Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Launched (1)
Rolling out (0)
In development (3)
🍾 LAUNCHED
New ways to add SharePoint images – Page authors can now copy and paste images on the canvas to automatically create a new image webpart. Roadmap ID: 65599
🚂 ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – January 2021
🆕 SharePoint: Page Authoring First Run Experience – The page authoring First Run experience is an interactive tutorial that walks users through the editing process the first time that they create a page or news post. Roadmap ID: 70667
🆕 SharePoint: Web Part Toolbox Updates – We are rolling out several changes to the web part toolbox; featured web parts will be replaced with a users most frequently used web parts, the categories from the large toolbox will also appear in the small toolbox, and the size of the small toolbox has increased. Roadmap ID: 70668
🆕 SharePoint: Image Lightbox – This feature lets users click on an image web part while in view mode to see a larger version of the image. Roadmap ID: 70669
Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Launched (0)
Rolling out (0)
In development (1)
🍾 LAUNCHED
N/A
🚂 ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – January 2021
SharePoint: Audience Targeting capability for Quick Links Web Part – Microsoft are adding the ability to target specific audiences per link within the Quick Links Web Part. With it, you target specific links to different audiences, helping you provide more personalized experiences on SharePoint pages. Roadmap ID: 67115
The new site performance page gives insights into the what impacts the viewing experience on a given page, as well as getting actionable feedback on things like how certain page or site assets would benefit from a content delivery network (CDN), what web parts and their usage might be impact page load times etc.
The my feed web part shows a mix of content from across Microsoft 365, based on what’s likely to be most relevant to the current user at any given time. The feed is personal. Different users will see different content.
As you work across rows and columns within Microsoft Lists, mistakes will happen and it needs to be easy to recover information. Similar to how you can remove sentences and phrases in a Word document, you will be able to do this in Lists by using the undo button. The same is true in reverse if there was something in a field previously that you want to bring back – just click the redo button.
Click Undo or Redo to revert changes or remove mistakes within Microsoft Lists.
You can now use the SharePoint tab experience to pin any page, news, list or document library as a separate tab in their Teams channel. Just go to the “+” button from any channel in Teams, select SharePoint and start pinning resources that your team needs to collaborate better.
The updated SharePoint tab experience when adding pages, lists or document libraries to a channel in Teams.
Microsoft Forms for polls in Microsoft Teams meetings
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.
Additional options for polls, surveys & checklists in Teams
There are now new templates for polls, surveys, and checklists in Teams from the OfficeDev GitHub repo. Once installed and configured by the Teams administrators, these messaging extensions provide a simple and intuitive experience for users across all platforms without the need to use 3rd party apps.
Easily create surveys to gather feedback to improve your processes.
The AI-based noise suppression analyzes your audio feed filtering out the noise and retaining only the speech signal. You can also control how much noise suppression you want, including a high setting to suppress more background noise.
Microsoft have introduced new Together mode scene selections to transport your team to a variety of settings. Choose a scene to set the tone and create a unique experience for your meeting, whether it be a smaller conference room meeting, or an all-hands meeting held in an outdoor amphitheater.
With full screen mode on Windows the meeting window fills up the whole screen, removing all other screen elements, including the title bar on the top and task bar on the bottom. On Mac OS, full screen mode maximizes the meeting window and the title bar is hidden. This helps you to reduce distractions and focus your attention.
The Meet Now icon is now available on mobile devices from the calendar tab and in the Teams channel helping you connect with your team instantly.
Once you start your meeting, you can use any messaging app on your mobile device to share the invite or add participants directly to the meeting, and anyone in the Teams channel can join without an invite.
Microsoft have improved the Teams experience on iOS devices with a new presentation mode, the ability to see more participants, and the ability to see shared content and a spotlighted participant concurrently.
Inline message translation gives all your team members a voice and facilitates global collaboration. With a simple click, people who speak different languages can fluidly communicate with one another by translating posts in channels and chat.
The new Power Apps app for Teams is now generally available. It allows you to build and deploy custom apps without leaving Teams. With the simple, embedded graphical app studio, it has never been easier to build low code apps for Teams.
The new Power Apps app for Teams can be backed by a new relational datastore – Dataverse for Teams.
New Power Automate App for Teams generally available
The new app makes it easier than ever to automate workflows within teams. With the simplified flow designer, you can easily build flows by selecting from a number of templates and simply selecting your options from drop down menus.
The new Power Automate app for Teams is now generally available.
