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.

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: Hub to hub site association, new templates, modern term store, edit images, calendar view in List web part

Hub to hub site association

Microsoft are adding the ability to associate a SharePoint hub site to another hub site, with a primary benefit to expand search results across multiple hubs in your organization. When hubs are associated with each other, content can be searched for and displayed on hubs up to three levels of association.

Find out more: Associate a SharePoint hub site to another hub to connect search experiences

New SharePoint Site templates – for retail, healthcare and non-profit

This update will bring four new SharePoint site templates to retail customers, non-profits, and healthcare organizations. All allow organizations to better track, manage information, and collaborate.

Find out more: SharePoint Look Book

Modern SharePoint site-level term store

Microsoft have updated the experience when creating and managing site-level taxonomy terms; this matches the previously updated, central term store in the SharePoint admin center. It’s now easier to navigate your taxonomies and create and edit terms when classifying & discovering your Syntex and SharePoint content.

Find out more: Create, configure, and manage groups and term sets

Edit images in SharePoint and OneDrive

You are now able to

rotate, crop (both freeform crop and fixed aspect ratio crop) and flip your images – horizontally and vertically. This update also includes options to adjust the light and color saturation of your images. Now it’s easy to make those transformations with adjustments for brightness, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, and color saturation.

Find out more: OneDrive’s new photo editing features and more

Calendar view in the List web part

The SharePoint List web part in Microsoft 365 allows you to display a list from your team or site on a page and customize it with your own title, view, and even size. And now, if you have created a Calendar view for your list, it will show properly in the List web part.

Find out more: Use the List web part

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Teams

In Teams: New features for teams meetings, all New Whiteboard, live transcript unscheduled meetings, breakout room manager support, breakout room pre-meeting room creation/ participant assignment, Presenter Mode ‘Standout’, Visio viewer, purchase apps, 1:1 Calling Safari, operator connect, calling plan expansion, chat supervisors delete messages, admin center updates

Teams (Education)

Teams (Government)

Teams

New features for Teams meetings

Users can now assign roles from the scheduling form and see the order of raised hands to ensure that all the voices are heard. Also, we’re revamping the mobile overflow menu to prioritize key actions, like viewing chat and adding a notification drawer for in-meeting system messages, so users can preview, collapse, and clear all notifications with one tap.

Find out more: What’s new in Microsoft 365

All-New Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams

The Microsoft Whiteboard in Teams has been completely rebuilt to provide a rich visual collaboration workspace. With 40+ new customizable templates, ability to insert images and shapes, and 8 new reactions, you can bring people together in a rich visual collaboration workspace. Available now in Teams desktop, web, and mobile. 

Find out more: Welcome to the new Whiteboard!

Live Transcript in unscheduled meetings using Meet Now and Channel meetings

Live Transcript is now available for unscheduled (ad hoc) and Channel Teams meetings. For ad hoc meetings, you will be able to download the transcript from the chat screen after the meeting. For Channel meetings, you can view the transcript under the Recordings & Transcripts tab. To enable this feature, make sure the Allow Transcription policy is turned on.

Find out more: View live transcription in a Teams meeting

Breakout Room managers support

Microsoft have added the ability for a meeting organizer to extend the management of breakout rooms to presenters. By taking control from breakout rooms management panel, appointed presenters will be able to perform breakout room operations as managers or meeting organizers, and join rooms as a breakout room manager. Only participants who are named as presenters can be appointed as breakout room managers.

Find out more: Presenter support in breakout rooms

Breakout room pre-meeting room creation and participant assignment

Organizers can now perform breakout room configurations and participant assignment tasks before the meeting starts via Teams desktop app. You can create rooms in bulk, add or delete individual rooms, configure meeting options, adjust session settings like timer, and pre-assign participants via both manual and automatic assignment options.

NOTE: At this time, only invited attendees – up to 300 participants, will be available for pre-assignment.

Find out more: Pre-meeting room creation and participant assignment in breakout rooms

Presenter mode ‘Standout’ in PowerPoint Live

Presenter mode “Standout” allows you to overlay your video feed on the PowerPoint presentation slide during a Microsoft Teams meeting. The experience works for both PowerPoint Presenter View and PowerPoint SlideShow view. Now you can easily direct your audiences’ attention with hand gestures and facial cues, while leveraging features such as notes, slide view, and inking.

Find out more: Presenter Mode ‘Standout’ for PowerPoint Live

Visio Viewer in Microsoft Teams

his capability enables both users with and without a Visio license to complete simple tasks on Visio files stored in Teams, like commenting, sharing, printing, downloading their Visio diagram as an image or PDF, and more—all from within Teams.

Find out more: free visio viewer

Enable Teams users to purchase Teams apps through the Teams store

Microsoft Teams users have now the ability to purchase third-party Teams app subscriptions from the Teams store.

Find out more: Purchase third-party apps for Teams

1:1 Calling in Safari Web Browser

Users can now initiate a 1:1 call with another Teams user while using Teams on Safari. Users can initiate a 1:1 call from the Calls App or from the Call button in the header of a 1:1 chat.

Find out more: Safari browser support

Operator Connect general availability

Enabling PSTN services on Teams becomes simpler and seamless with the general availability of Operator Connect. You can bring your existing operator PSTN service and phone numbers from a growing list of operators. Save on hardware and management costs and benefit from shared support and reliability. 

Find out more: Operator Connect general availability and new Microsoft Teams Phone features to modernize calling

Microsoft Teams Calling Plans expansion

With Microsoft Teams Calling Plans you can make Microsoft your operator and provide PSTN service to your users without on-premises equipment. We are expanding our coverage by adding five new calling plan markets – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Croatia – bringing our total to 33 markets.

Find out more: Microsoft Teams Calling Plans

Admin Center improvements

Admin notifications for Custom app submissions – When a developer submits a custom app for IT admin approval, admins will receive a notification in a dedicated Teams channel, so they can review and take next steps to publish the app.

Admins can use cloud shell from Teams admin center – Admins can open Azure cloud shell from Teams admin center inline and run powershell scripts from browser.

Export Teams list from Teams Admin Center – Administrators can export Teams list as a csv file from Teams admin center.

