M365 Groups – 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 | 2021-22

Welcome to the May 31 – June 6, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Twelve features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, OneDrive, Outlook and Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

Several existing meeting series have added more sessions for June. The spotlight event of the week is the Microsoft 365 Virtual Training for “Secure and Protect Your Organization”, which takes place on Wednesday, June 9th and Thursday, June 10th, starting at 10:00am Pacific.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include multiple posts related to collaborative work management in Microsoft 365, the monthly SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop, details on a more intuitive sharing experience across Microsoft 365, and the latest updates for migrating content from Box, Dropbox, and Google Workspace into Microsoft 365.

Noteworthy item highlights include the May 2021 updates for Project, information on automating and managing Azure Active Directory tasks at scale with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK, a Microsoft Inside Track video on best practices for implementing the Zero Trust security model, and details on major updates for Microsoft Bookings.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
OneDrive: Sharing experience – “Shared with” list	83725	November CY2021	Added: 01 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive At the bottom of the Share dialog, the “Shared with” list will give you an at-a glance view of everyone you’ve given access to the file.
OneDrive: Sharing experience – Manage Access settings	83726	November CY2021	Added: 01 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive We will be updating the “Manage Access” experience which will offer you additional controls for how recipients access files you’ve shared. “Shared with” list would be an entry point to Manage Access settings.
OneDrive: Sharing experience – Share menu dropdown	83727	November CY2021	Added: 01 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive We’re updating the Share menu to provide easy access to additional sharing options like Email, Copy link, Teams chat as well as Manage access settings.
OneDrive: Sharing experience – Copy link	83728	November CY2021	Added: 01 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive Instead of a Copy link button, you’ll see a footer where you can set permissions for the link and then copy it to share it with recipients.
Outlook and Exchange for Business: Project Moca moving to Outlook board	82013	July CY2021	Added: 01 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook With the recent launch of Outlook calendar board, we are moving all spaces created in Project Moca to the new calendar board. With this move, all Project Moca data will be moved into the board view in Outlook on the web.
Microsoft Teams: Windows 10 Native Notifications	64138	June CY2021	Added: 03 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams – Windows 10 Choose the style of your notifications: built-in Teams or Windows native notifications. The latter brings a suite of benefits, like respecting focus assist mode which enables you to avoid distracting notifications when you need to focus, and integrating with Windows 10 action center to helps you review your notifications in one place.
Microsoft Teams: Missed Activity Email in DOD	83061	June CY2021	Added: 03 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, DoD Missed activity email enables the user to stay on top of their Microsoft Teams notifications. A missed activity email is generated in case a user is away from Microsoft teams and has not reviewed their notifications. A user can choose to receive Missed activity emails by going to settings – notifications – choosing the frequency.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Admin review and feedback	82025	July CY2021	Added: 03 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Responding to reports about phishing or junk emails from end users can be very time consuming. With the new admin review feature, your security team will be able to quickly review reported messages and choose appropriate responses, automatically sending predefined but customizable emails to your end users. Coupled with automated investigation & response (AIR), you’ll be able to free up time for more critical work.
Microsoft Teams: Host Intrusion Detection (HDI) for VDI on Windows Virtual Desktop	83024	September CY2021	Added: 04 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams This feature will support use of Host Intrusion Detection (HID) on Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD).
Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams classes LTI application for educational learning managements systems (LMS)	83071	July CY2021	Added: 04 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Microsoft Teams classes LTI app helps educators and students easily navigate between their Learning Management Systems and Teams. Users can access their class teams associated with their course directly from within their LMS.
Microsoft Teams: Reporter and Side-by-Side Presenter Mode in desktop or window sharing	83371	July CY2021	Added: 04 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Two new presenter modes are now coming available. Reporter places content as a visual aid above your shoulder like a news story. Side-by-side displays your video feed next to your content. You can now select a mode that fits your needs and promotes a more engaging presentation and consumption experience.
Microsoft Teams: Live Transcription with speaker attribution (for additional SKUs)	82029	July CY2021	Added: 04 June 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Live transcripts provide another way to follow along with what has been said and who said it. After a meeting, the transcript file is automatically saved in the chat tab for that meeting. We are now expanding this feature to Office 365 E1, Office 365 A1, Office 365/Microsoft 365 A3, Office 365/Microsoft 365 A5, Microsoft 365 F1, Office 365/Microsoft 365 F3, Microsoft 365 Business Basic SKUs.

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

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).

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

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.

Empower your Frontline workforce to do more with Teams

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Build collaborative workspaces in 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.

Teams Chalk Talk: Energize your Live Events with Microsoft Teams

Explore teams and channels in 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

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

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

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

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

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!

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: Enable Remote Work with Microsoft Teams

BLOG ROUNDUP

Maximize results with collaborative work management in Microsoft 365

People today aren’t working so much as they are managing work. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’re experiencing it firsthand. “Burnout” often describes what’s happening. Countless studies over the past year have found employee burnout became “rampant, seemingly overnight” in 2020. With work shifted to a remote or hybrid model, there is more information to process than ever, and digital overload is real. Despite burnout, or the reason for it, 69% of respondents in a recent study said they’re not using a formal work management tool. Let’s face it: work management happens wherever and whenever it’s most convenient. We sock away emails in a “Follow-Up” folder, save shared files on our desktop, and manage tasks on sticky notes, spreadsheets, across multiple mobile apps—all for the same project! When it comes time to make sense of it all, it sometimes doesn’t make sense. So, we’re stuck managing work instead of working. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In the face of a tectonic shift in information, collaborative work management (CWM) with Microsoft 365 helps you save time and maximize results. CWM is a concentrated effort to streamline work management through a set of purpose-built apps. These apps add structure to all the unseen parts of business productivity: tasks, status updates, files, and the like. With a more efficient approach to the process of work, your team gets more time to collaborate on the work itself. The apps that comprise the Microsoft CWM offering are Microsoft Planner, Microsoft To Do, Tasks in Teams, and Microsoft Lists, which are for managing work; and, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Office, which are for collaborating on that work—all of which are brought together by Microsoft Teams, the central hub for CWM.

