as normal Project for the web projects. Project for the web does not have all the same features as Project Desktop. However, we try to import all your relevant information so you can still effectively work on your projects. Any .mpp files from Project Desktop 2016 or later should be importable into Project for the web. Keep in mind that Project for the web has lower limits than Project Desktop. To learn more about Project for the web limits, you can check out our documentation. Any .mpp files that violate a limit will not be importable.

Three new voice features for Outlook mobile—now on iOS, and coming soon to Android

At Microsoft, we’re investing in voice capabilities that transcend the challenges of small screens and tiny keyboards to help people communicate and manage tasks when they’re working on the go. We’re powering these capabilities with Microsoft Graph, which aggregates and organizes billions of signals across your organization as people work in Microsoft 365 all day. And the true magic happens when we layer AI on top of the Graph to get really valuable insights, so that when you use your voice to do things like request “the 2022 budget report” or “email Kim’s boss” the correct document or name appears in a snap. We are announcing new enhanced voice capabilities in Outlook mobile for iOS (and coming soon to Android) that make using voice to schedule meetings and compose emails simpler for everyone. These new AI-enhanced voice capabilities quickly contextualize your voice requests and provide a rapid response, making it more easy and natural to work on the go. Let’s take a look. | Related: Introducing Microsoft Dictation for iOS

Scheduler, a new Microsoft 365 service, makes scheduling meetings easier and faster

It’s not just you: weekly meetings have increased by 148% and the time that employees spend trying to schedule meetings both inside and outside of their organization is climbing. With the average time to schedule a meeting taking 6 to 29 minutes, Scheduler aims to give you back time to focus on the important things by making it easier, faster, and being available 24/7 to schedule meetings for you, and it’s available now. Let’s dig into what makes Scheduler work. Scheduler understands what you write, so you can word your requests to Cortana just as you would when asking any person for assistance scheduling a meeting in an email. As simple as “Cortana, please find a time to meet next week,” to something more detailed like “Cortana, please find us 45 minutes in the last week of the month in the morning for Pacific time and make it a Teams meeting.” As Scheduler learns, you may receive responses from Cortana asking you to clarify certain asks or to provide more details in order to complete your request.

Introducing Azure AD access reviews for service principals

With the growing trend of more applications and services moving to the cloud, there’s an increasing need to improve the governance of identities used by these workloads. We’re announcing the public preview of access reviews for service principals in Azure AD. Many of you are already using Azure AD access reviews for governing the access of your user accounts and have expressed the desire for extending this capability to your service principals and applications. With this public preview, you can require a review of service principals and applications that are assigned to privileged directory roles in Azure AD. In addition, you can also create reviews of roles in your Azure subscriptions to which a service principal is assigned. This ensures a periodic check to make sure that service principals are only assigned to roles they need and helps you improve the security posture of your environment.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-19

Welcome to the May 10 – 16, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Twenty-two features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, SharePoint, Lists, Viva, Outlook, Microsoft 365 Compliance, Microsoft Information Protection, Project, and Search.

There are no new events, but some of the existing meeting series have added a few more sessions for May and early June. This week’s spotlight event is the Microsoft 365 Virtual Training for “Protect Sensitive Information and Manage Data Risk”, which takes place on Wednesday, May 19th and Thursday, May 20th, starting at 10:00am Pacific.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include information and resources for securing a new world of hybrid work, a look at what’s new in April 2021 for OneDrive, the availability of Webinars in Microsoft Teams, and the general availability of network connectivity tools in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Wrapping up the post are noteworthy items with information on how hybrid customers can prepare for the retirement of Skype for Business Online, an inside look at how Microsoft drives inclusive and effective meetings with Microsoft Teams, a behind the scenes look at Microsoft Viva, and the general availability of Customer Key support for Microsoft Teams.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Microsoft 365 Compliance center: New Permissions management page	72239	May CY2021	Added: 10 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance We’re adding a new Permissions page within the Microsoft 365 compliance center. Admins will be able to use this new page to view and assign user roles and create and modify custom role groups – activities currently managed within the legacy Office 365 Security & Compliance Center.
Microsoft Teams: Network planner tool updates	82737	May CY2021	Added: 10 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Network planner tool will be updated to reflect the latest bandwidth requirements of Teams client. This will help IT administrators better estimate and plan their office bandwidth needs.
Microsoft Teams: Multi-language meeting invite control	81521	September CY2021	Added: 10 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams IT administrators can apply a new policy to set multiple languages in Teams meeting invites.
Outlook: [iOS] Send Button move in full compose	83145	May CY2021	Added: 11 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – iOS We are positioning the “send” button in a more convenient place when using your thumbs to type. This will match the experience in quick reply, and we hope will also be easier to reach for users.
Microsoft Teams: Together Mode Extensibility	81123	May CY2021	Added: 11 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Build your own scenes that elevate your meeting experience. We believe that by making Together Mode extensible, creators can create immersive scenes and users can go beyond simple video conferencing. Started building your scenes by going to the Developer Portal for Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft Information Protection: Microsoft 365 Endpoint data loss prevention (DLP) for GCC	81973	June CY2021	Added: 11 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP, GCC Endpoint DLP extends the activity monitoring and protection capabilities of DLP to sensitive items that are on Windows 10 devices. Once devices are onboarded into device management, the information about what users are doing with sensitive items is made visible in activity explorer and you can enforce protective actions on those items via DLP policies.
Microsoft Information Protection: Microsoft 365 Endpoint data loss prevention (DLP) for GCC-H and DoD	81974	May CY2021	Added: 11 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP, GCC-H, DoD Endpoint DLP extends the activity monitoring and protection capabilities of DLP to sensitive items that are on Windows 10 devices. Once devices are onboarded into device management, the information about what users are doing with sensitive items is made visible in activity explorer and you can enforce protective actions on those items via DLP policies.
Microsoft Viva: Topic management dashboard	81977		Added: 11 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Viva You can track the stats over time for topics through the lifecycle of suggested, confirmed, published, and removed with the new visual topic management dashboard.
Microsoft Project: Book resources to manage resource availability	81978	August CY2021	Added: 11 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Project Avoid over-scheduling resources by using bookings to ensure a resource’s time is effectively allocated within their availability.
Office app: Improvements to help configure Automatic Deployment Rules for Microsoft 365 Apps updates published to the Microsoft Update Catalog	81979	June CY2021	Added: 11 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Office With this change, IT admins that use Automatic Deployment Rules in Configuration Manager to deploy updates for Microsoft 365 Apps, including 2019 and 2021 volume license products, will be able to use the Title property within the search criteria of the ADR definition to easily find the desired update and not have to continually update the search criteria with each update release.
Microsoft Compliance center: New DLP alert management dashboard for gov clouds	81980	June CY2021	Added: 11 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance A new data loss prevention (DLP) alert management experience within the Microsoft 365 compliance center will enable admins to review, investigate, and manage DLP policy match events, related content, and associated metadata, as well as edit alert configuration options as a part of the DLP policy authoring experience. The dashboard shows alerts for DLP policies that are enforced on these workloads: Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and Devices.
Microsoft Teams: Immersive reader support for Mobile	82937	June CY2021	Added: 12 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Immersive Reader, which uses proven customization techniques to support reading across ages and abilities, is coming to Teams iOS and Android apps. You can now hear posts and chat messages read aloud using Immersive Reader on the Teams mobile apps. This functionality was previously available only on the web and desktop apps.
Microsoft Teams: Live reactions in Teams Meetings for DoD	83251	October CY2021	Added: 12 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams React during a meeting using emojis that will appear to all participants.
Microsoft Teams: Day view in calendar on iOS and Android	80106	June CY2021	Added: 12 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams – Android, iOS View all meetings and events for the day to easily see when you’re available or busy.
Azure Active Directory, OneDrive, and SharePoint for Business: Azure B2B integration with OneDrive and SharePoint is now generally available	81955	May CY2021	Added: 12 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Azure AD, OneDrive, SharePoint The Azure B2B Integration with OneDrive and SharePoint is now generally available. This integration is currently disabled by default but can be enabled using the SharePoint Online Management Shell.
Microsoft Information Protection: Exact Data Match to support Auto-labeling	81968	June CY2021	Added: 12 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP Organizations will be able to configure new or existing Auto-labeling policies using Exact Data Match (EDM) Sensitive Information Types (SITs), enabling more fine-grained control over which sensitive content gets labeled.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Expanded limits for protected users within anti-phishing policies	81981	June CY2021	Added: 12 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Defender for Office 365 We’re expanding the limits for protected users in the anti-phishing policy to allow 350 users.
Microsoft Teams: Restart Live Event	82953	July CY2021	Added: 14 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Previously when a producer or presenter ran a live event, they were not able to restart it even if you accidently ended it or if the event ran into an error. With this new feature, you will be able to restart your live event after you have ended it or if you have encountered a problem during it.
SharePoint: Admin center – Migration Manager: Dropbox migrations for Government Clouds	83456	December CY2021	Added: 14 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint, Gov 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).
Yammer: Updated community discovery experience in the new Yammer	79325	June CY2021	Added: 14 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Yammer Re-invigorated experience to browse, discover, and join communities around your Yammer network.
SharePoint: Microsoft Lists – Updated sharing experience	81965	May CY2021	Added: 14 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Lists Create unique sharing links for lists based on who and how you wish to share them, while adhering to any sharing settings per established IT and governance planning and policies.
Microsoft Search: Search box changes for guest users in OneDrive, SharePoint, and Lists	81983	June CY2021	Added: 14 May 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Search The search box for guest users will move to the top of the screen across OneDrive, SharePoint, and Lists apps, similar to how it appears for regular users.

