Microsoft 365 update for June 2019

A little later than usual, but never the less here’s the Microsoft Monthly Update for June 2019…

Better late than never 😉 here’s a round-up of all the latest news, enhancements and feature updates for June 2019…

In this month’s update:

SharePoint

Organizational assets

Organization assets lets you register one or more document libraries via PowerShell as a special source for images, such as photos and logos, across all sites. The Organization assets libraries are available when you add images to page headers, galleries, or other web parts.

Organization assets in SharePoint
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SharePoint hub sites limit raised to 2000

A hub site brings together numerous other sites, and now the number of hub sites you can create in your tenant has increased. As announced at SPC19, the number of SharePoint hubs that you can create per tenant will go up from 100 to 2000.

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Adobe Document Cloud integration

Adobe Document Cloud also now supports single sign-on with Azure Active Directory, dramatically the simplifying log-in process. Now you’ll be able to work with PDF files on the web and in the context of SharePoint & OneDrive, with features like inline commenting and drawing.

Inline commenting and drawing will now work in the context of SharePoint
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Easily tell if a SharePoint document library folder is connected to Teams channel

It’s now easier to tell which folders within your library have an associated Teams channel. Chat capability associated to it is visible and actionable right from within the SharePoint user interface. SharePoint helps users understand that actions like delete or renaming a channel-connected folder need to happen through the Teams app.

Easily tell if a document library in SharePoint is connected to Teams
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Teams

Teams desktop rolling out toO365 ProPlus & Microsoft/Office 365 Business/Business Premium

Starting in July 2019, if you’re using Monthly Channel, then Teams will be added to existing installations of Office 365 ProPlus (and Office 365 Business) on devices running Windows when you update your existing installation to the latest version.

If Teams is already installed in a user’s machine, they are not impacted by this change.

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Information barriers

Information barriers will help avoid conflicts of interest within your organization. This can help limit the disclosure of information by controlling communication between the holders of information and colleagues representing different interests.

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Team channel announcements

You can now post an “announcement” complete with a headline and background image, to ensure that your post catches your readers’ eye.

Annoucements in Teams
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Group chats now accomodate up to 100 users

Do you need to have an ad-hoc discussion with a large number of people? Group chats can now accommodate up to 100 users.

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Discover Private Teams more easily

Admins and team owners can now control whether they want to allow private teams to be discovered by Teams users. When a private team is discoverable, it shows up in search results and is included in suggestions in the team gallery alongside public teams.

Discover private teams
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Aid automation with Azure Pipelines

Launched in June, Microsoft releasued the Teams app for Azure pipelines. Azure pipelines allows you to automate customer builds and deployments, so you can spend less time with the nuts and bolts and more time being creative.

Azure Pipelines for Teams
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Meeting Options in Teams

You now have even more control over the design of your meetings in Teams! Meeting organizer’s can now control the lobby setting of any scheduled meeting. Settings can be found in the “Meeting options” link from the “Meetings” tab.

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Single toolbar for controls in Meetings and Calling

Teams session controls will now be unified into one toolbar at the bottom of the screen. This will affect Windows, Mac, and web clients. There is no impact for mobile or Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) devices.

While joining Teams Meetings on the Chrome browser, you can now share your own video and receive video of others.

Single toolbar in Meetings and Calling
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OneDrive

Password protected anyone sharing links

Now in OneDrive, you are able to set custom passwords while sharing a file or folder with anyone links to their colleagues within or outside their organization.

You can share the password separately with your intended recipients and they will be required to enter the password in order to access the shared content. If they accidentally forward or re-share the shared link, anyone without the password will not be able to gain access.

Password protected anyone sharing links in OneDrive
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External sharing with B2B integration (Preview)

The Azure Active Directory Business to Business (B2B) platform enables external users to exist in your Azure AD directory as “Guests” and can be managed in the way you are already familiar with.

External sharing with B2B integration joins external sharing in SharePoint and OneDrive with Azure AD B2B. It includes external sharing of files, folders, list items, document libraries and sites. The integration also expands the one-time passcode authentication experience to SharePoint sites and lists when sharing with external recipients who don’t already have a work, school or a Microsoft account (MSA).

With the integration turned on, when a user shares an item in SharePoint or OneDrive with an external user, a “Guest” account is immediately created for that external user (if one does not already exist). As a result, any sign-in or conditional access policies in place in your organization will take effect on those external users as well.

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OneDrive sync client B2B Sync – sync content shared internally or externally

Mirosoft are adding capabilities to the OneDrive sync client that lets users sync libraries or folders that have been shared from other organizations. You can now can sync content shared not only by peers within your own organization, but also by partners outside your organization that you regularly collaborate with.

This feature works in tandem with the external sharing with B2B integration feature and requires recipients to have a “Guest” account in Azure AD to make B2B collaboration possible.

Find out more:

Microsoft Search in OneDrive

Microsoft Search is now in OneDrive. A new search box will appear at the top of the page in the OneDrive suite header and provide a consistent place to access the search functionality making it easy to discover all files and folders.

Search in OneDrive
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Inside Look for .docx file types in hover cards

There are a few new features being rolled out as part of the improved File Card experience. Now you will see a “time to read” estimate, plus the “at a glance” feature which will show key sentences from within the Word document.

Hover cards in O365
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Automatically sync your SharePoint team site shared libraries with OneDrive team site automount

This feature offers admins the ability to automatically connect and synchronize specific SharePoint team site document libraries as part of a OneDrive deployment. To help configure a team site to sync automatically, Microsoft provide a new group policy (“Configure team site libraries to sync automatically”) for admins to deploy.

NOTE: these are the document libraries within group-connected team sites that appear under the “Shared libraries” list within a person’s OneDrive user interface.

OneDrive team site automount

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Yammer Q&A

Question and answer in Yammer enables you to start a conversation in the question format from the browser or mobile app. Unique styling helps everyone identify which posts need answers. In the coming weeks, you’ll also be able to filter to see only questions and unanswered questions.

Q&A feature in Yammer
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Yammer local data residency

Yammer now offers local data residency to help organizations in the EU meet data residency requirements. This feature is available to all new Office 365 customers associated with a tenant in the EU.

Coming soon, Yammer content will also show up in eDiscovery searches, bringing advanced security and compliance capabilities to Yammer groups connected to Office 365 Groups.

Find out more:

Cloud App Security

Discover the apps and services that are running on top of your IaaS and PaaS subscriptions, whether they are running on Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud Platform. Gain visibility into those apps and services, including which users are accessing them, transactions, IP addresses, and how much traffic is being transmitted.

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Azure AD conditional access policies

Annouced in June, Azure AD Conditional Access policies help you maintain control over your Office 365 environment and how your company resources are accessed. For example, you can define a conditional access policy that evaluates sign-in connections from mobile devices to Exchange Online, and requires employees use Outlook for iOS or Android to successfully access their work email and calendar.

Azure AD conditional access policies
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Version history in Office for Web

Version History is coming to Office for the web, enabling you to see what changes have occurred and revert to an earlier version if necessary. Version History is rolling out now, starting with PowerPoint on the web.

Find out more:

Links and resources

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