Microsoft Teams: Track and pause automatic firmware updates for Android-based Teams devices in the Teams Admin Center – With this feature, IT admins can track which firmware is being rolled out through automatic updates via the Teams Admin Center and when. Additionally, automatic updates can be paused temporarily, allowing time to validate scenarios. This feature is applicable for Teams Rooms on Android and Android-based Teams Phones, Panels, and displays. Roadmap ID:119389
Microsoft Teams: Video Filters in Microsoft Teams Meetings – Video filters allow participants in Teams Meetings to augment their video stream with visual effects. The effects are provided by app developers on Teams Platform. Roadmap ID:86811
Microsoft Teams: Add people to a group chat with @mention – Add new participants to the chat with @mention, removing the need to navigate to the add-dialog. When adding a new participant, you can control how much of the chat history to share. Roadmap ID:97736
Microsoft Teams: Casting from Teams desktop client to Microsoft Teams Rooms – For quick ad-hoc sessions that don’t require setting up a formal meeting, people can use 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. Roadmap ID:97227
Microsoft Teams: Bulk removal for individual policy assignments – Admins can cleanup individual policy assignments from users in bulk, so that those users can inherit the correct policy either via a group policy assignment or global org-wide default. Roadmap ID:90705
Microsoft Teams: Freehand by InVision Feature Change – The Freehand by InVision feature that was able to be initiated from the Share Tray in a Teams Meeting is being removed. Users can use the new Freehand by InVision Meeting App to create and collaborate on Freehands during their meetings. Roadmap ID:96011
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Teams: Expanding up to 10,000 users in Distribution Lists for lobby policy in Teams meeting – Currently, if you change your lobby policy in a Teams Meeting to “Invited Users Only” and invite a Distribution List (DL), only the first 1,000 users of that DL will be recognized and let through the lobby. All other users a part of the DL will not be recognized and will be placed in the lobby. With this update, up to 10,000 users of that given DL will be recognized and let through the lobby if the lobby policy is set to “Invited Users Only.” Roadmap ID:93585
Microsoft Teams: Live Captions Usability Improvement – The new Caption Settings pane allows for better discovery and easier navigation. Users have the ability to customize the size and color of their font as well as the height and position of the caption window with the option to scroll to review captions of what has been said, up to one minute ago. Roadmap ID:107782
Microsoft Teams: 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. Roadmap ID:107969
Microsoft Teams: Easier Teams Meeting join for Cloud Video Interop (CVI) users – Cloud Video Interop (CVI) licensed users can join Teams meetings as a guest without CVI coordinates. The Teams platform enables all four certified CVI partners to offer customers the ability to quickly join a Teams meeting without requiring the CVI coordinates in the meeting invite. Roadmap ID:120855
Microsoft Teams: QR code sign-in on Teams Displays for hotdesking – This feature helps hotdesking users sign-in quickly and securely into their Teams displays by scanning a QR code using their Teams mobile app on Android phones and iOS phones. Roadmap ID: 123153
Microsoft Teams: Virtual front desk on certified Teams displays – Virtual front desk is a feature that enables IT admins to interact with and provide personalized assistance to customers, colleagues, or guests who are on-site via video call on a Microsoft Teams display. Roadmap ID: 123154
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Loop: Tasks in Loop components sync with Planner and To Do – Tasks added to task lists in Microsoft Loop components in Teams and Outlook will be available in Microsoft Planner and To Do. Roadmap ID:124928
Microsoft Teams: Breakout rooms support for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows – With breakout room support, Teams Rooms on Windows can be added to a breakout room and moved in and out of the main room making it easy for breakout session coordination. Roadmap ID:95680
Microsoft Teams: App suggestions by task in In-context Stores – Users 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 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. Roadmap ID:122527
Rollout starts – July 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Ability for all participants to start collaborative annotations – All participants in meetings are now able to start collaborative annotations. Roadmap ID:89975
🆕 Microsoft Teams: See multiple participants and shared content preview in presenter window when screen sharing – While screen sharing, the presenter window now shows up to four meeting participants (both video and audio), active speakers, and raise hands. Meeting notifications are surfaced to the central area of the screen for easier awareness and consistent windowing behavior. Roadmap ID:128651
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Collaborative notes on Teams mobile – Collaborative notes allow meeting attendees to co-create and collaborate on their meeting agenda, notes, and action items. Since Collaborative notes are a Loop component, it is always in sync regardless of how many places they live in. Assigned Tasks in Collaborative notes automatically sync with ToDo & Planner. Roadmap ID:128652
Microsoft Teams: Front Row AI enhancements for Teams Rooms on Windows – Spatial Audio – Spatial Audio brings next-generation experiences to Teams Rooms on Windows that have Teams-certified stereo speakers with right and left capabilities. This intelligent audio technology delivers a more natural and inclusive experience for in-room participants making it feel like remote people are in the room with them. Roadmap ID:122554
Microsoft Teams: Meeting ID and passcode to join on Teams Rooms on Windows – IT Admins can configure and require a meeting ID and passcode to join a meeting on Teams Rooms on Windows to ensure higher levels of security and privacy. This feature is available for Teams Rooms Pro customers. Roadmap ID:101332
Microsoft Teams: Animated Backgrounds in Teams Meetings – The dynamic background feature in Teams Meetings allows users to replace their existing background with a dynamic animation for a more immersive virtual environment. It offers various options to enhance meeting experience with creativity and personalization according to their preferences. Roadmap ID:122513
Microsoft Teams: Two-way lobby chat in Virtual appointments – Provide a seamless client experience with an interactive lobby that allows facilitators to send messages to customers prior to the meeting. Roadmap ID:122395
Microsoft Teams: Front row gallery improvements for Teams Rooms on Windows – Improvements to the front row experience for Teams Rooms on Windows using Microsoft AI to remove individual backgrounds, adjust video participant size, and apply a unified background design so remote participants appear as if they are in the same room. Roadmap ID:95267
Microsoft Teams: Virtual appointment – a new Teams Meeting type for B2C meetings – Virtual Appointment is a new Teams meeting type tailored for B2C meetings with people outside of your organization. When using the meeting type, guests will get a meeting invitation that includes important appointment details to make joining easy. They can join from any device—no need to install Teams—and experience a comfortable pre-appointment virtual waiting room until you’re ready to begin. Roadmap ID:100705
Microsoft Teams: Automatic lowering of a user’s Raised Hand after speaking – To reduce the number of stale raised hands in meetings, we will now suggest users to lower their raised hand after we detect they spoke in the meeting. They will be able to choose to keep their hand raised. If the user doesn’t take any action on the suggestion notification, we’ll automatically lower their hand. This should ensure smoother meeting facilitation for organizers and presenters. Roadmap ID: 90022
Microsoft Teams: Walkie Talkie Transmission Usage Report – Walkie Talkie, a push-to-talk experience that enables clear and secure voice communication over the cloud, enables teams to communicate instantly and always stay on the same page. Through this new capability, customers can download Walkie Talkie Usage and Transmission Quality related data to build insights for understanding product usage in stores and making investment decisions. Roadmap ID:96972
Microsoft Teams: Browser screen pop for incoming PSTN calls – Admins can enable policy 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. Roadmap ID: 98054
Microsoft Teams: Attendee restriction to remove another attendee from chat for government clouds – Attendee removal from chat is now restricted to organizers. Roadmap ID:92937
Microsoft Teams: Dynamic caller ID for call queue agents – Call queue agents can now place calls from the Calls app using a call queue phone number as their caller ID. This ensures the call is properly identified by the recipient and that the call back number is the call queue number rather than the agent’s personal line. Roadmap ID:86992
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Teams: Simulcast for Teams on VDI – Simulcast support for Teams on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) enables multiple video call streams at the same time, even in the event of low network quality. Roadmap ID:99865
Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams Zero-touch App Install – Microsoft Teams Zero-touch App Install uses intelligent signals from your users to install and surface the apps that the admin has already allowed for the tenant. An admin can enable it to help users naturally discover and use apps that are highly relevant to their needs within Microsoft Teams. Roadmap ID:100385
Microsoft Teams: Breakout Rooms participant shuffle – Meeting organizers can randomly re-assign participants after initial room creation. Roadmap ID:116532
Microsoft Teams: Excel Live for GCCH and DoD – Collaborate easily in Teams with our new Excel Live feature. With this feature, you can easily collaborate with all meeting participants on your Excel worksheet during the meeting. Select the file you want to share, grant permissions to meeting participants, and enable all meeting participants to edit the document from the meeting window. Roadmap ID:116897
Microsoft Teams: Track and pause automatic firmware updates for Android-based Teams devices in the Teams Admin Center – With this feature, IT admins can track which firmware is being rolled out through automatic updates via the Teams Admin Center and when. Additionally, automatic updates can be paused temporarily, allowing time to validate scenarios. This feature is applicable for Teams Rooms on Android and Android-based Teams Phones, Panels, and displays. Roadmap ID:119389
Microsoft Teams: Intelligent Meeting Recap (Premium) – As part of Teams Premium, Intelligent Meeting Recap is a comprehensive AI-powered meeting recap experience that helps users catch-up, recall, and follow-up on hour-long meetings in minutes by providing recording and transcription playback with AI assistance. This allows users to browse the recording by speakers and topics, as well as access AI-generated meeting notes, action Items, and @mentions. Roadmap ID:122529
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: group chat messages links – Users will be able to share a link to a specific message in a group chat, enabling the group chat members to quickly navigate to a message and find information. Roadmap ID:122522
Microsoft Teams: Collaborative Stageview – With Collaborative Stageview, app content opens in a new Teams window where users can engage with content and chat with other team members, side-by-side. Collab Stage lets users share links and collaborate on content, right from within Teams. Roadmap ID:93769
Microsoft Teams: Updated companion mode for Android meetings – This feature allows you to add your Android device to an ongoing meeting, making it easy to chat, react, share, and more. Roadmap ID:109606
Microsoft Teams: Block anonymous users’ meeting chat read access in addition to current write access – This feature enables IT admins to block anonymous users from accessing the chat in internally hosted meetings by disabling the read access on top of the existing disabled right access. Roadmap ID:123974
Microsoft Teams: Mark all as read for activity feed – Users can triage their activity feed more efficiently using the new ‘mark all as read’ feature. With just one click, users can mark all unread activities as read. Roadmap ID:102238
Microsoft Teams: Easier Teams Meeting join for Cloud Video Interop (CVI) users – Cloud Video Interop (CVI) licensed users can join Teams meetings as a guest without CVI coordinates. The Teams platform enables all four certified CVI partners to offer customers the ability to quickly join a Teams meeting without requiring the CVI coordinates in the meeting invite. Roadmap ID:120855
Microsoft Teams: App suggestions by task in In-context Stores – Users 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 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. Roadmap ID:122527
Rollout starts – July 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Collaborative notes on Teams mobile – Collaborative notes allow meeting attendees to co-create and collaborate on their meeting agenda, notes, and action items. Since Collaborative notes are a Loop component, it is always in sync regardless of how many places they live in. Assigned Tasks in Collaborative notes automatically sync with ToDo & Planner. Roadmap ID:128652
