Office365

Microsoft 365 update for March 2020

AnthonyLeave a comment

I hope everyone is keeping safe and healthy during these uncertain times. Here’s a look at what’s been released or coming through the month of March 2020.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis management resources

In this month’s update:

SharePoint – multi-lingual, branding on mobile app, root site swap, wiki notation, start page rollback, edit metadata in web parts, rich-text capabilities for column formatting

Teams – Improved audio quality, background blur for iOS, Bookings app, raise hands, noise suppression, multi-window, Teams offline, Teams membership increase, group chat increase, Teams & Skype calling/ chat interoperability

Teams (cont.) – satin codec, business voice available in US, device management update, Shifts improvements, targeted comms in Shifts, workforce management integrations, RealWear headsets, Teams walkie talkie, collaboration bars, Poly phones

Power Apps – sharing for model-driven apps, AI Builder models GA, gateway management features, unified interface lookup filtering, command checker

Power Automate – UI flows GA, UI flows Feb 2020 update, Unattended Robotic Process Automation and AAD support, file attachments in approval flows, error handling/control logic UI flows

Power BI – read/write XMLA endpoints, query diagnostics GA, Multi Geo Premium Capacities performance improvements, on-premises data gateway March 2020, desktop feature summary March 2020, new search experience, Power BI mobile, report export options

Power Virtual Agents – wave 1 feature summary,  solution-aware flows, export bot’s conversation transcripts

Related – Microsoft Personal & Family, Yammer in your inbox, view/edit improvements for files in Office mobile

SharePoint

Multi-lingual publishing in communication sites

New language settings have been added for communication sites in SharePoint. Once set you can translate pages, news and assign individuals as translators per language.

Translators get notified via email when there is a new default language page created or when an existing one is updated by the original content author. Translators are responsible for adding their language’s content. People visiting the site will automatically see pages and news in their preferred user language when available.

Multi-lingual publishing capabilities have been added for pages and news in communication sites.

Find out more:

Company branding now supported on SharePoint Mobile App

Company branding set in the O365 admin center will now take effect within the SharePoint mobile app. This change will also apply to both the iOS and Android versions of the SharePoint app.

Customize your theme in the Microsoft 365 admin center and have it reflected in the SharePoint mobile app for iOS and Android.

Find out more:

SharePoint root site swap restrictions lifted

The restrictions on the SharePoint root site swap are now gone! Meaning that the ability to swap the location of a SharePoint root site with another using the PowerShell cmdlet, Invoke-SPOSiteSwap is now available for everyone.

Previously this was only available to customers with 10,000 users or more.

Find out more:

Wiki notation

Wiki notation links are back for pages and news! Those familiar with the old wiki pages in classic SharePoint will be very happy to see the return of these bookmark style links.

Type [[ where you want a link to appear, and you’ll be able to select from a list of pages on your site. Or, you can enter a link by typing [[your link name | URL]].

Start typing [[ to create wiki notation links within pages and news.

Find out more:

Microsoft to pause/ revert the updated SharePoint start page experience

Microsoft have announced they are pausing and rolling back the updated SharePoint start page experience. Announced via the Message Center (post #192001), Microsoft said their internal metrics data indicated that users were not finding all their sites as easily with the updated experience as they were in the previous design of the page.

After April 1, 2020 all users who may have received the updated experience will revert back to the current experience.

Find out more:

Edit metadata from within the SharePoint Document Library and List View web parts

Soon you be able to open and edit file or list item properties directly from the document or list view web parts. Moving away from having to go to the list or library itself, just click on info or more under the item’s properties.

Edit metadata from within the SharePoint Document Library and List View web parts

Find out more:

Rich-text capabilities in the conditional formatting rule builder

Conditional formatting rules for SharePoint lists allows you to use if/ then logic to format rows and columns based on numerical values and dates and so on. You now will have more flexibility on how these attributes appear with the enhanced rich text editor – to bold, color, underline, etc. more closely to how you wish your text to appear.

 Conditional formatting rule builder with new rich-text capabilities.

Find out more:

Teams

Improved audio quality for networks with high packet loss

Rolled out to Teams worldwide, you now will experience improved audio quality even with congested or lossy networks, poor WiFi or mobile data connection to you and I. Microsoft have introduced smarter jitter buffer logic, burst loss detection, and triggering of redundant transmissions to ensure smooth audio playback, even under high burst loss.

Find out more:

Background blur for iOS

Background blur is coming to iOS! Over the next few weeks this feature will be rolling out to iPhones and iPads.

Bookings app

The Bookings app allows you to schedule and take part in appointment’s with external people using Teams. With a single scheduling experience, you can create virtual appointments with external attendees easily. As an external attendee, you will receive an email invite with details of the appointment and a link to join. You can join via the web browser or the Teams mobile app.

The Bookings App in Teams will be available in the coming weeks.

The Bookings app in Teams allows you to schedule and take part in appointment’s with external people.

Find out more:

Raise hands feature in Teams meetings

Another update that has absolutely nothing to do with the popularity of Zoom, the new “raise hands” feature in Teams allows meeting attendees to identify that they wish to speak, making it easier to actively participate in large meetings.

Everyone will see a visual cue on the attendee’s video feed, as well as in the participant list, and can be sure to give them the room to participate in the conversation at hand.

The raise hand feature is coming to Teams meetings.

Find out more:

Noise suppression in Teams meetings

Real-time noise suppression in Teams automatically removes any unwanted background noise during meetings. This feature is coming soon to meetings and calls, but is generally available for recorded video content in Stream now.

Real-time noise suppression in Microsoft Teams.

Find out more:

Pop out Teams chats into multiple windows

You will now be able to pop out individual Teams chat conversations into a separate window, to help you streamline your workflow and more easily move between ongoing conversations.

Pop out Teams chats into multiple windows in Microsoft Teams.

Find out more:

Teams offline

Now you can open and access Teams even when you without internet access. Teams users will now be able to open Teams even when no network is available. You will be able to create and read messages, browse previously viewed channels, and to view calendar summaries.

Pinned chats, pinned channels, and recently visited chats and channels will always be available offline.

Teams is also optimized for low to poor performing networks, meaning users can still send messages with poor connectivity. If conditions are too poor to send a message, Teams will notify users of this and then save the message until the user has returned to a functioning network. 

Find out more:

Team membership increased to 10,000 users

Microsoft have increased the individual team membership from 5,000 to 10,000 users. This limit will start rolling out in April 2020. 

Find out more:

Group chat increased to 250 users

Coming soon, group chats will be able to accommodate up to 250 users allowing an ad-hoc discussion with colleagues you may not already share a Team with prior to a project starting in anger.

Find out more:

Teams & Skype Consumer chat and calling interoperability

Teams users will soon be able to find and communicate with users on the Skype consumer service, allowing businesses using Teams to engage with customers and colleagues on the iconic communications platform, across all clients including iOS and Android.

This new interoperability will allow Teams and Skype consumer users to chat and make calls using Voice over IP (VoIP) initiated by either client using an email address (phone number or Skype ID searches are not supported at this time.) For safety and security, Teams users can accept or decline first-time conversations with Skype users, and may block and unblock contacts.

This highly anticipated feature begins rolling out in Teams by the end of March. 

Find out more:

New Satin codec in Teams

The new Satin codec as part of Teams will deliver wideband audio with as little as 7 kbps. Although Wi-Fi and mobile data connections can deliver way faster speeds than this, Teams will continue to deliver the best audio experiences during periods of congestion and network handoffs without having to sacrifice video or screen sharing quality.

Find out more:

M365 Business Voice available in the US from April 1st

Business Voice, a cloud-based telephony system was launched in the UK and Canada for small and medium businesses back in November 2019.

Starting April 1st, Business Voice will be available to purchase in the U.S. for $20/user/mo. Business Voice will also be available form April 1 with a third-party calling plan will be available in over 70 countries.

Find out more:

Device management experience update

Administrators now have the ability to manage certified Microsoft Teams phones from the Microsoft Teams admin center. This will soon be extended for Microsoft Teams room devices and collaboration bars. Admins will be able to perform key actions such as update settings, restart devices, gather logs, review device call quality data, and more.

Find out more:

Capability improvements to Shifts

Microsoft have made changes to the Shifts experience for firstline managers and workers to free up time spent on administering the solution. Here’s an overview of what’s changed:

  • Schedule filtering: filter by team members or schedule groups, making it easier to manage large shift schedules
  • Recall shared schedule: recall single or multiple days of a shared schedule, in order to make any necessary changes
  • “Your shifts” view: quickly access shift information without scrolling through the entire team schedule

Targeted communications in the Shifts app

Soon you will be able to target messages to recipients who are on-shift based on their role and the shifts they are working. Users are automatically assigned to tags matching their schedule in the Shifts app in Teams, which allows for integration with major workforce management systems, including AMiON, JDA, and Kronos.

Targeted communications in the Shifts app in Microsoft Teams.

Find out more:

Kronos Workforce Central integration with Shifts

You can now integrate Kronos Workforce Central v.8.1 with Shifts for the viewing schedules, publishing and requesting open shifts, swapping shifts, requesting time off and offering shifts.

