Visio – Office 365 Weekly

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-23

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

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

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

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

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

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

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

EXCEL:

O365-Roadmap-2021-23 Download

PDF:

O365-Roadmap-2021-23 Download

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

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.

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.

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings 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.

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.

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.

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.

Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams

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

Teams Chalk Talk: 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: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

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 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.

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

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

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

Use chat and calling features in Microsoft Teams

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

BLOG ROUNDUP

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

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

Get started on Microsoft Viva Learning with Microsoft Mechanics

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

Bringing Visio to Microsoft 365: Diagramming for everyone

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

Microsoft works to ensure a great OneDrive experience on Apple products

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

NOTEWORTHY

Workplace Analytics June 2021 feature updates

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

Import your Project Desktop files to Project for the web

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

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

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

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

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

Introducing Azure AD access reviews for service principals

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

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2021-18

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!)

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: 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

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

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: 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

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

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: 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.

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

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 | 2021-08

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

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

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

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

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

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

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

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

On-Demand Session

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

On-Demand Session

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

On-Demand Session

Teams Chalk Talk: Apps in Teams Fundamentals

On-Demand Session

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

On-Demand Session

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

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

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

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

Microsoft Ignite – March 2021

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

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

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

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

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

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

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Teams Virtual Events

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Virtual Training Day: Secure and Protect Your Organization

Office Hours: Managing Windows 10 Devices & Updates

Microsoft Teams Summit: March 2021 | Online Event

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

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

BLOG ROUNDUP

Your Guide to Microsoft Teams @ Spring Microsoft Ignite 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTEWORTHY

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

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

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

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

Upcoming changes to mailbox receiving limits: Hot Recipients Throttling

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

Business Email: Uncompromised – Part One

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

New industry clouds offer launchpad for innovation

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

Office 365 Roadmap Update | 2020-51

Thirty-one features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, December 14 – 20, 2020. In an effort to keep the weekly digest post from being extraordinarily long, I have separated the Office 365 Roadmap updates out for this week.

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Outlook for Windows: Send email from your proxy email address (alias)	64123	March CY2021	Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Windows Send email from a proxy email address or account alias rather than your primary email address. The alias email address will be preserved in the FROM and REPLY TO for the recipients.
Excel: Change Regional Format settings in Excel for the web	66956	December CY2020	Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel – Web Regional format settings in Excel affect dates, currency, formula delimiters and more. If you are using your organization account, the default regional format settings in Excel for the web are the site regional settings of the host site where the Excel workbook is hosted. This feature enables you to change your regional format settings in Excel for the web. During your Excel for the web sessions, the regional settings will be overridden. Your preferences are stored using a third-party cookie. Your regional settings will only apply to your view of Excel workbooks – it will not affect how other people view these workbooks.
Outlook: Outlook on the web – Share to Microsoft Teams	68909	March CY2021	Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Web Send a copy of email messages or conversations, including attachments, into Teams chats and channels or start a Teams chat related to a specific email message. When sharing to Teams from Outlook on the web, a popup window will appear to confirm to which channel or person you want to share, you can also select whether you want to include attachments or not.
Excel: Switch Office themes automatically to match Windows 10	68954	December CY2020	Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel If you are using Windows 10 in Dark Mode then Office can now switch themes to match automatically – just choose “Use system setting” as your Office Theme.
Microsoft Teams: Simplified Global Notification Settings for GCC-High and DoD	70663	March CY2021	Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams, GCC High, DoD Government users can now configure and customize their notification settings through a newly designed notification settings section.
Forms: Default alert policies for phishing activities added to Microsoft 365 security and compliance center	76911	January CY2021	Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Forms We are now adding Microsoft Forms’ phishing activities alert (for blocked forms and users due to confirmed and suspicious phishing) to the default alert policies in Microsoft’s Security and Compliance Center (SCC). If there is any user restricted from sharing forms and collecting responses from Microsoft Forms because of confirmed phishing activities, or any form identified/detected as phishing form, IT admins will receive an alert in the SCC Alert center.
Microsoft Teams: Simplified way to manage your channel notification settings for GCC	77796	March CY2021	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams, GCC Through the teams and channels list or from the channel header, the users can quickly manage their notification settings by the means of a new fly-out design. Users can turn on all activity on or off with a single click or diving deep into custom to set their preferred permutations.
Excel: Notes in Excel on the web	61187	December CY2020	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel – Web Create Notes to share and track important information in your online workbooks.
Excel: Use ink and highlighter to annotate in Excel on the web	66260	December CY2020	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel – Web Use ink and highlighter to naturally annotate over worksheets in Excel on the web.
Excel: AutoFill with touch screen in Excel for the web	51826	December CY2020	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel – Web You can now use AutoFill with touch screen.
Microsoft Teams: Add a shared calendar to a Teams channel for GCC, GCC-High and DoD	68910	February CY2021	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams, Gov Create and share a channel specific calendar for members to view events. Teams automatically creates a new post, which will appear in the activity feed, when a channel meeting is created. Any user who has notifications turned off will see the event only when they open the channel calendar.
Microsoft Teams: Add a shared calendar to a Teams channel	68911	January CY2021	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams Create and share a channel specific calendar for members to view events. Teams automatically creates a new post, which will appear in the activity feed, when a channel meeting is created. Any user who has notifications turned off will see the event only when they open the channel calendar.
Microsoft Information Protection: Coauthoring in MIP labeled protected files (Preview)	68913	February CY2021	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: MIP Multiple authors can edit labeled and protected documents in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint simultaneously, frictionlessly, and with auto-save, as if they were regular documents.
Microsoft compliance center: Advanced eDiscovery Search tab is evolving to Collections tab	68914	February CY2021	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: M365 Compliance Now eDiscovery managers will see Collections in the top navigation of the Advanced eDiscovery solution in place of Search. Collections will provide an enhanced experience for collecting content for the case, including generating preview estimates and options for quickly collecting content directly into a new or existing review set.
Microsoft Information Protection: Upgraded data classification confidence levels	68915	January CY2021	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: MIP We are upgrading the confidence levels (match accuracy) from a numerical scale of 1 to 100 to three distinct levels: high, medium, and low. Each level reflects how much supporting evidence is detected along with primary element. A high confidence level looks for the most supporting elements and has the fewest false positives but the most false negatives, while a low confidence level has most false positives but fewest false negatives. All existing polices will automatically be migrated to these upgraded confidence levels.
Microsoft Information Protection: Copy and edit built-in info types and other improvements	68916	January CY2021	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: MIP Delivering on a common request, you can now copy built-in sensitive info types and edit the copied versions to fine-tune them to for your organization. Also, when creating a custom info type, you’ll notice an improved user interface and new capabilities. Highlights include the ability to use validators (like a Luhn check) for regular expressions and additional checks to help refine detection, including options for excluding text, defining starting and ending characters, and more.
Microsoft Teams meeting recordings saved to OneDrive & SharePoint for GCC-High and DoD	70664	March CY2021	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams, GCC High, DoD Ability to save Microsoft Teams meeting recordings to OneDrive and SharePoint for improved sharing capabilities, basic governance, automatic retention labels, go local, bring your own keys and, more that comes from recording video files and storing them in SharePoint and OneDrive.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Email entity page	70665	January CY2021	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: Rolling out App/Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Email entity page brings a new look to your email investigations, designed to provide a 360 degree view of an email. These updates eliminate the need to traverse multiple experiences to view email details. The email entity page will contain information in parity with existing email details flyout in protection.offfice.com from Threat Explorer, along with new information regarding authentication and detections, a revamped email preview capability for cloud mailbox emails, and detonation details for related files or URLs.
Microsoft Information Protection: Data classification analytics for GCC-High and DoD	70666	March CY2021	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: MIP, GCC High, DoD Data classification capabilities in Microsoft 365 compliance center help you get a holistic understanding of the sensitive data in your digital estate and related user activities. Overview shows you the locations of your digital content and most common sensitive information types and labels present. Content Explorer provides visibility into amount and types of sensitive data, and allows you to filter by label or sensitivity type to get a detailed view of locations where the sensitive data is stored. Activity Explorer shows activities related to your sensitive data and labels, such as label downgrades or external sharing that could expose your content to risk.
Excel: iPad Fluent redesign – Ribbon header and commands	71348	January CY2021	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel The Fluent Design System brings a more coherent, productive experience to customers.
Excel: Ink editor support in Excel Online	71436	December CY2020	Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel Pen Tool to help you handwrite to enter data and make quick edits to your data.
Excel: 3D Model Support in iOS	59909	February CY2021	Added: 17 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel Add 3D models to your Excel worksheets, adjust their size and position, and change their rotation.
Office app: New Ink Toolbox for iPhone and iPad	67356	February CY2021	Added: 17 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Office app – iOS New visual improvements to the ink experience in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 on iOS.
Excel: Paste options in Excel for the web	51388	January CY2021	Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel – Web Now get all the Paste Options right where you paste your content.
Outlook on the web: Extension of suggested replies worldwide	68919	January CY2021	Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Web We are rolling out suggested replies to customers worldwide in the following languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and German. Suggested replies will appear if people are having a conversation in any of those languages.
Microsoft 365: License management in the Microsoft 365 Admin app	68920	February CY2021	Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: M365 Admin app In the next release of the Admin app, license management will be added, enabling you to manage licenses from your mobile or tablet device. As a part of this feature, you’ll be able to: View all products and licenses for your organization with details such as the number of purchased and available licenses and expiration dates; Buy more or remove licenses based on current usage and needs; Assign or release licenses; and View and download detailed invoices.
Microsoft Information Protection: Auditing and Analytics in Office apps	70542	January CY2021	Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: MIP Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) will now send user label activity data to the Audit Log and Activity Explorer for admins to search and review.
Microsoft Teams: Block Downloads for Teams meeting recordings on OneDrive and SharePoint	70543	February CY2021	Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams All users with view-only permissions of a Teams meeting recording uploaded to OneDrive & SharePoint will now be blocked from downloading the recording by default.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Improvements to Alerts and Hunting	70544	March CY2021	Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 We’re releasing a number of updates to alerts and hunting, including: Extending data retention for Threat Explorer and Real-time detections from 7 days to 30 days for trial tenants, after which you will be able to search for data for 30 days. We’re also expanding export limits for email records in Threat Explorer and Real-time detections from 9990 to 200,000. And, we’re introducing Alert ID to hunting experiences: Going forward you will able to filter for exact messages which were associated with an alert. From Alert, you will be able to navigate to a filtered view of Explorer (filtered by Alert ID), to see the relevant messages.
Excel: Import data from dynamic arrays	76297	February CY2021	Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel You can now import, shape and refresh data from dynamic arrays in the current workbook.
Excel: Power Query Data Types Tutorial	67390	December CY2020	Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel Learn how to create data types using Power Query.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2020-40

