Starting December 1 2020, Yammer Groups API endpoints will only support the usage of Azure Active Directory (AAD) tokens. Yammer Groups API endpoints will no longer support the usage of Yammer OAuth tokens.
In MC215678 (June 2020), we announced that Microsoft To Do would support list sharing between personal Microsoft accounts and work or school accounts. We paused the rollout to incorporate your feedback. We are pleased to announce we are moving forward with this feature.
As originally announced in MC218984 (July ’20) automated external email forwarding is a tactic attackers use to exfiltrate data out of an organization. To counter that, we are updating our outbound anti-spam policies.
28 August, 2020
MC220853
SharePoint
Launched (0)
Rolling out (0)
In development (2)
🍾 LAUNCHED
N/A
🚂 ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – December 2020
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: Portal Launch wizard 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
If you have not previously customized the messaging policy for your tenant or assigned your users a custom messaging policy, message translation will be enabled by default.
Microsoft 365 services and applications will no longer support Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11); Microsoft 365 apps and services will be unable to connect, or have a degraded feature experience, when accessed on IE 11.
Additionally, the Microsoft Edge Legacy desktop application will experience end of support; after support ends, it will not receive new security updates.
Microsoft Teams (web app) Beginning November 30, 2020.
Microsoft 365 applications and services (excluding Microsoft Teams) Beginning August 17, 2021.
Microsoft Edge Legacy desktop application March 9, 2021.
MC220490
SharePoint
Launched (4)
Rolling out (2)
In development (24)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Microsoft Lists: sharing – Share entire lists, or list items with individuals or groups with view or edit permissions and the ability to manage access. Roadmap ID: 64164
Fluent design coherence updates for SharePoint – The fluent design system will be applied to modern SharePoint which will result in some visual changes. Roadmap ID: 63777
Default site theme color is changing from blue to teal – SharePoint’s new teal theme will automatically update new and existing communication sites and team sites. Roadmap ID: 60592
Lists/ library web parts consume dynamic data – You will be able to configure list web parts to send its property values to the List Properties web part. Roadmap ID: 57307
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Cumulative analytics for Hubs in SharePoint – Hub owners can now analyze aggregate usage analytics for their SharePoint hub sites, including all associated sites. Roadmap ID: 57160
SharePoint: Caching SharePoint Online Videos on Azure Content Delivery Network to improve video playback and reliability – Videos will be streamed from the CDN closest to the user to optimize the user experience. Roadmap ID: 66065
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – August 2020
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
Microsoft Lists: Updated Choice column experience: built on SharePoint – Items within a Choice column, in and out of Quick Edit mode for both lists and libraries, will support single, multi-choice, and manual fill as you add items. Roadmap ID: 67097
Release – September 2020
👀 Information Governance: New retention engine for SPO – New retention engine for SharePoint Online, which addresses the challenges with large tenants or tenant that must process large volume of data. Will also enhance reliability and SLAs for retention. Roadmap ID: 63061
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
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
Microsoft Lists: visual updates for Quick Edit – In Quick Edit, you’ll see new grid lines, an improved on-hover experience, themed color bars on the side of list items, a “Create New Item” button and updated column header drop-downs. Roadmap ID: 64871
SharePoint lists and libraries: Sticky column in Quick Edit – As users scroll horizontally across a list in Quick Edit mode, the far-left column remains in place – improving context while viewing and editing. Roadmap ID: 64866
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
Search scoping controls with Microsoft Search – Support in Microsoft Search in SharePoint for search scoping controls in modern document libraries, lists for site, hub or organization wide. Roadmap ID: 57098
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
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
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 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 lists and libraries: Rename title column – Users will be able to rename the title field column and see the name change appear consistently in grid view, when in Quick Edit and on the associated view and edit forms. Roadmap ID: 65146
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
SharePoint: Portal Launch wizard 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
Advanced eDiscovery: Supporting modern attachments from SharePoint Online – Collect, review, analyze, and export linked content from SharePoint Online in the new user experience. Roadmap ID: 66185
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
Centralized management for hub permissions – Hub permissions enable you to centralize the management of visitor access to associated sites. Roadmap ID: 65641
Release – Decemeber 2020
Custom verticals and refiners in Microsoft Search – Add custom refiners, create new verticals for SharePoint and OneDrive, and create modern result types with modern display templates with adaptive cards for OneDrive and SharePoint content. Roadmap ID: 57054
Microsoft Lists: mobile app (iOS) built on SharePoint – You’ll be able to create new lists, edit list items and easily share with other people. The Lists app will first come to iOS and Android shortly after. Roadmap ID: 64161
Microsoft Search in classic SharePoint sites – Microsoft Search in classic SharePoint sites brings the Microsoft Search experience to classic SharePoint sites and moves the search box to the application header in Office 365. Roadmap ID: 57131
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
(this post was written using a SharePoint 2010 environment)
This post details the steps involved in delegating or reassigning a workflow task to another person as part of a workflow process.
