In this post we demo the ability to download approvals in Microsoft Teams as PDFs for filing, printing or transferring.
Introduction
Microsoft introduced the ability to save, print and transfer approvals as PDFs in late 2022. With this feature, approval creators are able to save a completed approval request to a PDF file and have the option to print it. At the time of writing, there was very little online about this feature, or what it looks like – so here it is in action!
Demo – save a PDF from approval
There are several ways to trigger a new approval, via Teams chat or channel message, the approvals app or via Power Automate to name a few. In my example, I created a Teams channel approval:
Note: There’s a brief delay after sending your approval before it appears within your activity feed, or the approvals app (approx. 5 minutes). Once it does, you are able to go ahead and approve/ reject it. You cannot save approvals as PDF whilst they are in the ‘requested’ state.
Once the approval has been completed, you can either view the details of the approval (if a channel message) or open the approval up from the approvals app in Teams.
Approval details via the Teams channel message.Approval details via the approvals app.
Once your approval is open > press Save as PDF.
A PDF export of the approval window will download into the local downloads folder on your device. The output will look something like the below:
Current limitations
There is no way currently to change the download location of the PDF or change the behaviour. It would be nice it it was configurable to set it to save to a OneDrive location potentially.
There are no standard approval triggers related to this functionality in Power Automate. Again, for the same purpose as above, it would be good to be able to leverage this functionality via Power Automate to route the downloaded PDF to a OneDrive/ SharePoint location.
Microsoft Teams: Payments in Microsoft Teams – Grow your business by getting paid for appointments, classes, or events you host on Teams with the Payments app. Once you connect a third-party service to receive payments, you’ll be able to request payment right during a Teams meeting—and have customers pay you in just a few clicks. The Payments app is supported for businesses registered in the United States and Canada at this time. Note: Admins can manage the availability of the Payments app in the Teams admin center. Roadmap ID:97165
Microsoft Teams: ISV App Subscriptions instead of 3P app subscriptions – Ability for Admins to view and manage in single place all third-party app subscriptions they’ve purchased from Teams Admin Center, easily adding more licenses for the purchased subscriptions, cancel, upgrade and downgrade subscriptions and access invoices. Roadmap ID:95920
Microsoft Teams: Support of Transcription for Teams for Azure Virtual Desktop on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure – Users on Virtual machines can use transcription once the feature is available. Live transcripts provide way to follow along with what has been said and who said it. After a meeting, the transcript file is automatically saved in the chat tab for that meeting. Roadmap ID:87571
Microsoft Teams: Additional language support for Suggested Replies for mobile – Suggested replies now supported in: Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, French, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Italian, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Norwegian, Russian, Korean, Czech, Danish, Turkish, Polish. Roadmap ID:94017
đźš‚ ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Teams: Receive all group chat messages with resource-specific consent – The resource-specific consent (RSC) permissions model, originally developed for Teams Graph APIs, is extended for chat and channel scope. Using RSC, you can now request team owners to consent for a bot to receive user messages across standard group chats without being @mentioned. Roadmap ID:100883
Microsoft Teams: Music on hold for call transfer – Music can be played to callers on hold when a call transfer is initiated. Roadmap ID:98431
Microsoft Teams: Honor Tenant admin control settings for Microsoft Bookings SMS functionality in the Bookings app in Teams – Tenant admin settings in Bookings admin page in Microsoft Teams Admin center to enable/disable SMS functionality in all Bookings calendars in the tenant. Roadmap ID:92851
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – January 2023
Microsoft Teams: Receive all group chat messages with resource-specific consent – The resource-specific consent (RSC) permissions model, originally developed for Teams Graph APIs, is extended for chat and channel scope. Using RSC, you can now request team owners to consent for a bot to receive user messages across standard group chats without being @mentioned. Roadmap ID:100883
Microsoft Teams: Federated group calling – Easily start a group Teams call with federated colleagues outside your organization, including video and screensharing, all over an internet connection without any PSTN usage charges. Roadmap ID:103042
Release – February 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Busy-on-busy end user setting – Manage how incoming calls are routed when you are busy in an existing call or meeting directly from your Calls settings in the Teams app. Choose from the option to allow calls to come through, play a busy signal, or to redirect the call based on your unanswered call routing preference. Roadmap ID: 86991
Microsoft Teams: Upload files to your approval request via Power Automate portal – Files that are uploaded within the Power Automate portal will now show within the view details window of an Approval request within Teams. Roadmap ID:89106
Release – March 2023
Microsoft Teams: Join a meeting by digital code for GCC-High and DoD – User can join a meeting by entering a digital code. Roadmap ID:94620
Release – April 2023
Microsoft Teams: Graph API for Teams Meetings Transcripts – Graph API to access Teams Meetings transcript once the meeting is over. Roadmap ID:95788
Microsoft Teams: Walkie Talkie Transmission Usage Report – Walkie Talkie, a push-to-talk experience that enables clear and secure voice communication over the cloud, enables teams to communicate instantly and always stay on the same page. Through this new capability, customers can download Walkie Talkie Usage and Transmission Quality related data to build insights for understanding product usage in stores and making investment decisions. Roadmap ID: 96972
The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
In SharePoint: Tenant URL rename GA, New site templates, streamline site info SP admin center,
SharePoint Tenant URL Rename – General Availability
This capability is now generally available to organizations that have less than 10,000 total sites (including OneDrive and SharePoint sites). With the tenant rename capability, you will be able to have the SharePoint domain in all site URLs updated to the new name you choose and continue with that new name going forward.
The SharePoint team are introducing 3 new SharePoint site templates dedicated to helping you create sites for your HR department, to showcase Events, and a template powered by Microsoft Syntex to do contract management.
SharePoint admin center: Streamlining management of site information across Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups
SharePoint is updating the site detail panel to include Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups information. Admins that have permissions to SharePoint, Teams and Groups admin centers can now manage all related attributes (membership, group name, description, etc.) from a single site detail panel in the SharePoint admin center ‘Active Sites’ tab.
Note: SharePoint admins with SharePoint only permissions will have read-only access to the new attributes.
Modern FAQ – The Modern FAQ app provides users a better way to search for the answers to the questions they have in mind.
Smarter Event Booking – Smarter Event Booking allows you to create events and offer them to your users for registration.
Teams
In Teams: Accept/ block chat invite, scheduled send, start chat with groups, view chat history via search, unread toggle, upload documents via e-signature approvals, 1-click instant poll, PSTN dial-in breakout rooms, 7×7 videos, modern meetings on web, screen pop for incoming PSTN, transcription for calls on Android
Accept or block a group chat invitation from an unmanaged user
This feature brings the ability to accept or block a one-on-one chat from an unmanaged user that already exists in Teams. Microsoft are extending and additional safety layer for Teams users to also accept or block a group chat invitation from an unmanaged user.
Similar to delaying the delivery of emails in Outlook, you now can manually select the future date and time you would like a chat message to be delivered. Users can simply right-click the send button to schedule send and have the confidence their message will be delivered as scheduled.
Start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-enabled Security Groups, and Office 365 Groups
You will now be able to start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-enabled Security Groups, and O365 Groups. This feature will respect the limits on members in a group chat, currently set to 250 members.
Click on search message results to view the entire chat conversation history
Users who click on the chat message search result will now be presented with the entire message thread, regardless of the age of the message. This update creates efficiency as it ensures the user has the full context of the conversation.
Users will now find it easier to view, triage and catch up with their unread chat message notifications by easily turning on the unread toggle button in their activity feed panel. Alternatively, users will also be able to turn off the unread toggle to view both read and unread notifications.
Upload documents from OneDrive for E-signature Approvals
When creating an e-signature request in Approvals, users can now upload a document to be signed from OneDrive for Business directly. This enables access to your document from anywhere and on any device.
Defined binary responses to get immediate answers to your spoken poll question (yes/no, thumb up/down, heart/broken heart). Presenters can launch these polls without preparing in advance – say your question out loud then click the corresponding response icon.