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Resources-specific consent apps – Admins will be allowed to pre-approve apps using resource-specific consent (RSC) permissions, so that users can install them even when RSC is otherwise turned off. Roadmap ID:96980
Microsoft Teams: Reporting access and updated policy settings for Webinars in the Teams Admin Center – IT admins can access reports for webinars getting created within their tenant through the Teams Admin Center. There is a new policy setting to control the type of questions organizers can use in a registration form and an updated UX within the Teams Admin Center to configure event policy settings without Powershell. Roadmap ID:124764
Microsoft Teams: Animated Backgrounds in Teams Meetings – The dynamic background feature in Teams Meetings allows users to replace their existing background with a dynamic animation for a more immersive virtual environment. It offers various options to enhance meeting experience with creativity and personalization according to their preferences. Roadmap ID:122513
Microsoft Teams: Mixed grid view in meetings – Mixed grid eases the transition from video on to video off and places everybody in a 16:9 ratio. Users can also change their grid size by choosing one of the predefined options. As the new version of Gallery, this is the default view users will have upon joining meetings. Users can choose to go back to this view through the view switcher as desired. Roadmap ID:118467
Microsoft Teams: Express yourself in Teams meetings on VDI – While in a Teams meeting on a virtual desktop, you can express yourself using emojis that will appear to all participants to help make Teams meetings more inclusive, engaging, and fun. Roadmap ID:118470
Rollout starts – September 2023
Microsoft Teams: Automatically view up to 9 videos (3×3) in Teams meetings in Chrome and Edge – Microsoft Teams Meetings currently supports a maximum of 4 videos (2×2) on the screen by default (i.e., Gallery view) on web browsers. With this update, users will be able to automatically see up to 9 videos (3×3) on Chrome and Edge on their screen by default without an explicit action. Roadmap ID:122139
Microsoft Teams: Geo filtering for Teams apps – ISV’s can now target applications to select geographies (countries/regions) via partner center. Thus, users will only see apps relevant for them given their country and region. Roadmap ID:100974
Microsoft Teams: Front Row layout in Teams Rooms on Android – Additional functionality with the Front Row experience, a layout for hybrid meetings that enables users to see remote attendees at eye level and on dual screens. Users can see Chat in the right panel and participants with raised hands on the left panel. And, Meeting Chat is added in the Gallery, Large Gallery, and Together Mode layouts. Roadmap ID:119620
Microsoft Teams: Content sharing and Admin controls for Teams Rooms on Android – Enhanced content sharing capabilities with PC audio shared via HDMI and IT Admin controls on automatic sharing of HDMI content. Users can view and add annotations to shared content when a desktop user starts a session in a meeting. And, for Teams Premium users, there is support for watermark-enabled meetings to safeguard confidential information. Roadmap ID:119622
Microsoft Teams: View switcher improvement for Teams Rooms on Windows – Teams Rooms on Windows’ view switcher now has an updated interface where you can easily control views in a meeting. Customize your view such as turning on and off meeting chat or choosing what to see on the front row’s left and right panels. IT admins can configure default number of panels and default component on panel(s). Roadmap ID:98422
Microsoft Teams: Expanded Reactions – Expanded reactions allows users to apply any emoji as a reaction to chat messages! Pick from over 800 Teams emojis to react the way you want. Roadmap ID:88080
Microsoft Teams: Start Whiteboard from Teams meeting from Teams Rooms on Windows – Teams Rooms users can now start a Microsoft Whiteboard in a Teams meetings using the in-meeting share content function. With the new patterns of work, whiteboarding is a key feature to enable collaboration between in room and remote users. When Whiteboard is started from the room, it is attributed to the meeting organizer so that they can manage access to the artifact. Roadmap ID:95260
Microsoft Teams: Meeting chat on Gallery, Large gallery, and Together mode for Teams Rooms on Windows – Always know the context by brining chat pane on front of room display on Teams Rooms (Windows). Room users can use a touch console in the room to show/ hide chat on front of room display alongside meeting participants and/or content. Ability to show/ hide chat is available through view switcher. IT admins can configure to hide a meeting chat for a room if needed. Roadmap ID:98423
Microsoft Teams: In-meeting notification improvement for Teams Rooms on Windows – This update delivers improvements to in-meeting notifications on Teams Rooms on Windows and aligns them with Desktop’s framework. All critical notifications that require a user action will be shown on console. Roadmap ID:103659
Microsoft Teams: Unread Toggle on Activity Feed – Unread Toggle will help the user review only unread items on the activity feed easily and efficiently. Roadmap ID:88389
Microsoft Teams: Delete or rename files in a channel and in your OneDrive folder in Teams – To rename or delete a file in a channel, go to the files tab and find the file you want. Then select More options (the three dots) on the file. To rename or delete a file from your OneDrive, select More at the bottom of the app, then select Files. Once you find the file you want, select the three dots and choose to rename or delete it. Roadmap ID:98073
Microsoft Teams: Delete or rename files in a channel and in your OneDrive folder in Teams – To rename or delete a file in a channel, go to the files tab and find the file you want. Then select More options (the three dots) on the file. To rename or delete a file from your OneDrive, select More at the bottom of the app, then select Files. Once you find the file you want, select the three dots and choose to rename or delete it. Roadmap ID:98074
Microsoft Viva: Effective meetings in Viva Insights – A new “Effective meetings” experience is being introduced in the Microsoft Viva Insights app in Microsoft Teams. Meeting organizers will be able to view personalized insights and suggestions to help improve their meeting habits. Users will also be able to create and share meeting plans to set team meeting norms such as shorter meetings by default and always including Teams links. Roadmap ID:85660
Teams admin center: View users and groups assigned to a policy – Admins can view the list of assigned users and groups for a policy. Roadmap ID:97253
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: End user reporting for suspicious messages in Microsoft Teams – End users will be able to report suspicious Microsoft Teams messages as a security threat just like they do for emails – to help the organization to protect itself from attacks via Microsoft Teams. Roadmap ID:100160
Microsoft Teams: Change call queue and auto attendant greetings and announcements by authorized users – To adapt to changing environments, Teams users need to make adjustments to their call queue/auto attendant greetings and announcements. This is required more frequently than what the IT helpdesk can typically handle. Introducing user managed CQ/AA greetings for Teams end users. Now, authorized users, as identified by Teams tenant admins, can change greetings and announcements for their respective call queues and auto attendant without leaving Teams. Roadmap ID:116739
Microsoft Teams: Together Mode Usability Improvements – We are bringing new usability improvements to Together Mode. Participants in Together Mode will now have name labels attached to their videos. Name labels will also support status icons that indicate microphone, active speaker, spotlight or pin within the meeting. Second, your own video in the gallery will now be removed while Together Mode is active to avoid duplication of the self preview. Lastly, Together Mode will now display raised hands and reactions within the view. Roadmap ID:122127
Microsoft Teams: Create offline meetings in Teams – Create a meeting in Teams and turn off the online toggle when setting up calendar events for personal appointments, lunch break slots and more. These offline events will not have chat thread or other Teams online meeting artifacts. Roadmap ID:122483
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – May 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: work hours and location – Set your work location for the day so your team can learn about your availability for in-office and remote collaboration. Click on a user’s avatar or profile photo anywhere in Teams and get an overview of their online status, the next available calendar slot in Outlook, work hours, local time, and work location (remote or office). Roadmap ID:125375
Microsoft Teams: Virtual front desk on certified Teams displays – Virtual front desk is a feature that enables IT admins to interact with and provide personalized assistance to customers, colleagues, or guests who are on-site via video call on a Microsoft Teams display. Roadmap ID:123154
Microsoft Teams: Block anonymous users’ meeting chat read access in addition to current write access – This feature enables IT admins to block anonymous users from accessing the chat in internally hosted meetings by disabling the read access on top of the existing disabled write access. Roadmap ID:123974
Microsoft Teams: Two-way lobby chat in Virtual appointments – Provide a seamless client experience with an interactive lobby that allows facilitators to send messages to customers prior to the meeting. Roadmap ID:122395
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Manage Surface Hubs as Teams devices from Teams admin center (GCCH) – Admins can manage the end-to-end lifecycle of their Surface Hubs as Teams devices from Teams admin center, available in GCC High. Roadmap ID:127471
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Compact chat list – A new chat density setting will enable users to condense their chat list and have more chats visible on the screen. This setting does so by hiding message previews. Roadmap ID:126428
Microsoft Teams: Windows 11 support for Teams Rooms on Windows devices – Teams Rooms devices that are eligible for Windows 11, will receive the Windows 11 release. Devices that are not eligible, due to an incompatible processor, will continue on Windows 10 per hardware support policy. Roadmap ID:122148
Microsoft Teams: Share the system audio from Teams meetings on AVD VDI – Users in a Teams meeting on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) can now share audio while screen sharing. Roadmap ID:99189
Rollout starts – October 2023
Microsoft Teams: Approvals Graph API’s – The Approvals Graph APIs allows developers to create and manager Approvals from any application. This set of APIs allows users to integrate Approvals with line of business application and automate creation and updates of approvals. Approvals Graph APIs are currently in Private Preview. Roadmap ID:94653
In this post we look at the current limitations of sending Teams meeting invites that hide guest attendees and provide potential workarounds.
The problem
I’m sure most of the readers of this site will be familiar with sending Microsoft Teams meeting requests, I mean, who isn’t right? (if you are a Zoom user, you may have come to the wrong place). If you are a frequent meeting creator I’m sure you will have had scenarios where you need to create meetings that involves external guests. So far, so good, but what if you want to hide the guest list from the meeting invite, as it may contain personal email addresses of the external guests and pose a GDPR risk?
Well, you may find this is a problem, especially if you create the invite from the Outlook desktop client. You cannot hide the the invite list, either from required, or optional. Bcc isn’t an option either, as this isn’t available for Teams meeting invites.
Here are some workarounds for this problem:
Workarounds
#1 Use the hide attendee list feature in Outlook on the web
The hide attendee list is, bizarrely a feature that is only available in Outlook on the web, but does allow you to make the attendee list of your meeting anonymous. Super simple to use:
Create a new event > ensure Teams meeting is enabled
Press response options > hide attendee list
#2 Use a group if guests are regular attendees
Another option may be for more frequent or regular meetings, try adding the guest users into a mail-enabled security group. You could then email that group address, rather than the individuals directly. In testing this option, internal members of the mail-enabled security group can open it up from the meeting invite, but only see the internal members, not the external guests:
#3 Save meeting as an .ics file, share meeting invite in regular email
My least favourite option, but an option all the same. My idea for this one is to use the bcc option we already have in regular email, but add a Teams meeting link and a calendar invite into the message to make it work. To do this:
Create a new Teams meeting in Outlook, select the date/ time you require for your meeting
Copy the link within the click here to join this meeting text from your Teams meeting invite
Press Save as, ensure save selected appointment is ticked
In Outlook, select Options > Bcc
Create a new email > insert an attachment and add your newly created .ics file
Add some relevant copy to the email body and its ready to go!