Find out more:

RealWear headset for hands-free Teams collaboration

RealWear, industry leader in head-mounted, ruggedized solutions is partnering with Microsoft Teams to support digital transformation in manufacturing and other industrial environments. This partnership brings together RealWear devices and Microsoft Teams to empower Firstline

Workers while keeping their hands free. Teams on RealWear devices will be available later this year.

RealWear headsets for Microsoft Teams.

Find out more:

Teams Walkie Talkie on the Samsung XCover Pro

Walkie Talkie is a new push to talk experience in Teams that enables clear voice communication over the cloud. The Galaxy XCover Pro with Microsoft Teams simplifies and empowers Firstline Workers and their organizations to communicate and collaborate using just one device and one platform.

The capability will be available in the Teams mobile app and integrate with the newly unveiled Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro, a device built for workers on the front lines of any industry. The XCover Pro will be available through Microsoft retail stores starting in mid-April, and Walkie Talkie in Teams will be available starting July 2020.

Teams Walkie Talkie on the Samsung XCover Pro.

Find out more:

Bose headsets for Teams

Bose are the latest company to have their own Teams device. The Bose Noise Cancellation 700 UC (NC700) will be Teams certified and available for purchase later this Spring.

Find out more:

Teams collaboration bars

Collaboration bars allow you to turn your focus rooms or smaller conference areas into collaborative meeting spaces. These video conferencing solutions attach to displays, TVs or touchscreens to deliver high-quality, collaborative video meetings.

Collaboration bars for Microsoft Teams.

Find out more:

Poly Teams phones

The Poly CCX Series are a range of native Teams phones to help users to transform the way they communicate. The series offers a range models to choose from, starting with the CCX400 and up to the CCX600. You can personalize yours with a headset that suits your style or use the traditional handset. 

Find out more:

Power Apps

Sharing improvements for model-driven apps

Sharing model-driven apps has been streamlined into a single sharing panel so you can share apps without having to jump through several hoops to do so!

Sharing model-driven apps in Power Apps.

Find out more:

AI Builder models general availability

Six AI Builder models will move out of preview and reach general availability in April 2020. From April, the list of GA models will include:

  • Form processing – Read and save information from standard documents.
  • Key phrase extraction – Extract the key talking points from text.
  • Language detection – Identify the language being used in text.
  • Object detection – Recognize and count things in images.
  • Sentiment analysis – Analyze positive/negative sentiment in text.
  • Text recognition – Automatically process text from images.

Find out more:

New Gateway management features on Power Platform Admin Center

The Power Apps team have announced several enhancements to gateway management operations on Power Platform Admin center. An overview of the new features is listed below:

  • Gateway Member Status, State and Remove Operation
  • Gateway Cluster Status
  • Remove Gateway Clusters
  • Gateway Cluster Settings

Find out more:

Filtering improvements for lookups in Unified Interface

Several filtering improvements for lookups in Unified Interface will begin rolling out in March 2020.  These improvements include:

  • Web Client filtering
  • Unified Interface Filtering
  • Only my records filtering
  • Related records filtering
Unified Interface Filtering.

Find out more:

Command checker for model-driven apps

Command Checker is an in-app tool designed to help users understand why buttons are hidden or shown and what command will run upon click.

For each button on a given ribbon, the tool will show its calculated visibility status, the evaluation result of each enable/display rule attached to the button, and the command to be executed when clicked. 

Command checker for model-driven apps in Power Apps.

Find out more:

Power Automate

UI flows enter GA

Announced previously at Microsoft Ignite 2019, robotic process automation has been in preview with the launch of UI flows. UL flows will be generally available from April 2.

Find out more:

UI flows February 2020 update

The February 2020 update for Power Automate UI flows is now available in preview. Here’s a summary of the new features:

  • Add support for International Input Method Editors (IMEs)
  • Improve reliability for international keyboard layouts and special key support
  • Enable user to opt in or out of coordinate-based playback fallback that expands the coverage of UI automation
  • Improve user experience on the designer for UI flows
    • The domain name and username are automatically populated in the UI flows connection card.
  • Bug fixes including:
    • Some international users were seeing an error (“Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializationException”) when running UI flows on machines with international locale setting.
    • Latest Microsoft Edge releases caused errors automating browsers with UI flows.

Find out more:

Unattended Robotic Process Automation and AAD support now available in preview for UI flows

The Power Automate team have announced the preview of unattended UI flows – flows that run without human supervision. This is best for scenarios such as processing invoices and entering them into a legacy application automatically.

When running unattended, Power Automate will securely sign into the device on your behalf, execute the UI flow actions onto the target applications then sign out of the device.

Power Automate already supported on-premises Active Directory (AD)-joined machines to run UI flows. With this release UI flows now support Azure Active Directory (AAD)-joined machines.

Find out more:

File attachments in approval flows

The Power Automate team are releasing the ability to pass files from a connector action to the Approvals action step, so that you can enjoy the peace of mind that comes with sharing just enough information that’s needed.

You can now attach files to an approval flow.

Find out more:

Error handling and control logic for UI flows

The Power Automate team have announced the availability of error handling and control logic for UI automation scripts.

Error handling allows you to add resilience and robustness to your UI flows by adding parallel branches of execution. Control logic allows you to use actions like condition, switch case and terminate actions directly within a UI flow.

Find out more:

Power BI

Read/write XMLA endpoints in Power BI Premium public preview

The Power BI team have announced the public preview of read/write capabilities for the XMLA endpoint in Power BI Premium. The read/write capability now introduces many additional scenarios for dataset management, advanced semantic modeling, debugging, and monitoring.

Find out more:

Query Diagnostics General Availability

Query Diagnostics for Power Query has entered GA. Query Diagnostics is a powerful new feature that will allow you to determine what Power Query is doing during authoring and in some refresh workflows in Power BI Desktop.

Find out more:

Multi Geo Premium Capacities performance improvements

The Power BI team completed a global roll out of an improvement to Premium Capacities configured in remote locations (aka Multi Geo capacities).

Multi Geo capacities allow global organizations to remain compliant with data residency regulations that vary between geographies. Organizations can have their main Power BI region set to where their headquartered, and have reports served from remote geographies while ensuring data at rest remains bounded to the remote geography.

Performance Improvements for Multi Geo Premium Capacities.

Find out more:

On-premises data gateway March 2020 update

The Power BI team have announced the March update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.31.3).

Find out more:

Power BI Desktop March 2020 Feature Summary

The Power BI team have announced the release of several new features including new button actions, multi-column sort for tables, dual axis for line chart, a search for the filter pane, updates to decomposition tree, and much more!

Find out more:

A new, revamped search experience is coming to Power BI that allows users to search for reports, dashboards, apps, and workspaces from any page in the product.

New search experience in Power BI.

Find out more:

Power BI mobile updates

Several improvements have been introduced to the Power BI mobile experience including the Interactions Setting, which lets you configure how to interact with reports in Power BI mobile apps.

Find out more:

Export report to PDF, PPTX and PNG files using Power BI REST API (Preview)

An additional layer of capabilities for Power BI have been announced, allowing you to export a Power BI report by using a REST call, to the following file formats: PDF, PPTX (PowerPoint) and PNG.

Find out more:

Power Virtual Agents

Power Virtual Agents feature summary Wave 1

In Wave 1, the Power Virtual Agent team’s initial focus was on increasing the reach of Power Virtual Agents through language and geo-expansion, enhancing authoring capabilities, and addressing key features for large enterprises like collaboration across multiple bot authors, bot lifecycle management and other admin experiences.

Find out more:

Power Virtual Agents solution-aware flows

All Power Automate flows created from Power Virtual Agents are now solution-aware and available to your bots right away.

With this update, Power Virtual Agents now automatically saves all flows into the Default Solution under Solutions tab instead of the My flows tab.

Power Automate flows created from Power Virtual Agents are now solution-aware.

Find out more:

View, export, and manage retention time of your bot conversation transcripts

Power Virtual Agents now enables you to view and export your bot’s conversation transcripts beyond 30 days by managing transcript retention time.

With this feature, you will be able to do the following from the Power Apps portal:

  • View bot’s conversation transcripts
  • Export bot’s conversation transcripts
  • Manage how long to keep the transcripts

Find out more:

Related

Microsoft Personal & Family

March 2020 saw the announcement of Microsoft 365 Personal and Family moving away from O365 for individuals and families offering. Several name changes were also made to existing small- medium business and enterprise offerings.

Office 365 Business Essentials is now Microsoft 365 Business Basic; Office 365 Business Premium is now Microsoft 365 Business Standard; and Microsoft 365 Business is now Microsoft 365 Business Premium. Meanwhile, Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus will be called Microsoft 365 Apps.

Find out more:

Yammer conversations in your inbox

Yammer emails in Outlook on the web enable users to interact with Yammer conversations, polls, and questions, and deliver praise. Now you can see the full Yammer thread and reply, like, vote, attach files, share GIFs, and even watch videos right from your inbox.

These features are now available to all Enterprise tenants with releases in Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, and Outlook for iOS and Android coming next quarter.

Engage with Yammer conversations directly within your inbox.

Find out more:

View/edit improvements for files in Office mobile

You can now view and edit data in Excel in a simple, digestible card format, eliminating the need to span across columns that extend beyond the limits of the screen. Also new to Office mobile, PowerPoint Designer helps you create professional presentations with design, formatting, and iconography ideas for your content.

