The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: Immersive reader, audience targeting for events, site templates, iPad support for Lists, InTune policies for Lists, visualize Lists with Power BI

Immersive reader for SharePoint pages and news posts

Immersive Reader, currently built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft apps, will soon be available for SharePoint pages and news posts.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70737

Audience Targeting for Events Web Part

You now have the ability to target specific audiences per event within the SharePoint Events Web Part. Meaning you can target specific events to different audiences – aligning with in-place options to personalize your intranet experience.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70815
• Use the events web part

SharePoint site templates

This new SharePoint release of scenario-based site templates will help you expand what’s possible with content, pages, and web parts while helping you quickly get started building your own site. Each template contains pre-populated content and web parts that are fully customizable to meet the needs of your organization.

NOTE: This currently does not include a way to save a customised site as a template, to create custom site templates (aka site designs, or site scripts click here).

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70574
• Use SharePoint’s new site templates today!
• Customise SharePoint site templates
• SharePoint site design and site script overview

iPad support for Microsoft Lists for iOS

Microsoft have announced Lists for iOS now supports iPad. AKA, no more Lists at 2x. You’ll get a beautiful native experience to track, manage and share your information.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70748
• iPad support now available in Microsoft Lists for iOS

Manage Microsoft Lists for iOS using InTune app protection policies (APP)

The Microsoft Lists iOS app is now configurable as a public app in Intune app protection policy (APP) through the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center.  This allows app to be targeted to ensure that the data accessed is protected by app protection policies.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70752
• How to create and assign app protection policies
• How to enable Intune app protection policies (APP) with Microsoft Lists

Visualize List data with Power BI

Microsoft have announced the arrival of a new guided experience in Lists that will make it easy to create business intelligence reports in Power BI using your list data as your source.

• NOTE: Users with a Microsoft 365 E5 license or Power BI Pro license will have access to the full report authoring and viewing experience.
• Users without either of those licenses will be prompted by Power BI to sign up for a 60-day free trial of Power BI Pro when they attempt to save a new report or edit or view an existing report. Users with a Power BI free license may only visualize their list data but cannot publish nor view reports.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 72175
• View and manage Power BI user licenses
• Get started creating in the Power BI service
• Quickly create reports in the Power BI service
• Enable or disable self-service sign-up and purchasing

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Teams

In Teams: Breakout room retention/ participant reassignment, invite-only meeting options, Polls updates, creation/ expiration policies, audio permissions, external presenter in Live Events, custom backgrounds in iOS, casting, product feedback, native notifications, app updates, preconfigured website tab, app customisation, new reports, frontline worker updates

In Teams (Government): Meeting options updates, audio permissions, Planner labels, update Teams Rooms app, out of office

Breakout room retention/ participant reassignment

Organizers can now reassign participants even when rooms are opened. Previously, you could only reassign when rooms were closed. Breakout room assignments also now persist over multiple sessions. These features are useful for efficiently managing discussions and ensuring the right participants are in each breakout.

Find out more:

• Roadmap IID: 81372
• Use breakout rooms in Teams meetings

Invite-only meeting options

A new meeting setting is now available in Teams meeting options that automatically sends those who were not originally invited by the organizer to the lobby. For example, if an invitee forwards a meeting invitation to a colleague, when that person tries to join, they’ll be directed to wait in the lobby until the host selects to admit them. 

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 68730
• Change participant settings for a Teams meeting

Polls in Teams meetings has advanced capabilities for expanded options, intelligent suggestions and analytics

Attendees and guest attendees on mobile devices can now participate in Polls in Teams meetings. Also, discover intelligent poll suggestions to prepare relevant poll questions quickly and analyze responses to take swift action post-meeting.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 79448
• Discover intelligence, insights, and more for Polls in Microsoft Teams Meetings

Enhanced meeting creation and expiration policies

For added security and compliance, Teams meetings and join links are disabled for users whose scheduling permissions have been revoked. Previously, a user could continue to reuse their old meeting join links after their scheduling capabilities have been disabled. This policy update automatically expires those old meeting links so they can’t be reused.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 66921
• Team expiration and renewal in Microsoft Teams

Improvements to audio permissions settings for attendees

As a meeting presenter and organizer, you can now manage attendee audio permissions with greater flexibility. Attendees no longer need to request to speak for you to allow them to unmute, and you also have the ability to prevent individual attendees from unmuting.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 80261
• Manage attendee audio permissions in Teams meetings

External presenter support for Live Events

For Live Events created in Teams, you can allow anonymous users who do not have an Microsoft Service Account (MSA) or Azure Active Directory (AAD) identity to be a presenter. You can now also manage a live event as a Producer in a separate Teams window, so you can simultaneously support the event, while still collaborating with others on Teams.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70599
• Allow anonymous presenters in a live meeting

Custom Backgrounds on iOS for Teams meetings

Custom backgrounds are now available on iOS. Select from Microsoft provided backgrounds or one of your own directly from your iOS mobile device. Now you can make your video meetings more fun and personal while you’re on the go.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 82234
• Change your background for a Teams meeting

Teams casting from Android and iOS Teams App

For quick ad-hoc meetings that don’t require a formal scheduled meeting, users can leverage Teams casting to wirelessly connect to a Teams Room and display content from their mobile device. Users can broadcast their screen and share content stored locally on their device or accessible via Teams or OneDrive.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70564
• Cast content from a mobile device to a Microsoft Teams Room

Product feedback tool in Microsoft Teams

Teams automatically reviews the feedback that you submit, and provide help documentation related to the topic, if available. Additionally, once enabled by Teams administrator, you have the option to share your email address when submitting feedback in Teams, to allow for Microsoft to follow-up with you.

Windows 10 native notifications in Teams

You can now choose the style of your notifications: built-in Teams or Windows native notifications. The latter brings a suite of benefits, like respecting focus assist mode which enables you to avoid distracting notifications when you need to focus, and integrating with Windows 10 action center to helps you review your notifications in one place. If you have a Windows build 10.0.17763.288 or higher, you can make this change in Teams notifications settings.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 66742
• Now in public preview: Windows 10 native notifications

Update to Microsoft Teams mobile app on Android and iOS

Visual updates: The Teams mobile app has a new visual look and feel that delivers new headers, icons, and styling along with the ability to automatically switch to dark theme when you set your device to dark.