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

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Explore teams and channels in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

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).

Use chat and calling features in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

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

Empower your Frontline workforce to do more with Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Energize your Live Events with Microsoft Teams

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

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.

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

Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Customer Immersion Experience: Integrate Your Business into Microsoft Teams

Wednesday, May 26, 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

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.

Thursday, May 27, 2021 from 12pm – 2pm PT

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

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.

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

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: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

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

BLOG ROUNDUP

Securing a new world of hybrid work: What to know and what to do

Hackers launch an average of 50 million password attacks every day—579 per second. Phishing attacks have increased. Firmware attacks are on the rise, and ransomware has become incredibly problematic. And while Microsoft intercepted and thwarted a record-breaking 30 billion email threats last year, our work is never done. Security continues to be a number one priority for our customers, especially as many companies around the world are looking to transition from remote work to hybrid. To truly meet this challenge, defenders across the industry must come together for an end-to-end, Zero Trust security approach that covers the entire technology ecosystem. Because today, digital transformation cannot happen without security transformation.

OneDrive Roadmap Roundup – April 2021

Here are the latest functionalities that rolled out to production in the month of April 2021 – (1) Bookmarks for PDF viewing on Android, (2) Page rotation for PDF viewing on Android, (3) Public Preview of 64-bit OneDrive sync client, and (4) Dialog on first-time deletion of file(s). Note: the 64-bit sync client is available for early access, and requires a OneDrive work, school, or home account.

Introducing Webinars in Microsoft Teams: Easy, professional webinars to engage customers

Over the last year, we have found new ways to create engaging virtual experiences at work. We’ve transformed spaces in our homes to offices, developed new skillsets for remote collaboration, and in some cases, adopted new technology to get work done. We often hear from our customers about the burden of using different tools to accomplish similar tasks at work. This is one of the reasons we’re excited to announce new innovations in Microsoft Teams that give you more ways to use the tool you rely on every day for internal collaboration and meetings, now for webinars and external events. Beginning the week of May 10, 2021, Webinars and PowerPoint Live are beginning to rollout in Microsoft Teams. Additionally, Presenter mode will begin to roll out later in May. With these capabilities, you have new ways to deliver polished, professional presentations in meetings of all sizes, from small internal meetings to large customer-facing webinars and events—all from a single application. What’s even better? You don’t need to purchase a new license or product. These new capabilities are included in many of the Office and Microsoft 365 plans your organization uses today. There are no hidden costs or charges for overage fees with plans that include these capabilities—period.

Microsoft 365 admin center network connectivity is now generally available

We frequently hear from customers that they are concerned whether their users are getting the best possible performance and experience with Microsoft 365, which is often determined by the quality of connectivity that their users have and how Microsoft 365 connections are handled by the networks and network solutions between the client and Microsoft. Customers ask how they can measure and see the quality of network connectivity for their Microsoft 365 users and get insights how to optimize it further. That’s why we are excited to announce the General Availability of Microsoft 365 Admin Center Connectivity and the Microsoft 365 network connectivity test tool! Using existing network connectivity tests in Microsoft 365 can provide network assessments and insights. They are aggregated to represent the network connectivity of a work location in use by an Microsoft 365 customer. This can be very valuable in identifying potential network connectivity improvements that would improve performance and provide a better user experience for Microsoft 365 users.

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.

How hybrid customers can prepare for Skype for Business Online retirement

As the retirement of Skype for Business Online approaches, we want to help customers with hybrid deployments of Skype for Business (Server + Online) successfully plan for the changes ahead. This post provides guidance for upgrade readiness, post-retirement experiences for hybrid deployments, and transitioning on-premises users to Teams after Skype for Business Online retires.

Inside Track: Driving inclusive and effective meetings at Microsoft with Microsoft Teams

As Microsoft transitions to a hybrid work model where employees can choose to return to campus or work from home, Sara Bush, a senior program manager on the Seamless Teamwork team in Microsoft Digital, saw an opportunity to create research-driven guidance for running inclusive meetings. But what makes a meeting inclusive and effective? “Inclusion is defined by the ability to feel comfortable contributing their ideas and perspectives,” Bush says. “In an inclusive and effective meeting, I can participate fully because I have access to all the relevant documents, content, and people before, during, and after. This allows me to engage and contribute from anywhere.”

Behind the scenes on Microsoft Viva with Microsoft Mechanics

As work evolves rapidly into hybrid work, we need to do more to empower people to feel connected and bring their best self to work. Microsoft Viva, which we announced in February, brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights into an integrated employee experience through the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day. Your response to Viva, the first employee experience platform (EXP) built for the digital era, has been overwhelmingly positive. We’re just getting started on this journey and excited to help you learn more about Viva through a new Microsoft Mechanics series. Watch our Microsoft Mechanics host, Jeremy Chapman (@JeremyChapmanMechanics), introduce Microsoft Viva and explain the underlying technology and core options for enabling and configuring the platform. In upcoming videos from this series, Jeremy will be joined by our Viva engineering leaders to take deep dives into each of the Viva modules as well as how to set up and manage the experiences for your organization.

Customer Key support for Microsoft Teams now Generally Available!

Microsoft 365 provides baseline, volume-level encryption enabled through BitLocker and Distributed Key Manager (DKM) which ensures customer data is always encrypted at rest in the Microsoft 365 service with BitLocker and DKM. Microsoft 365 offers an added layer of encryption at the application layer for content, including data from Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Teams, called service encryption. Microsoft 365 Customer Key is built on service encryption, providing a layer of encryption at the application layer for data-at-rest and allows the organization to provide and control the encryption keys used to encrypt customer data in Microsoft’s datacenters. Customer Key provides an additional protection against viewing of data by unauthorized systems or personnel, complimenting BitLocker disk encrypted in Microsoft datacenters. Customer Key enhances the ability of organizations to meet the demands of compliance requirements that specify key arrangements with the cloud service provider, assisting customers in meeting regulatory or compliance obligations for controlling root keys.

Redirecting Known Folders to OneDrive for Business with MEMCM

This post provides information about creating OneDrive for Business profiles with Microsoft Endpoint Manager Configuration Manager (MEMCM). Let us start with the why. Since more businesses are allowing remote work these days what better way to allow your workforce to access their files from any device when their files are synchronized with OneDrive for Business. This can also lower the dependency on the company provided devices and provide less data loss in the case of faulty hard drives or if a machine needs a refreshed image. By using OneDrive for Business Profiles, we also automatically synchronize the content of the known folders unlike when we use folder redirection. Why should we do this with MEMCM when we can just set it with Group Policy? Two reasons number one: If you are like most organizations your On-Premises Active Directory environment already has plenty GPO (Group Policy Objects) settings being applied which can cause things like long logon times and waiting for all the Group Policies to process and refresh. Number two: The path to fully Azure Active Directory joined environment is to move away from group policy and apply these settings with Microsoft Endpoint Manager being that is one dependency a lot of environments have on staying hybrid joined is that Azure Active Directory does not have group policy like On-Premises Active Directory. So let us begin!!

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-18

Welcome to the May 3 – 9, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Twenty-nine features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Lists, Exchange Online, Outlook, Microsoft 365 Compliance, and Yammer.

There are no new events, but several new sessions have been added for existing event series. This week’s spotlight event is the “Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders” Customer Immersion Experience on Thursday, May 13th from 12pm – 2pm Pacific.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include the public preview of OneDrive sync admin reports, new site templates for SharePoint, the ability to customize the reply all storm protection settings, a look at news from the Microsoft Business Applications Summit, and the latest accessibility, security and customization features for Microsoft Stream.

Noteworthy item highlights include the April Project updates, the May 2021 feature updates for Workplace Analytics, an updated landing page for Visio.com, the availability of new storytelling resources to assist with adoption and change management programs.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Twenty-nine features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Lists, Exchange Online, Outlook, Microsoft 365 Compliance, and Yammer.

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-2021-18 Download

PDF:

O365-Roadmap-2021-18 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

Use chat and calling features 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?