My organisation has several approval workflows in action within our SharePoint 2010 environment, but one request I get all the time is to change who the approval has been sent to.
Approval tasks can be assigned as part of a workflow process, built via SharePoint designer or Nintex workflows. Once assigned, notification message(s) are sent to the approver and can either be approved via the Workflow Tasks section of a current item or via lazy approval if you have Nintex.
As this can be done with both regular SharePoint designer workflows and Nintex workflows, I’ll detail the steps below on how to switch the approver for both types of workflows.
Reassign a workflow task in SharePoint Designer workflows
In this example I have the following components configured:
A custom list with two columns: Title, Assigned To
A SharePoint Designer workflow that starts an approval process action on the current item and sets the approver as the person listed in Assigned To
Approval tasks are created within the workflows associated task list
An example SharePoint Designer workflow that uses the “Start Approval Process” task action on the current item and sets the approver as the person selected in the current item’s Assigned To field.
The steps below will demonstrate how to reassign an approver inside a workflow task:
Open your main list (in my example the custom list)
Either click on the status of your workflow for the current item (if column is displayed), or highlight the current item > under List Tools > Items > Press Workflows
NOTE: In some cases, the site owners or SharePoint admins may have hidden the workflow status column that gets created when you publish your workflow. If you can’t see this column, don’t worry just follow the other method described above.
If you press the Workflows button > left-click on the name of your running workflow(If you pressed the workflow status from the previous step, ignore this step)
Press the name of your running workflow to access the workflow tasks.
Under Tasks > click on the drop-down icon next to the title or your task > Press Edit Item
Press Edit Item by opening the drop-down menu next to the title of the workflow task.
A new pop-up window will open, at this point you will see the properties of the workflow task which includes:
Status – the status of the current workflow task (not started, approved, rejected)
Consolidated comments – Comments of the requester and all previous participants
Due date – the date set for workflow tasks to be completed by
Comments – allows the approver to enter any comments about why the item was approved or rejected
The workflow tasks pop-up window.
There will be four grey buttons at the bottom of the window > Press Reassign Task
Press the reassign task button.
In Reassign Task To > select the person you wish to reassign the task to and press Send
Delegate workflow tasks in Nintex workflows
In this example I have the following components configured:
A custom list with several columns, but namely: Title, Approver
Nintex Workflow 2010 version (2.3.10.0)
A Nintex workflow that uses a flexi task action to send an approval request task to the approver as the person listed in Approver column from the custom list
Approval tasks are created within the workflows associated task list
Flexi task to send approval to the person set in the current items Approver field.
The steps below will demonstrate how to delegate an approver inside a workflow task:
Open your main list (in my example the custom list)
Highlight the current item > under List Tools > Items > Press Workflows
Left-click on the name of your running workflow
Under Tasks > click on the drop-down icon next to the title or your task > Press Edit Item
Press Edit Item by opening the drop-down menu next to the title of the workflow task.