Organize chats in mobile app: In the Teams mobile app, you are now able to pin chats and filter the Chat list. This is great for when you quickly want to get back into important conversations! Pinned chats are also rolling out on Android shortly.

Emoji library and GIFs in mobile app on Android and iOS: In the Teams mobile app, there is an expanded library of emojis, and the ability to trim GIFs directly in the app.

Find out more:

• Download the mobile app for Teams

Preconfigured website tab in Team Templates

As an admin you can now add a URL of your choice to the website tab in a team template. When the end-user creates a team using the pre-built template, it will include the preset website you specified, making it easier to distribute standardized content to the entire organization.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70794
• Create a custom team template in Microsoft Teams

App customization and branding

App developers are able to specify if they want to provide the option for their customers to customize the app. If the developers provide this option, admins are able to customize app properties like app name, descriptions, icons and more to deliver a branded app experience right within Teams.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70769
• Create a custom team template in Microsoft Teams

New usage reports

Teams user usage report: The Teams user usage report provides you a view into your Teams activities and usage. You can generate insights and metrics on a per-team and cross-team basis to understand your interaction with peers and across the organization. 

Anonymous user usage reports: As a Teams admin you have the option to anonymize user data, protecting user privacy while viewing, downloading, sharing, and accessing the Teams usage report data. Once enabled, personally identifiable information like username, email addresses, and Active Directory IDs are anonymized.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70773, 70774
• Microsoft Teams usage report

Updates for frontline workers

Teams (Government)

Manage meeting options
Organizers are now able to modify the user experience across desktop, mobile, and web by using the new Meeting Options to customize their meeting safety and security settings. Meeting Options can be accessed in the Teams meeting invitation details in Outlook and Teams Calendar. Available in GCC-High.

Invite-only meeting options
A new meeting setting is now available in Teams meeting options that automatically sends those who were not originally invited by the organizer to the lobby. For example, if an invitee forwards a meeting invitation to a colleague, when that person tries to join, they’ll be directed to wait in the lobby until the host selects to admit them. This helps prevent those uninvited from joining the meeting. Available in GCC. Learn more

Enhanced meeting creation and expiration policies
For added security and compliance, Teams meetings and join links are disabled for users whose scheduling permissions have been revoked. Previously, a user could continue to reuse their old meeting join links after their scheduling capabilities have been disabled. This policy update automatically expires those old meeting links so they can’t be reused. Available in GCC.

Improvements to audio permissions settings for attendees
Meeting presenters and organizers can now manage attendee audio permissions with greater flexibility. Attendees no longer must request to speak for the organizer or presenters to allow them to unmute, and presenters and organizers can prevent individual attendees from unmuting instead of all attendees at once. Available in GCC. Learn more

More labels in Planner
Labels are a quick, visual way to categorize similar tasks in Planner and we’ve increased the number of labels to help you get even more organized. You can now add up to 25 labels in all different colors to your tasks in Planner web, mobile, and in Microsoft Teams. Available in GCC, GCC-High and DoD. Available for GCC, GCC-High and DoD. Learn more

New way to update the Teams Rooms app
You can now use Teams meetings and calling functionality in your Teams Rooms on Windows. IT Admins can easily perform a manual update. Simply download and run an offline app update PowerShell script to your Teams Rooms devices. Follow the steps in this article to get started. Available in GCC-High.

Out of Office Setting
Let others know that you are not available by scheduling your Out of Office in Teams. During this time, your presence status changes to “Out of Office” and your status message is displayed when someone reaches out to you via chat. Additionally, your Outlook calendar and automatic replies are updated accordingly. Available for GCC.

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OneDrive

In OneDrive: PDF Bookmarks on Android, Page rotation for PDF viewing on iOS and Android, 64-bit OneDrive, Dialog on First-Time deletion of File(s)

Bookmarks for PDF viewing on Android

etting back to your important PDFs in your mobile devices just got easier. Use the new bookmark option in OneDrive for Android to add bookmarks to your important content so you can pick up where you left off. 

Now when you open a PDF on your Android device you would be able to add or remove bookmarks by  tapping the bookmark icon (on the top of your screen)  or by long-pressing anywhere on the page you want to tag. 

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70547
• Mark up a PDF in OneDrive for Android

Page rotation for PDF viewing on iOS and Android

You can now leverage the page rotation tool to rotate one page or multiple pages so you don’t have to switch your device’s screen orientation when reading a document in OneDrive.   

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID :  68855, 70548
• Mark up a PDF in OneDrive for Android

64-bit OneDrive (Public Preview)

64-bit OneDrive sync client for Windows is now available as a public preview! You can now for use with OneDrive work, school, and home accounts.  

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID:  70694
• OneDrive sync 64-bit for Windows now in public preview
• Download the 64-bit version

Dialog on First-Time deletion of File(s)

When a user deletes a file(s) for the first time, they will be shown a dialog to educate them that their file is in the OneDrive recycle bin where it can be restored. This will show up on subsequent deletes until the user checks the box stating they do not wish to see it again. Admins can turn off this notification all together with a group policy setting.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70702

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Azure File Storage/ Excel Online (Business) Connector upgrade, F&O apps ISV Studio, data source environment variables, code components in Portals, mixed reality components GA, quick actions

Updates to the Azure File Storage and Excel Online (Business) connectors

Microsoft have announced improvements to the Azure File Storage and Excel Online (Business) connectors to make them more useful and robust. Additionally, the features between these two connectors have been re-arranged for greater clarity and ease of use.

Azure File Storage Connector: The Azure File Storage connector allows users to interact with their files in an Azure Storage account. Microsoft have removed the “blob” designation from this connector. This designation blocked Power Apps users from getting at the actions available for the connector. 

Excel Online (Business) Connector: The Excel Online (Business) Connector allows users to work with Excel files in document libraries that are supported by Microsoft Graph (OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Sites, and Office 365 Groups). 

