The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
SharePoint
SharePoint Premium: New autofill columns
Autofill columns allow an AI prompt to be set on a document library column that processes the file’s contents and saves the response to the associated column. The prompt can be configured to extract information from the file or to generate a response based on the analysis of its contents. That’s both existing, specific metadata, or generated metadata based on your specific criteria – which in the end, all make content mean more and your content become more discoverable, easier to enhance business processes, and takes the manual processing and automates it.
Find out more: Overview of autofill columns in Microsoft Syntex
SharePoint: Apply shapes to images
Our eyes and brain love variance – especially when we can enhance the story of a communication, visually. To help bring more interest to a page, you can now apply a shape over an Image web part or inline image in a Text web part. The shapes include square, circle, triangle, hexagon, pebble, and teardrop.
Find out more: Roadmap ID 395210
SharePoint: Enhancements to Text web part (Part 1)
The Text web part is one of the most used web parts in all of SharePoint – both in default templates and from organic use. In this update, you’ll find:
- And the ability to start new lists and set custom numbered lists.
- Expanded support for font sizes 8-250 with the capability to manually enter custom value.
- More bullet list styles – like Disc, Circle, and Square
- More numbered list styles – Using numbers, the alphabet, and Roman numerals.
Find out more: Add text, tables, and images to your page with the Text web part
SharePoint News Connector retirement
Microsoft will be retiring the SharePoint News connector from Microsoft Teams starting July 22, 2024, and ending August 31, 2024. To continue receiving SharePoint team site news notifications in Teams, use these alternatives, where development investments continue:
- Viva Connections News notifications
- Viva Amplify
- Or Workflow in Teams
After the connectors are retired, users will not receive new post notifications. While no admin action is required to implement the retirement, we recommend that you guide people through the process of determining if they have configured the SharePoint News connector using the detailed, step-by-step guide.
Find out more: SharePoint News connector retirement
Teams
Teams
Customize your draft message when you compose with Copilot
You can now instruct Copilot to adjust your draft message however you’d like. To try it out, write a message in chat or channels, open Copilot beneath the message box in Teams, choose to adjust the message with a custom prompt, and type your own prompt, like “add a call to action” or “make it persuasive” or “convert my message into a list and add inclusive language.” Copilot will adjust the message accordingly. This feature requires a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license.
Find out more: Prompt Like a Pro: Transform your messages with Microsoft Copilot in Teams
Intelligent message translation in chats
When you get a message in a different language, you will see a suggestion to translate the message into your preferred language. Additionally, in your translation settings, you can select which languages you don’t want to translate, and whether to translate messages automatically. These features reduce the need for manual translation or switching between apps, streamlining the workflow, saving valuable time and enhancing communication and collaboration across different language speakers.
Find out more: Translate a message in Microsoft Teams
Slash commands
Slash commands provide a quick, user-friendly, and consistent interface to take command of your actions fast. Instead of multiple mouse clicks to perform a task, like when you need to open a chat in a new window, add a code block, navigate to settings, or change your presence, you can simply type a slash in the compose box, select a command, and complete your task quickly.
Find out more: Use commands in Microsoft Teams
Meet now in Teams group chat
If you need to discuss and brainstorm with your team, start a quick and informal huddle using meet now in a group chat. Meet now in group chat enables ad-hoc calls in real time with your team, providing an alternative to a formal, scheduled meeting. Regardless of your whereabouts, you can start a call as spontaneously as dropping by your colleague’s desk. The chat is part of your ongoing group chat thread so the content stays in its context and you can find the information when you need it.
Find out more: Start an instant meeting in Microsoft Teams
Co-edit code blocks
Save time by using Loop components to share and co-edit code in Teams, instead of sending many code blocks. Just insert your code into a Loop component or turn a native code block into one. Then, anyone who can access the Loop component can review and co-edit it, making communication clearer and faster.
Find out more: Microsoft Adds Code Blocks to Loop App
Unfurling permalinks to see code previews
You can now share code with your team in chat more easily by pasting a permalink that shows a rich preview from Azure Dev Ops. The receiver can view the code in Azure DevOps. This helps your team understand the context without leaving the chat.
Streamlined compose box
The compose box UI has been updated to improve your messaging experience, making it simpler and more intuitive to craft and send messages. The redesign offers a cleaner layout and better-organized options directly from the compose box, enabling quick access to frequently used functions like message editing, emoji insertion, Loop components, and Copilot assistance. To explore a wider range of tools and features, such as file attachments, video clip recording, or adding apps to the conversation, click on the plus sign to access the extended menu.