Teams Admin Center interface Improvements

Microsoft have introduced 4 new improvements to the interface to make IT admin work more simple and intuitive. The left navigation bar is important for admin to navigate and easily find the things they are looking for, and the new left navigation bar organizes the Teams Admin Center into more closely related features, making it easier to find relevant and related tasks.

Also the home page got much more customized to admins immediate needs, enabling them now to drag and drop important items in the home page. Microsoft have also improved the login to work without third-party cookies and login popups and we have increased the timeout period for inactive sessions to 24 hours allowing admin to reuse existing browser sessions. An additional improvement is the simplification of the ‘User interface for External access’ page as admins can now easily select one of the four external access configurations that best fits their organizational needs: Allow all domains, or specific domains, Block specific domains while allowing everything else, and Block all domains

Teams (Education)

Chat supervisors can delete messages

Learning online can be personal, engaging, and socially enriching when educators and teachers use Teams chats, channels, and meetings to stay in touch. However, online learning can also present unique student safety challenges. This feature, designed with our Teams for Education users in mind, allows chat supervisors to delete inappropriate, off-topic, or other messages in a Teams chat.

Find out more: Chat, teams, channels, & apps in Microsoft Teams

Suggested Replies in chats – suggested replies presents users with up to three recommended responses to choose from in the context of a chat. This functionality will be enabled by default for teachers and faculty, and completely disabled for all students.

Data reports after Teams meeting class – If a teacher has used Forms polls in a Teams meeting class, a summary report for all the polls used in this meeting will be generated and shared with teacher.

Teams (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):

New assignment experience in modal window for breakout rooms – Participant assignment is now moved from the breakout rooms’ right panel to a separate window that pops up when selecting Assign Participants. 

Presenter mode in desktop or window sharing – Standout, Reporter and Side-by-side Presenter modes are now available when sharing your desktop or window in the Teams desktop app.

Present from PowerPoint to Teams – ow, even though you may not be in the same room as your audience, we believe your flow to present should be as easy and intuitive – clicking the Present in Teams button in PowerPoint is the only step you need to present the deck in your Teams meeting! 

Prompt to set Meeting Options for Large Teams Meetings in Outlook for Windows – Teams users in Outlook for Windows will now be prompted to set meeting options when creating a Teams meeting with 40 or more participants or 10 or more distribution lists. 

Together mode – Together mode reimagines meeting experiences to help participants feel closer together even when you are apart.

Improved experience for sharing content in a meeting – The new share content experience helps presenters find their desired content more quickly and easily. Windows are consolidated into a single bucket to provide a concise view and all PowerPoints are automatically organized to present with PowerPoint Live.

Live Transcript in unscheduled meetings using Meet Now and Channel meetings – Live Transcript is now available for unscheduled (ad hoc) and Channel Teams meetings. For ad hoc meetings, you will be able to download the transcript from the chat screen after the meeting.

Guest access support on mobile for DOD – Teams now supports Guest Access between tenants inside the DoD Cloud.

Guest access support on mobile for GCC-High – Teams now supports Guest Access between tenants inside the GCC-H Cloud.

Guest Access – Teams now supports Guest Access between tenants inside the GCC-High Cloud. You can invite users in other GCC-High tenants to collaborate on documents in Teams channels, resources, chats, and applications while still maintaining control over your data.

Teams device management in DoD – Tenants in the DoD environment can also manage their Teams devices from the Teams admin center. Admins can now control the entire lifecycle of their Teams devices which include an increasing variety of supported device types – IP Phones, Collaboration bars, Teams displays, Teams Meeting Room devices.

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: icons rollback, multiple portals in Dataverse, custom help pane GA, App.StartScreen, large file/ image support, Dataverse search

Business Recommended Icon and Tool Tip Icon rollback

As part of 2022 Release Wave 2, the Power Apps team had deprecated business recommended icon and tooltips as they were not discoverable and didn’t provide a modern usability experience for viewing extended field information.

Based on customer feedback, we’ve reverted this change and it continues to work today as it did in 2022 Release Wave 1. The team are working to enable makers the ability to show / hide descriptions for a particular field and customize the description per form by way of icon button and callout.

Find out more: Business Recommended Icon and Tool Tip Icon Rollback

Create multiple portals in your Dataverse environment

The Power Apps team have announced they are lifting the 1 portal type limit per environment, allowing the creation of multiple portals of the same type within an environment (no per language limit). This feature provides the following capabilities :

1. Dataverse starter portal and portal from blank
2. Customer self-service, Partner portal, Employee self-service, Community, Customer Portal – Coming soon!

Find out more: Create a Dataverse starter portal

Custom help pane in model-driven apps generally available

Custom help pane feature gives your model apps a custom in-product help experience that is tailored to your app. It is now announcing general availability. With this update, there will be better stability and permanence of the experience. 

Find out more: Create guided help for your Unified Interface app

App.StartScreen: a new declarative alternative to Navigate in App.OnStart

The Power Apps team are going to provide new declarative alternatives for all the things you do in App.OnStart.  Not only will your apps load faster and give a better user experience, but it will be easier to write and debug them too.  Declarative means that you continue to tell us what you want to happen, but you don’t need to tell us when or how. 

For example, an Excel spreadsheet describes a set of dependencies between cells (what), it doesn’t say when they should be recalculated or in what order (when and how), that is Excel’s job.  Going declarative relieves a lot of the tedium of keeping state variables up to date.

Find out more: App.StartScreen: a new declarative alternative to Navigate in App.OnStart

Large file and Image support in Power Apps canvas and UCI generally available

The Power Apps team have announced GA support in Power Apps for Dataverse large File and Image data types.  Files up to 128MB and Images up to 30MB are supported.   The File and Image data types have been widely used during the preview period.  However, there were various limitations on the size of files and images and scenarios supported in Power Apps. 

The sizes supported by Dataverse and Power Apps were different and the mobile scenario was not supported.  Those limitations are now removed and Power Apps (canvas and UCI) now align with the sizes available in Dataverse.  Large files and images now work in mobile scenarios as well.

