Here’s all the new and updated Microsoft roadmap items from the past week:
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From the message center
Here are some items from the message center that have drawn my attention over the last week:
Affects
Message
Last updated
Message ID
OneDrive SharePoint
OneDrive for Business/ SharePoint announce 250GB upload capability: Now, customers can upload files up to 250GB across OneDrive for Business and Sharepoint online.
New Video only Meeting stage experience: With this new meeting layout experience, video-only participants will fill the meeting layout even if they aren’t dominant speakers.
Announcing OneDrive for Business location picker support for security groups and distribution lists: Data loss prevention (DLP) for OneDrive for Business will soon support user accounts and groups as part of the policy scoping location picker.
Add up to 25 task labels and colors in Planner and Tasks in Teams: With this update, end users can choose up to 25 colored labels per task in Planner and Tasks in Teams.
Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Launched (3)
Rolling out (7)
In development (4)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Configure header, footer and body of a form for lists/ libraries – This feature allows users in SharePoint lists and libraries to add a custom header and a footer to the associated form.Roadmap ID: 63519
SharePoint: Caching SharePoint Online Videos on Azure Content Delivery Network to improve video playback and reliability – Videos will be streamed from the CDN closest to the user to optimize the user experience. Roadmap ID: 66065
SharePoint: Share a page to Yammer – The ability to share a modern SharePoint Online (SPO) page to a Yammer community will be available in the page actions bar. Roadmap ID: 66183
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Schedule SharePoint pages & news posts – You will be able to schedule a page or news post to be published at a specific date and time in the future.Roadmap ID: 62892
People cards for SharePoint list and library web parts – Now, when you see a person’s name or face within a SharePoint List or Library web part, you can hover over it and reveal their people card. Roadmap ID: 57814
Easy page and news publishing experience from sitepages library – Adding the ability to easily publish and republish a page or news post from the sitepages library in a site via the command bar or the file card experience. Roadmap ID: 61191
Save for later web part – New web part to display a user’s saved for later items. Roadmap ID: 57810
SharePoint: Stock Images – Free to use stock images will be available in the SharePoint image file picker. Roadmap ID: 59834
SharePoint: Audience Targeting capability for Quick Links Web Part – Microsoft are adding the ability to target specific audiences per link within the Quick Links Web Part. With it, you target specific links to different audiences, helping you provide more personalized experiences on SharePoint pages. Roadmap ID: 67115
SharePoint: Page Authoring First Run Experience – The page authoring First Run experience is an interactive tutorial that walks users through the editing process the first time that they create a page or news post. Roadmap ID: 70667
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – March 2021
🆕SharePoint: Events web part will display event images – Page authors in SharePoint who use the Events web part will be able to turn on an option to show event images within the web part. Roadmap ID: 70791
🆕 SharePoint: Immersive reader is coming to modern SharePoint pages and new posts – The Microsoft Immersive Reader, which is currently built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft apps, will be available for SharePoint pages and news posts. Roadmap ID: 70737
Release – April 2021
Microsoft Lists: @mentions in comments – Get a colleague’s attention to an item in a list by @mentioning them within list comments. That person will receive a notification and a link that takes them directly back to the item, to review the comment and take the requested action. Roadmap ID: 68811
Release – June 2021
Microsoft Lists: Commenting (iOS) – Bringing web commenting experience to Lists iOS mobile app. Add/delete a comment on list items to collaborate and share better. Roadmap ID: 70705
Here’s all the new and updated Microsoft roadmap items from the past week:
Please make sure to subscribe to get early access to new posts straight to your inbox!
From the message center
Here are some items from the message center that have drawn my attention over the last week:
Affects
Message
Last updated
Message ID
SharePoint OneDrive
OneDrive/SharePoint Send link to Outlook sharing option is being retired: Users will soon be unable to share a link directly via the Outlook Share Target in OneDrive and SharePoint.
New file sharing experience in Microsoft Teams: With this update, when users share a file from within Teams they will have the same option to create sharing links as with OneDrive & SharePoint
Introducing a change in access behaviour for public groups in Microsoft Forms: After this change, users will need to join and become a member of a public group in order to access shared forms within the group.
Introducing a SharePoint app bar that features global navigation: SharePoint modern communication and team sites will soon feature the SharePoint app bar which provides quick access to customizable global navigation as well as other intranet resources.
Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Launched (3)
Rolling out (2)
In development (1)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Information Governance: New retention engine for SPO – New retention engine for SharePoint Online, which addresses the challenges with large tenants or tenant that must process large volume of data. Will also enhance reliability and SLAs for retention. Roadmap ID: 63061
Information barriers – Information barriers are policies that can be configured to prevent individuals or groups from communicating with each other. Roadmap ID: 57313
Microsoft Lists: comments – Add a comment on a list or list items, including @mention capabilities to draw a person’s attention. Roadmap ID: 64169
🚂 ROLLING OUT
SharePoint Syntex: Add taxonomy columns from modern library views – Allows users to add taxonomy columns directly to library views in modern SharePoint and Syntex libraries. Roadmap ID: 70609
SharePoint: Image Lightbox – This feature lets users click on an image web part while in view mode to see a larger version of the image. Roadmap ID: 70669
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – March 2021
🆕 SharePoint: Page Analytics – View rich page analytics on SharePoint Pages, including page views, page viewers and page traffic. Roadmap ID: 70635
This is a quick tip for anyone who has noticed when they update images in modern SharePoint sites that they don’t seem to update.