Related:

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: May 2021

This post includes all the SharePoint and related tech updates that rolled out in May 2021. This is the all-inclusive roadmap release recap for all things SharePoint and related technology. May 2021 brought some great new offerings: Yammer conversation highlights, Immersive Reader for SharePoint documents, content migration from Dropbox and Google Workspace into Microsoft 635, OneDrive sync admin reports, Microsoft Lists: Export to CSV, Microsoft Lists: Updated sharing experience, Microsoft Lists: Turn comments on/off, and more. All the features listed began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of May 2021 (possibly early June 2021).

Announcing a more intuitive sharing experience across Microsoft 365 for better collaboration

Collaboration is a critical part of virtual work. At Microsoft, we’ve seen firsthand that the way people work together has fundamentally changed over the past year. More people are using Microsoft 365 applications like Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint to connect with internal team members across their organizations and with external colleagues than ever before. The Share dialog appears in more than 40 areas of Microsoft 365 and is accessed about 400 million times a month. That’s why we’ve been gathering feedback and capturing data to understand how you collaborate—and more specifically, how you share and work together with teammates on files—so we can make the right investments to make sharing options more intuitive across Microsoft 365 apps and make collaborating easier for you. Over the next year, we’re using an incremental, data-driven approach for rolling out updates to improve the sharing experience across all Microsoft 365 and Office applications for all platforms (desktop, web, and mobile). We’ll be making those incremental changes gradually, so we can continue to collect feedback and learn from you, improving the experience as we go to ensure we’re making it easier for you to collaborate with your colleagues in ways that work best for you.

Migrate content from Box, Dropbox, and Google Workspace into Microsoft 365 – release update

Microsoft focuses on providing a seamless move to Microsoft 365 with as much expertise and tooling we and our ecosystem can offer – across the globe. Our goal is to help move to the cloud with confidence. At times, you need to move content cloud-to-cloud. We’re pleased to highlight Mover integration progress, to bring more of their technology directly inside the SharePoint admin center in Microsoft 365. Now, the Migration Manager admin tab is the home to manage all content migrations into Microsoft 365 (primarily into OneDrive, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams) – without leaving the service. Microsoft offers numerous content migration tools and services to assist your migration into Microsoft 365 – from assessment, to planning and onboarding. And we work closely with our 3rd-party migration partners to optimize their offerings as well. As we continue to invest across the migration offerings, we are excited to expand our cloud-to-cloud capabilities to allow moving content from Egnyte into Microsoft 365. And before you move any file or folder from on-premises into Microsoft 365, you need to discover content and plan for the migration. Soon, Migration Manager will provide content discovery so admins can best understand what content they have, decide what to migrate and what to remediate. If you are interested, you can complete this form for the Migration discovery preview. Regardless of your organization’s size, data scale or information complexity, you can migrate documents and sites into OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams in Microsoft 365 successfully. And we are here to help.

NOTEWORTHY

May 2021 Project Update Blog

This post has a look at what’s new and upcoming for Project, including features such as: (1) Import Project desktop to Project for the web, (2) Collaboration Corner Presence, (3) Filtering on the Board & Timeline views, (4) Scheduling modes, and more. Upcoming features include: (1) Dropdown types in Custom Fields, and (2) Rollup Custom Fields.

Automate and manage Azure AD tasks at scale with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK

We’ve heard from customers that having a great PowerShell experience is critical in helping manage your identity needs at scale from automating tasks through scripts to managing users in bulk. We want to share the investments we’re making with PowerShell that will help you save time with administrative tasks. These will be focused on, but not limited to, high-use scenarios such as user, group, and application management and role-based access controls (RBAC). If you’re using the Azure AD PowerShell or MSOnline PowerShell modules to manage Azure AD, we encourage you to try the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. The Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK is where all our current and future investments are being made.

Inside Track: Best practices for implementing Zero Trust at Microsoft

Format: Video (5 mins) | Carmichael Patton, a security architect at Microsoft, shares the work that his team, Digital Security and Resiliency, has been doing to support a Zero Trust security model. “In Microsoft’s approach to Zero Trust, we don’t assume any identity or device on our corporate network is secure. We continuously verify it,” Patton says. “This allows us to reduce the risk in our environment by verifying those identities and validating device compliance before granting the access. Patton knows that Microsoft wasn’t born in the cloud either, and he’s here to provide guidance and discuss topics like value of network segmentation, the balance between security and productivity, and strategies for supporting identity and device health. The most critical piece of advice is to start simple. “First and foremost, understand what your environment and the telemetry to make sure you understand the risks and what it is you’re trying to mitigate,” Patton says. “If you haven’t already done it, start migrating identities to Azure Active Directory or some other connection point to get to the point of modern identity.

A new, more powerful, and customizable Microsoft Bookings is here

Last March, at Ignite, we gave you a preview of the new powerful and customizable Bookings experience and starting now, we are rolling it out to everyone! Once you’re in the new Bookings view, you’ll see the new experience which introduces many new capabilities in Microsoft Bookings. We understand that each organization is different and has varied needs for managing appointments. Bookings now has stricter administrative controls, and each user within Bookings has varied levels of control over how calendars are created, edited, and shared as well as how appointments can be booked. Bookings allows organizations to customize their Bookings page with their own logo. A color theme that best suits the organization can be chosen as well. Confirmations, cancellations, and reminders can be customized using a rich text editor. We’ve strived to make appointment scheduling as simple as possible. Admins can add multiple staff members and get a unified view across all their calendars and availability. Switching between multiple calendars is made easier with an option to filter by staff members and services. There is also an option to pin a specific calendar for easier tracking.

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!)

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

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

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 | 2021-16

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

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

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

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

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

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

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

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

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

Explore teams and channels in Microsoft Teams

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Energize your Live Events with 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

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

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Getting Started with Windows Virtual Desktop

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

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

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

BLOG ROUNDUP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTEWORTHY

New Yammer Training Videos & Resources

Microsoft 365 Compliance Resource Pages

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

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

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

iPad support now available in Microsoft Lists for iOS

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

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-15

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

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

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

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

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

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

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

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

On-Demand Session

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

On-Demand Session

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Explore teams and channels in Microsoft Teams

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

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

Microsoft Federal Collaboration and Cybersecurity Summit

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

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Use chat and calling features in Microsoft Teams

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

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Getting Started with Windows Virtual Desktop

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Integrate Your Business into Microsoft Teams

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

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

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

BLOG ROUNDUP

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

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

Streamline requests with new approval features in Microsoft Teams

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

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

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

Dynamic Groups in Azure AD and Microsoft 365

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

Announcing GA of Microsoft Data Loss Prevention Alerts Dashbo a rd

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

NOTEWORTHY

Email Notifications in Project for the web

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Announcing the iOS/iPadOS Security Configuration Framework

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

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-14

Welcome to the April 5 – 11, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Seventeen features added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Azure Active Directory, Outlook, M365 Compliance, and Microsoft Information Protection.