Explore teams and channels in Microsoft Teams

Empower your Frontline workforce to do more with Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Energize your Live Events with Microsoft Teams

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

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

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Customer Immersion Experience: Integrate Your Business into Microsoft Teams

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

Thursday, May 27, 2021 from 12pm – 2pm PT

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

Getting Started with Windows Virtual Desktop

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

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

BLOG ROUNDUP

Announcing Public Preview of OneDrive Sync Admin Reports

We’re excited to announce public preview of OneDrive Sync Admin Reports in Microsoft 365 Apps admin center. These reports give you more visibility into who in your organization is running the OneDrive Sync client and any errors they might be experiencing. OneDrive Sync is a lot like electricity or internet—people tend to take it for granted until they have a problem and they’re in the middle of an important project. This is even more the case now with so many people working from home and relying on cloud capabilities like OneDrive and SharePoint Online to help them be productive. Having insights into what’s happening with OneDrive Sync across your organization can help you proactively reach out to educate people to resolve common issues and improve user experience to help increase OneDrive adoption.

Use SharePoint’s new site templates today!

Imagine you’re working on a project that needs a new SharePoint site to track deadlines, record progress, and serve as a central place to collaborate with your team. Perhaps you’ve been tasked with creating an onboarding portal for your organization complete with new hire checklists and key information to help them get started. Maybe you’re leading a training series where you need to store course files and post class announcements. Where do you begin when it comes to designing sites for these scenarios? Now you have a starting point! We’ve made it even easier to begin on the right foot with site templates that are available to you in SharePoint. SharePoint site templates are flexible enough to address a variety of needs, make it easy to create and populate site content, and show you what’s possible. These complement those found in the SharePoint lookbook, which has been and continues to be an amazing source of inspiration for modern experiences you can build with out-of-the-box SharePoint components.

Reply All Storm Protection Customizable Settings

Last year we released the Reply-all Storm Protection feature to help protect your organization from unwanted reply-all storms. This feature uses global settings applicable to all Microsoft 365 customers for reply-all storm detection and for how long the feature will block subsequent reply-alls once a storm has been detected. We’re pleased to announce you’ll now have the ability to make these settings specific to your Microsoft 365 organization; email admins will have the flexibility to enable/disable the feature, and set customized detection thresholds and block duration time. This not only makes it more flexible to tailor for your organization, but it also allows more Microsoft 365 customers to take advantage of the Reply-all Storm Protection feature since the minimum number of reply-all recipients for detection can now be as low as 1000 when previously it was hard-coded at 5000. | Related: Loop Prevention in Exchange Online Demystified

Driving a data culture with Power BI– Empowering individuals, every team, and every organization

While we connect with our customers, our community, and our partners every day, at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit, we share some of our most important announcements on our strategy and roadmap. We prepare and deliver some really exciting demos and our product managers and engineers look forward to answering all of your questions. We had so much to announce that we had to break up our keynote into two parts, and then we had a special session just for goals in Microsoft Power BI…that’s 3 x 30 minutes of pure Power BI fun! In addition, we had tons of product sessions, and many real-world customer stories from Walmart, T-Mobile, Cerner, Bayer, and so many more. | Related: Microsoft Business Application Summit Recap

Make Learning More Accessible, Secure, and Customized with Microsoft Stream

Microsoft Stream (built on SharePoint) is bringing to production long-awaited features that unlock new value for you in the areas of accessibility, security, and customized content consumption. We’re complementing recent Teams meeting accessibility enhancements with improvements to transcripts and captions in Stream on SharePoint. We’re also making Teams meeting recordings read-only be default and we will also add “block download” functionality to Teams meeting recordings that are automatically saves to OneDrive and SharePoint. The Stream web app will soon be part of office.com – consolidating videos into a seamless, individualized experience for all stakeholders. We’ll also release a new player for video files in OneDrive and SharePoint, including several upgrades for playback such as higher quality video, a transcript pane on the right, speaker identification in the transcript (if enabled), and support for switching between transcripts in multiple languages.

NOTEWORTHY

April Project Update Blog

This post has a look at what’s new and upcoming for Project, including features such as: (1) Email assignment notifications, (2) Actions on Project Home, and (3) Open task from Project Power BI report. Upcoming features include: (1) Import from Project Desktop, and (2) Filtering on Board & Timeline views.

Workplace Analytics May 2021 feature updates

The Workplace Analytics team is excited to announce our feature updates for May 2021. This month’s update describes the following new features: (1) Collaboration metrics with Teams IM and call signals, (2) Metric refinements, (3) Analyze business processes, (4) New business-outcome playbooks, (5) More focused set of query templates, and (6) Workplace Analytics now supports mailboxes in datacenters in Germany.

Modern landing page for Visio on Office.com

We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Visio start page on Office.com, providing Visio users with a familiar start experience that is similar to other Office 365 apps and powerful Office features, like improved file discovery, improved collaboration features, and better template categorization. From the new landing page, you will experience the benefits of the Office.com ecosystem combined with unique features of the existing Visio landing page. This post includes additional details on the latest enhancements.

Storytelling for Champions – new resources available

We are pleased to share a set of new resources on storytelling for Champions! Our overall goal for delivering these new resources is to enable you and your organization to achieve greater results from your adoption and change management programs. Stories are an amazing way to connect with people through shared experiences, inspire others to act, and are an influential way to communicate. Storytelling can play a key role in any change journey as a powerful way to showcase examples of the new behavior change in action. The resources include: (1) A new storytelling guide, and (2) a storytelling course on LinkedIn Learning.

Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in the 2021 Enterprise Email Security Wave

Today, organizations face an evolving threat landscape and an exponentially increasing attack surface. Email represents the primary attack vector for cybercrime, and security teams are in search of efficient and cost-effective means to minimize the risk of these threats and the impact they have on organizational productivity and innovation. We are proud to announce today that Microsoft is positioned as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Email Security, Q2 2021, receiving among the highest scores in the strategy category. The Forrester Wave report evaluates enterprise email security solutions and provides a detailed overview of the current offering, strategy, and market presence of these vendors. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 received the highest possible score in the incident response, threat intelligence, and endpoint and endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions integration criteria, as well as in the product strategy, customer success, and performance and operations criteria. | Resource: Complimentary full report

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-17

Welcome to the April 26 – May 2, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were ten additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, SharePoint, Microsoft 365 admin center, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, and Search.

There is one new event – “Go further with Microsoft Lists”, which has five options based on region, taking place between May 10 – 14. The spotlight event of the week is the “Empower your Frontline workforce to do more with Teams”, with sessions on Tuesday, May 4th and Wednesday, May 5th.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include a look at what’s new in April 2021 for Microsoft 365, Teams and SharePoint, as well as the general availability of the new Exchange admin center.

Wrapping up the post are noteworthy items with details on updates to organizational theming in the Microsoft 365 admin center, the first two parts of a blog series on mastering configuration in Microsoft Defender for Office 365, information on how to connect your hybrid workforce with Yammer and OneDrive, and the April 2021 updates for Identity.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
OneDrive and SharePoint: Adjusting version retention for PST files	72237	August CY2021	Added: 26 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive, SharePoint This update will help customers manage PST file versions from consuming storage capacity for OneDrive & SharePoint Online. PST files are a type of Outlook Data File which can consume a lot of storage – especially when versions are considered. The service will now limit the number of PST versions retained, often resulting in less storage consumption.
SharePoint: Updates for Microsoft Teams connected team sites	81945	May CY2021	Added: 26 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint, Teams Every Microsoft Teams team is connected to a SharePoint team site. If you create a private channel, it gets a unique team site. You will see specific updates, including updates to site features, site permissions alignment, site classifications and sensitivity labels, and improvements to the user interface.
Microsoft 365 admin center: New guide with scripts and tools for Microsoft Edge IE mode and site discovery	72236	May CY2021	Added: 27 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Admin Enterprise Site Discovery provides a way for you to detect which of your users’ frequently visited sites need to use Internet Explorer mode (IE mode) in Microsoft Edge. In this step-by-step guide, you’ll get scripts to automate configuration of Enterprise Site Discovery, get IE mode recommendations from a cloud-based tool, and create an Enterprise Mode Site List that you’ll deploy to your users.
Microsoft Teams: Public Preview: Teams follow Office preview	81704	May CY2021	Added: 27 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Public Preview has provided IT admins with the ability to allow their users to receive preview features before they are released to the public. Coming up in June 2021, not only can users be opted-in to use Teams Public Preview, but IT admins can even configure Teams users preview state to follow Office preview state. All of this functionality will be accessible from the Teams Admin Center.
Microsoft Teams: Pairing the channel and the corresponding SharePoint folder name	72211	May CY2021	Added: 28 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams When renaming a Teams’ channel, the corresponding SharePoint folder will be renamed and reflect the new name. This will help create consistency across Microsoft 365 endpoints, making it easier on users to find their files from anywhere. This new feature will be available for all Standard and Private channels. For Standard channels – The corresponding folder in SharePoint will be renamed. For Private channels – The corresponding site name and the folder in SharePoint will be renamed. For legacy Teams channels that were renamed prior to this rollout, there will be no change in experience. When a legacy channel is renamed after this release, it will simultaneously rename the corresponding SharePoint folder.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Advanced Delivery for SecOps Mailboxes and Third-Party Phishing Simulations	72207	June CY2021	Added: 29 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Advanced delivery gives admins the ability to configure advanced message delivery for special scenarios, including third-party phishing simulation campaigns and SecOps mailboxes. Advanced delivery will deliver unfiltered messages in these cases and clearly mark messages as part of each scenario across all admin surfaces.
Microsoft Compliance center and Microsoft Teams for Business: Compliance capabilities for card content generated through apps in Teams messages	82992	May CY2021	Added: 29 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance We are extending Microsoft 365 compliance capabilities to content generated through Teams apps.
PowerPoint: PowerPoint modern comments for enterprise	82731	June CY2021	Added: 29 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: PowerPoint The new modern comments experience for PowerPoint is now available through your enterprise account. Modern comments greatly improves your comments experience with features such as resolving comments, anchoring comments to objects and text, improved @mentions, and more.
Microsoft Search: Query variable support on Keyword Query Language (KQL)	81953	October CY2021	Added: 29 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Search Profile attributes and Query String values from the URL can be used as Query variables on KQL. This will be resolved for both SharePoint and Graph connector verticals.
Outlook: Dictate emails on iPhone and iPad	81951	May CY2021	Added: 30 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – iOS Use speech-to-text to dictate email messages, available starting in EN-US.