I’ve recently been doing a lot more authoring/ page editing in modern SharePoint and a small quirk I have noticed is around images. Usually, if you update an image and overwrite the original a forced browser refresh (CTRL+F5) does the trick – the image will update to show the newest version.
The problem
I’ve been doing the exact same thing in a SharePoint communication site recently and noticed that the updated image would not display – no matter how many times I force refreshed the browser, no matter which browser I use (I flit between Chrome and Edge Chromium quite a lot). The image(s) were saved in the Site Assets Library, not weren’t checked out either so no reason why they would not display once overwritten.
The image (product, right) doesn’t update to reflect the changes made in SharePoint.
The solution
I’ve found a really simple way to get around this:
Right-click on the image > Open the image in a new tab
Force refresh (CTRL + F5) the image in a new tab
Navigate back to the SharePoint communication site > force refresh (CTRL + F5) again
The image will now be displayed as expected
Opening the image in a new tab or window then force refreshing will update the image on the SharePoint page.
If anyone else has come across this issue, or found any other ways to solve it – let me know in the comments!
Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Launched (1)
Rolling out (3)
In development (5)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Updates to site header options – You will be able to choose to show/ hide the site title and a choice between a square site logo thumbnail or a non-square site logo. Roadmap ID: 63776
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Lists: rules – Create simple if/then rules based on changes to list information to set reminders and send notifications. Roadmap ID: 64163
SharePoint: new experience to add content types to lists and libraries – Custom content types that are available to your SharePoint sites can easily be added to lists & libraries that allow multiple content types. In those SharePoint lists & libraries that allow multiple content types, a new ‘Content type’ option will be available in the ‘Add column’ menu. Roadmap ID: 67164
SharePoint: Portal Launch Scheduler in SharePoint PowerShell – The Portal Launch wizard available via SharePoint PowerShell is designed to configure the deployment waves when launching a new site. Roadmap ID: 66162
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – March 2021
🆕 Microsoft Lists: List Setting to disable/enable commenting – New list-level settings to disable/enable commenting. Roadmap ID: 70706
SharePoint: App Bar – The SharePoint app bar brings a consistent navigation experience to every site on your intelligent intranet, featuring quick access to important sites across the organization with global navigation, personally relevant sites, and the news feed. Roadmap ID: 70576
Release – April 2021
Microsoft Lists: Commenting (iOS) – Bringing web commenting experience to Lists iOS mobile app. Add/delete a comment on list items to collaborate and share better. Roadmap ID: 70705
Release – May 2021
Microsoft Lists: Enabling commenting to Lists app in Teams – Bringing web commenting experience to Lists app in Teams. Add/delete a comment on list items to collaborate and share better within the Teams canvas. Roadmap ID: 70707
In this post we will look at how you can add, edit or remove best bet keywords in classic SharePoint and how to do the same with promoted results in modern SharePoint.
In classic SharePoint you are able to highlight search results you wish to make more prominent by using keywords and best bets. Best bets appear at the top of the search results page with a yellow star ⭐ next to them.
Best bets will appear at the top of the search results page in classic SharePoint.
Keywords and best bets are all managed centrally via the Search keywords under Site Collection Administration section within your top-level site.
How to add keywords in classic SharePoint
A keyword is a definition for common terms or phrases that are used within an organisation. Keywords are what search queries will match to return a keyword result. Before you get started, you must have Site Collection Administrator permissions to manage keywords.
Click the Site Actions menu, choose Site Settings
On the Site Settings page, in the Site Collection Administration section, click Search keywords
On the Manage Keywords page, click Add Keyword
Add Keyword from the Manage Keywords page in classic SharePoint.
Enter the following information for each keyword you create:
Keyword phrase: what the search queries will match to return a keyword result
Synonyms: additional words that users might type when searching for the keyword, separated by semicolons. Synonyms must be shorter or equal to 100 characters
Best bets: the recommended results for the keyword. Best bets will appear in the order listed
Keyword definition: optional text that will appear with the keyword (optional)
Contact: the person to inform when the keyword is past its review date (optional)
Start date: the date you want this keyword to appear in search results
End date: the date you want this keyword to no longer appear in search results (optional, leave blank for no expiry)
Review date: the date you want this keyword to be reviewed by the contact (optional)
How to add a keyword best bet in classic SharePoint.
How to edit/ delete keywords in classic SharePoint
Click the Site Actions menu, choose Site Settings
On the Site Settings page, in the Site Collection Administration section, click Search keywords
Click on the keyword you wish to edit and press Edit. When editing a keyword you are able to update all of the information listed above, plus:
Add additional best bets
Change the properties of a best bet
Change the order of best bets by updating the number of the Title next to the best bet
How to edit keywords in classic SharePoint.