Several existing meeting series have had additional sessions listed, and there are three new events – 2 Microsoft Teams series (Explore teams and channels, and Use chat and calling features) and a Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms AMA. The Teams Breakout Rooms AMA session on Wednesday, April 14th at 9am Pacific is also this week’s spotlight event.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include information on the public preview of the OneDrive sync client for Windows 64-bit, a look at what’s new in Yammer in April 2021, details on modern comments in Microsoft Word, and the general availability of Azure Active Directory staged rollout.

Noteworthy item highlights include six tips to get the most out of Microsoft To Do on iOS, April 2021 updates for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android, a training curriculum for Microsoft Defender for Office 365, and details on Verifiable Credentials in Azure Active Directory.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
M365 Admin center: Translator service for the Service Health Dashboard	82267	May CY2021	Added: 05 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Admin The new translator toggle in the service health dashboard page translates the content of Incidents and advisories to the language selected by user.
Azure Active Directory: Location Based Access Control Public Preview	72205	May CY2021	Added: 06 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Azure AD You are now able to create Conditional Access policies to allow/deny access using a new type of Named Location known as GPS. For these policies, the user will need to share their GPS location from the mobile device on which Microsoft Authenticator is installed.
Microsoft Teams: Enable Manage apps page in the Microsoft Teams admin center for GCC customers	81182	April CY2021	Added: 06 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC As an admin, the Manage apps page in the Microsoft Teams admin center is where you view and manage all Teams apps for your organization. Here, you can see the org-level status and properties of apps, approve or upload new custom apps to your organization’s app store, block or allow apps at the org level, add apps to teams, purchase services for third-party apps, view permissions requested by apps, grant admin consent to apps, and manage org-wide app settings.
Microsoft Search: Microsoft Search in GCC	72216	September CY2021	Added: 07 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Search, GCC Microsoft Search: Organization-wide Search via Search Box in SharePoint, Office.com, and on Microsoft Search in Bing. Customizable Bookmarks, Acronyms, and QnA Answers.
Outlook: For iOS – More actions available in press and hold menus	72217	April CY2021	Added: 07 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – iOS This coming Outlook for iOS release will make Book a Workspace available in the New Message and New Event press and hold menus.
Microsoft Information Protection: Configure sensitivity labels for encrypt-only protection on Outlook messages	72218	June CY2021	Added: 07 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP In the Microsoft 365 compliance center, you can now create labels that enforce the encrypt-only restriction (available within Office 365 Message Encryption) when applied to Outlook email messages. With encrypt-only, users can send encrypted email to any recipient, whether they are inside or outside the organization, and the protection follows the lifecycle of the email.
*Microsoft Information Protection: Outlook support for DisableMandatoryInOutlook* and OutlookDefaultLabel settings**	72219	May CY2021	Added: 07 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP Outlook clients will now support the advanced Azure Information Protection (AIP) settings DisableMandatoryInOutlook and OutlookDefaultLabel.
Microsoft Teams: Org wide backgrounds (Preview)	80193	April CY2021	Added: 07 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Organization-wide backgrounds will now be available in preview. This feature will require an Advanced Communications license when it becomes generally available.
Microsoft Teams: Custom Backgrounds on mobile devices	82234	April CY2021	Added: 07 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Microsoft provided and user uploaded custom backgrounds are now available on iOS.
Microsoft Teams: Approvals in Teams	82332	May CY2021	Added: 07 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Get to results faster with Approvals in Microsoft Teams. Easily create, manage, share, and act on approvals directly from your hub for teamwork.
Microsoft Search: Earn Microsoft Rewards when using a work or school account	70634	May CY2021	Added: 08 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Search Users in your organization will have the ability to earn Microsoft Rewards points when signed into select Microsoft 365 services (Microsoft Search in Bing) with their organizational (work or school) account.
Outlook: Renaming of Notifications pane on web	72213	April CY2021	Added: 08 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Web Outlook on the web will change the Notifications pane title to Activity.
Microsoft Information Protection: Ability to test Exact Data Match	72220	April CY2021	Added: 08 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP After setting up EDM-based classification, tenant admins will now be able to test EDM sensitive information types (SITs) via the Microsoft 365 compliance center and via PowerShell cmdlet. Classification results returned will include the sensitive type, its count, and confidence.
Microsoft Information Protection: New named entities SITs and enhanced unified policy authoring templates	72221	July CY2021	Added: 08 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: MIP Named entities are sensitive information types (SITs) that can’t easily be identified by a regular expression or a function; these include person names, physical addresses, and medical terms & conditions. This update adds 52 new SITs representing named entities, and 10 enhanced policy templates that can be used in solutions such as DLP and auto-labeling, and cover important regulations, such as US HIPAA and EU GDPR.
Microsoft 365 Compliance center: Continuous compliance assessments	72222	June CY2021	Added: 08 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance Automated testing and documentation of scored actions in Compliance Manager with the ability to view or download evidence for an automatically scored action.
Microsoft 365 Compliance center: Out-of-the-box assessments for non-M365 assets	72223	May CY2021	Added: 09 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance Introducing pre-configured templates that extend Compliance Manager capabilities beyond Microsoft 365 assets.
Microsoft Teams: Call Merge for GCC	51127	June CY2021	Added: 09 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC Call Merge gives end users the capability to merge their active unheld 1-1 call into another 1-1 call or another group call. This applies to Teams VOIP calls and PSTN calls.

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

Explore teams and channels in Microsoft Teams

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

Best practices for data migrations to Microsoft 365

When: Tuesday, April 13, 2021 at 9:00am PT | If you are evaluating , kicking off or in the process of moving your organizational data to Microsoft 365 here are some recommendations from the subject matter experts based on their learnings post managing large scale migrations for multiple organizations. Tune in to learn more about the best practices that will help you run an effective, speedy and seamless migration to OneDrive and SharePoint irrespective of the tools you choose to use. The agenda is as follows: (1) Introduction, (2) How to prepare data for migration, (3) How to plan and communicate about the migration, (4) How to run a successful migration, and (5) Conclusion and QA.