Find out more: GA release of Large file and Image support in Power Apps canvas and UCI

Relevance search is now Dataverse search

Relevance search is now Dataverse search to emphasize that all data within Dataverse is searchable. The new Dataverse search name is visible in the Power Platform Admin Center. Dataverse search is enabled by default for all production environments. Dataverse search remains an opt-in feature for non-production environments and environments using their own encryption key.

Find out more: Configure Dataverse search for your environment

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Power Virtual Agent chat bot in Power Automate, copy to clipboard, Desktop update, Process advisor Application Analytics & Automation Recommendation GA, 21 new connectors

Power Virtual Agent Chat bot available across all pages in Power Automate

Power Virtual Agent Chat bot has been such a popular addition to Power Automate enabling users to ask questions in natural language to get help right in the product. The bot can answer your general questions like How do I share a flow or even specific questions like Why is my flow running slow. With this change, the bot is made visible across all the pages in Power Automate (for e.g. Flow, Process Insights, AI Builder) and you can engage the bot from anywhere in the product.

Find out more: Power Automate Cloud Flows October Updates

Copy To Clipboard for solution flows

Copy to Clipboard is a really useful feature on the designer while you are building your flows, especially when you are creating control logic (for example switch, conditions) and wish to duplicate the actions or set of actions in branches easily. The flow designer now has a streamlined experience for solution flows that enables copying and pasting actions for flows across solutions.

Find out more: Power Automate cloud flows update

Power Automate desktop – October 2021

The October 2021 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.14) has been released, take a look at the updates below:

Sensitive variables in Power Automate for desktop – With this feature, users are now able to mark any variable as sensitive. The values of sensitive variables will not be visible in the flow designer during debugging, while they will also not be logged in the desktop flow logs, for runs triggered by the portal or the console. Find out more.

Data loss prevention policies are now applicable to Power Automate for desktop (Preview) – Administrators will be able to apply data loss prevention policies to desktop flows, in order to secure their organization’s data. Find out more.

Support older versions of Internet Explorer – Power Automate for desktop will be able to support web automation with Internet Explorer v5 to v8, apart from v9 and above which were already supported so far. Find out more.

New capability to save an Excel workbook as XML Data – Users will now be able to save their Excel workbook as XML data (.xml), either through the ‘Save Excel’ or the ‘Close Excel’ action, via defining an XML map within the Excel file. Find out more.

Breaking forward compatibility of older versions of Power Automate for desktop – New desktop flows that will be created (or past flows that will be saved) in the new release, will not be able to be run or opened by older installations of Power Automate for desktop. Find out more.

Process advisor Application Analytics & Automation Recommendation now generally available

Gain deeper insights and take action in optimizing and automating your process with Process advisor Application Analytics and Automation Recommendation features, which are now generally available.

Find out more: Process advisor Application Analytics and Automation Recommendation features are now generally available

New 21 connectors in August and September

21 new connectors were released for Power Automate throughout August/ September. They include solutions and tools for inventory management, IT operations, document management, threat identification, gamification and much more. 

Find out more: New 21 connectors in August and September

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Power BI

In Power BI: Azure Purview GA, on-prem data gateway, desktop feature summary, streaming dataflows, new auth options for migrations, unused artifacts, next-gen premium platform GA

Power BI and Azure Purview now generally available

Azure Purview is a unified data governance service that enables organizations to easily create a holistic, up-to-date map of their data landscape, including on-premises, software as a service (SaaS), and multi-cloud platforms­, with automated data discovery.

With Power BI integrations, data consumers are empowered to find valuable, trustworthy, sensitive data, and provide end-to-end data lineage for analytics users to build and trace key business metrics to the origins of the data.  Recent integrations between Azure Purview and Power BI are now generally available.

Find out more: Microsoft Power BI and Azure Purview better together – now Generally Available

On-premises data gateway October 2021 update

The Power BI team have just released the October update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.101.16). This version of the gateway will ensure that the reports that you publish to the Power BI Service and refresh via the Gateway will go through the same query execution logic/run-time as in the October Power BI Desktop version.

Find out more: On-premises data gateway October 2021 update is now available

Power BI October 2021 desktop feature summary

This month’s Power BI desktop feature summary includes additional functionality and performance improvements for DirectQuery, optimization for the SWITCH function, new Bitwise DAX functions, and general availability of the Premium Gen2 platform for premium capacities, plus lots more.

Find out more: Power BI October 2021 Feature Summary

Power BI Streaming Dataflows October Update

Streaming dataflows allow authors to connect to, ingest, mashup, model, and build reports but based on continuous streaming, near real-time data. This is done directly in the Power BI service with beautiful, drag and drop, no-code experiences. Two new features were announced this month:

• Streaming support for Azure blobs
• Using static data with streaming dataflows

Find out more: Power BI Streaming Dataflows October Update

New authentication option facilitates migrations to Power BI Premium

The Power BI team have announced that XMLA endpoints on Premium Per User (PPU) now support Azure Active Directory (AAD) authentication with service principals. This authentication option enables administrative applications to perform automated maintenance tasks and unattended service-level operations by using their own app identities, which is often a requirement for migration of existing tabular data models from Azure Analysis Services and SQL Server Analysis Services to Power BI Premium.

Power BI Streaming Dataflows October Update

Streaming dataflows allow authors to connect to, ingest, mashup, model, and build reports but based on continuous streaming, near real-time data. This is done directly in the Power BI service with beautiful, drag and drop, no-code experiences. Two new features were announced this month:

• Streaming support for Azure blobs
• Using static data with streaming dataflows

Find out more: Power BI Streaming Dataflows October Update

New authentication option facilitates migrations to Power BI Premium

The Power BI team have announced that XMLA endpoints on Premium Per User (PPU) now support Azure Active Directory (AAD) authentication with service principals. This authentication option enables administrative applications to perform automated maintenance tasks and unattended service-level operations by using their own app identities, which is often a requirement for migration of existing tabular data models from Azure Analysis Services and SQL Server Analysis Services to Power BI Premium.

Find out more: New authentication option facilitates AAS migrations to Power BI Premium at a low price point

Power BI Unused Artifacts API (preview)

As part of the Power BI teams ongoing focus to enhance visibility at the tenant level, they have announced the preview availability of the new Unused Artifacts API, which enables Power BI Admins to uncover potentially unused artifacts in order to more efficiently manage resources. The initial version of this API returns a list of datasets that have not been used within 30 days for a specified workspace. Successive revisions will include additional artifact types such as reports and dashboards.