Welcome to the September 27 – October 3, 2020 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Twenty-one features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Microsoft 365 Groups, Outlook (Android), Forms, and Project.

New dates for existing meeting series have been added. One new event is an Exchange ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ AMA session on Thursday, October 8th at 9am Pacific. The spotlight event of the week is the “Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: The New World of Virtual Events” webinar on Thursday, October 8th at 9am Pacific.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include a look at what’s new for September 2020 in Teams, SharePoint and Project, as well as a Microsoft IT Showcase article on the lessons learned by Microsoft from applying Zero Trust during COVID-19.

Noteworthy item highlights include a reminder about Office 2013 client connectivity to Office 365 services, a reminder about the retirement of SharePoint 2010 workflows, and information on the general availability of SharePoint Syntex, as well as the five biggest Visio updates announced at Microsoft Ignite 2020.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Microsoft Project: Deploy Project for the web in Named Environments	67156	March CY2021	Added: 29 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Project Organizations have more flexibility in how they deploy Project. In addition to using Project in the Default environment, you can now use it in Named Environments.
Forms: Specific User Sharing for Response Collection	67157	October CY2020	Added: 29 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Forms With this update, Microsoft Forms owners will now be able to send out a survey to collect responses from specific users or security groups. (You now have the new option in the “Send to Collect Responses” dropdown menu to select that “Specific people in my organization can respond.”)
Office 365: Microsoft 365 Groups support for Information Barriers	67159	December CY2020	Added: 29 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft 365 Groups Microsoft 365 Groups will soon support Information Barriers. Information barriers help you create communication barriers, sometimes referred to as ethical walls, between users within your organization. This allows you to restrict communication and collaboration between two people or groups to avoid a conflict of interest or to safeguard internal information.
Office 365: Microsoft 365 Groups ownership governance experience	67160	November CY2020	Added: 29 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft 365 Groups Microsoft 365 Groups ownership governance in the Microsoft 365 admin center is designed to help manage the problem of ownerless Microsoft 365 Groups by providing a view showing the number of owners for each group, along with a way to assign group owners and to send an email asking group members to take ownership. We are also adding a filter that enables you to see all groups with zero owners.
Exchange: Microsoft 365 cross-tenant SMTP domain sharing in private preview	67161	January CY2021	Added: 30 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Exchange We are adding the ability for an SMTP domain to be shared across multiple Exchange Online tenants. This is particularly beneficial for organizations that undergo mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, as it allows users in more than one tenant to receive email for the same email domain.
OneDrive: Create Shared Library	67163	November CY2020	Added: 30 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive Simplified and streamlined experience for creating new TeamSites from OneDrive web.
SharePoint: New experience to add content types to lists and libraries	67164	October CY2020	Added: 30 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint Custom content types that are available to your SharePoint sites can easily be added to lists & libraries that allow multiple content types. In those SharePoint lists & libraries that allow multiple content types, a new ‘Content type’ option will be available in the ‘Add column’ menu.
Outlook for Android: Play My Emails from favorite people	71481	December CY2020	Added: 30 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Android Set Play My Emails option to read out emails only from your Favorite People. Cortana will read out new emails from only people you identify as favorites and are unread in the last 72 hours.
Microsoft Teams: Improvements to Meeting notes	67142	October CY2020	Added: 01 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Meeting notes will now support 100 users by default and, participants who have access to notes will no longer run into issues where they lose access. Also, if anyone joins your meeting past after it is scheduled and, doesn’t have access to notes, they can now request access from the notes owner in one click.
Microsoft Project: Create attachments on tasks	67151	February CY2021	Added: 01 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Project Add file attachments or links to any task in Project.
Microsoft To Do: Plan your day better with urgent and important task suggestions in My Day	67155	October CY2020	Added: 01 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: To Do Microsoft To Do has a list called My Day where users can add the tasks they wish to focus on today. We are introducing a new section in the suggestions pane of the My Day list where we will surface some urgent and important tasks to help users plan their day better.
Microsoft Teams: Inline message translation in DOD	67165	December CY2020	Added: 01 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, DOD With a simple click, people who speak different languages can fluidly communicate with one another by translating posts in channels and chat. Inline message translation will ensure that every worker in the team has a voice and facilitate global collaboration.
Microsoft Teams: Include computer sound when sharing a Desktop or Window on Mac for Wor l d Wide Multi-Tenant and GCC	67168	October CY2020	Added: 01 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams You can now include your computer’s sound when you share a Desktop or Window on Mac. This is great when you are sharing a video and want your audience to hear its audio during the meeting.
Microsoft Teams: Include computer sound when sharing a Desktop or Window on Mac for GCC-High and DoD	67169	November CY2020	Added: 01 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, GCC High, DOD You can now include your computer’s sound when you share a Desktop or Window on Mac. This is great when you are sharing a video and want your audience to hear its audio during the meeting.
Microsoft Teams: Freehand by Invision available in the popped-out meeting window	67170	October CY2020	Added: 01 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams You can now use the Freehand by Invision app to collaborate in meetings that pop out in the new meeting experience. Have fun sketching new ideas and brainstorming from the comfort and safety of a Teams Meeting.
Microsoft Teams: 3×3 gallery view for Microsoft Teams Rooms	68935	November CY2020	Added: 01 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams View up to 9 meeting participants during a Teams meeting in the 3×3 gallery view.
Outlook for Android: Play My Emails	71375	November CY2020	Added: 01 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Android Play My Emails in Outlook for Android can be used by customers in Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and India.
OneDrive: Sharing links that block download for video files	67166	October CY2020	Added: 02 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive Block Download support is now extended for video files.
Microsoft Teams: Set Presence Status duration for Government clouds	68937	December CY2020	Added: 02 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, Gov Teams users will soon have the ability to change their presence for a specific period of time.
Microsoft Teams: New Offline Presence Status for Government clouds	68939	December CY2020	Added: 02 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, Gov Teams users will soon have the ability to change their presence to “Offline”. This will allow them to have full access to Teams while signaling to colleagues that they are unavailable.
Microsoft Teams: Share System Audio on Mac	68941	October CY2020	Added: 02 October 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams This will allow Mac desktop users to include audio when sharing their Desktop or Window during a Teams meeting. Once enabled, any audio that is playing on the user’s machine will be shared in the live event for participants to hear.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Do more with apps

Microsoft Teams: Identify your upgrade approach

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

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

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

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

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

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

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Exchange

When: Thursday, October 8, 2020 at 9:00am PT | We are very excited to announce a Microsoft Exchange Post Microsoft Ignite ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ (AMA)! An AMA is a live online event similar to a “YamJam” on Yammer or an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. Join in the Microsoft Exchange AMA Space, and don’t forget to add this AMA to your calendar.