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

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Explore teams and channels in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Use chat and calling features in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

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

Empower your Frontline workforce to do more with Teams

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

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

Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Go further with Microsoft Lists

Learn all you can do with Microsoft Lists – your smart information tracking app in Microsoft 365. See how Lists evolve from SharePoint lists to empower individuals and teams to create, share and track information – including innovation in Microsoft Teams, information side-by-side your team conversations. We will teach you how to use and create views, configure conditional formatting, adjust forms and more. Plus, we will highlight extending lists with the integrated Power Platform and answer all frequently, or infrequently, asked questions. Get ready to become a Microsoft Lists pro, for free!

Teams Chalk Talk: Energize your Live Events with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Integrate Your Business into Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Wednesday, May 19, 2021 from 12pm – 2pm PT

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

Getting Started with Windows Virtual Desktop

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

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

BLOG ROUNDUP

View live transcripts in Microsoft Teams meetings, track Excel changes, and increase hybrid work security—here’s what’s new to Microsoft 365

As our customers around the world look for new ways to empower people for hybrid work, we’re committed to offering them experiences that enable everyone to connect and collaborate from home, at the office, and everywhere in between. From viewing live transcriptions during Microsoft Teams Meetings and tracking changes in Microsoft Excel documents to discovering and securing unmanaged devices, this month we’re announcing new features across Microsoft 365 designed to enable the flexibility that hybrid work requires. Other highlights include the ability to transform Microsoft Word documents into beautiful PowerPoint presentations using AI, expanded polling capabilities in Teams, and an updated Remote Desktop for Mac app. Let’s dive in.

Welcome to the April edition of What’s new in Teams – the monthly post where we’re keeping you updated on all the new features and innovation that we have made available in Microsoft Teams. This month we’re also excited to announce we’ve launched our new Microsoft Teams Instagram account. Go check it out for fun updates and new ways to engage with the product. Let’s check out all the new features we have delivered this month: (1) Meetings and webinars, (2) Devices, (3) Chat and Collaboration, (4) Management, (5) Frontline worker, and (6) Government.

Related:

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: April 2021

This post includes all the SharePoint and related tech updates that rolled out in April 2021. This is the all-inclusive roadmap release recap for all things SharePoint and related technology. April 2021 brought some great new offerings: Immersive Reader: SharePoint pages and news posts, Events Web Part: Audience Targeting, SharePoint site templates, Microsoft Lists for iOS: iPad support, Manage Microsoft Lists for iOS using Intune APP, Microsoft Lists: Visualize date with Power BI, OneDrive sync 64-bit for Windows, and more. All the features listed began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of April 2021 (possibly early May 2021).

Announcing General Availability of the new Exchange admin center

The new Exchange admin center (EAC) is a modern, accessible, web-based management portal for managing Exchange Online that is based on the Microsoft 365 admin center experience. The new EAC is simple and accessible, and it enables you perform tasks like restoring mailboxes, migrating data, and much more. Since entering Public Preview in June 2020, over half a million admins around the world have used it. We thrived on the feedback of our early adopters and we have steadily improved the new EAC with the help from a great community of early users. We are now excited to announce that the new EAC is now generally available for customers (including GCC customers) in 10 languages. With this announcement, we are also releasing a new dashboard, new usability features, and several intelligent reports to help admins be more productive in their work. The new EAC is expected to be available to customers in GCC High at the end of May 2021, and to customers in DoD at the end of June 2021.

NOTEWORTHY

New Yammer Training Videos & Resources

Updates to Organizational Theming in Microsoft 365 admin center

We are so excited to announce an enhanced theming experience for tenants. We have started rolling out the improvements and will be generally available by late May 2021. Through the Microsoft 365 admin center, start playing around with colors and logos and assign custom themes to different Microsoft 365 groups in your organization! The organizational theme is what appears in the top navigation bar for people in your organization. | Resource: Customize the Microsoft 365 theme for your organization

Mastering Configuration in Defender for Office 365 – Part One

This blog is part one of a three-part series detailing the journey we’re on to simplify configuration of threat protection capabilities in Office 365 to enable best-in class protection for our customers. Effective security is a never-ending battle to achieve balance between security and productivity. If we apply too many security controls to an environment, we limit the ability of its users to function efficiently. And if we err on the side of restraint, we do not hinder users in any way, but we leave the door open to threats. Email security is complex and ever-changing. With over 90 percent of threats surfacing through email, it’s critical that organizations are empowered to configure security tools in a way that works for their environment. We’re committed to offering Office 365 customers the best email protection by continually focusing on improving the effectiveness of our solutions both within Exchange Online Protection (EOP) as well as Defender for Office 365. EOP has a rich legacy of policy granularity and customizations that help customers meet their unique needs. As we’ve built and innovated on Microsoft Defender for Office 365, we have applied those same principles to the new advanced protection capabilities we offered as part of Defender for Office 365, while still respecting many of the EOP settings. | Related: Mastering Configuration in Defender for Office 365 – Part Two

Connect your hybrid workforce with Yammer + OneDrive

Yammer is a best-in-class, secure, and private enterprise social network that empowers employees to be more productive and successful by enabling them to collaborate easily, make decisions faster, and self-organize to take on any business challenge. Where Microsoft Teams is the perfect option for groups working together to deliver specific projects or services, Yammer works best for broader groups of people and open discussion. Organizational or department leaders often use Yammer to share company news, but Yammer can also be valuable for bringing people together to form communities with a common objective or interest—say, a global marketing team at a professional services firm sharing messaging best practices, or two public sector agencies (like a city council and social services) building community outreach programs. Yammer is also great for bringing together inclusive, diverse communities to help improve employee engagement and connectedness. And files are a core component to the success of this community experience because files and rich media help drive participation in Yammer. The synergy Yammer shares with both OneDrive and SharePoint enables your employees to have more focused discussions and boost engagement. With the new file picker experience, employees working in Yammer will soon be able to easily upload files stored in their OneDrive or SharePoint through a familiar interface, for sharing and collaborating with colleagues all across the organization.

Meet critical infrastructure security compliance requirements with Microsoft 365

Critical infrastructure operators face a hostile cyber threat environment and a complex compliance landscape. Every operator of an industrial control system also operates an IT network to service its productivity needs. A supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system operator of a power grid or chemical plant needs email, databases, and business applications to support it, much like any enterprise. As the cyber threat landscape to ICS has grown more hostile and publicized, the compliance responsibilities of critical infrastructure operators have increased as well. Microsoft Compliance Manager is a feature in Microsoft 365 compliance center. It uses signals from the customer’s Microsoft 365 tenant, Microsoft’s compliance program, and workflows completed by the customer to manage and report compliance against regulatory and industry-standard templates. These templates include NERC CIP, NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), NIST 800-53, and the US Protecting and Securing Chemical Facilities from Terrorist Attacks Act (H.R. 4007), as well as more than 330 standards-based assessments globally. You can also create custom templates based on other standards or mapped to your own policies and control set. | Related: What’s New from Ignite regarding Compliance Manager

April Identity Updates

We’re excited to share the latest Active Azure Directory news, including feature updates, support depreciation, and the general availability of new features that will streamline administrator, developer, and end user experiences. These new features and feature updates show our commitment to simplifying identity and access management, while also enhancing the kinds of customization and controls our customers need. New features for April 2021 include: (1) Additional service and client support for Continuous Access Evaluation (CAE) – MS Graph service & OneDrive clients on all platforms (Windows, Web, Mac, iOS, and Android) start to support CAE at the beginning of April. Now OneDrive client access can be terminated immediately right after security events, like session revocation or password reset, if you have CAE enabled in your tenant; (2) Embed Azure AD B2C sign-in interface in an iframe (Preview): Customers have told us how jarring it is to do a full-page redirect when users authenticate. Using a custom policy, you can now embed the Azure AD B2C experience within an iframe so that it appears seamlessly within your web application; and (3) Custom email verification for Azure AD B2C (GA): You can send customized email to users that sign up to use your customer applications, with a third-party email provider such as Mailjet or SendGrid. Using a Azure AD B2C custom policy, you can set up an email template, From: address, and subject, as well as support localization and custom one-time password (OTP) settings.

