SharePoint Stuff

The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: Auto news digest, new info columns in SP admin center, homepage insights dashboard, Internet Explorer 11 EOL, @mentions in comments, delete from within page details

SharePoint Auto News Digest updates

You can now brand your news digest with your organization’s theme colours and logo. If your organization site is already branded, that branding will automatically be applied to automatic news digests. The news digest uses built-in Intelligent ranking so that users see the news most relevant to them. The news digest is sent on a weekly basis, displaying only published news posts. If there are no news posts that are relevant for the user then no email gets sent to the user.

Find out more: Automatically sending news post digests

New information columns on Active sites page in the SharePoint admin center

In the SharePoint admin center, the Active sites page will provide new informational columns. The “Created from” column will show the apps that were used to create sites. And the “Teams” column will show which sites are connected to Microsoft Teams. The “Created from” and “Teams” information will also be available in the details panel when you select an individual site.

Find out more: SharePoint admin and migration announcements at Microsoft Ignite 2020

New homepage insights dashboard in the SharePoint admin center

Take an administration-at-a-glance approach with actionable charts and insights as cards on the SharePoint admin center homepage. And it’s customizable—you can add, remove, and rearrange cards to suit your needs.

Find out more: What’s new in the SharePoint admin center

Reminder – end of support for Internet Explorer 11 August 17, 2021

Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11) after August 17, 2021. This means SharePoint and OneDrive will not be supported on IE 11. After this date, customers will have a degraded experience or will be unable to connect to Microsoft 365 apps and services on IE 11.

While we know this change may be difficult for some, we believe that they will get the most out of Microsoft 365 apps when using the Microsoft Edge browser. Microsoft 365 users will be well served with this change through faster and more responsive web access to greater sets of features in everyday toolsets. 

Find out more: Prepare your SharePoint environment for the retirement of Internet Explorer 11 for Microsoft 365 apps and services

Microsoft Lists – @mentions in comments

“Mention” people you work with while adding a new comment to a list Item. As a result, the person will receive an email notification with a direct link to the list item. It’s a terrific way to notify, share and collaborate directly from within the list itself.

Find out more: Add and reply to comments in list items

Delete from within page details in SharePoint pages

Instead of going several clicks in beyond the site contents page and into the Pages library, now you can click the Page details button at the top of the page or news article and delete in one click from within the page details pane.

Find out more: View, edit, and add page details

Headspace mindfulness content comes to Microsoft Viva Insights

You’ll start to see a curated set of guided meditations and focus music from Headspace. The goal is to help disconnect from work in the evening, relax your mind before a big meeting, or find focus before starting an important project. In just a few minutes a day, meditation and mindfulness with Headspace can help users lower stress, increase focus and ease teamwork.

Introducing Headspace, a new focus mode, and quiet time settings with Microsoft Viva InsightsHeadspace integration with Viva Insights is rolling out default on and, unless disabled by admin, the curated set of Headspace mindfulness content will be available to any user with the Viva Insights app installed.

Find out more: Introducing Headspace, a new focus mode, and quiet time settings with Microsoft Viva Insights

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Teams

In Teams: Attendance dashboard, integrate meetings with Dynamics 365, lower all raised hands, chat bubbles, inking & laser pointer PowerPoint Live, updated large gallery view mobile, include device audio mobile, Access files offline on Android, live transcription for additional licenses, Large Gallery for VDI, free audio conferencing, Microsoft 365 Business Voice promotion, 1:1 PSTN Call Recording, Approval Templates, macOS notifications, trackable tasks, Whiteboard updates, App risk evaluation, Device management automatic alerting, app compliance

In Teams (Government)

Attendance Dashboard

After finishing a meeting or webinar, organizers can view an attendance report that helps you understanding how many registered vs. attended, who attended the meeting, and whether they engaged for all or part of the meeting. This is now embedded directly within the Teams UI for your reporting and analytics needs.

Find out more: View and download meeting attendance reports in Teams

Teams Webinars integrate with Dynamics 365 Marketing

You are now able to follow up with webinar participants through the attendance tab after a webinar, if you as a webinar organizer have a Dynamics 365 Marketing license. From there, you can export your attendance data into Dynamics 365 Marketing, so you can create customer journeys and send personalized follow-up emails to your webinar attendees.