Microsoft Teams: Blue Jeans Meeting join in Teams Rooms on Windows – Microsoft Teams Rooms customers can join Blue Jeans Meetings from Teams Rooms devices on Windows. See ‘More Info’ for instructions for third-party service interoperability. Roadmap ID:121769
Microsoft Teams: Simplified app update experience – Users will have a clear and transparent app update experience. Users will only need to approve an update once per app, and the new version will take effect seamlessly in all their chats, channels and meetings. Roadmap ID:95676
Microsoft Teams: Federated group calling for GCCH and DoD – Easily start a group Teams call with federated colleagues outside your organization, including video and screensharing, all over an internet connection without any PSTN usage charges. Roadmap ID:117566
Microsoft Teams: GCC-H support for Teams Panels – Teams Panels already support Government Community Cloud (GCC) tenants and now will meet Government Community Cloud High (GCC-H) account requirements. Roadmap ID:119618
Microsoft Teams: Support Breakout Rooms on VDI – Enable organizer support for Breakout Rooms for VDI users. Roadmap ID:119698
Microsoft Teams: Support apps in Channel Meetings – Meeting organizers and participants can now add apps to meetings in Teams channels for better collaboration and engagement across a variety of scenarios. Roadmap ID:81122
Microsoft Teams: Presenter window usability improvements in screen sharing – With the new Presenter window, controls are located at the top, making active speakers’ faces clearly visible during screen sharing, and raise hand notifications are surfaced for improved awareness. Roadmap ID:100392
Microsoft Teams: Start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-enabled Security Groups, and O365 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. Roadmap ID:62354
Microsoft Teams: Start Whiteboard from Teams meeting from Teams Rooms on Windows – Teams Rooms users can now start a Microsoft Whiteboard in a Teams meetings using the in-meeting share content function. With the new patterns of work, whiteboarding is a key feature to enable collaboration between in room and remote users. When Whiteboard is started from the room, it is attributed to the meeting organizer so that they can manage access to the artifact. Roadmap ID:95260
Microsoft Teams: Meeting chat on Gallery, Large gallery, and Together mode for Teams Rooms on Windows – Always know the context by brining chat pane on front of room display on Teams Rooms (Windows). Room users can use a touch console in the room to show/ hide chat on front of room display alongside meeting participants and/or content. Ability to show/ hide chat is available through view switcher. IT admins can configure to hide a meeting chat for a room if needed. Roadmap ID:98423
Microsoft Teams: On-demand Virtual Appointments – Enable on-demand B2C appointments to allow customers to meet with staff in businesses or departments right away without requiring them to schedule it in advance. Roadmap ID:99919
Microsoft Teams: Teams Platform Apps in Group VOIP Calls – All the familiar functionalities of meeting apps – tabs, bots, in-meeting dialogue, and meeting stage – will be supported in Teams VOIP Calls. Users of your apps will enjoy the same familiar app experience as seen in Teams Meetings, in their Teams VOIP Calls. Roadmap ID:96189
Microsoft Teams: In-meeting notification improvement for Teams Rooms on Windows – This update delivers improvements to in-meeting notifications on Teams Rooms on Windows and aligns them with Desktop’s framework. All critical notifications that require a user action will be shown on console. Roadmap ID:103659
Microsoft Teams: Delete or rename files in a channel and in your OneDrive folder in Teams – To rename or delete a file in a channel, go to the files tab and find the file you want. Then select More options (the three dots) on the file. To rename or delete a file from your OneDrive, select More at the bottom of the app, then select Files. Once you find the file you want, select the three dots and choose to rename or delete it. Roadmap ID:98073
Microsoft Viva: Effective meetings in Viva Insights – A new “Effective meetings” experience is being introduced in the Microsoft Viva Insights app in Microsoft Teams. Meeting organizers will be able to view personalized insights and suggestions to help improve their meeting habits. Users will also be able to create and share meeting plans to set team meeting norms such as shorter meetings by default and always including Teams links. Roadmap ID:85660
Teams admin center: View users and groups assigned to a policy – Admins can view the list of assigned users and groups for a policy. Roadmap ID:97253
Microsoft Teams: Teams calendar now includes scheduling form pop-outs for Government Clouds – Currently, it is not possible to work on a file, chat, look into activity while managing time on teams’ calendar. The reason for this is all these are in different apps located in the left app tray. Users have to switch back and forth between these apps to multi-task in calendar and there are times the data/context gets lost while switching between these apps. We have heard this feedback and as a first step towards solving this, scheduling form can now be popped out as a separate window. This scheduling form new window can be seen while creating a new meeting An existing meeting can also be now popped out by clicking on the icon on scheduling form. Our tech wizards have also made some improvements to calendar in this version which makes it faster to load now. In our next versions, we also plan to pop out the complete calendar app as a new window. Roadmap ID:99198
Microsoft Teams: Live Translated Captions in Meetings – Starting April 2023, product terms require that live translation for meeting captions users be licensed with Teams Premium. While license enforcement won’t be implemented until July 1, 2023, we recommend that proper licenses be acquired for any user that you intend to benefit from live translation of meeting captions. To review the terms and conditions governing the use of Microsoft products and Professional Services acquired through Microsoft Licensing programs, see the?Product Terms. Roadmap ID:94843
Microsoft Teams: Teams Platform Apps in Instant Meetings – All the familiar functionalities of meeting apps – tabs, bots, in-meeting dialogue, and meeting stage – will be supported in Teams Instant Meetings that are started from the Calendar. Users of your apps will enjoy the same familiar app experience as seen in Teams Meetings, in their instant meetings. Roadmap ID:99192
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Defender for Office 365: End user reporting for suspicious messages in Microsoft Teams – End users will be able to report suspicious Microsoft Teams messages as a security threat just like they do for emails – to help the organization to protect itself from attacks via Microsoft Teams. Roadmap ID:100160
Microsoft Teams: Approvals – Sequential Approvers Support – Requestors will now be able to toggle on sequential approvals to designate the approval order of the request. Roadmap ID:81675
Microsoft Teams: New Files App in Teams – One place for all your content across chats, channels, meetings and Microsoft 365 – manage, organize & locate the content you need quickly and easily. In addition, way finding is now more consistent and familiar to users. Roadmap ID:97677
Microsoft Teams: Virtual appointment – a new Teams Meeting type for B2C meetings – Virtual Appointment is a new Teams meeting type tailored for B2C meetings with people outside of your organization. When using the meeting type, guests will get a meeting invitation that includes important appointment details to make joining easy. They can join from any device—no need to install Teams—and experience a comfortable pre-appointment virtual waiting room until you’re ready to begin. Roadmap ID:100705
Microsoft Teams: View switcher improvement for Teams Rooms on Windows – Teams Rooms on Windows’ view switcher now has an updated interface where you can easily control views in a meeting. Customize your view such as turning on and off meeting chat or choosing what to see on the front row’s left and right panels. IT admins can configure default number of panels and default component on panel(s). Roadmap ID:98422
Microsoft Teams: Teams Platform Apps in One-on-One VOIP Calls – All the familiar functionalities of meeting apps – tabs, bots, in-meeting dialogue, and meeting stage – will be supported in Teams VOIP Calls. Users of your apps will enjoy the same familiar app experience as seen in Teams Meetings, in their Teams VOIP Calls. Roadmap ID:96188
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – May 2023
Microsoft Teams: Block anonymous users’ meeting chat read access in addition to current write access – This feature enables IT admins to block anonymous users from accessing the chat in internally hosted meetings by disabling the read access on top of the existing disabled write access. Roadmap ID:123974
Microsoft Teams: Give Feedback for GCC and GCCH – Users in GCC and GCCH can give feedback via the Help icon in Teams regarding their experience with the product. This drives how Microsoft addresses trends and influences future features and product updates. From the help icon, click on give feedback to provide verbatims on your product experience. Roadmap ID:123972
Microsoft Teams: Two-way lobby chat in Virtual appointments – Provide a seamless client experience with an interactive lobby that allows facilitators to send messages to customers prior to the meeting. Roadmap ID:122395
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Compact chat list – A new chat density setting will enable users to condense their chat list and have more chats visible on the screen. This setting does so by hiding message previews. Roadmap ID:126428
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Reporting access and updated policy settings for Webinars in the Teams Admin Center – IT admins can access reports for webinars getting created within their tenant through the Teams Admin Center. There is a new policy setting to control the type of questions organizers can use in a registration form and an updated UX within the Teams Admin Center to configure event policy settings without Powershell. Roadmap ID:124764
Microsoft Teams: App search improvement in Teams store – Improvements to search in Teams app store allows users to find the right apps and workflows quickly. Roadmap ID:122521
Microsoft Teams: Attach cloud files in chat and channel from Teams Mobile – Introducing the ability to upload files from OneDrive from Teams Mobile chat and channel. Also, view Recent files and attach most used files upfront from the Recent section. Roadmap ID:98327
Microsoft Teams: Appointment queue in GCC – Empower employees to manage and service scheduled and on-demand appointments in one location with advanced capabilities to track wait times, live status of a meeting and more. Scheduling administrators and staff conducting virtual appointments can monitor incoming requests and process them appropriately. Roadmap ID:122559
Microsoft Teams: Attach cloud files in chat and channel from teams mobile – Introducing ability to upload files from OneDrive from Teams Mobile chat and channel. Also, view Recent files and attach most used files upfront from the Recent section. Roadmap ID:98321
Rollout starts – July 2023
PowerPoint: present local files from PowerPoint app to PowerPoint Live in Teams – The “Present in Teams” button in PowerPoint apps has extended its support to present local files to PowerPoint Live in Microsoft Teams. Roadmap ID:117477
Rollout starts – August 2023
Microsoft Teams: Location-based routing for Teams on VDI – When making or receiving a PSTN call, location-based routing for Teams on VDI, enables the bypass of toll restrictions based on where the user is located. Such as when the user is not physically located on a corporate network. Roadmap ID:98501
Rollout starts – September 2023
Microsoft Teams: Loop components in Teams chat for GCC – Loop components in Teams chat allow end users to send a message with a table, action items or a list that can be co-authored and edited by everyone in line. Roadmap ID:93163
Rollout starts – October 2023
Microsoft Teams: Approvals Graph API’s – The Approvals Graph APIs allows developers to create and manager Approvals from any application. This set of APIs allows users to integrate Approvals with line of business application and automate creation and updates of approvals. Approvals Graph APIs are currently in Private Preview. Roadmap ID:94653
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.
In SharePoint: What’s next for SharePoint?, Renaming File viewer web part to ‘File and Media’, New List Templates with Approvals, SharePoint supports the Loop app, review recent site actions, what’s new for SharePoint server, Microsoft Edge to replace built-in PDF engine with Adobe Acrobat PDF engine
What’s next for SharePoint – join the event this May!
The next step of SharePoint’s journey at the Microsoft 365 Conference in Las Vegas, NV in early May. Join an in-person celebration of SharePoint’s past, present, and future – and build new connections with a full return of a vibrant in-person community event.
Microsoft are renaming the Files webpart to File and Media to make this webpart inclusive of more file types like videos. Users will see the new name for the webpart. Functionally, nothing changes w.r.t. the capabilities of the webpart. Note: Image files are not supported in the File and Media web part. However, if you want to insert an image on your page, you can use the use the Image web part.
When adding a new web part to a SharePoint page, you’ll now see the File web part reads, “File and Media.” Note the longer description appears on-hover.
We are introducing two new list templates that embed the Approvals app (service) into the Lists experience. With this change, two Microsoft Lists templates appear – specifically Travel Requests with approvals and Content Scheduler with approvals; both bring integration with the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams. You’ll see the new list templates within the Create list experience.
Note: This is an optional feature that users can leverage by using one of the two new list templates. If they opt out of the Approvals integration when creating the list, the value of each template carries through – minus the added approval functionality.