Find out more: Power BI Unused Artifacts API (preview)

General Availability of next-gen Premium Platform

The Power BI have announced the general availability of the platform that powers Power BI Premium experiences. With this release, Power BI Premium meets a milestone in its evolution, becoming a world-class capacity-based Analytics SaaS product powering mission-critical, enterprise-grade analytics solutions.

After a year in preview, the next-gen platform is now battle-proven to meet the demands of the widest range of analytics solutions: from self-service business datasets to centrally curated and distributed pixel-perfect reports and anything in between.

Find out more: General Availability of next-gen Premium Platform

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BONUS! Even more updates!

Congratulations if you have made it this far through the monthly update! For getting to the end you will be rewarded with other related titbits from around Microsoft 365…

Microsoft Loop

Microsoft Loop is a new app that combines a powerful and flexible canvas with portable components that move freely and stay in sync across applications—enabling teams to think, plan, and create together. Microsoft Loop has three elements: Loop components, Loop pages, and Loop workspaces.

Find out more: Introducing Microsoft Loop

All-in-one digital contact center solution

A new all-in-one digital contact center solution, powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Teams, brings together traditional contact center, unified communications, and customer service capabilities into a single, integrated software as a service (SaaS) solution.

Find out more: What’s new in Microsoft 365

Official communities are now available in Yammer

Now you can designate your most important communities as “Official” to show that they are company-endorsed within the network. Official communities offer a way to guide employees to the correct communities when they are searching for answers by using a familiar ‘verified’ icon represented by a check mark. Network admins designate official communities in your organization, and the benefits of clarity and trust follow for end users.

Find out more: Official communities are now available in Yammer

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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.

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: video playback updates, text web part improvements, navigation switcher, share list as a link, applied filters, Viva Connections – mobile

Video playback updates for videos in OneDrive and SharePoint

Updates to the universal video playback experience across Microsoft 365 apps and services, includes skip forward/backwards, playback speeds and pop out:

• Pop out – Allows you to launch the player from any embed video for a more immersive viewing experience.
• Playback speeds – Great for Teams meeting recordings saved to OneDrive & SharePoint; you’re able to change the playback speed between 0.5x up to 2x.
• Skip forward and back buttons – Buttons that allow the user to go 10 seconds forward / 10 seconds backward.

Find out more: Using videos on SharePoint pages

Text web part improvements for SharePoint pages and news

Microsoft have added the ability to paste images directly into the Text web part so it minimizes distance between the image and related text, plus you can wrap around images like you can do in other Office apps.

Find out more: Add text, tables, and images to your page with the Text web part

SharePoint navigation switcher for teams sites

Team site owners will be able to switch the team site navigation orientation from vertical to horizontal or turned off completely. Achieve a different look and feel, layouts, and alignment styles.

Find out more: Change the look of your SharePoint site

Share a list as a link

You now have more options for how you share Microsoft Lists, elevating the abilities closer to what you can do with Files and folders – view, edit, varying levels of who you share to, and the ability to establish defaults. The same admin controls that apply to sharing files and folders also apply to lists and list items.

Find out more: Share a list or list item

Applied filters in Lists

As you apply and adjust filters to narrow or expand what appears in the current list view, you’ll now see which filters have been applied and you can remove them without going back into the column filter pane – you will now do this at the top-left portion of the list.

Find out more:  Create a list from the Lists app

Microsoft Viva Connections –  mobile (Public Preview)

The Viva connections app incorporates a customizable dashboard, the feed, and relevant resources all in one experience in the Microsoft Teams desktop and mobile apps. Now in public preview, this release includes:

• Set a SharePoint home site from the SharePoint admin center
• Create, author, and manage a dashboard from the home site
• Use Video news links to communicate announcements
• Use the new Dashboard and Feed web parts on the home site
• Brand the Viva Connections app for the desktop and mobile experiences for Android and iOS

Find out more: Viva Connections Public Preview

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Teams

In Teams: Present from PowerPoint, Apple CarPlay, new assignment experience for Breakout Rooms, 2×2 video in Safari, restart live event, Peer5 eCDN support, 100K live events, share feedback in mobile app, pin messages, reply to specific message, new default office settings, Power Automate templates, navigation/ external access/ login improvements to admin center, Teams Rooms updates

Teams (Education)

Teams (Government)

Teams

Present from PowerPoint to Teams

Now, clicking the Present in Teams button in PowerPoint is the only step you need to present the deck in your Teams meeting! Available now in PowerPoint web, Windows, Mac, and Microsoft 365 Apps for Business license.

Find out more: Present from PowerPoint in Microsoft Teams

Teams meetings now available on Apple CarPlay

Microsoft Teams meetings are now available on Apple CarPlay. You can find a Teams icon on your Apple CarPlay screen. Simply use voice command through Siri to join your next meeting hands-free. You can also look up call history, make a call or send messages to one or more Teams contacts. Please note that this feature only supports audio mode to avoid distractions while driving.

Find out more: Place Teams calls with Apple CarPlay

New assignment experience for Breakout Rooms

Participant assignment is now moved from the Breakout Rooms’ right panel to a separate window that pops up when selecting Assign Participants. The enhanced interface allows you to sort by participants or rooms. You can also select multiple participants and assign them to rooms by using the check boxes next to the participants’ names.

Find out more: Use breakout rooms in Teams meetings

2×2 video in Gallery view for web meetings in Safari

Safari browser users are now able to change the Teams meeting layout to 2×2 Gallery view. Users can choose to show up to 4 participant videos during a Teams meeting.

Find out more: Safari browser support

Restart Live Event

This new feature allows you to restart your live event after you have ended it. Now, there’s a way to start fresh if you accidentally end your event or run into an error. Only the Producer of the live event can restart by clicking … and selecting Restart Event.

Find out more: Live events FAQ

Peer5 eCDN support for Teams Live Events

You can now work with Peer5, a certified eCDN partner, to optimize your network for live events held within your organization.