Admins can enable this policy in the Teams Admin Center, so that on acceptance of a PSTN call, an automatic browser launch can happen alongside Teams, displaying relevant information (CRM data, case data, etc.) to the user. This feature can also now be turned off in user settings.
Automatically view up to 49 videos (7×7) in Teams meeting
With this update, users will be able to automatically see up to 49 videos (7×7) on their screen by default without an explicit action. The actual number of videos seen by a user will depend on hardware/device capabilities.
The modern meeting and calling experience will be available for Teams on the web in Chrome and Edge browsers – including improved pre-join, dynamic view, and the updated control bar.
Transcription for calls on Microsoft Teams for Android
Transcription for 1:1 calls and group calls is now available on the Teams app for Android for whenever you’re on the go or just don’t have a notepad handy.
These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:
Updated Assignment List view for Teachers/ students – The Assignments list for teachers and students has been updated to a set of tabs for easy view of upcoming and past assignments.
Grade Trends and Distribution view in the Gradebook – In the Gradebook for Assignments, we’ve added the average grade for the class, all assignments, and for each student.
OneNote Class Notebook viewer for Teams Mobile – Through this new feature, users will be able to open and view OneNote notebooks right within their Teams Mobile apps.
Instant Poll in Teams Meeting – With Instant Poll, users can launch a pre-defined binary question (Yes/No, Thumbs Up/Down, Heart/Heartbroken) with just a single click in the Polls side pane during a meeting.
Intelligent chat message translation in Teams for iOS and Android – When you receive a message in Teams that is not in your preferred language, Teams asks if the text should be translated to your preferred language
Open Existing Whiteboards in Teams Meetings – Pull up the whiteboard you prepared before class with Open existing board in Teams meetings, and save time by no longer having to start your whiteboard from scratch.
Embed online videos in Whiteboard in Teams – Avoid fussing with Tab and Window switching that interrupts the flow of a meeting by including supplemental videos directly on the whiteboard with embedded online videos.
View Parent Contact Details on Teams Mobile – From the Parent App, teachers can now view a list of each student’s parent or guardian contact details listed in a Contact Card.
Assign Seats in Together Mode – With this latest innovation, meeting organizers and presenters can now assign seats to participants in Together mode.
Career coach updates – A few steps within the Career Coach set up and customization requirements in Teams Admin Center (TAC) have been reduced and transitioned into optional steps to simplify upfront configuration load on IT admins.
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):
Connectors in GCC – Teams Connectors, which support webhook integrations, will be made available in GCC.
Casting from Teams desktop client to Microsoft Teams Rooms in GCC-H – For quick ad-hoc sessions that don’t require setting up a formal meeting, users can leverage Teams casting to wirelessly connect to a Teams Room and display content from the Teams desktop client (Windows and Mac). Users can broadcast their screen and cast content stored locally on their computer or accessible via Office 365.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Formula repair (preview), 25% of new customer licenses, new ways to share ideas, release of modern learn page, developers tool update, table support for message/ individual publish, SharePoint virtual table updates, custom/ new views & forms on AAD user table, custom multi-table lookups support virtual tables, locked tabs on mobile apps, optimised command bar on tablet apps
Formula repair now in preview
With formula repair, now you may skip some of the troubleshooting effort as whenever you have a formula error, Power Apps will try to come up with a fix suggestion leveraging the power of AI. Once there’s a fix, a single click on the apply button will help you get rid of the error.
Power Apps licenses 25% off for the first year for new customers
There is a new 25% off offer on Power Apps Per user licenses. New customers of Power Apps, who don’t have any Per user licenses already, can save 25% on their first year. The offer is available now through March 31st, 2023. To purchase, speak with your Microsoft representative, or contact a Microsoft specialist or CSP partner from the Power Apps pricing page. Click on Contact Sales.
New ways to share Power Apps community forum ideas
As of November 29th 2022, Power Apps Ideas is now on a brand-new platform powered by Dynamics 365 Customer Service Community. On top of providing our community with a brand-new interface to share ideas, the migration will enable our product teams to be much more responsive to user feedback and better integrate your ideas into our product roadmap.
The Power Apps team have announced the release of the modern Learn page in Power Apps. The new Learn experience has consolidated content from all Microsoft resources to help with your onboarding and upskilling journey.
Power Platform Developers tool – October 2022 update
The Power Apps team have shared the October update for the Power Platform Developer tools. With this update, we are releasing some capabilities that have been in high demand by the developer community including: command line updates, solution pack, unpack and sync, Azure DevOps/ GitHub actions and more.
Tables now support configuring Messages and individual Publish
Messages (also known as displaystrings) are messages seen in the Dynamics apps built on Power Apps. You can now configure these messages to match your own names for tables and direct users to do the right thing in various situations when they are presented with these tailored messages. You can also translate these messages into any of the languages installed in your environment.
With this update we’re also bringing a Publish command to the table level, meaning you can publish changes made to Forms, Views or Messages at the table level – avoiding a Publish of the whole solution (or all customizations). This will mean you can publish just your changes and complete that faster than publishing everything all at once.
Improvement to SharePoint Virtual Tables – Multi-Select choice fields and Boolean fields
Multi-Select choice fields and Boolean fields in SharePoint Lists are now fully functional in Dataverse virtual tables. You can see all options labeled properly, Dataverse allows for multiple option selection, filtering of the column to display rows now works properly.Â
Customize or create new Views and Forms on the AAD User Table
The AAD User virtual table previously did not allow users to modify which fields are displayed in views and forms, and users were unable to build custom views and forms. This restriction has been relaxed and users can modify forms and views or create new forms and views using any of the available AAD User fields.Â
Custom Multi-Table Lookups now support Virtual Tables
Custom Multi-table lookups allow users to build a lookup that retrieves data from multiple tables at once. An out of the box example is Customer that looks up data from Account and Contact. Users can build their own lookups using SDKs or the APIs to have custom multi-table lookups. 
Tables can only participate in one of these lookups if they are not already part of an existing multi-table lookup.
Until now, only local tables could be one of the referenced tables. Now Virtual Tables can be used as a referenced table. This includes the out of the box AAD User Virtual Table. Â
App makers can now choose to lock the form tabs at the top as they scroll. Form tabs will always be visible and will help users to visualize and update data in larger form context. This also provides ability to switch tab at any time. Â
The command bar for tablets mobile application is at the bottom of the screen and can only display four commands. With this change app makers can configure tablet command bar to be displayed at the top and utilize full space to show more commands. Â
In Power Automate: 7 new verified, 16 new independent connectors, Power Automate Desktop update, new process mining capabilities
7 new verified & 16 independent publisher connectors released in October 2022
There were 7 new verified connectors and 7 updates from different service owners released in October, as well as 16 new Independent Publisher connectors. These connectors have solutions and tools for Commerce, Finance, Social Media, AI, Lifestyle and Entertainment and much more.
New process mining capabilities within Power Automate (Preview)
Microsoft have announced the preview of new process mining capabilities from Minit available in process advisor within Microsoft Power Automate. In this update, the process advisor powered with Minit introduces templates that enable customers to seamlessly drive powerful business process insights from cloud flows in Power Automate as well as insights from Microsoft Power Virtual Agents and other systems of records like SAP.
In Power BI: On-premises data gateway release, Power BI November 2022 feature summary, paginated reports support in Power BI Pro, new cache refresh settings Power BI Premium, save copy of report & collapse navigational pane
On-premises data gateway November 2022
The Power BI team have announced the release of the November update for the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.150.11). 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 November version of Power BI Desktop.
The Power BI team have announced support for paginated reports in Power BI Pro. Now, Microsoft Power BI customers have the flexibility to create and consume interactive reports as well as paginated reports using Power BI Pro.
