The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
SharePoint
In SharePoint: Create Pages and News from the SharePoint app bar, Microsoft Lists: Applied filters, Graph Connector Content Results Experience Switches to Results Inline in All Vertical, eDiscovery (Premium) Records Management – Discover the document version that has been shared (GA), Microsoft Viva: Mobile SharePoint site navigation
Create Pages and News from the SharePoint app bar
With this update, you will be able to start creating pages and news as an action from the SharePoint app bar. This means that no matter where you are in SharePoint, jump right in and starting creating and communicating – staying in the flow of work.
Find out more: Use the SharePoint app bar
Microsoft Lists: Applied filters
Microsoft Lists is rolling out a new way to visualize and clear the filters that are present in a view. As you add and adjust filters to narrow or expand what appears in the current list view, you’ll now see which filters have been applied. And you can remove them, too – all without going back into the column filter pane. You do this now in the top-left portion of the list.
Find out more: Use filtering to modify a SharePoint view
Graph Connector Content Results Experience Switches to Results Inline in All Vertical
You will soon see Graph Connector results merged inline in the All vertical on SharePoint (organization level) and Office.com. This means that your users will see Graph Connector results from their other apps & services seamlessly alongside Microsoft content – instead of the current result cluster experience which is bound to a fixed place in the middle of the page.
Find out more: Updated Connectors Results in Microsoft in Bing
eDiscovery (Premium) Records Management – Discover the document version that has been shared (GA)
To help meet regulatory obligations for retention and eDiscovery of shared content in your organization, eDiscovery (Premium) now supports the ability to discover the version of the document at the time that it was shared. This is facilitated by a new Records Management capability that enables you to automatically apply retention labels and retain the version of files shared as cloud attachments in email via Exchange and chat via Teams.
Find out more: Collect cloud attachments in Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Premium)
Microsoft Viva: Mobile SharePoint site navigation
This allows Viva connections mobile users to browse and reach SharePoint sites – both hub site and regular site navigation in Viva Connections – aka, easy access to browse other sites, reducing overall friction. Viva Connections is your gateway to the overall employee experience – now more inclusive to the rest of your SharePoint-based intranet.
Find out more: Introduction to the SharePoint app bar
Teams
In Teams: Auto lowering of hands, ultrasound howling detection, video closed captions in PowerPoint Live, green screen
Teams Management
Education
Government
Frontline workers
Teams (non-premium)
Automatic lowering of a user’s raised hand after speaking
If you raised your hand and then spoke in a meeting, this feature will alert you that your hand will be lowered after you have spoken. This feature allows meeting organizers the opportunity to focus on unanswered questions.
If you raised your hand in a Teams meeting and speak in the meeting you will see a notification informing you that your hand will automatically be lowered soon. You will be able to choose to keep your hand raised if you wish by clicking the “Keep it raised” button. If you do not act on the notification, your hand will automatically be lowered. This should ensure smoother meeting facilitation for organizers and presenters. This release is rolling out only to Microsoft Teams Desktop users.
Find out more: Now in public preview: Automatic lowering of a user’s Raised Hand after speaking
Ultrasound Howling Detection
When multiple users are in a Teams meeting in the same room using audio, a feedback loop is created, causing an echo. With this update, Teams can detect if another Teams device is nearby and already included with audio in the same meeting and notifies the users that want to join. Teams then automatically mutes the microphone and speakers of these users. You can turn the switch back on at any time if they wish.
Find out more: Now in public preview: Ultrasound Howling Detection in Teams Meetings
Video Closed Captions in PowerPoint Live
Closed Captions will now be supported for embedded videos in PowerPoint Live for Teams. If the video contains out-of-band closed captions, all viewers will automatically have the option to turn closed captions on for the video.
When creating a PowerPoint presentation in PowerPoint for Windows or PowerPoint for Mac, you have the option to include a closed captions file with your video. When the presentation is shared via PowerPoint Live for Teams, any embedded video that includes closed captions stored in a separate file will automatically include the option for attendees to turn on closed captions. When closed captions are turned on, they will appear at the bottom of the slide. When no closed captions are available for a video, the closed captions button will be disabled.
Find out more: Introducing Closed Captions in PowerPoint Live for Microsoft Teams Meetings
Green screen in Teams meetings
The new feature green screen improves the sharpness and definition of the virtual background effect around your face, head, ears, and hair. It also allows you to show a prop or other object in your hand to be more visible to other participants in a call. This feature supports Windows and macOS with Intel chips but not Mac M1/M2. It requires a solid color screen or clean background wall behind you. Further, users must apply a background effect in Teams meetings to enable the green screen effect and should select the correct backdrop color so that the effect is applied correctly, and better quality is achieved.