These features will be available in the next few months in the Office app for Android and iOS.

Find out more:

Resources

Advertisement

Microsoft 365 update for September 2019

AnthonyLeave a comment

A look back at all the latest updates and releases in the past month. in this months update:

SharePoint – page diagnostic tool, new web parts, CAD file preview in GA, activity highlights, site permissions panel, per site anyone link expiration policy, sharing reports

OneDrive – personal storage options, differential sync for all files, OCR scan support in iOS

Teams – filter chats, mute conversations, secondary ringer, cloud voicemail, reverse number lookup, calling in Chrome, phone updates for GCC, meet now with no invite, pin participant, missed meeting, meeting capabilities for more browsers

Related – To Do updates, multi-language support for Forms, Visio-Flow export, user templates in M365

SharePoint

Updated Page Diagnostic Tool

The diagnostic tool is a browser extension for Chrome and Microsoft Edge that helps identify modern/ classic Site Pages in SharePoint Online that may not be delivering optimal performance.

By comparing characteristics of a site page to known best practices, the tool provides remediation guidance, leading to suggested fixes across three analysis results: Attention required, Improvement opportunities and No action required.

Adding the Page Diagnostics browser extension, to seeing it work in action
Find out more:

New/ updated web parts

Lots of new and updated web parts are coming to SharePoint Online, here’s a look at them:

  • Button & Call To Action – engage your page viewer by providing focused text on and above a button
  • World Clock & Weather – add individual cities or a group of locations to highlight local times and weather
  • Divider – put a line in between sections and web parts, choosing the width and thickness
  • Highlighted Content adds Custom Query – use custom CAML or KQL queries to display precise sets of content, with the ability to combine filters using AND, OR, and NOT operators
Find out more:

CAD file preview enters GA

Utilising AutoCAD technology, you can now preview rich DWG files inline for OneDrive, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.

Autodesk AutoCAD for file previews in OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams
Find out more:

Activity highlights in the file card

The file card now shows relevant file activities, like if someone you work with edits, comments, or @mentions you, that activity is displayed with a link to take action.

Find out more:

Manage sharing/ access request settings from site permissions panel

Sharing and access requests for a SharePoint site have moved. Now located in the “Change sharing settings” link, site owners can use the new panel to allow only owners to share files, folders, and the site – restricting everyone else from sharing.

Find out more:

Per site anyone link expiration policy

Admins will now be able to customize the expiration length on a per-site basis for Anyone or anonymous sharing links. Admins can now override the tenant policy and set a more or less restrictive expiration policy for specific sites.

Note: This functionality will only be available via the SharePoint Online Management Shell.

Find out more:

Sharing reports

Site owners can now get a CSV file report to see all the items in their site that have been shared with any user, both inside and outside the organization. Useful for providing external sharing reports, the export can be filtered to only show content from the “Shared with External Users” option to view every unique user, permission, link, and item that has been shared externally.

From the site usage page, you can see recently shared items, with an option to run a report
Find out more:

OneDrive

More personal storage options

You can now add more storage to your existing Office 365 subscription (Personal or Home) in 200 GB increments, starting at $1.99 per month.

Note: the 200GB incremental additional storage plans are only available for Office 365 subscribers. The Basic plan is free and offers 5GB, and non-subscription paid is $1.99USD/mo. and offers 100GB.

Overview of OneDrive storage plans
Find out more:

Differential sync for all file types

Differential sync brings the ability to sync only the parts of large files that have changed, not the entire file. The ability to leverage differential sync to all file types, stored in OneDrive and SharePoint is being rolled out this month.

Note: differential sync is already available for Office file types.

Find out more:

iOS app OCR in scan support

The OneDrive mobile app already has built-in scanning capabilities for scanning documents, whiteboards, business cards to name a few, as well as converting them into an easy-to-read PDF format. Scans taken for iOS 11.1.5 or later are now available for optical character recognition.

Find out more:

Teams

Filter chats

Newly released filters added in Chat and Teams help you filter more than just your activity. In chat, type a person’s name to filter for every group, meeting, or one-on-one chat you have with them.

Fitler Chat in Teams
Find out more:

Mute conversations

Now you can mute a conversation in a channel. Alternatively, when you want to follow a conversation in a channel you’ve hidden from your list, all you need to do is turn on notifications.

Turn off notifications in Teams
Find out more:

Secondary ringer

With the secondary ringer functionality, if you wear plugged in headsets you will still be able to hear an incoming call ring from your computer.

Find out more:

Cloud voicemail improvements

You can now directly transfer a call to Cloud Voicemail. You can also now configure call answer rules, choose the greeting language, customize the TTS for the standard greeting and the ‘out of office’ greeting, and choose when you want your ‘out of office’ greeting to be played.

Find out more:

Reverse number lookup

Now when you receive a call, Teams will display the PSTN Caller’s name based on Azure Active Directory data and/or the Telco provided display name. Available now on the desktop, and coming soon to Teams mobile.

Calling in Chrome

If You use Teams on the web, you can now add Google Chrome to your list of browsers that support making calls from your web browser.

Find out more:

Telephony updates for Microsoft GCC

Several updates are coming to Microsoft Government Community Cloud (GCC) this month, such as:

Call Handling Enhancements, Teams Calling improvements for VOIP users, Group Call Pickup (GCP), phone number blocking, Multiparty Calling without Conference License, Call Park (CP), and Shared Line Appearance (SLA).

Find out more:

No invite required for Meet Now

The “Meet Now” feature on desktop allows you to skip the invitation and instead go straight to in a new meeting. All you need to do is go to Calendar on the left side of Teams, then select Meet now in the top right corner and add the people to the meeting.

Pin a meeting participant

You can now choose which meeting attendees to “pin” to create your own personal view.  Right-click on a meeting participant and select “pin” (or unpin) to create your own custom layout of meeting participants.  Note that this view is your own and does not impact other meeting participants.

Pin a meeting participant in Teams

Missed meeting-add notifications

Now you will see a notification in the Teams activity feed to notify you that someone tried to add you to a meeting, and if the meeting is still going on you can join directly from there.

Find out more:

Light weight meeting capabilities for Internet Explorer, Firefox & Safari

With the new light-weight meeting join capabilities, users can jump straight into a Teams Meeting in Internet Explorer 11, Safari, and Firefox browsers. Meeting audio is delivered via Audio Conferencing, so meeting organizers will need the respective license.

Find out more:

New version of Microsoft To Do

Microsoft unveiled a new version of To Do this month with a new look and new features. You can change the experience and background (includes dark mode) to suit your needs. To Do can now integrate with other Microsoft 365 apps to create a central view of your tasks.

Microsoft To Do
Find out more:

Microsoft Forms now offers the option to create surveys in multiple languages without having to merge separate documents.

Multi-language support for Microsoft Forms
Find out more:

Export Visio diagrams to Flow

Now you can easily create new flows in Visio and export them as a fully functioning workflow to Microsoft Flow. Built-in Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) stencils have sharing and commenting capabilities, simplifying development and collaboration.

Find out more:

New user templates to create users in M365

You can now create and use a template to save time when adding multiple users. Templates are particularly useful if you have users who share many properties, like those who work in the same role and the same location.

Find out more:

Resources

A guide to troubleshooting Teams

Anthony1 Comment

My organisation has started to use Microsoft Teams, albeit not globally but in small pockets there are groups of users with access to the product and are using it in anger interally.

Getting setup correctly and granting external, or guest access can be not such a simple request in my experience, so I thought it useful to document what I have observed, and some of the resolution steps applied to get Teams set up and working correctly for internal users, and how to make sure external access is enabled for guests.

In this guide:

  1. How to enable Teams for internal users
    • Turn on/ off Teams at the tenant level
    • Turn Teams on/ off for individual users
  2. How to enable guest access
    • Check Azure Active Directory
    • Check O365 Groups
    • Check Teams guest access
    • Check O365 settings
    • Check SharePoint sharing settings
  3. Configuring the user initated Teams licenses
  4. Troubleshooting Teams desktop application
    • Tip #1: the Office version matters
    • Tip #2: turn it off and on again
    • Tip #3: clear the cache
    • Tip #4 run credential manager

1. Enabling Teams for users internally

To enable Teams for individual users, they will need need to be assigned a Teams product license from the O365 admin center. Depending on your own policy for rolling out Teams, you can either do this at the tenant level or at the individual user level (for example, we turned off the Teams product at the tenant level, but assigned licenses at a user level).

Turn on Teams at the tenant level

  • Navigate to the O365 admin center, click on Services & add-ins
  • Search for Teams > under Settings by user/license type select the product license used in your tenant (for example E3)
  • Make sure the ‘turn teams on or off for all users of this type’ is set to On
Turning Teams on at the product license/tenant level

Turn on Teams for individual users

  • Navigate to the O365 admin center, click on Users > Active Users
  • Find the user you wish to turn Teams on for
  • Under Product licenses > press edit
  • Find the relevant product license (for example Office 365 E3) > press the drop down icon
  • Find Microsoft Teams from the list of options, and make sure it is switched on
Turning Teams on at the user level

I believe that by default when an enterprise product license is switched on that by default all the apps and services will be set to on. However, if your organisation is within a managed service agreement, you could well be in a situation where some of these apps are switched off as part of the product license.