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

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!

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

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

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 | 2021-06

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

Twenty features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, OneDrive, Lists, Microsoft 365 Compliance Center, Outlook (Windows), Word and Microsoft Information Protection.

There are a few additional sessions for existing meeting series, but there were no brand new events added. The spotlight event of the week is the Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements session on Wednesday, February 17th at 10am Pacific.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include two new PowerApps for Microsoft Teams that help you track projects and share news, information on why threat protection is critical to a Zero Trust security strategy, and a look at how partners are fueling growth and innovation on Microsoft Teams.

Noteworthy items from last week include the availability of Microsoft To Do widgets on iOS 14, the general availability of the Exchange Online V2 PowerShell module on Linux and macOS, and a couple of reasons to love passwordless authentication.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Increased set of first-party indicators for Insider Risk Management	68924	March CY2021	Added: 09 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance The Microsoft 365 Insider Risk Management solution will now recognize an increased set of first party indicators, including Endpoint (Windows 10), Microsoft Teams, Azure Active Directory, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Cloud Access Security.
Microsoft Teams: Disable/Enable a Single Attendee’s Video	70620	April CY2021	Added: 09 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Ability to disable and enable a single attendee’s video in a Microsoft Teams meeting.
Microsoft Teams: Disable/Enable all Attendee’s Video	70621	April CY2021	Added: 09 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Ability to disable and enable video for all attendee’s before, or during, a Microsoft Teams meeting.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Enhanced support for domains in Insider Risk Management	70631	March CY2021	Added: 09 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance Insider Risk Management now support enhanced classification of unallowed, allowed, and third-party domains leveraging wildcards. This helps improve classification of detections.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Content explorer enhancements for Insider Risk Management	70632	March CY2021	Added: 09 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance The Microsoft 365 Insider Risk Management solution will have an improved performance and experience within the content explorer, including transparency of document loads and completeness.
Microsoft Teams: Disable/Enable all Attendees’ Video	80221	May CY2021	Added: 09 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC High, DoD Ability in GCC-High and DoD to disable and enable video for all attendees before or during a Microsoft Teams meeting.
Microsoft Teams: Disable/Enable a Single Attendee’s Video	80224	May CY2021	Added: 09 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC High, DoD Ability to disable and enable a single attendee’s video in a Microsoft Teams meeting.
Syntex: Model usage analytics in content center	70626	February CY2021	Added: 10 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint Syntex The SharePoint Syntex content center provides model usage analytics to provide more information about how your models published from the content center are being used. The “How your models are performing in the last 30 days” section of the content center includes a 30 day roll-up of usage analytics data provided in the following charts and lists: Classification by model, Classification by library and Model usage.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Insider Risk Management recognizes sensitivity label downgrade	70630	March CY2021	Added: 10 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance Insider Risk Management will now be able to identify documents where the user successfully downgrades the sensitivity label applied on it.
Microsoft Teams: PowerShell Support for Team Templates	70698	May CY2021	Added: 10 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams PowerShell support for team templates operations including creating a new team template, viewing all available team templates, etc.
Microsoft 365: Apps will require Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime	70699	March CY2021	Added: 10 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft 365 Apps Microsoft 365 Apps is starting to provide new or improved features that rely on Microsoft Edge WebView2. WebView2 Runtime will be installed starting on March 8, 2021. Only devices that are running Windows and that have Version 2101 or later of Microsoft 365 Apps installed are affected.
Microsoft Search: Actionable items in search	70700	June CY2021	Added: 10 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Search A new action menu with search results will allow an item not only to be opened in the web experience, but directly opened in the client application, downloaded, shared or copy the link to the item.
Microsoft Teams: Manage team templates with template policies	70701	June CY2021	Added: 10 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Choose which team templates are shown to your users by setting a policy.
OneDrive: Dialog on First-Time deletion of File(s)	70702	February CY2021	Added: 11 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive When a user deletes a file(s) for the first time, they will be shown a dialog to educate them that their file is in the OneDrive recycle bin where it can be restored. This will show up on subsequent deletes until the user checks the box stating they do wish to see it again. Admins can turn off this notification all together with a group policy setting.
Microsoft Lists: Commenting (iOS)	70705	March CY2021	Added: 11 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Lists – iOS Bringing web commenting experience to Lists iOS mobile app. Add/delete a comment on list items to collaborate and share better.
Microsoft Lists: List Setting to disable/enable commenting	70706	March CY2021	Added: 11 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Lists New list-level settings to disable/enable commenting
Microsoft Lists: Enabling commenting to Lists app in Teams	70707	May CY2021	Added: 11 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Lists Bringing web commenting experience to Lists app in Teams. Add/delete a comment on list items to collaborate and share better within the Teams canvas.
Outlook for Windows: Every meeting online for Government Clouds	80164	March CY2021	Added: 11 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC 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.
Outlook for Windows: Every meeting online for Government Clouds	80365	April CY2021	Added: 12 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC High, DoD 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 Information Protection: Data loss prevention for Microsoft Teams for DoD	80375	May CY2021	Added: 12 February 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP, DoD Data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities in Microsoft 365 government clouds will be extended to include Microsoft Teams chat and channel messages, including private channel messages. If your organization has DLP, you can now define policies that prevent people from sharing sensitive information in a Microsoft Teams channel or chat session.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

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

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.

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

Track projects and share news in Teams with two new Power Apps

Within the Teams app store, you’ll now find two brand new applications published by Microsoft: Milestones and Bulletins. With the Milestones app, you can seamlessly track projects across your company, and with Bulletins, you can quickly publish news articles to the rest of your company. Both are deeply integrated within Teams, but what makes them unique is that they are built with Power Apps on top of the recently released Dataverse for Teams. By shipping them on top of Dataverse for Teams, we’re making it possible for you to fully customize these apps from top to bottom and to leverage them as inspiration to build your own apps! | Related: Communicate broadly and collaborate effectively with two new Power Apps

Why threat protection is critical to your Zero Trust security strategy

There’s been a significant increase in identity-based attacks. As IT leaders rely more heavily on identity in their security strategies, cybercriminals have increased their efforts on this threat vector. And with the shift to remote work in response to COVID-19, we’ve seen a notable number of pandemic-related phishing attacks. IT leaders need more visibility and protection. With the increase in threats, security professionals and admins are being overwhelmed with alerts. IT leaders are looking for more effective ways to manage alerts and better tools to proactively prevent attackers from being able to compromise accounts. Preventing identity compromise is more critical than ever. As IT leaders evolve their security strategies, people increasingly working remotely, and the number of identity-based attacks are rising, it’s vital for organizations to implement real-time, AI-based protections that prevent identity compromise.

How partners are fueling growth and innovation on Microsoft Teams

Teams not only enables you to meet, chat, call, and collaborate with your team, but it also serves as a platform that brings together the apps and workflows that help you get your work done. In fact, users utilizing third-party apps and custom-built solutions in Teams every month grew over seven times year-over-year. We also know that a workplace platform is only as good as the ecosystem of relevant and useful applications and custom integrations available. Because of this, we continue to invest in Teams platform capabilities to enable and empower our partners to continue to build new, innovative solutions. When our partners succeed, we succeed, and together we bring more value to our customers. The beauty and strength of Microsoft Teams is that it’s designed as a surface where partners can interweave capabilities to create innovative, productivity-enhancing solutions. With the broadest canvas to build upon—from bots, messaging extensions, cards, and apps across chat and meetings to name a few—partners have created amazing solutions that reach people where they are and fit the needs of customers in this digital, post-pandemic business environment. We are proud to have such a strong and thriving ecosystem of partners who are continuously pushing the bounds of innovation with the solutions they’ve built on Microsoft Teams. From the more than 800 Teams apps built by independent software vendors (ISVs) and published in our store to the thousands of systems integrators (SIs) who are developing custom Teams solutions—our partners are growing their business and finding immense value from building on Teams. Most importantly, our customers are benefitting from all of these solutions that increase employee productivity and enhance collaboration.

