Microsoft 365 monthly update – November 2022

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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.

SharePoint

In SharePoint: Tenant URL rename GA, New site templates, streamline site info SP admin center,

SharePoint Tenant URL Rename – General Availability

This capability is now generally available to organizations that have less than 10,000 total sites (including OneDrive and SharePoint sites). With the tenant rename capability, you will be able to have the SharePoint domain in all site URLs updated to the new name you choose and continue with that new name going forward. 

Find out more: Change your SharePoint domain

New SharePoint site templates

The SharePoint team are introducing 3 new SharePoint site templates dedicated to helping you create sites for your HR department, to showcase Events, and a template powered by Microsoft Syntex to do contract management.

Find out more: Apply and customize SharePoint site templates

SharePoint admin center: Streamlining management of site information across Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups

SharePoint is updating the site detail panel to include Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups information. Admins that have permissions to SharePoint, Teams and Groups admin centers can now manage all related attributes (membership, group name, description, etc.) from a single site detail panel in the SharePoint admin center ‘Active Sites’ tab.

Note: SharePoint admins with SharePoint only permissions will have read-only access to the new attributes. 

Find out more: Roadmap ID: 100053

Most used SharePoint Framework solutions – October 2022

Here are the top 10 most widely used SharePoint Framework solutions, in past month, which were installed from the app store:

Teams

In Teams: Accept/ block chat invite, scheduled send, start chat with groups, view chat history via search, unread toggle, upload documents via e-signature approvals, 1-click instant poll, PSTN dial-in breakout rooms, 7×7 videos, modern meetings on web, screen pop for incoming PSTN, transcription for calls on Android

Education
Government

Accept or block a group chat invitation from an unmanaged user

This feature brings the ability to accept or block a one-on-one chat from an unmanaged user that already exists in Teams. Microsoft are extending and additional safety layer for Teams users to also accept or block a group chat invitation from an unmanaged user.

Find out more: Microsoft roadmap ID: 95051

Schedule send

Similar to delaying the delivery of emails in Outlook, you now can manually select the future date and time you would like a chat message to be delivered. Users can simply right-click the send button to schedule send and have the confidence their message will be delivered as scheduled.

Find out more: Schedule chat messages in Teams

Start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-enabled Security Groups, and Office 365 Groups

You will now be able to start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-enabled Security Groups, and O365 Groups. This feature will respect the limits on members in a group chat, currently set to 250 members.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Chat with groups (M365, distribution & mail-enabled security groups) in Teams

Click on search message results to view the entire chat conversation history

Users who click on the chat message search result will now be presented with the entire message thread, regardless of the age of the message. This update creates efficiency as it ensures the user has the full context of the conversation.

Find out more: Search for messages and more in Teams

Unread toggle

Users will now find it easier to view, triage and catch up with their unread chat message notifications by easily turning on the unread toggle button in their activity feed panel. Alternatively, users will also be able to turn off the unread toggle to view both read and unread notifications.

Find out more: Unread Only Toggle Available for Teams Activity Feed

Upload documents from OneDrive for E-signature Approvals

When creating an e-signature request in Approvals, users can now upload a document to be signed from OneDrive for Business directly. This enables access to your document from anywhere and on any device.

Find out more: Create an e-sign approval

1-click Instant Poll during Teams meetings

Defined binary responses to get immediate answers to your spoken poll question (yes/no, thumb up/down, heart/broken heart). Presenters can launch these polls without preparing in advance – say your question out loud then click the corresponding response icon.

Find out more: Poll attendees during a Teams meeting

Support PSTN dial-in, dial-out, and call-me attendees in meetings to join Breakout Rooms

Enabling dial-in, dial-out and call-me PSTN participants to join breakout rooms and come back to the main room when breakout rooms end.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Support PSTN attendees in meetings to join breakout rooms

Screen pop for incoming PSTN calls

Admins can enable this policy in the Teams Admin Center, so that on acceptance of a PSTN call, an automatic browser launch can happen alongside Teams, displaying relevant information (CRM data, case data, etc.) to the user. This feature can also now be turned off in user settings.

Automatically view up to 49 videos (7×7) in Teams meeting

With this update, users will be able to automatically see up to 49 videos (7×7) on their screen by default without an explicit action. The actual number of videos seen by a user will depend on hardware/device capabilities.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Automatically view up to 49 videos (7×7) in Teams meeting

Modern meeting experience on the web

The modern meeting and calling experience will be available for Teams on the web in Chrome and Edge browsers – including improved pre-join, dynamic view, and the updated control bar.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Modern meetings and calls on Teams web client

Transcription for calls on Microsoft Teams for Android

Transcription for 1:1 calls and group calls is now available on the Teams app for Android for whenever you’re on the go or just don’t have a notepad handy.