How to delete keywords in classic SharePoint
Click the Site Actions menu, choose Site Settings
On the Site Settings page, in the Site Collection Administration section, click Search keywords
Click on the keyword you wish to delete and press Delete
How to delete keywords in classic SharePoint.
Modern SharePoint
Promoted results
Although a lot has changed with the advent of the modern search experience in SharePoint, you can still create and configure keywords and best bets – now called Promoted Results! Microsoft have published comprehensive guidance on how to manage query rules and add promoted results here, but summarise the steps myself below.
How to add promoted results in modern SharePoint
First you will need to consider whether you want your promoted results to appear across the tenant, a site collection or site within SharePoint before beginning. In this example I am creating a tenant-wide promoted result.
Navigate to the SharePoint admin center > More features > Search. Press Open
Within the search administration page, select Manage Query Rules
Open Manage Query Rules from within the SharePoint admin center.
On the Manage Query Rules page, select a result source for the new query rule (you can change this later)
Select New Query Rule. The new query rule has the following configuration options:
Rule name: enter the name for the new query rule
Context: restrict the rule to queries performed on a particular result source, from a particular category of topic page, or by a user matching a particular user segment
Query Conditions: define when a user’s search box query makes this rule fire. You can specify multiple conditions of different types, or remove all conditions to fire for any query text. Every query condition becomes false if the query is not a simple keyword query, such as if it has quotes, property filters, parentheses, or special operators
Actions: actions can add promoted results above the ranked results, add blocks of additional results promoted to always appear above ranked results or ranked so they only appear if highly relevant, or change ranked results, such as tuning their ordering
Publishing: make the query rule active during a particular time period
Add all the relevant information, then under Actions press Add Promoted Result
Add a Title, URL and Description for your promoted results
Make sure Render the URL as a banner instead of as a hyperlink is checked
Press Save
Create a new Query Rule and Promoted Result in modern SharePoint.
Now, when you search across Microsoft 365, you will be able to see your promoted result!
The newly created promoted result shows across Microsoft 365 search.
How to edit or delete promoted results in modern SharePoint
You can manage your query rules and promoted results through the Manage Query Rules page much like creating a new rule. To edit or delete a query rule/ promoted result:
Navigate to the SharePoint admin center > More features > Search. Press Open
Within the search administration page, select Manage Query Rules
Select the result source for the query rule you wish to edit
Click on the drop-down arrow next to the name of the query rule you want to change. From here you can:
View, edit, copy, delete or make the query rule inactive
If you are deleting a rule, once you press Delete you will be prompted with a message to confirm you want to delete the query rule. Press OK
Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Launched (0)
Rolling out (0)
In development (25)
🍾 LAUNCHED
N/A
🚂 ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – February 2021
🆕 SharePoint Syntex: Add taxonomy columns from modern library views – Allows users to add taxonomy columns directly to library views in modern SharePoint and Syntex libraries. Roadmap ID: 70609
Microsoft Lists: forms customization – Adjust what information shows on the out-of-box forms and include custom header and footer imagery and information. Roadmap ID: 64165
Microsoft Lists: sticky first column – As you scroll left and right, the first column of your list remains in place; similar to the sticky header that is already a part of Lists. Roadmap ID: 64168
Microsoft Lists: new ‘Integrate’ drop-down menu – Introduction of a new top-level menu item: ‘Integrate.’ To start, existing command buttons for Power Apps and Power Automate will move into Integrate – as they are integrated technologies and experiences. Roadmap ID: 64869
Microsoft Lists: rules – Create simple if/then rules based on changes to list information to set reminders and send notifications. Roadmap ID: 64163
Configure header, footer and body of a form for lists/ libraries – This feature allows users in SharePoint lists and libraries to add a custom header and a footer to the associated form. Roadmap ID: 63519
Microsoft Lists and SharePoint document libraries: Gallery view – Configure your lists and library items using a dynamic Gallery view – choosing how your documents and list items appear. Roadmap ID: 57304
Microsoft Lists: mobile app (iOS) built on SharePoint – You’ll be able to create new lists, edit list items and easily share with other people. The Lists app will first come to iOS and Android shortly after. Roadmap ID: 64161
Microsoft Lists: updated Yes/No column experiences – powered by SharePoint – List items with a Yes/No column, in and out of Quick Edit mode, will appear using the new experience design format – making it easier to create and more accessible to consume. Roadmap ID: 67119
Microsoft Lists: Support for thousands separator in Number column – When Lists owners and members leverage the Number column, they can now choose if the comma should appear or not. Roadmap ID: 68716
Microsoft Lists: offline mode – Similar to taking files offline, people will have the ability to take Microsoft Lists offline – so you can work with your information in scenarios where you may have low-to-no internet access. Roadmap ID: 68809
Microsoft Lists: @mentions in comments – Get a colleague’s attention to an item in a list by @mentioning them within list comments. That person will receive a notification and a link that takes them directly back to the item, to review the comment and take the requested action. Roadmap ID: 68811
SharePoint: Auto-News Digest – SharePoint Auto-News Digest sends automated email to employees in you company about the latest News posts that they have not yet read. Roadmap ID: 64685
