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: New site creation experience, manage layouts for search results, simplified sharing, Lists UX update, Twitter web part retirement, SharePoint Web UI kit, visual refresh
New site creation experience
With this update, you choose a site template based on your scenario. Before clicking “Create site”, you see what the template does for you, a visual preview, a list of site capabilities, and a list of pages and other features that come with each template… aka, guidance and clarity to future site owners.
Microsoft are also updating the content in the following site templates: Organization home, Event, Human resources, Volunteer center, and Crisis management.
Find out more: Roadmap ID 141819
Manage layouts for SharePoint results in Microsoft Search
This update will allow Microsoft Search admins to change result layouts for select SharePoint content using adaptive cards with Result Type feature in Microsoft Search administration. This enables a richer display with useful information in the search results so users can quickly find the information they need – beyond title and thumbnail.
The default result layouts for SharePoint sites, pages, list items and Portable document format (PDF) results can now be replaced with layouts built using adaptive cards. The changes can be made for Organization level search applicable to Office.com and SharePoint home. Note: Changes for Microsoft Search in Bing and site level search on SharePoint sites will roll out soon.
Find out more: Manage result types
Simplified sharing experience
The simplified sharing experience is available across more than fifty Microsoft 365 applications on all platforms: Web, Desktop, and Mobile. Additionally, when you select “copy link” you get a clear, on-screen confirmation that the link has been copied, and the confirmation self-dismisses.
Find out more: Feature Deep Dive: Simplified Sharing Across Microsoft 365
Microsoft Lists user experience (UX) update
You can now enjoy new features that make lists more interactive and collaborative:
- Add ratings to any list to give feedback or rank items
- Drag and/or paste images directly into a list
- See who is collaborating with you in real-time to avoid conflicts and confusion
- Switch views by clicking tabs to easily change how users see their data
Find out more: Microsoft Lists: Easier, Better, Faster, Stronger
Twitter web part retirement
Due to a change in Twitter’s (X) terms of use for third-party access, the Twitter web part in SharePoint in Microsoft 365 will no longer be supported and will be removed from the web part toolbox, as well as from any Microsoft-produced site templates.
To work around this issue, SharePoint admins can opt to remove the Twitter web part from affected pages.
Introducing a new SharePoint Web UI kit
Microsoft have launched the first modern UI toolkit to help customers design their SharePoint sites and pages. Using Figma, the industry standard tool for web design, to deliver a set of web parts, styles, and templates that make creating engaging sites much easier than was previously possible. The first iteration of the SharePoint Web UI kit will allow you to design a company and organization news communications site based on the example provided in the SharePoint look book.
Find out more: Introducing a new SharePoint Web UI kit!
SharePoint visual refresh
Microsoft are introducing updates to the Microsoft Fluent Visual styling of the search SharePoint platform that will improve the experience across the search SharePoint Authoring Experience and Microsoft Syntex. Aligning with the latest Microsoft Fluent design system principles includes updated icons with softer edges, a cooler grey palette, and more rounded corners on various UI controls.
Find out more: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=148368
Microsoft Viva
In Viva: Viva Pulse GA, Viva topics license changes, Viva Learning free LinkedIn courses, bulk inport Teams in Viva Goals, Viva Learning feature access management, date picker changes in Viva Goals, broadcast feature in Viva Goals
Viva Pulse is now generally available
Microsoft Viva Pulse is now generally available for customers worldwide. Viva Pulse empowers managers and project leads to easily request regular, confidential feedback, so they can understand their team needs and take action using team and project-based surveys available in the flow of work with Microsoft Teams and web app experience.
Find out more: Microsoft Viva Pulse is now generally available!
Lightweight management of manually created topics outside the Viva Topics license
Viva Topics provides a central knowledge base for manually created topics and definitions inside apps like Viva Engage. These topics don’t use Viva Topics’ AI, topic cards and pages but can be selected to classify conversations and posts in Viva Engage. Microsoft are proving a way for knowledge admins to edit, create, and delete these “simple” topics without Viva licensing as a way to make knowledge management more accessible to more users.