NOTEWORTHY

Microsoft To Do iOS 14 widgets are now available

With the launch of iOS 14, you can now add widgets to your home screen. We’re excited to announce that To Do widgets for iOS 14 are now available! We’ve added three new types of widgets for you – read on to learn more. The Your Tasks widget helps you select and view tasks from a list of your choice. The widget is available in two sizes: the medium widget shows a list of your tasks, while the large widget shows a list of your tasks along with due dates and other details. By default, the Your Tasks widget shows the Tasks list. In the My Day widget, you can view the first task on your My Day list. The Add Task widget allows you to quickly add a task to a list of your choice without having to open the To Do app.

EXO V2 PowerShell module is now Generally Available on Linux & macOS

At Microsoft Ignite 2020, we announced the preview of support for Linux and Windows PowerShell Core in Exchange Online management using EXO V2 Module. We are delighted to announce general availability of this feature along with the support for macOS. Officially supported distributions of Linux are Ubuntu versions 18.04 and 20.04 (native installations – not WSL). For macOS, supported versions are Mojave, Catalina & Big Sur. Read more in the detailed release notes here. In addition to cross platform support, we added support for longer session timeouts in interactive scripting scenarios. The module is now more secure with real time policy and security enforcement in all interactive cases with the help of Continuous Access Evaluation provided by Azure AD. Version 2.0.4 of EXO V2 module is available at PowerShell Gallery and we recommend all Exchange Admins start using this version of the module.

10 Reasons to Love Passwordless #3: Why biometrics and passwordless are a dream combination

The Microsoft identity team recently launched a series explaining why they love passwordless authentication (and why you should too!).The series kicked off with posts on FIDO and NIST compliance. Alex Weinert continues the series with this post speaking to biometric authentication. Rather than having to memorize a password (you can’t) or security answers (quick! What was your 6th grade teacher’s best friend’s pet’s maiden name when you had your first crush?), you can use what’s always with you – you! Biometrics let you use your face, fingerprint, or even heartbeat on some devices. Biometrics also provide terrific accessibility benefits, making it possible to sign in when typing in a password is not viable. It is really exciting to think about the technology in use by people or in situations where secure digital identity was previously out of reach. With biometrics, once a device is “bound”, almost any gesture can be used to authenticate. Think about the implications for folks who interact with technology in non-conventional ways, or whose job requirements make manual interactions impossible (e.g. a surgeon after scrubbing in) – with NFC and FIDO2, a tap of the token can sign you in securely. | Related: 10 Reasons to Love Passwordless #4: Secure your digital estate, while securing your bottom line

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

Get Started with 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.

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

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements

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 | 2021-04

Welcome to the January 25 – 31, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Twenty-three features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Exchange, Microsoft 365 Compliance Center, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, and Microsoft Information Protection.

There are a few new events, with two “Ask Microsoft Anything” (AMA) sessions – Lists on February 11th, and Office Scripts on February 16th. The third event is the “Reimagine the Employee Experience” event with Satya Nadella and Jared Spataro on Thursday, February 4th at 6am Pacific. Note: This is also the spotlight event of the week. It does appear that all of the standard meeting series now have the full February schedules posted.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include details on what’s new in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams in January 2021, the centralization of OneDrive settings into the SharePoint admin center, and 5 identity priorities for 2021 to strengthen security for the hybrid work era and beyond.

Wrapping up the post are noteworthy items on recent visual updates for Microsoft Planner, forms and rules configuration in Microsoft Lists, information on how companies are securing devices with Zero Trust practices, and recent updates for hybrid MFA and hybrid identity.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Excel: Track tasks with @mentions	49291	March CY2021	Added: 26 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Excel Use @mentions in comments to create, assign and track tasks within your workbook.
Forms: Shorten URL when sending Forms to collect responses	75243	February CY2021	Added: 26 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Forms In Microsoft Forms, you can now choose to use a shorter URL in some scenarios directly, enabling the responders easier to type and access the link for specific situations.
Office 365: Admins can choose to allow users to self-select their Office Update channel	79809	February CY2021	Added: 26 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 This feature will allow an admin to enable the user to self-select the Office channel within the Office client, resulting in an immediate change on the user’s device. Starting with the February 2021 update to the Office ADMX templates there is a new policy called ‘Show the option for the Office Update Channel experience’. It can be found in the ‘Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Microsoft Office 2016 (Machine)/Miscellaneous’ and ‘User Configuration/Administrative Templates/Microsoft Office 2016/Miscellaneous’ nodes.
SharePoint: Simplified MUI editing for multilingual communication sites	79847	March CY2021	Added: 26 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint This new feature allows the same user, with the right permissions, to update site navigation, site title, site description and site footer in all the languages enabled in your communication site.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Enhancements to Spoof Intelligence	70590	March CY2021	Added: 28 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Spoof intelligence experience for Security Admins will introduce enhancements so that Admins can setup spoof configurations, manage spoof allow/block lists for a tenant, review insights provided by spoof intelligence and view/export detailed spoof detections report. This feature provides a clearer, easier way for Security Admins to manage ability for a sending infrastructure to be able to spoof a particular domain or a user (email address) for both Cross-Org (External) and Intra-Org (Internal) email messages using “Spoof intelligence tenant allow/block list overrides policy.” As a Security Admin, you can view, add, update, delete spoofed domain pairs using this Policy or optionally using the PowerShell cmdlet.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Allowing URLs and Files with Tenant Allow/Block List	70591	June CY2021	Added: 28 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 One of the ways EOP protects customers is by blocking malicious attachments, URLs, and certain senders from reaching end users. We also understand that from time to time, customers may have special needs to block something on their own that our filters might find to be not malicious. In order to provide a way for our customers to do this at time of click and during mail flow, we’re developing a portal to help you self-serve and do it yourself. This portal will give admins the opportunity to explicitly allow or block attachments, URLs, senders and even certain recipients in your Office 365 tenant. This phase of this rollout enables explicitly allowing files and URLs.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Microsoft Compliance Manager general availability for DoD	70592	March CY2021	Added: 28 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance, DoD 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. With Compliance Manager, you will benefit from intuitive end-to-end compliance management, a vast out-of-the-box assessment template library and built-in automation to scale your compliance across global, industrial, and regional standards.
Microsoft Teams: Meetings – Live Captions in additional languages	70593	July CY2021	Added: 28 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Today, Teams meetings live captions is available for English. We will enable live captions in additional spoken languages such as German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Dutch.
Microsoft Information Protection: Granular conditional access policies via “Sensitivity Labels” for SharePoint Online sites	70594	June CY2021	Added: 28 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP Admins will have the ability to use Azure AD conditional access policies to trigger multi-factor authentication (MFA), device and location policies on a specific SharePoint site collection based by simply attaching CA policies to a label. Then these labels can be applied to Sites and now users access these sites will have to go through the CA policies in order to gain access.
Exchange Online: Label for external email messages received	70595	February CY2021	Added: 28 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Exchange Online Exchange will make available a PowerShell cmdlet so that admins can enable the protections against spam & phishing threats from external senders. This will be achieved by presenting a new label on emails called “External” in the message list in Outlook on the web and, in some Outlook clients, a “mail tip” at the top of the reading pane with sender’s email address.
Microsoft Teams: Share to Microsoft Teams from Outlook	70598	March CY2021	Added: 28 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams 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. Share to Teams supports Outlook on the web, Outlook for Windows, and the new Outlook for Mac Preview.
Microsoft Teams: Anonymous Presenter Support for Live Events	70599	March CY2021	Added: 28 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams You may allow an anonymous user who does not have and MSA or AAD identity to be a presenter in your live event.
Microsoft Information Protection: AIP client and scanner data available in Audit and Activity explorer	70600	February CY2021	Added: 28 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP Azure Information Protection (AIP) customers can now access data in Microsoft 365 compliance center Audit logs and Activity explorer, in addition to the AIP Analytics portal. This means that all data logged via AIP client and AIP scanner can be witnessed along with the rest of the Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) data sets from native Office apps and other cloud resources.
Microsoft Teams: Walkie Talkie for GCC	70601	March CY2021	Added: 28 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC 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 Android smartphones and tablets into a walkie-talkie, reducing the number of devices employees must carry and lowering costs for IT.
Microsoft Teams: Get a “Meet Now” Meeting link	70602	February CY2021	Added: 28 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Users can now copy a “Meet Now” meeting link without starting the meeting from the Calendar tab which can be used later.
Office 365: Dictation improvements in Word and Outlook including voice commands	70596	March CY2021	Added: 29 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 (Outlook , Word) Dictation has new UI and settings to control a profanity filter and automatic punctuation. Voice commands make editing and formatting your dictated text easier than ever.
Microsoft Teams: Virtual Breakout Rooms for GCC-High	70604	February CY2021	Added: 29 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC-High Meeting hosts can create breakout rooms to be used by meeting participants for smaller group discussion. They can assign participants to a room and call them back to the larger group when the breakout is complete.
SharePoint Syntex: Document understanding model – extractors position awareness	70605	February CY2021	Added: 29 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint Syntex An explanation enhancement to specify document region where an entity may appear in a content understanding model.
OneDrive: 64-bit OneDrive (Public Preview)	70694	March CY2021	Added: 29 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive A preview of 64-bit OneDrive is now available for download. It will only be supported on AMD64-based devices.
OneDrive: 64-bit OneDrive	70695	March CY2021	Added: 29 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive OneDrive is now available as a 64-bit install for AMD64-based devices.
Office 365: Dictation improvements in Word for Mac including voice commands	79976	March CY2021	Added: 29 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Word – Mac Dictation has new UI and settings to control a profanity filter and automatic punctuation. Voice commands make editing and formatting your dictated text easier than ever.
Office 365: Dictation improvements in Outlook for Mac including voice commands	79977	April CY2021	Added: 29 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Mac Dictation has new UI and settings to control a profanity filter and automatic punctuation. Voice commands make editing and formatting your dictated text easier than ever.
Outlook for Windows: New location for key Outlook modules	68205	March CY2021	Added: 29 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Windows The main modules in Outlook such as email, calendar, tasks and people are moving to a new app bar on the left of the folder pane. You can customize the app bar by pinning preferred Outlook and Microsoft 365 apps. This change can be previewed with the return of the Coming Soon toggle.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

Get Started 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!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

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.