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

Use chat and calling features in Microsoft Teams

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Teams – Breakout Rooms

When: Wednesday, April 14, 2021 at 9:00am PT | We are very excited to announce a Microsoft Teams ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ (AMA) for Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams! The AMA will take place on Wednesday, April 14, 2021 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT in the Microsoft Teams AMA Space. An AMA is a live online event similar to a “YamJam” on Yammer or an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of the product engineering team who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback. Be sure to add the event to your calendar!

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

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

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Get Started with 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: Protecting Identity, Apps, Data and Devices

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

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: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

BLOG ROUNDUP

OneDrive sync 64-bit for Windows now in public preview

We’re excited to announce that the 64-bit OneDrive sync client for Windows is now available as a public preview! We know this has been a long awaited and highly requested feature, and we’re thrilled to make it available for early access. You can now download the 64-bit version for use with OneDrive work, school, and home accounts. To move from the 32-bit to 64-bit (or vice versa) you’ll need to make sure the OneDrive version you install is the same version as you currently have, or newer. The 64-bit version is the right choice if you plan to use large files, if you have a lot of files, and if you have a computer that’s running a 64-bit version of Windows. Computers running 64-bit versions of Windows generally have more resources—such as processing power and memory—than their 32-bit predecessors. Also, 64-bit applications can access more memory than 32-bit applications (up to 18.4 million Petabytes). Note : If you have a 64-bit operating system with an x64-based processor, you can choose to install either the 32-bit or 64-bit OneDrive. For ARM64 devices, you should continue to use the 32-bit OneDrive.

What’s new for Yammer in April 2021

The seasons are changing and we have a lot of news to share! This blog will cover what we’ve recently shipped and what’s coming in the next few weeks. Recent changes include: (1) The new Yammer as the default user experience, (2) New design for Yammer Discovery and Digest emails, (3) Essential Announcements feature, (4) SharePoint News in the Yammer Home Feed, (5) Install Yammer as a Progressive Web App, (6) Suggested Communities feature, (7) New Yammer Insights, and much more! There’s also a peek at upcoming features such as new file views, and collapsed pinned posts.

Introducing Modern Comments in Microsoft Word

Workplace collaboration is evolving—and so is Microsoft Word. We’re pleased to announce expanded availability of our new modern commenting experience across Word platforms. Modern comments sets the stage for a richer Word collaboration experience for you and your teams by enabling modern features such as @mention notifications and more. It aligns how comments work across Office on different endpoints, so that you and your team can rely on a consistent experience regardless of whether you’re using Word, Excel, or PowerPoint on any platform. Modern comments was first introduced on the mobile and Web versions of Word where we iterated based on feedback. Now it is rolling out to Production on Word for Windows, and Current Channel (Preview) on Word for Mac! With modern comments, you no longer have to worry about your comments being seen by others before you’re finished editing them. Now, a comment or reply can only be edited by the person who created it. These new commenting experiences are ideal for today’s remote teams who may be working together from across town or around the world. Comments eliminate the need to coordinate schedules or conduct in-person discussions, providing greater flexibility and enabling collaborators to provide better insights. A consistent experience across applications makes everything flow smoothly.

Confidently modernize to cloud authentication with Azure AD staged rollout, now generally available

We’re excited to announce that staged rollout to cloud authentication is now generally available! This feature allows you to selectively test groups of users with cloud authentication methods, such as pass-through authentication (PTA) or password hash sync (PHS), while all other users in the federated domains continue to use federation services, such as AD FS, Ping Federate, Okta, or any other federation services to authenticate users. Moving your Azure AD authentication from federation services to the cloud allows you to manage user and device sign-in from a single control plane in Azure AD. Some of the benefits using cloud authentication include reducing the dependency on on-premises infrastructure, which typically includes a farm of servers and proxies that need to be accessible from the internet. In addition, you can take advantage of security capabilities like: Azure AD multifactor authentication (MFA), Conditional Access, Identity Protection for leaked credentials, Identity Governance, and more. New with the general availability, we’ve added the ability to monitor the users and groups added or removed from staged rollout and users sign-ins while in staged rollout, using the new Hybrid Auth workbooks in the Azure portal. | Resource: Staged rollout interactive guide

NOTEWORTHY

Six tips to get the most out of Microsoft To Do in iOS

When you’re juggling work and personal tasks, having clearly defined to-do lists can help reduce stress and improve productivity. Microsoft To Do helps you manage your tasks so you can get more time for yourself. It seamlessly syncs your tasks across devices, so you always have access to them, whether you use To Do on Android, iPhone, Mac, Windows, or the web. In the third installment of our six tips series, we’ll show you some nifty ways to make the most out of To Do on your iOS device, such as using Siri to add tasks and open lists in To Do, as well as viewing your Microsoft To Do lists in Apple’s Reminders app.

Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android | April 2021 Updates

We are thrilled to announce a number of enhancements that are now generally available on Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android. From an updated calendar view to a new touch console experience, users now have more visibility of meetings and easier access to them on these devices. There are also more enhancements when using Microsoft Teams Rooms in Personal Mode.

Become a Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Ninja!

Do you want to become a Microsoft Defender for Office 365 ninja? We can help you get there! We collected content for two roles: “Security Operations (SecOps)” and “Email Security” teams. The content is structured into three different knowledge levels, with multiple modules: Fundamentals, Intermediate, and Advanced. Some topics can be relevant for SecOps as well as for Email Security teams. This training will be updated on a regular basis to ensure you have access to the most current information available. COMING SOON: After each level, we will offer you a knowledge check based on the training material you have just finished! Since there’s a lot of content, the goal of the knowledge checks is to help ensure understanding of the key concepts that were covered. Lastly, there’ll be a fun certificate issued at the end of the training! Disclaimer: This is not an official Microsoft certification and only acts as a way of recognizing your participation in this training content.

Announcing Azure AD Verifiable Credentials

We started on a journey with the open standards community to empower everyone to own and control their own identity. I’m thrilled to share that we’ve achieved a major milestone in making this vision real. We’re announcing that the public preview for Azure AD verifiable credentials is now available: organizations can empower users to control credentials that manage access to their information. This blog post provides an overview of our standards-based platform, and the first solution we’ve built on that platform–to enable a new form of identity verification. We’re also sharing lessons learned from customers during private preview and next steps for improving interoperability with other standards-based systems. Azure AD customers can now easily design and issue verifiable credentials to represent proof of employment, education, or any other claim, so that the holder of such a credential can decide when, and with whom, to share their credentials. Each credential is signed using cryptographic keys associated with the DID that the user owns and controls.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-13

Welcome to the March 29 – April 4, 2021 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were nineteen features added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Word, M365 Compliance, Azure Active Directory, and Yammer.

