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: Favourite/ unfavourite additional file types, Taxonomy tagging in Syntex, Lists Preview support iOS & Android, Copilot in Stream
Favourite/ Unfavourite additional file types and folders
Microsoft have made sure that the favourites experience is consistent across Microsoft 365 apps, using the same pinning and favourites experience. This release will include support for adding additional file types and folders to favourites from OneDrive web and Document Libraries. This goes beyond Office files and allows you to favourite PDFs, image files, video files, CAD files, 3D graphics, SharePoint pages, and more.
Find out more: Roadmap ID 152744
Syntex taxonomy tagging and image tagging general availability
Syntex taxonomy tagging and image tagging are now in general availability. Syntex Taxonomy Tagging uses AI to help you label and organize documents by automatically tagging them with descriptive keywords, based on your taxonomy defined in SharePoint. By applying a taxonomy column and enabling taxonomy tagging, the document is automatically tagged with keywords from your term store to help with searching, sorting, filtering and more.
Find out more: Set up and manage taxonomy tagging in Microsoft Syntex
Microsoft Lists – MSA Preview support on iOS and Android
Microsoft have announced support for the Microsoft Lists – MSA Preview within Microsoft Lists for iOS and Android – now available. You can sign into Microsoft Lists with multiple accounts for Microsoft 365 work and school and a single Microsoft account (MSA*).
Find out more: Introducing Microsoft Lists – MSA Preview for iOS and Android
Introducing Copilot in Stream
Microsoft have announced Copilot in Stream as part of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Copilot in Stream sets a new standard for quickly extracting meaningful information and insights from the videos in your organization. You can use it to:
- Summarize a video into relevant points.
- Ask questions to get insights from long or detailed videos.
- Locate where people, teams, or topics are discussed so you can jump to that point in the video.
- Identify ‘calls to action’ and where you can get involved to help.
Find out more: Introducing Copilot in Microsoft Stream
Microsoft Viva
In Viva: Viva Insights updated homepage for org leaders, verified topic badges, disable private messages in Viva Engage, new campaign features in Viva Engage, Topic page improvements, AI Topic suggestions, Insights customer attributes, top news card updates in Viva Connections, up to 50 Viva Connections Experiences
Viva Insights Updated Homepage for Organizational Leaders
Organizational leaders will soon see a refreshed Viva Insights homepage with content tailored to them. This update will only apply to organizational leaders who have already been assigned the Group Manager or Insights Business Leader role in Viva Insights. This updated content will include more emphasis on leader-specific metrics, actions, and articles.
Find out more: Manager and leader insights
Verified topic badges in Microsoft Viva
With this update, editors can mark published topics as Verified in Microsoft Viva and add a specific group of SMEs as editors to the topic. Verification helps readers identify topics with added reliability. Topics that are Verified are identified by a special badge and indicate the content is reviewed for accuracy and are regularly updated by assigned editors. Assigned editors will be informed of being added to the topic via an email.
Find out more: Answers in Viva: Earn and view badges
Admin setting to disable private messages in a Viva Engage
Admins will have the ability to turn off private message capabilities in their Viva Engage (Yammer) network. Once turned off, users will not see the feature in the frontend. This setting is available for admins to use any time. If turning off private messages in existing networks, users will lose access to their messages. All content remains ingested and available via eDiscovery.
Find out more: Configure your Viva Engage tenant
Topic page improvements in Viva
Microsoft are introducing new improvements in Microsoft Viva to prevent locking of pages on session abandonment. This adjustment not only addresses inadvertent locking, but also ensures consistency between topic pages and card experiences through proactive page check-ins and showing the latest published version to viewers on topic pages.
Find out more: Create contribute and edit topics
Answers in Viva – AI Topic Suggestions
With AI topic extraction, we can suggest topics based on the user’s question. The AI recommends up to 3 topics to add to the question, either from existing topics or newly generated ones. The user needs to manually select and add the suggested topics, as they are not automatically attached. The user can also search and add their own topics, choosing not to use the AI suggestions.
Find out more: Viva Topics product updates: Answers in Viva, new topic types, and more
Viva Insights custom attributes
New logic allows analysts to build on or combine existing organizational attributes. For instance, a new org attribute that combines several roles that can then be used to filter results in the analysis.
Find out more: Customizing metrics in Viva Insights
Top card updated to include more news source options in Viva Connections
Improvements are coming to the Viva Connections Top News Card, which will be rebranded as the “News Card.” These enhancements will introduce greater configurability and the ability to create multiple News Card instances, while the default configuration will remain consistent with the Top News Card.