SharePoint supports the Loop app – Components, pages, and workspaces
The Loop app is now in public preview, and SharePoint provides the underlying storage and collaboration technology for Loop:
Tree Structured Storage – Optimizing for innovation and performance, SharePoint has moved from a traditional file stream architecture to tree-structured storage. Leveraging B-Tree graph nodes allows us to unlock powerful collaboration capabilities and unmatched flexibility in a data structure that works for existing file types but also natively supports Fluid Framework, the underlying tech for Microsoft Loop.
Performance Optimizations – The Loop experience sets a new bar in editing and real-time collaboration, especially for speed and scale. This drives performance improvements – not only in core SharePoint – throughout our partners in Azure on Blob, SQL, Networking, as well contributions to Windows and Chromium http stacks.
Personal and Work – Today’s Loop announcement is a major milestone because it is simultaneously available for both personal (MSA) and organization (AAD) accounts. This is the direct result of work inside SharePoint to support both authentication models.
Security and Compliance – By building on the core SharePoint platform, Loop components, pages, and workspaces inherit all of SharePoint’s industry-leading work on compliance and security.
A visual of a Loop workspace showing a page titled Project Home with reacting to the content.
What’s new for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition – March 2023
Here’s the latest feature updates for SharePoint Server Subscription:
Unified patches – To simplify the process for updating your SharePoint Server Subscription Edition environments, we’re introducing a single update each month for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, starting with the March 2023 public update.
Support for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) version 1.5.1 – To expand the customization scenarios that SharePoint Server Subscription Edition supports, the 23H1 feature update adds support for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) version 1.5.1.
New PowerShell cmdlets for variations feature – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 introduces 4 new PowerShell cmdlets that will replace the functionality of the “stsadm.exe -o variationsfixuptool” command.
SharePoint Server recompiled with Visual C++ 2022 – Microsoft have recompiled SharePoint Server Subscription Edition with the newest Visual C++ compiler: Visual C++ 2022.
Private key management in certificate management – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition introduced a new certificate management feature that allows SharePoint farm administrators to directly manage the deployment and lifecycle of SSL/TLS certificates in their SharePoint Server farms.
Support for wildcard host header bindings – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 adds support for specifying a wildcard host header binding for a web application.
Expanded usage of modern sharing dialog – To deliver a more intuitive sharing experience, these sharing entry points have been updated to use SharePoint’s modern sharing dialog.
Column totals in modern list views – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 adds support for displaying column totals in modern list views just like in classic list views. This option can be enabled in the “save view” feature.
Enhanced Quick Chart web part – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 enhances the Quick Chart modern web part by adding a “Get data from a list or library on this site” option. Users can now configure the Quick Chart web part to consume data from a list or library within the site.
Improved file picker – The Quick Links web part file picker can now support more file types such as PDF, TXT, MP4, M4V, MP3, OGG, and WAV. The File Viewer web part file picker can now support PDF files.
New product servicing policy for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition – Starting in January 2023, each public update for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition will be supported for one year after its release date (until the second Tuesday of the same month in the following year).
Antimalware Scan Interface integration comes to SharePoint Server 2019 – Our 22H2 feature update for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition first introduced Windows Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) integration to SharePoint Server.
SharePoint 2013 reaches end of support on April 11, 2023 – As a final reminder for those customers who haven’t migrated to SharePoint Online or upgraded to a newer version of SharePoint Server yet, SharePoint 2013 will reach end of support on April 11, 2023.
Microsoft Edge to replace built-in PDF engine with Adobe Acrobat PDF engine
As part of the Adobe and Microsoft collaboration to re-envision the future workplace and digital experiences, Microsoft are natively embedding the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine into the Microsoft Edge built-in PDF reader. With the use of the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine, users will have a unique PDF experience that includes higher fidelity for more accurate colors and graphics, improved performance, strong security for PDF handling, and greater accessibility – including better text selection and read-aloud narration.
In Teams: New desktop app, collaborative notes, speaker coach, avatars, new channel experience, updated files app, video filters, closed captions in PowerPoint Live, Whiteboard innovations, auto-lowering of a users raised hand, meeting toolbar improvements, ultrasound howling detection, disable chat for anonymous or unauthenticated users, live transcript in all languages, expanded view for profile card
Dynamics emergency calling updates, busy-on-busy settings, user managed call queue, click-to-call, hotline phones, simplified call delegation, shared device license for Teams mobile Android, Teams phone devices UI updates, virtual front desk, PSTN support for Breakout Rooms DoD, GCC High, SIP Gateway support, leave meeting on all devices
At Enterprise Connect 2023 earlier this month, Microsoft unveiled the new era of Teams, including the introduction of a new Teams desktop app in public preview for Windows. New Teams is a reimagining of the app from the ground up to be faster, simpler, and more flexible. Follow the announcements at Enterprise Connect to learn more about new Teams. From some independent benchmarking, they found the new Teams app:
Coming to Public Preview in April, Collaborative notes ensure that each meeting helps you to drive your work forward with a collaborative agenda, co-edited meeting notes, and follow up tasks that sync with ToDo and Planner. The best part is these notes are Loop components, that can be copy/ pasted to places like Teams chat and Outlook.
Speaker Coach provides private, personalized feedback on your speaking and presentation skills in both real-time as well as post-meeting in a summary. Now available in preview. Live insights are only seen by you and are not saved in recorded meeting transcripts.
A day of hybrid meetings can be exhausting, especially when you are distracted by how you or your background looks. Avatars for Microsoft Teams gives you a much-needed camera break, while still allowing you to collaborate. Represent yourself with customizable avatars and reactions. Maximize engagement by including more people in the conversation— whether they need a break due to video fatigue, are joining from a different time zone, or just feel more comfortable with their video off. Add a new layer of choice to your meetings.
Last year, Microsoft announced a new channels experience, built with an intuitive design that allows teams to focus, stay on task, brings everyone up to speed, actively engages real-time. Coming June 2023:
The compose box and recent posts will appear at the top of the page.
You can navigate to a conversation view that makes the discussion more engaging and synchronous, just like a chat. You can also pop out the post, keep an eye on the discussion, while continuing to work on other topics.
Hashtags referencing Viva Topics will provide context right in the channel on organizational topics without having to ask anyone else.
A streamlined information pane will include all the important contextual information like channel’s members and pinned posts so new team members can quickly on-board and for all members to find the information they need, right in the channel.
Pin posts to make it easy for everyone to know what’s important in the channel and quickly reference it.
Simplified badging is making it easier for users to understand when there are new unread activities in teams. In addition, the simplified design helps users focus on the specific channels which requires the most attention, like channels in which the user was @mentioned.
Whether editing a Word document or collaborating in PowerPoint with a team, a new files app experience with an updated navigation panel enables you to quickly discover, access and share your files from your chats, channels, or meetings:
Home: Get back to your recently accessed files.
My files: Access your personal files saved in your OneDrive.
Shared: Find files shared with you and files you have shared with others across M365.
Downloads: Locate files downloaded from Teams on your computer.
Quick Access: Pin a Teams channel file tab or SharePoint document library to access quickly.
This new file experience brings consistency and familiarity with how files are stored, shared, and accessed across Microsoft 365 and OneDrive.
Video filters in Teams meetings allow you to remove unwanted distractions and better express yourself by bringing your personality to each meeting. The filters enable participants in Teams Meetings to augment their video stream with visual effects ranging from animated frames to styles changing the video’s hue. You can apply these filters even before you join a meeting from the lobby.
Closed Captions in PowerPoint Live aim to help those who are Deaf or hard of hearing, have difficulty processing auditory information, have a language barrier, or who are simply joining the meeting from a loud environment, to better understand the auditory content being shared. Meeting attendees will now have the option to turn on closed captions for any video that includes a closed captions file.
During the meeting enjoy a breadth of Whiteboard innovations including the ability to open your existing whiteboard in Teams meetings, quickly set up your whiteboard using one of the 60+ templates, invite others to follow your viewpoint as you navigate, identify collaborators through sticky note attribution, automatically resize your sticky note text, and format it as you see fit.
You can also copy and paste Loop components into Whiteboard from Teams chat and soon from Outlook mail and Word for the web. The whiteboard you and your participants collaborated on, as well as shared comments, can be accessed in the Teams chat under the Whiteboard tab following the meeting.
Automatic lowering of a user’s Raised Hand after speaking
To reduce the number of stale raised hands in meetings, Teams will now suggest you lower your raised hand after we detect they spoke in the meeting. You will be able to choose to keep their hand raised. If the you doesn’t take any action on the suggestion notification, we’ll automatically lower your hand. This should ensure smoother meeting facilitation for organizers and presenters.
The updated Microsoft Teams meeting toolbar makes navigating meetings and discovering new features and capabilities easier than ever. For example, you are now able to raise your hand from the meeting toolbar with the dedicated raise hand button, you can navigate the More menu easier from sub-menu groupings, as well as navigate the More menu easier from sub-menu groupings.
When multiple people join a meeting in the same room then a feedback loop is created which causes an echo and in many cases the echo quickly escalates to howling (like when a musician holds the mic too close to a loudspeaker). If you a meeting with multiple other people on laptops join from the same location, we notify you that another Teams Device is detected in the vicinity and is already joined with audio to the current meeting. We will automatically mute the mic and speakers of the person who has joined after a you and has audio on.
Disable chat write access for anonymous or unauthenticated users
IT admins can now disable chat write access at the policy level for non-federated users and unauthenticated users who join Teams meetings through a link that must be used in conjunction with disabled meeting chat policy to provide additional security against data exfiltration.
Live Transcript in all available languages in Teams Meetings on Web
During any Teams meeting, you can start a live transcription of the proceedings. The text appears alongside the meeting video or audio in real time, including the speaker’s name (unless they chose to hide it) and a time stamp. Live transcription can make your meeting more productive and inclusive for participants who are deaf or hard-of-hearing or have different levels of language proficiency. Participants in noisy places will also appreciate the visual aid. People can choose not to be identified in meeting transcripts.
Microsoft are introducing an expanded view of the profile card in Teams, giving you the ability to view details and build stronger connections with your collaborators. From Teams chats, channels, calls or meetings, you can easily look up richer profile data and learn more about who you are collaborating with including, contact information, job title, organizational chart, and their LinkedIn profile. Insights like birthdays, career updates, suggested tasks will also be included in your profile card, helping form personal connections by celebrating important milestones.
Dynamic emergency calling enhancements on Teams Phone
If you are in the US, you can now easily set your emergency location in the Calls app on Teams with location recommendations. Next quarter, you will be able to set the emergency location on your Teams Phone devices without needing to rely on administrators to set the emergency location.
If you are busy in a call or meeting, you can minimize distractions with the ability to manage how incoming calls are routed. Busy-on-busy settings can be set directly from your Calls settings in the Teams app. Choose from the option to allow calls to come through, play a busy signal, or to redirect the call based on your unanswered call routing preference. Next quarter, you will be able to set busy-on-busy settings on Teams phone devices as well.
User managed call queue and auto attendant greetings
To adapt to changing environments, you may need to adjust their call queue/auto attendant greetings and announcements. This is required more frequently than what the IT helpdesk can typically handle. To solve this, we introduced user managed call queue and auto attendant greetings. Next month, if you are an authorized user, as identified by Teams tenant admins, you can change greetings and announcements for their respective call queues and auto attendant without leaving Teams.