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: The New World of Virtual Events

When: Thursday, October 8, 2020 at 9:00am PT | The recent shift to remote, hybrid and on-premise work has IT professionals across every industry looking for more solutions and support for deploying Microsoft Teams. That’s why we’re excited to launch this new live webcast series. The events industry transformed overnight, and Microsoft Teams played a big part in this transition. In Episode 7, we’ll sit down with members of the Microsoft Teams product group and learn how they are building the future of high-scale communication with Microsoft Teams. Be sure to add this event to your calendar!

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Microsoft Teams: Implement your upgrade approach

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

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

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: New Resources for Microsoft Teams Admins

When: Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 9:00am PT | The recent shift to remote, hybrid and on-premise work has IT professionals across every industry looking for more solutions and support for deploying Microsoft Teams. That’s why we’re excited to launch this new live webcast series. In Episode 8, learn about new Teams deep dive help videos for administrators as well as other resources to get your support teams and help desk up to speed. Be sure to add this event to your calendar!

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

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

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Manage Guest Access in Microsoft Teams

When: Thursday, November 5, 2020 at 9:00am PT | The recent shift to remote, hybrid and on-premise work has IT professionals across every industry looking for more solutions and support for deploying Microsoft Teams. That’s why we’re excited to launch this new live webcast series. In Episode 9, which is one of the most requested episodes, we’ll feature tips, tricks and gotchas on managing guest access in Microsoft Teams. Be sure to add this event to your calendar!

BLOG ROUNDUP

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | September 2020

September has been an eventful month filled with exciting news and announcements. Before we dive into the new product features released this month, we want to address feedback we’ve heard from you regarding the performance of Microsoft Teams and share some of the investments we’re making to improve it. Last week at Ignite, we announced many new features coming to soon to Microsoft Teams. Be sure to read on to see features that have started rolling out in September.

This post includes all the SharePoint and related tech updates that rolled out in September 2020. This is the all-inclusive roadmap release recap for all things SharePoint and related technology. Highlighted features include Expiring external guests’ access to SharePoint and OneDrive documents, new “create list” experience for SharePoint sites, new calendar and gallery views for Microsoft Lists, edit in grid view option for “quick edit”, and much more! All the features listed began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of September 2020 (possibly early October 2020).

Project for the web – September 2020 Update

Our team recently updated the items on the Microsoft 365 Public Roadmap. You can see our upcoming features and when those features will be available! This post has a look at the features released in September 2020, as well as a look at others coming soon. The September 2020 features include: (1) Task Custom Fields, (2) Group by Assigned to option, and (3) Self-service onboarding. The upcoming features include: (1) Project & Roadmap in Microsoft Teams, (2) Export to Excel, and (3) Share projects with groups you do not own.

Microsoft IT Showcase: Lessons Microsoft learned from applying Zero Trust during COVID-19

The world, and ways employees work, have been forever changed by COVID-19. Thanks to Microsoft cloud technologies like Microsoft Teams, Azure Active Directory, and Microsoft’s modern security approach, Zero Trust, employees no longer need to physically be in the office to be productive. Microsoft’s global workforce continues to successfully work from home using Microsoft-issued devices, personal devices they’ve enrolled in Microsoft’s device management solution, or remote desktops through Windows Virtual Desktop. “As the corporate world changed over the past year, so has the way we access corporate resources,” says Mark Skorupa, a principal program manager on Microsoft’s digital security team. “The power of the cloud already opened the doors for us to move away from on-premises corporate network models. When COVID-19 hit, we didn’t skip a beat.” Recently, employees on Microsoft’s Zero Trust team virtually sat down at Microsoft Ignite 2020 to share their biggest takeaways from applying Zero Trust in an age of remote work. | Related: Microsoft Advanced Compliance Solutions in Zero Trust Architecture

NOTEWORTHY

Reminder: Office 2013 Client Connectivity to Office 365 Services

As previously announced, Office 2013 clients’ connections to commercial Office 365 services will not be supported after October 13, 2020. After this date, ongoing investments in the Office 365 cloud services – including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business – will proceed based on post-Office 2013 requirements. We recommend that organizations with Office 2013 clients consider migrating to Office 365 ProPlus. Support for Office 2016 and Office 2019 connections to Office 365 cloud services will continue until October 2023. Up to date information on current system requirements can be found under on the Office system requirements page, with related timelines available in the Office system requirements matrix.

Reminder: SharePoint 2010 workflow retirement

As part of the evolution of the Microsoft 365 service, we periodically evaluate the capabilities of the service to make sure that we’re delivering the utmost value to customers. After careful consideration, we concluded that for SharePoint 2010 workflows, Microsoft 365 customers would be better served by modern workflow solutions. SharePoint 2010 workflows have been retired since August 1, 2020 for new tenants and will be removed from existing tenants on November 1, 2020. This applies to all environments where Power Automate is available as a replacement solution (excluding the Department of Defense until Power Automate availability). If you’re using SharePoint 2010 workflows, we recommend migrating to Power Automate or other supported solutions. A retirement announcement banner has been introduced on multiple workflow pages: “Starting 11/1/2020 6:00:00 AM, SharePoint 2010 workflows will be retired and users will no longer have the ability to run or create 2010 Workflows.”

General Availability – SharePoint Syntex

We are thrilled to announce that SharePoint Syntex, the first product from Project Cortex, is available today. SharePoint Syntex uses advanced AI and machine teaching to amplify human expertise, automate content processing, and transform content into knowledge. SharePoint Syntex is generally available as a user-based add-on for Microsoft 365 plans for commercial customers. SharePoint Syntex is the first product coming out of our investments in Project Cortex. In addition to SharePoint Syntex, we’ll be releasing other innovations later this year that help you organize information into topics and deliver knowledge across Microsoft 365 apps. We’ll have more details to share on Project Cortex topic experiences later this year.

Recapping Ignite with the five biggest Visio updates

Visio was well-represented at this year’s first-ever all-digital Microsoft Ignite. We hosted six sessions that covered a variety of product topics, from recently released features to our vision for the coming months. Of everything we discussed, there are five updates we’re particularly excited about. We’ve (briefly) recapped those here and will post additional details for each on Tech Community in the coming days. But if you’re anxious for those details sooner, check out the associated Ignite sessions videos linked below. The five updates are: (1) General availability of Data Visualizer add-in, (2) Self-service purchase, (3) Visio in Atlassian Confluence, (4) Visio for the web enhancements, and (5) Amazon Web Services (AWS) shapes are coming soon. | Related: Purchase Visio cloud subscriptions with your business domain

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2020-39

Welcome to the September 20 – 26, 2020 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Last week, all eyes (and ears) were focused on Microsoft Ignite 2020, the first ever virtual Ignite. There’s a ton of content in this week’s digest, so the intro will be short. You can find recordings, and related content at Microsoft Ignite On-Demand.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

With Ignite 2020, there were a ton of updates to the Office 365 Roadmap last week – 158 new features to be exact! Microsoft Teams had the highest number of features with 68 total, followed by Search (30) and Outlook (28 – all platforms).

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-2020-39-Ignite Download

PDF: O365-Roadmap-2020-39-Ignite Download

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

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

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

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Do more with apps

Microsoft Teams: Identify your upgrade approach

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

Microsoft Teams: Ready your end users

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

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

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

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

Microsoft Teams: Implement your upgrade approach

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: The New World of Virtual Events

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: New Resources for Microsoft Teams Admins

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Manage Guest Access in Microsoft Teams

BLOG ROUNDUP

Seven ways we’re empowering every person and every organization to thrive in a new world of work

Note: If you’re looking for one post to summarize Ignite 2020, this is it. | Throughout 2020, as we’ve navigated the equivalent of a year of digital transformation every month, it’s IT pros who’ve led the way. When COVID-19 caused a sudden shift to remote work, IT pros brought entire organizations online—sometimes over a single weekend. They trained individuals and teams on essential new tools, quickly deployed custom apps, and vigilantly protected organizations from increasingly complex security threats. Now, as business leaders look to build resilient organizations and find new opportunities for expansion, they’re looking to IT pros for sustainable solutions to support them for the long haul. We want to help. At Microsoft, it’s our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. At Microsoft Ignite we announced scores of new features and capabilities that aim to do just that. But in this age of accelerated transformation, helping our customers achieve more also requires a broader view. So we’ve committed to becoming the world’s best students on the future of work, closely studying our own telemetry, and working closely with customers and researchers across every field, to understand our challenging new reality. This unique vantage point has shaped our understanding of where leaders and organizations need to focus today and in the future, and guided our innovation investments to build tools to support them. Here are seven keys to success for every IT and business leader to empower people for the new world of work—plus innovation in each area to deliver human ingenuity at scale – (1) Reimagine teamwork, culture, and social capital – digitally, (2) Prioritize wellbeing to help people focus and be their best, (3) Create a trusted, secure, modern experience for every employee, (4) Unlock the data, knowledge, and expertise of the entire organization, (5) Automate process and workflows to increase discontinuous innovation, (6) Include everyone in digital transformation, and (7) Help people learn, reinvent, and grow with the pace of change. | Resource: Microsoft Ignite 2020 Book of News

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Ignite 2020

At Microsoft Ignite 2020, we announced a ton of new capabilities to help people stay connected, collaborate, and build solutions in Teams. This post outlines what’s new in: (1) Meetings, (2) Meeting room experiences, (3) Calling, (4) Chat and collaboration, (5) Microsoft 365 integrations, (6) Firstline Workers, (7) Healthcare, (8) Security and compliance, (9) Management, and (10) Power Platform and custom development.