Find out more: Introducing Viva Topics lightweight management in Viva Engage
Update to the Free LinkedIn Courses Available in Viva Learning
Microsoft provides free content in Viva Learning that can be accessed by any Viva Learning user without the need for a LinkedIn premium license. As part of this partnership, Microsoft are increasing the set of free courses to the Global Skilling Initiative catalog which consists of more than 300 courses. This will replace the existing catalog of 125 free LinkedIn courses available in Viva Learning.
Find out more: LinkedIn Learning in Microsoft Viva Learning
Microsoft Viva: Bulk Import Teams in Viva Goals
With the bulk import of teams, administrators and anyone with the permission to create teams will be able to create multiple teams at a time by importing them from an external source using an Excel template. This will also enable creation of organization hierarchy and addition of members into these teams by adding groups, as part of the team creation process.
Find out more: Viva Goals Releases New Features to Help Improve Organizational Performance
Admin feature access management in Viva Learning
Microsoft are introducing feature access management in Viva Learning for admin features. Global Admin and Knowledge Admin can delegate admin feature access to non-admin users via search Microsoft 365 groups.
Find out more: Admin roles and tasks in Microsoft Viva
Date picker in check-in modal to show UTC timezone in Viva Goals
Microsoft are unifying the date picker to have the UTC date picker, which means that any Viva goals user making a check-in from any time zone will always see the same date and its representation on the progress graph will be consistent.
Previously in Viva goals, when making a check-in, the user could update the date of check-in from the check-in modal, which was based on the user’s local time zone. Users in different time zones saw the date of check-in and its representation on the progress graph differently, computation of progress and status also became a challenge.
Find out more: Introduction to Microsoft Viva Goals
Teams
In Teams: Microsoft Inspire 2023 Teams announcements, zoom in/ out screen shares, breakout room participant shuffle, virtual desktop interface (VDI), copy links to group chat messages, video enhancements in chat, calendar enhancements, mobile updates, on-demand recording for webinars
Teams Management
Education
Government
Frontline workers
Microsoft Inspire 2023 Teams announcements
Several announcements were made at Microsoft Inspire 2023 for Teams, including Copilot in Teams Phone & Chat, collaborative notes in Meetings, shared calling and more.
Find out more: What’s New in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Inspire 2023
Teams (standard)
Zoom controls when viewing screenshares in Teams
Previously, when in a meeting you could only zoom using pinch-to-zoom gesture on a trackpad or other shortcuts. Now, you can use the newly available buttons to zoom in, zoom out, and restore the original size of the incoming screenshare.
Find out more: Introducing zoom controls when viewing screenshare in Teams meetings
Teams Breakout Rooms participant shuffle
As a meeting organizer, co-organizer, or breakout room manager, you can utilize the new Shuffle capabilities to randomly assign participants to rooms—either prior to the meeting or during the live meeting. You can decide to either shuffle everyone or shuffle only unassigned participants to evenly re-distribute participants to existing rooms.
Find out more: Shuffle participants in Teams meetings
Virtual Desktop Interface (VDI) in Teams meetings
During a Teams meeting, you can use emojis like Like, Love, Applause, Laugh, and Surprise to express yourself. Just click on the React button in the meeting toolbar to send your reactions. Reactions will be displayed at the bottom of the screen and next to the names of participants who reacted.
Find out more: Express yourself in Teams meetings on VDI
On-demand recording for webinars
After a webinar has ended, an on-demand recording is available for organizers to manage and share seamlessly with attendees. Organizers can publish an on-demand recording of their webinar within the webinar management experience and an email is automatically sent to attendees with a link to access the recording. Organizers can preview the email and edit the content prior to the on-demand recording being shared with attendees.
Find out more: Get started with Microsoft Teams webinars
Mobile updates
- Enable quick and easy navigation from message search result to location in chat – When you click one message result from TM Search, you will be navigated quickly to the location in chat.
- Extended Directory People search in Teams mobile app for iOS – You can now see external people results from Extended Directory in Teams Mobile Search.
- Richer suggestions in search – You can see richer and more suggestions when you formulate a query.