A new pop-up window will open, at this point you will see the properties of the workflow task which includes:
Outcome – the status of the approval task (approved or rejected) or delegate the task to another person
Comment – allows the approver to enter any comments about why the item was approved or rejected
Item Properties – a view of some of the list item properties for the current item associated with the workflow task
Within the workflow task, press delegate this task to change the approver.
Press delegate this task. At this point the pop-up window will change to display the following fields:
Delegate – this is used to specify the user to assign the selected task to
Comments – this is used to provide instructions or additional information to the user the task is being delegated to
To delegate to a new approver, click on the address book icon on the right to select a user from the Select People or Group dialog box
Add any additional comments in the Comments field. This text is appended to the ‘Approval Required’ notification that is sent to the delegated user.
Use the address book within the delegate field to assign the task to another approver.
Yammer will be retiring the “Account Activity” page in the Yammer Admin Center for Administrators beginning September 11, 2020. Instead we recommend using the Yammer OAuth Token.
When selecting the Microsoft 365 app launcher icon from the Dynamics 365 legacy web client, the list of apps will not appear in a drop-down pane. Instead, users will be redirected to Office.com in a new browser tab.
Updated August 13, 2020: To ensure the best possible experience for our users, we are delaying some of our deployments to reduce the amount of change flowing into the services.
Effective immediately, we have retired support for organizations to audit Sway activities via the Microsoft 365 admin center. We apologize for the delayed notice and are working to ensure we provide timely guidance in the future.
The following pages in the classic SharePoint admin center have been replaced by pages in the new SharePoint admin center and will be removed/retired: “Site Collections”, “Sharing”, “Access control”, and “Geo locations”.
N/A
MC220223
SharePoint
Launched (5)
Rolling out (1)
In development (7)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Bulk edit list items and file properties in the form – You can now select multiple items and edit their list items or documents properties all at once in the default form. Roadmap ID:64228
Open a list or library item within the view form from Quick Edit – Users will see their list and document library view forms inside of the Quick Edit experience. Roadmap ID: 64230
Create a new list item via a form in Quick Edit – Users will see the “New” button on their command bar in lists when they are in Quick Edit to create new items via the default form. Roadmap ID: 64232
Create all column types directly within Quick Edit – Replacing the legacy column creation in Quick Edit, this feature will allow you to create all column types directly from Quick Edit. Roadmap ID: 64171
SharePoint lists: New hyperlink field editor in Quick Edit – Microsoft are replacing the legacy hyperlink editor when people use SharePoint lists in Quick Edit mode. Roadmap ID: 63275
🚂 ROLLING OUT
SharePoint lists & libraries: new rich-text editor (RTE) for text fields – A newer, richer experience when a person creates a multi-line text field for a SharePoint list or library. They now will have the option to enable the rich-text editor (RTE). Roadmap ID: 63176
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – August 2020
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
Microsoft Lists: sharing – Share entire lists, or list items with individuals or groups with view or edit permissions and the ability to manage access. Roadmap ID: 64164
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
Release – September 2020
Microsoft Lists: Lists app in Microsoft Teams – Team members will be able to both create new lists and add existing ones as tabs in Teams’ channels. Roadmap ID: 64162
Release – later in 2020
Advanced eDiscovery: Supporting modern attachments from SharePoint Online – Collect, review, analyze, and export linked content from SharePoint Online in the new user experience. Roadmap ID: 66185
Release – Decemeber 2020
Expanded support to search and export items in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business Recycle Bin in Core eDiscovery & Advanced eDiscovery – The eDiscovery and SharePoint Online teams are making architectural changes that will make the Recycle Bin (both first-stage and second-stage Recycle Bins) in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business searchable and exportable by eDiscovery Managers. That means organizations can search and export items in the Recycle Bin regardless of whether a site is on hold or not. Roadmap ID: 67092
New employee onboarding hub from the SharePoint look book
The new employee onboarding hub is a template provided by the SharePoint team that aims to provide resources, support and general information to aid new starters.
