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: Syntex image tagger, prebuilt models for contracts, simplified sharing, Viva Connections dashboard customization for mobile
Microsoft Syntex image tagger
This feature enables Syntex to use AI to automatically tag images that reside on SharePoint libraries with descriptive keywords. These keywords are stored in a managed metadata column on the item, making the images easier to search, sort, filter, and manage.
Find out more: Configure Microsoft Syntex for pay-as-you-go billing
Microsoft Syntex: Prebuilt model for contracts
This model can be used to analyze contracts and extract common entities. You’ll see a new option when creating models for “Contract Processing” and be able to upload sample contracts to select the entities you wish to extract. The model can then be published to a document library to process contracts and automatically generate metadata.
Find out more: Use a prebuilt model to extract information from contracts in Microsoft Syntex
Simplified sharing experience across Microsoft 365
Microsoft are are completely revamping the Sharing control to help you and your organization share more easily and confidently. You can focus on the people you want to share with and how you want to share with them. The share link scope is always shown at the bottom of the dialog box and can be modified at the top-right, under the settings gear, to best fit your scenarios before you share with others. Additionally, the copy link section now returns a quick success toast when the link successfully copies to your computer clipboard.
Find out more: Roadmap ID: 124933
Viva Connections dashboard customization for mobile
Microsoft have announced that dashboard customization is now available on Viva Connections mobile. AKA, people can personalize their mobile dashboard with the information that is most relevant to their work.
Find out more: Roadmap ID 117428
Teams
In Teams: Expanded profile card view, new notes tab, new files app experience, offline meetings, active speaker view, profanity filtering in live captions, breakout rooms VDI support, new meeting recap experience, avatars, change call queue/ auto attendant greetings, compliance recording for redirected calls, busy-on-busy admin settings Teams phone, dynamic emergency calling Teams phone
Teams Management
Education
Government
Frontline workers
Teams (non-premium)
Expanded view for profile card
From Teams chats, channels, calls or meetings, you can easily look up richer profile data and learn more about who they are collaborating with including, contact information, job title and their LinkedIn profile and insights, like birthdays or career updates, helping form personal connections. You will also be able to easily access their colleagues’ organization chart from the profile and once done viewing, they can simply close and continue where they left off in Teams.
Find out more: What’s New in Microsoft Teams Feature Spotlight – Expand Profile Card
Create offline meetings in Teams
You can now schedule in-person meetings, like when a meeting doesn’t require you to be online, such as personal appointment or lunch break. In the Teams calendar, you will be able to easily turn off the online toggle to create an offline meeting. Offline meetings will not include chat threads or other meeting functionalities such as the join a meeting button or recording capabilities.
Find out more: How to set up an offline event on MS Teams Calendar
New ‘notes’ tab when creating a standard channel
When creating a new standard channel in Teams, organizations who have enabled OneNote, the M365 app for notetaking, will automatically see a new ‘Notes’ tab created. Each team will have a dedicated OneNote workbook within the channel making it easier for workgroups to seamless collaborate. Team members will be able to add their notes, edit, attach files, recall & search for channel notes within OneNote on any platform.
Find out more: Now in public preview: Future of wiki and Notes in Teams
A new files app experience in Teams
A new files app experience in Teams includes an updated navigation panel that allows you to discover, access, download and easily share your documents and files from your chats, channels, or meetings more quickly. The new file app experience in Teams, is now powered by OneDrive, bringing consistency and familiarity with how files are stored, shared, and accessed across Microsoft 365.
Find out more: Explore the Files list in Teams
Active speaker view in meetings
Speaker view for Teams meetings allows you to effortlessly track the current active speaker. The active speaker’s video will be rendered at a higher resolution, providing better visual clarity. The use of 16:9 tiles and consistent placement of audio and video participants on the same stage ensures a fluid experience.
Find out more: Now in public preview: Speaker view in Teams meetings
Profanity filtering on/off control for Live Captions
You now have a new option to turn off the profanity filtering and be able to see the Captions as is. You can control this option via Settings in Teams > Captions and transcripts > Filter profane words in meeting captions. To turn live captions on, join a meeting or start a call. Select the More icon in the meeting toolbar > Language and speech > Turn on live captions. To change the spoken language, click the three dots in the live captions pane at the bottom of the screen.