- Enable “people + keyword” search in iOS – You can query as ‘people + keyword’ in search bar to find messages or more entities around a certain person. For example, ‘Lisa okr’.
- Make calls through speed dial and call history on Apple CarPlay – You can now easily call your speed dial contacts and get back to your recent calls on Teams on Apple CarPlay with your iPhone.
Teams management/ Platform
These features are currently available in the Teams admin center, or for IT administrators:
- Ability to block meeting chat access in external, non-trusted meeting joins – This feature enables IT Admin to block regulated, internal users to access chat when these users attend meetings organized by external non-trusted tenants.
- Ratings & Reviews for Apps – This feature allows end users to provide ratings and write reviews for apps they’ve acquired in the Teams app store.
- App suggestions by task in In-context Stores – 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 users 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.
- MINDZEIT® Bot – The MINDZEIT® Bot, currently available only in German, reduces stress by recommending mental exercises based on your current mood. In addition to improving the wellbeing of employees, MINDZEIT also offers concrete advantages for enterprises, such as reduction of absenteeism, downtime costs, and error rates; improving employee loyalty and corporate culture; and increasing the health and motivation of employees.
- Upward Agent – UPWARD AGENT, from Japan, works closely with front-line salespeople to achieve digital transformation. Maximize the effective use of CRM by increasing data input rate and quality. UPWARD has various features to ensure digital transformation, including timely visualization of sales activities, automatic recommendation of customers to visit based on your current location, and automatic recording of activity such as phone calls and sales visits to create data that can be shared across your organization.
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):
- Teams device management for Department of Defense (DoD) customers in the Teams Admin Center – DoD customers can manage their Teams devices from the Teams Admin Center giving Admins control of the entire lifecycle for their Teams devices.
- Virtual Appointments for GCC – Virtual appointments in Microsoft Teams are now available for GCC customers to conduct business-to-customer (B2C) engagements that help build deeper customer relationships through simplified scheduling, meeting facilitation, and post meeting follow-ups. GCC customers can use the following capabilities in virtual appointments: custom branded lobby, manage scheduling through Bookings and the Virtual Appointments app, appointment queuing and on-demand appointments, analytics, and virtual appointment graph APIs.
Frontline workers
These features currently available to Microsoft’s frontline worker customers
- New Tag Management Settings – This feature will update default tag management settings in the Teams Admin Center to include Microsoft Default along with Team owners and members and Team owners. You can update this to your preferred option of Team owners or Team owners and members at the tenant level and override the default.
- EHR Connector Virtual Appointment usage report for user access – Users who are not designated as admins now have access to the EHR Connector Virtual Appointment usage report through the Virtual Appointments App in Microsoft Teams.
- Tasks in Teams – Checklist item completion requirement for frontline organizations – The Task publishing capability in Microsoft Teams has been enhanced with a new feature: checklist completion requirement. This feature is valuable for organizations with a frontline workforce. You can now activate the checklist completion requirement when creating or updating tasks in a publishable task list. Once a task with this requirement is published, frontline teams will be notified that they cannot mark the task as complete until all the checklist items have been fulfilled. This functionality provides organizations with a reliable way to ensure that all necessary steps are accomplished before considering a task finished.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Access Team templates into solutions GA, Direct Power Fx Dataverse actions, Cards for Power Apps GA, Copresence in Canvas Studio, new Power Apps homepage, show/ hide notifications on mobile, modern control updates June 2023, shared device mode, IP Firewall in Dataverse
Adding Access Team templates into solution general availability
You can now include Access Team templates into your solution. This allows you to export your Access Team templates from one environment and import it into another. Access Team template allows you to create teams of users who can access records of a certain table with specific access rights. For example, you can create an access team template for the account table and specify the Read, Write, and Share access rights on the record for the sales team. The sales team members are dynamically added to access the record on the account form.
Find out more: Access team templates can be added in a solution | Microsoft Learn
Direct Power Fx Dataverse actions support (Preview)
Direct access to Dataverse actions in Power Fx formulas is now a Preview feature (default on.) As a part of the Power Fx language, authors can now directly invoke a Dataverse action within a formula. A new Power Fx ‘Environment’ language object that authors can add to their app enables access to Dataverse actions. It is available with Power Apps release version 3.23022.