Power Virtual Agents (PVA) for Teams generally available
Power Virtual Agents (PVA) for Teams is now generally available. Microsoft are also providing additional features including native authentication, where bots can be designed to provide information to users based upon their identity. You can now also easily make your bot available to your teammates and have admin approval to make it available for the whole organization.
Power Virtual Agents (PVA) for Teams is now generally available.
Teams apps for meetings are now generally available with nearly 20 new apps in the Teams app store, such as Asana, HireVue, Monday.com, Slido, and Teamflect, as well as familiar Microsoft apps such as Forms. Learn more. If you’re a developer, learn more about creating Teams apps for meetings.
Call Merge gives end users the capability to merge their Teams VoIP and PSTN active 1-1 calls into another 1-1 call or another group call. You can merge your calls, simply by choosing the “…” (more actions) button from the call controls and select “merge calls”.
To support the most critical conversations in the event of an outage, the new Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) allows you to place and receive PSTN calls even in the event of a WAN outage. This SBA is now available to certified Session Border Controllers (SBC) vendors, allowing SBCs to link with the Teams client in the event the client cannot reach the Microsoft Calling network.
Ericsson has completed the Session Border Controller (SBC) certification process, which ensures that their SBC supports Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams, joining the list of certified SBCs.
Microsoft Teams displays is a new category of all-in-one dedicated Teams devices that features an ambient touchscreen and a hands-free experience powered by Cortana. These devices seamlessly integrate with your PC, providing easy access to Teams chat, meetings, calling, calendar, and files.
New features rolling out to Microsoft Teams Rooms and Surface Hub
The latest app for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android, version 1.0.94.2020102101, is now available through the Teams Admin Center. New features have also begun rolling out to Surface Hub, including:
Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android:
Support for dual screens: Now you can use Teams Rooms on Android in spaces with a dual screen configuration.
New gallery views: Teams Rooms on Android now supports the 3×3, large gallery, and Together Mode gallery views.
Auto-answer for meetings: Now, Microsoft are providing a setting that allows calls to be answered automatically. This new feature can be enabled through the Admin settings.
Surface Hub:
Together mode: view meeting participants in the new Together mode, which brings everyone into a shared virtual space.
Large gallery: view up to 49 meeting participants simultaneously in full screen mode,
in the new 7×7 video grid.
Single Sign-On (SSO) for Bots
SSO authentication in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) minimizes the number of times users need to enter their login credentials by silently refreshing the authentication token. If users agree to use your app, they will not have to consent again on another device and will be signed in automatically.
Device management automatic alerting in Teams Admin Center
Device management automatic alerting provides more efficiency in identifying devices issues by triggering notifications that can be turned into an immediate correction action.
Device management automatic alerting in Teams Admin Center
Shifts schedule assistance will alert managers if conflicts occur anywhere in the schedule and they will receive conflict warnings when approving schedule change requests. This alerting saves managers time, makes shift scheduling more efficient and reduces inaccuracies that lead to employees not turning up for their shift.
Insights across classes and spotlight student activity (Education)
New capabilities in Insights helps you as an educator to understand engagement and progress of students over time and across your classes. Now, educators can see high-level trends across classes, like inactive students, active students per day, missed online classes and missed assignments.
And within a class, new spotlight cards show trending student behaviours an educator may want to take action on.
Meeting organizers and presenters can now prevent attendees from unmuting during their online class and enable specific attendees to unmute when they raise their hands. This can be helpful in class where you want to be in control of who’s speaking when.
Assignment Settings allow educators to set default due times, set preferences on what happens when a new student is added to the class, change the default location where notifications for an assignment will be posted (like an Assignments specific channel), and turn off turn-in celebrations if they’re not age-appropriate for older students.
The Parent /Guardian Weekly Email setting has also moved from the Teams Settings to Assignment Settings. (Settings changes will apply to new assignments created after the updated setting selection has been saved.)
New Assignment Settings give educators more control.
Add your favourite apps to virtual classes and courses
ow you can use some of your favorite apps before, during and after your virtual classes. Educators can incorporate Buncee and Wakelet and have students work together on content, share and discuss topics, and ask questions during class.
Discover How to Add a Buncee as a Tab in Teams Meetings, Ask Questions, and Save them in Buncee.
With full screen mode on Windows the meeting window fills up the whole screen, removing all other screen elements, including the title bar on the top and task bar on the bottom. On Mac OS, full screen mode maximizes the meeting window, and the title bar is hidden. This helps you to reduce distractions and focus your attention. GCC only in November.