Paginated reports are traditional operational reports best used for multi-page list-type reports for operational processes with document-like output requirements. One key benefit of paginated reports is that they are programmable which gives report authors more flexibility and control of the structure and formatting of their reports.
The Power BI team have announced that ClientCacheRefreshPolicy is now a configurable property for your Power BI Premium workspaces. Admins can override scheduled cache refresh settings for an entire workspace, improving the performance of their semantic models.
The default behavior in the Power BI service is to automatically cache dashboard, tile, and report queries upon refresh to provide an optimal report viewing experience. For enterprise semantic model deployments, where hundreds of reports and artifacts are built from a single Power BI dataset, automatic caches may cause performance issues. With the ClientCacheRefreshPolicy property, admins can disable the automatic cache refresh setting to optimize the behavior of their Power BI datasets.
Save a copy of a report/ collapse navigation pane in organizational app
After listening to customer feedback, the Power BI team have decided to bring back the feature in the org app that allowed you to save copies of reports. App consumers who have build permissions can now save copies of reports to their “My workspace” from the app. Further, app authors can now by default collapse the app navigation pane for their app consumers. Enabling this feature would allow your app consumers to land on full screen mode.
Microsoft Teams: Video clip – Video clip is a new feature in Microsoft Teams that enables the user to record, review, send and view short, lightweight video message in Teams chat from desktop and mobile. Roadmap ID: 97158
đźš‚ ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – February 2023
Microsoft Teams: View switcher improvement for Teams Rooms on Windows – Teams Rooms on Windows’ view switcher now has an updated interface where you can easily control views in a meeting. Customize your view such as turning on and off meeting chat or choosing what to see on the front row’s left and right panels. IT admins can configure default number of panels and default component on panel(s). Roadmap ID:98422
Release – May 2023
Microsoft Teams: Approvals Graph API’s – The Approvals Graph APIs allows developers to create and manager Approvals from any application. This set of APIs allows users to integrate Approvals with line of business application and automate creation and updates of approvals. Roadmap ID: 94653
Microsoft Teams: Receive all group chat messages with resource-specific consent – The resource-specific consent (RSC) permissions model, originally developed for Teams Graph APIs, is extended for chat and channel scope. Using RSC, you can now request team owners to consent for a bot to receive user messages across standard group chats without being @mentioned. Roadmap ID:100883
Microsoft Teams: Mandatory Comments for Approvals App in Teams – Teams Admins and Approval Template creators can enable mandatory comments for when an approver responds to a request. Roadmap ID:92911
Microsoft Teams: Add a group of approvers to your approval request – Users are able to select Office 365 groups as approvers when creating a new approval request within the Teams Approvals App. Roadmap ID:89108
đźš‚ ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Teams: Chat Bubbles during Teams meetings for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android – Ability to view chats sent during a Teams meeting on the front of room display in a Teams Room, calling attention to the chat conversation happening alongside the meeting. Roadmap ID:85441
Microsoft Teams: Multitask with Picture in Picture on iPhone / iPad – The new Picture in Picture mode lets you see your meeting in an adjustable window while using other apps on your mobile device. Roadmap ID:89826
Microsoft Teams: Delete Chats – With Delete Chats, users can permanently delete entire conversations from their view. This does not affect what any other users in the chat see. Roadmap ID:90723
Microsoft Teams: Start Whiteboard from Teams meeting from Teams Rooms on Windows – Teams Rooms users can now start a Microsoft Whiteboard in a Teams meetings using the in-meeting share content function. With the new patterns of work, whiteboarding is a key feature to enable collaboration between in room and remote users. When Whiteboard is started from the room, it is attributed to the meeting organizer so that they can manage access to the artifact. Roadmap ID:95260
Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams Rooms Companion Device Experience Enhancement – Optimize Video Gallery for in-room participants – When joining a meeting in a Microsoft Teams Rooms with a personal laptop running Microsoft Teams, the video galleries on both the Teams Room and laptops will be optimized to display only remote attendees. (Proximity Join with Microsoft Teams Rooms is required). Roadmap ID:96212
Microsoft Teams: Add people to a group chat with @mention – Add new participants to the chat with @mention, removing the need to navigate to the add-dialog. When adding a new participant, you can control how much of the chat history to share. Roadmap ID:97736
Microsoft Teams: Meeting chat on Gallery, Large gallery, and Together mode for Teams Rooms on Windows – Always know the context by brining chat pane on front of room display on Teams Rooms (Windows). Room users can use a touch console in the room to show/ hide chat on front of room display alongside meeting participants and/or content. Ability to show/ hide chat is available through view switcher. IT admins can configure to hide a meeting chat for a room if needed. Roadmap ID:98423
Microsoft Teams: Approvals as a PDFs can be saved, printed and transferred – Approval creators will be able to save a completed approval request to a PDF file and have the option to print it. This feature will also allow customers to easily transfer their proof of approval as a PDF to another system or store as a file. Roadmap ID:99190
Microsoft Teams: On-demand Virtual Appointments – Enable on-demand B2C appointments to allow customers to meet with staff in businesses or departments right away without requiring them to schedule it in advance. Roadmap ID:99919
Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android – New touch and collaboration experiences – New touch and collaboration experiences will include 4K display support to further enhance your meeting experience on large screen devices and the ability to control the room system from both the Front of Room touch display and the touch console for convenience; to get this experience, the“Enable touch controls”setting on the device must be enabled. Roadmap ID:101948
Microsoft Teams: In-meeting notification improvement for Teams Rooms on Windows – This update delivers improvements to in-meeting notifications on Teams Rooms on Windows and aligns them with Desktop’s framework. All critical notifications that require a user action will be shown on console. Roadmap ID:103659
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – December 2022
Whiteboard: Attribution for sticky notes – Participants in Teams and on Web can see who added sticky notes to the board. Roadmap ID:66765
Microsoft Teams: RTMP-In for Teams Live Events – Produce your Teams Live Events using an external encoder and leverage RTMP-in to broadcast to your Teams Live Event Attendees. Roadmap ID:84960
Release – January 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Edit and Delete events support for messages in user: Bot chats – Currently, message events can be accessed by developers. This feature allows developers to access, edit or delete event updates on messages in user:bot chats. Roadmap ID:102620
🆕 Visio: Visio personal app in Microsoft Teams – Visio will be available as a personal app, or private workspace, in Microsoft Teams. With a private workspace, users will be able to view and edit Visio files in a central location without leaving Teams. When using the Teams desktop app, users will be able to use the Pop out app option to open Visio in a separate window, allowing users to continue using Teams chat, call, collaboration, and meeting capabilities. Roadmap ID:109596
Release – February 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Video Filters in Microsoft Teams Meetings – Video filters allow participants in Teams Meetings to augment their video stream with visual effects. The effects are provided by app developers on Teams Platform. Roadmap ID:86811
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Actionable Missed call Notification in Activity – Users will have the option to call back on a missed call directly from their activity feed. Roadmap ID:102236
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Suggested files in chats – Save time with AI based file suggestions in chat. As an expansion of suggested replies in chats, Teams uses AI to surface files when it detects in the conversation intent to share a file. Now, users will be able to respond to their chat message and attach a file in one click. Roadmap ID:95065
Microsoft Teams: Presenter window usability improvements in screen sharing – With the new Presenter window, controls are located at the top, making active speakers’ faces clearly visible during screen sharing, and raise hand notifications are surfaced for improved awareness. Roadmap ID:100392
Microsoft Teams Admin Center: Virtual Appointments Analytics Takeback – Virtual appointments analytics reports converting to be Teams premium functionality. Roadmap ID:100506
Microsoft Teams: Virtual appointment – a new Teams Meeting type for B2C meetings – Virtual Appointment is a new Teams meeting type tailored for B2C meetings with people outside of your organization. When using the meeting type, guests will get a meeting invitation that includes important appointment details to make joining easy. They can join from any device—no need to install Teams—and experience a comfortable pre-appointment virtual waiting room until you’re ready to begin. Roadmap ID:100705
Microsoft Teams: Graph API for Teams Meetings Transcripts – Graph API to access Teams Meetings transcript once the meeting is over. Roadmap ID:95788
Release – March 2023
Microsoft Teams: Simulcast for Teams on VDI – Simulcast support for Teams on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) enables multiple video call streams at the same time, even in the event of low network quality. Roadmap ID:99865
Release – June 2023
Microsoft Teams: Global sign in and sign out for GCCH & DOD – Teams iOS app will support Global sign-in and sign-out to simplify the experience for Frontline Workers. Employees can now use any device from the shared device pool to sign in with their credentials and sign out of it at the end of the shift. This will remove all their personal and company information from the device. Roadmap ID:85736
The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
In SharePoint: Stream (on SharePoint), Storyline for Viva Engage/ Yammer, OneDrive folder backup for macOS, Conditional Access Improvements for Lists app on Android, Lists support for Android tablet, rules in custom List templates, create list from CSV, RAC policy for OneDrive GA, Conditional access policies for SharePoint sites, default sensitivity label for libraries (preview), anti-malware scan on file download, Forensic malware identification and extraction, migration manager updates, SPMT improvements, SharePoint data access governance (DAG) insights V1, Tenant rename, OneDrive Cross-tenant User Data Migration
Stream (on SharePoint) is now generally available
Stream (on SharePoint) is deeply integrated with Microsoft 365. Now, video can be a part of your everyday work and school apps: you can search, discover, play, share, embed, and record videos directly in Microsoft Office.