Enhancements for multi-tenant organization (MTO) users
Microsoft are introducing new improvements to support consistent and seamless collaboration experiences for users in different tenants within the same parent organization, such as conglomerates or organizations that have merged. These improvements include:
- The “External” label will be removed from the chat list and chat header, so you will no longer see it when collaborating with users from other MTO tenants.
- Users can view richer profiles for people from other MTO tenants, including their profile picture and contact information. These profile pictures are now shown consistently throughout the Teams UI.
- Users can share files with other MTO users in 1:1 and group chats.
- Users can access all their chat threads with new messages from one place, directly from their home tenant, with no tenant switching required.
- MTO admins now have an option of configuring text-based labels for each participating tenant, which will then be displayed for each user from respective tenants
Find out more: Synchronize users in multitenant organizations in Microsoft 365
Meeting organizers can manage access to meeting recording, transcript, and AI-generated insights
Meeting organizers now have an option to manage which attendees have access to the meeting recording, transcript, and AI-generated insights that are based on the transcript, like Copilot queries and intelligent meeting recap. Meeting organizers can select from three options: (1) Everyone (2) Organizers and Co-organizers, or (3) Specific People. By default, access is set to ‘Everyone,’ but meeting organizers can change this before the meeting starts. This new meeting option is currently rolling out to Copilot for Microsoft 365 licensed users and will be available to Teams Premium licensed users next quarter.
Meeting notes powered by Loop are available for Channel meetings
Meeting notes powered by Loop are already an essential feature in scheduled meetings, but now they are available in Channel meetings. Participants can collaborate on the agenda, take notes together, and track follow-up tasks in the same place. Because meeting notes are Loop components, they stay in sync across all the places they have been shared. Meeting notes eliminate the typical bottleneck of a single note-taker for capturing the agenda and notes, and makes notes visible to everyone, improving accuracy and inclusion at every stage of your meeting.
Presenters can move the presenter toolbar and optimize video in Microsoft Teams screensharing
Now, when you share your screen in a Teams meeting, you can easily move the Presenter toolbar to any place you want on your screen so that you can still see the important areas of the screen when you’re presenting. We’ve also added a new feature to the Presenter toolbar in Teams that lets you manually optimize video playback when screensharing. Use the ‘Optimize’ button on the Presenter toolbar to make sure your content runs as smoothly as possible.
Enhancements to meeting transcript file storage and management
Microsoft are standardizing the storage of meeting transcript files to OneDrive for Business, and bringing parity to the file management experience for meetings with only transcription enabled and meetings with both transcription and recording enabled. The changes included in this rollout are:
- Meeting transcript files for transcription-only meetings will start saving to the OneDrive for Business folder of the meeting organizer (for scheduled meetings, Meet Now, Townhall, and Webinar).
- Starting with this rollout, all Teams client actions and entry points will only point to transcript file saved in the OneDrive for Business folder.
- Until the deprecation of storage in Exchange Online is complete in the coming weeks, when the meeting organizer or co-organizer deletes the transcript in the Microsoft Teams app, this will delete both copies of the transcript (from OneDrive for Business and Exchange Online).
- Default permissions are updated so that only meeting organizers and co-organizers have permission to download or delete the meeting transcript file, while meeting participants only have viewing permissions for the transcript in Teams client and Stream.
- Meeting organizers can update file permissions in Stream and select which participants have permission to download, view, and edit the transcript in Stream.
- The existing admin policy for default expiration time for meeting recordings will now also apply to the meeting transcript files stored in OneDrive for Business for transcription-only meetings.
- Customers who use Microsoft Purview can now use auto-apply retention label policies (requires one of the E5/A5/G5 SKUs) to set explicit retention & expiration controls on Teams transcripts stored in OneDrive for Business in addition to recording.
Expanded admin policy for who can download meeting transcripts
The current admin policy that restricts downloading meeting recordings will now also restrict download permissions for meeting transcript files in OneDrive for Business. This restriction applies to new meeting transcripts throughout the organization. Admins can make exceptions for members of specific security groups, allowing governance or compliance specialists to download meeting transcripts. This feature will be accessible through the SharePoint Advanced Management add-on license.