You can now add new or existing OneNote Notebooks tab to your Teams channels if you’re a DoD customer. You can also go to Files or add OneNote Personal App to open your OneNote notebooks directly.
Meeting organizers and presenters in the US Government Community Cloud can now prevent attendees from unmuting during the meeting and enable specific attendees to unmute when they raise their hands.
OneDrive and SharePoint for Business: Immersive Reader support in OneDrive and SharePoint. Roadmap ID: 81954
Create shared library in OneDrive
Microsoft are updating the existing experience of creating new Shared Libraries from OneDrive on the web. The end goal being a simpler and easier way to create collaborative spaces for your shared files and folders for team members to access and collaborate on files from anywhere on any device.
Users will now be able to set familiar sharing and access controls directly in Teams with the added option to share a link with a specific private or group chat. This means only people in that chat have access to the shared content. Shared links intelligently reconcile to file name and all sharing follows the admin settings and configured policies.
The new first run experience in OneDrive now allows you to select which Windows known folders you would like to sync to OneDrive. Moving your important folders to OneDrive allows you to have the power of cloud in your most productive folders on Windows.
Known Folder Move in the first run experience in OneDrive.
Manage page permissions from Power Apps Portals Studio
The Power Apps team have recently announced a new and improved way to mange web page permissions from within the portals Studio. Now, you can do so with just a toggle to either allow anonymous access for everyone or restrict access to users in certain web roles only.
Manage page permissions from Power Apps Portals Studio.
Azure API Management connector on the Power Platform
Microsoft are introducing Azure API Management connectors as a way to quickly publish Azure API Management backed APIs to the Power Platform for easy discovery and consumption, dramatically reducing the time it takes to create apps connecting to Azure services.
Developers can leverage Microsoft Azure API Management in Dataverse for Teams, which will further amplify their pro-code component and unlock access to any Microsoft cloud hosted Service with just a few clicks.
Developers can now leverage Microsoft Azure API Management in Dataverse for Teams.
Microsoft Dataverse for Teams – generally available
The Common Data Service has been renamed Microsoft Dataverse. The low-code data platform is now generally available and comes with a suit of embedded Power Platform tools that make it easy to be apps, automate processes and build chatbots without leaving Teams.
Now in preview, horizontal and vertical container layout controls help automatically reflow and resize controls within them to enable easy, no expression responsive layouts in canvas apps. These are available in mainline and Teams authoring experiences.
New Layout containers in canvas apps make responsive apps easier.
The Power Apps team have announced the release of the rich text editor (RTE) control, which can be used for any multi-line or single-line text field across Dynamics 365.
New rich text capabilities in model-driven apps in Power Apps.
Now generally available, the new intelligent search experience in model-driven Power Apps includes a series of usability enhancements and core relevance search improvements to deliver quality results quickly. Usability improvements for things such as the search bar, suggested results, results page enhancements just to name a few.
Suggested results, as you type are just one of several improvements made to the search experience in model-driven Power Apps.
Power Automate Robotic Process Automation (RPA) UI flows Analytics
The Power Automate team have announced there are now two different options to monitor the analytics for RPA UI flows, either from the Power Platform Admin Center or using the Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit.
Usage reports show you which UI flows are being used most so you can get a good idea about your automation inventory.
New to ISV Studio is a feature which allows SVs to view failures their customers encounter when installing an app via AppSource. Once logged into ISV Studio, a user can see a summary of the recent failures for all their apps on the home page.
AI Builder form processing models train using documents with different layouts
, You can now create a unique form processing model that will extract the same information from up to 100 different document layouts in AI Builder. To get started, just create a new Form Processing model and gather at least five sample forms for each layout that you want to process.
Upload at least five sample forms to get started with the form processing models in AI Builder.
AI Builder credit consumption reporting lets you choose the date of a report and download an Excel file showing the consumption in your tenant by environment, during the 30 days preceding the selected target date.
Download consumption reports in the Power Platform Admin Center.
The Power BI team have announced new admin settings which provide more granular control over export options in Power BI, and extend export settings to control also export from paginated reports.
Download report – Controls downloading .pbix files and paginated reports.
The November update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.66.8) is out now. Included in this month’s release are updates to the Hive LLAP Connector on Gateway, November’s mashup engine plus lots more.
Another month, another jam packed Power BI feature summary! This month’s update includes a preview of the new Field List and Model View as well as the Visual Zoom Slider.