Find out more: Create a Viva Connections dashboard and add cards
New Campaign features in Viva Engage
Microsoft have announced two new features in Viva Engage this month: Campaign sashes and campaign co-organizers. Users will have the capability to include a campaign sash in their storyline cover photo and avatar sash. Additionally, campaign managers (administrators and corporate communicators) will possess the ability to appoint co-organizers for their campaigns.
Find out more: Campaigns in Viva Engage
Create up to 50 Viva Connections experiences within a tenant
Customers with Viva suite or Viva Communications and Communities license can create up to 50 distinct Connections experiences for their audience groups. This is currently limited to only 10 experiences.
Find out more: Overview of how to plan, build, and launch Viva Connections
Teams
In Teams: Create up to 1000 channels per team, cross-cloud guest access + authenticated meetings, video clip enhancements, on-demand webinar recordings, shared calling, Teams Phone Mobile availability, remove teams call and meetings
Teams Rooms and Devices
Teams Management
Education
Government
Frontline workers
Teams (standard)
Create up to 1,000 channels per team
Now, you can create up to 1,000 standard or shared channels in new and existing teams. This enables a team to have a channel for every project or topic without worrying about running out of space or about managing an additional team for the same workgroup. Private channel support will become available later.
Find out more: Limits and specifications for Microsoft Teams
Teams Cross Cloud guest access
Microsoft are extending existing guest access functionality, allowing guest to participate in rich collaboration experiences in chat, meetings, channels and teams between tenants across Microsoft clouds. Guests can participate in a full collaboration experience including audio/video, screen share, file share and both 1:1 and 1:many chat. Admins can establish trust between tenants and across the Microsoft clouds via Entra B2B and Cross Tenant Access Settings.
Find out more: Overview: Cross-tenant access with Microsoft Entra External ID
Teams Cross Cloud Authenticated Meetings
You can now join a meeting hosted in another Microsoft cloud while signed in to their account in their home tenant – no tenant switching required. When the meeting starts, the host validates the identities of the participants. You can rest assured that meeting participants don’t have access to other data from the hosting tenant.
Find out more: Meet with people in other Microsoft 365 cloud environments
Video clip messages enhancements
You could already record and send video clip messages in one-on-one and group chats. Now, you can also blur your background, record your screen, and record audio-only clips.
Find out more: Record a video or audio clip in Microsoft Teams
On-demand webinar recording
Once a webinar ends, organizers can publish the video recording and automatically send an email to attendees with a link to watch the video on-demand. The published video will be hosted on the online event page. A recording can be published from the recordings section within the webinar setup and management experience.
Find out more: Manage webinar recordings in Microsoft Teams
Teams Phone Shared Calling
Shared calling allows admins to easily enable groups of users to make and receive PSTN calls using a shared phone number and calling plan. Users enabled for shared calling will be equipped with the full set of Teams Phone features and experiences. This new Teams Phone feature provides an alternative way to enable calling for users that connect with external contacts less frequently. Shared calling is available to users with a Teams Phone license through either E5 or Teams Phone Standard.
Find out more: Plan for Shared Calling
Teams Phone Mobile now available in Denmark and UK
Teams Phone Mobile enables organizations to integrate mobile calling with Teams for flexible, productive, and secure mobile communications. Teams Phone Mobile is now available in Denmark through Telia and in the United Kingdom through BT.
Find out more: Microsoft Teams Phone Mobile
Remove Teams call and meetings details from mobile device call logs
You can now choose if they want to keep or remove their Teams call and meetings history details in the call log of their iOS device. You can set their preference in Calling settings in the Teams mobile app.
Find out more: First things to know about calls in Microsoft Teams
Teams management
These features are currently available in the Teams admin center, or for IT administrators:
- Configuration of hotline phones via the Teams Admin Center – Administrators can now configure hotlines for Teams certified phone devices through the configuration profile on Teams Admin Center. Hotlines enable Teams phone devices to directly dial a pre-configured phone number or contact, such as emergency services in a manufacturing plant or help desk in your organization. Learn more about setting up Hotline phones.
- Configuration of virtual front desk via the Teams Admin Center – Administrators can now configure virtual front desk settings for Teams displays, through the configuration profile on Teams Admin Center. Virtual front desk helps you interact with and provide personal assistance to customers and colleagues who are on-site through a video call on Teams displays. Learn more about setting up Virtual Front Desk.