Find out more: Participant attendance-based communication for online events powered by Microsoft Teams

Lower all raised hands

When at least one hand is raised, meeting organizers and presenters can now lower all raised hands with a single click. Simply navigate to the participant pane and click on the Lower all hands option. This helps quickly lower all hands when associated questions have been resolved to make way for new raised questions.

Find out more: Raise your hand in a Teams meeting

Spotlight multiple users in a meeting

Organizers and presenters can now spotlight up to 7 participants simultaneously during meetings. Previously, while an attendee can pin multiple participants for their own private view, only one participant can be spotlighted for all attendees.

Once a single participant has been spotlighted, simply click on the context menu of your additional participant(s) and select Add Spotlight. For meetings that have multiple speakers or presenters, this is great to focus all attendees’ view on those specific video feeds. Feature is available in both Desktop and Mobile.

Find out more: Spotlight someone’s video in a Teams meeting

Chat bubbles

Chats sent during a Teams meeting now surface on the screens of all meeting participants, making the chat more central to the conversation. You no longer need to manually open the chat window within a meeting to see what participants are typing. This feature is on by default. To turn off this feature, select Don’t show chat bubbles under more actions.

Find out more: Introducing Chat Bubbles in Microsoft Teams meetings

Inking and Laser Pointer in PowerPoint Live in Microsoft Teams

Virtual laser pointer and ink annotations are now available in PowerPoint Live. Presenters can engage more with their audience by drawing attention or clarifying certain sections of the PowerPoint deck.

Just as you would use a physical laser point in a room, PowerPoint Live allows you to effectively point at different places in the presentation so the audience can easily follow along what’s on the slide. Only the active “in control” presenter is able to see and make annotations via the annotation toolbar. 

Find out more: Laser point or draw on PowerPoint slides in a Teams meeting

Updated Large gallery view on Teams mobile

When selecting Large gallery in meetings, we are introducing a mobile-optimized layout for Teams mobile users that allow you to swipe through all the participants in a meeting. With up to 10 participants per page on your screen, you can now see all participants clearly on your mobile device.

Note: This is available in iOS 13+ and Android OS 9+ or any version with more than 4GB RAM. All other devices continues to see the current Large gallery experience.

Find out more: Download the Teams mobile app

Include device audio when sharing on iOS and Android

Now you can include audio when sharing on iOS and Android devices during a Teams meeting. This is great when sharing a video with voiceover and music. It allows everyone to watch simultaneously without echoes or sync issues.

Note: You can find this setting under More actions, Share screen with audio. It is available to devices with Android 10+ or iOS 13+.

Find out more: Download the Teams mobile app

Live Transcription with speaker attribution for additional licenses

Live transcription allows you to follow and review conversations (in English-US) alongside the meeting video or audio in real time. Attendees who joined late, or missed the meeting, can easily catch up by reading what was discussed and searching the transcript by speaker.

This feature was initially available to users with Office 365/Microsoft 365 E3/E5, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, and Microsoft 365 Business Premium licenses. This feature has been now expanded to users with Office 365 E1, Office 365 A1, Office 365/Microsoft 365 A3/A5, Microsoft 365 F1, Office 365/Microsoft 365 F3, and Microsoft 365 Business Basic licenses.

Find out more: Live transcription with speaker attribution now available in Teams meetings for English (US)

Access files offline on Android

The Teams mobile app on Android now allows you to access files even when you are offline or in bad network conditions. Simply select the files you need access to, and Teams will keep a downloaded version to use in your mobile app. You can find all your files that are available offline in the files section of the app.

Note: This feature was made available earlier this year for iOS.

MacOS native notifications in Teams

Users can now choose to deliver Microsoft Teams notifications, either via Teams built-in notifications or via macOS native notifications. When choosing native notifications, Teams inherits the OS notifications settings and supports quiet hours, action center triaging and more native features.

Note: This is only available on MacOS 10.15 or later.

Find out more: Change your notifications style in Teams

Large Gallery for VDI

The Large gallery feature is now available in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Now VDI users are able to expand their gallery, viewing up to 49 participants on the same screen during a Teams meeting.

Find out more: Optimization for Microsoft Teams (citrix)

Get Audio Conferencing for free

Join Microsoft Teams meetings on the go with a global dial-in number or dial out to help others join a meeting with Audio Conferencing. Eligible customers purchasing Microsoft partners and web can take advantage of the free Audio Conferencing offer now extended through December 31, 2021.