Require participant consent for meeting transcription
The meeting policy that requires explicit consent to be recorded is expanding to include transcription. When the policy is applied, a notification will pop up when the recording or transcription is initiated, requesting consent of all participants to be transcribed and recorded. Before a user gives consent, the user cannot unmute, turn on camera, or share content in the meeting.
Mute and unmute yourself from Windows taskbar in Microsoft Teams
Getting back to the Teams meeting to mute or unmute yourself can be difficult. In the new Teams experience on Windows, you can now see your microphone and your mute/unmute status from the Windows taskbar. From there you can also mute and unmute yourself by clicking the microphone icon. Now it will be much easier to control your microphone during a Teams meeting while multitasking.
SMS notifications for staff-scheduled appointments in Bookings
You can now set up SMS text notifications in Microsoft Bookings to be sent to the person for whom an appointment is scheduled. This is a welcome change to the current feature, which only sends SMS notifications when appointments are scheduled by an attendee via a published booking page. With this update, SMS confirmations and reminders can be sent to attendees even when appointments are booked by a scheduler or a staff member through the calendar scheduling experience in Bookings. This feature is available to Microsoft Teams Premium license holders.
Disable social share of Teams webinars for individual event attendees
With disable social share of webinars for attendees, Teams webinar organizers can prevent attendees from sharing the webinar event page to social networking sites for public events post-registration. This allows organizers to more closely control their specific audience for an engagement to those intended attendees.
Frontline workers/ Vertical solutions
These features currently available to Microsoft’s frontline worker customers and vertical solutions:
- Shifts plugin for Copilot for Microsoft 365 – Frontline teams can now harness the power of Copilot for Microsoft 365 with the new Shifts plugin. Both managers and workers can ask Copilot to show them their shifts schedule for their specific team, as well as open shifts and time off. With quick insights at their fingertips, frontline teams can manage schedules with more agility and speed so they can focus on critical tasks. Shifts plugin for Copilot is now generally available with both the Copilot for M365 license as well as Microsoft Teams E and F-SKU licenses.
- Speech-to-text for Teams Walkie Talkie – Walkie Talkie users on Android and iOS devices can now view captions on the walkie talkie home screen, as Walkie Talkie in Teams will automatically convert speech to text.
GCC Customers
- Meeting notes powered by Loop are available to Government Community Cloud (GCC) environments – Meeting notes powered by Loop are now available to our GCC customers. Meeting notes enable meeting participants to co-edit the meeting agenda, notes, and tasks in one place. Because meeting notes are Loop components, they stay in sync across all the places they have been shared.
Power Apps
Canvas coauthoring
The Canvas Coauthoring experience is now available for the public worldwide, including sovereign clouds. Up to 10 makers can now edit a canvas app simultaneously. Makers will be able to see each other’s edits in real-time and track their teammates’ work via real-time presence adorners on the authoring canvas, similar to Office’s collaborative experience.
Find out more: Coauthoring (preview)
Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) view assisted by Copilot
Microsoft have announced the public preview of a brand-new data experience that simplifies working with complex data models in an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) view with the assistance of Copilot. This feature changes how you handle data from different sources using a simple drag-and-drop interface. With Copilot, you can eliminate repetitive tasks as it takes care of populating sample data and configuring table metadata, allowing you to focus on creativity and strategy.
Find out more: Work with complex data models in an ERD view assisted by Copilot
Share and install components with catalog
Catalog enables makers to share and install re-usable components and templates that are customized for their orgs, by their orgs. This provides much more useful starting points than generic templates. Because the Catalog is based on our Solutions framework, you can easily install catalog items from any environment in a tenant, update items for makers to use the most recent version, and make catalog components accessible from authoring experiences like Power Apps Studio. The catalog also includes Enterprise level security, with items requiring approval before they can be officially published and accessible.
Find out more: Catalog in Power Platform (preview)
Developer environment and plan now available in Sovereign clouds
The Power Apps Developer Plan is now available in sovereign clouds starting with GCC and later this year will be available in GCCH and DOD. Developer Plan is needed to get Developer Environments, which offer personalized spaces for makers to experiment, innovate, and build. They provide premium capabilities like Dataverse and premium connectors at no additional cost. These environments also adhere to your organization’s default Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy for security. Striking a balance between control and empowerment.
