The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across Microsoft 365. The free version includes updates to SharePoint, Teams and OneDrive, whilst subscribers get all of the updates, plus Power Platform, Copilot and more.
You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
SharePoint
SharePoint: A new Start experience
Microsoft have designed a new user-friendly approach to creating sites and pages. This new Start experience becomes a central location to refine drafts, review past work, and monitor engagement metrics. Users will be able to create personal pages using available templates and/or publish them to a target site as needed, then track all your pages in one place.
Find out more: Discover content with the SharePoint start page
New Banner web part
This update means big improvements to the title area at the top of SharePoint Pages and News. You can remove the title area all together; it’s no longer mandatory. SharePoint Page and News authors can choose to add no banners, one banner, or multiple banners to the page. The title area will be rebranded as a Banner web part with new layouts while additional use of banners will function as headings within the bulk of the page
Find out more: Improvements to the title area at the top of SharePoint Pages and News – Microsoft Community Hub
SharePoint design ideas
Microsoft are introducing a new SharePoint design ideas feature with AI powered suggestions for improving the structure of your SharePoint content. With this feature, authors can now use Design Ideas in Microsoft SharePoint to rearrange and reformat their image section, text section, and banner webpart.
Find out more: Introduction to SharePoint design ideas feature
SharePoint eSignature: Coming soon to Canada, UK, and selected European countries
Microsoft SharePoint eSignature service will soon expand to the UK, Canada, and select European countries, with rollout starting in mid-August 2024. Microsoft SharePoint eSignature allows users to easily request eSignatures on a PDF document via SharePoint online. Signers can easily add their electronic signature. Signed documents are saved securely back to SharePoint.
Find out more: Overview of SharePoint eSignature – Microsoft Syntex | Microsoft Learn
New template updates for news/ pages
Microsoft are simplifying the templates for creating News pages and all templates will support sharing by email by default. When creating a new News post, all templates will be grouped and users will no longer need to select from a specific email-ready category.
Find out more: Page templates in SharePoint – Microsoft Support
Legacy SharePoint Invitation Manager settings have retired
Microsoft have retired all related settings from the Microsoft SharePoint admin center. The only setting specific to the legacy Invitation Manager (that retired late February 2024) is the setting for Guests must sign in using the same account to which sharing invitations are sent. Please note that all link sharing today requires guests to accept link sharing invitations with the account that was invited. If your users want guests to access links with a different account, users should select the Anyone link sharing setting instead.
The setting Guests must sign in using the same account to which sharing invitations are sent will no longer appear in the SharePoint admin center. As the SharePoint Invitation Manager has already been retired, there is no behaviour change in the product.
Find out more: Plan and deploy a file collaboration environment – SharePoint – SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn
SharePoint Premium/ Syntex: document processing models will no longer process files if the service is not enabled for the site
Microsoft are updating the service setting to only process files where you have applied a model to a library on an enabled site. Previously, if you make a model available to process files on a site and then disable the site, this action will not disable the model. Now you can still use models to process files and incur charges. You can make a model available to process files by creating a model on that site or in a content center. This change will make the model processing consistent with the other content processing services.
Find out more: Set up and manage prebuilt document processing in Microsoft Syntex – Microsoft Syntex | Microsoft Learn
Delay custom script setting removal until November 2024 via PowerShell
The Custom Script setting from SharePoint admin center was removed in May 2024. There is a PowerShell command that was made available in April 2024 to delay the change, which has now been extended to delay the change until November 2024 (previously May 2024). With the Custom Script setting is removed, you are no longer be able to add, modify or remove scripts within OneDrive and SharePoint sites unless administrators temporarily allow that by turning the setting on specific sites.
Find out more: Allow or prevent custom script – SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn
Microsoft Lists: Row reorder
Instead of having to add an extra column to get tricky with ascension or descension of numbers and dates… now you can simply grab a row, or multiple rows, to reorder List items using the drag and drop action. This effectively creates a custom sort of your items so you can start your list, reorder your list, and not feel bound to some immovable or hacked custom order.
Find out more: Introducing Drag and Drop to Reorder Items in Microsoft Lists – Microsoft Community Hub
Teams
Teams
Time-based prompts in Copilot in chat
There’s no need to manually scroll and search through extensive chat histories. Now when you activate Copilot in your chat, you can use time-based phrases like “yesterday,” “last month,” “6 months ago,” or ” December 2023″ in your prompts. Copilot will efficiently locate and provide insights on information from the time period you specify.
Find out more: Use Copilot in Microsoft Teams chat and channels – Microsoft Support
Request to join a shared channel via channel link
It is now easier for users to access relevant shared channels and for channel owners to manage memberships. Users that share the same tenant can request to join a shared channel by using the channel’s share link. Channel owners will receive the join request and can easily approve or deny requests. While fostering efficient collaboration in organizations, this feature also helps to reduce administrative tasks for channel owners.
Find out more: Join a shared channel in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support
Channel cards
Now you can get a quick overview of a channel using its channel card. Hover over the channel name in the header, or wherever the channel is mentioned, to see important information, such as the channel description, last activity time, team name, and membership information, helping you quickly understand the context and purpose of the channel. The card also provides easy access to notification settings, owner channel management, and the channel roster.