In a world where everything and everyone is connected, customers’ expectations have evolved. Customers want quick answers and seamless interactions. Click-to-call makes it easy for customers to reach your sales and support teams directly from your webpage or app. Developers can add, customize, and program the widget to connect customers to a specific Teams user, call queue, or auto attendant. Click-to-call will be available in public preview next quarter.
Hotline phones (Private Line Automatic Ringdown)
Next quarter, you will be able to program Microsoft Teams certified phone devices to directly dial a pre-configured phone number or contact, such as emergency services in a manufacturing plant or help desk in your organization. The hotline can be set up directly through the device settings or the Teams admin center. The device will need to be enabled with a Teams Shared Device License and set to common area phone mode.
Simplified call delegation UI and feature enhancements
Shared line appearance lets a user choose a delegate to answer or handle calls on their behalf. Next quarter, we will be launching a simplified experience in the Calls app and on Teams phone devices for users who have set up call delegation. Delegators will be able to view and join active calls handled by the delegate and grant delegates permission to join active calls.
Teams Shared Device license on Teams mobile app for Android
The usage, importance, and range of experiences conducted on shared devices continues to evolve. Mobility is becoming a must have and many segments of the workforce rely on mobile devices to keep their business connected. To support mobile and flexible work styles, later this year the Microsoft Teams Shared Device license will be available on the Teams mobile app on Android. This will enable Android phones to be set up as shared devices. Walkie Talkie, call queues, auto attendants, cloud voicemail, call park and all other features currently supported for common area phones will be available through the Teams Android app.
We are continuing to simplify the UI for Teams phone devices. Next quarter, we will be launching a redesigned dial pad to help with reducing unnecessary mistakes while dialing a phone number and offers a new dial pad only view in landscape mode if you primarily use their devices for placing outbound PSTN calls. The updated meeting experience and navigation will enabled you to more quickly join meetings and help them easily navigate across applications on their phone device.
Leave a meeting on all my devices
When you join a meeting using multiple personal devices, you can encounter friction when leaving the meeting, including forgetting to leave the meeting on one of their many devices. This functionality allows you to leave a meeting from all your devices with a single tap.
The following features are currently available for the Teams Management Platform (admin center):
Teams Admin Center: Simplified navigation – The new Simplified Left Navigation feature allows administrators to pin their preferred menu options to the navigation panel, reducing clutter and streamlining the process of finding the information they need.
View users and groups assigned to a policy – Admins can view the list of assigned users and groups for a policy.
Teams Advisor guidance for Phone system deployment – Teams administrators can use Deployment Advisor for tailored guidance on deploying Teams Telephony to their organizations.
Export Teams list from Teams Admin Center – Administrators can export Teams list as a csv file from Teams admin center.
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):
SIP Gateway for GCC – SIP Gateway is now available for Government Community Cloud customers to enable core Teams calling functionality on legacy devices. For organizations with investment in SIP devices, SIP Gateway provides calling, meeting dial-in, voicemail and other core telephony features.
Frontline workers
Virtual Appointments in Microsoft Teams – Virtual Appointments is a new Teams meeting type tailored for B2C meetings with people outside of your organization. Guests will get a meeting invitation that includes important appointment details and enables an easy join experience via SMS or email from any device—no need to install Teams. The Virtual Appointment app provides a single location where professionals and admins can create and manage scheduled and on-demand appointments as integrated with Bookings. It is further enhanced with Teams Premium, which unlocks a snapshot of the queue of appointments, a summary of appointment analytics, and options to manage appointments.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Copilot, Enhanced security for shared connections, modern controls for canvas apps, selection checker enforcement, CoE starter kit backed by self-serve data, new Power Fx formula bar, request a premium license, CLI February update, tenant switcher in mobile, design data driven cards in Teams, admin-configured welcome experience, pipelines GA
Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps
Microsoft announced a next-generation AI copilot in Microsoft Power Apps that will transform how we build and interact with software applications this month. With the power of large language models, we are advancing to the next step in the evolution of code abstraction—moving from custom code, to low-code, to natural language authoring where human and machine work side by side to build applications together.
Enhanced security for implicitly shared connections
The Power Apps team have announced an enhanced security for implicitly shared connections in Power Apps. With this feature, connections are no longer directly shared with the users of a Power App. Instead, a proxy connection object that only grants access to the underlying resource (e.g., a specific SQL Server table) is shared. End user authors cannot create new applications with either the connection or the proxy connection. This feature also limits the end-user to the actions (get, put/patch, and delete) that are defined in the corresponding Power App.
Following on from the launch of the new look for model driven apps, the Power Apps team are making the same modern controls available to canvas apps through an opt in preview. The new controls bring the following improvements:
Modern – A focused and less cluttered design that supports richer interaction states and elevation, provides a higher usability baseline to build your low code apps from. These controls are based on Microsoft’s own Fluent design system which powers majority of Microsoft experiences across all products like Microsoft Teams, Word and more.
Fast – Built for performance. We are making critical investments for this new suite to ensure your apps are fast and fluid.
Accessible – These controls are WCAG 2.1 compliant with accessibility built in by default. We will provide a comprehensive set of properties for our developers to configure.
Theming – Designed with theming in mind. Although not part of the initial launch, support for theming and per control styling is coming to the preview soon.
Power Apps developers can turn on modern controls feature in Power Apps Studio by navigating to list of preview features in settings dialog.
Solution checker enforcement in Managed Environments
The Power Apps team have announced the public preview of solution checker enforcement, a new feature in Managed Environments that gives admins much more control over the customizations in their environments! Solution checker enforcement allows you to block or warn on solution imports with critical severity violations, as defined in the solution checker rules. There are two modes you can choose for solution checker enforcement:
In Block mode, solutions can only be imported if they were checked with solution checker and they contain no critical violations. Solutions containing non-critical violations won’t be blocked.
In Warn mode, solutions can be imported even if they weren’t checked with solution checker or if they contain critical violations.
improved barcode reader control general availability
Scanning barcodes is a critical part of many frontline worker workflows – whether you are managing shelves in a retail store, inventorying goods in a warehouse, managing assets on the factory floor, or accessing records in a hospital. We are excited to share the immediate general availability (GA) of the improved barcode reader control. Workers will now be able to scan barcodes quickly, accurately, and flexibly on their Android and iOS devices.
Select to scan – Select which of the visible barcodes you want to be scanned, instead of only being able to automatically scan the first visible code.
Multiple scan – Within a single barcode reading session, scan as many barcodes as you want, returned as a table output property.
Better user experience – See what you are scanning and have scanned with barcode tracking indicators and a dropdown drawer showing your scan history.
CoE Starter Kit backed by data from self-serve analytics data export (preview)
The Power Apps team have announced that the CoE Starter Kit can now use data provided by self-serve analytics as a foundation for inventory and telemetry, enabling rich insights built for scale. The experimental preview of the CoE Starter Kit using data provided by the Data Export feature is a foundation for inventory and telemetry. You can export Power Platform inventory and usage data directly into Azure Data Lake Storage using the Data Export feature in the Power Platform Admin Center.
The Power Apps team have announced a new formula editor is available an experimental feature that we encourage you to turn on in your apps and try out! The new editor is based on the powerful Monaco shared code editor component which allows us to provide you with better performance, a consistent editing experience across Studio, and additional error highlighting improvements.
Request a Power Apps premium license from org admins
Power Apps is excited to share that users can now request a license from their admin – directly in product! If a user is trying to run an app that requires a license, they will see the option to ‘Request a license’, in addition to the buy a license or start a trial option (if eligible). Once a request is submitted, a confirmation message will appear at the top of the page saying the request was successfully sent to their admin.
Tenant switcher in Power Apps mobile allows users to easily switch to a different directory, when using Power Apps on phones or tablets without logging out. Users see the list of directories they have access to on the profile page, and they can pick any directory to see apps shared with them as a guest user.
Cards for Power Apps can be sent automatically via flows
Cards for Power Apps is a recent addition to the low code lineup, announced as public preview in September, that empowers business users and developers alike to create interactive, embeddable, data-driven, lightweight mini-apps that bring context and actions directly into Teams conversations.
Now, cards for Power Apps can be sent automaticallyvia flows using our new connector and the updated Teams connector! The cards authoring experience has also been significantly improved, making it easier to design cards that suit your business processes. With these new features, anyone can use cards to bring conversations and workflows together like never before.
Admin-configured maker welcome experience in Power Apps
Admin-configured maker welcome content is now available for the Power Apps maker portal. Today, admins rely on sending welcome emails, creating wikis, and setting up internal portals to educate makers. Since this information can be presented in so many different places, makers may miss important communication.
With the maker welcome experience, admins can customize content that is displayed to users in the maker portal, proactively communicating information such as security policies, knowledge bases, the environment’s purpose, and support information to makers.
Pipelines in Power Platform is Generally Available
Pipelines within Power Platform are now generally available. Pipelines aims to democratize application lifecycle management (ALM) for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 customers by bringing deployment automation capabilities into Managed Environments in a manner that’s more approachable for all makers, admins, and developers.
In Power Automate: Copilot in Power Automate, 2 new verified + 11 independent publisher connectors, dataverse solutions by default, Power Automate connector for updates in Teams
AI Builder and Copilot in Power Automate
Power Automate will make it possible for you to not just describe a flow to create, but also improve and iterate on your flows with AI-driven conversations. This next-generation AI based Copilot in Power Automate will sit right inside of the flow studio and help out with every flow that’s being built or changed.
Copilot in Power Automate will allow open ended and conversational experiences while authoring your flows. As you build, you’ll be able to ask questions and get assistance making improvements and changes. You won’t need any special knowledge of how Power Automate works – simply by using natural language you’ll be able to build and enhance everything from a simple flow to a complex, robust enterprise-wide process.
2 new verified, 11 new independent publisher connectors
There were 2 new verified and 11 new independent publisher connectors released in the past few months. These connectors have solutions and tools for Communication, Marketing, Collaboration, Productivity and much more.
Dataverse solutions by default capabilities for Power Automate
A new environment setting is available to administrators that ensures that all cloud flows will be created in Dataverse and added into the Default solution, when Dataverse is available in the environment. There are multiple ways to create cloud flows. The following table summarizes which entry points are currently supported by the switch for create in Dataverse solutions by default:
Power Automate connector for Updates in Microsoft Teams
Updates is a Microsoft Teams app which allows you to create, submit, and review employee updates, surveys and work reports in one place, to keep your team on track for success. The Power Automate connector for Updates which allows Power Automate users to leverage Updates and address use cases like daily update, project progress, shift handoff, checklists, inspection, store visits, etc. as a part of their flows. For example, a common scenario is to collect inventory count during a store walkthrough. With this connector in place, when a frontline/store worker submits a daily or weekly update for store inventory in the Updates app, the Updates connector will automatically trigger the embedded workflow which can automatically aggregate all the inventory into a dashboard.
In Power BI: Pin workspaces, on-premises data gateway, analysis services server properties GA, Power BI March 2023 Feature Summary, On-object, Power BI data from different regions, Scanner API, Power BI org apps with multiple audiences, Power BI & PowerPoint, query parallelization
Pin workspaces
The Power BI team have announced that the pin workspace feature is now available! You can pin your workspaces on top of the list. And unpin them anytime as needed. This functionality enables you to easily navigate to the workspaces that are most relevant to you without searching through the workspace list.