It’s available from the SharePoint Look Book site and takes about 20 minutes to provision.
This optional feature allows hub site permissions to be synced to associated sites. Hub site owners can specify access by individuals, security groups, or Microsoft 365 groups.
SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) supports migrating content from SharePoint Server 2016
Now generally available, the SharePoint Migration Tool now includes support for migrations from SharePoint Server 2016. This now means that the SPMT now supports migrations from:
SharePoint Server 2016
SharePoint Server 2013
SharePoint Foundation 2013
SharePoint Server 2010
SharePoint Foundation 2010
Network and local file shares
The SharePoint Migration Tool now includes support for SharePoint Server 2016.
Microsoft have recently announced the roll out of Lists beginning in July and the new app comes with 8 pre-made templates to choose from.
Microsoft Lists began rolling out in late July.
P.S. if you don’t yet see the Lists app in your list of available M365 apps and you are on first release, open your OneDrive and replace onedrive.aspx with lists.aspx!
Includes new grid lines, an improved on-hover experience when using your mouse around the grid, themed color bars on the side of list items – including error messaging, a “Create New Item” button at the bottom of quick edit for creating new items inline, and updated column header drop-downs.
Microsoft have improved the image upload experience – including mobile camera support. This is a default column when using the new Asset manager template, and is a column type that can be added to any list or library.
You can now rename the default title column in SharePoint and the change will be reflected everywhere – in quick edit, on the associated view, and in the list form.
Much of Windows and Microsoft 365 is navigable via keyboard, and this month, SharePoint pages joined in.
Microsoft have introduced keyboard shortcuts for SharePoint pages. You can see all the available keyboard shortcuts by pressing Shift + ? when editing the page.
When in page edit mode, click Shift + ? to bring up the page keyboard shortcuts.
Office 365 Data Loss Prevention treats files as sensitive by default until fully scanned
You can now enable Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to automatically block external access to new files in SharePoint and OneDrive until they have been fully scanned by the service for sensitive information.
If the file has no sensitive content based on the DLP policy, then guests can access the file. If the policy identifies a file with sensitive content, then guests continue to be prohibited from accessing the file.
To mark new files sensitive by default, you will need to change a tenant property using PowerShell and a cmdlet.
Create and manage DLP policies on the Data loss prevention page in the Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance Center.
Microsoft have announced that the new multi-window meeting and calling experiences has started rolling out. This new experience is the foundation for not only pop-out meetings and calling, but for Together mode and Large gallery views.
New multi-window meeting and calling experiences in Teams.
A new lobby setting has launched for Teams Meetings that gives you greater control over who can enter your meeting. An “only me” option has been added to the “Who can bypass lobby?” setting.
Once enabled, only the organizer will be able to join the meeting directly. Everyone else, including people from within the same organization, will be sent to the lobby.
New lobby setting in Teams Meeting Options: “only me”.
Microsoft Teams Rooms, app version 4.5.35.0 now available
The latest Teams Rooms app is out now! Updates include:
Support for video gallery-only layouts: For meeting room configurations with a single front of room display, you can now switch between viewing the video gallery or presented content.
Raise hand: During a meeting, you can raise a virtual hand from the center of room console to let people know you want to contribute without interrupting the conversation.
Default speaker volume settings: From within the Teams Rooms settings, device administrators can now set a default volume level for in-room conferencing and system speakers.
Direct guest join for Cisco Webex meetings and devices: Now Teams Rooms and Cisco Webex meeting room devices can connect to each other’s meeting services via embedded web technologies.
Auto-enrollment and device management from Teams Admin Center: Microsoft Teams Rooms have been added to the list of devices that can be managed through the Teams Admin Center.
Microsoft have announced that direct guest join has reached general availability and is available through the latest Microsoft Teams Room app, version 4.5.35.0.