- Auto install approved apps – Uses intelligent signals from your users to install and surface the apps that the admin has already allowed for the tenant. An admin can enable it to help users naturally discover and use apps that are highly relevant to their needs within Microsoft Teams. Learn more about Auto install approved apps.
Education
These features currently available to Microsoft’s Education customers:
- Mark your student as Excused from an Assignment – this new functionality allows educators to mark one or more students as excused from any assignment anywhere you can currently Return or Return for Revision. This will help simplify the process of managing student assignments and ensure greater flexibility in addressing individual student needs.
- Importing your Grade and Assignment Settings – We’ve recently introduced new settings to Assignments and Grades like Grading Categories and Alternative Grading Schemes and now we’re making it easier to reuse your settings across different classes with Import Settings, which will automatically analyze your source class and replicate all relevant settings in your destination class.
- Updated Insights Reports for Alternative Grading Schemes – With the introduction of the new Grading Schemes feature, we have made corresponding updates to both the Insights Reports for Assignments and the trend reports accessible to both educators and students via the gradebook.
- OneNote Section Support – Educators can now add a whole Class Notebook section to their module instead of just individual pages. Sharing a section instead of individual pages will help save valuable space in modules and make a simpler experience for students.
- OneNote Page Previews – In both Classwork and Assignments, users will now see a preview of a OneNote page before adding, ensuring that teachers are sharing the right content with their students.
- New student homepage in Reflect – We are excited to introduce a new homepage for students in Reflect where students can respond to check-ins, explore and reflect on their mood trends over time, and take a brain break with our curated collection of short, inclusive activities designed to promote mental fitness, refresh the mind, and refocus.
- Improved experience for Staff Team – We’ve enhanced the Reflect experience for your Staff team, providing greater control over privacy settings when checking in with your colleagues. With Reflect in the Staff team, you can take the temperature of your school ecosystem and ensure that educators’ own needs are being met so they can invest the best of themselves in teaching.
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):
- Microsoft Teams Admin Center: Manage apps, App details pages, and Custom app management for GCCH & DoD – Teams Admin Center is adding Manage apps and App details pages to GCCH and DoD. Admins can get a list of all apps present for their tenant from the Manage apps page, review app details, allow and block apps, as well as upload and update custom apps from Teams Admin Center.
- Certified Teams Phone device release for DoD – The first certified Teams phone device release is now available to DoD customers. Administrators can remotely manage the entire lifecycle of Poly CCX 500 phones directly from Teams Admin Center. DoD roll out for other JITC certified Teams phone device models is in progress.
Frontline workers/ Vertical solutions
These features currently available to Microsoft’s frontline worker customers and vertical solutions:
- Format text in tasks in Teams – Rich text notes are now available for Planner tasks in Teams. You can paste formatted content into the notes field, and use common keyboard shortcuts for formatting, like CTRL+B to make text bold. As part of this update, formatted notes are now also enabled in task publishing for frontline organizations. When authoring a task, you can apply rich text formatting using a toolbar that appears in the task notes field. Formatting includes styling like bold, italic, underlined text, text color, and font size. Bulleted lists, rich text links, indentation, and tables are also available.
- SOTI and VMware Workspace ONE support shared device mode on Android – Organizations using SOTI and VMware Workspace ONE as their third-party unified endpoint management solutions for Android can also enroll devices in Microsoft Entra ID with shared device mode. Customers will be able to use the applicable Microsoft 365 Android apps that support shared device mode.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: New custom connector enhancements, default environment routing, auto-claim for Power Apps, mobile offline canvas apps, Modern controls updates in canvas apps, Power Fx 1.0
Public preview of new custom connector enhancements
The Power Apps team have announced the public preview of two new custom connector features:
- Service principal authentication – This feature enables you to authenticate as a service principal rather than using a user account. The advantage of this approach is that service principals do not rely on short-lived tokens that expire, making them an excellent choice for scenarios where you require continuous and uninterrupted access for automated processes, such as those within a Power Automate Flow.
- Environment variables in policies – Environment variables play a vital role in facilitating application lifecycle management (ALM) scenarios, particularly when migrating an application or Flow between Power Platform environments. Now, Microsoft have expanded the scope of environment variables to include custom connector policies as well.