2. How to enable guest access

OK so before I begin detailing the steps I followed, there is a pretty great guest access checklist that Microsoft has provided that covers all the steps plus explanation in order to enable guest access in Teams. You can take a look at that below:

Microsoft Teams guest access checklist

Much of what I detail below were already turned on for me, so this just acts as a series of checks – much like the Microsoft guide, to run through to make sure guest access is set up correctly.

Check Azure Active Directory settings

  • Log in to https://portal.azure.com
  • Select Azure Active Directory > Users > User settings
  • Under External users, select Manage external collaboration settings

These are the settings I used for external collaboration:

  • Guest user permissions are limited: Yes
  • Admins and users in the guest inviter role can invite: Yes
  • Members can invite: Yes
  • Guests can invite: Yes
  • Enable email one-time passcode for guests: No
  • Collaboration restrictions: allow invitations to be sent to any domain (most inclusive)

Check Office 365 Groups

  • In the O365 admin center, go to Settings > Services & Add-ins > Office 365 Groups
  • Make sure Let group members outside the organization access group content is set to On
  • Make sure Let group owners add people outside the organization to groups is set to On
  • Make sure Let group members outside the organization access group content is set to On

Check Teams guest access settings

  • In the Teams admin center, select Org-Wide settings > Guest access
  • Set the Allow guest access in Microsoft Teams switch to On
  • Press Save

Check O365 sharing settings

  • In the O365 admin center, go to Settings > Security & privacy
  • Under Sharing > select Edit
  • Make sure Let users add new guests to this organization is set to On
  • Press Save

Check SharePoint sharing settings

Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center.

  • In the O365 admin center, select SharePoint
  • In the SharePoint admin center, select Sharing
  • Under Sharing outside your organization, select Allow sharing with the external users that already exist in your organizations directory

NOTE: Basically, any of these options will work, outside of don’t allow sharing outside your organization.

3. Configuring user initiated Teams licenses

Something else you might experience as part of the rollout of Teams, is the prevalence of user initiated Microsoft Teams (Commercial Cloud) licenses. These are auto-assigned licenses that users recieve that do not currently have a Teams license.

If you wish to turn off this ability, you can by doing the following:

  • In the O365 admin center, go to Settings > Services & add-ins > User owned Apps and Services
  • Make sure that Let users install trial apps and services is set to Off

4. Troubleshooting tips for the Teams desktop application

Since rolling out Teams, along with the desktop app I have noted a few common issues and some simple resolution steps:

Tip #1: the Office version matters

Some users struggle to open files in Teams, and get issues that the file is locked or has to be saved locally and re-uploaded.

The build version of Office has an effect on the behaviour between the Office apps and Teams. For example, I noted that someone who had Office Version 1611 (Build 7571.2109) would be unable to open files in Teams, and were unable to open the file in edit mode. Where as myself running Office Version 1802 (Build 9029.2253) had no issues. When the user updated their Office version to 1802 or later, the issues were resolved.

Tip #2: turn it off and on again

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best one, and in these cases many times simply removing the Teams product license for the user > saving > then re-applying the license works wonders.

Along the same vein for this, having concurrent Teams licenses from your enterprise and commerical cloud user initiated licenses has also been promlematic for me, hence why we made the decision to turn off the commercial cloud licenses.

Tip #3: clear the cache

Tip #3 and tip #4 pretty much go hand in hand, but clearing the cache when trying to get Teams working is never a bad idea in my opinion.

  • Close the Teams app, and make sure the process has stopped in Task Manager
  • Go to Start > Run > and enter C:\Users\[YOUR_USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams

From here, delete all the files from the following folders:

  • \Application Cache\Cache\
  • \blob_storage\
  • \Cache\
  • \databases\
  • \GPUCache\
  • \Local Storage\
  • \tmp\

Then clear these files out from C:\Users\[YOUR_USERNAME]\AppData\Local\:

  • \Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache
  • \Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cookies
  • \Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Web Data
  • Internet Explorer Temporary Internet Files
  • Internet Explorer Cookies

NOTE: Mark Vale also includes a PowerShell script on his post about this that will be much quicker way to do it. You can check that out here.

Tip #4 run credential manager

This final tip helps if you see authentication errors when users try to login to the desktop app.

  • Press Start, type Run
  • Enter rundll32.exe keymgr.dll,KRShowKeyMgr
  • In stored usernames and passwords, find the msteams_adalsso credentials and press remove on each one

Microsoft 365 update for August 2019

AnthonyLeave a comment

In this month’s update:

SharePoint – Site swap, site owners can join to hub sites, activity highlights in file hover card
OneDrive – Popular around me, comments on non-office files, Samsung + OneDrive
Teams – Focus time, content cameras, meetings first, share audio, partner provided calling plans for Japan, audio conferenceing via direct routing GCC High & GCC DoD, Personal apps (developer preview), enhanced assignments Teams for Education
PoweApps – October PowerApps release wave videos, publishing changes to Portals, PowerApps CLI, new functions, provisioning/ admin updates, inline navigate, SharePoint declaration improvents, data source experience & CDS views, share canvas apps with guests
Related – Work-in-progress slides in PowerPoint, direct links to PowerPoint slides, enhanced Yammer mobile experience

SharePoint

Site swap

Finally, you can make your root site a modern communication site or a modern team site! Using the new PowerShell cmdlet: Invoke-SPOSiteSwap, switches the location of a source site with another target site.

Note: the source or target sites cannot be “associated” with an Office 365 group or connected to a hub site.

Invoke-SPOSiteSwap
         -SourceUrl <string>
         -TargetUrl <string>
         -ArchiveUrl <string>   
      [<CommonParameters>]
Find out more:

Site owners can assoicate sites to a hub

Site owners can now associate their sites to a hub they have permissions to join. Previously this ability required site collection level admin privileges.

Find out more:

Activity highlights in the File Hover Card

The activity highlights shows you if someone you work with edits, comments, or @mentions you on files you’re working on. This is displayed in the File Hover Card, with a link to the relevant activity.

Recent activity in the File Hover Card
Find out more:

OneDrive

Now you can find relevant content at the top of the Shared with me view in OneDrive. Files which are recommended based on your working relationships will surface to help you find trending information faster and discover new content.

The new popular around me view in OneDrive
Find out more:

Comments on non-Office files

You can already comment on Office docs in Office on the web, but now you can comment on other file types in OneDrive on the web such as PNGs, JPGs, or PDFs. You can also comment while using the viewer in OneDrive.

Comments on non-Office files in OneDrive
Find out more:

Samsung + OneDrive

OneDrive will be natively integrated into the Samsung Gallery app, providing automatic syncing of your photos and videos and enabling new protection and cross-device experiences. The Galaxy Note10 will be the first to get the OneDrive integration, with more Samsung devices to follow.

Find out more:

Teams

Focus time

When you schedule “focus time” through MyAnalytics, Teams will automatically help you stay focused by changing your presence to “focusing” and silencing all notifications during the focus period (based on your priority access settings).

Find out more:

Content cameras & intelligent capture

The Microsoft Teams Room app has been updated to include a “content camera” feature. This detects the whiteboard in the room, crops and frames it, and shares the content with remote participants.

Microsoft Teams Rooms
Find out more:

Meetings first

Meetings First is a configuration mode that allows organizations to continue to use Skype for Business Server for their chat and enterprise voice needs, but move their meetings workload to the cloud.

Any version of Skype for Business Server is supported, though more recent clients will have a better coexistence experience. In addition, organizations need to be licensed for Teams, including Audio Conferencing if PSTN dial-in/dial-out functionality is required.

Teams Meetings First
Find out more:

Share audio in Teams

Now, you can share your audio during a Teams meeting, so all participants can hear whatever media you’re presenting.

Find out more:

Partner provided call plans for Japan

SoftBank has released their UniTalk calling plans to Office 365 customers in Japan. The Softbank Calling Plans enables SoftBank to sell and support PSTN calling services specifically for the Japanese market.

Find out more:

Audio Conferencing via Direct Routing for GCC High and GCC DoD

  • o Conferencing via Direct Routing for GCC High and GCC DoD

This feature enables participants to join your organization’s meetings using a standard phone number. Configuring this feature requires your GCC High or GCC DoD organization to use its own numbers for dial-in access and all meeting dial-outs to phones are via Direct Routing.

Find out more:

Personal apps on mobile (developer preview)

Currently in developer preview, Personal apps can extend and customize Microsoft Teams for your organization. It provides a capability for people in your organization to use 3rd party apps within Teams.

Personal apps in developer preview has been rolled out, with a a broader target rollout in the last quarter of 2019.

Find out more:

Enhanced assignment tab in Teams for Education

The enhanced Assignments tab now shows a clear view of what’s coming up next, when creating a class assignment, educators can add resources from your Staff or PLC team. Simply select Add resources on your assignment and choose it from the file picker. You no longer need to move your content between teams.

Add resources in Teams for Education
Find out more:

PowerApps

PowerApps October release wave updates!