Now in preview, anomaly detection helps you enhance your line charts by automatically detecting anomalies in your time series data. It also provides explanations for the anomalies to help with root cause analysis.
Power BI Premium per user public preview now available
Now, Power BI users have access to all the Power BI Premium capabilities, on a per user basis, for the entire public preview period for free. The public preview of Power BI Premium per user has been enabled in all public tenants that requested priority access, and will be rolling out to all tenants worldwide throughout the month of November.
Several updates have been released for paginated reports in Power BI for November 2020 including new paginated reports samples, in-product parameter updates and more.
When users share Word files, the sharing e-mail will include information about the estimated time it will take a user to read the document as well as a list of the key points in the document. People will now see a short three-bullet point summary of the document, helping them quickly determine if the file is relevant to them.
Web capture in Microsoft Edge lets you easily capture and mark up web content, and then save or share it—simply drag a box to select what you want to capture even if you need to scroll. Another improvement to Edge is the a new “My Feed” section within the enterprise new tab page.
Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Launched (3)
Rolling out (1)
In development (2)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Active time spent reports on SharePoint Site Usage – You can now get reports with aggregated data on the amount of time that users are spending on your intranet sites. Roadmap ID: 57159
SharePoint: Site Performance Page for Site Owners and Editors – The Site Performance Page will display results from the Page Diagnostics for SharePoint tool and the information will be available within SharePoint from site settings. Roadmap ID: 66196
Microsoft Lists: ‘Quick Edit’ is becoming “Edit in grid view” – When you want to bulk edit lists items in a list, you would click the ‘Quick edit’ button in the top action bar. We are renaming this button to read. “Edit in grid view”. Roadmap ID: 67136
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Lists: comments – Add a comment on a list or list items, including @mention capabilities to draw a person’s attention. Roadmap ID: 64169
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – January 2021
SharePoint: Portal Launch Scheduler in SharePoint PowerShell – The Portal Launch wizard available via SharePoint PowerShell is designed to configure the deployment waves when launching a new site. Roadmap ID: 66162
Release – March 2021
SharePoint: Collapsible sections on modern pages – You’ll have the ability to show page sections in an accordion view (collapsed or expanded) or as tabs. The accordion view will be collapsed by default, but can be set to show expanded. Roadmap ID: 67147
This post details a potential issue observed with Teams user status, some considerations and how it the issue was resolved.
The situation
I recently had several instances of users Teams status either being slow to update, or in some cases showing as ‘offline’ or unavailable. There is an amount of information if you search for it online, but I couldn’t find a definitive answer on how to resolve it through my googling.
I dealt with one user for whom this issue was particularly persistent, their status was stuck as ‘offline’ 100% of the time in Teams, but also Teams showed all their colleagues status as ‘offline’ too.
The image above is an example of how a users status was set to ‘offline’, whilst team mates in their chat were showing as ‘offline also, and active participants in a chat also showing as ‘offline’.
Things to try
So I wrote a post last year, in which I covered many of the troubleshooting steps involved in getting set up with the desktop app. However I’ll summarise what I tried to do (and failed), before finally resolving the issue.
#1 Reset status
/available in the search bar within the Teams app, or;
Press your photo icon > click on your status > reset status
Try resetting your Teams status to set it back to available.
In my users case this did absolutely nothing, didn’t change the status within the Teams app whatsoever.
#2 Logging in using web browser
In my experience Microsoft generally advise logging in via the browser to either a) clear whatever cache is causing the status to get stuck, or b) verify it is a local issue and not one with the Teams app. Just ask the user to login to teams.microsoft.com and verify if their status changes.
In my case, the users status updated to available whilst in the browser, but when closing it reverted back to ‘offline’.
#3 Clearing the Teams cache
As documented here, clearing the Teams cache fixes many of the issues users have with the desktop app, but in my case this didn’t work either.
What worked for me
They always say the simplest solution is the best right? Another saying I like is why use a hammer when a screwdriver will do…well in this case the hammer was needed!
After trying all of the above, what fixed the issue was to uninstall and re-install the Teams desktop app…that was it!
Before uninstalling/ re-installing, I got the user to try logging into Teams desktop on a different machine, which low-and-behold worked. After a fresh version of Teams was installed on the users machine, all the status problems disappeared, so if anyone else has the same problem – try uninstalling & re-installing the Teams app!
Don’t forget the new Offline Presence status!