Find out more: Now in public preview: Profanity filtering on/off control for live captions in Teams meetings
Support Breakout Rooms on VDI
Organizer support for Breakout Rooms for VDI users is now enabled. Breakout rooms allow meeting organizers to split main meetings into smaller sessions for focused discussions.
Find out more: Now in public preview: Breakout rooms support on VDI
Avatars for Microsoft Teams
Avatars for Microsoft Teams gives you that much-needed camera break, while still allowing you to collaborate effectively. You can add a new layer of choice to your meetings and represent yourself the way you want with customizable avatars and reactions.
Find out more: Set up avatars for Microsoft Teams
The new meeting recap experience
Microsoft Teams helps you catch up on meeting contents from the ‘Details’ tab of a meeting, which provides links to the meeting transcript, recording, and any manual notes that were taken. Now, we’re taking it further with the new and improved meeting recap experience, available for all Teams users.
Find out more: Intelligent meeting recap in Teams Premium, now available
Change call queue & auto attendant greetings/ announcements by authorized users
To adapt to changing environments, Teams Phone users need to adjust their call queue/auto attendant greetings and announcements. This is required more frequently than what the IT helpdesk can typically handle. Now with user managed CQ/AA greetings for Teams end users, authorized users identified by Teams tenant admins can change greetings and announcements for their respective call queues and auto attendants without leaving Teams.
Find out more: Manage your call queue and auto attendant greetings in Microsoft Teams
Compliance recording for redirected calls
Organizations who are using compliance recording solutions integrated with Teams will now be able to ensure that compliance recording policies are maintained when a call is redirected. Redirected scenarios include forwarded and transferred calls, calls redirected to voicemail, delegated calls, and call to call groups. This further enables organizations to consistently adhere to regulations, internal policies, and industry standards.
Find out more: Introduction to Teams policy-based recording for callings & meetings
Busy-on-busy admin settings now honored on Teams phone devices
Within Teams admin center, admins can enable a “busy on busy” call setting to also show on phone devices (excluding user-controlled option). Busy on busy lets you configure how incoming calls are handled when a user is already in a call or conference or has a call placed on hold. New or incoming calls can be rejected with a busy signal or can be routed accordingly to the user’s unanswered settings, while the recipient will receive a missed call notification. Announced last month for desktop and web, this feature is now available on Teams Phone devices.
Find out more: Busy on busy when in a call
Dynamic emergency calling enhancements on Teams Phone Devices
If you are in the US and Canada, you can now easily set and confirm their emergency location in the Calls app on the phone device. Announced last month for desktop and web, this important feature is now available on Teams Phone devices.
Find out more: Plan and configure dynamic emergency calling
Teams (premium)
Virtual Appointments two-way lobby chat
Virtual Appointments two-way lobby chat to enable clients and facilitators to chat prior to B2C meetings.
Find out more: Virtual Appointments in Microsoft Teams
Intelligent Meeting Recap
Intelligent recap leverages AI to automatically provide a comprehensive overview of your meeting, helping save time catching up and coordinating next steps. You’ll see generated meeting notes, recommended tasks, and personalized highlights to help you quickly find the information most important to you, even if you miss the meeting.
Find out more: Intelligent Meeting Recap
Teams management
New widget for unspent Azure consumption commitment
New widget in the Microsoft Teams admin center (TAC) helps admins quickly view unspent Microsoft Azure consumption commitment (MACC) that they can apply when making purchase of Teams apps that are Azure benefit eligible. It will only be available to organizations that have an existing MACC agreement with Microsoft.
Block anonymous users’ meeting chat read access
This feature builds on the ability to block anonymous users’ write access in internal meetings by also blocking anonymous users from accessing the chat. This is done by disabling the read access on top of the existing disabled write access. IT admins can turn on this setting for internal users from the Teams Admin Center or through PowerShell. Attendees in the same meeting who have access to meeting chat will be notified that external participants might not see chat when this setting is in effect.
Find out more: Manage chat in Teams meetings
App suggestions by task in In-context Stores
You constantly think about which tasks they need to complete such as creating a survey inside Teams. Now, app suggestions will be organized by tasks the apps support as opposed to conventional categories (productivity, project management). As a result, the new categorization will reduce the amount of time you need to spend learning about these apps – helping them to work more effectively. The task-based app suggestions will be added to the Tabs, Messaging Extension, and Bots in-context Stores.