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

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

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

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

Reimagine the Employee Experience

When: Thursday, February 4, 2021 at 6:00am PT | Please join us, Satya Nadella and Jared Spataro to discover our commitment to empower people and teams be their best at the Reimagine the Employee Experience digital event. See new ways to bring together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights with everyday work. Visit Microsoft 365 Twitter on Thursday, February 4 at 9:00 AM Eastern Time for a link to the digital event.

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Securing Your Organization

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

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Lists

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

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Office Scripts

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements

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

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

BLOG ROUNDUP

From breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams to AI in To Do—here’s what’s new to Microsoft 365 in January

If this year has taught business leaders anything, it’s that people make all the difference. And from experiences that make it easier for everyone to engage in large meetings to partnerships that enable frontline workers, we are committed to helping our customers use technology to unleash the power of their people. New announcements in Microsoft Teams make it easy for everyone to engage in large meetings, help connect organizations, empower frontline retail workers, and more. New capabilities help make it easier to prioritize and organize tasks, access lists on the go, and use custom functions in Microsoft Excel workbooks. Application Guard, which helps desktop users stay safer and more productive by opening Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files in a virtualized container, is now generally available for everyone with Microsoft E5 or E5 Security subscriptions.

This blog post outlines all the great Teams features released in January 2021, including Approvals in Teams, Offline autosend, meeting chat moderation settings, add a shared calendar to a Teams channel, Microsoft Teams Secure Score recommendation, Task publishing feature in Tasks for Teams, and many, many more!

As we continue to power innovative experiences across Microsoft 365, we also realized that now, more than ever, admins need increased centralized control over content across the organization. Aligning to our coherence and modernization efforts, we are working hard to unify these experiences by bringing consistent design, naming conventions, look and feel to enable a smoother admin experience across the Microsoft 365 admin suite. And today we’re happy to announce that the OneDrive and SharePoint admin centers are converging into one, giving you holistic control and streamlining the admin experience. With the new integrated admin center, you can manage everything at an organizational level all in one place: control internal and external sharing, set user access controls, manage default storage limits, enable user device notifications, specify retention policies, and manage sync controls for OneDrive. We’ve also improved the user interface to provide a more consistent experience and support Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 compliance, enhanced reporting, and added the Global Reader admin role, which provides a read-only view of SharePoint admin center. When you assign the Global Reader role to an admin, they can view—but not edit—all administrative features and settings in all Microsoft 365 admin centers, which helps you delegate admin responsibilities more efficiently.

5 identity priorities for 2021—strengthening security for the hybrid work era and beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed how organizations run their businesses. It’s also changed the way we work, learn, and collaborate. What hasn’t changed is the critical role identity plays in helping organizations to be secure and productive. Identity has grown at an unprecedented pace—from 300 million monthly active users (MAU) in March 2020 to 425 million today. Organizations around the world have accelerated the adoption of security and collaboration apps. But behind these numbers are stories of customers like you, working tirelessly to help your organizations stay ahead. Our 2021 recommendations will help you strengthen your identity and security foundations for the long term, so you can be ready for whatever comes next. | Related: Why operational resilience will be key in 2021, and how this impacts cybersecurity

NOTEWORTHY

Planner: More visual cues to celebrate completed tasks and stay motivated

If you’re like us, crossing a completed task off your list gives you a boost. The simple, visual act of striking that to-do is both satisfying and energizing. You did it and you can do it again. That’s exactly why we introduced confetti animation in Planner last year: that burst of color represents pride in your completed work and offers motivation to finish the work ahead. It’s also why we’re excited to announce even more visual cues to help you do the same, all of which are now available in both the Planner web app and the Tasks app in Teams. These include: (1) A checklist progress bar, (2) Confetti animation for completed tasks, and (3) Confetti animation for a completed checklist.

Configure forms and rules in Microsoft Lists

Going beyond the out-of-box experience doesn’t always require coding or separate tools. With Microsoft Lists, you can further customize forms and notifications with a few clicks, or a copy/paste of JSON code. Both capabilities are now rolling out into Microsoft 365. Create simple if/then rules, based on changes to list information, to set reminders and send notifications. Users with edit permissions on the list can create and manage rules. Users with read-only permissions can’t create or manage rules. Once the feature is available to your users, they’ll be able to create a rule by selecting Automate and then Create a rule in the list command bar near the top of the page. | Related: New Microsoft Lists adoption center

How companies are securing devices with Zero Trust practices

Organizations are seeing a substantial increase in the diversity of devices accessing their networks. With employees using personal devices and accessing corporate resources from new locations in record numbers, IT leaders are seeing an increase in their attack surface area. They’re turning to Zero Trust security models to ensure they have the visibility they need, and their data is protected as its accessed from outside the corporate network using a wider variety of devices. We surveyed IT leaders around the world to determine how they’re using Zero Trust practices to protect their devices and enable access to the corporate network from unsecured devices.

Upcoming changes to managing MFA methods for hybrid customers

It’s never been more important to enforce MFA. As part of our efforts to make hybrid MFA deployments simpler and more secure, we’ll be updating empty authentication numbers with users’ public phone numbers if those numbers are being used for MFA. Starting February 1, 2021, for synced users who are using public profile numbers for MFA, Microsoft will copy the public number to users’ corresponding authentication number. Once the authentication number is populated, the MFA service will call that authentication number, instead of the public number. Microsoft will copy subsequent changes to the public number over to the authentication number until May 1, 2021 (except deletions of the public number).

Strengthen your hybrid identity with these new Azure AD Connect releases

We continue to hear from you that hybrid identity is as important as ever, even as more apps move to the cloud. In Azure AD, our key hybrid identity tool is Azure AD Connect. This comes in two flavors based on your use case needs: Azure AD Connect sync which lives on-premises, and Azure AD Connect cloud sync which is powered by the cloud. We are constantly improving these capabilities based on your feedback, to make it easier to deploy and configure while also improving security, scale and throughput. We’re announcing Azure AD Connect cloud sync is generally available! This was formerly known as Azure AD Connect cloud provisioning during its preview. We have also made significant updates to our classic Azure AD Connect sync tool with improved scale and performance. Azure AD Connect cloud sync is the future of our hybrid identity sync capabilities. It moves all the heavy-lifting of the transform logic to the cloud. It also reduces the on-premises footprint with light-weight agents that can be distributed for enterprise-grade availability. Customers can deploy this either standalone, or even alongside Azure AD connect sync. When deployed together, it allows you to connect disconnected AD forests that arise from merger and acquisition or remote office location scenarios.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-03

Welcome to the January 18 – 24, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were seventeen additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Exchange, Microsoft 365 Compliance Center, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and Microsoft Information Protection.

The “Microsoft 365 Defender: Protect, Detect, and Respond to Solorigate using Microsoft 365 Defender” session on Thursday, January 28th at 11am Pacific, is the only brand new event. There were new sessions added for some of the existing meeting series. This week’s spotlight event is the “Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements” training on Tuesday, January 26th from 10am – 2pm Pacific.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include tips for safe online meetings and collaboration with Microsoft Teams, details on automatic email forwarding in Exchange Online, information on how IT leaders are securing identities with Zero Trust, and several deployment acceleration guides for Microsoft 365 Information Protection and Compliance.