In August the PowerApps team added videos to the release notes show casing upcoming innovations as part of the wave 2 releases. You can see the video below:

PowerApps 2019 release wave 2 overview
Find out more:

Publishing changes to PowerApps Portals

PowerApps Portals now uses the selective entity caching approach to improve reliability and performance of your portal. With this update, you can now see changes reflected on the portal immediately.

Find out more:

New features for the PowerApps CLI

PowerApps component framework can now see changes in the test harness as they are made and push components directly into an org using the CLI.

The push capability will make you more efficient because it bypasses the custom component versioning requirements and does not require you to build your solution in order to import into your development environment.

The watch capability removes the need to reload your test harness after every change is made.

Find out more:

SetFocus function

The SetFocus function gets data entered faster by having the app position the cursor in the input field where we should begin. When you go to validate, the app will take you directly to the offending entry, even if it scrolled off screen.

SetFocus function in PowerApps
Find out more:

With function

You can now simplify large formulas by dividing them into named sub-formulas, eliminate redundant sub-formulas, and easily work with functions that return records.

Find out more:

Provisioning & administration updates for Power Platform admin center

Several changes were rolled out in August to the Power Platform admin center, including:

  • Provisioning environments
  • Provisioning based on available capacity
  • Administrators can view all environments in the admin center
  • Simplified license requirements to administrator environments
  • Top table trend is now available in the capacity report.
Power Platform admin center
Find out more:

Inline navigate to all of our modern model-driven designers

To reduce the amount of clutter within your browser while building apps, Microsoft have introduced an option to open the modern view and form designers inline. To get back, you can simply press the back button in the designer.

Inline navigate for modern model-driven designers
Find out more:

Improvements to SharePoint delegation

Delegation of SharePoint complex objects and Query and filter operations on objects such as Person and Choice is now supported in PowerApps.

In addition, the DateTime and Date values are still not yet delegable, but a null value can be delegated for a DateTime and Date field.

Find out more:

Data source experience & Common Data Service views

New data source experience and Common Data Service views that allow adding data sources into the app, or creating new connections without inserting a control have been updated.

Also updated is enabling a Common Data Service entity view that can be selected in the property pane and the Items property.  The property pane will update the Items property to add the Filter function taking the the view name as the filter.

Find out more:

Share canvas apps with guests

Now in public preview, this feature enables canvas apps to be shared with guests of your organization! This enables teams of individuals made up of different organizations participating in a common business process to access the same app.

Sharing canvas apps with guests of your organization
Find out more:

Please note: there are also several updates for the PowerApps Unified Interface that I haven’t been able to list here, but you can find all the details from the link below:

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/august-2019-updates-for-microsoft-powerapps/

Related

You can now transform standard shapes in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel into rough outlines that look handdrawn and convey a sense of in-progress work. Sketched Shapes is perfect for building wireframes, drafting designs, or adding an artistic touch.

Work-in-progress diagrams and slides in PowerPoint
Find out more:

You can now get a link to an individual slide from PowerPoint and share it with recipients. This will help others land on the most relevant information without having to find what you were trying to show them through a stack of presentation slides

Find out more:

Recently announced, a new Yammer mobile experience to iOS and Android devices. Some highlights include a modernized feed experience that reduces visual clutter and delivers improved readability, live events, and townhalls that you can view on the go; Seen Counts to let you know how many people have viewed your messages; and group search to cut down on search time and find the information you need.

Find out more:

Links and resources

Microsoft 365 update for July 2019

AnthonyLeave a comment

In this months update:

Page/ news authoring improvements

Several updates will soon be available for page and news authoring:

  • Drag and drop files to the canvas – authors will be able to upload images to the canvas using drag and drop. They will automatically add the file viewer and upload the file to the document library
  • Link preview – rich preview for links pasted into the text editor to embed videos from Stream/ YouTube links or images with title and description from other links
  • On-page anchors – support for anchor links, allowing readers to jump to a specific parts of the pages
  • Undo/Redo – authors will have the option to undo changes prior to saving/ publishing
  • Vertical sections – vertical sections will be able to be added to client-side pages
SharePoint news in Office 365
Find out more:

Communication sites will soon have an out-of-the box footer control, which can be controlled using the change the look panel or by using PowerShell [FooterEnabled]. The site footer supports following elements: 8 links or labels, logo and name.

Collaboration site footers in modern SharePoint
Find out more:

Site usage updates

An improved user experience for the site usage pages in SharePoint, including new “Unique Visitors” and “Site Visits” charts, plus more.

Find out more

Preview 360-degree images

You will soon be able to view 360-degree images interactively, directly within SharePoint and OneDrive.

360-degree images in SharePoint and OneDrive
Find out more:

Quick edit improvements for libraries & lists

New features available when in quick edit mode for libraries and lists such as filtering content, dragging & dropping column widths, showing all view and column formatting and improvement support for user/ choice fields

Improvements to quick edit mode for SharePoint libraries and lists
Find out more:

Bulk approvals for SharePoint lists/libraries

Soon will soon be able to select multiple items and have the ability to approve/reject them in one go. You can also add optional comments to the approved or rejected items and the Flow will send them out to stakeholders.

Find out more:

Presevation hold library updates

New 30-day grace periods are being introduced for the release of SharePoint Online holds, preventing the hold from being immediately released. Whilst within the grace period, any deleted item will continue to be preserved in the preservation library until the hold is removed.

Items in a preservation hold library are now moved into the “second stage recycle bin” before being purged.

Diagram of a preservation hold library process flow
Find out more:

Per-site anyone link expiration policies

Currently, anonymous sharing links can be set to expire after a set number of days (between 1 and 720). This new setting will allow admins to cahnge the expiration policy length on a per-site basis, overriding the tenant level policy.

This will only be available via the SharePoint Online Management Shell as part of the inital release, but will be apart of the SharePoint admin center soon.

Find out more:

OneDrive Azure Active Directory (AAD) business-to-business (B2B) sync (preview)

Currently in preview, this integrates external sharing in SharePoint and OneDrive with Azure AD B2B. This includes external sharing of files, folders, list items, document libraries and sites.

When a user shares an item in SharePoint or OneDrive with an external user, a guest account is immediately created for that external user (if one does not already exist).

Find out more:

Teams

Read receipts & priority notifications

Added in July were read receipts and priority notifications to make sure time-senstive message are received and prioritised.

For a limited time, unlimited priority notifications will be made available for all customers. This promotion runs from July 2019 to December 31, 2019.

Priority notifications in Teams
Find out more:

@-less mentions

Now simply start typing a person’s name (starting with a capital letter) as to tag them by name. They will receive a notification, which they can click to go directly to the point in the conversation where they were mentioned.

@-less mentions in Teams
Find out more:

Channel moderation

Channel moderation gives team owners and moderators, exclusive rights to create new posts in the channel and control whether team members can reply.

Find out more:

Teams live events captioning

Currently in preview, live captions and subtitles allow attendees to read speaker captions in real time – improving accessibility for meetings and live events.

Find out more:

Usage reports for live events

Available now, usage reports help you easily identify trends across your organisation including event status, views, scheduler and more.

Live events usage reports in Teams
Find out more:

Network planner (preview)

The Network Planner calculates your network requirements for deploying Teams and cloud voice across physical locations. You only need to provide your network details and Teams usage.

Find out more:

Time clock in Teams Shifts

The new time clock feature in Teams Shifts allows workers to clock in and out right from their Teams mobile app. Managers have the option to geo-fence a location to ensure team members are at the designated worksite when clocking in or out.

Find out more:

Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021

Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021 and after that date the service will no longer be accessible.

Please note that the Skype Consumer service and Skype for Business Server will both be unaffected by this announcement.

Find out more:

OneDrive

More updates are rolling out to the file card experience for both OneDrive and SharePoint:

  • Inside look – get even deeper information about a file such as “key points, and the average time to read. “Key points” is only available in North America and on Word documents
  • Activity highlights – shows relevant activities related to the files you’re working on. Includes edits, comments and @mentions
Find out more:

Full support for Intune for OneDrive

Announced in July 2019, Intune has released administrative templates. With the templates, admins can now configure over 2500 settings supporting the management of Windows, OneDrive and Office in a similar user interface to group policy editor.

Find out more:

OneDrive mobile app updates

  • Design refresh for iOS app – latest update brings the iOS app in-line withthe suite of other Office apps
  • Recent view includes PDFs and scans – uploaded scans and recently viewed PDFs automatically surgace at the top of the “recent” list
  • PDF annotation experience – more intuitive and touch friendly markup experience with lightweight notes, with other improvements to the annotation and signature experience
  • OneDrive powered file picking experience in Outlook for iOS – Consistent “recent” list of files and folders through the OneDrive app, email attachments and shared libraries
  • Revamped settings page – Improved usability of the settings page for OnDrive on iOS
Refreshed design for OneDrive app on iOS
Find out more:

Personal vault

OneDrive personal vault is a protected area that you are only able to access with a strong authentication method or two-tep identity verification.

Find out more:

PowerApps

PowerApps Portals now in public preview

First announced in July, the public preview for PowerApps Portal is now open to everyone. PowerApps Portals are low-code, responsive portals that allow external users access to interact with data stored in the common data service.