Collaborative Stageview
With Collaborative Stageview, app content opens in a new Teams window where you can engage with content and chat with other team members, side-by-side. Collab Stage lets you share links and collaborate on content, right from within Teams.
Auto Install Approved Apps
Microsoft Teams Auto Install Approved Apps (AAA) feature allows admins and users to streamline the management and usage of apps within their organizations. AAA automatically installs apps on Teams for users after they sign-in to SaaS apps with Azure AD credentials, while respecting app access controls set by admins. This reduces manual processes and administrative costs. Admins can seamlessly add apps that users have used outside of Teams, maximizing the value of existing SaaS licenses. With AAA, users avoid searching for apps and can continue to use the same tools within Teams to stay in the flow of work without context switching.
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):
- Excel Live for GCCH – Excel Live is now available for GCCH. With “Excel Live,” you can share and collaborate on an Excel workbook in a meeting.
- GCC-H support for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android – Teams Rooms on Android and Teams Admin Center functionalities are now supported¹ for GCC-H customers. Now GCC-H tenant customers can take advantage of Microsoft Teams Rooms on both Windows and Android devices. Available in Standard, Premium, and Pro licenses.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Modern controls for canvas apps, visual improvements for model driven, tenant isolation GA, premium license requests, pipelines updates, device picker (preview), Copilot by default, canvas built-in offline previe
Modern controls for canvas apps
The Power Platform team have recently released the following improvements for modern controls in canvas apps:
New insert pane design for modern controls
Established concept of modern & classic controls for fluent based vs current controls – a paradigm which will be used frequently as we progress towards canvas modernization.
Key control improvements
Here are the latest updates about the changes published in May:
| Checkbox | We added new critical properties – OnCheck, OnUncheck & OnSelect, removing OnChange from the flow. We fixed issue of control movement on selection. |
| Badge | We added new brand and shape properties |
| Button | We will only have OnSelect property on button and we disabled OnChange property. |
| Dropdown | We will only have OnChange property on dropdown and disabled OnSelect property |
| Tab List | We fixed all responsive and overflow issues making this control more usable. The first tab is now selected by default unless maker explicitly configure defaultSelectedItem property |
| Text | ‘Text’ property is now available as output property, expanding use cases for this control. Text control is updated to better visualize whitespace and paragraphs in control. |
Improved property reference & Enums
The Power Platform team have simplified property references for modern controls. Earlier, the properties had long reference in format PowerApps.CoreControls.<Control name>.<Property name>.<Value>. The new format is <Control name>.<Property name>.<Value> to increase usability of these controls.
Many enum based properties were incorrectly represented as ‘strings’ confusing makers about the type of property. But we updated our infrastructure to correctly represent those values, now making it easy for our makers to manipulate them correctly.
No more extra step for arrays to work on dataset based controls
The Power Platform team have removed the PCF limitation to select the default ‘value’ field in order to make dataset based controls work while providing an array as input. This increases usability and steps to configure key existing controls like tab list, radio button & dropdown, and also for upcoming controls like breadcrumb & combobox. Our makers can now directly add list of items in control and control will work as expected.
Visual improvements in model driven apps
The Power Platform team have released the following updates to the modern apps preview:
Dialogs
Dialogs now flow to the height of their content, reducing white space for small dialogs. The buttons and icons have also been modernized.
Loading indicators
The Power Platform team have modernized loading indicators in the header and form. Loading spinners within the app have also been modernized.
Power Platform Tenant Isolation is Generally Available
The Power Platform team have announced that tenant isolation for Power Platform is generally available (GA) in all clouds as of May 10th. Tenant isolation makes it easy for administrators to ensure that connectors used in apps and flows can be harnessed in a safe and secure way within the tenant, while minimizing the risk of data exfiltration outside the tenant.
Find out more: Cross-tenant inbound and outbound restrictions
Power Apps makers can now proactively request premium licenses for their app users
Makers can request Power Apps premium licenses during the app share experience, ensuring a smooth end user experience by making sure their app users have the appropriate licenses. Once a request has been acted upon by an admin, the maker will get an email notification informing them of the status of their submitted request(s).