Storyline for Microsoft Viva Engage and Yammer generally available
Storyline is a new way for people to share, connect, and contribute to their organization through Yammer and the Viva Engage app. Previously, the only way to share broadly through Yammer was through communities, but communities aren’t always a perfect fit for what people want to share. In some cases, there may not be a community that matches the subject the person wants to discuss.
Note: Storyline is supported only in Microsoft Viva Engage and Yammer enterprise networks that enforce Office 365 identity.
older Backup enables an admin and/or end-user to redirect the local macOS Desktop and Documents folder to OneDrive. This allows you to keep using those folders to save their content while delivering the protection and access anywhere promise that OneDrive offers. The feature and relative list entries are very similar to the Folder Backup experience that has been on Windows for a while.
Conditional Access Improvements for the Microsoft Lists App for Android
Microsoft recently announced the launch of the Microsoft Lists app for Android. The app was launched with App Protection Policy (APP, also known as MAM) and its support for the Require app protection policy grant control. Microsoft Lists will now also support the Conditional Access (CA) grant control, like other Microsoft 365 apps, such as SharePoint.
You can create rules to automate tasks such as sending someone a notification when data changes in the list or a new file is created in the library. You’ll choose a condition that triggers the rule and the action that the rule will take. Some list templates will soon come with rules pre-packaged into them to help you keep you and your team members notified of changes to data in the list. This is just another way to help keep data in Lists complete, accurate, and up to date.
Create a list from comma-separated values (CSV) files
You can now create new lists from data inside CSV files –often used for exchanging complex data between different applications. In Lists, select the “From CSV” option when creating a new list. When you use the Export to CSV command in a list, you get a special CSV file that includes information about the list you exported. That means if you import that same CSV into another site, you get a list that has the same column types, formatting, and data as your original list.
Restricted access control (RAC) policy for OneDrive in your organization – General Availability
The OneDrive team have announced that restricted access control (RAC) policy for OneDrives is now generally available. With this policy, you can now restrict access to all OneDrives in your organization to a set of users, say all your employees only and no one else. You simply create security groups in Azure Active Directory that contains all your employees, then in SharePoint admin center configure the Limit OneDrive Access to those groups.
Conditional access policies for SharePoint sites, OneDrives, and Teams – General availability
Microsoft have announced the general availability of conditional access policies for SharePoint sites, OneDrives, and Teams. Simply use the SharePoint Online PowerShell to set appropriate access policy for a site, which dictates the conditions required for accessing that site. For example, for your 2025 Strategy site that is expected to have business critical content you can configure the policy to require MFA (multi-factor-authentication) for all users.
The key benefit of this capability is that users need to go through additional credential gates only when they try accessing sites or teams that contain business critical information. If your organization already has sensitivity labels deployed, then you can also associate this policy with the sensitivity labels and simply label the sites or teams appropriately.
Default sensitivity label for document libraries (Public Preview)
The SharePoint team have announced default sensitivity label for SharePoint Document Libraries comes to public preview. With this new capability you can now protect your Office documents from the day they are created or uploaded to SharePoint document libraries. Simply set the appropriate sensitivity label for your document libraries using the Library Settings in the information panel. From that point onwards all documents, newly created or modified, in that library will be automatically labelled.
Forensic malware identification and extraction – General availability
Microsoft have anounced the general availability of malware identification and extraction capability. With this capability, using simple SharePoint PowerShell cmdlet administrators can find out what type of malware is present in a file that was marked as infected and extract that file from the site to perform further analysis. All this is possible without needing to elevate their access to the SharePoint or OneDrive site where the content is present.
Migration Manager was made generally available in 2019 and now enables you to migrate content from file shares, Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, and Egnyte. Several new features were announced during Microsoft Ignite 2022 and include: Bulk download reports, Migration filters, and Estimated time to migrate. All these new features are planned to be made generally available by the beginning of the calendar year 2023.
The SharePoint Migration Tool can help you migrate from on-premise server sources including SharePoint 2010, 2013 and 2016. Now you can streamline scan and migration jobs within one tool. Secondly, the page navigation flow is revamped to make it intuitive for you to manage your migration jobs and create migration-by scenarios.
SharePoint data access governance (DAG) insights V1 – General Availability
The SharePoint team have announced that V1 of data access governance (DAG) insights feature is generally available. DAG insights empower you to discover top-100 and top-10,000 sites that matter the most among millions of sites you may have and monitor/validate/tailor sharing and access policies for those sites.
The SharePoint team have announced the general availability of SharePoint Tenant Rename, for tenants with less than 10K sites. This allows you to rename your tenant’s SharePoint URL let’s say from contoso.sharepoint.com to fabrikam.sharepoint.com. In future, we are looking to expand this support to large tenants that have more than 10K sites.
OneDrive Cross-tenant User Data Migration – General Availability
The OneDrive team have nnounced the general availability of OneDrive cross-tenant user data migration. With this capability you can now move users’ OneDrives across two tenants using a simple set of SharePoint PowerShell cmdlets. You can also move users’ mailboxes across tenants.
One another notable capability is, upon OneDrive move although the URL of the OneDrive has changed the sharing links to old URLs will continue to work! This is made possible by the cross-tenant redirect capability that ensures any hit to old URLs is redirected to new URL.
In Teams: Assign seats in together mode, pop out shared content, live translated captions, updated companion mode, call history, contact groups in calls app, M365 connected templates, PDF experience, suggested replies in group chat, video clip, delete/ rename files in a channel or OneDrive folder, calendar includes scheduling form, upgraded usage analytics for admins, app usage report update
Together mode makes meeting participants feel more like they’re in the same room during virtual meetings. With this latest innovation, meeting organizers and presenters can now assign seats to participants in Together mode.
Previously, you could pop out individual Teams chat conversation, meeting, and calling experiences into a separate in window to help streamline the workflow. We are now bringing the ability for users to also pop out shared meeting content in a separate window so you can see both shared content and meeting participants with ease.
Live translated captions for Microsoft Teams delivers AI-powered, real-time translations from 40 spoken languages so meeting participants can read captions in their own language. This helps break down language barriers for your global meetings and calls to be productive and effortless.
Microsoft have updated companion mode in Teams mobile to give in-room attendees quick access to engagement features like chat, live reactions, and Microsoft Whiteboard. We are making it easier to access meeting and device controls, like the ability to join a meeting, cast a PowerPoint, mute the room, turn room cameras on and off, and more. Here are some areas companion mode in Teams mobile makes hybrid meetings better:
Users can use a single tap to join a meeting on both their device and Microsoft Teams Room.