Find out more: Now in public preview: Green screen feature in Teams Meetings
Teams Management
The following features are currently available for the Teams Management Platform (admin center):
- App Geo Fencing – ISV’s can now target applications to select geographies (countries/regions) via partner center. Users will only see apps relevant for them given their country and region.
- Auto Install Approved Apps – Microsoft Teams Auto install approved apps (formerly known as Zero-touch App Install) feature allows admins and users to streamline the management and usage of apps within their organizations.
Government
These features currently available to Microsoft’s commercial customers in multi-tenant cloud environments are now rolling out to our customers in US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and/or United States Department of Defense (DoD):
- Support PSTN dial-in, dial-out, and call-me attendees in meetings to join Breakout Rooms for DoD and GCC High – This Breakout Rooms feature in Microsoft Teams enables PSTN participants to be assigned and join breakout rooms. PSTN participants includes dial-in users, dial-out users, and call-me users.
Frontline workers
- Microsoft Teams: Approvals – Sequential Approvers Support – The ability to add sequential approvers in an Approval.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Request a premium license, GA of comments in canvas studio, Improved variables and collections experience, improvements to Modern App Designer, Custom Connector from Visual Studio, table designer, simplify updates using JSON, offline sync GA, public preview checking who has access to a record, Power Apps on Windows
Request a Power Apps premium license from org admins
Users can now request a premium license from their org admins, in product! can also manage these requests or configure the settings to continue using their custom process in M365 Admin Center.
Find out more: New: Request a Power Apps premium license from org admins | Microsoft Power Apps
General Availability of comments in the Canvas Studio
Microsoft have announced the General Availability of comments in the Canvas Studio! We know that providing & interacting with feedback during app development is crucial to creating top-notch apps. With this feature, makers can easily add comments to their apps, enhancing collaboration with their fusion team and leading to better canvas apps.
Find out more: Streamline collaboration with the General Availability of comments in Power Apps and Power Automate | Microsoft Power Apps
Improved variables and collections experience in Canvas Designer
In the new variables and collections experience, app makers can now define and interact with them in real-time while designing the app. This creates a more intuitive and seamless app-building process where makers can focus on building apps efficiently without unnecessary back and forth clicks.
Find out more: Improved variables and collections experience in Canvas Designer | Microsoft Power Apps
Recent improvements to the Modern App Designer
App navigation is now the default panel in the designer, allowing makers to edit the sitemap efficiently. The Pages panel now has a restructured hierarchy to better align with makers’ mental model and accurately reflect any coauthoring personas. Component designers now open within the app designer, along with improved discoverability to entry points.
Find out more: Recent improvements to the Modern App Designer | Microsoft Power Apps
Create Custom Connector from within Visual Studio
Power Platform is now a connected service in Visual Studio 2022 Preview! Code-first developers will now be able to create both APIs and connectors from within Microsoft Visual Studio, thereby minimizing context switching when developing custom connectors for Microsoft Power Platform.
Find out more: Create a Custom Connector for your Web API from within Visual Studio | Microsoft Power Apps
Update forms and views more conveniently with table designer
With this new experience, makers can now add columns to their forms and views on the fly, instead of navigating away from their table to update their forms and views manually. This also means when working with table in the modern app designer, makers can see the forms and views in their apps updated in real time once they finish working on their tables.
Find out more: Update forms and views more conveniently with table designer | Microsoft Power Apps
Updates to simplify using JSON
ParseJSON() and untyped objects are very flexible, but we’ve heard your feedback that improvements are needed to require less code and make untyped objects easier to use. So today’s announcement is all about implicit type conversion, or coercion. For untyped objects it means the automatic conversion of untyped objects to the actual type required based on the context. We will do this for all simple scalar types: booleans, numbers, text, GUIDs, colors, dates and times.
Find out more: Updates to simplify using JSON | Microsoft Power Apps
Announcing General availability of Offline sync at a glance
Microsoft have announced the general availability of Offline sync at a glance. We’ve introduced a new device status indicator that is always visible in the main navigation bar of forms and grids in model-driven apps. This indicator gives you a quick view of your server connectivity and sync state, putting offline at the center of the experience so that you always know whether your device and data are ready to go.