Find out more: New: Makers can now proactively request Power Apps premium licenses for their users
Piplelines updates
To provide makers and admin with more ways to customize their solution deployment processes, the Power Platform team have released an update that includes scheduled deployments, extensibility with Power Automate cloud flows, deployment notes, and more. Now, admins have greatly expanded configurability for their pipelines to enable makers to deploy quickly and properly. Makers will be able to deploy when and how they want, without worrying about business disruptions or manually acquiring approvals from their admins.
Find out more: More power with pipelines in Power Platform
Copilot, Build apps through conversation, now available by default
The AI assisted app generation experience on the Power Apps home page is now available by default to customers using environments with Dataverse in the US region. From the home page header, simply describe the app that you want to build, and AI will design a table with relevant sample data to get you started on your app. Confirm to create an app and continue building inside the designer!
Find out more: Build apps through conversation (preview)
Device picker app (preview)
The device picker allows you to quickly check the look of your app in multiple viewport sizes whether on the web, on a table, or on mobile. When used in combination with auto-layout containers or other responsive app authoring techniques, you can see how the content of your app will reflow as you switch through the different device types and change the orientation.
Find out more: Preview an app
Canvas built-in offline (preview)
The Power Platform team have announced the Public Preview of the canvas offline feature for mobile application on iOS, Android and Windows devices. With this experimental feature, you can easily enable your Dataverse-centric canvas Power Apps for offline scenarios with simple switches and a simple canvas control. There is no need to use Power Fx SaveData/LoadData functions or manage offline data with complex collection schemes. Just build your app with normal Power Fx formulas and the offline feature handles all the complexity for you.
Find out more: Mobile offline for canvas apps (preview)
Power Automate
In Power Automate: Automate email data extraction in minutes, Power Automate desktop update May 2023, new features for automation, customer managed encryption keys
Automate email data extraction in minutes with Power Automate, AI Builder, and GPT
If you would like to know how to extract email data in minutes, watch the video below:
Find out more: Automate email data extraction in minutes with Power Automate, AI Builder, and GPT
Power Automate desktop – May 2023
The May 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.32) has been released – here are the new features and updates:
- Custom actions can now be created in desktop flows and deployed via the Assets library (in preview)
- Automatically repairing the selectors of UI elements is now available
- A new terminal emulation action is now available
Find out more: May 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop
AI powered automation features coming to Power Automate
At Microsoft Build 2023, Microsoft shared new ways you can automate and orchestrate business processes across your organization with Microsoft Power Automate. Here are the key new features/ updates:
- Copilot in Power Automate now in preview – Building off the foundations of the describe it to design it feature using natural language to accelerate the creation of automation, these two unified experiences enable developers to work smarter—not harder.
- Actions SDK for desktop flows now in preview – Now, using the new actions SDK (preview) for desktop flows, developers can create custom actions to speed up development.
- Hosted machines now generally available – Now GA, hosted machines takes a groundbreaking approach to running RPA bots at scale takes the weight off IT for setting up and managing virtual machines by letting Microsoft do the work for you with hosted infrastructure.
- Work queues now in preview – The new work queues feature provides full digital workforce management, which involves managing and optimizing the use of digital workers, such as software robots, and distributing prioritized work effectively across automations and available resources.
Customer managed encryption keys for Power Automate (preview)
With Customer Managed encryption Keys (CMK), customers can bring their own encryption keys to secure all their cloud data at rest, to provide them with added control. While every customer data is encrypted using Microsoft-managed encryption keys by default, CMK provides added protection, especially for highly regulated industries like Healthcare and Financial Services, to encrypt their cloud assets using their own key.
Find out more: Announcing public preview of customer managed encryption keys for Power Automate
Power BI
In Power BI: Power BI embedded with Fabric, Power BI server feature summary, on-prem data gateway, Power BI desktop feature summary, Power BI admin role rename, new tenant setting notifications, admin monitoring, item links to configure tabs in Teams
Power BI Embedded with Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric is an end-to-end, unified analytics platform that brings together all the data and analytics tools that organizations need. Fabric integrates technologies like Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Power BI into a single unified product, empowering data and business professionals alike to unlock the potential of their data and lay the foundation for the era of AI.