Users can easily access chat, participant list (see who’s in the meeting), live reactions, and raise hands to easily participate from the room
Audio on the mobile device will automatically turn off to ensure echo doesn’t happen.
Get a more comprehensive view of your call history to see how calls arrived, whether calls were transferred or forwarded, and how they were controlled once received. This detailed call history, combined with the ability to access call recordings and transcriptions from within call details, gives you the context you need to be efficient and productive.
Creation of Contact Groups is now available in the right rail pane of the Calls App. Users can now create new groups, and edit the membership of existing groups via the Calls App.
We are combining the best of Microsoft Teams templates with SharePoint site templates – into the same flow of creation. When you create a new team using a default template – for example the Manage a Project template, the project management channels and apps, and the connected SharePoint template gets applied automatically.
Tenant admins can set Adobe Acrobat as the default app in Teams admin center to view and edit PDF files in the Microsoft Teams. End-users can view, search, comment and annotate PDF files without an Adobe Acrobat subscription or an Adobe ID. This feature is in public preview.
Instead of spending time typing a routine response to an incoming message, simply reply with one click by choosing a suggested response to your group chat. Suggested replies uses machine learning to generate responses that are most relevant to the conversation.
You can now create short, lightweight, rich video clips allow you to express yourself, deliver a more personal touch and strengthen your connections. Simply record, send and view a video clip in chat. The recipient of the video clip can easily reply with a chat message or a video clip of their own. Generally available in desktop and will be in public preview in mobile by end of the year.
Delete or rename files in a channel and in your OneDrive folder in Teams
To rename or delete a file in a channel, go to the files tab and find the file you want. Then select More options (the three dots) on the file. To rename or delete a file from your OneDrive, select More at the bottom of the app, then select Files. Once you find the file you want, select the three dots and choose to rename or delete it.
Teams calendar now includes scheduling form pop-outs
In a Teams calendar, users will now be able to pop-out an existing meeting using the pop-up icon in a Teams calendar scheduling form. Users will be able to pop out the meeting and have it visible while creating a new meeting. This feature will allow users to view multiple meetings in separate windows while also being able to check their chats or edit their files without the need to switch apps.
Upgraded usage analytics for Teams administrators and users
Updates and improvements were made to Teams related usage report in the Microsoft 365 admin center (and corresponding graph APIs) to be more accurate and upgraded. Microsoft are bringing consistency across different reporting surfaces, updating the Teams admin center usage reports and end user analytics in Teams with same underlying data source as Microsoft 365 Admin Center Teams usage reports.
Enhancement to app usage report - support for Line of Business apps
An updated version of Teams app usage report with support for Line of Business (LoB) apps in alignment with Teams app usage in M365 admin center. The new enhancements includes the support for usage of Line of Business apps, Tenant level install trend, enhanced quality of metrics reported, tenant wide usage of Microsoft, 3rd party and LoB apps etc. These enhancements will help the admin measure the usage of the Teams app across their organization and to categorize them.
These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:
Education Insights – Student Support Card – New AI-based Student Support spotlight in Education Insights helps educators better support students before they fall behind.
Frontline workers
These features are currently available for frontline worker customers:
Approvals as a PDFs can be saved, printed and transferred – Approval creators will be able to save a completed approval request to a PDF file and have the option to print it. This feature will also allow customers to easily transfer their proof of approval as a PDF to another system or store as a file.
Approvals in integrated SharePoint Lists – List users will now be able to create and manage simple approval requests directly within integrated SharePoint Lists.
Assign Approvals to a Tag in Teams – For an approval assigned to a tag, the tag will expand and send to the correct members when the approval requestor hits submit.
Rich notes in Tasks field – Tasks will also support rich text support in the notes field, so you can include more detailed instructions with the help of rich formatting such as bold, italic, and underlined text, bulleted and number lists, and hyperlinks. Learn more about how to get started with Tasks in 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):
Enhancement to app usage report – support for Line of Business apps – An updated version of Teams app usage report with support for Line of Business (LoB) apps in alignment with Teams app usage in M365 admin center. This will help admins track all app usage metrics over time.
Music on hold for Voice over IP calls, consultative transfer, and call transfer for GCCH and DOD – Music on hold is available for Voice over IP (VoIP) calls placed on hold, as well as VoIP and PSTN placed on hold for a call transfer and consultative transfer.
Live Share SDK support for meeting extensions – Live Share is a new developer capability designed to transform Teams meeting apps into collaborative multi-user experiences without writing any dedicated back-end code. Support for meeting extensions in the Live Share SDK enables general-purpose collaboration features, including turn-key media synchronization to co-watch videos, inking, cursors and annotations in meetings.
Text prediction for Teams mobile in GCC-High and DoD – When you compose or reply to a message in Teams, Editor Text Predictions anticipates your writing and suggests a suitable word or phrase inline. This saves time and helps you reduce typos.
Connectors in GCC – Teams Connectors, which support webhook integrations, will be made available in GCC.
Firefox Meeting Support for Outgoing Screen Sharing – Extend outgoing screen sharing capabilities for Teams Meetings from the Firefox browser.
Updated companion mode for Android users for GCC, GCC-High and DoD – For a better hybrid meeting experience, we have updated companion mode in Teams mobile to give in-room attendees quick access to engagement features like chat, live reactions, and Microsoft Whiteboard. We are making it easier to access meeting and device controls, like the ability to join a meeting, cast a PowerPoint, mute the room, turn room cameras on and off, and more.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Test engine, dynamic group members in Dataverse, content security policy GA, ESLint rules GA, modernized business units, coauthoring public preview, maker matching public preview, communication site template, Ideas GA, modern command bar, PDF function, Teams link unfurling, read barcodes, model-driven UI updates, mobile commanding updates, Power Platform Tools, Managed Environments GA
Test Engine: An open platform for automated testing of canvas apps
Test Engine is an evolution of Power Apps testing tools. Test Engine builds upon the key use cases of Test Studio, but takes it in a new, powerful direction through open source collaboration and use of the Playwright browser testing platform. The goals of Test Engine are to provide customers with a robust testing platform for all types of Power Apps, and to make it super easy to integrate automated testing into your app development processes.
This initial release supports the ability to author tests for Power Apps canvas applications, with plans to add support for model-driven apps, as well as enhanced tooling to facilitate integration into your CI/CD systems like GitHub and Azure DevOps. We welcome you to exercise this tool and give us feedback as we continue to build out the platform.
Azure AD Dynamic user membership group in Dataverse group teams support
Microsoft Dataverse supports Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) security and office groups, including the ability to differentiate Owners, Members, and Guests. To complete the full Azure AD group functionality, Microsoft have extended the Azure AD group support to include dynamic user membership group type.
The dynamic user membership type leverages business rules to manage the group membership. Group members are added/removed dynamically based on the business rules, eg where Department = “Sales” for all users from the Sales department.  Power Platform Dataverse authentication and authorization were extended to support this Azure AD group type.
Content Security Policy for Power Apps now generally available
In September this year, Microsoft announced the public preview of Content Security Policy. When you turn on Content Security Policy for an environment, you can enable protection for clickjacking attacks for apps in that environment and receive policy violation reports to your custom reporting endpoint. You can control the Content Security Policy for Model-driven apps and Canvas apps separately.
Content Security Policy for Power Apps is now generally available. It is recommended you turn on the Content Security Policy in production environments after testing your apps in a sandbox environment with this setting turned on.
ESLint rules for Power Apps and Dynamics 365 now generally available
In July this year, Microsoft announced the public preview of ESlint rules for Power Apps and Dynamics 365. This brought the solution checker rules to your development environment, which helped you find and address issues in your JavaScript and TypeScript code directly in your VSCode before packing them into the solution file.