Find out more:

• Updates to the Azure File Storage and Excel Online (Business) connectors

F&O apps now available in ISV Studio

The ISV Studio team have announced the release of F&O application telemetry in ISV Studio! ISV Studio is a technical benefit of the ISV Connect program and is designed to be the platform that allows an ISV to monitor the success of their published apps by providing telemetry into:

• Usage analytics (Monthly/Daily/Weekly active usage)
• Total Installs by Tenant/Date/Geo
• Install Failures (Power Platform/D365 CE only)

Find out more:

• Product Update: F&O apps now available in ISV Studio!
• Microsoft Power Platform ISV Studio

Data source environment variables

Microsoft have announced a vast new set of capabilities that provide enterprise grade application lifecycle management for the data sources that canvas apps and cloud flows connect to. Environment variables are a powerful tool for a variety of ALM scenarios as they allow you to externalize input parameters from the components that use them.

Environment variables are now natively built into authoring experiences across canvas apps and cloud flows as well as solution authoring and solution import experiences

Find out more:

• Announcing data source environment variables
• Environment variables overview
• Announcing the new solution import experience with connections and environment variables

Code components within Power Apps Portals (preview)

Support for code components within Power Apps portals is now available with portals version 9.3.3.x and package version 9.2.2103.x. as these updates are rolling out. In this preview release the feature provides support for Field type of code components allowing fields on portal forms to be replaced with code components.

Find out more:

• Power Apps portals: Start using code components with portals (Preview)
• Power Apps component framework overview
• Starter portal package version 9.2.2103.x

Power Apps Mixed Reality Components General Availability

Microsoft have announced the general availability of mixed reality (MR) features in Power Apps, which include the View in 3D, View in MR, View Shape in MR, and Measure in MR components. You are able to leverage low-code development to drag-and-drop these mixed reality capabilities directly in your apps today from the Media and Mixed Reality sections of the insert pane.

Find out more:

• Power Apps Mixed Reality Components General Availability
• Add mixed reality components to your canvas app

Quick actions are now customizable in model-driven Power Apps

Quick actions are commands that help you complete your task without losing context of your work. New capabilities released around search, starting with a search bar in the front and center of model-driven Power Apps. This search bar is powered by Dataverse relevance search, that shows results as you type and has robust intelligence built in.

For usability reasons, quick actions are capped at FIVE commands per table. Quick actions show up only in the context of search – alongside suggestions and in results page on the primary column.

Find out more:

• Search quick actions are now customizable in model-driven Power Apps
• New search experience and quick actions in Power Apps
• Introducing the new search experience in model-driven Power Apps
• Search for tables and rows by using relevance search

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Dataverse integration, Direct purchase RPA, trigger flows from Power BI, AI Builder update, Power Automate Desktop update, 11 new connectors, process advisor updates

Changes to Power Automate’s native integration with Microsoft Dataverse

The Common Data Service (current environment) connector, featuring a native integration between Power Automate and Dataverse, will now be known as Microsoft Dataverse, and appear with the new icon and color shade as shown below. Now we know that old habits die hard – and that’s why you will still be able to search using the old name for a while. Lastly, the names of triggers and actions, and their options and descriptions will be updated to match the revised terminology.

Find out more:

• Announcing changes to Power Automate’s native integration with Microsoft Dataverse
• Create an automated flow by using Microsoft Dataverse connector

Direct purchase on Power Automate RPA attended is now available

You can now directly purchase the Power Automate per user plan with attended RPA for yourself, or even for all members in your team without need to be an M365 tenant/org admin! Anyone who has a valid organization email account is now able to purchase RPA directly.

Find out more:

• Direct purchase on Power Automate RPA attended is now available

Trigger flows from Power BI reports

There is now a new way in which you can combine Power BI data and flows by allowing users to manually trigger a flow from any Power BI report. This new capability uses the Power Automate visual in Power BI and a new “Power BI button clicked” trigger on the Power BI connector.

Find out more:

• Trigger flows from Power BI reports
• Power Automate custom visual for Power BI

AI Builder April 2021 update

Several new additions have been announced for Microsoft AI Builder which improve document automation capabilities and extend Microsoft’s footprint across products and geographies.

• Improved table extraction in form processing
• Support of table data in document automation
• Identity document reader public preview release
• AI Builder in Teams
• Availability in India, France, Germany, and UAE

Find out more:

• AI Builder April 2021 update

Power Automate Desktop April 2021 update

Several new features and updates are included in the April 2021 update for Power Automate Desktop:

• Refresh button is available in console
• Save as new flow functionality is available in the flow designer
• The action copying mechanism has been improved
• Desktop recorder now supports image-based recording
• Improved interaction with Java-based apps and applets

Find out more:

• Power Automate Desktop April 2021 update

11 new connectors released

11 new connectors have been released for Power Automate, offering connectivity to services that offer company financial data insights, IoT devices, and task management – taking the total number of connectors available on the platform to near 500.

Find out more:

• 11 More Connectors Released in March 2021!

Process advisor updates

Several enhancements to Process advisor in March 2021 to improve process creation including a guided first run experience, recording improvements, manage activity names plus more.

Find out more:

• Process advisor updates in March 2021

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Power BI

In Power BI: On-premises data gateway, April 2021 feature summary, Charticulator visual, object-level security, new sharing experience, Dataflows update, Power BI Premium per user GA

On-premises data gateway April 2021

Microsoft have announced the April update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.79.6). This release includes:

• Test single sign-on (SSO) configuration
• GA -SSO for Refresh and DirectQuery
• PowerShell enhancements
• Compatible with the April PBI desktop

Find out more:

• On-premises data gateway April 2021 update is now available

Power BI April 2021 Feature Summary

In this month’s Power BI feature summary there are updates for the preview Power Automate visual, previews for Small Multiples and DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services are getting some new features plus lots more!

Find out more:

• Power BI April 2021 Feature Summary

Charticulator visual (Public Preview)

Microsoft have announced a new custom visual in AppSource: the Microsoft Charticulator visual. Previously to use Charticulator, a user would flip between the web app at charticulator.com and Power BI (PBI). Now, users can create a wide range of custom chart designs right within PBI using our brand-new Microsoft Charticulator custom visual.

Find out more:

• Announcing the new Charticulator visual (Public Preview)

Object-Level Security (OLS) is now generally available in Power BI Premium and Pro

Object-level security (OLS) enables model authors to secure sensitive tables or columns from report viewers– sensitive data, for example includes personally identifiable information (PII). This added layer of security prevents users without the appropriate access levels from discovering business critical or sensitive personal information. 