Find out more: Audio Conferencing in Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 Business Voice promotion

Business Voice is a cloud-based telephony solution built into Teams that combines essential telephony components into a single package. It is designed for businesses with up to 300 users and includes a phone system, audio conferencing and a domestic calling plan.

Through December 31, 2021, Microsoft customers can purchase Business Voice at a 25 percent discount for 12 months.

Find out more: What is Microsoft 365 Business Voice?

1:1 PSTN Call Recording

Microsoft have changed how 1:1 Call recording is enabled. By creating its own policy, Administrators can now delineate recording configurations between meetings and calling.

Previously, 1:1 Call recording has been controlled by the CsTeamsMeetingPolicy / AllowCloudRecording attribute. Now, it is controlled by the CsTeamsCallingPolicy / allowCloudRecordingForCalls attribute. This feature is only available via PowerShell.

Find out more: 1:1 Call Recording in Microsoft Teams Deep Dive

Approval Templates

To streamline workflows, new out of the box templates provide a repeatable structure for common approvals like filling out expense reports or requesting overtime. Admins and team owners can use these as is, customize, or create new templates for their organization and teams to use.

Use the structured form to input all the necessary information and eliminate back and forth on missing data for a faster approval.

Find out more: Streamline requests with new approval features in Microsoft Teams

Create trackable tasks from your ad hoc Teams messages

Tasks happen everywhere – in an email threads, working on files, or within team chats. And before you forget to make a note of a task, simply click in, and create tasks from Microsoft Teams messages on desktop and web. Like you’ve seen for emails in Outlook and comments in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs.

Find out more: Create trackable tasks from your ad hoc Teams messages

Microsoft Whiteboard updates within Microsoft Teams to support hybrid work

The new Whiteboard is now integrated into more areas across Microsoft 365 – now available in Teams channels and chats. Start a collaborative whiteboard for everyone in the meeting with just one click. You can also pre-prep or reuse whiteboards across multiple Teams meetings.

This update brings a lot of great user interface capabilities: improved real-time collaboration to make it easier to follow along with what others are doing, new interactive content with sticky notes, fluid components, and insert images and documents via new sharing controls connected to OneDrive. Plus, a lot more.

Find out more: Meet the new Microsoft Whiteboard designed for Hybrid Work

App risk evaluation

Teams admins are now able to view the security, compliance, and data privacy details for apps coming from Microsoft Cloud App Security. This helps Teams admins save time on security reviews and enable a more focused selection-based security specifications, resulting in increased app quality.

Find out more: Microsoft Teams App Security and Compliance

Device management automatic alerting in Teams Admin Center

The feature enable IT Admin to identify devices issues by triggering notifications on device problem and device health check status that can be turned into an immediate correction action.

Find out more: Microsoft Teams device health monitoring

Security, compliance, and data protection capabilities for apps

For Microsoft 365 Certified Teams apps, admins can view security, compliance, and data protection capabilities in a new tab on the app’s detail page in the Teams Admin Center. This transparency gives Microsoft customers trust in the applications that run their organizations and ISVs an opportunity to showcase their hard work in becoming M365 Certified.

Find out more: Microsoft 365 App Compliance Program

Teams (Government)

Here are the features released this month for customers in in US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and/or United States Department of Defense (DoD):

• Together mode: 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. Available in GCC and GCC-High.
• Updating settings for attendees’ video: Meeting attendees can turn their camera on or off to share video by default, plus configure to have all attendees’ cameras disabled, also reverse it and set it enabled/ disabled for individual attendees.

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Image display from Lists, GitHub actions GA, canvas app layout containers GA, NFC tags on iOS/ Android, image/ file support for Dataverse CMK, VS Code extension + Power Platform command line, rename action-based data sources, Power Apps component framework for canvas

Power Apps can now display images from Microsoft Lists

This improved experience allows images stored in Image columns in Microsoft Lists can be displayed when designing custom forms in the Power Apps design canvas. You can choose to display the images in four sizes: small, medium, large, or full.

Find out more: Image control in Power Apps

General Availability of GitHub Actions for Microsoft Power Platform

GitHub actions for Microsoft Power Platform are now generally available. This capability expands the coverage for enterprises that want to implement CI/CD with Power Platform Applications driven from a source code first view. To support fully automated build/ release pipelines, this capability was first released with the Power Platform Build Tools, an extension for Azure DevOps – and now as part of GitHub Actions for Power Platform.