ESLint rules for Power Apps and Dynamics 365 is now generally available. It is strongly recommended you include the ESLint for Power Apps npm package in your development environment to improve the quality of your customizations and avoid packaging unsafe customizations to the solution.
Microsoft have extended the business unit security model by allowing security roles from different business units to be assigned to a user/team. This allows a user/team to access data from different business units based on their security roles to support the Matrix data access structure vs the traditional hierarchical data access structure.
User can update the Owning Business unit column to set the record’s ownership, and other users who are assigned with a security role from this Owning Business unit can access the record. User can also change the record ownership to another user without the need for the new record owner to have a security role from the record’s Owning Business unit. This reduces the operation overhead to manage and assign security role from different business units for easier collaboration while maintaining the high level of security compliance.
Coauthoring in Modern app designer (Public Preview)
The Power Apps team have announced that Coauthoring is now available in most of the regions allowing fusion teams to build better apps faster. With coauthoring you can see who is working on the same app at the same time, and you can see their applied changes in real-time. You don’t need to worry anymore about your changes, because coauthoring helps you avoid the unintentional overwrite of each other’s changes.
Connect with experienced makers in your organization to help you during app development! The virtual agent will also surface your organizations internal community channels and resources to help you stay connected.
The Power Platform team launched the Power Platform communication site template this month. The Power Platform communication site template is a SharePoint communication site that provides you with a starting point of content and page templates as you’re setting up your internal Power Platform wiki and hub site.
This communication site is designed to be the place where the Power Platform maker and user community within your organization can find the news and resources they need, including digital governance and compliance guardrails, upcoming events, success stories and more.
Power Apps Ideas are now generally available. Now you can easily write a Power Fx formula using natural language or examples.
We know that Power Fx is a low code programming language, makes it possible for hundreds of millions of people with the Excel-like skills to add advanced logic to their apps. However sometimes it’s not easy to write a formula, even for the most experienced Power Fx users, as it may sometimes take a lot of time searching for, learning about and debugging complex formulas.
Modern command bar is on by default for existing apps in Canvas
The modern command bar will be enabled by default for all existing apps in Canvas in North America on 11/07/22. The new command bar not only has a modern look and feel, but is also designed to improve your authoring experience. It allows a seamless customization experience of editing common controls by dynamically displaying the common properties directly within the command bar.
In 2021, the Print function was released to accommodate scenarios where app users needed to print physical copies of a screen’s contents. We’re taking that concept a step further this month with our release of the PDF function.  
This experimental release unlocks many scenarios where app users need to send screen content. The PDF can be configured to include an entire screen’s contents or a specific part, and they can expand to include tabular data that extends beyond the visible area of the screen, extending onto multiple pages.  
The Power Platform team have announced the launch of link unfurling in Teams for canvas apps. Previously, when a user copied an app URL & pasted the link into a Teams message to send to colleagues, users would only receive the app’s full link or a shortened vanity URL. Additionally, a click on the app’s link would launch the app in a browser, forcing the user to leave Teams to view and use the app. Now, starting with canvas apps, the Power Apps app link will unfurl into an adaptive card from which recipients can directly add the app to Teams or open the app in a browser.
Read selected barcodes using your device’s camera
Scan barcodes – include QR, data-matrix, CODABAR, and more – on Android and iOS devices using the new experimental Barcode Reader control. This new control supports more types of barcodes and enables users to select which barcode in view to read instead of automatically reading the first detected barcode.
Mobile commanding improvements provide easy access to contextual commands when you’re using Power Apps mobile via opt-in settings. Delete and process commands are only displayed when they are relevant. Global injected commands such as Edit columns, Edit filters, and Show Chart have been moved from the main set of commands to overflow menu.
The command bar on Power Apps mobile for tablets is now located at the top like to the web app. This helps with more commands available to user utilizing the larger tablet viewport.
Power Platform Developer Tools monthly release (September Refresh)
The Power Platform team have announced a new update for the month of October i.e., “September Refresh”. Those of you who have been following us already know of this trend, because the work our team does in the prior month gets released in the following month. Hence in October, we release the September Refresh. With that statement aside, here is what’s included in this release:
Integrating PRT, CMT, PD into the Power Platform CLI
solution export with “_managed” added to the name
Package deploy defaults to async for solution import
Managed Environments are now generally available. Enabling people with diverse technical and nontechnical skills to contribute to the development process through low-code tools has unlocked an explosion of apps. While low-code has accelerated companies’ abilities to innovate, it has also introduced new dimensions to scaling and managing your developer community.
In Power Automate: 14 new verified, 10 independent publisher connectors, Power Automate Desktop update, automate document processing, Ignite 2022 updates
14 new verified, 10 independent publisher connectors released in September 2022
There were 14 new verified and 10 new independent publisher connectors released through September 2022 for Power Automate. Let’s take a look:
Verified connectors
Centrical – Brings together real-time performance management, personalized micro-learning, augmented coaching, and advanced gamification to personally guide employees and their managers to success.
ConsenSys Ethereum – A fully-managed proxy service that allows power apps and flows to integrate with the Ethereum blockchain and the Quorum Blockchain Services (QBS).
DQ on Demand – A complete suite of functions providing you with easy access to a data quality marketplace through the Microsoft Power Platform.
FactSet – Delivers superior content, analytics, and flexible technology to help more than 170,000 users globally and is continuing to open up its powerful workstation content and analytics with API access.
iManage Work – Industry-leading provider of document and email management solutions for knowledge workers.
IN-D Invoice Data Capture – IN-D Invoice Data Capture connector converts static documents (scanned, PDFs, screenshots, etc.) into usable information to fuel your business processes.
Power Assist – Elevate Digital’s Power Assist connector offers actions to manipulate data in familiar ways that are currently difficult or unsupported within Power Automate and Power Apps.
SmartCOMM Doc-Gen ap10-sb – Allows businesses more control over their business-critical customer communications.
Talkdesk – Global cloud contact center leader for customer-obsessed companies.
Tesseron ASM Ticket – This connector allows you to create, edit and search Tickets in your Tesseron ASM Instance.
Text Request – Text Request is a service to help businesses reach customers through texting and conversation management. Use
Tikit – Tikit is a Microsoft 365 Service Desk that matures with your Microsoft 365 technology adoption and revolves around the center of where you work every day – Microsoft Teams.
Vocean – Retrieve the insights gathered within Vocean for further use with programs already tightly involved in your organization.
Yarado – Helps Power Automate users increase productivity, using RPA to connect users to processes outside the Power Automate environment
Independent Publisher connectors
Connpass by Miyake Hideo – Using the connpass, you can search and collect information about IT workshops and events.
HTTP Garden by Troy Taylor – Gardening for every Hyper Text Transfer Protocol response status code. Provides an image for each status code.
Mapbox by Simone Lin – Mapbox allows you to access its navigation, location search and static map generation services to create interactive/static maps in your application.
Mockaroo by Rick Wilson – Mockaroo can be used to generate realistic sample data to help test applications.
Owlbot by Troy Taylor – Owlbot searches the internet to index information and making them accessible.
PrexView by Troy Taylor – PrexView makes it simple to convert your data to different formats.
USGS Earthquake Hazards by Troy Taylor – The United States Geological Survey (USGS) monitors and reports on earthquakes, assesses earthquake impacts and hazards, and conducts targeted research on the causes and effects of earthquakes.
You Need A Budget by Troy Taylor – You Need A Budget (YNAB) allows you to build a personal application to interact with your own budget or build an application that any other YNABer can authorize and use.
Automate Document Processing end-to-end with AI Builder
At Ignite 2022, the Power Automate team shared advances in Intelligent Document Processing as well as new AI capabilities that will allow you to automate more scenarios with better performance, using Power Automate and AI Builder:
Unstructured Document Processing
Improved accuracy and language support with Azure Form Recognizer 3.0
AI and Power Automate updates from Microsoft Ignite 2022
At Ignite 2022, the Power Automate team shared some exciting innovations for Microsoft Power Automate, empowering makers and pro-coders with new ways to automate and scale enterprise-wide with AI, including:
Describe it and let AI build it – Creating flows is the foundation of Power Automate, and now you can describe what you want to automate in a sentence, and an AI-based copilot will build your flow in seconds.