Analysis Services server properties in Power BI Premium are now in general availability
Analysis Services server properties in Power BI Premium are now in public preview. At this time, we’ve transitioned this capability to general availability with full support in Power BI Premium and Power BI Embedded. As mentioned in the public preview announcement, the Analysis Services (AS) server properties gives administrators granular control to optimize and alter query behavior in their workspaces.
In this month’s release there are updates for the On-object interaction, updates to the way you can apply slicers on your reports using a new Apply All Slicers button, Multiple Audiences in the Power BI app and more.
Introducing On-object! The new way to build and format your visuals releasing with March 2023 Power BI Desktop. Aligning to our new “Office-like” strategy we bring you, on-object. A new way to build and format visuals directly on the visual.
Use Power BI data from different regions in your Power Apps solution
The Power BI team have announced that its now possible to use the capabilities of the Power App Solutions/Power BI integration even when the Power Apps environment and the Power BI workspaces it’s integrating with are located in different geographic regions.
This Power Apps Solutions/Power BI integration is controlled by two admin feature switches – one in the Power Platform admin center and the other in the Power BI admin portal. Both switches are enabled by default. Both switches must be enabled to allow cross-geo operation.
The Scanner API is part of the Power BI admin API. It enables administrators to efficiently and automatically retrieve valuable information about their organization’s Power BI assets, such as inventory, metadata, and lineage. To further meet your needs and follow up on your requests, the Power BI team have added several new capabilities over the past few months, inlcuding:
Power BI Org Apps with Multiple Audiences Generally Available
The Power BI team announced the launch in Public Preview of Multiple Audiences for Power BI org apps in August 2022. This feature is now generally available and with this, the multiple audience feature will now be supported by Power BI Mobile.
Power BI integration with PowerPoint Generally Available
Power BI and PowerPoint are now better together than ever before. We’re excited to announce the general availability of the Power BI integration with PowerPoint, which brings the world’s most powerful data visualization tool to the world’s most popular presentation program. The value of this integration is clear: it lets people easily add interactive Power BI data visualizations to their PowerPoint presentations, making them more interactive, more informative, and more engaging.
Query parallelization helps to boost Power BI dataset performance in DirectQuery mode
The Power BI team have announced significant query processing improvements in the Power BI engine around query parallelization in DirectQuery mode, which can help to accelerate query response times, specifically for DAX and MDX expressions that generate multiple storage engine (SE) queries.
Microsoft Teams: Grading Categories in Teams Assignments – Teams Assignments is adding grading categories, which will allow users to define categories of assignments with associated weights that will be used to calculate grades. Average grades will be calculated by multiplying the average grade for each category by its associated weight. This will allow users to give different levels of importance to different types of assignments. Roadmap ID:115513
Visio: Visio personal app in Microsoft Teams – Visio will be available as a personal app, or private workspace, in Microsoft Teams. With a private workspace, users will be able to view and edit Visio files in a central location without leaving Teams. When using the Teams desktop app, users will be able to use the Pop out app option to open Visio in a separate window, allowing users to continue using Teams chat, call, collaboration, and meeting capabilities. Roadmap ID:109596
Microsoft Teams: Microsoft 365 connected templates – We are combining the best of Microsoft Teams templates with SharePoint site templates – into the same flow of creation. When we create a new team using a default template – for example the “Manage a Project” template, the project management channels and apps, and the connected SharePoint template gets applied automatically. Critically, the pages, lists, and Power Platform integrations are pinned as tabs in Teams automatically, and best of all these pages and lists are fully editable right in Teams. Roadmap ID:84724
Microsoft Teams: Ability for Teams Admins to manage Teams third-party app subscriptions from within Teams Admin Center – Ability for Admins to view and manage in single place all third-party app subscriptions they’ve purchased from Teams Admin Center, easily adding more licenses for the purchased subscriptions, cancel, upgrade and downgrade subscriptions and access invoices. Roadmap ID:95920
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Teams: Call Health Panel for VDI – The Call health view in Teams helps you identify and troubleshoot issues you might experience during a Teams meeting or call. In this view you will get data on your network, audio, screen sharing, and outgoing video quality. These real-time metrics are updated every 15 seconds and are best used to troubleshoot issues that last for at least that long. To view your stats during a call or meeting, select More actions icon at the top of the call window, and then select Call health near the top of the menu. Roadmap ID:117858
Microsoft Teams: Virtual appointment – a new Teams Meeting type for B2C meetings – Virtual Appointment is a new Teams meeting type tailored for B2C meetings with people outside of your organization. When using the meeting type, guests will get a meeting invitation that includes important appointment details to make joining easy. They can join from any device—no need to install Teams—and experience a comfortable pre-appointment virtual waiting room until you’re ready to begin. Roadmap ID:100705
Microsoft Teams: Spatial Audio – Spatial Audio brings next-generation spatialized audio to Teams, where you can meet like you’re there together. This intelligent audio technology makes the meeting experience more natural, inclusive and focused for everyone. Roadmap ID:107783
Microsoft Stream: Timeline markers in Teams meeting recording for when a screen was shared – We are adding markers (which appear as icons above the video timeline) in Teams meeting recording timelines to indicate when a screen was shared in the meeting. The markers help you see who shared the screen at which moment, and to easily jump right to that part of the meeting. This feature is only available for customers who have purchased the Microsoft Teams Premium add-on offering. Roadmap ID:117418
Microsoft Teams: Federated group calling for GCCH and DoD – Easily start a group Teams call with federated colleagues outside your organization, including video and screensharing, all over an internet connection without any PSTN usage charges. Roadmap ID:117566
Microsoft Teams: GCC-H support for Teams Panels – Teams Panels already support Government Community Cloud (GCC) tenants and now will meet Government Community Cloud High (GCC-H) account requirements. Roadmap ID:119618
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – May 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Track and pause automatic firmware updates for Android-based Teams devices in the Teams Admin Center – With this feature, IT admins can track which firmware is being rolled out through automatic updates via the Teams Admin Center and when. Additionally, automatic updates can be paused temporarily, allowing time to validate scenarios. This feature is applicable for Teams Rooms on Android and Android-based Teams Phones, Panels, and displays. Roadmap ID:119389
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Collaborative Stageview – With Collaborative Stageview, app content opens in a new Teams window where users can engage with content and chat with other team members, side-by-side. Collab Stage lets users share links and collaborate on content, right from within Teams. Roadmap ID:93769
Microsoft Teams: Together Mode Usability Improvements – We are bringing new usability improvements to Together Mode. Participants in Together Mode will now have name labels attached to their videos. Name labels will also support status icons that indicate microphone, active speaker, spotlight or pin within the meeting. Second, your own video in the gallery will now be removed while Together Mode is active to avoid duplication of the self preview. Lastly, Together Mode will now display raised hands and reactions within the view. Roadmap ID:122127
Microsoft Teams: Animated Backgrounds in Teams Meetings – The dynamic background feature in Teams Meetings allows users to replace their existing background with a dynamic animation for a more immersive virtual environment. It offers various options to enhance meeting experience with creativity and personalization according to their preferences. Roadmap ID:122513
Microsoft Teams: Mark all as read for activity feed – Users can triage their activity feed more efficiently using the new ‘mark all as read’ feature. With just one click, users can mark all unread activities as read. Roadmap ID:102238
Microsoft Teams: Give Feedback for GCC – Users in GCC can give feedback via the Help icon in Teams regarding their experience with the product. This drives how Microsoft addresses trends and influences future features and product updates. From the help icon, click on give feedback to provide verbatims on your product experience. Roadmap ID:123972
Microsoft Teams: Change call queue and auto attendant greetings and announcements by authorized users – To adapt to changing environments, Teams users need to make adjustments to their call queue/auto attendant greetings and announcements. This is required more frequently than what the IT helpdesk can typically handle. Introducing user managed CQ/AA greetings for Teams end users. Now, authorized users, as identified by Teams tenant admins, can change greetings and announcements for their respective call queues and auto attendant without leaving Teams. Roadmap ID:116739
Microsoft Teams: Breakout Rooms participant shuffle – Meeting organizers can randomly re-assign participants after initial room creation. Roadmap ID:116532
Microsoft Teams: Live Captions Usability Improvement – The new Caption Settings pane allows for better discovery and easier navigation. Users have the ability to customize the size and color of their font as well as the height and position of the caption window with the option to scroll to review captions of what has been said, up to one minute ago. Roadmap ID:107782
Microsoft Teams: Expanded view for profile card – With the expanded view of the profile card, users will now be able to see a richer view of a person’s profile, such as their contact data, custom properties, and their LinkedIn information. This expansion also enables the user to view richer organization chart information about the person they are interacting with, without leaving the context they are in. Roadmap ID:109526
Microsoft Teams: Loop components in Teams chat for GCC – Loop components in Teams chat allow end users to send a message with a table, action items or a list that can be co-authored and edited by everyone in line. Roadmap ID:93163
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Unified user experience for Bookings App in Teams – The Bookings app in Teams is moving to the new Virtual Appointments app and users will see a unified Bookings app experience across all the entry points. Users will be able to access features targeted for virtual appointments scenarios via the new Virtual Appointments app. Roadmap ID:120420
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Export API Support for Teams Control Messages – Control Messages are system generated messages on Teams client when an activity or event occurs. For example, User A was added User B to a chat and shared all chat history. Export API, a compliance archiving solution for Teams, goes beyond user generated Teams message and provides support to archive Teams control messages. As part of this release, Export API will support member add and member remove messages in the context of Teams, chats, and channels. Roadmap ID:122517
🆕 Microsoft Teams: New Net Promoter Score survey in Teams Rooms on Windows – Capture meeting room participant feedback and help make Teams Rooms experiences better with the new Net Promotor Score (NPS) survey that occasionally appears on Teams Rooms on Windows consoles upon leaving a Teams Meeting. Roadmap ID:121117
🆕 Microsoft Teams: View Together Mode for everyone on Teams Rooms for Windows – Meeting organizers and presenters can select Together Mode for all the participants and select a layout to fit the meeting type. Roadmap ID:126105
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Updated companion mode for Android meetings – This feature allows you to add your Android device to an ongoing meeting, making it easy to chat, react, share, and more. Roadmap ID:109606
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Customize and edit emails for webinars (Premium) – Customize and edit content for webinar emails including registration confirmation, reminder emails, cancellation notices, and more. Roadmap ID:119391
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Ability for meeting participants to rename themselves – Teams meeting participants will be able to rename themselves in order to have flexible representation in different meetings, regardless of their tenant set display name. Roadmap ID:122934
Microsoft Teams: Mixed grid view in meetings – Mixed grid eases the transition from video on to video off and places everybody in a 16:9 ratio. Users can also change their grid size by choosing one of the predefined options. As the new version of Gallery, this is the default view users will have upon joining meetings. Users can choose to go back to this view through the view switcher as desired. Roadmap ID:118467
Microsoft Teams: Virtual Appointments app for GCC – The Virtual Appointments app provides a single location where professionals and administrators can create and manage scheduled and on-demand virtual appointments in Microsoft Teams, view valuable appointment insights and analytics, get real-time status updates in a queue view, and send appointment reminders. Roadmap ID:121360