Find out more:

• Object-Level Security (OLS) is now generally available in Power BI Premium and Pro!

New sharing experience for Power BI reports

Sharing reports in Power BI will be as easy and familiar as sharing in Office. Microsoft are introducing a new sharing capability in Power BI that will allow reports to be shared via links in addition to direct access sharing.

Find out more:

• New sharing experience coming soon!

What’s new in Dataflows April 2021

Several new features have been announced in Dataflows allowing users to more seamlessly ingest, prepare, and refresh data that can be widely reused by others across the Power Platform and Azure.

Find out more:

• What’s New In Dataflows – April 2021

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The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: App bar, focus mode, events web part, page analytics, lists new integrate menu, improved person column, migrate content from Box

SharePoint app bar

Modern SharePoint communication and team sites are beginning to feature the SharePoint app bar which provides quick access to customizable global navigation as well as other intranet resources – all accessible for users wherever they might be in SharePoint.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70576
• Introduction to the SharePoint app bar
• Use the SharePoint app bar

Focus mode for modern SharePoint pages

Focus mode enables SharePoint page authors and viewers to focus on a greater amount of page content by hiding the site header, site navigation, and global navigation bar with one click. Another click brings back all when you ready to un-focus and move on.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70800

Images in the SharePoint Events web part

SharePoint page authors who use the Events web part can enable an image to show per event. The image is derived from the image used in the title area of the Event page.

NOTE: Existing Event web parts will not be updated. However, new web parts added to pages and news will default to show images.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70791

SharePoint page analytics updates

Microsoft are introducing analytics for SharePoint pages and news articles. You’ll be able to see the number of viewers, in addition to seeing information about how users interact with your page or news.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70635
• View usage data for pages and news

New Integrate drop-down menu in Microsoft Lists

Microsoft are introducing a new top-level menu item labeled Integrate. This is the home for features that help extend list experiences. The existing command buttons for Power Apps and Power Automate will move into this new top-level drop-down menu.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 64869 

Improved Person columns in Microsoft Lists

Microsoft are improving the behaviour of Person columns in lists by making the suggestions that appear when you type more relevant. When you type in the people picker, the autofill suggestions come from Microsoft Graph.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70751
• What’s new for Microsoft Lists – Microsoft Ignite 2021

Migrate content from Box to Microsoft 365

This new feature gives SharePoint and Microsoft 365 admins streamlined support to migrate content from Box into Microsoft 365; that’s Box files and folders as well as conversion of Box notes into Word documents – to where you choose as destination into OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 68816
• Box to OneDrive and SharePoint Migration Guide

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Teams

In Teams: live transcription, meeting recap, meet now in Outlook, meet now from calendar, mask PTSN numbers, bypass lobby, outgoing video in Safari, Touch Bar controls on Mac, dynamic meetings on Android, Live Event presenter iPad, CVI support, GoLocal Data Center Support, On-Demand Chat Translation Android, Voice-enabled channels, SBA, multi-account settings, 250GB upload support, Viva Connections, Viva Insights

PS support for templates, template policies, new file share exp, add Teams to SharePoint, 10K users in org-wide Team, 25K person Teams, OOO, history menu, queue sent messages, Planner labels, Restrict managed device sign-in, manage Teams displays, simple periodic review, assign policy package, unified creation exp, sensitivity label changes

In Teams (Government): click here for all Teams Gov updates

Live transcription with speaker attribution

Live transcription allows you to follow and review conversations (in English-US) alongside the meeting video or audio in real time. Attendees who joined late, or missed the meeting, can easily catch up by reading what was discussed and searching the transcript by speaker.

NOTE: Tenant admins have to turn on the Allow transcription policy to enable this feature.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 65967
• Live transcription with speaker attribution now available in Teams meetings for English (US)

Meeting recap

Meeting recap helps teams stay on track and keep their work moving forward after the meeting is over. It includes meeting recording, transcript, chat, attached files and more. The recap is shared with participants in the meeting Chat tab and viewable in the Details tab. Those who missed the meeting, joined late, or want to revisit what was discussed, can play the recording, or review the transcripts respectively.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 68729
• How to use Meeting Recap in Microsoft Teams

Meet Now in Outlook client for Windows

You can now start an instant Teams meeting from the Calendar tab in Outlook for Windows by clicking Meet Now. To enable this feature, tenant admins just have to set the Allow Private Meet Now policy option to True in the admin console.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 68838
• Create instant meetings with Meet now

Get a Meet Now meeting link from the Calendar

Users can now copy a Meet Now meeting link from the Calendar and share it out with others without starting the meeting. If you are in an email, chat, or channel conversation and agreed to meet at a certain time, this is an easy way to copy a meeting link and paste it into the conversation.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70602
• Create instant meetings with Meet now

Masking PSTN participant phone numbers

For customers who have Audio Conferencing enabled for their Teams meetings, their tenant administrators now have the ability to define how their participants’ phone numbers appear in the roster view for meetings scheduled within their organization. The options include masked to external users, masked for everyone, or off (visible to everyone). This provides flexibility in securing PSTN participants’ phone numbers.

NOTE: This feature is currently available through PowerShell cmdlet.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 67091

New bypass lobby option

The Teams meeting policy has a setting that allows certain groups of users to bypass the meeting lobby and join the meeting directly. This update includes two additional options: “People in my organization” (which excludes guests) and “People in my organization, trusted organizations, and guests.” This provides another level of security and flexibility to Teams users.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 81376
• Change participant settings for a Teams meeting

Outgoing participant video in meetings in Safari browser

Outgoing video in web meetings is now available to Safari users. Simply click the camera icon to start a sharing your video in the meeting. This requires Safari 14 or higher on MacOS BigSur.

Find out more:

• Meetings and conferencing in Microsoft Teams

Touch Bar meetings controls on Mac

MacBooks with Touch Bars now have Teams Meeting controls that quickly allow users to access controls without clicking into the window. Users can open the ‘view participants’ panel, open meeting chat, use raise hand, enable video, mute/unmute, open shared tray, and leave the meeting from one place.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 68906

Dynamic meeting experiences on Android

New meeting experiences on Android devices enables participants to view content, speakers, and attendees all on one screen. Attendees are now able to see up to 20 participants on mobile devices and up to 30 participants on tablets. In addition, attendees are able to view shared content and a spotlighted participant simultaneously, and no longer have to choose between content being presented or pinned speakers.