The direct guest join capability enables meeting room devices to connect to meeting services from other vendors via embedded web technologies.
New options to enable and manage Microsoft Teams Rooms devices
Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard and Teams Rooms Premium are the new tiers to manage Teams Rooms devices:
Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard: Formerly known as the Meeting Room SKU, this enables inclusive meeting room experiences across Teams Rooms, collaboration bars and Surface Hub. Standard provides the necessary licenses for Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business Online, and Intune management.
Microsoft Teams Rooms Premium: Includes all the licenses that come with Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard while providing additional value through a cloud-based remote management service.
You can now search for content in a specific channel or chat by pressing CTRL + F. Search results will only contain messages and files found in the selected chat or channel.
Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels in Teams
Sensitivity labels for Teams, SharePoint sites, and Microsoft 365 Groups is now generally available. You can now associate a sensitivity label with policies related to privacy, external user membership, and unmanaged device access.
Access and manage Visio files in Microsoft Teams with tabs
With the new Visio as a tab feature, you can create a tab from any Visio file (new or existing) in Teams with a single click. Adding a tab in Teams is now available to all Teams users.
NOTE: Editing is only available for those with a Visio Plan 1 or Plan 2 subscription.
Enhanced device management capabilities in Teams Admin Center
New device management capabilities in the Teams Admin Center make it easier to deploy and manage a fleet of devices, with improvements across device set-up, bulk management tasks, and health monitoring. And now you can manage your Microsoft Teams Room devices in the same place as your collaboration bars and IP phones.
Manage Microsoft Teams Rooms and other Teams devices using enhanced device management capabilities in Teams Admin Center.
You can now configure your applications from the same Teams Admin Center portal, without the need to jump between portals to the application store to perform the changes.
Now generally available, Advisor for Teams is a new onboarding tool that offers recommended plans and a collaboration space for the deployment team to streamline the roll out of all the Teams workloads, including messaging, meetings and calling and Skype for business upgrade workloads.
Microsoft have announced the following new capabilities to ensure that users can more easily leverage the key business apps they use every day inside of Microsoft Teams:
Custom apps Submission to Approval: You will now be able to submit Teams apps through any of these clients and trusted sources (e.g.: Visual Studio Code, Power Virtual Agents, Power Apps and more) via our App Submission Microsoft Graph API – streamlining the process of submitting apps directly to the Teams Admin Center for IT admins to review and approve.
Custom app publishing: You will be able to leverage a streamlined process to manage – review, approve and publish custom apps directly from the Teams Admin Center. An admin can view the custom apps publishing status, manifest details, and update their status from ‘submitting’ to ‘publishing’ so that end users will be able to access those apps.
Custom app publishing in the Teams admin center.
Install app to a team from Teams Admin Center: To create a customized, more productive environment for the users, you can now install an app for any team in your organization.
Add an app to a team from the Teams admin center.
Application monetization and bringing the purchase to Team Admin Center: A new third-party subscription purchase experience will enable you to view and purchase subscriptions associated with the 3rd party Teams apps.
Create, manage, and deploy Power Platform apps and chatbots
With the advent of Microsoft Dataflex – a built in relational database for Teams – makers can build, deploy, and manage these apps using Power Apps and chatbots using Power Virtual Agents to simplify and digitize their everyday work.
Create, manage & deploy chatbots from within Teams.
The new Power BI app for Teams enables you to access reports and dashboards in Teams to easily find insight in context and collaborate.
This app also helps you make data-driven decisions at scale with confidence and provides new ways to connect insight to action through sample reports, automation, and easy sharing functionality.
Single-Sign On (SSO) support for Teams tabs with Azure Active Directory
Teams tabs now support single sign-on (SSO) with Azure Active Directory for both desktop and mobile. Developers can now build their apps to sign-in their users using the same account they are using to sign into Microsoft Teams.
Single-Sign On (SSO) support for Teams tabs with Azure Active Directory.
Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Teams Toolkits for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code provides developers everything they need to jump start their Teams app development journey. From code through publish, these toolkits provide a frictionless and enjoyable experience building Teams apps.
In scenarios where a bot sends messages on behalf of a user, attributing the message to that user can help with engagement, showcase a more natural interaction flow and helps condense the card design.
Time clock provides a hybrid clock in and clock out experience so Firstline Workers can start their shift from wherever their work is, whether remote or at the job location, all with the geo-fencing capabilities.
Now, employees will be able to clock in and out of Shifts directly from web or desktop with Time clock along with the existing mobile experience.
New policy packages for Firstline Worker and Managers
Firstline Worker and Firstline Manager policy packages for Teams provide IT administrators with pre-defined policies and policy settings tailored for their entire Firstline Workforce. Policy packages simplify, centralize, and help provide consistency when managing policies for Firstline Workers and managers across your organization.
NOTE: These new policy packages will be available by default in the Admin Center and in PowerShell.
New policy packages for Firstline Worker and Managers.
Search for Shifts activities in Teams Shifts Audit Logs
Audit logs for Shifts provides IT admins a unified view and search functionality to help monitor and keep track of activities. Staying on top of employees clocking in and out and making edits to shifts is critical to ensuring smooth and compliant operations.
Beginning in July 2020, Teams meetings are now available for up to 300 attendees (up from 250), with support for up to 1,000 students coming by the end of the year.
When you want to bring in more students or faculty to watch a presentation or discussion, Teams will also support a view-only meeting experience for up to 20,000 participants.
To prevent uninvited students in class, Student Lobby – which keeps students in a lobby until invited in by the educator, is now available. This tied to the “only me” bypass lobby feature detailed in this post.
School Data Sync (SDS) team creation again available
Admins can (once again) automatically bulk-create both Microsoft 365 Group and class Teams for their educators. This helps to save educators time and makes a new team “locked” and inaccessible by students until educators unlock the team.
Microsoft Teams meeting attendee limit increases to 300 participants (GCC, GCC-High, and DoD)
To help customers meet rapidly changing communication and meeting needs, Microsoft have increased the maximum number of participants allowed in a Teams meeting to 300.
Increase in the number of simultaneous videos in Teams meetings (GCC-High and DoD)
Microsoft have increased the number of participants who can be viewed simultaneously on the Teams meeting stage from 4 to 9. This new experience optimizes for attendees who have enabled video and places the remaining audio-only participants below the meeting stage.
To provide a high audio and video quality experience, the layout logic will consider user bandwidth and alter the number of videos shown to provide the best meeting experience.
The raise hands feature allows meeting attendees to identify that they wish to speak by toggling the hand icon in the meeting control bar, making it easier to actively participate in meetings.
Raise hands is available for both PC, Mac, and web-based clients to start, with mobile applications quickly following.
PSTN participant phone numbers masked from external users (GCC)
For those with Audio Conferencing enabled for their Teams meetings, Microsoft will mask the PSTN participant’s phone number to users who have joined from outside of your organization.
You can now pop out individual Teams chat conversations into a separate window, to help them streamline their workflow and more easily move between ongoing conversations.
Priority notifications in Gov Clouds (GCC, GCC-High and DoD)
Priority notifications alert a recipient of an urgent message on their mobile and desktop devices until a response is received, every two minutes for up to 20 minutes. IT Admins can manage this feature as part of messaging policies in Teams.
Selecting the “Channel info” icon in the channel header will display summary information related to that channel including the description, a list of recent contributors and members, as well as system messages.
IT admins now have the opportunity to create a custom video background policy for Teams meetings. The setting controls whether users can customize their video background in a meeting.
Assignments is growing even more globally inclusive with additional languages supported including Croatian, Estonian, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Slovenian, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.
With students working from a variety of devices, including many mobile devices, it’s important that they have access to the core curriculum. To make learning more equitable, the Class Materials folder is now available on Android.