With the release of Microsoft Fabric, ISVs and application developers using Power BI embedded can now leverage new capabilities of Microsoft Fabric, all while maintaining their Power BI embedded solutions and using the Power BI REST APIs.
Find out more: Power BI Embedded with Microsoft Fabric
Power BI Report Server May 2023 Feature Summary
The May 2023 edition of the Power BI Report Server release has a number of great new features like the Report Server accessibility tagging for screen-reader report consumers, new accessibility for matrix navigation, plus updates to features for Modelling, and Reporting.
Find out more: Power BI Report Server May 2023 Feature Summary
On-premises data gateway May 2023 release
The May 2023 update for the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.174.10) has been released. 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 May version of Power BI Desktop, plus more.
Find out more: On-premises data gateway May 2023 release
Power BI May 2023 Feature Summary
The Power BI May 2023 update has lots of new features and updates including Microsoft Fabric, the preview announcement of new Open, Save, and Share options when working with files in OneDrive and SharePoint document libraries, updates to the On-Object Interaction feature.
Find out more: Power BI May 2023 Feature Summary
Power BI admin role to be renamed Fabric Administrator
On May 23, 2023, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Fabric. It offers various data-related experiences, including data integration, data engineering, data warehousing, data science, and real-time analytics with Power BI. These services are hosted on a lake-centric SaaS solution. The administration for these experiences is now centralized in the Fabric Admin portal, previously known as the Power BI admin portal. Beginning in June 2023, the role of Power BI Administrator will be renamed as Fabric Administrator to better reflect its evolving scope and responsibilities.
All applications including Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Graph APIs, Microsoft 365, and GDAP will start to reflect the new role name gradually. As a reminder, your application code and scripts shouldn’t make decisions based on role name or display name.
Find out more: Power BI Administrator role will be renamed to Fabric Administrator
New Tenant Setting Notifications and GetTenantSettings API
With the introduction of Fabric, the administration of analytical capabilities has been centralized in the Fabric Admin portal (previously known as the Power BI admin portal). The goal of Fabric is to simplify the management of the increasing number of settings in the Admin Portal as new workloads are added to the platform. To achieve this, two important enhancements are being implemented. These enhancements aim to assist in identifying newly-introduced tenant settings and programmatically managing the expanding body of tenant settings.
Find out more: New Tenant Setting Notifications and GetTenantSettings API
Admin Monitoring for Tenant Admins
With the growing emphasis on governance, compliance, and policy, customers now require more clarity into workflows and related actions. Tenant Administrators, in particular, need to comprehend and examine details such as the number of active users and artifact activities. The Public Preview release of the Admin Monitoring workspace offers pre-prepared reports and data sets that provide curated insights. These resources assist in the improved management, administration, and governance of your tenant.
Find out more: Admin Monitoring for Tenant Admins
Better Power BI Report Integration with OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview)
The public preview of the viewing experiences mentioned in this blog are now available in all tenants. The Power BI Desktop capabilities mentioned in this blog will become available in a future version of Desktop.
Power BI will soon introduce an enhanced integration with OneDrive and SharePoint, allowing for improved report integration. A public preview of this feature will be available in the upcoming weeks, generating excitement among users.
There are two main improvements:
- Quickly view your Power BI files directly in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint (now available)
- Work seamlessly in Power BI Desktop with files in OneDrive and SharePoint
These updates are important because they mostly affect Power BI authors who often use OneDrive and SharePoint to work together on creating reports. The goal is to make their work easier and encourage more people to use Power BI.
Note: The ability to view Power BI files directly in OneDrive and SharePoint preview requires Power BI Admins to opt-in to enable the preview. The ability to share links to Power BI reports saved in OneDrive and SharePoint from Power BI Desktop preview is on by default and requires Power BI Admins to opt-out to disable the preview.
Find out more: Pre-Announcing Better Power BI Report Integration with OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview)
Use item links to configure Power BI Tabs in Microsoft Teams
The Power BI team have announced several updates to the Power BI Tabs in Microsoft Teams. These updates help you create tabs faster, allowing you to use links to configure tabs, and helps open a default page and set default filters for the items you share through tabs. These include:
- Simplified UI for adding tabs
- Simplifying permissions and request access for embedded content
Find out more: Announcing: Now you can use item links to configure Power BI Tabs in Microsoft Teams
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