Find out more: Public preview of new custom connector enhancements
Default Environment Routing (preview)
Microsoft have announced the public preview of Default Environment Routing, a new Managed Environments feature that allows Power Platform admins to automatically direct new makers into their own personal developer environment when they visit make.powerapps.com for the first time. Default environment routing offers new makers a personal, safe space to build with Microsoft Dataverse, without the fear of others accessing their apps or data.
Find out more: Default environment routing (preview)
Introducing auto-claim for Power Apps licenses
Microsoft have introduced the public preview of auto-claim for Power Apps licenses, a feature that empowers administrators to effortlessly set up policies within the Microsoft 365 admin center. These policies enable automatic license assignments to unlicensed users when they engage with Power Apps that require licensing.
This capability extends to Power Apps per user licenses, offering administrators the opportunity to establish auto-claim policies, much like they do for other Microsoft licenses. Once configured, this policy proactively addresses licensing needs for individual Power Apps users within the tenant.
Find out more: Manage auto-claim policies in the Microsoft 365 admin center
Mobile offline for canvas apps
Microsoft have announced the Public preview of mobile offline for canvas apps on iOS, Android and Windows devices. With this preview, you can make Dataverse data available offline in your app with the flip of a switch. Just build your app with normal Power Fx formulas and the offline feature handles all the complexity for you.
Find out more: Mobile offline for canvas apps (preview)
Modern controls updates in canvas apps
Below are the August updates for modern controls already released or currently in deployment:
- Table – The first iteration of a new responsive Table control is now available for makers. After connecting your Table to data and selecting the columns you want to see, the Table will show your data in a tabular or list format, depending on the width of the control.
- Text – Ability to highlight text in the text control which allows for an unblocked copy and paste on the text control. Plus the auto height for the text control is now available in the properties panel.
- Date picker – New date format properties – Short, Long Abbreviated and Year Month, which are more accommodative of standard date properties across regions. New properties to customize date picker like StartDay, EndYear, StartofWeek, & more to make it more usable for end users.
Find out more: August 2023 updates for modernization and theming in Power Apps
Power Fx 1.0
Microsoft has announced the general availability of open-source Power Fx 1.0. “1.0” means that the language definition is now stable and breaking changes will be managed and communicated. It is now ready for you to integrate in your production work loads. Over the next several months, Microsoft will be updating to 1.0 in order to match the rest of the Power Platform.
Find out more: Leverage Power Fx 1.0
Power Automate
In Power Automate: Power Automate Desktop, Automate work in Excel Online, Power Automate plugin for ChatGPT, navigate easier across environments
Power Automate desktop update – September 2023
The September 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.36) has been released, you can find out more about the new features and updates below:
- More SharePoint connector actions are now available – More operations for the SharePoint connector, which come with dynamic inputs and outputs, are now available out of the box as native actions for desktop flows.
- A new work queue action is now available (in preview) – The action Requeue item and add delay has also been introduced in preview under the Work queues group of actions, to enable the respective functionality out of the box in desktop flows.
- Actions from three new cloud connectors have now been introduced – Microsoft Forms, OneDrive and RSS are the latest connectors that come down to Power Automate for desktop, with multiple operations now being available out of the box as native actions for desktop flows.
Find out more: September 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop
Automate work button in Excel Online
The new “Automate Work” button in Excel Online, powered by Power Automate, makes it simpler to automate tasks and run processes efficiently from anywhere. With this feature, you can access pre-built templates and easily create workflows within Excel Online. This button replaces the previous “Automate a Task” button, which allowed users to choose Office Scripts templates and then go to the Power Automate portal to build a flow.
Find out more: Maximize your productivity in Excel with Power Automate
Introducing the Power Automate plugin for ChatGPT
Microsoft have announced a preview of a dedicated plugin for ChatGPT that lets users leverage the automation capabilities of Power Automate, directly from the ChatGPT experience. Power Automate plugin for ChatGPT enables users to create, list and run flows from ChatGPT. It leverages Power Automate’s natural language to flow authoring experience to help users create flows directly from ChatGPT. In addition, we’re excited to announce the brand new “Skills Connector” and “Run a flow from Copilot trigger” that lets you discover and invoke flows from the ChatGPT interface.