PowerApps Portals now in public preview
Find out more:

PowerApps ISV Studio in public preview

Also annouced in July was the public preview of the PowerApps ISV Studio, the Power Platform destination for independent software vendors (ISV) to monitor and manage their applications.

Find out more:

AppSource certification readiness

With the public preview annoucement of PowerApps Build Tools, this includes an Azure DevOps Build task (PowerApps checker service) that validates your app against the AppSource certification criteria.

Find out more:

Right-click and keyboard shortcuts

The PowerApps design canvas now responds to right-clicks to perform key actions like copy, paste, reorder and align. This same menu is also available in the tree view.

Find out more:

Manage gateways through Power Platform Admin Center

If you are a gateway admin you will now see all data gateways (standard and personal mode) that you have admin privileges over. This view will allow you to manage gateway admins, as well as search on cluster names and contact info.

Find out more:

Share canvas app data using the common data service with Azure AD Security Groups

Canvas apps using the common data service can be shared with Azure AD security groups, and data permissions for these groups can be set using the PowerApps.com sharing experience. This streamlines the process of sharing apps with several users, rather than on an individual basis.

Sharing a PowerApps canvas app using the common data service with Azure AD security groups
Find out more:

Updates to the on-premises data gateway

The on-premises data gateway is now built using .NET 4.7.2 framework, so some operating systems may no longer be supported.

With July 2019 update, if you don’t have .NET 4.7.2 framework or higher but are using a supported OS version, the gateway install will prompt the .NET framework install. If you choose not to install the .NET framework, the installation will fail.

Find out more:

Flow

New SharePoint connector actions

Several highly requested features have been added to the SharePoint connector:

  • Work with folders – you can now directly create folders in a document library. Extracting .zip files into a folder is also supported
  • Use check in / out – you can now use Check in, Check out and Discard check out when working with document libraries
  • Work with Permissions – you can grant access to an item or a folder in SharePoint to specific people, or delete all links giving access to an item or a folder and remove all people with direct access except owners
  • Modern Document Sets – Document sets will appear in the file picker for the When a file is created in a folder and When a file is created or modified in a folder action triggers.
Modern document set actions in Flow

Use Flow with Azure DevOps

Now in public preview, the PowerApps and Flow Build Tools are now available for download. As Flow expands across Microsoft 365, the automation of the lifecycle of Apps and Flows grows also, plus managing them through source control and versioning leveraging DevOps for deployments.

Find out more:

Guest user support

Now in public preview, guest access enables users to assign approvals to guest users who are not full members of the tenant. Support includes the SharePoint and Approvals connectors for building automated, instant or scheduled flows.

Find out more:

Flow authoring improvements

One powerful aspect of automating flows is that any action can use data output by any trigger or action above it in the Flow. This can be a challenge if you want to change a step earlier in the Flow, which other actions depend on.

Now, you are able to delete or rename actions one which other steps depend. Flow checker can be used to fix any issues that arise.

Previously, there were restrictions for classic CDS workflows around editing a running, automated flow – in which you had to first disable it. Now, this restriction has been removed, meaning you can now edit running flows.

New connectors

There were four new connectors released throughout July 2019, such as:

  • Corda Blockchain – Corda is a smart contract distributed ledger. With the Corda connector, you can perform actions such as submitting transactions and reading contract state.
  • LiveTiles Bots – Let people focus on the work that matters most. Automate mundane, repetitive tasks. Create personal, team, enterprise and external assistants with a range of abilities
  • Projectum Present It – Fill data dynamically into your documents
  • Serverless360 BAM & Tracking – ServerLess360 Custom connector helps you track your business processes
Find out more:

Now when you paste a link for a OneDrive or SharePoint file in a message, it will replace it with the name of the file and the corresponding Office app icon. That link will also allow you to manage permissions for the file using a new sharing dialogue.

New file sharing experience in Outlook for the web
Find out more:

Microsoft have annouced they are retiring the “Online” branding for Office web apps. The user experience will reflect this change soon.

Find out more:

Microsoft Forms continues to improve and help create forms faster and more professionally. Here’s a round-up of the latest feature releases:

  • Branching – available early August 2019, branching provides more flexibility to manage survey strutures with conditioning questions supported
  • Theme recommendation – theme recommendation intelligently suggests designs based on the user input title
  • Quick poll add-in for Outlook – you can now create real time polls in seconds without having to leave the email app
  • Quizzes from Office.com – now users can create a new quiz, directly from the O365 homepage
Quick polls for Outlook
Find out more:

Links and resources

Microsoft 365 update for June 2019

AnthonyLeave a comment

Better late than never 😉 here’s a round-up of all the latest news, enhancements and feature updates for June 2019…

In this month’s update:

SharePoint

Organizational assets

Organization assets lets you register one or more document libraries via PowerShell as a special source for images, such as photos and logos, across all sites. The Organization assets libraries are available when you add images to page headers, galleries, or other web parts.

Organization assets in SharePoint
Find out more:

SharePoint hub sites limit raised to 2000

A hub site brings together numerous other sites, and now the number of hub sites you can create in your tenant has increased. As announced at SPC19, the number of SharePoint hubs that you can create per tenant will go up from 100 to 2000.

Find out more:

Adobe Document Cloud integration

Adobe Document Cloud also now supports single sign-on with Azure Active Directory, dramatically the simplifying log-in process. Now you’ll be able to work with PDF files on the web and in the context of SharePoint & OneDrive, with features like inline commenting and drawing.

Inline commenting and drawing will now work in the context of SharePoint
Find out more:

Easily tell if a SharePoint document library folder is connected to Teams channel

It’s now easier to tell which folders within your library have an associated Teams channel. Chat capability associated to it is visible and actionable right from within the SharePoint user interface. SharePoint helps users understand that actions like delete or renaming a channel-connected folder need to happen through the Teams app.

Easily tell if a document library in SharePoint is connected to Teams
Find out more:

Teams

Teams desktop rolling out toO365 ProPlus & Microsoft/Office 365 Business/Business Premium

Starting in July 2019, if you’re using Monthly Channel, then Teams will be added to existing installations of Office 365 ProPlus (and Office 365 Business) on devices running Windows when you update your existing installation to the latest version.

If Teams is already installed in a user’s machine, they are not impacted by this change.

Find out more:

Information barriers

Information barriers will help avoid conflicts of interest within your organization. This can help limit the disclosure of information by controlling communication between the holders of information and colleagues representing different interests.

Find out more:

Team channel announcements

You can now post an “announcement” complete with a headline and background image, to ensure that your post catches your readers’ eye.

Annoucements in Teams
Find out more:

Group chats now accomodate up to 100 users

Do you need to have an ad-hoc discussion with a large number of people? Group chats can now accommodate up to 100 users.

Find out more:

Discover Private Teams more easily

Admins and team owners can now control whether they want to allow private teams to be discovered by Teams users. When a private team is discoverable, it shows up in search results and is included in suggestions in the team gallery alongside public teams.

Discover private teams
Find out more:

Aid automation with Azure Pipelines

Launched in June, Microsoft releasued the Teams app for Azure pipelines. Azure pipelines allows you to automate customer builds and deployments, so you can spend less time with the nuts and bolts and more time being creative.

Azure Pipelines for Teams
Find out more:

Meeting Options in Teams

You now have even more control over the design of your meetings in Teams! Meeting organizer’s can now control the lobby setting of any scheduled meeting. Settings can be found in the “Meeting options” link from the “Meetings” tab.

Find out more:

Single toolbar for controls in Meetings and Calling

Teams session controls will now be unified into one toolbar at the bottom of the screen. This will affect Windows, Mac, and web clients. There is no impact for mobile or Microsoft Teams Room (MTR) devices.

While joining Teams Meetings on the Chrome browser, you can now share your own video and receive video of others.

Single toolbar in Meetings and Calling
Find out more:

OneDrive

Password protected anyone sharing links

Now in OneDrive, you are able to set custom passwords while sharing a file or folder with anyone links to their colleagues within or outside their organization.

You can share the password separately with your intended recipients and they will be required to enter the password in order to access the shared content. If they accidentally forward or re-share the shared link, anyone without the password will not be able to gain access.

Password protected anyone sharing links in OneDrive
Find out more:

External sharing with B2B integration (Preview)

The Azure Active Directory Business to Business (B2B) platform enables external users to exist in your Azure AD directory as “Guests” and can be managed in the way you are already familiar with.

External sharing with B2B integration joins external sharing in SharePoint and OneDrive with Azure AD B2B. It includes external sharing of files, folders, list items, document libraries and sites. The integration also expands the one-time passcode authentication experience to SharePoint sites and lists when sharing with external recipients who don’t already have a work, school or a Microsoft account (MSA).

With the integration turned on, when a user shares an item in SharePoint or OneDrive with an external user, a “Guest” account is immediately created for that external user (if one does not already exist). As a result, any sign-in or conditional access policies in place in your organization will take effect on those external users as well.

Find out more:

OneDrive sync client B2B Sync – sync content shared internally or externally

Mirosoft are adding capabilities to the OneDrive sync client that lets users sync libraries or folders that have been shared from other organizations. You can now can sync content shared not only by peers within your own organization, but also by partners outside your organization that you regularly collaborate with.