Find out more: View live transcription in a Teams meeting

Education

These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:

  • Updated Assignment List view for Teachers/ students – The Assignments list for teachers and students has been updated to a set of tabs for easy view of upcoming and past assignments.
  • Grade Trends and Distribution view in the Gradebook – In the Gradebook for Assignments, we’ve added the average grade for the class, all assignments, and for each student.
  • OneNote Class Notebook viewer for Teams Mobile – Through this new feature, users will be able to open and view OneNote notebooks right within their Teams Mobile apps.
  • Instant Poll in Teams Meeting – With Instant Poll, users can launch a pre-defined binary question (Yes/No, Thumbs Up/Down, Heart/Heartbroken) with just a single click in the Polls side pane during a meeting. 
  • Intelligent chat message translation in Teams for iOS and Android – When you receive a message in Teams that is not in your preferred language, Teams asks if the text should be translated to your preferred language
  • Open Existing Whiteboards in Teams Meetings – Pull up the whiteboard you prepared before class with Open existing board in Teams meetings, and save time by no longer having to start your whiteboard from scratch.
  • Embed online videos in Whiteboard in Teams – Avoid fussing with Tab and Window switching that interrupts the flow of a meeting by including supplemental videos directly on the whiteboard with embedded online videos.
  • View Parent Contact Details on Teams Mobile – From the Parent App, teachers can now view a list of each student’s parent or guardian contact details listed in a Contact Card.
  • Assign Seats in Together Mode – With this latest innovation, meeting organizers and presenters can now assign seats to participants in Together mode.
  • Career coach updates – A few steps within the Career Coach set up and customization requirements in Teams Admin Center (TAC) have been reduced and transitioned into optional steps to simplify upfront configuration load on IT admins.

Government

These features currently available to Microsoft’s commercial customers in multi-tenant cloud environments are now rolling out to our customers in US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and/or United States Department of Defense (DoD):

  • Connectors in GCC – Teams Connectors, which support webhook integrations, will be made available in GCC.
  • Casting from Teams desktop client to Microsoft Teams Rooms in GCC-H – For quick ad-hoc sessions that don’t require setting up a formal meeting, users can leverage Teams casting to wirelessly connect to a Teams Room and display content from the Teams desktop client (Windows and Mac). Users can broadcast their screen and cast content stored locally on their computer or accessible via Office 365.

Power Apps

In Power Apps: Formula repair (preview), 25% of new customer licenses, new ways to share ideas, release of modern learn page, developers tool update, table support for message/ individual publish, SharePoint virtual table updates, custom/ new views & forms on AAD user table, custom multi-table lookups support virtual tables, locked tabs on mobile apps, optimised command bar on tablet apps

Formula repair now in preview

With formula repair, now you may skip some of the troubleshooting effort as whenever you have a formula error, Power Apps will try to come up with a fix suggestion leveraging the power of AI. Once there’s a fix, a single click on the apply button will help you get rid of the error.

Find out more: Formula repair in Power Apps (preview)

Power Apps licenses 25% off for the first year for new customers

There is a new 25% off offer on Power Apps Per user licenses. New customers of Power Apps, who don’t have any Per user licenses already, can save 25% on their first year. The offer is available now through March 31st, 2023. To purchase, speak with your Microsoft representative, or contact a Microsoft specialist or CSP partner from the Power Apps pricing page. Click on Contact Sales.

New ways to share Power Apps community forum ideas 

As of November 29th 2022, Power Apps Ideas is now on a brand-new platform powered by Dynamics 365 Customer Service Community. On top of providing our community with a brand-new interface to share ideas, the migration will enable our product teams to be much more responsive to user feedback and better integrate your ideas into our product roadmap. 

Find out more: https://ideas.powerapps.com 

Modern Microsoft learn page in Power Apps

The Power Apps team have announced the release of the modern Learn page in Power Apps. The new Learn experience has consolidated content from all Microsoft resources to help with your onboarding and upskilling journey.

Find out more: https://make.powerapps.com/learn

Power Platform Developers tool – October 2022 update

The Power Apps team have shared the October update for the Power Platform Developer tools. With this update, we are releasing some capabilities that have been in high demand by the developer community including: command line updates, solution pack, unpack and sync, Azure DevOps/ GitHub actions and more.

Find out more: Power Platform Developers tool – October update

Tables now support configuring Messages and individual Publish

Messages (also known as displaystrings) are messages seen in the Dynamics apps built on Power Apps. You can now configure these messages to match your own names for tables and direct users to do the right thing in various situations when they are presented with these tailored messages. You can also translate these messages into any of the languages installed in your environment. 

With this update we’re also bringing a Publish command to the table level, meaning you can publish changes made to Forms, Views or Messages at the table level – avoiding a Publish of the whole solution (or all customizations). This will mean you can publish just your changes and complete that faster than publishing everything all at once.

 Find out more: Edit system table messages with Power Apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Improvement to SharePoint Virtual Tables – Multi-Select choice fields and Boolean fields

Multi-Select choice fields and Boolean fields in SharePoint Lists are now fully functional in Dataverse virtual tables. You can see all options labeled properly, Dataverse allows for multiple option selection, filtering of the column to display rows now works properly. 

Find out more: Get started with virtual tables (entities) (Microsoft Dataverse) – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Customize or create new Views and Forms on the AAD User Table

The AAD User virtual table previously did not allow users to modify which fields are displayed in views and forms, and users were unable to build custom views and forms. This restriction has been relaxed and users can modify forms and views or create new forms and views using any of the available AAD User fields. 