2020 will be remembered as a year of historic transformation. The pandemic has changed the way businesses operate and people work. One thing that has not changed is our basic human nature and the need to feel safe. Being safe and feeling safe is what allows us to do more, create more, and have trust in the technology that connects us all. It’s no wonder, then, that cyber-security is so important right now. Digital security is about people—it’s about empowering defenders to defend and protect employees, data, work, and personal safety. It’s about making people and organizations resilient in an environment of unexpected change, like widespread remote work. Nearly overnight, organizations worldwide have had to enable remote workforces, support rapidly evolving business requirements, and steer to the next normal without knowing what that normal would be. All of this takes place against a backdrop of advanced threats and adversaries. For those responsible for securing their organization’s digital infrastructure, this has all come on top of what they were already navigating—levels of complexity that often translate into barriers for companies, their people, and the customers they serve. We’re delivering a new set of security, compliance, and identity innovations to help all customers simplify and modernize their environments by embracing the reality that the past seven months have likely reshaped the next 10 years of security and digital transformation.

In many organizations, world events have transformed technology adoption more in the past few months than in the past few years. Remote work and learning in virtual classrooms have accelerated the adoption of cloud services beyond anybody’s wildest expectations. Some organizations are now transitioning from remote work to hybrid work. Whatever the future holds, however, the workplace will no longer be either the home or the office but a fluid experience that spans both. At Microsoft, we’ve been intensely focused on our customers during this rapid transition—the teachers, the health care workers, the IT leaders who are trying to help their small business or global enterprise adjust to and thrive in a global pandemic. To support you through this transformation, we are moving faster than ever to bring you Microsoft 365, delivering a broader set of features than when we launched Office 365 in 2011. How will our capabilities come together to provide a holistic solution for organizations? First, we provide collaboration services with Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and Microsoft Lists. Second, we provide employee engagement and communication services through SharePoint, Microsoft Stream, and Yammer. Third, we connect people to knowledge and expertise through Microsoft Search and Project Cortex. All these tools are part of an integrated experience and platform.

At Microsoft Ignite 2020 we announced that the next versions of Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Skype for Business Server and Project Server will be available in the second half of 2021, and are only available with the purchase of a subscription license. Subscription entitles access to support, product updates, security and time zone patches. Microsoft Office will also see a new perpetual release for both Windows and Mac, in the second half of 2021. We also announced updates for the Exchange Hybrid Configuration Wizard, Exchange Admin Center, lots of features for Outlook, and much more!

Related:

NOTEWORTHY

We heard you! Diagramming is much easier now in Visio for the web

Over the past few months, we’ve addressed several major asks from our Visio for the web users. We’re announcing some of these for this first time, like hyperlinks and copy diagrams across files, and recapping others that were released earlier this year, like export as image and multipage operations. Each of these is available for licensed users, although certain limited capabilities are available for Visio Viewer and unlicensed users. Read on for a quick overview of each feature.

Reminder: Office 2013 Client Connectivity to Office 365 Services

Microsoft IT Showcase: Deploying Microsoft Teams across Microsoft hinged on good governance

When Microsoft moved to Microsoft Teams for all communications, it needed a good plan. More than 250,000 employees and licensed vendors would be affected by the shift, as would 600,000 guests that the company collaborates with on a regular basis. Too much was at stake to allow anything to go wrong. “Our foundation for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams governance within Microsoft is tied to how we manage and govern Microsoft 365 Groups inside the company,” Johnson says. “Groups are the common layer under Teams, SharePoint team sites, Yammer Communities, Outlook groups, and a lot more.” Governance refers to the policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that a company like Microsoft uses to help ensure their IT resources are being effectively deployed and managed, and that data security and compliance standards are in place while still allowing employees get their work done. An effective governance framework can streamline deploying solutions like Microsoft Teams, ensure all systems are secure and compliant, and generally make sure its technology does what it’s supposed to do. Put simply, governance is setting things up so people can be their most productive selves.

Enhancing the Planner web and mobile experience with a pair of updates

To tide you over until Ignite 2020, we’ve got a pair of feature enhancements to announce that improve the Planner web and mobile experiences. The first is the Filter by Progress (Completed) option for Planner web. As you know, completed tasks in Planner get moved to the bottom of your plan board and hidden under a disclosure widget—the official name of that twisty triangle. But those same completed tasks disappeared entirely from the Schedule view, and you couldn’t filter on them in the Charts view. We’ve now addressed both issues by adding completed tasks as a Progress filter option in both the Schedule and Charts view. In the Schedule view, completed tasks appear as a green bar; in the Charts view, you’ll see them in green in both the pie and bar chart. You can filter completed tasks alongside not started and in progress tasks, too, to see how your team is tracking against deadlines. You can also filter by completed tasks in the Board view. The second is the Copy links feature for Planner mobile. This feature works exactly like its name implies: in the Planner mobile app, you can copy a plan or task link and paste it anywhere else. This makes sharing your plans and tasks much easier, especially if you need input from others who aren’t actively members of your plan.

Best practices to simplify governing employee access across your applications, groups and teams

In the modern workforce, the emergence of hybrid cloud deployments and collaborative applications make it easy for employees to share information, data, and files with other internal as well as external users, helping them collaborate easily with vendors, business partners, contractors and customers. Managing all the access across different resources – Office groups, Teams, SharePoint sites, as well as your own applications and SaaS applications – is challenging. As requirements change with new applications being added, or users needing additional access rights, IT staff may not know who should have access or to which applications. To succeed at scale, an identity governance process must enable all users’ access to be able to change with their needs, without burdening IT staff to be involved in each access request. Azure AD entitlement management, a feature of Azure AD identity governance, helps organizations manage their access lifecycle at scale by automating request workflows, assignments, reviews, and expiration. You can empower users to request access to the resources they need. These requests and the resulting access can be approved and regularly reviewed by people across the organization who know whether someone should still have access.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2020-38

Welcome to the September 13 – 19, 2020 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were twenty-six additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Microsoft 365 Compliance, Yammer, Visio, and Outlook. Due to the large number of items, all of the roadmap items are in a separate post this week, Office 365 Roadmap Update | 2020-38.

There are a couple of new events listed in this week’s post. The “Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production” only has an on-demand session available for now. The Office 365 network connectivity team will hold office hours on Wednesday, September 23rd from 8am – 12pm Pacific. The spotlight event of the week is Microsoft Ignite, which runs from Tuesday, September 22nd – Thursday, September 24th.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include information on how to enable a seamless remote work experience for your users, a summary of the OneDrive roadmap updates for August 2020, the introduction of reactions in Yammer, the availability of the Microsoft Virtual Event Playbook, and lots of guides to Ignite 2020 for various services including Teams, Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Planner, Stream, Outlook, Microsoft 365 Admin, Power Platform, and more.

Noteworthy items from last week include diagramming updates for Visio for the web, a friendly reminder regarding Office 2013 client connectivity to Office 365 services, a Microsoft IT Showcase on Teams governance, updates for Planner on the web and mobile app, and some best practices for simplifying governance for employee access across applications, groups and teams.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Twenty-six features were added to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap last week, so for this week the roadmap updates are detailed in a separate post, Office 365 Roadmap Update | 2020-38.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Teams Chalk Talk: Get to Teams – Zero to Production

On-Demand Session

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

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

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

Microsoft Ignite 2020

When: Tuesday, September 22, 2020 – Thursday, September 24, 2020 | Because the world is in unchartered territory with COVID-19, Microsoft Ignite will be launched as a complimentary digital event experience this year. Please join us to learn innovative ways to build solutions, migrate and manage your infrastructure, and connect with Microsoft experts and other technology professionals from around the globe. Registration is required. The session catalog and agenda builder are now available.

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Do more with apps

Microsoft Teams: Identify your upgrade approach

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

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

Microsoft Teams: Ready your end users

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

Office 365 Network Connectivity Office Hours – Online Edition

When: Wednesday, September 23, 2020 from 8:00am – 12:00pm PT | On Wednesday September 23 from 8am to 12noon PST the Office 365 network connectivity team will be online to take your questions. Set yourself a meeting request and come back here on Wednesday morning when this post will have been updated with a Teams link to connect. You can talk about our features, new Ignite announcements, or about our tooling for improving Office 365 network connectivity.