Find out more: Microsoft Acquires Peer5 to Enhance Live Video Streaming in Microsoft Teams

Scale Teams Live Events to 100k attendees

Teams Live Events now support up to 100k attendees. This feature is available when you engage the Microsoft LEAP team for assistance in producing and delivering your event.

Find out more: Microsoft 365 Live Events Assistance (Public Preview)

Share Feedback in mobile app

Share your feedback directly from the Help & Feedback option in Settings, without the need to send an email message. Admins will now be able to control elements such as sharing email addresses and logs from the mobile app.

Pin a message

You can now easily pin chat messages to drive awareness and provide your chat members quick access to important content. Pinning will help your team stay in sync on what’s relevant in a timely manner.

Reply to a message

When chatting in Teams, you will be able to reply to a specific message. The original message will be quoted in the reply text box, helping everyone in the chat to understand the message’s context more easily. Quoted replies will be available in 1:1, Group and Meeting chats.

Choose new default settings when opening Office documents in Microsoft Teams

Now, users can better control how their Office documents open in Microsoft Teams. Choose your preferred way to open all of your Office documents with a new setting — either in Teams, the browser, or the Office desktop apps.

NOTE: The option to open in the Office desktop apps is only available for users who have an Office version 16 or newer installed and activated. 

Find out more: Edit an Office file in its desktop or web app

Power Automate templates to be added to Teams templates

With Teams templates users can more easily create the right team, leveraging predefined channels and preinstalled apps. Now, select Microsoft provided templates will curate a selection of Power Automate flow templates that are specific to your team scenario. For example, Manage a Project team template will include Manage a Project Power Automate flow templates.

Navigation updates in Teams Admin Center

This change to left navigation organizes the Teams admin center into more closely related features. Plus, it makes it easier for Teams admins to find relevant and related tasks to complete set up and deployment within Teams admin center.

Simplified External access management in Teams Admin Center

Teams administrators can now easily select one of the four external access configurations that best fits their organization’s needs. Please note that this is a usability improvement and doesn’t impact your organization’s existing External access settings.

Login improvements to Teams admin center

Teams admin center login improved experience to work without third-party cookies and login popups. IT administrators can now use Teams admin center in all modern browsers including the following.

• InPrivate browsing or Strict tracking prevention of Edge
• Incognito mode in Chrome
• Safari

In addition, we have increased the timeout period for inactive sessions in Teams admin center to 24 hours, allowing Teams admins to reuse their existing browser sessions.

Teams Rooms udpates

Updates for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows:

• Dynamic view on single and dual displays – Dynamic view intelligently arranges elements of a meeting for an optimal viewing experience. As people join, turn on video, start to speak or present, Teams automatically adjusts the layout in the room.
• Spotlight multiple participants – A Teams Room can now spotlight multiple participants during a Teams meeting, universally showing participants on the front of room display and in the gallery to all meeting attendees. 
• Pin multiple participants – You can now pin multiple participants to the front of a Teams Room display
• Meetings roster experience update – The meeting room roster experience on the Teams Room console has been updated to more closely align with the experience users are familiar with on the Teams desktop application.
• Support for large meeting controls – A Teams Room meeting now supports large meetings with a full set of controls, available from the center of room console. 
• Lock meeting support – Users in a Teams Rooms can now lock a meeting and prevent additional attendees from joining once a meeting has started.
• Live reactions – Participants in a Teams Room now can send live reactions from the meeting room, sharing sentiments on the front of room display similar to the Teams desktop app. 
• Chat bubbles – Teams Rooms lets you view chat bubble notifications for messages sent by participants in a Teams meeting on the front of room displays.
• Presenter mode support – Microsoft Teams Rooms adds support for presenter mode layout on the front of room display.
• Teams casting for Teams Rooms on Windows & Android – Users can broadcast their screen and cast content stored locally on their device or accessible via Office 365
• Redesigned Teams Rooms on Surface Hub experience – With a new meeting stage, a robust set of meeting controls, and popular features including Together Mode scenes, background noise suppression, chat bubbles, and live reactions, Teams Rooms on Surface Hub enriches collaboration for the hybrid workplace. 

Teams (Education)

Here are the latest updates rolling out for Microsoft Teams for Education customers:

Reading Progress in Teams updates
Reading Progress, a free reading fluency and practice tool built into Teams Assignments, has now rolled out globally, with Auto-detect support in 37 languages. To try out Reading Progress today, just click the Attach button when creating a new Assignment and choose Reading Progress. Learn more about getting started with Reading progress here.

• Sample content from ReadWorks – To help educators get up and running quickly with Reading Progress, we’ve partnered with ReadWorks, a leading non-profit with thousands of high-quality reading passages across various reading levels. These passages cover a breadth of grade levels. To get started, just select Browse sample library after launching Reading Progress.
• Swap camera – To allow students to quickly swap their camera from rear-facing to front-facing before recording, we’ve added a button they can push before starting to swap between cameras.

All new Microsoft Whiteboard

Visual collaboration through new features in Microsoft Whiteboard
When you open the new Whiteboard, you’ll notice a brand-new user interface that combines a clean, modern look with improved functionality. The new visual refresh makes features easier to access and discover. It’s also built to support the ever-growing capabilities of the app, which now include:

• 40+ new templates – Expand and strengthen your whiteboarding sessions with templates for common scenarios like brainstorming, problem solving, group projects, and many more.
• 12 new sticky notes & note grids – Enhance visual collaboration and encourage student participation through the beauty of color.
• Reactions – Student expression is a cornerstone of group work in class. Students can now provide lightweight contextual feedback with a set of fun, engaging, and meaningful reactions.
• Insert images – Images can help with learning and conveying abstract and complex concepts. Bring your whiteboard session to life by adding photos and images. 

Replying to specific chat messages in Teams
Microsoft Teams public preview now lets users reply to specific chat messages. Quoted reply allows you to select messages in chat that you want to include in your response. It’s a great way to add context and clarity to conversations in class or staff teams.

Assign students to breakout rooms in a separate window
Now when you assign students to breakout rooms, a separate window pops up when selecting Assign participants. You can select multiple students and assign them to rooms by using the checkboxes next to the students’ names. 