New SharePoint admin center home page – Updates to the SharePoint admin center to align it to the Microsoft admin center, including more tiles and graphs. Roadmap ID: 57318
SharePoint Online search query volume limits when using app-only authentication – When this change is implemented, queries using the Site.Read.All permissions level or greater will be throttled at 25 QPS. The search query will return with a 429 response and you can simply retry the query. Roadmap ID: 64963
SharePoint: Audience Targeting capability for Quick Links Web Part – Microsoft are adding the ability to target specific audiences per link within the Quick Links Web Part. With it, you target specific links to different audiences, helping you provide more personalized experiences on SharePoint pages. Roadmap ID: 67115
SharePoint: Text web parts automatically added to new sections in modern pages – Microsoft are now adding text web parts automatically for you when you add new sections to a modern page. Roadmap ID: 67146
SharePoint: new experience to add content types to lists and libraries – Custom content types that are available to your SharePoint sites can easily be added to lists & libraries that allow multiple content types. In those SharePoint lists & libraries that allow multiple content types, a new ‘Content type’ option will be available in the ‘Add column’ menu. Roadmap ID: 67164
SharePoint: Portal Launch Scheduler in SharePoint PowerShell – The Portal Launch wizard available via SharePoint PowerShell is designed to configure the deployment waves when launching a new site. Roadmap ID: 66162
SharePoint admin center: site creation source – SharePoint admins will now be able to see where sites were created from – be it PowerShell, via the SharePoint admin center, from Teams, from SharePoint “Create site” – and to be able to see more clearly who created the site. Roadmap ID: 68813
SharePoint admin center – Migration Manager: Box migrations (public preview) – With their recent Mover acquisition, Microsoft are excited to expand capabilities to allow moving content from third-party cloud storage providers starting with Box.com. Roadmap ID: 68816
SharePoint: Page Authoring First Run Experience – The page authoring First Run experience is an interactive tutorial that walks users through the editing process the first time that they create a page or news post. Roadmap ID: 70667
New leadership connection site template – The template brings together conversations from Yammer, news, resources, and showcases upcoming events. Roadmap ID: 71752
Release – March 2021
🆕 SharePoint: Company-Branded Auto News Digest – For SharePoint news users, we are launching an update to the Auto-News Digest feature. Now users will receive a company branded Auto-News Digest. Roadmap ID: 70606
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.
OneDrive settings move to the SharePoint admin center
All OneDrive admin capabilities, including controls for sharing, access, sync, and storage, are now available from within the SharePoint admin center, consolidating admin tools in one place.
The OneDrive admin center will now be consolidated within the SharePoint admin center.
Microsoft have increased the upload file size limit for Microsoft 365 from 100 GB to 250 GB – which includes uploads of files into SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive.
Microsoft Lists helps you track information and organize work. List is simple, smart, and flexible, so you can stay on top of what matters most to your team and will now be available on your iPhone and soon your iPad.
Create simple if/then rules, based on changes to list information, to set reminders and send notifications. Users with edit permissions on the list can create and manage rules. Users with read-only permissions can’t create or manage rules.
List form customisation: footer, header & body text with JSON
You can configure the list form in a list or library with a custom header, footer, and the form body with one or more sections with fields in each of those sections. The form configuration does not change the data in the list item or file; it only changes how the form is displayed to users who browse the list or library.
Anyone who can create and manage views in a list can use form configuration to configure the form with header, footer, and body with sections.
JSON list form customization: footer, header, body text.
Approvals in Microsoft Teams enables everyone, from frontline workers to corporate headquarters employees, to easily create, manage, and share approvals directly from your hub for teamwork. You can quickly start an approval flow from the same place you send a chat, in a channel conversation, or from the Approvals app itself.
The offline experience for Microsoft Teams chat and channels helps you to continue be productive even without a network connection. Offline autosend identifies when Teams messages are sent or edited while the user is offline. These messages are automatically sent once the device is back online.
Administrators who manage tenants that have less than or equal to 10,000 members can now create an org-wide team, which automatically syncs all the tenant’s members with the team.
Meeting organizers can now choose from three chat settings to help create a safe and inclusive meeting environment.
Chats can be “Disabled”, preventing the organizer and participants from using the meeting chat. Alternatively, they can be set to “Only during the meeting”, allowing participants to send messages only during the meeting and the organizer to send messages at any time. Lastly, the default will be set to “Enabled”, allowing chats for all meeting attendees at any time.
You can now create and share a calendar with members of a specific channel. When a channel meeting is created, Teams automatically creates a new post in the channel’s activity feed. If users don’t have notifications turned on, they will see the event when they open the channel’s calendar. Once a channel event is posted, you can add it to your personal calendar.
Yammer community notifications in the Microsoft Teams Activity feed
Microsoft released the Communities app for Microsoft Teams in 2020, bringing all your Yammer communities and conversations into Teams. Now you will receive Yammer notifications in the Teams Activity feed on web, desktop, and mobile.
You can then like, read, respond to the post, and react with our new inclusive reactions – without leaving Teams.
Notifications coming from your Yammer communities while in Teams.