Some of the existing meetings had new April sessions added. The one new event is also the spotlight event of the week – an Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) with the Microsoft Planner team on Wednesday, April 7th at 9am Pacific.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include a look at what’s new in Microsoft Teams for February and March 2021, the March 2021 roadmap pitstop for SharePoint, details on new capabilities for admins in Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, the availability of the Viva Connections desktop app, and seven Zero Trust adoption strategies from security leaders.

Wrapping up the post is a look at recent visual improvements to Outlook mobile, the Project updates for March 2021, information on the April 2021 updates for Workplace Analytics, a native external sender callout on email in Outlook, and a look at the data points Microsoft uses to provide unique capabilities in Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
SharePoint: SharePoint News Boost	70810	April CY2021	Added: 29 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint Prioritize important news and announcements to appear at the top of news feeds across Microsoft 365. You can boost the visibility of a news article for a set time, until an employee has seen your content, or until a viewer has seen the item in their feed a set number of times.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Collection of Teams conversation as transcript in Advanced eDiscovery	70812	June CY2021	Added: 29 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance eDiscovery managers will soon have the flexibility to collect Teams messages as transcript items. Transcripts will aggregate and thread messages in the same Teams conversations into a single HTML file that is available for review and export. Customers will continue to have the ability to collect Teams messages as individual items as offered today.
Microsoft Teams: Admins can install Apps in Meetings	81086	May CY2021	Added: 29 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams We will enable IT admins to select Teams apps that can be installed in meetings for their organization.
Microsoft Teams: Tags are available in GCC High	81091	June CY2021	Added: 29 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC Tags are available in GCC High. Tags in Teams let users quickly reach a group of people without having to @mention or type out everyone.
Microsoft Teams: Manage tags in Teams programmatically – Microsoft Teams Tags APIs are now in public preview	81093	June CY2021	Added: 29 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams This set of APIs can be used to programmatically assign users tags in a team, making tag creation and maintenance faster and easier. Using these new APIs, developers can now: create tags in a team and assign users, get a list of tags in a team, update tags or delete tags.
Microsoft Teams: Tags are available in DoD	81096	August CY2021	Added: 29 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, DoD Tags are available in DoD. Tags in Teams let users quickly reach a group of people without having to @mention or type out everyone.
Word: Dark Mode	65136	March CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Word Dark Mode in Word will provide a modern look for documents while giving users the ability to reduce eye strain and accommodate light sensitivity from long hours at a computer screen.
Yammer: Nested Replies in Yammer	70809	April CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Yammer Yammer conversations will soon have nested replies. This threading makes it easier for users to read and engage with conversations that have many comments by organizing replies together in a way that maintains context. This feature also includes improvements to: deleting comments, allowing users to deep link to specific replies, and improved community feed ordering.
Microsoft Compliance center: Data loss prevention (DLP) solution overview page	70814	April CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: M365 Compliance The DLP solution overview page will appear in the Microsoft 365 compliance center and house policy recommendation widgets and other actions and guidance related to your available DLP solutions.
Azure Active Directory: Password Protection Enforced for all Changes	72197	April CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Azure AD Currently password updates made through Graph do not have banned password enforcement, along with B2C users and Service Principals. This change will enforce Password Protection for all password creations and changes.
Microsoft Graph: Graph connectors Results in All tab	72198	April CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Graph Microsoft Graph connectors for Microsoft Search provide a set of out-of-the-box search connectors and search %26amp; indexing APIs that enable Microsoft 365 customers to connect Microsoft Search to data sources outside of Microsoft 365. With this feature, users can explore results from Microsoft Graph connectors in the All vertical.
Office 365: Microsoft feedback management controls	72199	April CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 We are introducing new cross platform policies to help administrators better manage the feedback experience for their organization. They will be able set feedback collection policies per AAD group for Microsoft 365 products.
Microsoft compliance center: New DLP alert management dashboard	72206	April CY2021	Added: 31 March 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.
Azure Active Directory: Temporary Access Pass	72242	April CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Azure AD Temporary Access Pass (TAP) is a time-limited passcode that can be used to registration Passwordless FIDO2 and Phone Sign-in. TAP also makes recovery easier when a user has lost or forgotten their strong authentication methods and needs to sign in to register new authentication methods.
Azure Active Directory: Application Proxy traffic optimization	72248	April CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Azure AD You now can now designate which region your Application Proxy service connector group should use. By choosing the closest region to your applications and connectors, you can improve performance and reduce the latency to the App Proxy service.
Azure Active Directory: B2C Identity Protection & Conditional Access	72251	April CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Azure AD You can enhance the security of Azure AD B2C implementation with Azure AD’s Identity Protection and Conditional Access capabilities. Identity Protection allows organizations to automate the detection and remediation of identity-based risks, investigate risks, and export risk detection data to third-party utilities for further analysis. Conditional Access is the policy engine that brings signals together to make decisions and enforce organizational policies. Together, these capabilities give application owners significantly greater control over risky authentications and access policies.
Azure Active Directory: Conditional Access authentication context	72253	April CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Azure AD Conditional Access authentication context lets you target policies for data and actions within an app so you can refine your Zero Trust policies for least privileged access while minimizing user friction.
Azure Active Directory: Verifiable credentials	72255	April CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Azure AD Verifiable credentials let organizations confirm information about someone without collecting and storing their personal data. Organizations will be able to issue digital versions of a variety of credentials such as physical badges, loyalty cards, and government-issued paper documents based on open standards.
Microsoft Teams: Breakout Room Presenter support	81118		Added: 31 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Extend the management of Breakout Rooms to specific presenters.
Microsoft Teams: Roaming bandwidth control	81350	May CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Enhanced UX for participant assignment. This includes new capabilities such as sorting participants and rooms and performing multiple selections and assignments to rooms.
Microsoft Teams: New assignment experience in modal window for Breakout Rooms	81389	June CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams You now can now designate which region your Application Proxy service connector group should use. By choosing the closest region to your applications and connectors, you can improve performance and reduce the latency to the App Proxy service.
Microsoft Teams: Breakout Room pre-meeting room creation and participant assignment	81390	May CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Introducing capability for organizer to perform breakout room configuration and participant assignment before the meeting starts.
Microsoft Teams: Separate Window Teams Live Events Producer Experience	81804	May CY2021	Added: 31 March 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams With this new feature, you are now able to produce your Teams Live Events as a Producer in a separate window, allowing you to effectively manage your event.
Outlook: Updates to attachments in received mail	72212	April CY2021	Added: 02 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook We are consolidating the options to manage a received file under a single dropdown menu similar to Outlook for Windows and Mac. For customers with OneDrive enabled, we are adding the ability to directly edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint attachments in the corresponding desktop or web app.
Outlook: Admin-set organization logos in Outlook for iOS and Android	72214	May CY2021	Added: 02 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Android, iOS Admins can set an organization logo through Azure Active Directory, and users will see this logo in certain multi-account scenarios to better differentiate between work and personal mail.
Microsoft Teams: Teams webinar capabilities general availability	80099	April CY2021	Added: 02 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Schedule and deliver 1,000 person webinars with the same Teams app you use for meetings! Webinar capabilities support registration page creation, email confirmation for registrants, host management for attendee video and audio, attendee reporting, plus interactive features like polls, chat and reactions.
Microsoft Teams: New manage tag experience and other enhancements	81803	April CY2021	Added: 02 April 2021 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Tags in Teams let users quickly reach a group of people without having to @mention or type out everyone. Tags now can be managed as a Tab and you can receive notification for tag membership changes or search for tags in Teams. Tags will also now have a description field so that you can add more details to a tag.