Teams (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):

Include device audio when sharing on iOS and Android
Now you can include audio when sharing on iOS and Android devices during a Teams meeting. For example, when sharing a video with voiceover and music, you and your colleagues can watch it simultaneously without echoes or sync issues. You can find this setting under More actions, Share screen with audio It is available to devices with Android 10+ or iOS 13+. Available in GCC, GCC-High, and DOD. 

Network planner for Government clouds
Network planner is now available to our GCCH, DoD customers. Network Planner can help you determine and organize network requirements for connecting Microsoft Teams users across your organization. When you provide your network details and Teams usage, the Network Planner calculates your network requirements for deploying Teams and cloud voice across your organization’s physical locations.

New assignment experience in modal window for Breakout Rooms
Participant assignment is now moved from the Breakout Rooms’ right panel to a separate window that pops up when selecting Assign Participants. The enhanced interface allows you to sort by participants or rooms. You can also select multiple participants and assign them to rooms by using the check boxes next to the participants’ names. This helps you quickly find your participant or room, speeding up the assignment process. Available in GCC. 

Improved experience for sharing content in a meeting
The new share content experience helps presenters find their desired content more quickly and easily. Windows are consolidated into a single bucket to provide a concise view, and all PowerPoints are automatically organized to present with PowerPoint Live. Now you can focus on the content of what you’re sharing instead of rummaging through the correct content to share in your meeting. Available in GCC-High. 

Teams meetings now available on Apple CarPlay
In addition to calling, your Microsoft Teams meetings are now available on Apple CarPlay. You can find a Teams icon on your Apple CarPlay screen. Simply use voice command through Siri to join your next meeting hands-free. You can also look up call history, make a call or send messages to one or more Teams contacts. Please note that this feature only supports audio mode to avoid distractions while driving. Available in GCC, GCC-High, and DOD.

Large gallery and Together Mode views for Teams Rooms on Windows
Large gallery and Together Mode views have been implanted for GCC-H in Teams Rooms. It allows Teams Rooms to support different video gallery layouts, including in large gallery and Together mode, in GCC High clouds.

Guest access support on mobile for GCC-High and DoD
Teams now supports Guest Access between tenants inside the GCC-H Cloud and the DoD Cloud.

New default for Teams notification style for GCC
Teams notification style will be defaulted to native notifications for new users. Currently the default style is Teams purple. With this change to native notifications, the user will benefit from support for assist mode, action center, accessibility and more. Available now in GCC.

Follow/Mute conversations for GCC
Control the number of notifications you get and select which chats you would like to mute or follow. Once you mute a chat you will no longer receive notifications from it, however you will still be included in the conversation. You can change your mind at any time and unmute the conversation to continue getting notifications. Available in GCC. 

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Updated solution explorer experience, Power Platform developer tools, programming by example, respect Azure AD Conditional Access policies, Text, Integer, or DateTime API, app side panes, Maintenance Window Management, new DLP capabilities

Updated solution explorer experience (public preview)

The Power Aps team have announced the public preview release of an updated solution explorer experience, which provides richer tooling to manage your solution as well as a myriad of updates that mean most makers will have all the tools they need to be successful, without ever needing to switch to the classic solution explorer.

NOTE: This experience will soon become the default experience on the maker portal, but whilst we’re in preview if you run into any issues, you can disable the preview experience by toggling the switch on the solution list.

Find out more: Managing solutions has a new look (public preview)

Power Platform developer tools – August refresh

The latest set of changes are across the Power Platform Command Line, VS Code Extension, Power Platform Build Tools, and GitHub actions and include:

• Ability to delete solutions via the command line with the new command: pac solution delete
• Pac admin command that either require an environment id or url can now pass either on with the –environment flag and the system does the appropriate action (and yes, you can mix and match for options like environment copy as you could provide the url for the source environment and the id for the target environment)

Plus lot’s more.

Find out more: AUGUST UPDATE: Power Platform Developer Tools

Programming by example

With Power Apps Ideas – Programming by example, you can just tell Power Apps what is the desired output and Power Apps will work out the formulas to get you there. This feature is powered by PROSE (Programming by Examples and Natural Language), researched and developed by the Microsoft PROSE team. And the same technology is already used in other Microsoft products as well, e.g. Flash fill in Excel, Intellicode suggestions in Visual Studio and Table extraction in Power Query, etc. Now it is also available in Power Apps, currently for US region only. Make sure you have turned on the “Enable Ideas panel” flag if you cannot see it in your apps in a US environment.

NOTE: It currently supports label controls within a gallery and works best for dates and strings. You can refer to this document for more details.

Find out more: Generating Power Fx formulas from examples

Power Apps respecting Conditional Access on individual apps (public preview)

This latest addition of Power Platform governance capabilities allows organizations using Azure Active Directory (AAD) to secure resources with finer granularity in Power Apps. For instance, apps with sensitive data can enforce one or more Conditional Access policies. You can decide additional apps that would need to enforce any Conditional Access policies based on your organizations policies. Conditional Access no longer needs to be an all-or-nothing-application across all Power Apps.

Find out more: Announcing Public Preview of Power Apps respecting Conditional Access on individual apps

New API for changing the format of existing Text, Integer, and DateTime data types to compatible formats

A new API has been made public that will allow users to change the format of a Text, Integer, or DateTime data type to any of the compatible formats for the type (UI functionality will be available in the fullness of time). This will not make any changes to the data of these columns, it will simply instruct the client to display the content in the selected format.

Find out more: Change the format of existing Text, Integer, and DateTime data types to compatible formats+ 2 “new” formats.

App side panes with model-driven apps (public preview)

With the app side panes public preview, developers can open one or more panes on the right/far side of the model-driven app using the Client API.  The panes can contain model-driven app pages like views or forms as well as the new custom page.

Find out more: App side panes available for public preview with model-driven apps

Maintenance Window Management (public preview)

Not all customers operate within the strict definition of day-time business hours; shifting the Maintenance from the default settings today to a time that best suits business needs for a given Environment will lend customers desired flexibility in scheduling Application and Database updates – this can now be done with Maintenance Window Management via the Power Platform admin center.

Find out more: Announcing Public Preview of Maintenance Window Management!