Task publishing is now generally available. Your leadership can create tasks centrally at the corporate level and publish them to targeted frontline locations like stores, clinics, or factories. Tasks can be assigned to all frontline teams or specific locations based on customizable publishing characteristics like size or layout.
The new Microsoft Teams UI Kit and Microsoft Teams UI Library helps designers, product managers or developers quickly understand the key design considerations for making quality Teams apps and also simplify the process by providing templates and tools to use.
With the new Microsoft Teams for Education policy wizard, you can easily apply education tailored policies for a safe learning environment. The policy wizard allows you as an IT admin to quickly and easily apply the most relevant set of policies for students at a global (Org-wide default) level and apply a custom policy set to a group of educators and staff tailored to their needs.
The following features have been rolled out this month to customers in US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and/or United States Department of Defense (DoD):
Together mode: Together mode reimagines meeting experiences to help participants feel closer together even when you are apart. Find out more.
Multi-Window Chat: You can now pop out individual Teams chat conversations into a separate window. Find out more.
Multi-Window for Meetings and Calling: Users will have the ability to pop out meetings and calling into separate windows to help them optimize their workflow. Find out more.
Meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint: You can now save Microsoft Teams meeting recordings to OneDrive and SharePoint.
Simplified way to manage your channel notification settings: Through the teams and channels list or from the channel header, the users can quickly manage their channel notification settings by the means of a new fly-out design.
Targeted communications: Targeted communication allows team members to message everyone in a specific role at the same time by @mentioning the role name in a post by using tags. Find out more.
Not only can you sync these shared libraries from SharePoint and Microsoft Teams to your PC or Mac using OneDrive, you can now view shared libraries with full fidelity from within the OneDrive on the web. This means you can create new documents, pin important ones to the top, add shortcuts to your OneDrive, create views, manage metadata, share and more.
It’s now easier and simpler to create new shared libraries from OneDrive on the web. The new streamlined experience backed by an Office 365 group, allowing you to specify the people you want to share with – and the new shared library appears immediately as a new content collaboration space for your team files.
OneDrive admins can now specify a file name or file extension you’d like to exclude from the OneDrive sync at the device level. This setting lets you prevent the OneDrive sync app (OneDrive.exe) from uploading specific files to OneDrive or SharePoint. No errors appear for the skipped files, and the files remain in the local OneDrive folder.
So now as a part of “Known Folder Move” if you need to move a Desktop folder which might consist multiple shortcut files, just add .lnk files to the list of the excluded files and prevent them from syncing. End users will be notified about the exclusion in the activity center and will be able to recognize these files with “do not enter” status in the File Explorer.
End user notification regarding the excluded files.
NOTE: You can find the new setting in the admx/adml files that ship with OneDrive version 20.201.
Relevance search is becoming more intelligent through the infusion of machine learning. Moving forward, relevance search results will improve over time, thus making it easier to find the data you’re looking for.
Some of the new capabilties include:
Spelling check
Recognizing common abbreviations and acronyms
Better understanding through common knowledge & synonyms
Introducing intelligence in relevance search in Power Apps.
General Availability of Geospatial Features in Power Apps
The Power Apps team have announce the general availability of geospatial features in Power Apps, which include both the Address Input and the Interactive Map Component. Geospatial features empower app makers to introduce location-based capabilities into their apps to visualize and update geospatial data using tools they are already familiar with.
The Power Apps team have announced the experimental release of source code files for Canvas apps. Source code of a Canvas app to be effectively managed in GitHub or Azure DevOps. Diffs, pull requests, and comments can be based on lines of formula text rather than .msapp blob files.
Innovation Backlog is a new app that’s part of the Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit that gives your business users a place to record and prioritize their wish list of digital innovations. Your teams can use this app to submit ideas for apps and flows and describe pain points with the current process.
You can now send push notifications to model-driven apps using Power Automate! With the updated Power Apps Notifications connector, you can direct users straight to a specified page or section of your app – like the relevant entity view or form.
Send push notifications to model-driven apps using Power Automate.
Monitor enables Power Apps makers to start viewing a stream of events from a user’s session to diagnose and troubleshoot app behaviour during development in Power Apps or to monitor published apps during runtime.
Now generally available (GA), the Power Apps team have introduced a new collaborative troubleshooting capability “Connect User” in Monitor to better facilitate team collaboration and troubleshooting.
Recipient users can use the link to open the Monitor and connect to your Monitor session.
Broad distribution apps within Dataverse for Teams
Previously, apps built on Dataverse for Teams could only be used by other members within a team. The Power Apps team are introducing broad distribution apps within Dataverse for Teams which allows you to take an app that was built within a Teams team and share it with others inside of your company.
This makes it possible for a centralized development team to build an app on top of Dataverse for Teams and then share it with a bunch of users who don’t belong to the original development team.
apps shared with colleagues will appear in the Built by your colleagues section within the Teams app store.
The simple image control for model-driven apps consists of a file picker button, thumbnail along with open and delete buttons. The open button will retrieve the full photo in a new browser tab. This experience simplifies the UI for users and saves additional overhead for displaying the larger images within the form.