Find out more: Connect to Microsoft Dataverse – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn
Cards for Power Apps generally available
Now generally available, Cards for Power Apps is an easy way to build and share interactive, embeddable, data-driven, lightweight micro-experiences that bring context and actions directly into Teams conversations.
Find out more: Cards for Power Apps overview – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn
Copresence in the Canvas Studio
Now, makers can access and be present within a canvas app together. Copresence only supports one editor at a time, but other makers will enter the canvas app as readers in read-only mode which allows readers debug code, review screens, and interact with comments all together in the same session. Best of all, you do not have to do anything to turn this feature on as it is enabled on by default for your ease of use.
Find out more: Experience Copresence in Canvas Studio | Microsoft Learn
New Power Apps home page (public preview with Copilot eligibility expansion)
he new home page features a modern design that offers an intuitive and user-friendly experience. The new layout showcases the latest AI Copilot app creation flow, plus simplified “Start from” options, making it easier than ever for you to start creating apps to solve your business needs. Microsoft are expanding the Copilot Build apps through conversation (preview) capability, to all makers in the US region.
Find out more: Build apps through conversation – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn
Show or hide your mobile notification area when running apps on Power Apps mobile
When running apps within Power Apps mobile, the device notification bar where battery life, clock, Wi-Fi signal, notifications, etc lived previously was always hidden by default. Now app makers can determine whether this area will be visible at the top of the screen or not by default.
Find out more: Install the Power Apps mobile app – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn
Modern control updates in June 2023
In this month’s release, model-driven apps will default to showing all users a “Try the new look” toggle to enable the modern, refreshed look.
Find out more: Monthly release Aug 2023 – Release Notes | Microsoft Learn
Shared Device Mode for Power Apps on Android General Availability
The Power Apps team have announced the general availability of Shared Device Mode (SDM) for Power Apps Mobile App on shared Android devices, joining the portfolio of apps including Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Edge, Viva Engage (previously Yammer) and Managed Home Screen.
Find out more: Announcing General Availability for Shared Device Mode for Power Apps on Android | Microsoft Learn
IP Firewall in Dataverse (public preview)
The Power Apps team have announced that the Global rollout of IP Firewall public preview is completed and is available to all our customers across all the Geos starting July 7th, 2023. By using the IP firewall feature, you can apply the right access controls when needed to help keep your organization secure and stay out of your users’ way when not needed. With IP Firewall, you will be able to configure IP restrictions on each of the Power Platform environments thereby allowing access to Dataverse API only from allowed IP ranges.
Find out more: IP firewall in Power Platform environments – Power Platform | Microsoft Learn
Power Automate
In Power Automate: AI Builder updates, Power Automate desktop updates
July 2023 updates for AI Builder
The Power Automate team have announced several new updates to AI Builder capabilities, including:
- GPT action broadly available to US customers – the ‘Create text with GPT action’ is now broadly available to customers based in the United States.
- Validate and augment GPT content with editable Approvals – a new feature in Approvals that allows you to review and edit text.
- AI Builder activity monitoring available in public preview – a new monitoring feature that allows you to keep track of AI Builder model activity and AI credit consumption.
- Extend Invoice Processing with custom fields – you can now extend the behavior of the prebuilt invoice processing model by adding new fields to be extracted in addition to the default ones.
- Co-ownership of AI models – AI Builder now supports multiple users co-owning an AI model, empowering multiple individuals to contribute to the AI model training lifecycle process.
- Pricing – AI Builder prices have also been adjusted, with updated rates and volume discounts available.
Find out more: July 2023 updates for AI Builder | Power Automate blog
Power Automate for desktop July 2023 update
The Power Automate team have announced that the July 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.34) has been released. Some of the key features released, include:
- Office 365 Outlook connector actions have now been introduced (in preview).
- A new scripting action is now available – the action Run .NET script has been introduced under the Scripting group of actions, allowing users to easily invoke C#/VB.NET code.