During my investigations I also remembered reading this from the Microsoft roadmap regarding a new offline presence status coming to Teams this month. So if you do find yourself in a similar situation as me, be sure to include this in your thinking too…
Beginning on February 8th, 2021, we are turning on Guest access in Microsoft Teams by default for any customers who have not configured this setting. This will bring Teams Guest capability into alignment with the rest of the suite, where the setting is already on by default.
Access to Settings, Zoom Controls, Keyboard Shortcuts, About, and Check for Updates is moving from the Me Menu to a new menu in the title bar. The Me Menu will be focused on account management, where users can switch to another account or tenant through the first level of the Me Menu.
SharePoint page authors will soon need to supply required information before a page or news post can be published if one or more required properties have been set up in the pages library
Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Launched (3)
Rolling out (4)
In development (25)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Set Default Page Templates – This feature will allow site owners to set a page template as the default when a user creates a new page or news post on the site. Roadmap ID: 64529
SharePoint: General Availability of SharePoint Syntex – Microsoft SharePoint Syntex uses advanced AI and machine teaching to amplify human expertise, automate content processing, and transform content into knowledge. SharePoint Syntex will be available as a user-based add-on for Microsoft 365 plans and will be generally available to Microsoft 365 commercial customers on October 1, 2020. Roadmap ID: 67134
SharePoint: My Feed web part – Make your page or site in SharePoint more dynamic and relevant to individual users by adding the My feed web part. The My feed web part will show a mix of content from across Microsoft 365, based on what’s likely to be most relevant to the current user at any given time. Roadmap ID: 67148
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Updates to site header options – You will be able to choose to show/ hide the site title and a choice between a square site logo thumbnail or a non-square site logo. Roadmap ID: 63776
Active time spent reports on SharePoint Site Usage – You can now get reports with aggregated data on the amount of time that users are spending on your intranet sites. Roadmap ID: 57159
Improved page/ news publishing experience – A new pre-publish panel that gives authors an overview of key information about their pages or news posts. Roadmap ID: 63257
SharePoint: SharePoint spaces General Availability – SharePoint spaces moves from Public Preview to General Availability. Roadmap ID: 67135
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – December 2020
Microsoft Lists: forms customization – Adjust what information shows on the out-of-box forms and include custom header and footer imagery and information. Roadmap ID: 64165
Microsoft Lists: sticky first column – As you scroll left and right, the first column of your list remains in place; similar to the sticky header that is already a part of Lists. Roadmap ID: 64168
Microsoft Lists: new ‘Integrate’ drop-down menu – Introduction of a new top-level menu item: ‘Integrate.’ To start, existing command buttons for Power Apps and Power Automate will move into Integrate – as they are integrated technologies and experiences. Roadmap ID: 64869
SharePoint: Auto-News Digest – SharePoint Auto-News Digest sends automated email to employees in you company about the latest News posts that they have not yet read. Roadmap ID: 64685
Microsoft Lists: rules – Create simple if/then rules based on changes to list information to set reminders and send notifications. Roadmap ID: 64163
Configure header, footer and body of a form for lists/ libraries – This feature allows users in SharePoint lists and libraries to add a custom header and a footer to the associated form. Roadmap ID: 63519
Microsoft Lists and SharePoint document libraries: Gallery view – Configure your lists and library items using a dynamic Gallery view – choosing how your documents and list items appear. Roadmap ID: 57304
Microsoft Lists: comments – Add a comment on a list or list items, including @mention capabilities to draw a person’s attention. Roadmap ID: 64169
New SharePoint admin center home page – Updates to the SharePoint admin center to align it to the Microsoft admin center, including more tiles and graphs. Roadmap ID: 57318
SharePoint Online search query volume limits when using app-only authentication – When this change is implemented, queries using the Site.Read.All permissions level or greater will be throttled at 25 QPS. The search query will return with a 429 response and you can simply retry the query. Roadmap ID: 64963
SharePoint: Share a page to Yammer – The ability to share a modern SharePoint Online (SPO) page to a Yammer community will be available in the page actions bar. Roadmap ID: 66183
SharePoint: Site Performance Page for Site Owners and Editors – The Site Performance Page will display results from the Page Diagnostics for SharePoint tool and the information will be available within SharePoint from site settings. Roadmap ID: 66196
New ways to add SharePoint images – Page authors can now copy and paste images on the canvas to automatically create a new image webpart. Roadmap ID: 65599
New ways to add SharePoint images – Page authors can now copy and paste images on the canvas to automatically create a new image webpart. Roadmap ID: 65599