Find out more: View offline sync status – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn
Announcing public preview of checking who has access to a record
The owner of records can easily share their records with other colleagues to collaborate in Microsoft Dataverse. We have extended the Check Access function to include getting the list of all the users who have access to a record.
For shared to users who are not the record owner, they can also see all the users who has access to a record and who the record owner is.
Find out more: Check your user access and permissions – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn
Power Automate
In Power Automate: Power Automate Desktop April 2023, improvements to Azure OpenAI models
April 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop
In the April 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.31) there are several new features and updates, including:
- Testing the selectors of UI elements is now available during flow authoring
- Cross-domain iframe web elements are now supported
- Keyboard shortcuts have been introduced to run desktop flows
- Actionable runtime error messages are now available for Excel actions
- GA of SharePoint connector actions
Find out more: April 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop
Improving the Azure OpenAI models in Power Automate
In October 2022, Microsoft released the Describe it to design it feature where you can write a simple sentence and get a flow based on this description. Since then, Microsoft have seen it dramatically improve the experience of building flow reducing the flow creation time in half and flows are 1.8x more likely to run week-over-week compared to building from blank.
Find out more: Improving the Azure OpenAI models in Power Automate to save people time
Power BI
In Power BI: Power BI April 2023 feature summary, Power BI reports in Jupyter Notebooks, DLP for BI GA, Dynamic Format Strings for Measures, edit your data model in the Power BI service, on-premise data gateway, public preview of the Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL), composite models on Power BI Datasets and Analysis Services models GA, Deployment Pipelines: View item’s code changes before deploying it
Power BI April 2023 Feature Summary
This month’s updates include a preview feature On-object that was announced last month and dynamic format strings for measures, plus additional features in Reporting, Data Connectivity, Service, Paginated Reports, Mobile, and Visualizations.
Find out more: Power BI April 2023 Feature Summary
Create Power BI reports in Jupyter Notebooks
Microsoft have announced the latest update to the Power BI and Jupyter Notebook library, which empowers users to create powerful reports based on their data directly in their notebooks, without leaving their workflow. With this new update, users can gain insights instantly without the hassle of switching between tools or dealing with cumbersome data exports.
Find out more: Create Power BI reports in Jupyter Notebooks
Microsoft Purview data loss prevention policies for Power BI are now generally available (GA)
Microsoft have announced the general availability of Microsoft Purview’s data loss prevention policies (DLP) for Power BI. This follows the successful public preview of DLP policies for Power BI which we launched back in April 2022!
Find out more: Announcement: Microsoft Purview data loss prevention policies for Power BI are now generally available (GA)
Dynamic Format Strings for Measures
With dynamic format strings for measures a DAX expression can now be used to determine what format string a measure will use. These dynamic format strings for measures are the same dynamic format strings already available in calculation groups! If you are familiar with these in calculation items, the DAX patterns you used there are applicable here to individual measures.
Find out more: Deep dive into the new Dynamic Format Strings for Measures!
Edit your data model in the Power BI Service (Preview)
Microsoft are introducing data model editing in the Service, allowing Service users a first step towards viewing and modifying their existing data models on the web. In this preview you can modify your existing data models on the web through actions such as editing relationships, creating DAX measures, and managing row-level security (RLS).
On-premises data gateway April 2023 release
Microsoft have announced that we have just released the April 2023 update for the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.170.10).
Find out more: On-premises data gateway April 2023 release
Public preview of the Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL)
Microsoft have announced the public preview of a new Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) to address those limitations by providing:
- A human readable format using a YAML-like syntax. Each tabular metadata object has a textual representation with minimal delimiters. Indentation is used to indicate parent-child relationships between objects.
- A better editing experience, especially for properties containing DAX and M expressions.
- A standard folder output format where each model object has an individual file representation, making TMDL more source control friendly well suited for collaboration.
Find out more: Announcing public preview of the Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL)
Composite models on Power BI Datasets and Analysis Services models GA
Microsoft have announced that the preview is officially over and that composite models based on Power BI datasets and Analysis Services Tabular models are now generally available and fully supported on Premium, PPU and new Pro workspaces.
Find out more: Announcing general availability for composite models on Power BI Datasets and Analysis Services models
Deployment Pipelines: View item’s code changes before deploying it
With the addition of Change review, Deployment pipeline offers a complete built-in compare tool: It constantly runs an automated synchronization check, allows you to run the essential action of Compare to spot the New, Removed, and Different items when two not-in-sync environments are compared, and now, with Change review, you can also view the changes, line-by-line, in the item’s code.
Find out more: Now on Deployment Pipelines: View item’s code changes before deploying it
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