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

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Ignite 2020 Wrap-Up Part 1

When: Wednesday, September 23, 2020 at 9:00am PT | The recent shift to remote, hybrid and on-premise work has IT professionals across every industry looking for more solutions and support for deploying Microsoft Teams. That’s why we’re excited to launch this new live webcast series. Join us for a wrap-up of day 1 at Microsoft Ignite. You’ll hear all the highlights and we’ll talk about what’s coming up on day 2. Be sure to add this event to your calendar!

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

Teams Chalk Talk: How to enable Teams for Firstline Worker engagement

Are you ready to start enabling Microsoft Teams as a single experience for productive conversations, smooth flow of information, simplified schedule management in a compliant and secure environment? This interactive workshop is designed to help you prioritize your starting scenario and develop a plan for a pilot for the tailored experience to suit the needs for your firstline co-workers. We’ll build upon best practices from Teams experts and make it real with examples from manufacturing, retail, hospitality, and transportation industries. Join us for an expert-led workshop for guidance on key decision points and implementation steps for digitally enabling your firstline workers with Microsoft Teams. In this workshop, you will learn: (1) How to identify scenarios that matter to your firstline workers and the best approach to implementing Teams from pilot to scale across your entire organization, (2) How to map scenarios to Microsoft Teams use cases, and (3) How to craft the right experience for your firstline workers in Teams by configuring apps and policies.

Wednesday, September 23, 2020 at 11am PT

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Implement your upgrade approach

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Ignite 2020 Wrap-Up Part 2

When: Friday, September 25, 2020 at 9:00am PT | The recent shift to remote, hybrid and on-premise work has IT professionals across every industry looking for more solutions and support for deploying Microsoft Teams. That’s why we’re excited to launch this new live webcast series. Join us for a complete wrap-up of day 1 and 2 at Microsoft Ignite. You’ll hear all the highlights and talk with product experts. Be sure to add this event to your calendar!

Customer Immersion Experience: Creating a Secure Online Meeting

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

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

Customer Immersion Experience: Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: The New World of Virtual Events

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: New Resources for Microsoft Teams Admins

Customer Immersion Experience: Running Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Manage Guest Access in Microsoft Teams

BLOG ROUNDUP

Enable a Seamless Remote Work Experience for your Users

For many companies, providing remote work options was already a rapidly growing movement (+173% since 2005 according to Global Workplace Analytics). That was before the COVID-19 crisis, which has massively accelerated that trend and highlighted a number of remote work problems that require immediate remediation. The need to maintain security without sacrificing performance has generated unprecedented demands on enterprise IT to support work-from-anywhere productivity at a massive scale. Microsoft 365 is well positioned to help customers fulfill that demand, but high concurrency of users working from home generates a large volume of Microsoft 365 traffic which, if routed through forced tunnel VPN and on-premises network perimeters, causes rapid saturation and runs VPN infrastructure out of capacity. In this new reality, using VPN to access Microsoft 365 is no longer just a performance impediment, but a hard wall that not only impacts Microsoft 365 but critical business operations that still have to rely on the VPN to operate. For customers who connect their remote worker devices to the corporate network or cloud infrastructure over VPN, Microsoft recommends that key Microsoft 365 scenarios including Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online are routed over a VPN split tunnel configuration. This VPN split tunnel guidance is in alignment with the Microsoft 365 Network Connectivity principles, which are designed to work efficiently for remote users whilst still allowing an organization to maintain security and control over their connectivity. These connectivity principles can also be implemented for remote users very quickly with limited work yet achieve a significant positive impact on the problems outlined above. | Related: Microsoft 365 network connectivity test tool now with report sharing is released to preview

OneDrive Roadmap Roundup – August 2020

We hope all of you are taking care of yourselves and staying safe. Here are the latest functionalities that rolled out to production in the month of August 2020, including: (1) Tasks in Word and Excel, (2) Update to comment notifications, (3) Mute comment notifications, and (4) OneDrive app for Surface Duo. | Related: OneDrive helps connect teachers and students in the new world of remote learning

Introducing Yammer Reactions

People come to Yammer to have meaningful conversations, to share knowledge, and to build communities. Conversations on Yammer can inform you about a colleague’s personal milestone, help you seek information from a colleague who is more than one degree away in your organization and help you recognize the amazing accomplishments of your team. You may need more than a ‘like’ to express yourself on these conversations. That is why we are rolling out reactions for every conversation or reply in the new Yammer. You can now express yourself through gratitude and celebration, laughter, and sadness-just like in real life. This gives you more ways to respond or express your feelings in the conversations you care most about, while gaining insight about how others feel about your content and conversations.

The Microsoft Virtual Event Playbook and Community are here!

Over the course of recent months, we have all embraced virtual events as an essential way to communicate and connect. Executive townhalls, employee training, digital conferences and customer engagements are just a few examples of popular scenarios. To simplify and accelerate your usage of Microsoft 365 for these scenarios we are delivering to you the Virtual Event Playbook. This comprehensive guidance provides you with information and tools to deliver seamless events easily and quickly for your audiences. This initial playbook covers the most common scenarios that we have seen and the guidance within it has been gathered from product engineering, field consultants, MVP’s, Microsoft Partners and others across our company. It is the comprehensive and official guidance from Microsoft for these services. We are currently working on additional modules for large scale custom events, device integration and industry specialties. We will be rapidly updating this content as new features become available.

Your Guide to Microsoft Teams @ Ignite 2020

This will be the first ever digital Microsoft Ignite, and Microsoft Teams is bringing you an amazing lineup of content all-digital event experience. Given we’re doing things a little bit differently this year, we want to walk you through what your journey will look like. We’ve created over 40 sessions that span the breadth of Teams so you can hear about the newest product capabilities, get your questions answered, and learn how to create a resilient, inclusive, and connected workplace with Microsoft Teams. For a full list of sessions, check out the Teams digital brochure embedded at the bottom of this blog and bookmark this brochure link for future reference.

Related:

NOTEWORTHY

We heard you! Diagramming is much easier now in Visio for the web

Reminder: Office 2013 Client Connectivity to Office 365 Services

Microsoft IT Showcase: Deploying Microsoft Teams across Microsoft hinged on good governance

Enhancing the Planner web and mobile experience with a pair of updates

Best practices to simplify governing employee access across your applications, groups and teams

Office 365 Roadmap Update | 2020-38

Twenty-six features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, September 13 – 19, 2020. In an effort to keep the weekly digest post from being extraordinarily long, I have separated the Office 365 Roadmap updates out for this week.