Microsoft Teams: Automatically view up to 9 videos (3×3) in Teams meetings in Chrome and Edge – Microsoft Teams Meetings currently supports a maximum of 4 videos (2×2) on the screen by default (i.e., Gallery view) on web browsers. With this update, users will be able to automatically see up to 9 videos (3×3) on Chrome and Edge on their screen by default without an explicit action. Roadmap ID:122139
Microsoft Teams: Enable zooming while viewing screenshare – Users can now zoom in and out while viewing a screenshare in a Teams call and meeting. Roadmap ID:116010
Microsoft Teams: Collaborative notes – [Updated April 20, 2023: We will not be rolling this feature to customers in GCC at this time. We will communicate via Message center when we are ready to proceed. Thank you for your patience.] Collaborative notes allow meeting attendees to co-create and collaborate on their meeting agenda, notes, and action items. Since Collaborative notes are a Loop component, it is always in sync regardless of how many places they live in. Assigned Tasks in Collaborative notes automatically sync with ToDo & Planner. Roadmap ID:101509
Rollout starts – July 2023
Microsoft Teams: Enable second video stream with “Teams Content Camera on Desktop” – Users will be able to enable a second video stream to support both their Personal Video and Teams Content Camera on Desktop feature. When enabling the Teams Content Camera on Desktop feature, the Personal Video is expected to be maintained so long that the user selects a separate Camera to support the two video streams. Roadmap ID:118580
Microsoft Teams: Upload files to your approval request via Power Automate portal – Files that are uploaded within the Power Automate portal will now show within the view details window of an Approval request within Teams. Roadmap ID:89106
Microsoft Teams: Receive all group chat messages with resource-specific consent – The resource-specific consent (RSC) permissions model, originally developed for Teams Graph APIs, is extended for chat and channel scope. Using RSC, you can now request team owners to consent for a bot to receive user messages across standard group chats without being @mentioned. Roadmap ID:100883
Microsoft Teams: Activity feed improvements for centrally published urgent tasks – We’re improving visibility for when a time-sensitive urgent task is published to a team. When an organization publishes a task with a priority set to “Urgent”, each member or owner of the team that receives this task will receive a notification in the Activity feed informing them that an urgent task was published to their team. Roadmap ID:117573
Microsoft Teams: Teams calendar now includes scheduling form pop-outs – In a Teams calendar, users will now be able to pop-out an existing meeting using the pop-up icon in a Teams calendar scheduling form. Users will be able to pop out the meeting and have it visible while creating a new meeting. This feature will allow users to view multiple meetings in separate windows while also being able to check their chats or edit their files without the need to switch apps. Roadmap ID:99197
Microsoft Teams: Firefox Meeting Support for Outgoing Screen Sharing – Extend outgoing screen sharing capabilities for Teams Meetings from the Firefox browser. Roadmap ID:99384
Microsoft Teams: Parent App – With Parent Connection, educators can see the roster of the parents and guardians for their students (info provided by School Data Sync) and initiate a Teams chat with them by a single click. So now, instead of the twice-yearly parent-teacher conference or sporadic email, educators and guardians can provide more iterative updates back and forth through Teams chat to help manage and track their student’s progress. Roadmap ID:96942
Microsoft Teams: View attendance report on Microsoft Teams for Android and iOS – You can now check the attendance information for regular meetings or webinars and also the registration information before webinars on Microsoft Teams for Android and iOS. Roadmap ID:97466
Microsoft Teams: Meeting Chat Bubbles on iOS – When Chat bubbles is enabled, chat messages will surface on the mobile screen where you can preview the most recent two messages. Roadmap ID:89817
Microsoft Teams: Universal Actions and Refresh Support for User Sent Cards – Adaptive Cards v2 (ACv2) now known as Universal Actions for Adaptive Cards brings the bot as the common backend for handling actions and introduces a new action type, Action.Execute, which works across apps, such as Teams and Outlook. This lights up the following new capabilities on Teams:Universal ActionsUser Specific ViewsSequential Workflow supportUp to date views. Roadmap ID:86746
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Teams: Simplified app update experience – Users will have a clear and transparent app update experience. Users will only need to approve an update once per app, and the new version will take effect seamlessly in all their chats, channels and meetings. Roadmap ID:95676
Microsoft Teams: Geo filtering for Teams apps – ISV’s can now target applications to select geographies (countries/regions) via partner center. Thus, users will only see apps relevant for them given their country and region. Roadmap ID:100974
Microsoft Teams: Profanity filtering on/off control for Live Captions – With the newly introduced toggle for turn on/off profanity filtering, user will now be able to control whether they want to continue to leverage the profanity filtering capability provided out of box, or, if they want to see every word as-is. Roadmap ID:113412
Microsoft Teams: Active speaker view in meetings – Active speaker is a new view added to Microsoft Teams meetings. It highlights the active speaker while still showing the rest of the participants in the meeting. Users can use this new view through the view switcher in a meeting. Roadmap ID:116009
Microsoft Teams: Green screen in Teams meetings – Green screen improves the sharpness and definition of the virtual background effect around your face, head, ears, and hair. It also allows you to show a prop or other object in your hand to be more visible to other participants in a call. The virtual background with a green screen provides the best virtual background effect, consuming fewer system resources, allowing your Teams to run smoother. Roadmap ID:117941
Microsoft Teams: Support Breakout Rooms on VDI – Enable organizer support for Breakout Rooms for VDI users. Roadmap ID:119698
Microsoft Teams: Delete or rename files in a channel and in your OneDrive folder in Teams – To rename or delete a file in a channel, go to the files tab and find the file you want. Then select More options (the three dots) on the file. To rename or delete a file from your OneDrive, select More at the bottom of the app, then select Files. Once you find the file you want, select the three dots and choose to rename or delete it. Roadmap ID:98073
Microsoft Teams: Delete or rename files in a channel and in your OneDrive folder in Teams – To rename or delete a file in a channel, go to the files tab and find the file you want. Then select More options (the three dots) on the file. To rename or delete a file from your OneDrive, select More at the bottom of the app, then select Files. Once you find the file you want, select the three dots and choose to rename or delete it. Roadmap ID:98074
Microsoft Teams: Honor Tenant admin control settings for Microsoft Bookings SMS functionality in the Bookings app in Teams – Tenant admin settings in Bookings admin page in Microsoft Teams Admin center to enable/disable SMS functionality in all Bookings calendars in the tenant. Roadmap ID:92851
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – April 2023
Microsoft Stream: Timeline markers in Teams meeting recording for when a screen was shared – We are adding markers (which appear as icons above the video timeline) in Teams meeting recording timelines to indicate when a screen was shared in the meeting. The markers help you see who shared the screen at which moment, and to easily jump right to that part of the meeting. This feature is only available for customers who have purchased the Microsoft Teams Premium add-on offering. Roadmap ID:117418
Rollout starts – May 2023
Microsoft Teams: New ‘notes’ tab when creating a standard channel – When creating a new standard channel, a new Notes tab will be automatically created. Each Teams team will have a dedicated OneNote workbook and each channel will have its own section, making it easier on the workgroup to add their notes. Roadmap ID:101962
Microsoft Teams: Animated Backgrounds in Teams Meetings – The dynamic background feature in Teams Meetings allows users to replace their existing background with a dynamic animation for a more immersive virtual environment. It offers various options to enhance meeting experience with creativity and personalization according to their preferences. Roadmap ID:122513
Microsoft Teams: App search improvement in Teams store – Improvements to search in Teams app store allows users to find the right apps and workflows quickly. Roadmap ID:122521
Microsoft Teams: Dashboard for Chat – This feature will update the existing chat details page to provide more information to users and help them easily find content shared in the chat. Roadmap ID:114938
Microsoft Teams: Excel Live for GCCH and DoD – Collaborate easily in Teams with our new Excel Live feature. With this feature, you can easily collaborate with all meeting participants on your Excel worksheet during the meeting. Select the file you want to share, grant permissions to meeting participants, and enable all meeting participants to edit the document from the meeting window. Roadmap ID:116897
Microsoft Teams: Expanding up to 10,000 users in Distribution Lists for lobby policy in Teams meeting – Currently, if you change your lobby policy in a Teams Meeting to “Invited Users Only” and invite a Distribution List (DL), only the first 1,000 users of that DL will be recognized and let through the lobby. All other users a part of the DL will not be recognized and will be placed in the lobby. With this update, up to 10,000 users of that given DL will be recognized and let through the lobby if the lobby policy is set to “Invited Users Only.” Roadmap ID:93585
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Block anonymous users’ meeting chat read access in addition to current write access – This feature enables IT admins to block anonymous users from accessing the chat in internally hosted meetings by disabling the read access on top of the existing disabled write access. Roadmap ID:123974
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Allow meeting apps to show an indicator on their icon to signal new activity – This feature enables meeting applications to display an indicator on their icon, encouraging users to participate in new in-app activities during a meeting. The application has the option to show the indicator to selected attendees or to all participants. Roadmap ID:122539
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Breakout rooms support for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows – With breakout room support, Teams Rooms on Windows can be added to a breakout room and moved in and out of the main room making it easy for breakout session coordination. Roadmap ID:95680
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Front Row AI enhancements for Teams Rooms on Windows – Spatial Audio – Spatial Audio brings next-generation experiences to Teams Rooms on Windows that have Teams-certified stereo speakers with right and left capabilities. This intelligent audio technology delivers a more natural and inclusive experience for in-room participants making it feel like remote people are in the room with them. Roadmap ID:122554
Microsoft Teams: Together Mode Usability Improvements – We are bringing new usability improvements to Together Mode. Participants in Together Mode will now have name labels attached to their videos. Name labels will also support status icons that indicate microphone, active speaker, spotlight or pin within the meeting. Second, your own video in the gallery will now be removed while Together Mode is active to avoid duplication of the self preview. Lastly, Together Mode will now display raised hands and reactions within the view. Roadmap ID:122127
Microsoft Teams: Mark all as read for activity feed – Users can triage their activity feed more efficiently using the new ‘mark all as read’ feature. With just one click, users can mark all unread activities as read. Roadmap ID:102238
Microsoft Teams: Teams Rooms on Windows and VTC endpoint calling via CVI partners – Users can make one-to-one calls between Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows and VTC endpoints enabling ad-hoc video calls across services. The Teams Rooms platform enables Cloud Video Interop (CVI) partners to offer this feature for Teams Rooms Pro licensed customers. Please check with your CVI partner for availability. Roadmap ID:95263
Microsoft Teams: Teams Button to Join Meeting from Pre-Join Screen – Starting today, users can successfully join and participate in a meeting directly with their Teams Button on their Microsoft Teams certified peripheral. After a user receives a meeting start notification, the user can press the Teams Button to bring up their Meeting Pre-Join Screen. Now, a subsequent press of the Teams Button will allow the user to join the meeting! Roadmap ID:95632
Microsoft Teams: Teams Button to bring Meeting Stage to foreground during meeting – With this feature, users can bring up the meeting stage to the foreground by pressing their Teams Button during a meeting. This allows users to more quickly return to the meeting stage to review chat discussions or the content being shared, especially if the meeting stage was hidden behind other windows. Note: This feature only applies to devices with dedicated Teams Buttons. If the device has a dual-purpose button (both hookswitch and Teams Button), pressing the button will end the call. Roadmap ID:98496
Rollout starts – July 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Ability to block meeting chat access in external, non-trusted meeting joins. – Public Description: This feature enables IT Admin to block regulated, internal users to access chat when these users attend meetings organized by external non-trusted tenants. Roadmap ID:123975