Find out more:

• What’s New in Microsoft Teams | November 2020

Live Event presenter for iPad

Sales teams, executives, and other iPad users now have the ability to present live in Teams Live Events. Just open the Teams for iPad app, join the Live Event as Presenter and broadcast your video or screen share to your audience.

Find out more:

• Present in a live event in Teams

Cloud Video Interop (CVI) support for Teams Live Events

Join Teams Live Events on non-native Teams devices via Cloud Video Interop (CVI) with support for Microsoft partner meeting room devices.

Find out more:

• Cloud Video Interop for Microsoft Teams

Teams Live Event GoLocal Data Center Support

Microsoft are now enabling local data centers for Teams Live Events in the following countries: France, Germany, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, and United Arab Emirates. Any user with the eligible SKU and the appropriate IT admin policy is able to schedule a live event.

Find out more:

• Location of data in Microsoft Teams

Voice-enabled channels

Voice-enabled channels allow connecting a call queue to a channel in Microsoft Teams. Users can collaborate and share information within the channel while taking calls in the queue. This feature is ideal for scenarios such an IT help desk or HR hotline. IT admins can quickly connect call queues to specific channels, and team owners can manage the settings.

Find out more:

• Create a call queue

Survivable Branch Appliance

To support the most critical conversations in the event of an outage, a Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) allows users to place and receive PSTN calls even in the event of a network outage. During an outage, the Teams client switches to the SBA automatically and ongoing calls continue without interruptions and no user action is required. Once the Teams client identifies that network connectivity has been restored, normal call functionality is resumed, and any call data records are uploaded to the cloud.

Find out more:

• Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) for Direct Routing

Android On-Demand Chat Translation

Inline message translation helps ensure that every worker in the team has a voice and facilitate global collaboration. With a simple click, people who speak different languages can fluidly communicate with one another by translating posts in channels and chat.

Find out more:

• Translate a message in Teams

Additional settings for multiple Accounts and Organisations

You can now in the Teams desktop client add a personal account, along with one work/school account, change your profile picture, and switch between accounts and orgs through Settings.

Find out more:

• What’s New in Microsoft Teams | February and March 2021

250 GB file size support in Microsoft teams

Microsoft have now increased the upload file size limit for Microsoft Teams from 100 GB to 250 GB. This also applies to all other Microsoft 365, services including SharePoint and OneDrive. You are now able to easily share large files like a 3D model of a new building, a client commercial shot in 8K video, a large dataset for a vaccine trial or research projects or large videos for educational projects.

Find out more:

• Gain more flexibility with 250 GB file size support in Microsoft 365

Viva Connections on Teams desktop

Viva Connections is your gateway to a modern employee experience. It is personalized and appears in the apps and devices your employees already use every day, such as Microsoft Teams. Viva Connections gives people a curated, company-branded experience that brings together relevant news, conversations, and other resources.

Find out more:

• Add Viva Connections for Microsoft Teams desktop

Microsoft Viva Insights

Viva Insights gives individuals, managers, and leaders personalized insights and actionable recommendations that help everyone in an organization thrive. Discoverable directly in the Teams app bar by selecting the ellipsis (…) – Viva Insights makes it seamless for users with Exchange Online mailboxes to strengthen relationships with key people, follow up on to-dos, and protect focus time to work uninterrupted. 

Find out more:

• Personal productivity and wellbeing – what’s next with Microsoft Viva Insights

PowerShell Support for team templates

Admins can now manage team templates at scale with templates cmdlets in PowerShell. With this new set of templates cmdlets, admins are able to get a list of all available templates within their tenant, get details of a particular template, and create, edit, and delete a team template.

Find out more:

• MicrosoftTeamsPowerShell

Manage team templates with template policies

Admins can now choose which team templates are shown to the end user. In the Teams Admin Center, admins can create teams template policies and designate which team templates to hide or show. Once the policy was created, assign users to it so that each user sees only the team templates tailored to their role.

Find out more:

• Manage Teams templates in the admin center

New file sharing experience

Microsoft have streamlined file sharing in Microsoft Teams. You can now create a shareable link for any file stored in Teams and directly set the appropriate permissions. Additionally, you can also set permissions for files stored in SharePoint or OneDrive while composing a private chat or starting a channel conversation.

Find out more:

• Sharing files in Teams

Add Microsoft Teams to SharePoint

Microsoft are making it even easier to bring SharePoint content into Teams, in the same motion of adding Microsoft Teams to your team site, aka #teamify. As you connect SharePoint to Teams, you choose what lists, libraries, and pages you want to bring into Teams as tabs in the new, default General channel.

Find out more:

• Create a Microsoft Team from SharePoint

Up to 10,000 users in an org-wide team

You can now create an org-wide team to promote collaboration and communications across the entire organization. Administrators who manage tenants that have less than or equal to 10,000 members can now create an org-wide team, which automatically syncs all the tenant’s members with the team.

Find out more:

• Create an org-wide team in Microsoft Teams

25,000 person teams

Team membership limit is increasing to 25,000 per individual team. With millions of employees working remotely or in hybrid environments, it’s more important than ever for employees to feel connected. Teams makes it easier to collaborate with others, chat, meet virtually, and integrate your business solutions, all in a single platform. 

Find out more:

• Limits and specifications for Microsoft Teams

Out of Office

Schedule an Out of Office message in Teams. This helps set expectations with your colleagues, letting them know that you won’t be able to respond during this time and allows you to take the time off. During this time, your presence status is changed to “Out of Office” and your status message is displayed when someone reaches out to you via chat. Additionally, your Outlook calendar and automatic replies are updated accordingly.

Find out more:

• What’s New in Microsoft Teams | February and March 2021

History Menu

The History Menu for Teams desktop clients displays your recently visited locations when hovering over the backward and forward navigation options. Using the menu you can quickly jump back to previous locations, making it much easier to quickly get back to nested locations like tabs or documents. The menu is also accessible via keyboard shortcut.