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

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

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

Choosing the right tools for your Microsoft 365 migration

When: Tuesday, April 6, 2021 at 9:00am PT | Moving to Microsoft 365? There are several tools and methods offered by Microsoft to help you through this journey. In this webinar we will demonstrate the various options available to enable you to successfully migrate your organizational data to Microsoft 365 so that you can empower your users for collaboration and productivity. The agenda is as follows: (1) Introduction, (2) Migration from file shares and SharePoint servers, (3) Migration from cloud providers, (4) Future investments, and (5) Conclusion and QA.

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Planner

When: Wednesday, April 7, 2021 at 9:00am PT | Last year, we hosted several “Ask Microsoft Anything” (AMA) sessions for Planner—and they were a huge hit! We heard from customers around the world who asked about our plans for future feature releases, technical difficulties, integrations with other Microsoft 365 apps, and much, much more. The conversations were engaging and enlightening: our team learned even more about your needs to make Planner the best task management app for your work. If you’re curious about the kinds of questions and answers in these sessions, check out the November AMA summary. Coming on the heels of several app enhancements, like more labels, and the Reimagine Project Management with Microsoft digital event, we’re excited to be hosting our first AMA of the year on Wednesday, April 7 at 9 a.m. PST right here on Tech Community. Make sure to save the date! To join, simply visit the Planner AMA space at the time of the event and select “Start a New Conversation” to post your question. This session is open to all Tech Community members. Representatives from both the product and engineering teams for Planner will be on hand to answer your questions.

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

Teams Chalk Talk: Supercharge key workflows with apps in Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

Best practices for data migrations to Microsoft 365

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

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with 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: Protecting Identity, Apps, Data and Devices

BLOG ROUNDUP

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | February and March 2021

It’s been a busy, productive couple of months. We announced a lot of exciting product updates and offerings at Ignite earlier this month, and many of these are now generally available. However, those aren’t the only new features and capabilities to launch in February and March. In fact, there’s a lot. So, grab a cup of something and let’s see what’s new in: (1) Meetings and webinars, (2) Calling, (3) Devices, (4) Chat and Collaboration, (5) Power Platform and custom development, (6) Management, (7) Security, compliance, and privacy, and (8) Government.

Related:

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: March 2021

This post includes all the SharePoint and related tech updates that rolled out in March 2021. This is the all-inclusive roadmap release recap for all things SharePoint and related technology. March was a month that brought more Viva goodness, refined SharePoint and Lists experiences, and a few gems for your content migrations. Blink and it’s April, but first, let’s review March. March 2021 brought some great new offerings: Microsoft Viva Connections, SharePoint app bar, Focus mode for SharePoint pages and news, images in SharePoint Events web part, SharePoint page analytics, Integrate menu for Microsoft Lists, Graph-based people picker for Person columns, Box migration into Microsoft 365, guest access in Yammer, and more. All the features listed began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of March 2021 (possibly early April 2021).

What’s new for admins in Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise

March was an exciting month for the Microsoft 365 Apps community. We know that IT admins like you are continuing to play a critical role in keeping your organizations focused and productive, which is why we’re always innovating new features and services for Microsoft 365 Apps. Read on to discover more about the latest capabilities, including Microsoft 365 Apps health, extended offline access, and device-based subscription. And if you missed any of our Microsoft Ignite sessions, watch the on-demand videos to learn more about what we’re developing to help make your role easier. | Related: Deploying Microsoft 365 Apps for Mac with Microsoft Endpoint Manager – A Deep Dive

Install Viva Connections today

The next step in the journey towards greater employee experience is here. Earlier this month, we announced that Microsoft Viva Connections would soon be available for desktop and today, we’re excited to share that you can now download and install the Viva Connections desktop app in your organization. The mobile experience for Viva Connections will be available in Teams in the summer of 2021. In conjunction with the release of the mobile experience, we will also release an update to the desktop experience that will focus on improvements for IT administrators and deployment enhancements. This summer update will combine both the mobile and desktop configuration and deployment into the Teams admin console. In this summer update we will also release web parts for the “dashboard” and “feed” to align with the mobile experience. These new web parts will enable the dashboard experience, authored in SharePoint, to be constant across all end points. As web parts they will be available to add to any of your sites and allow you to leverage multiple columns and other advanced layouts on the desktop.