Simple image control for model-driven apps.
Also included as part of the simple image control is the preview for our image annotation control, which allows for images to be added to a form and then the ability for them to be marked up with any additional information.
New Toggle & Calendar model-driven apps controls + deprecation of old controls
Two new controls are coming to model-driven apps in Power Apps, plus some older controls are being depreciated. Firstly, the new Toggle control will replace the current Flip Switch control, with many of the properties being the same as the Flip Switch, except for additional support for nulls “—”.
The new Toggle control will replace the current Flip Switch control in model-driven apps.
The new Calendar control V2 brings a much needed refresh to UCI vs the existing calendar (Calendar Control V1). The new calendar control is also accessible, mobile and allows for items to be created directly from the control.
The new Calendar Control (V2) in model-driven apps.
As well as the depreciation of the Flip Switch and Calendar Control (V1), the Power Apps team will also be deprecating some gauge controls, Linear Slider, Radio Knob, Arc Knob, Linear Gauge; along with the Website Preview control and the MultiSelectPicklistControl (v1).
The Power Automate team have announced the availability of a new Power Virtual Agents-based chatbot and contextual help while building flows. A new set of documents by curating customer support asks and community asks to help you learn how to automate with top connectors in Power Automate has been launched that are accessible whilst building flows.
The team have also launched an assistant for Power Automate to aid in authoring workflows in the form of a Power Virtual Agent bot (PVA bot) that provides the next level of assistance for customers in a question/answer interaction format.
Get contextual help for Power Automate plus the addition of a dedicated chat bot.
December 2020 saw the addition of 11 new connectors in Power Automatem including:
Adobe PDF tools – The Adobe PDF Tools Connector brings the power of Acrobat into automated document workflows without writing any code.
Africa’s Talking Voice – Africa’s Talking Voice is a platform that allows developers to build scalable, dynamic, fully-featured voice applications that reside entirely in the cloud.
AgilePoint NX – The AgilePoint NX connector opens up two-way communication between Power Automate and the AgilePoint digital process automation platform.
Bitvore Cellenus – Bitvore Cellenus is a groundbreaking AI-powered platform that delivers leading indicators of business performance for companies, industries, markets and municipal obligors to the Financial Services industry.
Boomapp connect – Boomerang provides fully automated communication workflows seamlessly through boomapp connect, allowing intelligent messaging on the Microsoft Power Platform, without the end user having to change their behaviour.
Cloud BOT – Cloud BOT is a cloud RPA that makes the web automation robot possible with no code. This connector allows you to pass data to the robot, or return data after the robot finished.
Expensya – Expensya is a next-generation spend management service for B2B customers, offering the most advanced OCR and Approval Workflows.
Kanbanize – Kanbanize helps managers gain visibility across all projects, connects planning with execution, and guides the continuous optimization of the delivery workflows.
LatinShareSHP Permissions – The LatinShare SHP permissions connector allows you to manage SharePoint security in a custom way at the site, list, and item level. Users will be able to assign, remove, and restore permissions to specific groups or users.
Power Query Dataflows – Dataflows are a self-service, cloud-based, data preparation technology available in Power Apps, Power BI and Dynamics Customer Insights products and portals.
Transform2All – With the Transform2All connector the transformation between data structures can be simplified to a single action in Power Automate.
Import a connector from GitHub as a custom connector
The Power Automate team have announced you can now import a connector from GitHub from the Power Platform connectors repository and deploy the connector as a custom connector all from the Custom connectors page.
Import a connector from GitHub as a custom connector.
Several exciting updates are rolling out this month for paginated reports, including an improved publishing experience in Power BI Report Builder, additional sample reports, Microsoft Dataverse connectivity and much more!
Additional paginated sample reports are now available.
Power BI Report Server January 2021 Feature Summary
Several new features are included in the January 2021 update to Power BI Report Server, including: visual zoom sliders, custom publish message and ArcGIS for Power BI support, plus more.
The Power BI team have announced they are now previewing step folding indicators in Power Query Online. These indicators will allow you to understand which steps fold, and which steps don’t. When you make a change that breaks folding, it will become obvious.
This allows you to resolve issues more quickly and easily, avoid performance issues in the first place, and have better insight into your queries.
General availability of read/write XMLA endpoints in Power BI Premium
Power BI inherits a large ecosystem of developers, partners, BI tools, and solutions built over the years. XMLA endpoints provide access to the Analysis Services engine in the Power BI service, allowing customers to leverage enterprise BI tools directly on Power BI datasets.
Read/write XMLA endpoints introduced many additional enterprise BI scenarios for dataset management, application lifecycle management, governance, complex semantic modeling, debugging, and monitoring— all within Power BI!