🆕 Microsoft Teams: 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. Roadmap ID:125556
Microsoft Teams: Enable zooming while viewing screenshare – Users can now zoom in and out while viewing a screenshare in a Teams call and meeting. Roadmap ID:116010
Microsoft Teams: License Management in Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Teams Admin Center for SaaS offers built by Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) – With Microsoft’s license management solution for SaaS offers built by Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), customers can easily assign, use, and track SaaS licenses in Teams and Teams admin center. This also provides ISVs with a ready-to-use solution without the need to develop their own license management and enforcement system. Roadmap ID:85418
Yammer, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Stream: Yammer Encoded Events powered by Microsoft Teams – Today in Yammer the video stream and production in a Live Event is powered by Stream. With this feature, all Live Events (production and the video stream itself, within Yammer) will be powered by Microsoft Teams. Roadmap ID:82054
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Teams: Upload files to your approval request via Power Automate portal – Files that are uploaded within the Power Automate portal will now show within the view details window of an Approval request within Teams.Roadmap ID:89106
Microsoft Teams: Active speaker view in meetings – Active speaker is a new view added to Microsoft Teams meetings. It highlights the active speaker while still showing the rest of the participants in the meeting. Users can use this new view through the view switcher in a meeting. Roadmap ID:116009
Microsoft Teams: Front Row layout in Teams Rooms on Android – Additional functionality with the Front Row experience, a layout for hybrid meetings that enables users to see remote attendees at eye level and on dual screens. Users can see Chat in the right panel and participants with raised hands on the left panel. And, Meeting Chat is added in the Gallery, Large Gallery, and Together Mode layouts. Roadmap ID:119620
Microsoft Teams: Meeting join and extension enhancements for Teams Rooms on Android – Users can start an ad-hoc meeting in one touch with the ‘Meet’ button, join a Teams meeting with a meeting ID and passcode, and extend a current room reservation within in a meeting. Roadmap ID:119621
Microsoft Teams: Content sharing and Admin controls for Teams Rooms on Android – Enhanced content sharing capabilities with PC audio shared via HDMI and IT Admin controls on automatic sharing of HDMI content. Users can view and add annotations to shared content when a desktop user starts a session in a meeting. And, for Teams Premium users, there is support for watermark-enabled meetings to safeguard confidential information. Roadmap ID:119622
Microsoft Teams: Room Remote on Desktop – The Room Remote feature users to control a nearby shared meeting room device from their Windows desktop/PC companion device via the Teams client. This feature first launched on mobile devices and will now be available on Windows PC form factors when joined to the meeting as a companion device. Roadmap ID:95482
Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows UI refresh – A vibrant new look and feel for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows consoles and front-of-room displays. To make Teams Rooms even easier to use, there is greater consistency in the user interface across Windows and Android devices. This update includes vivid new ambient screens, new themes, and a refreshed calendar that enables scrolling for full day views, on consoles and front-of-room displays. There are also improved visual cues throughout the experience that make it easier and more intuitive to interact with the console. Roadmap ID:117952
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – April 2023
Microsoft Teams: Customize and edit emails for webinars (Premium) – Customize and edit content for webinar emails including registration confirmation, reminder emails, cancellation notices, and more. Roadmap ID:119391
Rollout starts – May 2023
Microsoft Teams Admin Center: 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. Roadmap ID:125173
Microsoft Teams: Animated Backgrounds in Teams Meetings – The dynamic background feature in Teams Meetings allows users to replace their existing background with a dynamic animation for a more immersive virtual environment. It offers various options to enhance meeting experience with creativity and personalization according to their preferences. Roadmap ID:122513
Microsoft Teams: Intelligent Meeting Recap (Premium) – As part of Teams Premium, Intelligent Meeting Recap is a comprehensive AI-powered meeting recap experience that helps users catch-up, recall, and follow-up on hour-long meetings in minutes by providing recording and transcription playback with AI assistance. This allows users to browse the recording by speakers and topics, as well as access AI-generated meeting notes, action Items, and @mentions. Roadmap ID:122529
Microsoft Teams: Spatial Audio – Spatial Audio brings next-generation spatialized audio to Teams, where you can meet like you’re there together. This intelligent audio technology makes the meeting experience more natural, inclusive and focused for everyone. Roadmap ID:107783
Microsoft Teams: New channels experience – New channels experience, built with an intuitive design that help teams focus and actively engage. The new channels experience include: compose box and recent posts will appear at the top of the page, every post will now have a conversation view and a new right pane with the channel’s key information. Roadmap ID:91683
Rollout starts – June 2023
Microsoft Teams: Together Mode Usability Improvements – We are bringing new usability improvements to Together Mode. Participants in Together Mode will now have name labels attached to their videos. Name labels will also support status icons that indicate microphone, active speaker, spotlight or pin within the meeting. Second, your own video in the gallery will now be removed while Together Mode is active to avoid duplication of the self preview. Lastly, Together Mode will now display raised hands and reactions within the view. Roadmap ID:122127
Microsoft Teams: An improved search experience in chat and channels – A new search experience will allow users to search in a specific chat or channel and reach relevant results faster. The results will appear in the right handrail so you can stay in the flow of your work. Enhancements like highlighted key words will make it easier for user to scan their results. Roadmap ID:122550
Microsoft Teams: Hotline phones – Enables administrators to program Microsoft Teams certified phone devices to directly dial a pre-configured phone number or contact, such as emergency services in a manufacturing plant or help desk in the organization. The hotline can be set up directly through the device settings or the Teams admin center. The device will need to be enabled with a Teams Shared Device License and set to common area phone mode. Roadmap ID:123749
Microsoft Teams: Mark all as read for activity feed – Users can triage their activity feed more efficiently using the new ‘mark all as read’ feature. With just one click, users can mark all unread activities as read. Roadmap ID:102238
Microsoft Teams: Teams Button to Join Meeting from Pre-Join Screen – Starting today, users can successfully join and participate in a meeting directly with their Teams Button on their Microsoft Teams certified peripheral. After a user receives a meeting start notification, the user can press the Teams Button to bring up their Meeting Pre-Join Screen. Now, a subsequent press of the Teams Button will allow the user to join the meeting! Roadmap ID:95632
Microsoft Teams: Teams Button to bring Meeting Stage to foreground during meeting – With this feature, users can bring up the meeting stage to the foreground by pressing their Teams Button during a meeting. This allows users to more quickly return to the meeting stage to review chat discussions or the content being shared, especially if the meeting stage was hidden behind other windows. Note: This feature only applies to devices with dedicated Teams Buttons. If the device has a dual-purpose button (both hookswitch and Teams Button), pressing the button will end the call. Roadmap ID:98496
Rollout starts – August 2023
Microsoft Teams: Join a meeting by digital code for GCC-High and DoD – User can join a meeting by entering a digital code. Roadmap ID:94620
Microsoft Teams: Live Translated Captions in Meetings on Android and iOS – Choose translated captions for a more inclusive meeting experience. Live translated captions will be part of Teams Premium. Roadmap ID:98513
In this post we will explain what the root site of your SharePoint Online environment is, why you may want to replace it, limitations and more.
Intro
The root site in SharePoint Online is one of the sites that get created automatically when you purchase your Microsoft 365 subscription that includes SharePoint. The root site is a teams site, but not Microsoft 365 group connected. It’s URL is contoso.sharepoint.com or similar, owned by the company administrator and cannot be deleted.
Example of a root site in SharePoint Online.
By default, the root site has the “everyone except external users” domain group added within the site members SharePoint group, meaning that everyone except external users has edit access to the site.
Root site permissions showing how the “everyone except external users” domain group has been added within the site members SharePoint group.
As the root is is a team site, when organisations start to build intranet solutions, they may find they want to use the root, or top-level URL as their default landing page, or home site for their intranet. To do this, you will need to swap the existing root site for a communication site in your SharePoint Online environment.
Root site vs. home site – what’s the difference?
As mentioned earlier, the default root site of a SharePoint environment is the one that is setup at the beginning when you purchase your subscription. You may also come across the term home site, which is used by Microsoft frequently. The Microsoft definition of a home site is:
“A landing site for your intranet that brings together news, events, embedded video and conversations, and other resources to deliver an engaging experience that reflects your organization’s voice, priorities, and brand”.
Setting a home site doesn’t change the SharePoint start page from appearing when pressing the SharePoint link in the Microsoft 365 ribbon, or pressing the home button on the side-bar. The SharePoint start page is something else – not a root site or home site
Setting a home site doesn’t change the site that appears if you browse to the root URL i.e. contoso.sharepoint.com
There is a separate configuration setting that let’s you can specify a new home site – but this is not the same as replacing the root site
Replacing the root site
There is some pretty good documentation available here from Microsoft on how to replace a root site, but it lacks screenshots and any limitations that may be relevant. So here’s how to replace the root site of your SharePoint Online environment:
💡 You’ll need to have the SharePoint admin role to be able to perform a root site swap.
Navigate to the SharePoint admin center
In the all sites view > sort the A to Z column so that the current root site appears at the top of the list
Select the root site > press replace site from the command bar
Press replace site from the command bar in the SharePoint admin center to start the root site swap process.
A replace root site pane will open > enter the URL of the source site you wish to replace the root site with
Press Save
Note: SharePoint auto-generates what the URL will be for the root site when you swap it. This cannot be changed.
Things of note
Any featured links added to the SharePoint start page will need adding after replacing the root site
A site redirect is created to redirect traffic from the source site to the root site (if the source site is already being used)
Following the root site swap, the source site redirects also update any sharing links, apps or files to refer to the new URL
Limitations
During the root site swap, you may see a 404 not found message appear temporarily.
Following the root site swap, all content needs to be re-indexed by search, so some content might not appear in the search results whilst this happens.
The source site used for the root site swap has to be a communication site (SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0), or modern team site not connected to a Microsoft 365 group (STS#3).
Neither the root site, or source site can be registered as a hub site prior to replacement. If either are hub sites, they must be unregistered, then re-registered following the swap.
If your root site has sub-sites, they will be archived as part of the replacement process.
The site you select as the new root site must be within the same domain as the current root site.
If the site is on hold, you’ll receive an informative error and you can’t replace the site.
If your root site swap contains large lists or libraries then it is worth considering migrating these before the root site swap. There is no official documentation on size limitations as part of the replacement process, and should be possible – but I would air on the side of caution!
Setting a home site
Although different from the root site, a home site does have it’s own capabilities, such as:
“Intranet” wide search – Home sites don’t have the scoped search that typical sites have.
Home site news posts become official organizational news and take priority on the start page and in the home section of the mobile app.
Customised global navigation in the SharePoint app bar
Before you start – make sure to have the URL of the site you wish to set as the home site handy, as you’ll need it later! Here’s how to set a home site in SharePoint:
Navigate to the SharePoint admin center.
Select Settings > SharePoint – Home site.
In the SharePoint admin center > select settings then press the SharePoint – Home site option.
Enter the URL of the site you want to use.
Press Save.
Note: After setting the home site, it may take several minutes to take effect.
SharePoint Stuff 