🆕 OneDrive: Updated file sharing experience – OneDrive is updating the unified file sharing experience that appears when you share files in Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, SharePoint, Stream, OneNote, Planner and many other Microsoft 365 apps. The updated sharing dialog will have simpler look and feel. Additionally, when users select “copy link” they will get a clear on-screen confirmation that the link has been copied, and the confirmation will self-dismiss. Roadmap ID: 124933
OneDrive: Sharing Experiences – simplifying external sharing – Respecting the Admin settings, we want to simplify the journey for end-users to share with someone who is external to the organization to improve collaboration. Roadmap ID: 100713
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 OneDrive: Relocating sync command in OneDrive’s My files view to settings – We are relocating the command for Sync in My Files to the settings gear. All functionality remains the same, but with a new entry point. Roadmap ID: 124902
Microsoft 365 admin center: Send email notifications from your own domain – Notifications that cannot be sent from a user’s email account can now be configured to use your own custom verified domain instead of the Microsoft default domain.Roadmap ID:103628
OneDrive: Favorite/Unfavorite files – Not all M365 documents are used in the same way. You’ll inevitably have a few that you use every week and some you’ll use occasionally. This is where using Favorites can help you stay organized. Favoriting files is a great way to mark content of personal importance and can help you to get back to the content you’re looking for right away. We have made sure that the favorites experience is consistent across Office.com, OneDrive, Document Libraries, and the Files app in Teams by building on top of the existing pinning and favorites experience in Office. Roadmap ID: 117497
OneDrive: Sync app- Automatic Account Configuration – The OneDrive sync app will automatically sign in if there are existing credentials available to Microsoft applications (Teams, Office, Edge, Windows). Roadmap ID: 93242
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Syntex: Split PDF pages into new PDF files with the Extract action in OneDrive for iOS – Users of Microsoft Syntex can now split a PDF file into multiple PDFs with the Extract file action in OneDrive for iOS. The Extract file action lets you quickly split and extract multiple pages of a PDF into a new PDF file stored in SharePoint or OneDrive. Roadmap ID: 117548
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 365 admin center: Send email notifications from your own domain – Notifications that cannot be sent from a user’s email account can now be configured to use your own custom verified domain instead of the Microsoft default domain.Roadmap ID:103628
OneDrive: Favorite/Unfavorite files – Not all M365 documents are used in the same way. You’ll inevitably have a few that you use every week and some you’ll use occasionally. This is where using Favorites can help you stay organized. Favoriting files is a great way to mark content of personal importance and can help you to get back to the content you’re looking for right away. We have made sure that the favorites experience is consistent across Office.com, OneDrive, Document Libraries, and the Files app in Teams by building on top of the existing pinning and favorites experience in Office. Roadmap ID: 117497
🚂 ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – June 2023
OneDrive: Sharing experience – Manage Access settings – We will be updating the “Manage Access” experience which will offer you additional controls for how recipients access files you’ve shared. “Shared with” list would be an entry point to Manage Access settings. Feature ID:83726
Rollout starts – July 2023
🆕 OneDrive: Access Lists, Forms, Sway & PowerBI content in OneDrive Web – We’re adding the capability to surface Lists, Forms, Sway and PowerBI content in the OneDrive Home, Shared and Favorites experiences within OneDrive Web. Roadmap ID: 124870
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.
OneDrive: Updated Files On-Demand Settings on Windows – We are updating the OneDrive sync app settings for Files On-Demand for users who have the feature enabled. Roadmap ID: 101520
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Syntex: Split PDF pages into new PDF files with the Extract action in OneDrive for iOS – Users of Microsoft Syntex can now split a PDF file into multiple PDFs with the Extract file action in OneDrive for iOS. The Extract file action lets you quickly split and extract multiple pages of a PDF into a new PDF file stored in SharePoint or OneDrive. Roadmap ID: 117548
OneDrive: New Shared Experience – We are updating the Shared experience in OneDrive for web which can be found in the left nav pane. The new experience will show files and folders shared across various Microsoft 365 apps so that users can find files shared with them over email, chats, and meetings all in one place. In addition, users can identify updates to files by using the activity column, as well as leverage the new filtering pills to quickly find shared files. Roadmap ID: 117426
OneDrive: Favorite/Unfavorite files – Not all M365 documents are used in the same way. You’ll inevitably have a few that you use every week and some you’ll use occasionally. This is where using Favorites can help you stay organized. Favoriting files is a great way to mark content of personal importance and can help you to get back to the content you’re looking for right away. We have made sure that the favorites experience is consistent across Office.com, OneDrive, Document Libraries, and the Files app in Teams by building on top of the existing pinning and favorites experience in Office. Roadmap ID: 117497
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – May 2023
🆕 OneDrive: PDF Annotation and Fillable Form Fields – Using the Edit action in Microsoft OneDrive for the Web, you can 1) annotate PDFs with hand-drawn ink and 2) fill in PDF form fields, 3) save these edited PDF files to your OneDrive account. Roadmap ID: 124802
Rollout starts – November 2023
OneDrive: Sharing experience – Manage Access settings – We will be updating the “Manage Access” experience which will offer you additional controls for how recipients access files you’ve shared. “Shared with” list would be an entry point to Manage Access settings. Feature ID:83726
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 