Find out more:

• Use History to revisit where you’ve been in Teams

Queue sent messages when offline

When attempting to send messages while offline, Teams queues messages and send these once a network connection is re-established. This help ensure that your messages get to your recipients. If the message is in an unsent state for more than 24 hours, the message fails, and the user is prompted to resend or delete the message.

Find out more:

• Teams Desktop and Browser Clients Get Offline Sending Capability

More labels in Microsoft Planner

Labels are a quick, visual way to categorize similar tasks in Planner and we’ve increased the number of labels to help you get even more organized. You can now add up to 25 labels in all different colors to your tasks in Planner in Microsoft Teams and Planner across web and mobile.

Find out more:

• Add up to 25 embedded, editable labels to your tasks

Restricting Windows and Mac managed device sign-in to specific tenants

You are now able to restrict Teams sign-in for Windows and Mac managed devices to ensure that employees cannot sign-in to another organization’s tenant using the other tenant’s credentials from the device they are authorized to use for work. This policy can also be used to configure access to personal accounts.

Find out more:

• Remote provisioning and sign in for Teams Android devices

Manage Teams displays in Team Admin Center

Microsoft are adding one more device category, the Teams Display, to the device portfolio that can be now managed within Teams Admin Center. This allows IT admins to simplify, customize, and automate Teams panel devices as well.

Find out more:

• Manage your devices in Microsoft Teams

Simple Periodic review for guest users

Microsoft have added scheduled access reviews for guests across all Teams and Groups by default. The system automatically schedules periodic guest access reviews across Teams, delivering better identity security hygiene.

Find out more:

• Access Reviews for guests in all Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups is now in public preview

Assign policy package to a group

Admins can now can easily assign a policy package to a group such as an entire retail workforce. This helps making your work more efficient in a simple friendly step.

Find out more:

• Custom policy packages

Unifying the experiences of creating teams

Microsoft have aligned the experience of creating a team via the Teams Admin Center to the experience of creating a team in the Teams client, both on the desktop and web, to provide a unified experience when a team is added, regardless of interface.

Find out more:

• Create a team from scratch

Microsoft Information Protection: changes in display of sensitivity labels for Teams

For Teams with hierarchical sensitivity labels applied, the channel headers only displays the parent label instead of showing the child label. For example, with a parent sensitivity label such as Confidential and a child sensitivity label of Finance, Teams only shows “Confidential” in the channel header.

Find out more:

• Use sensitivity labels to protect content in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 groups, and SharePoint sites

Teams (Government)

These features currently available to Microsoft’s commercial customers in multi-tenant cloud environments are now rolling out to our customers in US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and/or United States Department of Defence (DoD).

PowerPoint File Sharing
PowerPoint File Sharing allows you to share a PowerPoint file within a Teams Meeting without having to use Desktop or Window sharing. Available in DOD.

Multi-Window Meetings and Calling experiences
Multi-window experiences are coming to Teams meetings and calling. Users will have the ability to pop out meetings and calling into separate windows to help them optimize their workflow. These experiences can be turned on directly within Teams for PC and Mac clients. Available in GCC-High and DOD as opt-in.

Add a shared calendar to a Teams channel
Create and share a calendar with members of a specific channel. When a channel meeting is created, Teams automatically creates a new post in the channel’s activity feed. Users, who have notifications turned off, will see the event only when they open the channel’s calendar. Once a channel event is posted, you can add it to your personal calendar. This feature provides all members within the channel, except guest users, visibility to upcoming events. Available in GCC and GCC-High

Virtual Breakout Rooms
Breakout rooms allows meeting organizers to divide the meeting into smaller groups to facilitate discussions and brainstorming sessions. A breakout room can be created in a Teams meeting or a Teams channel meeting, allowing greater flexibility on how you want to meet. Organizers can easily jump in between breakout rooms, deliver announcements to all breakout rooms at once, and bring everyone back to the main meeting at any time. Available in GCC and GCC-High.

Outgoing participant video in meetings in Safari browser
Outgoing video in web meetings is now available to Safari users. Simply click the camera icon to start a sharing your video in the meeting. This requires Safari 14 or higher on MacOS BigSur. Available in GCC.

Touch Bar Meetings Controls for Mac
MacBooks with Touch Bars now have Teams Meeting controls that quickly allow users to access controls without clicking into the window. Users can open the view participants panel, open meeting chat, use raise hands, enable video, mute/unmute, open shared tray, and leave the meeting from one place. Available in GCC, GCC-High, and DOD.

Live Reactions in Microsoft Teams meetings
All attendees can now use emojis to react during a meeting. These reactions help promote inclusivity in meetings and keep things upbeat and interactive. Available in GCC.

Get a Meet Now meeting link from the Calendar
Users can now copy a meeting link from the Calendar tab and share it out with others without starting the meeting. If you are in an email, chat, or channel conversation and agreed to meet at a certain time, this is an easy way to copy a meeting link and paste it into the conversation. Available in GCC.

Masking PSTN participant phone numbers
For customers who have Audio Conferencing enabled for their Teams meetings, their tenant administrators now have the ability to define how their participants’ phone numbers appear in the roster view for meetings scheduled within their organization. The options include masked to external users, masked for everyone, or off (visible to everyone). This provides flexibility in securing PSTN participants’ phone numbers. This feature is currently available through PowerShell cmdlet. Available for GCC. Learn more

Enable tenant administrators to configure masking of PSTN participant phone numbers
If a customer has Audio Conferencing enabled for their Teams meetings, their tenant administrators now have the ability to define how their Audio Conferencing participants’ phone numbers appear in the roster view for meetings scheduled within their organization. The options include masked to external users, masked for everyone, or off (visible to everyone). This provides flexibility in securing PSTN participants’ phone numbers. This feature is only available through PowerShell cmdlet at this time. Available in GCC. 

Live Event Presenter for iPad
Live Event Presenters can now join and share content from their iPad. Select ‘Join as presenter’ to start broadcasting content to your audience. Available in GCC.

Set Presence Status duration for Government clouds
Manage your availability with the new status duration option in the presence menu allows users to set a certain status for a specific period of time. For example, they will be able to set their status settings to “Do not disturb” for 30 minutes, one hour, two hours, or the entire day or whole week. 

Offline Presence Status for Government clouds
You can now change your presence to appear offline, signalling to colleagues that you are not available, while having a full access to Teams. The Offline presence status comes in handy for people who want to access Microsoft Teams outside of working hours and users who simply want to focus on their work. 