Find out more: About the Power Apps Developer Plan
Improved management of new and preview features for canvas apps
Microsoft have introduced a new category in canvas app settings to help you identify between newly released and preview features. The new category that clearly indicates that features are GA and the long-term direction of the product, but still includes the flexibility of having a switch to control the feature. The switch allows Microsoft to slowly deploy the feature and watch for problems, and at the same time gives you control to enable the feature for your production workloads on your own schedule especially when a breaking change is involved.
Find out more: GA of many long time Preview features
Public preview for delete app users and view platform app users
Admins can take advantage of a modern and accessible UI to manage application users. Admins can do this by using the Application users page in the environment settings in the Power Platform admin center. Application users can be added, updated (or refreshed), and now inactivate application users can be deleted. Admins can also view the list of platform application users with their respective security role assigned.
Find out more: Manage application users in the Power Platform admin center
General availability of delete group team members when the associating Microsoft Entra group is deleted
When a Microsoft Entra group is deleted from the Azure portal, all Dataverse group team members will be removed within 24 hours. Previously, if a group team member logged into Dataverse after the Microsoft Entra group was deleted, the team member was removed from the Dataverse group team. This left other team members in the Dataverse group team because they did not access the system. To eliminate any unauthorized data access issues, all team members are automatically removed from the group team upon deletion of its associated Microsoft Entra group.
Find out more: Manage group teams
IP firewall support for TDS endpoint
Currently, the IP firewall is set up to support only the Dataverse OData endpoint, which means that IP-based access restrictions do not apply to the TDS endpoint. This implies that customers are unable to set up IP-based access controls for the TDS endpoint. However, the recent introduction of IP firewall capabilities for the TDS endpoint now allows customers to apply IP restrictions, enhancing the security of their TDS endpoint access.
Find out more: IP firewall in Power Platform environments
Power Automate
June 2024 update of Power Automate for desktop
Microsoft have announced that the June 2024 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.45) has been released. This latest version includes:
- New data table actions have been introduced – New actions that are dedicated to data table use cases are now available, to accommodate the respective operations out of the box.
- New Excel actions have been introduced – New actions for Excel automation are available, including: Copy worksheet, read formula, get table range from worksheet, auto fill, append cells and lookup range in worksheet
- An image-based fallback mechanism is now available for UI elements – Power Automate for desktop now supports a robust fallback mechanism for UI elements. If the configured selectors fail to identify a UI element on the screen, users can now capture a screenshot of the element and set it as an alternative identification method.
- A new timeout property is available for desktop flows (v2 environments) – In the properties pane of a desktop flow in the console of Power Automate for desktop, you can now set a maximum running time, upon which the flow will be forced to time out.
- Embedded connection references are now available in public preview for desktop flows – When you use cloud connector operations in a desktop flow, you now have the ability (in public preview) to embed therein some or all of your connection references. In this way, other co-owners, with whom you have shared your desktop flow, can safely use your connections in the context of that desktop flow.
Find out more: June 2024 update of Power Automate for desktop
Files and items modified by Power Automate or Power Apps in SharePoint will show as “Microsoft Power Platform” on behalf of the user
Microsoft are making some changes to how items and files modified by a Power Automate flow or Power App display in SharePoint. In Classic Mode you will see a modified by “Microsoft Power Platform” on behalf of the user that caused the flow or app to create or modify an item or file. Additionally, in the columns “App Created By” or “App Modified By” you will also see “Microsoft Power Platform” in both current user interface as well as Classic Mode.
Note: The columns “Created By” and “Modified By” are not changing as part of this updated experience, you will still see the user that triggered the flow or app process.
Find out more: Connector reference – SharePoint
Power BI
Power BI June 2024 Feature Summary
Highlights in the June update of the Power BI feature summary include: the ability to download large semantic models, Power BI enhanced report format (PBIR), and Subfolder support in Power BI Report Builder, plus many more:
Find out more: Power BI June 2024 Feature Summary
On-premises data gateway June 2024 release
Microsoft have announced the 3000.222.10 version of the on-premises data gateway. 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 June version of Power BI Desktop.
Find out more: On-premises data gateway June 2024 release
Power BI enhanced report format (PBIR) in Power BI Desktop developer mode (Preview)
The Power BI enhanced report format (PBIR) for Power BI Project files (PBIP) represents a significant milestone in that direction. This new report format offers source control-friendly file structures, facilitating co-development and improving development efficiency for Power BI reports. Together with TMDL for the semantic model, Power BI Projects now have a great source control experience for both report and semantic model.
Find out more: PBIR considerations and limitations