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SharePoint
Launched (0)
Rolling out (1)
In development (2)
🍾 LAUNCHED
N/A
🚂 ROLLING OUT
SharePoint: Share a page to Yammer – The ability to share a modern SharePoint Online (SPO) page to a Yammer community will be available in the page actions bar. Roadmap ID: 66183
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – February 2021
SharePoint: Web Part Toolbox Updates – We are rolling out several changes to the web part toolbox; featured web parts will be replaced with a users most frequently used web parts, the categories from the large toolbox will also appear in the small toolbox, and the size of the small toolbox has increased. Roadmap ID: 70668
Release – March 2021
🆕 SharePoint: Simplified MUI editing for multilingual communication sites – This new feature allows the same user, with the right permissions, to update site navigation, site title, site description and site footer in all the languages enabled in your communication site. Roadmap ID: 79847
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Teams
Launched(6)
Rolling out(2)
In development(16)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Microsoft Teams: Add a shared calendar to a Teams channel – Create and share a channel specific calendar for members to view events. Teams automatically creates a new post, which will appear in the activity feed, when a channel meeting is created. Any user who has notifications turned off will see the event only when they open the channel calendar. Roadmap ID: 68911
Microsoft Teams: Education Policy Wizard – A dedicated Education policy package that easily apply policies for a safe learning environment. Roadmap ID: 70661
Microsoft Teams: Add document libraries, pages or news to a channel in Teams via the new SharePoint tab – Team members can now use the SharePoint tab experience to pin any page, news, list or document library as a separate tab in their Teams channel. Roadmap ID: 68860
Microsoft Teams: Together mode for GCC, GCC-High and DoD – Together mode uses AI segmentation technology in meetings to digitally place participants in a shared background, making it feel like you’re sitting in the same room with everyone else. Roadmap ID: 68847, 66716
Microsoft Teams for RealWear – FirstLine Workers using RealWear HMT-1 and HMT-1Z1 can now collaborate with a remote expert using video calling on Teams. Roadmap ID: 65038
Microsoft Teams: Branded Lobby – Admins will now be able to add a customer logo to the Teams experience, for display in the lobby and meeting pre-join experience. The logo will be displayed for meetings where the organizer has the Advanced Comms SKU. Roadmap ID: 67113
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Teams: 25K person teams – Support for up to 25,000 members per individual team.Roadmap ID: 68723
Microsoft Teams: Targeted communications in GCC – Targeted communication allows team members to message everyone in a specific role at the same time by @mentioning the role name in a post. Roadmap ID: 68841
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – February 2021
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Get a “Meet Now” Meeting link – Users can now copy a “Meet Now” meeting link without starting the meeting from the Calendar tab which can be used later. Roadmap ID: 70602
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Virtual Breakout Rooms for GCC-High – Meeting hosts can create breakout rooms to be used by meeting participants for smaller group discussion. Roadmap ID: 70604
Outlook for Windows: Every meeting online – Update your settings to make every meeting you create a Teams Meeting by default so you no longer need to remember to click the Teams Meeting option. Roadmap ID: 66021
Microsoft Teams: Call Merge – Call Merge gives end users the capability to merge their active unheld 1-1 call into another 1-1 call or another group call. This applies to Teams VOIP calls and PSTN calls. Roadmap ID: 66054
Microsoft Teams: New Calling Experiences – Simplify the calling experience with a streamlined view that shows contacts, voicemail and calling history together, making it easier to initiate or return a call with a single click. Roadmap ID: 68771
Microsoft Teams: Touch Bar Meetings Controls for Mac – Teams Meeting controls for MacBooks with Touch Bars that allow users to mute/unmute, start/stop video, open sharing tray, open the view participants panel and raise or retract their hand. Roadmap ID: 68906
Global Usage report for Microsoft Teams – A new report will be made available with both tenant level aggregation and per-team level details to enable admins to get an overall picture of how the organization is using teams within Microsoft Teams. Roadmap ID: 70552
Release – March 2021
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Share to Microsoft Teams from Outlook – Send a copy of email messages or conversations, including attachments, into Teams chats and channels or start a Teams chat related to a specific email message. Share to Teams supports Outlook on the web, Outlook for Windows, and the new Outlook for Mac Preview. Roadmap ID: 70598
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Anonymous Presenter Support for Live Events – You may allow an anonymous user who does not have and MSA or AAD identity to be a presenter in your live event. Roadmap ID: 70599
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Walkie Talkie for GCC – This native built-in app in Teams turns employee or company-owned Android smartphones and tablets into a walkie-talkie, reducing the number of devices employees must carry and lowering costs for IT. Roadmap ID: 70601
Microsoft Teams: Transcription for 1:1 Calls – Transcription captures the text version of your Call and saves it for later use. This can be enabled via the control bar within the Call window. Roadmap ID: 68774
Microsoft Teams: Transfer Calls between desktop and mobile – Transfer calls between desktop and mobile allows a user to move their call between devices. Roadmap ID: 68776
Microsoft Teams: 1:1 PSTN Call Recording – Record 1:1 PSTN Calls. Roadmap ID: 68777
Microsoft Teams: Prompt to set Meeting Options for Large Teams Meetings in Outlook for Windows – Teams users in Outlook for Windows will be prompted to set meeting options when organizing Teams meetings for 40 or more participants or 10 or more distribution lists. Roadmap ID: 68918
Release – April 2021
Microsoft Teams: Prompt to set Meeting Options for Large Teams Meetings in Outlook for Windows in GCC – Teams users in Outlook for Windows will be prompted to set meeting options when organizing Teams meetings for 40 or more participants or 10 or more distribution lists. Roadmap ID: 78699
Release – July 2021
Microsoft Teams: Meetings – Live Captions in additional languages – Today, Teams meetings live captions is available for English. We will enable live captions in additional spoken languages such as German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Dutch. Roadmap ID: 70593
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SharePoint
Launched (0)
Rolling out (0)
In development (2)
🍾 LAUNCHED
N/A
🚂 ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – March 2021
🆕 SharePoint: Scenario-Based Site Templates – Use scenario-based site templates that leverage existing SharePoint capabilities (e.g. pages, lists, libraries, branding) to build your own sites faster and get inspired. Roadmap ID: 70574
🆕 SharePoint: App Bar – The SharePoint app bar brings a consistent navigation experience to every site on your intelligent intranet, featuring quick access to important sites across the organization with global navigation, personally relevant sites, and the news feed. Roadmap ID: 70576
This post describes an issue that surfaced late in 2020 with policy tips not showing within emails in Outlook where data loss presentation policy rules are matched.