Location picker support for security groups and distribution lists
Data loss prevention (DLP) for Microsoft Teams will now support security groups and distribution lists as part of the Teams location picker, enabling more granular control of DLP policy scope (i.e. to include/exclude particular departments, business units, geo-specific security groups, etc.). Available in GCC.

Data loss prevention for Microsoft Teams
Data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities in Microsoft 365 government clouds will be extended to include Microsoft Teams chat and channel messages, including private channel messages. If your organization has DLP, you can now define policies that prevent people from sharing sensitive information in a Microsoft Teams channel or chat session. Avaliable in GCC-High.

Channel notification settings updates
Manage your notification settings to get only the notifications you want, and better manage your time. Through the teams and channels list or from the channel header, the users can quickly manage their notification settings by the means of a new fly-out design. Users can turn on all activity on or off with a single click or diving deep into custom to set their preferred permutations. Available in GCC.

Polls in Teams Meetings
Forms polls for Teams meetings provides an easily discoverable and seamless experience that will help you conduct more engaging and productive meetings. With Forms polls, meeting presenters can prepare, launch, and evaluate polls before, during, and after meetings, respectively, all from one place under a tab in the Teams meeting. Avaliable in GCC.

Share from Microsoft Teams to Outlook
Sometimes not all your audience is in Teams. Leverage the information discussed over Teams messages and continue the conversation, without losing context, in email. Send a copy of a Teams chat message or an entire channel conversation into Outlook. The message will include rich text support. Available in GCC.

Meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint
Ability to save Microsoft Teams meeting recordings to OneDrive and SharePoint for improved sharing capabilities, basic governance, automatic retention labels, go local, bring your own keys and, more that comes from recording video files and storing them in SharePoint and OneDrive. Avaliable in GCC, GCC-High and DoD.

Walkie Talkie
Walkie Talkie, a push-to-talk experience that enables clear and secure voice communication over the cloud, enables teams to communicate instantly and always stay on the same page. This native built-in app in Teams turns employee or company-owned Android smartphones and tablets into a walkie-talkie, reducing the number of devices employees must carry and lowering costs for IT. Available in GCC.

Simplified Global Notification Settings
Government users can now configure and customize their notification settings through a newly designed notification settings section. Available in GCC.

Follow or Mute Conversations
This feature will empower users to have finer controls at a conversation thread level within a channel. Available in GCC.

Low data mode
Whether you want to preserve data or are just in a location with a poor or limited network connection, sometimes it’s helpful to limit the amount of data you’re using during a video call. A new low data mode is now available, allowing users to cap the amount of data that will be used during Teams video calls as well as establish different settings based on network availability so that the setting can be turned on always, or only while on cellular networks. Available in GCC, GCC-High, and DOD.

Reporting and analytics in the Teams Admin Center for GCCH
The reporting and analytic section in the Teams Admin Center was added in the left navigation bar, to enable them generating Teams usage reports. Available in GCC-High.

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OneDrive

In OneDrive: dark mode for web, “at a glance” summaries, PDF bookmarks on iOS, DWG file support

Dark mode for web

The OneDrive team are rolling out Dark Mode for OneDrive web, for both commercial and personal accounts. In addition to its aesthetic appeal, Dark Mode also reduces eye strain and improves the battery life of your devices.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 68868

“At a glance” summaries in sharing emails

When users share Word files, the sharing e-mail will now include new information like estimated time to read as well as key points in the document. This will help recipients decide how to engage with the shared document. 

NOTE: Files that have been marked as sensitive by DLP will not include this information. Admins who do not want this new functionality can disable it using the SharePoint Online Management Shell by running “Set-SPOTenant – IncludeAtAGlanceInShareEmails $false”

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 66189

Bookmarks for PDF viewing on iOS

Now when you open a PDF on your iOS device you would be able to add or remove bookmarks by tapping the bookmark icon(on the top-right corner) of the page or by long-pressing anywhere on the page you want to tag. 

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70547

Support for DWG file version in sync

Microsoft are updating OneDrive Sync client to support Version History for DWG files. This change fixes a known issue where Version History is missing for DWG files backed by Sync client.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70575

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Power Fx, print(), portals web API support, code review tool, formula bar changes, ALM updates, XML Diffing, Dataverse custom API GA, visual data prep GA, ISV studio read-only,

Microsoft Power Fx

Microsoft Power Fx is an open source formula language for low code that’s based on Microsoft Excel and is exciting for these three reasons:

• Power Fx is open source. The future of programming is open. Microsoft has embraced the pace of open innovation that has accelerated the adoption of languages like C# and Typescript. With Power Fx, we’re now bringing that same open approach to the low code world. Microsoft will open-source Power Fx, making the language available for open contribution by the broader community on GitHub.
• Power Fx is based on Microsoft Excel. Using formulas that are already familiar to hundreds of millions of users, Power Fx allows a broad range of people to bring skills they already know to low code solutions. Power Fx becomes a common ground for business users and professional developers alike to express logic and solve problems.
• Power Fx is built for low code. Power Fx is already the foundation of the Microsoft Power Apps canvas. We’ll soon extend its use across Power Platform to Microsoft Dataverse, Microsoft Power Automate, Microsoft Power Virtual Agents, and beyond, making it even easier for everyone to get started with low code tools.

Find out more:

• What is Microsoft Power Fx?
• Introducing Microsoft Power Fx: the low-code programming language for everyone

Print() screens in your canvas app

Using the new print function: Print(), you can now open the current screen of your app in the default browser print dialog where the app is played. This function will allow app users to print content to printers in their network or save to PDF through the capabilities of their browser.

Find out more:

• Print function in Power Apps
• Print() screens in your canvas app

Power Apps portals web API support general availability (GA)

The Power Apps teams have announced the General Availability (GA) of Power Apps portals Web API support with portal version 9.3.3.x that was introduced in August 2020 release as a preview feature.

The portals Web API is built for creating a rich user experience inside portal pages. It isn’t optimized for third-party services or application integration. It is recommended to use Microsoft Dataverse OData Web API for third-party services or application integration use cases.