Format data by examples – Now, we’ve made this super simple for users by allowing them to format data by examples. Like what we’ve done with Power Apps Ideas (preview), we’re bringing this similar experience to Power Automate, powered by PROSE.
Advancements in AI Builder – Document processing has been the most frequently used feature in AI Builder due to how mundane and time consuming the nature of processing documents can be. We are pleased to share that we are improving the experience even further with our newest feature updates to Intelligent Document Processing.
Automate through conversation with Power Virtual Agents – Starting November 10, 2022, a new bot authoring experience will automatically turn on in preview for users. This new experience unifies the sophistication of low-code and pro-code capabilities, which is a fusion of the Microsoft Azure Bot Framework Composer and Power Virtual Agents’ bot building experience. Pro-code and low-code users can build together with multi-authoring and commenting capabilities, while taking advantage of the latest functionalities, such as Power Fx and code views.
Automate SAP with reimagined connect and new solution – Microsoft announced details about the enhancements that have been made to the SAP ERP connector that support SAP system connectivity to Power Platform and the ability for a flow maker to work with SAP’s complex application program interfaces (APIs) within Power Automate flows.
Automate natively in Excel Online – The Power Automate team are integrating Power Automate natively into Excel Online, letting you create custom flows using pre-built templates, tailored to what you can accomplish with Excel. Excel Online now has an “Automate” tab in the ribbon.
Automate with embedded experiences – WorkFusion and DocuSign are joining the Cloud Embed program for Power Automate. Cloud Embed allows independent software vendors (ISV) to embed Power Automate directly into their user experience (UX).
Scale with the hosted RPA bots – Hosted RPA bots allow you to run unattended RPA at scale and is fully hosted in the cloud. It’s easy to setup your hosted RPA bots, just provide a few parameters: Just give it a name, the maximum number of parallel bots allocated to this group, which base image and account to be used and you’re all set.
Power BI
In Power BI: Power BI feature summary, Power BI Ideas site updates, on-premises data gateway, submetric roll ups, Ignite 2022, cross-tenant dataset sharing, Power Query SDK for VS Code, development history for deployment pipelines,
Power BI October 2022 Feature Summary
This month’s update includes updates to features like Power BI metrics, Modeling, Deployment pipelines, and more.
The Power BI team have announced a much anticipated release in the Metrics experience: With submetricroll ups, it’s easier than ever to aggregate your metric values so you can spend less time crafting multiple scorecards and connections, and more time analyzing your performance.
With the release of current and target roll ups, you can set automatic aggregations of your submetric values to show in your parent metric. You can select from aggregation types of sum, average, min and max values.
This is an oldie but a goodie in my opinion, this post will show you how to use library filters in SharePoint to only show items/ files created, or modified by the current user.
The steps below will guide you through the process of updating the view of a list or library to only show items created or modified by the current, logged in user.
Open the list or library you wish to update
From the library actions ribbon > select the current view (for example: all documents)
Press edit current view
Scroll down the edit view page until you get to the filter section
Create the following filter:
NOTE: this example will only show items that were created by OR modified by the current, logged in user. If you want your filter to only show items where both these values are true, change OR to AND.
Press OK to save your changes
Now your view should have updated to only show items created by, or modified by the current, logged in user.
Considerations
This example is really simple and easy to implement and there isn’t any real impact on your users as nothing is technically being restricted, just filtered out of the default view.
The flip-side of this is that in of itself could be considered a limitation if there is information stored within the list/ library that requires limited permissions. I’ll go into the options available for this later in this post.
However with that said, depending on what permissions you have in place for your list/ library, you could use this approach to secure the contents too.
Consideration #1 – Views don’t change permissions
A “back door” to gaining access to all contents stored in the list/ library would be to use a different view than the set default view to access all items (for example: if you created a new view to follow the below method, but left the default view set to show everything).
The solution to this would be to apply this filter approach to the default view, make sure any other public views follow the same approach and make sure end users don’t have elevated permissions.
Consideration #2 – Ensure permissions are set correctly
The only way an end user could bypass this approach without any “all items” views available, would be if they had the permissions to do so. The permission that controls this is called the Manage Lists permission, which is only granted via the Edit, Design, Full Control, Manage Hierarchy permission levels by default.
If end users aren’t in these groups, your in luck!
Consideration #3 – list/ library contents is not searchable
If you are using views to filter who can see contents within your list/ library then you will need to ensure this setting is updated if the contents needs to be hidden (below example is a document library):
Press the cog button > library settings
Press advanced settings
Under Search > change allow items from this document library to appear in search resultsto No
Press OK
Update the allow items from this document library to appear in search results advanced setting to ensure items aren’t visible in search.
Consideration #4 – If it’s a list, enable item level permissions
With lists, in advanced settings there is an additional configuration option – item level permissions which allows you to specify which items users can read and edit.
As the heading implies, this consideration only works for lists in SharePoint as the functionality isn’t available out the box for document libraries. SharePoint Maven have written up what the two different levels of item level permissions you can set mean, which you can find here.
Microsoft Teams: Call Merge for Teams on VDI – Call Merge for Teams on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) gives users the capability to merge an active 1-1 call into another 1-1 call or another group call. This applies to both Teams VOIP calls and PSTN calls. Roadmap ID:99863
đźš‚ ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Teams: Webinar – Updated template with enhanced setup experience – Updated webinar template with a new layout and expanded options to customize registration details and settings specific to the event.  Roadmap ID:86826
Microsoft Teams: Expanded Reactions – Expanded reactions allows users to apply any emoji as a reaction to chat messages! Pick from over 800 Teams emojis to react the way you want. Roadmap ID:88080
Microsoft Teams: Sign Language View and always-on captions in meetings – Prioritize up to two other participants’ videos for sign language in meetings so they stay visible even while content is shared and set captions to stay on across all meetings. Roadmap ID: 99452
Microsoft Teams: Hardware Occupancy Sensor Integration – With supported occupancy sensor hardware, a notification banner is displayed on the Teams panel if the room is occupied when it is available or if the room is not occupied when it is reserved. The room will also be auto checked in when the sensor detects occupancy if check in is enabled. Roadmap ID: 101993
Microsoft Teams: View attendance report on Microsoft Teams for Android and iOS for Gov – You can now check the attendance information for regular meetings or webinars and also the registration information before webinars on Microsoft Teams for Android and iOS. Roadmap ID:102387
Microsoft Teams: View meeting transcripts on Microsoft Teams on Android and iOS for Gov – Microsoft Teams: View meeting transcripts on Microsoft Teams on Android and iOS. Roadmap ID:102390
Microsoft Teams: Language Interpretation for GCCH and DoD – Language interpretation will allow language interpreters to translate what the speaker says into another language in real time without disrupting the original flow of delivery of the speaker. This will allow more inclusive meetings, where participants who may not speak the same language can fully collaborate with each other. Roadmap ID:102411
Microsoft Teams: Cameo in PowerPoint Live – Cameo is a new PowerPoint experience that seamlessly integrates your Teams camera feed into your presentation, letting you customize how and where you want to appear on your slides and offering layout recommendations for optimal viewing. Roadmap ID:87725
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – January 2023
Microsoft Teams: ISV App Subscriptions instead of 3P app subscriptions. – Ability for Teams users to view and manage in single place all third-party app subscriptions they’ve purchased in the Teams app store, without leaving the Teams client. Easily adding more licenses for the purchased subscriptions, cancel, upgrade and downgrade subscriptions and access invoices. Roadmap ID:92484
Microsoft Teams: Support for Co-organizer to manage Breakout Rooms – Co-organizers can create, manage and move between Breakout Rooms like meeting Organizers. Roadmap ID: 105014