Find out more: Overview of the model-driven app form designer – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Custom Multi-Table Lookups now support Virtual Tables

Custom Multi-table lookups allow users to build a lookup that retrieves data from multiple tables at once. An out of the box example is Customer that looks up data from Account and Contact. Users can build their own lookups using SDKs or the APIs to have custom multi-table lookups.   

Tables can only participate in one of these lookups if they are not already part of an existing multi-table lookup.  

Until now, only local tables could be one of the referenced tables. Now Virtual Tables can be used as a referenced table. This includes the out of the box AAD User Virtual Table.  

Find out more: Use multi-table lookup columns (Microsoft Dataverse) – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Locked tabs at the top of forms on Mobile apps

App makers can now choose to lock the form tabs at the top as they scroll. Form tabs will always be visible and will help users to visualize and update data in larger form context. This also provides ability to switch tab at any time.  

Find out more: How to use a model-driven app on a mobile device – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Optimized command bar for tablet apps

The command bar for tablets mobile application is at the bottom of the screen and can only display four commands. With this change app makers can configure tablet command bar to be displayed at the top and utilize full space to show more commands.  

Find out more: How to use a model-driven app on a mobile device – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Power Automate

In Power Automate: 7 new verified, 16 new independent connectors, Power Automate Desktop update, new process mining capabilities

7 new verified & 16 independent publisher connectors released in October 2022

There were 7 new verified connectors and 7 updates from different service owners released in October, as well as 16 new Independent Publisher connectors. These connectors have solutions and tools for Commerce, Finance, Social Media, AI, Lifestyle and Entertainment and much more.

Find out more: 7 New Verified Connectors and 7 Updates released in October 2022

16 New Independent Publisher Connectors in October 2022

Power Automate desktop update November 2022

The November 2022 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.26) has been released. This month’s updates include:

  • A home page is now available in the console
  • A license request form has been introduced in Power Automate for desktop
  • Warnings have been introduced in Power Automate for desktop
  • More SharePoint connector actions are now available in Power Automate for desktop
  • Captured UI elements will now be more efficient

Find out more: November 2022 update of Power Automate for desktop

New process mining capabilities within Power Automate (Preview)

Microsoft have announced the preview of new process mining capabilities from Minit available in process advisor within Microsoft Power Automate. In this update, the process advisor powered with Minit introduces templates that enable customers to seamlessly drive powerful business process insights from cloud flows in Power Automate as well as insights from Microsoft Power Virtual Agents and other systems of records like SAP.

Find out more: Microsoft announces preview of new process mining capabilities within Power Automate

Power BI

In Power BI: On-premises data gateway release, Power BI November 2022 feature summary, paginated reports support in Power BI Pro, new cache refresh settings Power BI Premium, save copy of report & collapse navigational pane

On-premises data gateway November 2022

The Power BI team have announced the release of the November update for the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.150.11). This version of the gateway will ensure that the reports that you publish to the Power BI Service and refresh via the gateway will go through the same query execution logic/run-time as in the November version of Power BI Desktop.

Find out more: On-premises data gateway November release

Power BI November 2022 Feature Summary

In this month’s update there are several updates including an optimize ribbon, Linked Metrics and a new EvaluateAndLog DAX function and much more.

Find out more: Power BI November 2022 Feature Summary

Paginated reports support in Power BI Pro

The Power BI team have announced support for paginated reports in Power BI Pro. Now, Microsoft Power BI customers have the flexibility to create and consume interactive reports as well as paginated reports using Power BI Pro.

Paginated reports are traditional operational reports best used for multi-page list-type reports for operational processes with document-like output requirements. One key benefit of paginated reports is that they are programmable which gives report authors more flexibility and control of the structure and formatting of their reports. 

Find out more: Announcing support for paginated reports in Power BI Pro

New cache refresh settings in Power BI Premium

The Power BI team have announced that ClientCacheRefreshPolicy is now a configurable property for your Power BI Premium workspaces. Admins can override scheduled cache refresh settings for an entire workspace, improving the performance of their semantic models.

The default behavior in the Power BI service is to automatically cache dashboard, tile, and report queries upon refresh to provide an optimal report viewing experience. For enterprise semantic model deployments, where hundreds of reports and artifacts are built from a single Power BI dataset, automatic caches may cause performance issues. With the ClientCacheRefreshPolicy property, admins can disable the automatic cache refresh setting to optimize the behavior of their Power BI datasets.

Find out more: New cache refresh settings available in Power BI Premium

Save a copy of a report/ collapse navigation pane in organizational app

After listening to customer feedback, the Power BI team have decided to bring back the feature in the org app that allowed you to save copies of reports. App consumers who have build permissions can now save copies of reports to their “My workspace” from the app. Further, app authors can now by default collapse the app navigation pane for their app consumers. Enabling this feature would allow your app consumers to land on full screen mode.

Find out more: Save a copy of a report & Collapse navigation pane in Organizational App

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