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Insider risk management hand-off	68686	November CY2020	Added: 14 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: M365 Compliance Introducing a new remediation action in Communication Compliance that will enable a user to be added to an existing Insider risk management policy for further evaluation.
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Policy health check and ability to pause policy	68687	November CY2020	Added: 14 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: M365 Compliance Provide guidance during Communication Compliance policy creation on the settings used and the potential volume of items that will be captured. Pausing a policy will enable an administrator to manually suspend evaluations of communications.
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Ability to set a retention period for a Communication Compliance policy	68688	November CY2020	Added: 14 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: M365 Compliance Introducing the ability to define how long content captured by a Communication Compliance policy is retained.
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Translate content during investigation	68130	November CY2020	Added: 14 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: M365 Compliance Leverage Microsoft translator in Communication Compliance to automatically translate messages that are not in the investigator’s preferred language.
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Burnout and suicide detection	68131	December CY2020	Added: 14 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: M365 Compliance Deliver new machine learning models for Communication Compliance to detect both burnout and suicidal thoughts.
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Conflict of interest template	68132	October CY2020	Added: 14 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: M365 Compliance Introducing a new policy template for Communication Compliance that will monitor communications between two groups of users which can be used for collusion or conflict of interest detection.
Microsoft 365 Compliance Center: Ability to ignore email signature or disclaimer	68133	October CY2020	Added: 14 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: M365 Compliance Provide the ability within Communication Compliance to define text that should be ignored during policy evaluation to avoid false positives.
Visio: Self-service purchase capabilities for Visio	67124	September CY2020	Added: 14 September 2020 Status: Rolling out App/Service: Visio Microsoft is enabling individuals and teams to purchase some Microsoft Visio product directly with their business domain. Self-service purchasing capabilities will allow individuals worldwide (excluding India) to acquire a subscription for Visio Plan 1 and Visio Plan 2. Self-service purchase capabilities are not available for customers who are eligible for Government or Education offers.
Microsoft Teams: PowerPoint File Sharing in GCC-High and DOD	68926	September CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams, GCC High, DOD PowerPoint File Sharing allows you to share a PowerPoint file within a Teams Meeting without having to use Desktop or Window sharing.
Outlook for Android: Scan QR code to sign into your work or school account	69147	October CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Android When notified in Outlook on the web, send yourself a link to Google Play store to download Outlook for Android and scan the on screen QR code to securely log into Outlook without entering your user name and password.
Outlook for iOS: Scan a QR code to sign into your work or school account	69148	October CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – iOS When notified in Outlook on the web, send yourself a link to the Apple app store to download Outlook for iOS and scan the on screen QR code to securely log into Outlook without entering your user name and password.
Yammer: Updated UX of the Yammer tab for Microsoft Teams	70073	October CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer, Teams The Yammer tab for Microsoft teams will get updated to include the new Yammer experience.
Yammer: Default to the New Yammer experience on web	70321	October CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer The new default setting shows the opt-in toggle for new Yammer to all users. Global admins and Yammer Verified Network admins of existing networks can still control how your organization rolls out the new Yammer experience under the ‘New Yammer’ tab in Yammer Admin settings.
Outlook for iOS: Support Scribble with iPadOS 14	70323	September CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – iOS Once iPadOS 14 is available and you update your OS, you can use the Apple Pencil with Outlook to Scribble in text fields such as the body of your email, keyword Search, new event scheduling. Your hand writing will be converted to text.
Yammer: Browse community files stored in SharePoint with SharePoint library structure and capabilities	67240	December CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer Browsing files that have been uploaded to a Yammer community will now have access to the SharePoint files structure and capabilities.
Yammer: Select attachment uploads from SharePoint file picker	67241	September CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer When selecting a post attachment, Yammer will now use the SharePoint Online file picker to select the file.
Outlook for iOS: Set Outlook as your default email app with iOS and iPadOS 14	67980	September CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – iOS When iOS and iPadOS 14 are available and you update your OS, you can choose Outlook as your default email app.
Yammer: New people experiences	68066	December CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer Enhancing how users can share, post and discover content across their company.
Outlook for iOS: See Outlook calendar details with watchOS 7	68291	September CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – iOS See what’s on your calendar tomorrow and at a glance know if you’re marked as free or busy.
Microsoft Teams: Organizational branding for line of business app catalog	67111	September CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams IT Admins will be able to customize their Teams line-of-business (custom) app catalog using their organization’s branding. This will enhance the user experience (UX) for end users and increase organic discovery and use of an organization’s line-of-business (custom) apps.
Microsoft Information Protection: Auto-classification with sensitivity labels in SPO, EXO, OneDrive for gov clouds	67125	October CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: MIP, Gov Auto-classification with sensitivity labels in OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online will soon be available in GCC, GCC-High and, DoD environments. With this release, you can start using sensitivity labels at scale for documents stored on OneDrive and SharePoint Online, and for emails in transit in Exchange Online automatically without manual user input.
Yammer: New Live Events Insights	65515	October CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer Improve your live events viewership. Monitor attendance, measure engagement, and recognize trends.
Yammer: New Conversation Insights	65516	November CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer See which conversations perform best. Monitor engagement, measure reach, & amplify conversations.
Yammer: New Community Insights	65591	September CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer Manage and moderate content faster with Yammer Community Insights. Key metrics help admins and users measure engagement and find valuable insights.
Outlook for Windows: Support Immersive Reader	56423	October CY2020	Added: 15 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Windows With a new option in the Simplified Ribbon, you can access Immersive Reader options in Outlook that are currently available today in Microsoft Word.
SharePoint: Organization Chart Webpart	67131	October CY2020	Added: 17 September 2020 Status: In development App/Service: SharePoint This webpart allows page authors to generate an organization chart based off of an individual. The page author will have the option to determine how many levels up this org chart goes.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2020-36

Welcome to the August 30 – September 5, 2020 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Eighteen features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Teams, Planner, OneNote, and Outlook (Android, iOS).

Additional dates for existing meeting series have been posted, and there are some new Teams “Chalk Talks” events listed. The spotlight event of the week is the “Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Upcoming Changes to Office Support” on Wednesday, September 9th at 9am Pacific.

Highlights from last week’s blogs include the August 2020 updates for Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, as well as general availability of Microsoft Lists in Microsoft Teams, and information on three ways Microsoft 365 can help reduce help desk costs.

Wrapping up the post are noteworthy items such as the “What’s New with Microsoft 365” August 2020 video, a video on “How Microsoft does Zero Trust”, and a reminder about upcoming changes to Office 2013 client connectivity to Office 365.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Outlook for iOS: Recommended Office information	67557	October CY2020	Added: 31 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – iOS The Discover feed of information on the Search home page is changing to Recommended and provides quick access to additional relevant company information based on the Microsoft Graph.
Outlook for iOS: SharePoint News and recorded Teams Meetings	67560	September CY2020	Added: 31 August 2020 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Outlook – iOS Your company Discover feed (soon to be renamed Recommended Roadmap ID 67557) will include SharePoint news and access to recently recorded Teams online meetings that are relevant to you.
Outlook for Android: SharePoint News and recorded Teams Meetings	67561	November CY2020	Added: 31 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Android Your company Discover feed on the Search landing page will include SharePoint news and access to recently recorded Teams online meetings that are relevant to you.
Planner: More labels in Planner	66193	December CY2020	Added: 31 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Planner Add up to 25 labels to your tasks in Planner.
Planner: File recommendations	66364	December CY2020	Added: 31 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Planner Planner will recommend related files to attach your tasks.
Planner: Smart Planner Board backgrounds	66578	December CY2020	Added: 31 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Planner Add relevant and unique background images to your Planner board through smart recommendations.
OneNote: Create a new OneNote page in the Assignments “New File” dialog menu	66580	September CY2020	Added: 31 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: OneNote When educators are creating Assignments, or students are attaching work, it’s handy to be able to create a new file on the fly. We will be adding the ability to create a blank OneNote page that can easily be filled out, through the New File dialog.
OneNote: Students and educators get a notification when a new Class Notebook page is distributed	66582	September CY2020	Added: 31 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: OneNote, EDU We are making a new update that will allow any Educator using Page Distribution in the OneNote client to ensure that all students get a notification in Teams after a page is distributed! This notification will work for educators using the Class Notebook Toolbar in OneNote Windows 10, iPad, Web and Mac.
Outlook for Android: Use your voice to compose an email	68286	October CY2020	Added: 01 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Android Use your voice to start to compose a message to a specific person.
Outlook for Android: Use your voice to initiate a phone or Teams call	68301	October CY2020	Added: 01 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Android Start using your voice in Outlook to connect and call a specific person via their phone or Teams.
Outlook for iOS: Use your voice to create a new calendar event	68302	October CY2020	Added: 01 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – iOS Use your voice to create a new calendar event.
Outlook for iOS: Use your voice to compose an email	68303	October CY2020	Added: 01 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – iOS Use your voice to start to compose a message to a specific person.
Outlook for iOS: Use your voice to initiate a phone or Teams calls	68304	October CY2020	Added: 01 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – iOS Start using your voice in Outlook to connect and call a specific person via their phone or Teams.
Outlook for Android: Use your voice to create a new calendar event	68305	October CY2020	Added: 01 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Outlook – Android Use your voice to create a new calendar event.
Office 365: Office.COM UI update	67088	October CY2020	Added: 01 September 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Office 365 Office.com is being updated to include the catch-up pane. A single place for you to catch up on all activity related to content you shared, or was shared with you. (including comments, @mentions, changes and more).
Microsoft Teams: Update to the format Meeting Invitations for Microsoft Teams	67094	September CY2020	Added: 01 September 2020 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Teams Microsoft Teams Meetings Invites are getting a formatting update to make meetings easier to join. The new format will support all the same meeting invite customization Teams supports today.
Visio: Copy diagrams across Visio files in Visio for the web and Microsoft Teams	67116	September CY2020	Added: 03 September 2020 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Visio Copy your shapes and diagrams across Visio files opened in Visio for the web or Microsoft Teams to extend, merge, or modify the diagram, and to create new ones.
Microsoft Teams: Suggested replies for iOS	69740	September CY2020	Added: 04 September 2020 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Teams – iOS Suggested replies in Teams chat uses assistive AI to create short responses based on the context of the previous message.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

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

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

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Teams Chalk Talk: Do more with apps

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams Security

When: Tuesday, September 8, 2020 at 9:00am PT | The recent shift to remote, hybrid and on-premise work has IT professionals across every industry looking for more solutions and support for deploying Microsoft Teams. That’s why we’re excited to launch this new live webcast series. Let’s talk security in Episode 3. The top challenge IT pros are facing right now is securing data. Join our product expert for a deep dive discussion on identity and authentication. Be sure to add this event to your calendar!

Microsoft Teams: Seamless Collaboration with Microsoft 365

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

Microsoft Teams: Identify your upgrade approach

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Ready your end users

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Teams Chalk Talk: Taking charge of AV quality experiences

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

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Upcoming Changes to Office Support

When: Wednesday, September 9, 2020 at 9:00am PT | Join us for an opportunity to “Ask Microsoft Anything” (AMA) about upcoming changes to support for Office 2016 for Mac, Office 2010 and Office 2013 connectivity to Office 365 services. To join, simply visit the Office End of Support AMA space at 9:00am Pacific and submit a question. An AMA is a live, online, text-based question-and-answer event similar to a “YamJam” on Yammer or an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. Note: While we’ll only be answering questions in real-time from 9am – 10am Pacific, you can post your questions for the AMA to the Office End of Support AMA space up to 24 hours in advance. We look forward to seeing you there!