This enables you to add shared folder shortcuts directly to your OneDrive. Shared folders include content that others shared with you through their OneDrive or content that is a part of your shared library in Microsoft Teams or SharePoint.
Microsoft have expanded the list of supported file types that users can create block download links for. This update includes support for PDF files, Images, Audio, and other non-text and non-video file types.
Microsoft have announced the availability of variables inside UI flows. With this feature, users can add variables to perform multiple actions within your UI automation. You can use variables for data types such as integer, float, array or string.
For example, you can use a variable to count how many times an operation was performed in a loop. Or you can use variables to create a string array with screen recordings done in a UI flow loop.
The append to array variable action inside UI flows.
Process receipts and translate text with AI Builder
Two new prebuilt models for AI Builder have been released in preview by Microsoft – receipt processing and text translation.
Receipt processing lets you read and save key information from common sales receipts to automatically pre-populate expense reports simply by scanning photos of your receipts. The prebuilt model uses optical character recognition (OCR) to extract both printed and handwritten text from receipts. You can retrieve valuable information such as the merchant details, transaction date and time, list of purchased items, tax, and totals.
Receipt processing in AI Builder.
Text translation can be used to process text in real-time from different languages from your customers worldwide, for internal and external communications and to keep language consistency in the text data that you store. Now available in preview, no trial or subscription required to try this feature.
Loop and array inputs are now available inside UI flows. With this feature, you are able to add a loop to your UI automation as a post-recording activity.
You will be able to pass an array object as input variable from an API flow to a UI flow, and then create a loop within UI flow script to perform repetitive action within your UI automation.
Support for Office Scripts in the Excel Online (Business) connector
Now in public preview, Office Scripts are now supported within the Excel Online (Business) Connector. Office Scripts allow you to accomplish a vast array of tasks and complex sequences of actions. Effectively any operation possible in Excel for the Web is now achievable programmatically.
Run script action (preview) within the Excel Online (Business) Connector.
Microsoft Dataflex, the new name for the Common Data Service is a “low-code data platform for Teams, and provides relational data storage, rich data types, enterprise grade governance, and one-click solution deployment”.
Microsoft Dataflex for Teams is being rolled out as part of existing Microsoft 365 subscriptions, but there is also Dataflex Pro, which offers wider integrations to Microsoft and other non-Microsoft products.
Caching changes for Power Apps portals version 9.2.6.x or later
As a part of July release (version 9.2.6.x), the Power Apps team are unifying caching approach for capacity-based portals and add-on portals.
After changes in this release, you won’t have to manually clear configuration entity cache for capacity-based portals. Additionally, high load portals should see improved performance and a reliable data cache refresh.
Caching changes for Power Apps portals version 9.2.6.x or later.
You can now refer to the whole record in ForAll and other record scope functions with ThisRecord. With this change you can name records with the As operator, allowing you to clarify formulas and work with all the records in nested ForAll and Gallery controls.
The Power Apps teams have also added Excel’s Sequence function to generate a table containing a sequence of numbers, perfect for iterating a specific number of times with ForAll.
ThisRecord in action within a collection in Power Apps.
The monitor tool is now available to support model-driven apps. Monitor tool provides a way to view a stream of events from a user’s session in order to diagnose an issue.
The latest build currently supports:
KPI for page loads, command executions, and other major events
Column Comparison through FetchXML, SDK, and OData
The Power Apps team have announced the availability of column comparison in CDS-based queries. Column comparisons will allow you to use FetchXML, SDK or OData to perform column comparisons for the Common Data Service. Column comparisons will also work in the Power Apps expression language with CDS version 9.1.0000.19562 or later.
The new React Power BI component supports both JavaScript and TypeScript and will help you embed your analytics in a React web application. Using the React component you can now get up and running quickly with embedded analytics in your application.
External tool support in Power BI Desktop (public preview)
The Power BI team have announced the public preview of external tool support in Power BI Desktop providing:
BI professionals a range of additional semantic modeling features, DAX query/expression optimization and authoring, and application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities.