New Data Loss Prevention policies for enhanced Power Platform governance (public preview)

Microsoft have announced new DLP capabilities are now available for you to use worldwide in Public Preview:

• Connector Action Control enables admins to easily allow/block specific connector actions for each connector. For example, you could block the Delete row (V2) action for the SQL Server connector.
• Endpoint Filtering enables admins to properly secure connection endpoints by configuring an ordered list of endpoint patterns to allow/block. Continuing the SQL Server connector example above, you could configure a policy to allow only connections to testserver.contoso.com endpoint, and block everything else.
• Custom Connector Parity allows tenant admins to apply DLP classification on custom connector URL patterns and allows environment admins to apply DLP on custom connectors in their environment. For example, admins can create an additional rule for a custom connector by creating a new pattern for https://*.contoso.com URL and associate it with the connector.

Find out more: New Data Loss Prevention policies for enhanced Power Platform governance available for Public Preview

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Machine runtime, desktop update, co-presence, 15 independent publisher connectors

Power Automate machine runtime

The Power Automate team have announced a new machine-runtime app dedicated to manage your machine settings. This new app provides you with many advantages:

• A clearer and easier user interface to register and manage your machine
• The capability to create your machine group directly from the machine-runtime app
• An independent app that redefines roles between the Power Automate Desktop app (for the creation and testing of your desktop flows) and the machine-runtime app (for machine configuration to trigger desktop flows through Power Automate). You can decide to install only one of these apps or both depending on your needs.
• A direct access to the troubleshoot tool (preview) to get your logs and change the user account your machine connectivity is running as.

Find out more: Introducing Power Automate machine runtime

Power Automate Desktop September 2021 update

The September 2021 release of Power Automate Desktop is out now and contains the following new features and updates:

• New getting started experience – provides an in-product guided walkthrough experience, to make it easier for new users to onboard and get started creating desktop flows quickly.
• Introduction of ‘Invoke SOAP web service’ action – A new dedicated action has been added, which allows users to invoke SOAP web services.

Find out more: Power Automate Desktop September 2021 update

Co-presence in Power Automate

With co-presence within Power Automate, each user can know in near real-time which other users are currently editing the flow. The user avatars are refreshed periodically to show the updated slate of concurrent editors in the flow. If multiple users make changes to the flow simultaneously, we detect conflicts during the flow save operation, and present appropriate options to the user to minimize conflicts. A user can choose to refresh the flow definition or save a copy of the flow to not lose the changes.

Find out more: Announcing co-presence in Power Automate

15 new Independent Publisher connectors

The Power Automate team have announced that 15 new Independent Publisher connectors were published in July and August. Here’s a look at the new connectors:

• Airtable by Woong Choi – Connector to read and write data in Airtable. Airtable is a cloud-based spreadsheet-like service that enables users to collaborate and manage different types of data.
• CQC Data by Martyn Lesbirel – Reports & ratings for health & social services regulated by the CQC in England.
• Discord by Daniel Laskewitz | Sogeti & Michal Guzowski – Discord is a voice, video and text communication service used by over a hundred million people to hang out and talk with their friends and communities.
• Etsy by Troy Taylor, Hitachi Solutions – This connector uses your API key to access various Etsy.com features. It supports actions for inventory, sales orders, and shop management. All actions are based on Etsy Open API v3 which does have endpoints that are still in beta.
• Hashify by Troy Taylor, Hitachi Solutions – Hashify is a basic web application and public-accessible hashing API to generate hash digests of plain-text input or small file input to various output encodings such as hex, base32, and base64.
• HubSpot CMS by Hitachi Solutions – This connector is used to retrieve and make changes to HubSpot CMS. HubSpot CMS is a SaaS CMS designed to help businesses grow their web presence with a special emphasis on enabling marketers. 
• HubSpot CRM by Hitachi Solutions – HubSpot CRM is a system for managing customer relationships and storing data. The CRM custom connector provides access to CRM objects or groups of objects, which are represented as a map of property names to values.
• HubSpot Marketing by Hitachi Solutions – This connector is used to retrieve and make changes to HubSpot Marketing. HubSpot Marketing helps you attract the right audience, convert more visitors into customers, and run complete inbound marketing campaigns at scale.
• JIRA Search by Paul Culmsee – This connector provides access to the v2 Jira issue search API which is not exposed using the built-in JIRA connector. You can searches for JIRA issues using JQL expressions.
• Secure Code Warrior by Hitachi Solutions – Secure Code Warrior makes secure coding a positive and engaging experience for developers as they increase their software security skills. 
• Spotify by Daniel Laskewitz – The Spotify connector will give you access to your Library, Artists, Albums, Tracks and more!
• Toggl Plan by Daniel Laskewitz | Sogeti – Plan, collaborate, and get projects done with Toggl Plan.
• UK Bank Holidays by Martyn Lesbirel – A JSON object containing the bank holidays of the four kingdoms of the United Kingdom supplied by H.M. Government.
• What3Words by Matt Beard – What3Words divides the world into 3 metre squares and this connector will help you translate from conventional methods like latitude and longitude to their respective words and vice versa.
• Yelp by Ahmad Najjar – The Yelp connector allows you to get the best local content, points of interest, and user reviews from millions of businesses across 32 countries.

Find out more: 15 Independent Publisher Connectors in July and August

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Power BI

In Power BI: Azure Purview GA, on-prem data gateway, desktop feature summary, streaming dataflows, new auth options for migrations, unused artifacts, next-gen premium platform GA

Security Group Support for Log Analytics Integration (Preview)

Azure Log Analytics for Premium workspaces now support AD Security Groups. This can be set in the Tenant Settings page. We follow the same design pattern with other tenant settings, so with this update Tenant Administrators can control the groups of Workspace administrators that are allowed to connect with Log Analytics.

Find out more: Security Group Support for Log Analytics Integration (Preview)

Power BI Report Server September 2021 Feature Summary

With the September 2021 update of Power BI Report Server comes a whole host of updates, including line charts improvements, new formatting options for buttons, small multiples new feature, plus lot’s more!

Find out more: Power BI Report Server September 2021 Feature Summary

Get User Artifact Access As Admin API

The Get User Artifact Access As Admin API takes the graph ID of a user and returns lists of assets that the user has access to. The results are paginated by a continuation token, with each page corresponding to one type of asset.