Find out more: Introducing the Power Automate plugin for ChatGPT
Power BI
In Power BI: Power BI desktop feature summary, Power BI Report Server Feature Summary, On-premises data gateway release, enhanced admin portal with keyword filtering, dataset refresh history updates, calculation groups for direct lake datasets, Power BI/ OneDrive/ SharePoint report viewing on by default, shareable cloud connections for datasets/ paginated reports
Power BI September 2023 Feature Summary
The September 2023 update for Power BI desktop is out now. This months update includes editing you data models, row -level security, and a reminder to update your .NET Framework version for Desktop:
Find out more: Power BI September 2023 Feature Summary
Power BI Report Server September 2023 Feature Summary
The September 2023 release of Power BI Report Server is out now with updates including enhanced viewing, full screen for PBOX and RDL viewing and mobile layout switcher.
Find out more: Power BI Report Server September 2023 Feature Summary
On-premises data gateway September 2023 release
The September 2023 on-premises data gateway release (version 3000.190.17) is out now. This version of the gateway will ensure that the reports that you publish to the Power BI Service and refresh via the gateway will go through the same query execution logic/run-time as in the September version of Power BI Desktop.
Find out more: On-premises data gateway September 2023 release
Enhancing admin portal experience with keyword-based filtering
The Fabric Admin Portal serves as a central hub for administrators, streamlining essential tasks such as feature access management and security configurations. The newly implemented keyword-based filtering feature enhances the Fabric Admin Portal, addressing the challenge of navigating through a long list of settings.
Find out more: Enhancing Admin Portal Experience with Keyword-Based Filtering
Azure Active Directory shared device mode (preview) for Power BI Mobile apps
The Power BI mobile apps has now added preview support for Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) shared device mode. Shared device mode is a device-level configuration that enables single sign-on (SSO) and device-wide sign-out for Microsoft Power BI and all other apps on the device that support this configuration.
Find out more: Supporting Azure Active Directory shared device mode (preview) for Power BI Mobile apps
Dataset refresh history enhancements
The Power BI team have enhanced the dataset Refresh History page to help you diagnose and resolve issues more effectively. Right from the Refresh History page, and for each dataset refresh (including successful ones), you can visualize essential details about the refresh operation. This information could swiftly explain why a refresh took longer than expected, eliminating the need for further time-consuming deep-dive analysis.
Find out more: Dataset Refresh History Enhancements
Calculation groups for Direct Lake datasets
Direct Lake datasets now support calculation groups. Direct Lake datasets can directly access Lakehouse tables in Microsoft Fabric giving you amazing report performance without having to schedule a refresh or move data. And calculation groups are a powerful feature that allow you to define dynamic calculations to be applied to existing measures.
Find out more: Announcing calculation groups for Direct Lake datasets
Power BI OneDrive and SharePoint report viewing will be on by default starting in October
Earlier this year Microsoft announced they are enhancing Power BI report integrations with OneDrive and SharePoint. The public preview for quickly viewing your Power BI files directly in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint was released as an opt-in experience in May 2023. In the coming weeks the public preview to view Power BI files in OneDrive and SharePoint will be turned on by default in your tenants unless you take action before September 29th, 2023.
Find out more: Heads up: Power BI OneDrive and SharePoint report viewing will be on by default starting in October
Admin Digest
This section covers the highlights from the month’s admin digest blog:
- Enable Bing Chat Enterprise by user – For tenants with Bing Chat Enterprise, admins now have the option to enable or disable Bing Chat Enterprise to a subset of users before deploying it more broadly across your organization. To provide user-level access, follow the standard process outlined at View Microsoft 365 licenses and services with PowerShell. The service plan name for Bing Chat Enterprise is Bing_Chat_Enterprise. Learn more about changing license plans for users and groups here. As a reminder, turning off Bing Chat Enterprise reverts the user to the consumer Bing Chat experience that does not include commercial data protection when users access AI-powered chat through bing.com, Edge sidebar, or Windows Copilot.
- New features to simplify user device channel management – Next month, new capabilities will begin rolling out in the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center to help admins switch Update Channels for their user devices or Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) Groups in Inventory. Cloud Updates will offer an “Enable Cloud” button on the home dashboard which can help simplify moving devices to Current or Monthly Enterprise Channel. You’ll also be able to review current rollout information, next release dates for updates, and a progress chart displaying devices and their update status.
- New Teams Premium deployment and enablement guides – Microsoft recently launched a new deployment guide for Teams Premium (direct download link), designed to assist Teams admins and provide a comprehensive understanding of each feature included in the Teams Premium package. The deployment guide consists of two assets. The primary deck offers an extensive overview of each feature, including its value, visibility, use case(s), additional roles required, prerequisites, dependencies, and limitations.
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