Find out more: GitHub actions for Power Platform

Canvas app layout containers generally available

The container, horizontal container and vertical container layout controls in canvas apps are now generally available. These controls help you automatically reflow and resize controls within them to enable easy, no expression layouts in canvas apps. Containers make responsive apps much easier.

Get started with these controls by navigating to “Insert” under the Layout category, to insert these controls into the canvas. Navigate to Settings, select Display, and turn off the Scale to fit setting to enable your canvas app to be responsive. Responsive expressions with X, Y, Width and Height will continue to play a complimentary role in the building of responsive apps.  

Find out more: Building responsive canvas apps

Read NFC tags with Power Apps on iOS and Android

Power Apps already offers robust, camera-based barcode scanning when running in the Power Apps Mobile app for iOS and Android, but barcodes are often only useful in clean, well-lit consumption scenarios. Power Fx now supports reading NFC and HF-RFID tags when running in the Power Apps Mobile app for iOS and Android.

Power Fx is now able to read the first record from a NFC standards-compliant tag, support Text and URI datatypes and provide record type information.

Find out more: ReadNFC function in Power Apps

Image and file data type support in Dataverse customer managed key (CMK) environments

Dataverse customer managed key (CMK) environments can now support the use of the Dataverse file column (a.k.a. File data type) and image column (Image Data Type) as of version: 9.2.21052.00103. Files and images uploaded will be encrypted at rest and secured using the customer’s provided key.

Note: At present, files within CMK environments are limited to a maximum size of 128MB per file. All files within CMK environments will be stored in the Dataverse data storage, instead of Dataverse file blob storage. This will be enabled by default if you have a CMK environment with a version equal to or greater than 9.2.21052.00103, and you have provided a key.

Find out more: New support for image and file data types in Dataverse customer managed key (CMK) environments

Power Platform VS Code Extension and the Power Platform CLI

The Power Platform team have announced an update to the Power Platform VS Code extension, launched as public preview on May 25th and the updated Power Platform Command Line (CLI). The canvas pack and unpack commands have been updated in the current update, plus several updates to the PCF.

Find out more: Announcing updates to the Power Platform VS Code Extension and the Power Platform Command line

Rename action-based data sources

Power Apps action-based data sources can now be renamed. This feature can help avoid an extensive rename of formula referenced data sources in a Power App.  The feature will reach all regions by the end of this week June 18, 2021.

Find out more: Rename your Power Apps action-based data sources

Power Apps component framework for Canvas apps GA

The Power Apps component framework for canvas apps is now generally available. Now, pro developers can not only utilize power and flexibility of modern web technologies, but also can include their existing IP and external third-party libraries to  seamlessly extend industry leading Low-Code Development Platform for Professional Developers. 

Find out more: Code components for canvas apps

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Desktop update June 2021, four new connectors

Power Automate Desktop June 2021

The June 2021 update of Power Automate Desktop is out now. In this months release, there are several new features and updates, including:

• Ability to run desktop flows from another desktop flow
• Auto-switching to image based recorder upon detection of RDP and Citrix environments
• Improvements in configuration of Windows-related actions
• Deprecation of action ‘Create MODI OCR engine’

Find out more: Power Automate Desktop June 2021 update

Four new connectors released in May 2021

Four new connectors were released into the Power Automate ecosystem this past May. Take a look at the latest connectors:

• Mavim iMprove – The Mavim iMprove connector empowers organizations to create and re-use all process-related content (such as process flows, goals, KPI’s, risk, controls, people, supporting technology) through Power Automate workflows, PowerApps and Azure DevOps.
• Ordnance Survey Places – Ordnance Survey Places provides the latest details of over 40 million addresses across the UK connecting the existing OS Places API service to your app.
• DocJuris – DocJuris is the simplest way to empower everyone in your company to quickly and consistently close contracts at scale.
• Service Objects – The Service Objects’ connectors deliver contact data validation to the Power Automate ecosystem. In real-time, verify and correct your contact record’s name, phone, address and email while appending critical location and device details, ensuring you have genuine, accurate and up-to-date information for every customer. 

Find out more: Four New Connectors Released in May

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Microsoft Teams with Power BI activity feed notifications

Power BI is integrating with the Microsoft Teams activity feed. In Teams, you’ll be notified when someone shares a report to you or requests access to a report you own. This helps you get more done without leaving Microsoft Teams or hunting through your emails.