An extensibility model empowering customers to build their own tools to extend the core functionality of Power BI Desktop for their own needs.
The External Tools ribbon contains buttons for external tools installed on the machine and registered with Power BI Desktop.
July’s desktop feature summary includes several enhancements to Q&A, gradient legend support, ability to further customize slicer header text and the general availability release for both relative time filter and model view enabled for live connect, plus lot’s more!
Contact list for Power BI apps & allow contributors to update
Two new enhancements in Power BI that are available now. First, the new contact list for apps makes it easier for app users to get help when they need it and for app owners to receive notifications about the app.
Also, a new option to allow contributors to update app content helps workspace admins manage access more effectively. A workspace Admin will find the Allow contributors to update the app for this workspace option in the settings pane for a new workspace experience workspace.
New option to allow contributors to update app content in Power BI apps.
Power Virtual Agents 2020 release wave 2 notes available
Information around the features planned to be released as part of the 2020 release wave 2 are out now. Some planned features include expanding capabilities in the authoring experience from deeper Microsoft Teams integration, tools to create richer content, Adaptive Cards capabilities, authentication improvements, improved Power Automate integration, plus more.
On-demand training sessions for SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Yammer, and Stream
A series of training videos covering the recent updates across SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Lists, Microsoft Teams, Project Cortex, Yammer, and Stream – including information for employees, admins, and developers can be found below:
Now in public preview, Endpoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP) extends data loss prevention to devices. Building on Microsoft Information Protection, Endpoint DLP extends the existing DLP capabilities in Microsoft 365 to your devices, helping you to meet compliance requirements and protect sensitive information.
Several new third-party connectors have been introduced across Microsoft Azure Sentinel to simplify gaining security insights across many leading solutions and partners, including networks, firewalls, endpoint protection and vulnerability management.
Azure Sentinel lets you build a more complete picture of the threats that your organization faces, conduct deep threat hunts across your environment, and use the power of automation and orchestration in the cloud to help free up your security analysts to focus on their highest-value tasks.
Universal Print, a cloud-based print infrastructure that creates a simple, secure print experience for Microsoft 365 customers, is now in public preview.
With Universal Print, organizations no longer need to maintain on-premises print servers or install printer drivers, reducing the time and effort needed by IT to maintain the print environment.
The video search experience in Stream will temporarily exclude results from transcripts and search will not work for individual videos on the player page for the Singapore data center. Similar previously announced changes in other datacenters have been reverted.
We’re adding a PIN-based verification step to our existing phone-based verification process, to better protect your organization. If you contact us from a number not registered with your organization profile, the Microsoft support representative will send a verification code to your registered email or phone in your Admin Center profile.
As Microsoft Teams has become the core communications client for Microsoft 365, this is a reminder the Skype for Business Online service will retire July 31, 2021.At that point, access to the service will end.
We will be retiring the Discover view from the OneDrive Website beginning August 2020. Instead we recommend finding files across your organization by using Search, which is where we will continue to invest in further improvements over time.
September 30, 2020
MC219746
SharePoint
🍾 LAUNCHED
N/A
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Download SharePoint site usage data in Excel – SharePoint site owners and members will be able to download their site’s 90-day usage data in an excel report, directly from the Site Usage page. Roadmap ID: 66395
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – later in 2020
Information Governance: New retention engine for SPO – New retention engine for SharePoint Online, which addresses the challenges with large tenants or tenant that must process large volume of data. Will also enhance reliability and SLAs for retention. Roadmap ID: 63061
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 lists and libraries: Sticky column in Quick Edit – As users scroll horizontally across a list in Quick Edit mode, the far-left column remains in place – improving context while viewing and editing.. Roadmap ID: 64866
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
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
Lists/ library web parts consume dynamic data – You will be able to configure list web parts to send its property values to the List Properties web part. Roadmap ID: 57307
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
SharePoint Stuff 