Release – February 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Expanding up to 10,000 users in Distribution Lists for lobby policy in Teams meeting – Currently, if you change your lobby policy in a Teams Meeting to “Invited Users Only” and invite a Distribution List (DL), only the first 1,000 users of that DL will be recognized and let through the lobby. All other users a part of the DL will not be recognized and will be placed in the lobby. With this update, up to 10,000 users of that given DL will be recognized and let through the lobby if the lobby policy is set to “Invited Users Only.” Roadmap ID:93585
Release – February 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Expanded view for profile card available in Teams – The expanded view of the profile card is now available in Teams. On the profile card expanded view you can see richer persona info, such as contact data and LinkedIn info. It also gives you easy access to view organization chart information without having to leave the context, meaning, you no longer no longer have to go to 1:1 chat in order to see organization chart information. Roadmap ID: 109526
Release – March 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Automatic lowering of a user’s Raised Hand after speaking – To reduce the number of stale raised hands in meetings, we will now suggest users to lower their raised hand after we detect they spoke in the meeting. They will be able to choose to keep their hand raised. If the user doesn’t take any action on the suggestion notification, we’ll automatically lower their hand. This should ensure smoother meeting facilitation for organizers and presenters. Roadmap ID: 90022
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Bots and Message Extensions in DOD – DOD customers are able to build and deploy Bots and Message Extensions in their Microsoft Teams environment. This release supports custom, line-of-business bots. Roadmap ID: 96076
Release – June 2023
Microsoft Teams: Support for breakout rooms for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android – Ability to consume breakout rooms feature in Teams meetings. Roadmap ID:68745
Microsoft Teams: Support PSTN dial-in, dial-out, and call-me attendees in meetings to join Breakout Rooms – Enabling dial-in, dial-out and call-me PSTN participants to join breakout rooms and come back to the main room when breakout rooms end. Roadmap ID:100297
đźš‚ ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Teams: Start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-enabled Security Groups, and O365 Groups – Item has been delayed and is being rescheduled. You will now be able to start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-enabled Security Groups, and O365 Groups. This feature will respect the limits on members in a group chat, currently set to 250 members. Roadmap ID:62354
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – December 2022
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Notification Granularity – Admins can use Intune to determine the types of content a user can see in a notification on their mobile lock screen. Roadmap ID: 102651
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Multitask with Picture in Picture on iPhone / iPad – The new Picture in Picture mode lets you see your meeting in an adjustable window while using other apps on your mobile device. Roadmap ID: 89826
Microsoft Teams: Webinar – Updated template with enhanced setup experience – Updated webinar template with a new layout and expanded options to customize registration details and settings specific to the event.  Roadmap ID:86826
Microsoft Teams: Expanded Reactions – Expanded reactions allows users to apply any emoji as a reaction to chat messages! Pick from over 800 Teams emojis to react the way you want. Roadmap ID:88080
Microsoft Teams: Start Whiteboard from Teams meeting from Teams Rooms on Windows – Teams Rooms users can now start a Microsoft Whiteboard in a Teams meetings using the in-meeting share content function. With the new patterns of work, whiteboarding is a key feature to enable collaboration between in room and remote users. When Whiteboard is started from the room, it is attributed to the meeting organizer so that they can manage access to the artifact. Roadmap ID: 95260
Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams Rooms Companion Device Experience Enhancement – Optimize Video Gallery for in-room participants – When joining a meeting in a Microsoft Teams Rooms with a personal laptop running Microsoft Teams, the video galleries on both the Teams Room and laptops will be optimized to display only remote attendees. (Proximity Join with Microsoft Teams Rooms is required). Roadmap ID:96212
Microsoft Teams: Meeting chat on Gallery, Large gallery, and Together mode for Teams Rooms on Windows – Always know the context by brining chat pane on front of room display on Teams Rooms (Windows). Room users can use a touch console in the room to show/ hide chat on front of room display alongside meeting participants and/or content. Ability to show/ hide chat is available through view switcher. IT admins can configure to hide a meeting chat for a room if needed. Roadmap ID:98423
Release – January 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Presenter window usability improvements in screen sharing – With the new Presenter window, controls are located at the top, making active speakers’ faces clearly visible during screen sharing, and raise hand notifications are surfaced for improved awareness. Roadmap ID: 100392
Microsoft Teams: Manage Attendee Audio Permissions for DoD – Meeting organizers and presenters can now manage the audio capabilities of meeting attendees. Before the meeting, organizers can enable or disable the ability for attendees to use their mic (i.e. share audio), and during the meeting both the organizer and meeting presenters can modify attendee speaking capabilities. Roadmap ID: 105013
Microsoft Teams: Magnify slide in PowerPoint Live – Allow meeting attendees to privately magnify the slide and allow presenters to magnify the slide for all meeting attendees. Roadmap ID: 96758
Yammer, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Stream: Yammer Encoded Events powered by Microsoft Teams – Today in Yammer the video stream and production in a Live Event is powered by Stream. With this feature, all Live Events (production and the video stream itself, within Yammer) will be powered by Microsoft Teams. Roadmap ID:82054
Release – February 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams Premium – Microsoft Teams Premium makes Teams meetings more personalized, intelligent, and secure, with branded meetings, intelligent recap and search, live translated captions, advanced meeting protection, and it provides advanced webinar and advanced Virtual Appointment experiences.Roadmap ID: 100654
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Invite Parents via SMS for Communication – Parent Connection allows teachers to communicate with the guardians of a student. To enable parent-teacher communication, admins can now choose either email or SMS as their preferred Parent Connection invitation channel. Sending messages in an SMS-heavy market makes it easier to connect with Parents while keeping teachers’ experience simple. These messages sent to parents and guardians will be in plain text, without HTML, formatting, or styles applied. Roadmap ID: 99718
Microsoft Teams: Additional filters added to the approvals list – The approval list within the personal app will include additional filters to filter your approval list such as key word search and other options such as Approved.  Roadmap ID:92486
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – December 2022
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Hardware Occupancy Sensor Integration – With supported occupancy sensor hardware, a notification banner is displayed on the Teams panel if the room is occupied when it is available or if the room is not occupied when it is reserved. The room will also be auto checked in when the sensor detects occupancy if check in is enabled. Roadmap ID: 101993
🆕 Microsoft Teams: In-meeting notification improvement for Teams Rooms on Windows – This update delivers improvements to in-meeting notifications on Teams Rooms on Windows and aligns them with Desktop’s framework. All critical notifications that require a user action will be shown on console. Roadmap ID: 103659
Release – January 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Meeting Toolbar Usability Improvements – The updated Microsoft Teams meeting toolbar makes navigating meetings and discovering new features and capabilities easier than ever, including the ability to seamlessly switch between views and menu options. Roadmap ID: 102065
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Support for Co-organizer to manage Breakout Rooms – Co-organizers can create, manage and move between Breakout Rooms like meeting Organizers. Roadmap ID: 105014
Microsoft Teams: Mention Everyone in chat – Similar to how users @ mention individuals in chat, users will now have the option to @ mention “Everyone’. All participants in the chat will receive a notification, removing the hassle of mentioning each person’s name one by one or missing someone. Roadmap ID:101573
Release – February 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Support for Tabs for anonymous users in meetings – Developers now have the ability to show tab experiences for anonymous users in Teams meetings. Roadmap ID: 97888
Release – April 2023
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Location-based routing for Teams on VDI – When making or receiving a PSTN call, location-based routing for Teams on VDI, enables the bypass of toll restrictions based on where the user is located. Such as when the user is not physically located on a corporate network. Roadmap ID: 98501
🆕 Microsoft Teams: Share the system audio from Teams meetings on VDI – Users in a Teams meeting on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) can now share audio while screen sharing. Roadmap ID: 99189
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