The activity feed notification capability has started to roll-out to commercial cloud customers. Users need to install the Power BI app for Microsoft Teams to receive the activity feed notifications.

Find out more: Announcing: Collaborate faster in Microsoft Teams with Power BI activity feed notifications

MIP sensitivity labels in Power BI (Preview)

MIP labels are available both in the Power BI service and in Power BI Desktop (Preview). Microsoft have developed industry-leading data-classification inheritance capabilities, including the labeling and protection of files when data is exported from Power BI,  inheritance of MIP labels from Synapse (preview), inheritance of labels when creating new content, and downstream inheritance (preview).

Find out more: Now organizations can require users to set MIP sensitivity labels in Power BI (Preview)

Scanner API (Admin REST APIs) enhancements

Microsoft announced new Scanner APIs for extracting tenant-level metadata using Power BI Admin REST APIs in December 2020. Microsoft have now announced further enhancements that includes the items our customers have been asking for most – now, as part of the API response, you can get the metadata of dataset tables and columns, measures, DAX expressions, and mashup queries.

Find out more: Announcing Scanner API (Admin REST APIs) enhancements to include dataset tables, columns, measures, DAX expressions, and mashup queries

Power BI June 2021 Feature Summary

June’s Power BI feature summary includes updates to connectors, plus DirectQuery support for Dataflows, preview release for the paginated reports visual plus many more!

Find out more: Power BI June 2021 Feature Summary

Power BI report action bar available in SharePoint Online webpart

You can now do more with the Power BI webpart in SharePoint Online with the addition of the Power BI report action bar. With the action bar, users can now easily Analyze in Excel, Export to PowerPoint, and Export to PDF.

Find out more: The Power BI report action bar is now available in the Power BI SharePoint Online webpart

Long-term usage and performance insights (public preview)

The Power BI team have announced the availability of detailed historical activity information and analytical insights on Power BI operations. This new capability gives you full visibility into Power BI usage and performance so you can confidently manage your environment and comply with organizational policies. 

Once user activities and metrics are enabled, Microsoft will provide a Power BI report template allowing you to:

• Visualize historical data over long periods to observe usage trends, spot periods of unusual load, and identify performance degradation.
• Isolate activities by time range, capacity, dataset, user, report and more.
• Investigate internal operations within a query or dataset refresh to see where time is being spent.

Find out more: Announcing long-term usage and performance insights (Public Preview)

Updated timeline for upgrading classic workspaces

The Power BI team are extending the timeline for upgrading classic workspaces to new workspaces. The Power BI team are now targeting automatic upgrade of classic workspaces to new workspaces by April 2022.

• July 2021
  • ‘Upgrade all’ workspaces tool within Power BI Admin portal released to all tenants
    • Update as of 7/21/2021 – We are ahead of schedule and ‘Upgrade all’ has been released and is available to all tenant admins.
  • Ability to create classic workspaces removed for all tenants
• April 2022
  • Automatic upgrade of all classic workspaces to new workspaces will be performed by Microsoft

Find out more: Updated timeline for upgrading classic workspaces

Paginated report visual for Power BI reports (public preview)

The Power BI team have announced that the public preview of the paginated report visual for Power BI reports is now available in the June release of Power BI Desktop. For the first time, this native Power BI visual allows you to render any paginated report you’ve uploaded to the service in a Power BI report.  

Find out more: Paginated report visual for Power BI reports is now available in public preview

On-premises data gateway June 2021

The June 2021 update for the On-premises data gateway has been released (version 3000.86.4).

Find out more: On-premises data gateway June 2021 update is now available

Embed Power BI in Salesforce

There are new developer samples for embedding Power BI analytics in Salesforce. You can embed Power BI report, dashboards and more in Salesforce for your organization or for your customers. By embedding Power BI in Salesforce, your users will have access to Power BI interactive data visualizations that can be connected to all the data sources that are supported by Power BI.

Find out more: Embed Power BI in Salesforce

Email notifications for non-owners of dataflows

The Power BI team have announced the availability of email notifications to non-owners in your organization. This addresses concerns from customers around limitations related to ownership in Dataflows being restricted to one user only. 

Find out more: Announcing email notifications for non-owners of dataflows

Power BI Report Builder June 2021

The June release of the Power BI Report Builder includes a number of new features designed to improve your paginated report authoring experience, plus the addition of the Power BI Report Builder as an app in the Microsoft Store.

Find out more: What’s new in the June update of Power BI Report Builder

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