Find out more: View channel cards in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support
Apps now supported in group chats with external users
You can now access applications in group chats with individuals outside your organization, allowing for improved collaboration and productivity. Group chat participants from the tenant hosting the chat can install, remove, or update applications for use by all members. All participants can use apps shared by people in other organizations in group chats hosted by those organizations. The installation of apps within these chats will adhere to the app policies of the organization that creates the chat.
Show/hide discover feed
Discover feed delivers a personalized, relevance-based feed of Teams channel content to make it easier for you to stay informed and engaged with the content that matters to you most. You can now show or hide the discover feed by going to settings > general and setting the toggle to on or off.
Find out more: Show or hide the Discover feed in Microsoft Teams (microsoft365.com)
Intelligent meeting recap for unscheduled townhalls for Android devices
Intelligent meeting recap enables unscheduled town hall participants using Android devices to browse meeting recordings by speaker name and topic title. Intelligent recap is an AI-powered feature from Microsoft Teams that will help users catch up on missed meetings with AI-generated notes, follow-up tasks, name mentions, topics, chapters, speaker identification, and more. Teams Premium users can find it on the new ‘Recap’ tab in the Teams calendar event detail and in chat.
Find out more: Intelligent meeting recap in Teams Premium, now available – Microsoft Community Hub
Town hall reactions
Town hall participants can now send and see reactions (for example “like”, “love”, “applause”, “laugh”, or “surprised”) to express themselves in real-time during a town hall. Attendees can select the reaction they wish to temporarily display to the presenters and other attendees via the actions ribbon at the top of the town hall window. Reactions appear as a continuous stream on the side of the screen, giving real-time representation of participant sentiment. Reactions allow organizers and presenters to gauge how the audience is reacting to content. Reactions are available in town hall instances created by a user with a Teams Premium license.
Find out more: Get started with town hall in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support
Teams webinar creation and registration APIs
Customers and developers can now use new APIs to create, update, and delete webinars. They can also register attendees to existing webinars. Webinar Creation and Registration APIs is included in all Teams licenses.
Find out more: Get started with town hall in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support
Town hall Graph APIs
Graph APIs in town halls allow organizers to create, update, publish, and delete town hall events. Organizers can also get and list Town Hall Sessions, get, list, and create presenters, and create or update presenter profile photos. Graph APIs are included in all Teams licenses.
Find out more: Get started with town hall in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support
Town hall export Q&A questions
After an event, organizers can now export attendee questions as a .CSV file. This can help organizers understand the types of questions asked, document and catalog those that have been answered, and get a better understanding of the general sentiment of a town hall. The data can also be shared on a SharePoint site or through email with attendees. Export Q&A questions is included in all Teams licenses.
Find out more: Get started with town hall in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support
Cross-Room reaction visualizations for hosts
Mesh event hosts can now see attendees’ raised hands and reactions across all rooms in multi-room events. Multi-room events occur when a Mesh event exceeds 16 attendees, helping to scale these inclusive events to larger audiences. This feature allows hosts to determine the sentiment in events and bridge the experience gap by giving them the ability to see reactions coming from across multiple different rooms in a single event, helping presenters to easily gauge participant feedback from all attendees in larger-scale events. The cross-room reaction visualization for hosts is available in Teams Premium.
Find out more: Get started with town hall in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support
GCC Customers
- Intelligent meeting recap with AI-generated notes and tasks for GCC environment – AI-generated notes and tasks within intelligent meeting recap are now available in the Government Community Cloud (GCC) environment. Intelligent meeting recap streamlines post-meeting processes by providing a comprehensive recap of meeting events, identifying follow-up tasks, summarizing key points, and granting quick access to essential meeting details. This update adds to the features already available to GCC customers within intelligent recap, which include personalized timeline markers, speaker timeline markers, chapters, and topics. A Teams Premium GCC license or a Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 GCC license is required.
OneDrive
Colored folders in the OneDrive folder in Microsoft Windows File Explorer
Colored folders were introduced on OneDrive web in mid-2023 and now will be available in Windows File Explorer for OneDrive folders starting mid-September 2024. Users will be able to see folder colors applied from OneDrive on the web in the OneDrive folder in File Explorer and manage folder colors in File Explorer by right clicking a folder name and then selecting OneDrive > Folder color.
Find out more: Roadmap ID 410218
OneDrive: Change to shared folder experience
Microsoft are making a change to the shared folder experience in Microsoft OneDrive. Currently, when a user opens a shared folder in OneDrive, they are taken to a view of that folder within the sharer’s OneDrive. In the new experience, opening a shared folder will take the user to the shared folder within the People view of their own OneDrive. This view, organized by people, shows and allows access to all the files and folders that have been shared with the user.
Find out more: Roadmap ID 395378
Find files faster with the improved search experience in OneDrive for the web
An improved search experience is coming to OneDrive for the web, enabling users to find files more efficiently with new filters and a clickable location column. Previously, users were unable to easily filter by date or file types and cannot easily identify location of files with similar names. Now, users can filter search results by file types, date modified and easily switch between My files, All files, Current folder and Current document library.
Find out more: Roadmap ID 395379
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