Zero Trust: 7 adoption strategies from security leaders

Microsoft considers Zero Trust an essential component of any organization’s security plan. We have partnered with Cloud Security Alliance, a not-for-profit organization that promotes cloud computing best practices, to bring together executive security leaders to discuss and share insights about their Zero Trust journeys. We recently sat down with 10 executive security leaders from prominent energy, finance, insurance, and manufacturing companies in a virtual roundtable, to understand what has worked and discover where they needed to adjust their Zero Trust security model. Our collective goal was to learn from one another and then share what we’ve learned with other organizations. Discussions like these give us valuable opportunities to grow and led us to publish an eBook to share those conversations with other cybersecurity professionals. We are publishing the “Examining Zero Trust: An executive roundtable discussion” eBook as a result of those conversations. The eBook describes how the Zero Trust security model involves thinking beyond perimeter security and moving to a more holistic security approach. The eBook complements other resources we have published to help organizations expedite their journeys in this critical area, such as the Microsoft Zero Trust Maturity Model and adoption guidance in the Zero Trust Deployment Center. Zero Trust assumes breach and verifies each request as if it originates from an uncontrolled network. If Zero Trust had a motto, it would be: never trust, always verify. That means never trusting anyone or anything—inside or outside the firewall, on the endpoint, on the server, or in the cloud.

NOTEWORTHY

Work/personal visual improvements in Outlook mobile

Outlook for iOS and Android brings together email, calendars, contacts and files in one app so you can quickly connect, organize, and get things done. Over the last year, Outlook has worked on several enhancements designed to provide a clear separation between work and personal accounts, in addition to, helping users quickly identify external messages. These enhancements include: (1) Account switching, (2) Contact separation, (3) Organization logos, and (4) External sender tag.

March Project Update Blog

This post has a look at what’s new and upcoming for Project, including features such as: (1) Export Timeline to PDF, (2) Email Assignment Notifications, (3) Project Accelerator, and (4) Overall effort in the Project details pane. Upcoming features include: (1) Import from Project Desktop, (2) Assign tasks to non-group members, and (3) Actions on Project Home.

Workplace Analytics – April 2021: Feature updates

We are pleased to announce a new feature release for April 19, 2021. The new release includes a few exciting updates: (1) Integration of Microsoft Teams chats and Teams calls into the Collaboration hours metric and refined Collaboration hours logic to better accommodate overlapping activities, and (2) New “is person’s manager” and “is person’s direct report” attributes available in Person-query participant filters. (Please note that these became available on March 29, 2021.). Additionally, we’ve implemented a handful of improvements to other metrics: (1) Outlier improvements to Email hours and Call hours metrics, and (2) Better alignment of After-hours collaboration hours and Working hours collaboration hours to total Collaboration hours, and of After-hours email hours and Working hours email hours to total Email hours.

Native external sender callouts on email in Outlook

We know that some of our customers leverage Exchange transport rules to prepend subject line or insert the message body to show the email is from external senders. This approach has a few limitations including: ending up with duplicate [External] tags in the subject line if there are additional replies from external users, and adding things to the subject line breaks Outlook conversation threading. There can also be localization issues, as transport rules have no knowledge of client language that end-users are using. We have heard the feedback on this, and are working on providing a native experience to identify emails from senders outside your organizations (which can help protect against spam & phishing threats). This is achieved by presenting a new tag on emails called “External” (the string is localized based on your client language setting) and exposing related user interface at the top of your message reading view to see and verify the real sender’s email address.

Business Email: Uncompromised – Part Three

In the previous two blogs in this series, we detailed the evolution of business email compromise attacks and how Microsoft Defender for Office 365 employs multiple native capabilities to help customers prevent these attacks. In Part One, we covered some of the most common tactics used in business email compromise attacks, and in Part Two, we dove a little deeper into the more advanced attacks. The BEC protections offered by Microsoft Defender for Office 365, as referenced in the previous two blogs have been helping keep Defender for Office 365 customers secure across a number of different dimensions. However, to fully appreciate and understand the unique capabilities Microsoft offers, we need to take a step back. When we talk to customers about Microsoft Defender for Office 365, we always mention not only the size of our service, but the volume of data points we generate and collect throughout Microsoft. These things together help us responsibly build industry-leading AI and automation.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-12

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

Twenty-two features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Microsoft Viva, Outlook, Office App (Desktop), M365 Compliance, and Microsoft Information Protection.

More sessions for existing meeting series have been added for March and April. There are two new events focused on migrating files to OneDrive / SharePoint Online, taking place on April 6th and April 13th. The spotlight event of the week is the Customer Immersion Experience sessions for “Protecting Identity, Apps, Data and Devices” scheduled at 9am Pacific and 12pm Pacific on Thursday, April 1st.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include a look at 7 urgent trends for leaders in the shift to hybrid work, availability of live transcription with speaker attribution in Teams meetings for English (US), best practices for migrating to SharePoint and OneDrive, and a new option to block Bcc messages to distribution groups in Exchange Online.

Wrapping up the post are noteworthy items such as information on Yammer Live Events Insights, the availability of Windows release health in the M365 admin center, details on how to get started with trials for Microsoft Viva Topics, and a new export to PowerPoint from Microsoft Word for the Web.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Twenty-two features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Microsoft Viva, Outlook, Office App (Desktop), M365 Compliance, and Microsoft Information Protection.

Due to some issues with table formatting in the WordPress editor, the roadmap updates for last week are available via download as listed below:

Excel: O365-Roadmap-2021-12 Download

PDF: O365-Roadmap-2021-12 Download

Note: The Estimated Release dates listed in the files 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.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

On-Demand Session

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

On-Demand Session

Build collaborative workspaces in Microsoft Teams

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

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Leverage pro tips and tricks for 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 Team s Fundamentals

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

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

Choosing the right tools for your Microsoft 365 migration

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

Best practices for data migrations to Microsoft 365

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

Tuesday, April 13, 2021 from 12pm – 1pm PT

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

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

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

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

BLOG ROUNDUP

One year in: 7 urgent trends for leaders in the shift to hybrid work

We’ve published our first annual Work Trend Index: “The Next Great Disruption is Hybrid Work—Are We Ready?” We surveyed more than 30,000 people in 31 countries, analyzed trillions of productivity and labor signals across Microsoft 365 and LinkedIn, and talked to experts who have studied collaboration, social capital, and space design at work for decades. Our research uncovered seven key trends leaders need to know now to make hybrid work, work. One thing is abundantly clear: We are no longer bound to traditional notions of time and space when it comes to how, when, and where we work. It’s a big mental shift—one that will require leaders and organizations to fundamentally reexamine and rewire their operating model. And there are big changes ahead. Our research indicates that nearly half (41 percent) of the global workforce is considering leaving their employer this year, and 46 percent say they’re likely to move because they can now work remotely. Your approach to hybrid will ultimately impact who stays, who goes, and who seeks to join your company. We hope this research-backed guide can help business leaders on their own hybrid-work journeys. The next phase will bring challenges and opportunities, but we’re optimistic about the future. If we take what we’ve learned from overcoming a once-in-a-hundred-year challenge and use it to chart a path forward that gives people the flexibility they need, together we can build a better world of work for everyone. | Related: The philosophy and practice of our hybrid workplace