• If a user has access to multiple types of artifacts, the response will be separated into different artifact types, each of which requires a new API call using a continuation token at the end of each result payload. This is the same pattern used in the Get Activity Events API
• This API supports reports (including paginated reports), dashboards, datasets, dataflows, personal workspaces, shared workspaces (both classic and new), capacities, and apps. The graph ID can be that of an AAD user or AAD guest user, a Distribution Group, a Security Group, or a Microsoft 365 Group
• This API can also be called via Service Principal, along with all other read-only Admin APIs

Find out more: A New Admin API to determine who has access to what (Public Preview)

Power BI Desktop September 2021 Feature Summary

In this month’s Power BI Desktop update there are lot’s of new capabilities, including line charts, and DAX functions, plus many, many more:

Find out more: Power BI September 2021 Feature Summary

On-premises data gateway September 2021

The September update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.96.1) is out now! Included in September’s release:

• Azure Active Directory-based Single Sign-On for Amazon Redshift
• Kerberos-based Single Sign-On for Hive LLAP and Tibco Data Virtualization
• Compatible with the September PBI desktop

Find out more: On-premises data gateway September 2021 update is now available

Insights (public preview)

The Insights feature helps users easily find and explore insights such as anomalies, trends, and KPI analysis in their data as they interact and consume their reports. It proactively notifies a user if there are interesting insights in their reports and provides explanations for the insights. It works out of the box on any report so consumers can automatically get insights without any setup or configuration by the creators. 

Find out more: Announcing public preview of Insights

Power BI Embedded Analytics Playground Updates

Earlier this year, the Power BI team released an embedded analytics playground, a one-stop shop for Power BI embedded analytics. Since then, the team have introduced the following updates:

• Use your own embed token – You can now embed a report in our developer sandbox by using your own embed token.
• Localization – You can now view and interact with the Power BI embedded analytics playground in multiple different languages.

Find out more: Power BI Embedded Analytics Playground Updates

Automatic Installation of the Power BI app for Microsoft Teams

Power BI is making it easier for organizations to roll-out Power BI experience in Teams, so users get can discover and use data where they work. This helps people get notified faster, get richer link sharing experiences, and access all their data without leaving Microsoft Teams. To enable organizations to easily roll-out of Power BI in Teams:

• Power BI will begin automatically installing the Power BI app for Teams for users when they visit the Power BI service
• Power BI admins can choose not to auto-install through a new Power BI tenant setting
• The tenant setting has started to roll-out now, giving admins time to opt-out if desired
• The automatic installation will start to take effect in November 2021, for organizations with the setting enabled.

Find out more: Pre-Announcing Automatic Installation of the Power BI app for Microsoft Teams

Export Power BI report to file API (preview)

Export Power BI report to file API (preview) allows you to export Power BI reports to the following file formats: PDF, PPTX (PowerPoint) and PNG, by using a REST call. This API also includes the introduction of Premium/Embedded Gen2 capacities, which has the following modifications:

• The number of Power BI exports per hour will not be limited to 50 per hour per capacity, but only to 50 report pages per minute per capacity
• There will be no maximum concurrent report pages limitation
• An export API operation load will be evaluated as a slow-running/background operation as described in Premium Gen2 capacity load evaluation. The workload under which export API operations will appear is called ‘InteractiveReportExports’.

Find out more: Export Power BI report to file API – Preview Update

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BONUS! Even more updates!

Congratulations if you have made it this far through the monthly update! For getting to the end you will be rewarded with other related titbits from around Microsoft 365…

Discover knowledge with Topics integration between Yammer and Viva

Yammer is integrating with and adopting Viva Topics to make community-sourced knowledge easily accessible across an organization and support a consistent experience in Microsoft 365. With this new integration, Topics will refer to the same thing whether in Yammer, Viva, or elsewhere in Microsoft 365. For example, users will see topics in Yammer enhanced with Viva Topics experiences, such as Viva Topic cards, and Viva Topics experiences like pages and cards will include content from Yammer—such as questions and answers and conversations.

Find out more: Yammer Topics API changes

Easily change the case of your text in Word for Android and iOS

Being able to change the sentence case is a core editing capability and we want to increase your confidence in editing while on your phone. You can now change the capitalization of selected text with just a few taps. This feature already existed on iOS, but it’s now available on Android, too.

Find out more: Increase productivity with new features on Word for Android and iOS

Move tasks to any of your plans in Planner

Until recently, you could only move tasks between plans in the same Microsoft 365 Group. With this new feature, you can move tasks to any plan you’re a member of, regardless of group. To move tasks in the Planner web app, tap the ellipses (…) that will appear in the upper right corner when hovering over your task and select Move task.

Find out more: Two new Microsoft Planner features to help you surface and organize your tasks

Filtering in Project for the web

You now have more granular control of task filtering in Project for the Web. Tasks in Grid, Board, and Timeline view can now be filtered by:  

• Keyword
• Finish Date (new)
• Progress
• Bucket (new)
• Assigned to (new)

To filter your tasks, simply press the Filters button on the top right within a project in any view, and select filters you’d like to apply in the Filter Tasks pane:

Find out more: New Filtering in Project for the web

Power Virtual Agent Employee FAQ bot template

Since Power Virtual Agents in Teams integration launched last year, chatbots are being used beyond HR, IT functions to cover facility hours, tech troubleshooting, employee training and other functions to keep their employees informed.

Power Virtual Agents Employee FAQ bot template is available at https://aka.ms/PVAEmployeeFAQ.  By following the instructions, you will be able to have your own Employee FAQ bot in just a matter of minutes with no-coding required.

Find out more: PVA Employee FAQ bot template

Manage your forms with Collections

Forms Collections is a new feature that enables you to create and manage online archives for your Microsoft Forms without leaving the Forms site. To get started, go to the Forms start page (forms.office.com) and click “All my forms”. You’ll see a “New Collection” option at the top right of the page.

Click the button to create your first Collection and you’re ready to start organizing. Then you can easily drag and drop any form or quiz into the newly created collection, or you can also click the More Options “…” on the form and move it into any collection.

Find out more: Manage your forms with Collections

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