In this month’s update we take an in-depth look at all the recently released features for all the products within Microsoft 365.
SharePoint – Site performance, my feed web part, lists undo/redo
Teams – SharePoint tab, Forms for polls in Teams, polls/ surveys/ checklists, AI-based noise suppression, Together mode scene selection, full screen support, instant meeting from mobile, updated iOS meeting layout, pinned posts, set presence duration, Android on-demand chat translation, Power Apps in Teams GA, Power Automate in Teams, Power Virtual Agents in Teams GA, Teams apps for meetings GA
Teams (cont.) – Call merge, survivable branch appliance, Ericsson Session Border Controller certification, Teams displays, new features for Teams Rooms/ Surface Hubs, SSO for bots, device management automatic alerting, Shift schedule assistance
Teams (Education) – Class insights & spotlight student activity, prevent students from unmuting, delete meeting recordings, updated assignment settings, add your favourite apps to virtual classes and courses
Teams (Government) – Full screen support, OneNote (DoD), Prevent attendees from unmuting
OneDrive – Create shared library in OneDrive, file sharing in Teams, Known Folder Move in FRE
Power Apps – Manage page permissions from portal studio, Dataverse GA, Azure API Management connector, new layout containers in canvas apps, what’s new Power Query & Dataflows, RTE control, new search experience in model-driven apps
Power Automate – RPA UI flows analytics, Power Automate Desktop update, 24 new connectors, view app install failures in ISV Studio, train form processing models with different layouts in AI Builder, AI Builder consumption reporting
Power BI – New export settings, on-prem data gateway update, November feature summary, anomaly detection, Power BI Premium, paginated report feature summary
Related – At-a-glance/ key points in emails, capture and share in Edge
SharePoint
SharePoint site performance page
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.
Find out more:
My feed web part
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.
Find out more:
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 if there was something in a field previously that you want to bring back – just click the redo button.
Find out more:
Teams
Updated SharePoint tab app
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.
Find out more:
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.
Find out more:
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.
Find out more:
- Microsoft Teams apps polls (GitHub)
- Microsoft Teams apps survey (GitHub)
- Microsoft Teams apps checklist (GitHub)
AI-based noise suppression
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.
Find out more:
Together mode scene selection
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.
Find out more:
Full screen support in new meetings experience
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.
Find out more:
Instant meetings from mobile devices
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.
Find out more:
Updated layout for meetings on iOS
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.
Find out more:
Pinned posts
You can pin any message in a channel, and it appears in the channel information pane for all members of the channel to see.
Find out more:
Set presence status duration
Let others know when you are available in Teams by managing your presence status. Users can now change their presence status for a specific period.
Find out more:
Android On-Demand Chat Translation
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.
Find out more:
Power Apps in Teams generally available
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.
Find out more:
- Low code apps and bots in Microsoft Teams with Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents
- Overview of Microsoft 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.
Find out more:
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.
Find out more:
Teams apps for meetings 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.
Find out more:
Call merge
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”.
Find out more:
Survivable Branch Appliance
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.
Find out more:
Ericsson Session Border Controller certification
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.
Find out more:
Microsoft Teams displays
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.
Find out more:
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.
Find out more:
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.
Find out more:
Shift schedule assistance
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.
Find out more:
Teams (Education)
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.
Find out more:
Prevent students from unmuting during class
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.
Find out more:
Delete meeting recordings in Teams
Now the recording owner (either the person who started the recording or any additional owners named) can delete the recorded class or lecture.
Find out more:
Updated Assignment Settings
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.)
Find out more:
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.
Find out more:
Teams (Government)
Full screen support in new meetings experience
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.
Find out more:
OneNote in Teams DoD
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.
Find out more:
Prevent attendees from unmuting in Teams Meetings
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.
Find out more:
OneDrive
- OneDrive: Android – Night time reading mode for PDF viewing. Roadmap ID: 72230
- OneDrive: Dialog on First-Time deletion of File(s). Roadmap ID: 70702
- OneDrive and SharePoint: Adjusting version retention for PST files. Roadmap ID: 72237
- OneDrive: Request Files for GCC High and DoD. Roadmap ID: 72228
- 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.
Find out more:
File sharing in Microsoft Teams
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.
Find out more:
Known Folder Move in first run experience (FRE)
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.
Find out more:
Power Apps
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.
Find out more:
- Power Apps portals: Manage page permissions from portals Studio
- Allow anonymous access to a page using 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.
Find out more:
- Azure API Management connector on the Power Platform
- Export APIs from Azure API Management to the Power Platform
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.
Find out more:
- Microsoft Dataverse
- Low code apps and bots in Microsoft Teams with Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents
- Reshape the future of work with Microsoft Dataverse for Teams—now generally available
New Layout containers in canvas apps
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.
Find out more:
Power Query and Dataflows in Power Apps updates for November 2020
The Power Apps team have released several new features for Power Query and Dataflows, to help bring data into Microsoft Dataverse.
Find out more:
- What’s New in Power Query and Dataflows in Power Apps – November 2020
- Power Query documentation
- Create and use dataflows in Microsoft Power Platform
New rich text editor (RTE) control
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.
Find out more:
New search experience in model-driven 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.
Find out more:
- Introducing the new search experience in model-driven Power Apps
- Using relevance search to search for rows
Power Automate
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.
Find out more:
- Introduction to Power Automate RPA UI flows Analytics
- Power Automate UI Flows are available in CoE Starter Kit
Power Automate Desktop November 2020 update
November’s Power Automate Desktop update was released last month with several updates for productivity, development and accessibility.
Find out more:
24 new Power Automate connectors!
24 new connectors were released through October 2020 for Power Automate. Too many to list below but some to look out for I think include the Azure Communication Services SMS, Power Apps Notification V2 and AvePoint Cloud Governance.
Find out more:
View app install failures in ISV Studio
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.
Find out more:
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.
Find out more:
- AI Builder form processing models can now train using documents that have different layouts
- Create a form processing model
AI Builder consumption reporting is now available
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.
Find out more:
New export settings in the Power BI admin portal
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.
Find out more:
On-premises data gateway November 2020 update
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.
Find out more:
Power BI November 2020 Feature Summary
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.
Find out more:
Anomaly detection (preview)
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.
Find out more:
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.
Find out more:
Paginated Report November 2020 Feature Summary
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.
Find out more:
Related
At-a-glance and key points in sharing emails
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.
Find out more:
Capture and share web content in Microsoft Edge
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.
Find out more:
SharePoint Stuff 