Live transcription with speaker attribution now available in Teams meetings for English (US)

We’ve all been in situations where we’re double-booked or joined a meeting late. You don’t want to interrupt the flow but need to catch up quickly. Or, for accessibility reasons or ambient noise situations, you need help following the conversation and understanding who’s speaking. Wouldn’t it be great to have transcription with speaker attribution built into the meeting? We’re excited to now offer live transcription in Microsoft Teams meetings for English (US). Live transcription is a written record of the spoken text that occurs during a meeting. It identifies each speaker, is captured automatically in near real time, and is available during and after the meeting. Live transcription in Teams uses a meeting’s invitation, participant names, attachments, etc. to improve the accuracy and recognize meeting-specific jargon for each transcript automatically, without any human involvement. This means no one at Microsoft ever sees the meeting’s content, and the models are automatically deleted immediately after each meeting. In addition, Microsoft doesn’t use or store this data for improving its own AI.

Best practices for migrating to SharePoint and OneDrive

Last year, many IT organizations found themselves scrambling to quickly get people access to tools and information they needed to work from home effectively. Now, they’re in a position to think more strategically about the best ways to support a remote workforce. For organizations who’ve deployed Microsoft 365, one of those ways is by migrating content to SharePoint and OneDrive. No matter what your reasons for migrating to SharePoint and OneDrive, the process can seem overwhelming. You have so much to consider: What content do you have, and where is it stored? What will you move? What needs extra consideration, like regulatory compliance? How will you get data from file shares or third-party cloud apps into SharePoint and OneDrive? And those are just some of the logistical aspects—you also need to think about things like timing for the migration and how to communicate what’s happening to the rest of the organization. To help, we’ve outlined some critical steps for you to consider for a successful migration.

Block BCC Messages to Distribution Groups in Exchange Online

We all know that email distribution groups (DGs) are great for easily sharing information or engaging in discussions with a large group of people. Whether it is a DG for business-related discussions or a DG about upcoming yard sales this weekend, DGs have been a helpful part of email life since the beginning of… well… email. Yet, the amount of traffic for some DGs can overload your inbox and become a distraction from all the other important tasks of your job. How do you handle this torrent of enticingly distracting DG messages? One way is to create an Inbox rule to move messages sent to the DG to a specific folder, so instead of a flood of messages in your inbox, you can automatically store them in a folder for later review. However, sender behavior can break this process. To reduce the noise generated by Reply All’s to a DG message, some senders add the DG to the BCC line. This stops Reply All’s to the DG but is also considered bad email etiquette. And for privacy reasons, Inbox rules don’t evaluate anything on the BCC line, so the message ends up as noise in your inbox instead of going to special folder you created. Twice a year at Microsoft we let our developers go wild and come up with innovative features or new tech outside of their normal work. A few Exchange Transport engineers who were dedicated members of an internal “for sale / want to buy” DG had this exact problem: people would BCC the DG so these emails would bypass Inbox rules and land in inboxes as unwanted noise during the business day. So, these devs-gone-wild came up with a solution to block messages when the DG is on the BCC line. Admins can now thwart people from adding a DG to the BCC line with a new “-BccBlocked” switch on the Set-DistributionGroup cmdlet.

NOTEWORTHY

Introducing Yammer Live Events Insights

Over the last year, there has been a massive rise in the number of Yammer Live Events. Understandable. With so many people working remotely, Yammer Live Events are an awesome medium for organizations to connect with employees. Because of this, one of the recurring things we’re hearing from customers is the ability to understand the impact of these events. We’re thrilled to announce Yammer Live Events Insights. This gives organizations the insights they need to measure reach and engagement and build more powerful events. | Related: Guest Access in Yammer is now Generally Available

Windows release health now available in the admin center

We have started the rollout of Windows release health to the Microsoft 365 admin center. Windows and Microsoft 365 IT admins now have easy, integrated access to essential information about monthly quality and feature updates, the latest features and enhancements for IT, servicing milestones, and lifecycle updates. The Windows release health experience on the admin center also offers insights into known issues, workarounds, and resolutions related to Windows updates. This will be a phased rollout and we expect this information experience to be available to all applicable customers by the end of April. In addition, you can also see Windows-related notifications in the Message center and customize your notification preferences just as you would for any other product or service in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Azure AD Ignite 2021 Recap: Securing your application ecosystem

In case you missed Microsoft Ignite earlier this month, we’ve been busy adding new capabilities to help you secure and manage your apps in the cloud and on-premises with Azure AD. These updates will help: (1) Increase IT efficiency with new enterprise app management capabilities, (2) Modernize your app authentication from Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) to Azure AD, and (3) Secure your on-premises apps with Azure AD application proxy. Read on to learn more about these new capabilities!

Get started with trials for Microsoft Viva Topics

It has been awesome to watch customer excitement growing since last month’s launch of Microsoft Viva Topics. Viva Topics applies AI to empower people with knowledge in the apps they use every day, automatically organizing content and expertise across your systems and teams to create topics with built-in security, compliance, and workflow. Across the team we’ve been humbled by the enthusiasm and uptake. We know many of you are eager to start working with Viva Topics, and we want to provide answers to some of the most frequently asked questions. | Related: Resources for setting up Viva Topics and Viva Connections

Microsoft Word and PowerPoint for the Web announce Export to PowerPoint presentation

Have you ever wished you could easily export your Microsoft Word document into a PowerPoint presentation with just a few clicks? Now you can! We are excited to announce this feature is now available in Word and PowerPoint for the Web with your Microsoft 365 subscription, and we cannot wait for you to try it out! This feature uses artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to save you time and provide you with slide suggestions powered by Designer in PowerPoint. The slides are derived from your section headers in the document, so make sure to organize your Word document accordingly for optimal suggestions. Based on key words in your document, Designer in PowerPoint will suggest imagery, icons, videos, themes and fonts to arrange your content. You can always change the suggested content if needed. | Related: PowerPoint for the web introduces Auto Fix: A new time-saving feature to clean up your slides!