- A new work queues action is now available (in preview) – the action Add work queue item has also been introduced in preview under the Work queues group of actions, to enable the respective functionality out of the box in desktop flows.
- A tool to inspect UI elements has now been introduced (in preview) – a new tool to inspect UI elements has now been added in the flow designer in preview, providing the option to explore the hierarchy tree of all UI elements on the screen, check their attributes and values, and capture them for use in the desktop flow.
- A troubleshooter application with certain diagnostic categories is now available (in preview).
- Power Automate for desktop can now work in a verbose logging state (in preview) – The troubleshooter also hosts a new functionality in preview, which can put Power Automate in a verbose logging state.
Find out more: July 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop | Power Automate blog
Power BI
In Power BI: Power BI feature summary, Low code authoring paginated reports, on-prem data gateway, automatic replica synchronization for Dataset Scale-Out, datasets in mobile
Power BI July 2023 Feature Summary
The July 2023 update for Power BI Desktop is out now, updates have been made to Reporting, Modeling, Data Connectivity, Service, Mobile, Developers, and Visualizations.
Find out more: Power BI July 2023 Feature Summary
Low code authoring of paginated reports
The Power BI team have introduced an easy new way to create and export paginated reports on the Power BI service. You can create a simple paginated report such as an inventory report with an image, textbox and a table. You can export, save or share these reports.
Find out more: Low code authoring of paginated reports
On-premises data gateway July 2023 release
The July 2023 update for the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.182.4) is out now. This update brings the on-premises data gateway up to date with the July 2023 release of Power BI Desktop.
Find out more: On-premises data gateway July 2023 release
Automatic replica synchronization for Dataset Scale-Out (Public Preview)
The replica synchronization feature and APIs for Dataset Scale-Out are now in public preview, giving you more control over the scale-out configuration and replica synchronization behavior. Specifically, you no longer need to enable Scale-Out at the workspace level by using a burdensome XMLA request.
Find out more: Announcing the Public Preview of automatic replica synchronization for Dataset Scale-Out
Datasets in Power BI Mobile apps
The Power BI team have announced that Power BI Mobile apps now support datasets. This feature will help dataset owners manage their dataset directly from the mobile app, allowing them immediately respond to failures and unlock their users who need fresh data in their reports.
Find out more: Datasets are now in Power BI Mobile apps. You can now refresh your datasets also when you’re on the go.
Admin Digest
This section covers the highlights from the month’s admin digest blog:
- Bing Chat Enterprise now in preview – Now in preview, Bing Chat Enterprise gives organizations AI-powered chat for work with commercial data protection. Chat data is not saved, Microsoft has no eyes-on access, and your data is not used to train foundation models. To enable the preview, eligible customers can turn on Bing Chat Enterprise by going to https://aka.ms/TurnOnBCE to opt in. You will also need to ensure Microsoft Search in Bing setting in the Microsoft 365 admin center is turned on. Learn more about managing Bing Chat Enterprise here.
- Learn about Microsoft 365 Backup and Archive – Microsoft 365 Backup was introduced at Inspire to help you back up and quickly restore your organization’s data to a prior point-in-time after a catastrophic event or unforeseen data loss. Microsoft 365 Archive offers long-term storage of inactive or aging files that you might still want to maintain for compliance or retention requirements.
- Microsoft Edge manager service – The Microsoft Edge management service is now generally available (Roadmap ID 124856). You can access the service through the Microsoft 365 admin center, Org settings > Microsoft Edge to configure Microsoft Edge browser settings for your organization and apply these settings by group assignment or group policy. Through the portal, you can also manage browser extensions and policies or view user requests for browser extensions.
- Feature release status in the message center – Microsoft recently made feature release status in the message center for Teams, and Outlook on the web, and Microsoft 365 admin center available worldwide to customers. Now, you can have visibility to feature rollout status in the message center, Planner sync for the message center, and Service Communications API, along with the ability to view release status in Targeted and Standard release rings. Additionally, on the message center, you can apply filters based on the status of the releases and the timeframe of their status changes. To learn more, you can read the documentation here.
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