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

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

Teams Chalk Talk: How to enable Teams for Firstline Worker engagement

Microsoft Teams: Implement your upgrade approach

Teams EDU Introduction for IT Pros

When: Tuesday, September 15, 2020 at 8:00am PT | Bring conversations, content, assignments, and apps together in one place with Microsoft Teams. Build collaborative classrooms, connect in professional learning communities, and connect with colleagues — all from a single Office 365 Education experience. Learn how IT can enable these capabilities for users while maintaining the necessary configurations to align with required organizational business and security requirements. Join us for this webinar to learn: (1) Administration capabilities to enable and govern Microsoft Teams, (2) Allow for frictionless user Teams creation while enforcing business rules and addressing IT concerns, (3) Understand the Teams lifecycle and recommended practices for long term management of the environment, and (4) Security and compliance capabilities for Teams integrated in the Office 365 tools you are already using today. Note: You can also find this session, and more, on-demand here.

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Ignite 2020 Pre-Show

When: Tuesday, September 15, 2020 at 9:00am PT | The recent shift to remote, hybrid and on-premise work has IT professionals across every industry looking for more solutions and support for deploying Microsoft Teams. That’s why we’re excited to launch this new live webcast series. In this special episode, you’ll get a preview of what’s coming up at Microsoft Ignite. Hear about upcoming sessions you don’t want to miss, as well as new resources that will help you make the most of your experience. Be sure to add this event to your calendar!

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

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Ignite 2020 Wrap-Up Part 1

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Ignite 2020 Wrap-Up Part 2

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

Thursday, October 1, 2020 from 9am – 11am PT

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: The New World of Virtual Events

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: New Resources for Microsoft Teams Admins

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Manage Guest Access in Microsoft Teams

BLOG ROUNDUP

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | August 2020

In August, we saw updates in Microsoft Teams that continue to improve the meetings experience and new features that provide developers a rich canvas to build workflows to enhance personal productivity. We are excited to share new features this month across meetings, calling, devices, chat and collaboration, IT admin, and industry. Some of the new features highlighted in this post include: (1) Spotlight – meeting organizers and presenters will be able to lock their video as the main view for all meeting participants, (2) Meeting recording storage for areas where Stream is not available, (3) Real time presence, and (4) New Power Automate triggers and actions for Teams. This post also has information on updates available in EDU and US Government tenants. | Related: New Insights, Spotlight video and 6 other updates for Microsoft Teams for Education | August 2020

Microsoft Lists in Microsoft Teams is now generally available

We are proud to announce the general availability of the Lists app in Teams for all our commercial and GCC customers. As you might already know, Microsoft Lists, which we announced at Build 2020 is a Microsoft 365 app that helps you track information and organize your work. Lists are simple, smart, and flexible, so you can stay on top of what matters most to your team. Track patients, loans, issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory and more using customizable views and smart rules and alerts to keep everyone in sync. With ready-made templates, you can quickly create lists from directly within Teams and access them on the Teams mobile app by accessing the Lists tab you added as a channel. | Related: Microsoft Lists in Microsoft Teams is now generally available in GCC

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: August 2020

This post includes all the SharePoint and related tech updates that rolled out in August 2020. This is the all-inclusive roadmap release recap for all things SharePoint and related technology. Highlighted features include SharePoint site templates for Education, Azure CDN caching for SharePoint and OneDrive video, Download SharePoint site usage data in Excel, Updates to the list and list item sharing experience, Improved image columns in SharePoint lists and libraries, and much more! All the features listed began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of August 2020 (possibly early September 2020).

3 ways Microsoft 365 can help you reduce helpdesk costs

With more people than ever working remotely, organizations must maximize employee productivity while protecting an ever-growing digital footprint. Many have stitched together specialized security solutions from different vendors to improve their cybersecurity posture, but this approach is expensive and can result in gaps in coverage and a fragmented user experience. With Microsoft’s integrated security solutions, you can enhance security and user productivity more cost-effectively. Focusing a lens on the helpdesk illuminates how consolidating with Microsoft helps streamline and strengthen your security posture. Your helpdesk plays an important role in enabling employees to be more effective, but it can also reveal organization-wide productivity challenges. Productivity matters because if security controls are too cumbersome, employees will find workarounds. This blog highlights three examples of how Microsoft 365 can help you reduce costs while strengthening cybersecurity.

NOTEWORTHY

What’s New with Microsoft 365 | August 2020

Format: Video (8 mins) | This month, we cover new features available for Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams and on the web, how to automate user provisioning to Azure AD from SAP SuccessFactors, new Power Automate triggers and actions in Teams, and more!

How Microsoft does Zero Trust

Format: Video (31 mins) | Learn about Microsoft’s approach to Zero Trust within the context of network configuration. Research shows that the Zero Trust concept is used to discuss very different approaches to the same problem and it is often left to the organization to determine which approach is best for their environment. In this session, we’ll outline an approach that details 4 critical categories that evolve the discussion from “Trust but verify” to “Verify everything, trust nothing” including the network.

Project for the web – August 2020 Update

The Project team has been focused on big features, with one new release for August 2020 – Group by Assigned. Starting in September, you can organize your tasks by assignee in the Board view. This will provide insight into what each person is working on! There are several upcoming features including: (1) Share Projects with groups you don’t own, (2) Task Custom Fields, (3) Project & Roadmap in Microsoft Teams, (4) Email notifications, and (5) Export to Excel.

Reminder: Office 2013 Client Connectivity to Office 365 Services

Office 365 Weekly Digest | 2020-35

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

There were fifteen features added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including items for Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Yammer, and Visio.

A few events for existing meeting series were added, all in early September. This week’s spotlight event is the “Go Deeper with Microsoft Teams: Leverage pro tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams” webinar. There are two sessions, both on Thursday, September 3rd at 5am and 8am Pacific.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include a look at what’s new to Microsoft 365 in August 2020, tips for network optimization for on-premises Office installs and updates, information on the tools and services available from Microsoft to help migrate content to Microsoft 365, and details on the new transcription and voice commands available in Microsoft Word.

Noteworthy item highlights include information on the public preview of Application Guard in Microsoft 365 Apps, new features that provide agile management of SharePoint intranet sites, a look at Project Moca in Outlook on the web, and suggested steps for implementing a Zero Trust security model for your remote workforce.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

Description	Feature ID	Estimated Release	Details
Microsoft Teams: New File Viewer released for GCC-High	67087	August CY2020	Added: 24 August 2020 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Teams, GCC-High GCC-High will have a new file viewer – OneUp.
Office 365: Application Guard for Office	67101	December CY2020	Added: 24 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Office Files from the internet and other potentially unsafe locations can contain viruses, worms, or other kinds of malware that can harm your users’ computer and data. To help protect your users, Office can open files from potentially unsafe locations in Application Guard, a secure container that’s isolated from the device through hardware-based virtualization. When Office opens files in Application Guard, users can securely read, edit, print, and save those files without having to re-open files outside the container. This functionality is available as a Preview to organizations with Microsoft 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5 Security license or Users (in the above enterprise) who use Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise on Beta Channel.
Microsoft Teams: File Viewer Upgrades in Gov Clouds	66200	September CY2020	Added: 24 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams, Gov Teams file viewer is being upgraded for Gov clouds from legacy to OneUp for non-Office file types and to unified app for Office file types (Word, PowerPoint and Excel).
SharePoint Spaces: Touch device support	67107	December CY2020	Added: 25 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: SharePoint SharePoint spaces will enable users to interact with a space using touch interactions in addition to the mouse and keyboard based interactions currently supported.
OneDrive: Selective sync in KFM	66186	August CY2020	Added: 25 August 2020 Status: Rolling out App / Service: OneDrive Known Folder Move (KFM) is now possible even if the Desktop, Documents, or Pictures folder were previously selected not to sync down to the device. Instead of blocking KFM, we will support syncing those folders at time of KFM.
OneDrive: OneDrive Home in mobile	66190	September CY2020	Added: 25 August 2020 Status: Rolling out App / Service: OneDrive New landing tab in the app to make it easier to find your important files (featuring Recent, Offline, and shared libraries).
OneDrive: Updates to comment notifications	66192	September CY2020	Added: 25 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive Users who create or upload Word, Excel, PowerPoint or any other type of file to OneDrive or SharePoint will now get email notifications whenever someone else leaves a comment on their file.
Yammer: New reactions for posts	64931	August CY2020	Added: 27 August 2020 Status: Rolling out App / Service: Yammer Users will be able to react to posts in Yammer. New reactions include Like, Love, Laugh, Sad, Celebrate, and Thanks.
OneDrive: Expiring access for external users for the Government Clouds	68542	September CY2020	Added: 27 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: OneDrive, Gov Admins and end users can expire shares to external users.
Yammer: Edit attachments in a post	67239	September CY2020	Added: 27 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Yammer When editing a posting in Yammer, a user can now also edit the attachments in the post.
Microsoft Teams: Incoming video support on Safari	67109	September CY2020	Added: 27 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Teams meetings in Safari 13 and later will support incoming video. A participant can see the video of an active speaker. No configuration is needed.
Microsoft 365 compliance center: Communication compliance availability for government clouds	67112	September CY2020	Added: 27 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Microsoft 365, Gov Communication compliance is an insider risk solution in Microsoft 365 that helps minimize communication risks by helping you detect, capture, and act on inappropriate messages in your organization.
Microsoft Teams: Custom Meeting Images	67113	September CY2020	Added: 28 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Teams Admins will now be able to add a customer logo to the Teams experience, for display in the lobby and meeting pre-join experience. The logo will be displayed for meetings where the organizer has the Advanced Comms SKU.
Microsoft To Do: Support for push notifications for shared list activities for work and school accounts	67114	October CY2020	Added: 28 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: To Do This update adds the ability to create Microsoft To Do push notifications in Work and School accounts just as you can in your Personal account.
Microsoft Visio: Azure icons in Visio for the Web	56627	August CY2020	Added: 28 August 2020 Status: In development App / Service: Visio – Web The latest Azure icons are available in Visio for the web. These icons can be used to accurately create diagrams to represent Azure services and networks.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Get Started with Microsoft Teams