This feature works in tandem with the external sharing with B2B integration feature and requires recipients to have a “Guest” account in Azure AD to make B2B collaboration possible.

Find out more:

Microsoft Search in OneDrive

Microsoft Search is now in OneDrive. A new search box will appear at the top of the page in the OneDrive suite header and provide a consistent place to access the search functionality making it easy to discover all files and folders.

Search in OneDrive
Find out more:

Inside Look for .docx file types in hover cards

There are a few new features being rolled out as part of the improved File Card experience. Now you will see a “time to read” estimate, plus the “at a glance” feature which will show key sentences from within the Word document.

Hover cards in O365
Find out more:

Automatically sync your SharePoint team site shared libraries with OneDrive team site automount

This feature offers admins the ability to automatically connect and synchronize specific SharePoint team site document libraries as part of a OneDrive deployment. To help configure a team site to sync automatically, Microsoft provide a new group policy (“Configure team site libraries to sync automatically”) for admins to deploy.

NOTE: these are the document libraries within group-connected team sites that appear under the “Shared libraries” list within a person’s OneDrive user interface.

OneDrive team site automount

Find out more:

Yammer Q&A

Question and answer in Yammer enables you to start a conversation in the question format from the browser or mobile app. Unique styling helps everyone identify which posts need answers. In the coming weeks, you’ll also be able to filter to see only questions and unanswered questions.

Q&A feature in Yammer
Find out more:

Yammer local data residency

Yammer now offers local data residency to help organizations in the EU meet data residency requirements. This feature is available to all new Office 365 customers associated with a tenant in the EU.

Coming soon, Yammer content will also show up in eDiscovery searches, bringing advanced security and compliance capabilities to Yammer groups connected to Office 365 Groups.

Find out more:

Cloud App Security

Discover the apps and services that are running on top of your IaaS and PaaS subscriptions, whether they are running on Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud Platform. Gain visibility into those apps and services, including which users are accessing them, transactions, IP addresses, and how much traffic is being transmitted.

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Azure AD conditional access policies

Annouced in June, Azure AD Conditional Access policies help you maintain control over your Office 365 environment and how your company resources are accessed. For example, you can define a conditional access policy that evaluates sign-in connections from mobile devices to Exchange Online, and requires employees use Outlook for iOS or Android to successfully access their work email and calendar.

Azure AD conditional access policies
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Version history in Office for Web

Version History is coming to Office for the web, enabling you to see what changes have occurred and revert to an earlier version if necessary. Version History is rolling out now, starting with PowerPoint on the web.

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Links and resources

Microsoft 365 update for May 2019

AnthonyLeave a comment

I decided to hold fire on posting a full write up from the SharePoint Conference to create a bumper edition of this month’s update.

I’ll include several of the bigger announcments coming out of SPC19, but ill include a full list of links to all the annocument recaps coming out of the event for more information.

In this month’s update:

SharePoint

SharePoint home sites

One of the most requested features of the modern experience for SharePoint is the ability to have the default or ‘root’ SharePoint site in the full modern experience. Home sites can be any commication site in your environment, that come with ‘superpowers’ such as:

  • News from home sites becomes organisational news
  • Search from home sites becomes tenant wide
  • Shared branding with the SharePoint start page
  • Unique mobile app experience

SharePoint home sites are being targeted to be rolled out around Q3 2019.

Find out more:

Sensitivity labels for SharePoint sites

Currently in private preview, Sensitivity Labels allow you to apply consistent security and access policies to SharePoint sites based on the sensitivity of the site.

Sensitivity labels with protection now supported

You can now experience the same collaborative capabilities for Office files protected with sensitivity labels in Microsoft 365 in SharePoint and OneDrive as files with no protection applied. Files with labels applied will be encrypted on upload by Azure Information Protection and understand the policies applied to the document by the label.

External access expiration

Tenant-scoped external sharing expiration allows admins to specify how long external users can have access to sites and their contents. Once the maximum period of time for external sharing links has been met, access if revoked unless extended by the administrator.

Find out more:

SharePoint admin center improvements

There have lots of improvements since the new SharePoint admin center was released to preview earlier this year. Here are some major updates from this month:

  • Classic features now available in new admin center
  • Support for performing bulk actions against a collection of sites
  • Ability to rename sites (GREAT NEWS!)
  • Improved sharing controls
  • Windows PowerShell cmdlet (invoke-spositeswap) that allows you to replace the root site within a tenant with an existing site (ALSO GREAT NEWS!)
Find out more:

Data bar formatting for number columns

Column formatting in SharePoint lists & libraries continues to improve, you can now format number columns with chart-like data bars!

Find out more:

DLP for restricted access

A new security control (in private preview) that blocks external sharing of files in OneDrive and SharePoint until a DLP scan has been completed. This prevents overexposure of sensitive information and compliance with policies set by the tenant administrator.

DLP for restricted sharing

Another new security control (coming to private preview Q3 2019), that coincides with easy sharing with anonymous links, but once files are scanned by DLP and flagged as sensitive, anonymous access to the file is blocked.

Find out more:

App Pages and Teams tabs

Now in GA with SharePoint Framework 1.8, app pages make it possible to add full-page tools in SharePoint. Available through a new create page experinece, team members can add application pages to existing sites.

You can also add more Teams tabs directly into your SharePoint sites.

Find out more:

SharePoint Migration Tool updates

SharePoint 2013 full site migration GA

Announced earlier this year, full site migrations for SharePoint server 2013 now enters GA. This includes migration support for the following:

  • Document lists and libraries
  • SharePoint list templates (see full list here)
  • Out of the box sites (sites not utilising any code or 3rd party tools)
  • Navigation & icons
  • Site descriptions
  • SharePoint web parts (see supported web parts here)
  • Pages (including site asset library pages)
  • Managed metadata (including content types and term stores)

Additional language support

The migration tool is now localised for 11 different languages, support for Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish & English.

SharePoint 2010 migration support

Huge news for those of us still toiling away on SP2010 😀 with end of extended support for SharePoint 2010 less than 15 months away, you can now start to migrate content from SharePoint 2010 to Office 365.

Find out more:

SharePoint Server improvements

Announced at SPC2019, SharePoint Server 2019 provides more flexible deployment options to include support for Azure Stack and SQL Managed Instances.

A managed instance in Azure SQL Database is a fully managed SQL Server Database Engine Instance hosted in Azure cloud. Support is also being extended for deploying SharePoint Server 2016 (SharePoint Server 2019) on Azure Stack so you can build and run SharePoint environments using consistent Azure services on-premises.

Find out more:

Teams

Proximity-based meeting join

Proximity-based meeting join for Microsoft Teams Rooms means that the Teams app on your desktop or mobile will find a Teams-enabled room for you to use that is nearby and available. Available now for your desktop and mobile clients, and will start working automatically. 

“Meeting started” notifications on your phone

You can now receive “meeting started” notifications on your phone when someone joins a Teams meeting on your calendar. You can join the meeting right from the notification, and skip searching for the correct meeting in your calendar.

Find out more:

Busy-on-busy signals

Busy on Busy is a feature that allows callers to know a user’s status when contacting them. When a user is already in a call or meeting, this setting alerts the caller that they are on another call by playing a busy signal. This feature is automatically available in your Teams experience.  

New Calls App

Voice over IP (VOIP) enabled users will now see the Calls App in the App bar in the Desktop and Web Clients, with voicemal coming soon. There is no change in functionality for existing users or calling policy configuration.

Call Me functionality

You can now join meetings through a “Call me” functionality both from pre-join screen and during the meeting. To use this feature, you need to provide a phone number where you can receive a phone call.

Find out more:

Read-only material with Class Materials

The new Class Materials folder in the General channel of Microsoft Teams for Education allows you to share files with students, without the ability to edit.

Find out more:

Manage membership on mobile

Manage your team and add new members straight from the Teams app on your phone. Invite guests from outside your organization via their email address using your mobile app.

Export reporting data from the admin center

You can now export Teams usage reports to CSV files for offline analysis. After selecting a report in the Analytics and reports section of the Microsoft Teams admin center, click Export to Excel.

OneDrive

Full-fidelity experience for shared libraries

You can now view shared libraries with full-fidelity from the OneDrive UI on the web. This means you can create new documents, pin important ones to the top, create views, manage metadata, share and more.

Full-fidelity experience for shared libraries
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Preview more files than ever before

You can preview more than 320 file types in OneDrive, including 360-degree images and AutoCAD DWG files.

Comments on non-Office files

Collaborators can now add comments to any of the 320+ file with new support for comments on non-Office files.

Animated image of a comment left in a Word document stored in OneDrive.
Find out more:

New records management capabilities

You can now use native connectors to import non-Microsoft 365 data, like data from Facebook and Twitter into the 365 cloud for archival purposes. A new records management solution helps you easily manage business, legal, and HR records in a single location.

Find out more:

Quizzes, polls and forms in Stream

You can now add quizzes, forms, or polls directly into Microsoft Stream videos. The Forms integration into Microsoft Stream helps presenters interact with their audience and gives them a way to solicit feedback.

You can also now securely record, upload, and share video from the Microsoft Stream mobile app.