Microsoft Lists: Updated Person column experience: built on SharePoint – Items within a Person column, in and out of Quick Edit mode, will appear using the new “pill” design format when a person’s photo is displayed. Roadmap ID: 67095
SharePoint spaces: Touch device support – SharePoint spaces will enable users to interact with a space using touch interactions in addition to the mouse and keyboard based interactions currently supported. Roadmap ID: 67107
SharePoint: Text web parts automatically added to new sections in modern pages – Microsoft are now adding text web parts automatically for you when you add new sections to a modern page. Roadmap ID: 67146
SharePoint: Collapsible sections on modern pages – You’ll have the ability to show page sections in an accordion view (collapsed or expanded) or as tabs. The accordion view will be collapsed by default, but can be set to show expanded. Roadmap ID: 67147
SharePoint: new experience to add content types to lists and libraries – 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. Roadmap ID: 67164
Microsoft Lists: column settings in Grid view – The capabilities when in Lists “Grid” view (previously Quick Edit) will now allow people to pin a column to the filter’s pane, format the column, show/hide columns, and hide their column(s). Roadmap ID: 68714
Microsoft Lists: Support for thousands separator in Number column – When Lists owners and members leverage the Number column, they can now choose if the comma should appear or not. Roadmap ID: 68716
Microsoft Lists: undo / redo – As you work across rows and columns within Microsoft Lists, mistakes will happen and it needs to be easy to recover information. Similar to how you can remove sentences and phrases in a Word document, you will be able to do this in Lists by using the undo button. The same is true in reverse with the redo button. Roadmap ID: 68810
SharePoint: Migration Manager: Teams and OneDrive destinations in Migration Manager – SharePoint Migration Manager now lets you select a Teams channel or a OneDrive username when setting your migration destination. Roadmap ID: 68884
Microsoft Teams: Improvements to the “Create a Microsoft Team from SharePoint” experience – Enhance existing Microsoft 365 Groups with Teams functionality, directly from SharePoint team sites. Roadmap ID: 68861
Release – March 2021
👀 SharePoint: Updated Tag column for images – Image tags are automatically created and includes descriptive labels when they are uploaded into SharePoint within Microsoft 365. This improves Microsoft Search results. With the new update, people will be able to manually add or remove tags from this column using freeform text or from the managed metadata service (your company taxonomy). Roadmap ID: 68902
In this post we look at how to set up the admin consent workflow in Azure, which fixes an issue with the Samsung Email app requiring admin consent, giving users a way to request access to applications and allowing global admins the ability to grant tenant-wide consent.
I had an issue recently in my organisation where after a recent OS update, users began to report receiving a “need admin approval” message appear when attempting to access mail through the native Samsung email application.
The “Need admin approval” message that began appearing via the Samsung email app.
So the first thing I checked out was the Enterprise application in Azure Active Directory just to do a once-over of the settings there. However, there was no Samsung Email app to be found!
Fail #1 – user consent settings
So after noticing there was no Samsung email app to check the configuration of, still in Enterprise applications I went to > Consent and permissions > User consent settings.
From here I changed the user consent for applications part to Allow user consent for apps from verified publishers, and also set the five permissions classed as low impact as recommended.
Update the user consent settings to allow user consent for apps from verified publishers.
For me, this did not work.
I then spoke to Microsoft support who recommended configuring the admin consent workflow (preview), which gives end users a way to request access to applications that require admin consent.
Configure the admin consent workflow
There is full documentation from Microsoft here on how to configure the admin consent workflow, but I’ll include the steps I took to enable it below:
Navigate to Azure Active Directory. You need to be a global administrator to complete these steps
Open Enterprise applications > under Manage, select User settings
Under Admin consent requests (Preview), set Users can request admin consent to apps they are unable to consent to to Yes
Set Users can request admin consent to apps they are unable to consent to to Yes under Admin consent requests (preview).
Now you need to set the users who are to review the admin consent requests(these need to also have the global administrator, cloud application administrator, and application administrator roles)
Enable or disable email notifications to the reviewers when a request is made
Enable or disable reminder email notifications to the reviewers when a request is about to expire
Specify how long requests stay valid
Press Save
Changes can take up to an hour to take effect – for me it took closer to 45 minutes. After this time, I tested the Samsung email app again and the message changed to requiring approval:
This then notifies the user that their request has been sent, and an email is sent to the request administrator(s). Then in Enterprise Applications, under Activity if you click on Admin consent requests (Preview) you will see Samsung Email listed, as well as being able to see who requested it on the Requested by tab.