Full disclosure, I’ve got a series of posts planned on my experiences of Microsoft 365 compliance that I had hoped to publish last year, but other things have got in the way so apologies for the lack of any background I’d hoped to have in place – but it is coming!
Data loss prevention policy tips showing within Outlook emails.
Data loss prevention (DLP) policies allow you to enable policy tips to be shown with custom text when a policy match occurs. Going through user acceptance testing in Autumn 2020 there no were no major issues – DLP rules were matching correctly and the policy tips were displaying consistently throughout Microsoft 365 from SharePoint to Outlook.
In November 2020, I noticed that policy tips that had been showing in Outlook had stopped appearing all together. It was around this time I came across this article from Microsoft that says:
This issue occurs because the compatible version criteria that’s processed by the policy evaluator is based on the version of mso20win32client.dll, not the version of Outlook. In many cases, the version of mso20win32client.dll is not the same as the version of Outlook and Office.
For example, an administrator may configure a very restrictive policy that applies only to version 16.0.11727.20244 or a later version of Outlook. However, the policy evaluator uses version 16.0.11727.20222 of mso20win32client.dll and determines that the rule should not be applied. In this example, the rule would have to indicate the minimum required version of 16.0.11727.20222 to have the policy tip appear in Outlook.
Now I’ve interpreted, plus also had it confirmed by Microsoft support that effectively means the policy ips will not work if the version of Office/ Outlook you are running is newer than the version the policy evaluator is using. It doesn’t say that specifically in the excerpt above, but it is most definitely the case. I’ve tested using Outlook on the web as the article describes and the policy tips still show. I’ve also deleted the registry value as suggested in the resolution section of the article to no avail too.
An additional support article was brought to my attention on this issue which you can read here. The article doesn’t reference the one I’ve highlighted in this post, but does mention some additional issues I was hadn’t noted:
Outlook DLP policy tips are not detecting sensitive information in PDF, Excel, Word and other attachments and it may work inconsistently across attachments
Policy tip detection may work for smaller attachment such as a 15KB file, but not for larger attachments such as a 2MB file
Outlook is also not detecting HIPAA or ICD-9 or ICD-10 correctly in the message body
In some cases, Outlook is not detecting key words with certain syntax such as quotation marks
In some cases, Outlook is not showing the policy tip if the message is being retrieved from a Draft
I’ve been in discussions with various people from Microsoft who have also tried to help move this issue forwards. Here are some of the suggestions I’ve had so far:
Update to the latest version of Office on the semi-annual channel to see if the problem persists
Create a new Windows 10 VM with the latest version of Office installed, added to an OU, but with no organisational GPO’s set to prove if it isn’t related to GPO’s
Add a device on the insider channel to know when the issue is fixed natively fixed on the Outlook client
Speak to Microsoft Premier Support
In my organisation we have client machines on different versions of Office so I can rule out option 1, as I test more of the suggestions I will update this post!
Update from readers 22/02/21
One of the readers of this blog – @AT added an update that they had received from Microsoft on this issue:
Our reader had found the policy nudge files weren’t being downloaded to the app data folder when applied (these are under appdata\local\microsoft\outlook). They added that the policy nudge files started to re-appear last weekend (14 February 2021), but the policynudgerules.xml file was incomplete. Pasting text from old policy nudge files into the newly downloaded one allows the override to be seen.
They added that the workaround they used was as follows:
Close Outlook
Delete the registry key LastDownloadTimesPerAccount
Delete the 2 PolicyNudge.xml files in users app data folder
Reopen outlook and create a new email (this re-creates the registry and 2 .xml files)
Edit PolicyNudgeRules.xml file
Restart Outlook
Aside from the fact the policy tips do not detect sensitive information in attachments in Outlook, our reader also noted that Outlook will try to re-download the policy files after 24 hours on an Outlook restart, so the edited PolicyNudgeRules.xml file will be replaced with the incomplete one. At the end of the registry value there is a 9 digit number which is Epoch time, that’s being used to detect if 24 hours has elapsed.