Noteworthy items highlights include the availability of the Groups feature in the new Exchange Admin Center, updates for Yammer Reactions to make them more inclusive, information on the Microsoft Lists app for iOS, and details on an internal PowerApps “Release Planner” app used internally by Microsoft product teams.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Microsoft 365 Compliance center: Information governance – Auto-labeling of cloud attachments	70580	June CY2021	Added: 19 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance This update enables organizations to automatically apply retention labels to the version of files shared as cloud attachments, which are live links of SharePoint or OneDrive content that can be shared via emails or Teams messages.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Information governance – Retention policies for Microsoft Teams private channels	70582	March CY2021	Added: 19 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance This update enables organizations to apply an organization-wide retention policy on Teams private channel messages.
SharePoint: Scenario-Based Site Templates	70574	March CY2021	Added: 21 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint Use scenario-based site templates that leverage existing SharePoint capabilities (e.g. pages, lists, libraries, branding) to build your own sites faster and get inspired.
OneDrive: Sync Client support for DWG file Version History	70575	March CY2021	Added: 21 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive We’re updating OneDrive Sync client to support Version History for DWG files. This change fixes a known issue where Version History is missing for DWG files backed by Sync client.
Exchange: OAuth Client Credential Flow support for POP/IMAP	70577	July CY2021	Added: 21 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Exchange Adding support for the Client Credential OAuth flow to the POP and IMAP protocols in Exchange Online.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Information governance – Adaptive retention policies (Public Preview)	70578	June CY2021	Added: 21 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance This update allows admins to create retention policies scoped to geography, department, or other user or site attribute. For example, admins can create a policy specifically for users in the UK’s human resources team by leveraging the adaptive policy scope.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Information governance – Multi-stage disposition review	70579	June CY2021	Added: 21 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance This update allows organizations to use a multi-stage disposition process, including multiple stakeholders and reviews before deleting the content.
Microsoft 365 Compliance center: Information governance – Yammer retention	70581	March CY2021	Added: 21 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance This update enables organizations to apply retention policies on Yammer messages.
Microsoft 365 Compliance center: Advanced Audit – Mail attachments event	70584	June CY2021	Added: 21 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance This update adds a new audit event that specifies if a mail attachment was accessed by the user.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Advanced Audit – Teams reactions on messages	70585	June CY2021	Added: 21 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance See new audit activity related to Teams reactions on messages.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Advanced eDiscovery – Hold optimizations	70586	June CY2021	Added: 21 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance This update provides various service optimizations for Advanced eDiscovery, including hold reliability and limits increase.
Microsoft Information Protection: Microsoft Teams location picker supports security groups and distribution lists (GCC)	70587	February CY2021	Added: 21 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP 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.).
SharePoint: App Bar	70576	March CY2021	Added: 22 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint The SharePoint app bar brings a consistent navigation experience to every site on your intelligent intranet, featuring quick access to important sites across the organization with global navigation, personally relevant sites, and the news feed.
Teams: 2×2 video in Gallery view for web meetings in Edge and Chrome browsers	70589	February CY2021	Added: 22 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Gallery view now can show up to 4 participant videos during a meeting in Edge or Chrome browser.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint: Threat and vulnerability management for macOS	70691	January CY2021	Added: 22 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Software vulnerability assessment are available for macOS. The same familiar insights are available as for Windows devices in the recommendations, software inventory, weaknesses, and other dashboards.
Microsoft Teams: Align the experience creating a team from different Teams interfaces	70696	February CY2021	Added: 22 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Align the experience for Teams creation in Teams Admin Center to the experience in creating a team in the Teams client.
Microsoft Teams: Moving all PowerShell work items under ITPro-PowerShell	70697	February CY2021	Added: 22 January 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Migrate from ADAL to MSAL – Moving all PowerShell work items under ITPro-PowerShell.

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

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

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.

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Meeting Organizational Compliance Requirements

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

Wednesday, January 27, 2021 at 8am PT

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

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

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.

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 365 Defender: Protect, Detect, and Respond to Solorigate using Microsoft 365 Defender

When: Thursday, January 28, 2021 at 11:00am PT | Microsoft security researchers continue to investigate and respond to the sophisticated cyberattack known as Solorigate involving a supply chain compromise and the subsequent compromise of cloud assets. Will review how M365 Defender can detect the various stages of Solorigate and help you formulate your response plan.

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Securing Your Organization

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

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Tuesday, February 16, 2021 from 12pm – 2pm PT

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Customer Immersion Experience: Integrate Your Business into Microsoft Teams

BLOG ROUNDUP

7 tips for safe online meetings and collaboration with Microsoft Teams

Remote and hybrid work has become the new norm for many employees across the globe as day-to-day collaboration continues to be accomplished virtually. With this shift to online communication, how can you ensure that you’re collaborating safely? Queue Microsoft Teams! Whether you’re hosting virtual meetings, carrying out daily group and 1:1 chat, sharing documents, or coauthoring in a document in real-time – Teams enables safe and secure collaboration! This post outlines seven tips for safe online meetings and collaboration with Microsoft Teams.

We realize that many customers have genuine business requirements to configure automatic email forwarding. On the other hand, email forwarding may lead to data leakage. For example, if we have a compromised account, the attacker might create a forwarding rule for a particular mailbox, and the user might be unaware that their mail is being forwarded. This is a very common tactic used when accounts are compromised. It is therefore important for administrators to know all mailboxes that have forwarding enabled and where the mail is been forwarded to. We have various insights and alerts that help administrators monitor such activities, but prevention is always better than the cure. In this blog post, we thought to revisit (and update) various auto forward controls, how they work together and how they can help you achieve a requirement of allowing automatic forwarding for users who really need this feature.

How IT leaders are securing identities with Zero Trust

The past twelve months have been a remarkable time of digital transformation as organizations, and especially digital security teams, adapt to working remotely and shifting business operations. IT leaders everywhere turned to Zero Trust approaches to alleviate the challenges of enabling and securing remote work. Using Zero Trust to secure users, data, and devices (wherever they may be) has changed from optional to a business imperative overnight. In this short report, we surveyed IT leaders around the world to determine how they’re implementing Zero Trust practices to protect their identities and ensure their employees have secure access to resources. | Related: Using Zero Trust principles to protect against sophisticated attacks like Solorigate

Microsoft 365 Information Protection and Compliance Deployment Acceleration Guides

The guides can be used both independently, but we recommend using all the solutions together for your deployment needs. We are not recommending one solution be implemented before another but have included information in each guide to tie all the solutions together with features to consider during your implementation. The guide covers current released feature as of today and will be updated once additional features progress from beta, or private preview to general availability. In summary, the deployment guides include: (1) One Compliance Story covering how to each solution features complement each, (2) Best Practices based on the team’s experience with customer roadblocks, (3) Considerations to take and research before starting your deployment, (4) Help Resources links to additional readings and topics to gain a deeper understanding, and (5) An appendix for additional information on licensing.

NOTEWORTHY

Groups in new Exchange Admin Center (EAC) brings performance and ease of discoverability

Continuing on our path to release the new EAC, we wanted to tell you that the Groups feature is now available. The experience is modern, improved, and fast. Administrators can now create and manage all 4 types of groups (Microsoft 365 group, Distribution list, Mail-enabled Security group and Dynamic distribution list) from the new portal. We wanted to call out some improvements in Groups experience in the new EAC when compared with classic EAC.

Yammer Reactions are now inclusive

We believe that Yammer, a tool that connects people and helps build communities, has an important role to play for a sense of belonging and inclusion. And we don’t want to simply build for inclusivity, we want to celebrate it. Recently Yammer introduced reactions, and next, we want to bring diverse skin tones to Yammer reactions. We want users to feel a deeper sense of representation when interacting with the new Yammer. Once you select your skin tone (settings available both on web and mobile!), you can react quickly without having to decide every time you reply! Yammer will be the first of the Microsoft 365 products to offer inclusive reactions. We are excited to lead the charge with other product groups at Microsoft in keeping inclusivity at the center of everything we do.

Get the Microsoft Lists app for iOS

Microsoft Lists is a Microsoft 365 app that helps you track information and organize your work. They are simple, smart, and flexible, so you can stay on top of what matters most to your team. And now you can track issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory and more to keep everyone in sync from anywhere while on the go with a personalized, mobile-first experience. The Microsoft Lists app for iOS provides access to the lists you own and that have been shared with you. You can create new lists, edit list items, and easily share with other people. While sipping coffee – create an Issue tracker list. In the passenger’s seat zipping from place to place – share a link to the session item from a conference in the Event itinerary list. Or standing in a grocery line waiting to check out – update the status of an item based on information from a team chat. Work and information management don’t have to stop when you’re on the go.

How Microsoft built and adopted a customized “Release Planner” app

Business leaders know the importance of streamlining product releases and updates. Many organizations suffer from disorganized release cycles lacking automated reviews, approvals, notifications and standardization. What is needed is a centralized location for all update and release related actions and communications. Whether you have an internal software development team or produce software for use outside your organization, you will benefit from considering a Power Apps solution to track your updates and releases. A team at Microsoft recently built a low code app to efficiently coordinate hundreds of their own product features. They went from collecting manual input from three hundred product managers to developing one Power Apps app as a central location for release plans. This Power Apps app was so successful that the team released it as a free, open source for the benefit of you and your business. This app is now used internally in Microsoft by six hundred active users every month.