Animated screenshot of a video being played in Microsoft Stream.
Find out more:

Question and answer feature in Yammer

The new question and answer feature allows you toask a question, then you or a group admin can mark the best answer – making the knowledge easier to share and reuse in the future. Additionally, a group can feature intelligent, bot-like responses to frequently asked questions.

Animated image portraying Yammer question and answer functionality. A cursor clicks "mark best answer" on a person's reply.

Geo-data storage capabilities in Yammer

Microsoft are accelerating availability of in-geo data storage for Yammer in the EU, available now. This means that now Yammer messages and files attached to Yammer messages will be stored at-rest in our EU datacenters, for new Yammer networks in the EU.

Find out more:

Microsoft Search enters GA

Microsoft search is now generally avalible, offering a unified, consistent search experience to help you discover relevant people, content, commands, and activities across all the Microsoft 365 experiences you use daily.

Find out more:

Block downloading option for sharing links

The sharing links feature that blocks downloads is being updated. The updated feature will block downloads, disallow printing, or copying of a file. Block download is now available when using the “Specific people” sharing link type.

Users will be able to create “block download” links from File Explorer, Office apps, and the rest of the apps which use the common Office 365 file sharing experience.

Find out more:

Planner and To-Do intergrations

You can now see all your tasks across Microsoft 365 in To-Do, including flagged emails in Outlook and tasks assigned in Planner. View your tasks, deadlines, and details, and plan to get more done throughout your days.

Animated screenshot of Microsoft To-Do and Planner integration.
Find out more:

Microsoft Graph data connect enters GA

Announced this month, the general availabity of Microsoft Graph data connect. This service helps bring together productivity data from the Microsoft Graph with business data and derive deep insights about effective work patterns.

Find out more:

Links and resources

If you’ve made it this far…wow well done! Apologies this was such a long update, I wanted to make sure I included all of the updates from the SPC19, plus the various pitstops and what’s new blog posts for each of the products we cover in our monthly update.

Finally, the main inspiration for this monthly update, Jim Naroski’s new in 365 video series seems to have changed – with no more Jim. This change for me is definately for this worst, as expressed in the comments section too by the looks of it. Hopefully its a one time thing, but if not Jim’s personal touch to delivering all the latest 365 news spurs me on to continue my own series.

#bringbackjim

Microsoft 365 update for April 2019

AnthonyLeave a comment

Another bumper post for April, in this months update:

Let’s get started!

SharePoint updates

Files restore for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams

Files restore offers a self-service recover solutionthat allows administrators and site owners to restore files from any point in time during the last 30 days. Look for a new “Restore this library” option within the library settings panel.

Files restore example for SharePoint document libraries
Find out more:

Modern Document Sets

Long awaited modern document sets will update the user interface to bring them inline with modern sharepoint. Document sets allow you to group related documents together using shared metadata. Modern document sets also unlock the same intuitive user actions like drag and drop content, link to content that lives outside the document set, pin files and much, much more.

Modern Document Sets in SharePoint
Find out more:

News Audience Targeting

Audience targeting is a new feature within the news and highlighted content web parts that enables authors and site owners to tag news articles with Azure Active Directory groups to filter content through web parts to people within those groups.

Find out more:

Author reply emails for comments, replies and likes

Now when someone comments on your page or news post, SharePoint notifies you via email. Multiple comments will be batched so that you receive a single email. This feature will start rollout to targeted release in April, with worldwide rollout currently scheduled to be completed in mid-June 2019.

Find out more:

Connected web parts for SharePoint

Coming soon are three new connected web parts for SharePoint Online that allow you to display data from list and library web parts. With the List Properties, File Viewer and Embed web parts you can now connect to a data source and interact with lists and libraries in new ways.

Find out more:

Multi-Geo in SharePoint Online and Office 365 Groups

SharePoint Online and Office 365 Groups now joins Exchange Online and OneDrive in having the ability to enable where SharePoint sites and their content is stored.

Multi-Geo in SharePoint and Office 365 Groups enables global businesses to control the country or region where shared resources like SharePoint Team Sites, Office 365 Groups content (associated SharePoint Sites and Groups mailboxes) are stored at-rest.

Introducing Office 365 Multi-Geo
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Autodesk AutoCAD integration for SharePoint and OneDrive

New integrations with Autodesk connect OneDrive and SharePoint to the drafting tools available through AutoCAD. As you work with DWG files across these applications, you can open and edit them in the AutoCAD desktop application, the AutoCAD mobile app, and the new AutoCAD web app.

Find out more:

You can now use larger, more flexible image types to upload your company logo in the Office 365 navigation bar. You will be able to upload a custom logo of any file size/ format via a URL in order to improve the clarity of the logo image that your users see.

Find out more:

Office 365 Group card enhancements

Improvements to the Office 365 group “hover cards” so that you can act on the group within the context of what you’re doing, rather than going to a separate page. You can search through all group members, renew the group per any set expiry, and approve pending members.

Office 365 Group card enhancements
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Microsoft Teams updates

Praise badges

Praise in Microsoft Teams is the new way to show your appreciation and encourage each other at work. Send in a 1:1 chat or post it to a channel for the entire team.

Find out more:

Teams PowerShell module GA

The Teams PowerShell module is now generally available. This PowerShell module allows you to manage the lifecycle of teams within your organisation.

Find out more:

Request to add on behalf of

You can now request on behalf of someone else to join a private team. Teams can be created as either private, where admins control membership, or public, where anyone in the organization is welcome to join.

Increased member limits

Organisation wide teams now have higher size limits, so they can have up to 5000 members in a team. Global administrators can easily create a public team that pulls in every user in the organisation and keeps the membership up to date with Active Directory as users join and leave.

Org-wide teams now have higher size limits

Show/ hide teams

It’s now much easier to keep your teams list tidy. What used to be Favorite and Remove from favorites is now Show and Hide. Choose which teams and channels you want to show in your teams list and hide the rest. You’ll still get notified when @mentioned, they just won’t clutter your teams list.

Hiding a team from a list view
Find out more:

OneDrive updates

Golden folder icon design

OneDrive is introducing golden folders with subtle, yet noticeable clues emblazoned on the icon to remind you of the contents and sharing status of each folder. Golden folders are being rolled out across mobile and web in OneDrive, SharePoint and connected experiences in other apps.

Golden folders in OneDrive and the OneDrive mobile app
Find out more:

OneDrive sync client improvements

The OneDrive sync client lets you can access and share all your files directly from your desktop in Windows File Explore or macOS Finder. Some new updates for the sync client include:

  • Self-help option: “Illegal files names not syncing” 
    A new in-app resolution to sync errors – like when using an Asterix “*” symbol or any file name starting with “~$” – to help avert and solve naming blockers, to then rename the file and continue with upload
  • Request assistance
    Look for a new “Get Help” option in the OneDrive activity center on your desktop. This enables people to initiate a support ticket.
  • Prompt for pending uploads
    And one last “wait, before you go” feature… the OneDrive sync client will also notify users when they have pending uploads when the computer is shutting down or going into standby
Find out more:

Block download option for specific people sharing link

You are now able to use the “Block download” functionality that allows people to block recipients from downloading, copying and pasting shared content when using the “Specific people” style sharing links.

Find out more:

Office client apps – required document properties updates

Users will now be able to save Office files with missing required properties. This change only applies to the Office files synced by the OneDrive sync client. Additionally, users can add, or update required properties for a document by navigating to the file in the SharePoint document library and entering the appropriate value.

Find out more:

Other, related updates

Yammer conversations & highlights web part

The Yammer conversations wep part enables you to integrate topics, groups or users into SharePoint. This combines the social nature of learning across organizations with the content and knowledge management powers of SharePoint.

The Yammer Highlights web part, provides a quick overview of active conversations and a targeted portal to specific groups or conversations in Yammer.

Microsoft Search in Bing Preview includes Yammer conversations ​

Yammer conversations or conversations between co-workers will now start appearing Microsoft Search in Bing. Microsoft Search will only return information and files that you have permission to see.

Find out more:

New icons in Office 365 apps

Microsoft have updated their available icon set, with nearly 350 new icons being added to choose from. You are able to rotate, resize, and recolor the icons without any loss in the quality of the image. You can also separate the icon into its components and use only the pieces you want.

Find out more:

Power BI web by example connector

The Power BI web by example connector allows customers to scrape data from HTML pages. It supports ingesting any data element on the page, beyond just HTML tables. You can now automatically suggest Power BI tables based on HTML element repetition patterns.

Find out more:

Custom assessments in Compliance Manager

Compliance Manager now allows you to create custom risk assessments of any application used in your organization. This customised assessments capability enables IT to import their own security and compliance controls into Compliance Manager, including those for corporate policy, local law, and industrial standards.

Find out more:

Security Policy Advisor

Office Security Policy Advisor is a new intelligent service, now available in preview, that uses behavior-based analysis to help IT admins to quantify the risks and benefits of applying a tailored policy, and monitor policy health over time, for their Office clients.

Admins can now deploy policies with a single click and easily update, or even roll back, policies.

Find out more:

Links and resources

Microsoft 365 blog – New in Microsoft 365 – April 2019
New in Microsoft 365 video – April 2019
SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop – April 2019
What’s new in Teams – April 2019
OneDrive Roadmap Roundup – April 2019