From here, I just pressed Approve, which naturally approvedthe request,. Once approved, the request is cleared from the admin consent requests list.
Granting tenant-wide admin consent to an application
Microsoft documentation here talks about needing to grant admin consent for the applications to be available tenant-wide. It’s really easy to do as in my example, the Samsung Email app is now listed under Enterprise Applications, so all I needed to do was:
Go back to Enterprise applications
Select the Samsung Email application
Select Permissions and then click Grant admin consent
Agree with the permissions the application requires and grant consent
Samsung Email application appearing in Enterprise applications.Grant tenant-wide admin consent for the Samsung Email application.
The Yammer Embed feed, which is currently part of classic Yammer, is being upgraded to the new Yammer. Use an Embed to display a single My feed, Group feed, Topic feed, User feed, or Open Graph object feed on a web page.
Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Launched (0)
Rolling out (0)
In development (2)
🍾 LAUNCHED
N/A
🚂 ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – November 2020
SharePoint: Migration Manager: Teams and OneDrive destinations in Migration Manager – SharePoint Migration Manager now lets you select a Teams channel or a OneDrive username when setting your migration destination. Roadmap ID: 68884
👀 Configure header, footer and body of a form for lists/ libraries – This feature allows users in SharePoint lists and libraries to add a custom header and a footer to the associated form. Roadmap ID: 63519
Currently, 1:1 Call recording is controlled by the -CsTeamsMeetingPolicy / AllowCloudRecording attribute. Microsoft are now changing it so that 1:1 Call recording can be controlled by its own policy.
Microsoft Lists: ready- made templates – Create a new list from ready-made templates that accelerate list creation, structure, forms and flows. There will be 8 templates at initial launch. Roadmap ID: 64166
Microsoft Lists: home page – The Microsoft Lists home page is your home for all your lists across Microsoft 365. Roadmap ID: 64160
🚂 ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – November 2020
👀 SharePoint: Migration Manager: Teams and OneDrive destinations in Migration Manager – SharePoint Migration Manager now lets you select a Teams channel or a OneDrive username when setting your migration destination. Roadmap ID: 68884
Release – December 2020
Updates to site header options – You will be able to choose to show/ hide the site title and a choice between a square site logo thumbnail or a non-square site logo. Roadmap ID: 63776
SharePoint and Teams: updated Add a Team to a site wizard – Choose the SharePoint content that you want to add as tabs in Teams when you first connect them via the “Add a Team” flow from your site. Roadmap ID: 46990
This post is more a re-telling of a series of events I observed recently, which at first led me to believe I was going mad until I found a conclusion which I was somewhat happy with!
In my organisation we have created an org-wide Team in which the General channel is moderated, as described in my post on how to restrict posts in org-wide teams. Owners of the org-wide Team are also limited to global admins and members of the internal communications team, so only a very small number of people are able to post messages within the Team.
So imagine my surprise when one evening when a new message had been posted in the general channel by a standard user!
Example of the ‘Scheduled a meeting’ message as appeared within moderated channel in org-wide Team.
Just delete the post…not so fast
Naturally the internal communications team were asking questions as to how this happened also. Whilst I was working that part out they also wanted to delete the post from the org-wide team’s general channel. Easy enough if you’re the Teams Owner and a Teams Admin to boot right? Wrong!
The ability for Teams Owners to delete sent messages is switched off by default and is a relatively recent feature. If you want to enable Teams Owners to be able to delete sent messages you will need to be a Teams Admin and do the following:
Teams admin center > Messaging policies
Either create a new or configure the org-wide default policy
Enable Teams Owners to be able to delete sent messages
Wait up to 24 hours
Turn on ‘owners can delete sent messages’ via messaging policies in the Teams Admin Center.
However, even if you do this any replies to the message post won’t be deleted as part of this, nor will the message post completely disappear. I’ve wrote a separate post about deleting message posts and chats in Teams that goes into much more detail about this plus more.
At first I believed that the user in question must have had some sort of elevated permissions for the org-wide team that enabled them to post. After reviewing the post above and testing differences between what org-wide team owners and members can see I noticed that the Meet Now and Schedule a Meeting buttons were only available to Team Owners.
The ‘Meet’ and ‘schedule meeting’ option becomes available for Teams Owners in org-wide Teams.