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

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

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Integrate apps to do more in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Microsoft Teams: Do more with apps

Microsoft Teams: Identify your upgrade approach

Microsoft Teams: Ready your end users

Microsoft Teams: Master working from home

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

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

Microsoft Teams: Implement your upgrade approach

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams Security

Microsoft Teams: Seamless Collaboration with Microsoft 365

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Upcoming Changes to Office Support

Microsoft Teams: Staying connected with your team while remote

Teams EDU Introduction for IT Pros

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Ignite 2020 Pre-Show

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Ignite 2020 Wrap-Up Part 1

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

Thursday, September 24, 2020 from 12pm – 2pm PT

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Ignite 2020 Wrap-Up Part 2

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

Thursday, October 1, 2020 from 9am – 11am PT

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: The New World of Virtual Events

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: New Resources for Microsoft Teams Admins

Enabling Remote Work with Microsoft Teams: Manage Guest Access in Microsoft Teams

BLOG ROUNDUP

From Tasks in Microsoft Teams to whiteboarding during remote meetings—here’s what’s new to Microsoft 365

As we work to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, we’re learning to embrace a heterogeneous future. Our mission is to enable people, teams, and organizations to thrive in this new world of remote and hybrid work and learning. Last month at Inspire, we shared how we’re working together with our partners to build new experiences for our customers designed to connect people, inspire creativity, and foster innovation. We’re committed as ever to develop technology that helps you keep moving forward, no matter if you’re fully remote or in a hybrid work environment. This month, we’re releasing new features in Microsoft Teams to help users automate more of their workflow, ideate on digital whiteboards more easily, help improve readability while browsing the web, and more. Let’s take a deeper look at these updates and what else is new in August.

Network optimization tips for on-premises Office installs and updates

There are a variety of scenarios including but not limited to, installations of Office using Content Delivery Network (CDN), lean 2nd installs (removing the Office source files from the install packages), right-sized first install (only include most used language packs), and default behavior where Office stays up to date using CDN. Microsoft recommends optimizing these network operations because a device can get portions of the content from other devices on its local network instead of having to download the update completely from Microsoft CDN. The goal of this article is to provide solutions for challenges collected from customers in the field.

Migrate your content into Microsoft 365

The latest productivity experiences await you and your content. Once in Microsoft 365 – you will see improved collaboration, increased security, and compliance. Our goal is to help all customers to easily migrate their content to Microsoft 365. The infographic and information in this post will help you learn about the numerous content migration tools and services from Microsoft and our 3rd-party migration partners. This is collectively the broadest set of offerings to assist your migration into Microsoft 365 – from assessment, to planning and onboarding. Migration Manager simplifies file share migrations, Mover provides capabilities to migrate from 3rd-party cloud providers, the SharePoint Migration Tool accelerates on-premises migrations of SharePoint, and Microsoft 365 FastTrack helps organizations plan, migrate and adopt these services.

Microsoft 365 saves you time and effort with transcription and voice commands in Word

Whether you’re a reporter conducting interviews, a researcher recording focus group sessions, or an online entrepreneur recording informal discussions, you want to be able to focus on the people you’re talking to without worrying about taking notes and without having to spend hours transcribing your conversations after-the-fact. If that sounds like you, Transcribe in Word is here to help. Now you can record your conversations directly in Word for the web and transcribe them automatically. Transcribe detects different speakers so after you finish recording, you can easily follow the flow of the transcript. After your conversation, you can revisit parts of the recording by playing back the time-stamped audio and you can even edit the transcript if you see something amiss. Your transcript will appear alongside the Word document, along with the recording, which enables you to leverage your transcript to create great content in the way that is best for you. | Related: Save teachers and students time and effort with new transcription capabilities in Word

NOTEWORTHY

The Solution Evolution: What’s possible with Microsoft Teams (Vol. 1)

Format: Video (25 mins) | In this series, we will highlight how organizations are solving common problems with Microsoft Teams and how those solutions evolve over time. This first video features a simple solution for harnessing knowledge management, low code/no-code options for finding the right info at the right time and wrangling multiple apps, all the way to creating a self-service support model that comes to you. Timestamps for each scenario highlighted in the video are available in the description.

Application Guard for M365 Apps public preview

Application Guard for Office is now available in public preview! Files from the internet and other potentially unsafe locations can contain viruses, worms, or other kinds of malware that can harm your users’ computer and data. To help protect your users, Office opens files from potentially unsafe locations in Application Guard, a secure container that is isolated from the device through hardware-based virtualization. When Office opens files in Application Guard, users can securely read, edit, print, and save those files without having to re-open files outside the container. Note: This feature will be off by default. | Resource: Application Guard for Office (public preview) for admins

Agile IT management of your SharePoint-powered intelligent intranet

Business changes at a faster pace today more than ever before. The agility of IT to be both proactive and reactive in the face of change is a must. Adapt, or fade out. This affects everything and must be reflected in your intranet. The more change you can absorb and respond to, the more value you can provide without compromise or arduous task – for both change and growth expansion. Microsoft has released numerous admin capabilities to both modernize your intranet, manage change, and keep it dynamic. The SharePoint admin center offers the flexibility and control you need to manage everything your intelligent intranet requires. SharePoint admins create and manage sites, establish or adjust the primary intranet entry point, optimize for spanning geographies – location and languages, and more. Features highlighted in this post include: (1) the ability to adjust a SharePoint site address, (2) power to invoke a SharePoint root site swap, (3) multi-geo capabilities in OneDrive and SharePoint, and (4) multi-lingual publishing features for SharePoint communication sites.

Organize your content your way with Project Moca

The way you work is complex and the streams of information keep increasing, constantly demanding your attention. Your projects, your team’s projects, and the information you need to do your work are stored across multiple applications, forcing you to constantly switch between them and then re-focus and regain context. That constant switching and the inevitable distractions add up quickly – and your productivity plummets. Keeping things organized is one step to being productive. Having everything in one place will save you time and being able to quickly find what you need will make you more effective. Imagine a dresser, with unlimited drawers, and each drawer with unlimited organizers in them. To help you achieve that, we are introducing Project Moca in Outlook on the Web. With Project Moca, you can simplify your workflow so you can focus on what matters. Add tasks, goals, notes, files from OneDrive and other cloud storage providers, links, contacts, and even emails and events, all into one dynamic space. Each space has a flexible canvas so you can customize and view your content your way.

How do I implement a Zero Trust security model for my Microsoft remote workforce?

Zero Trust has always been key to maintaining business continuity. And now, it’s become even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic to helping enable the largest remote workforce in history. While organizations are empowering people to work securely when, where, and how they want, we have found the most successful are the ones who are also empathetic to the end-user experience. At Microsoft, we refer to this approach as digital empathy. As you take steps to protect a mobile workforce, a Zero Trust strategy grounded in digital empathy will help enhance cybersecurity, along with productivity and collaboration too. Some of the key steps that you can take to begin applying digital empathy and Zero Trust in your organization include: (1) Protect your identities with Azure Active Directory, (2) Secure employee devices, and (3) Discover and manage cloud apps. | Related: Microsoft Zero Trust deployment guide for your applications