After reviewing the audit logs for the user, checking the owners of the org-wide team through the Teams Admin center and Azure AD groups it became clear that wasn’t the issue.
Trying to schedule a meeting with the org-wide team email address
Other ideas I had around what might be the cause of this was that maybe the user had the email address for either the Team or the group behind and had managed to schedule a meeting and include that address. Firstly, if you’re a member and you try to “get email address” for the channel you get an error message.
Also, I noted that you are unable to search the global address list in Outlook for the org-wide team email address, nor are you able to search Groups within Outlook and find it.
Add the org-wide team’s email address as a shared mailbox
One final area I looked into was based on the audit events I’d seen earlier. What was interesting was there was an activity event in the logs called “Sent message using Send On Behalf permissions”, which led me to test adding the org-wide team’s email address as a shared mailbox to see if that might be it.
Audit log details including the ‘Sent message using Send On Behalf Permissions message’.
Again, only an owner is able to do this, but interestingly enough as an owner I was able to see the emails surrounding the scheduled meeting in the mailbox for the org-wide team.
Conclusion/ Resolution
After ruling out all of the above lines of enquiry we did notice within the Teams app, under + New Meeting there is an ability to create a live event.
When you create your live event and press next, you get a “live event permissions” screen. The default is set to org-wide, which is the exact same wording as the org-wide team we’ve set up. I haven’t tested this myself as of yet, but based on the audit information I was able to get around the event that was created, I think there is a high probability that this is how the meeting was created and posted to the org-wide team.
Creating a live event, by default sets the permissions to Org-wide.
As another aside, if you select people and groups, you are able to add the org-wide team as a participant in the meeting, which may also render the same results.
You can select the Org-wide Teams 365 Group from under People and Groups.
So, I want to throw this out to you, loyal reader! Should anyone be in this situation, or be able to test my theory please comment below and let me know what you find.
Q&A – other org-wide team issues
So since I wrote this post (only a week ago!) I’ve had a couple of new issues crop up related to org-wide teams that I wanted to document. So here goes:
#1 Can members can reply to posts in moderated channels?
So with the scenario described above, it was my belief that the org-wide team was pretty much locked down for comments, minus the ability for users to react to posts.
Recently I’d suggested to our communications team to start @ing the org-wide team in posts to send out notifications to all users, which proved successful as engagement on posts where we did this increased massively.
However, in doing this we also quickly noticed that all members of the org-wide have the ability to reply to posts in moderated channels! Needless to say this came as a bit of a surprise, especially since we had been using the org-wide team since April with zero comments on any post until now!
There are no settings within the Member permissions that control whether users can reply to posts or not either, so it cant be controlled at the team level.
Answer: encourage owners who author posts to set who can reply to their posts
So the way I tackled this problem was to encourage the org-wide team owners to consider who they want to be able to reply when they create new posts using the reply settings. You have two choices in the post formatting settings:
Everyone can reply
You and moderators can reply
#2 Can members can upload files in an org-wide team?
Short answer to this is again, yes. As members of the org-wide team users have the ability to upload files in the General channel that are visible to everyone in your organisation.
So how can you stop it?
Answer: Change the SharePoint site permissions
The answer to this for me was an easy one, change the permissions so that all members only have read permissions to the files tab. As everything files in Teams is ultimately SharePoint so for me it was a simple permissions change that did the trick.
There are two ways you can go about changing the permissions in this scenario:
Move the users out of the Members SharePoint group with edit permissions, into a Visitors group with read
Break inheritance on the General folder within the Shared Documents library, add all users to the Visitors group and remove the Members group
In essence, they both do the same thing but I tested both approaches and either work – I chose the first option as I don’t like to break folder inheritance if I can avoid it.
To change the SharePoint site permissions behind a Team, follow these steps:
Open your Team > select the relevant channel (i.e. General)
Press the Files tab > Open in SharePoint
In the SharePoint site > press the cog icon
Site permissions > Advanced site permissions
Open the Members group > make a note & select the objects listed in there (for me I had a members group again and everyone except external users)
Actions > remove users from group
Go back to the main permissions page. TIP: just add /_layouts/15/user.aspx after the name of your Team
Open the Visitors group
Pres New> enter the names of the groups that were previously in the Members group
Press Show Options > untick send an email invitation
Press Share
That’s it! Now when users navigate to the files tab of any channel within your org-wide Team they will no longer have the upload button visible.
SharePoint Stuff 