Find out more:

• Announcing General Availability (GA) of Power Apps portals Web API support

Power Apps Code Review Tool

With the Power Apps review tool, you can conduct app reviews more efficiently thanks to a customizable checklist of best practices, a 360 view of your app through app checker results, app settings and a free search code/formula viewer.

Find out more:

• Power Apps Code Review Tool
• Power Apps Source File Pack and Unpack Utility
• Source code files for Canvas apps

Formula Bar changes

After the recent introduction of the “Enhanced Formula Bar” for Canvas apps, many of the experimental features have now been merged into the “standard” formula bar that everyone uses, notably:

• Enter key adds a newline.  Not only does Enter add a newline, but Shift-Enter does as well (the previous way it was done in Power Apps) as well as Alt-Enter (the way Excel does it).
• Tab key adds a tab more often.  In other words, we are less aggressive with suggestions.  Previously, we would show suggestions for a blank line, which would insert the first suggestion on a Tab key press, making it very hard to add a Tab at the front of a line. No longer. 
• There is now a scrollbar.

Find out more:

• Formula Bar Changes

Key ALM updates

The Power Apps team have announced several application and environment lifecycle management improvements during the month of March, including:

• ALM improvements for canvas apps
• ALM improvements for model-driven apps
• Environment operations now supported for canvas apps and flows
• Solution API improvements

Find out more:

• Key ALM updates
• Application lifecycle management (ALM) with Microsoft Power Platform

XML Diffing

The Power Apps team recently added Smart XML Diffing to Power Apps that can be a real time-saver for you and your development team. The tool is a quick gateway to review the changes between component solution layers.

Find out more:

• Power Apps makers fix your solution woes with smart XML Diffing

Microsoft Dataverse Custom API General Availability

The Power Apps team have announced that the Custom API for Microsoft Dataverse is now generally available. Custom API is a new code-first approach that provides developers a better way to create APIs in Dataverse to perform operations on the server.

Find out more:

• Microsoft Dataverse Custom API General Availability
• Create and use Custom APIs

Visual Data Prep general availability (Diagram View in Power Query Online)

Within Power Query, the Power Apps team have reimagined query authoring, and now provide an interface to easily create your queries and visualize your data preparation process using ‘Diagram View’. The Diagram View feature within Power Query Online (e.g. within Power Platform dataflows) is now generally available.

Find out more:

• Announcing Visual Data Prep general availability (Diagram View in Power Query Online)
• Diagram view

ISV Studio: Read-only access

A new feature in ISV Studio now allows publishers to give more users access to ISV Studio without also giving access to the publishing process in Partner Center! Up until now all users accessing ISV studio had to be an owner or contributor of a publisher account in Partner Center to get access. With this new capability, access can now be given directly from ISV Studio for additional users.

Find out more:

• New in ISV Studio: Read-only access!
• Microsoft Power Platform ISV Studio

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Extract identity document information, desktop updates March 2021, 11 new connectors, flow templates for educators, approvals in teams new features, Power Automate Desktop now free

Extract identity document information using AI Builder

The new AI Builder ID reader prebuilt model allows you to extract information (such as first name, last name or date of birth) from passports from all over the world and state-issued driver’s licenses. AI Builder makes it easy to read and export this data in your business processes if you use either passports or driver’s licenses as proof of residency or for hotel check-in purposes, for instance.

Find out more:

• Extract identity document information using AI Builder
• ID reader prebuilt model (preview)

Power Automate Desktop March 2021 updates

March 2021 saw two releases of Power Automate Desktop, new features including enhancements to the flow designer, ‘Get last error’ & ‘Get password from CyberArk’ actions, variables can be used during web/desktop recording plus lots more!

Find out more:

• Power Automate Desktop March 2021 updates

11 new connectors released in February 2021

February brought with it eleven new connectors to Power Automate, offering functionality across security, form management, plus many more! 

Find out more:

• 11 New Connectors Released in February 2021!

Flow templates for educators

Power Automate can be a useful tool that takes everyday tasks and automates them through various “flows.” Like a “flow chart” from which it gets its name, a “flow” is a series of steps that run in order. It can look up rows from a table, send emails, create files, and even play back a set of recorded clicks and keystrokes for desktop automation.

Find out more:

• Flow templates for educators

Additional features for Approvals in Microsoft Teams

The Power Automate team have added lots of new capabilities to make creating, managing and sharing Approvals even easier. Features include:

• Create an Approval template for your organization
• Create an Approval Request from a Template
• New attachment capabilities
• Markdown support

Find out more:

• Approvals in Microsoft Teams updated with more features!

Power Automate Desktop for Windows 10 – no additional cost

Microsoft have announced that desktop automation in Power Automate Desktop will be available to Windows 10 users at no additional cost. Windows 10 users can harness the power of low-code RPA by downloading Power Automate Desktop on March 2, and it will be included in Windows Insider Preview builds in the coming weeks.

Find out more:

• Automate tasks with Power Automate Desktop for Windows 10—no additional cost

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Power BI

In Power BI: On-premises data gateway, April 2021 feature summary, Charticulator visual, object-level security, new sharing experience, Dataflows update, Power BI Premium per user GA

New deployment pipelines capabilities

The Power BI team have announced the release of some new features that allow teams to leverage deployment pipelines including paginated reports management, data protection, deploy and update datasets plus much more.

Deployment pipelines is a Premium feature, now available to all PPU-licensed users, a license that recently became generally available.

Find out more:

• Announcing new deployment pipelines capabilities
• Introduction to deployment pipelines

Power BI inheritance of MIP labels from Azure Synapse Analytics (Public Preview)

The Power BI team have announced a public preview of Power BI MIP label inheritance when import data from Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure SQL Database. This capability will help you to ensure your data remains classified and secured across its data journey from Azure, through Power BI and to Office.

Find out more:

• Announcing Power BI inheritance of MIP labels from Azure Synapse Analytics (Public Preview)
• Sensitivity label inheritance from data sources (preview)

Support of external tools in Power BI Desktop now generally available

Introduced last year, support for external tools within the Power BI Desktop authoring experience is now generally available. External tools integration enables you to leverage a wide range of additional semantic modeling features, DAX query/expression optimization and authoring utilities, and application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities in Power BI Desktop to boost your productivity as a world-class Power BI solution creator. 

Find out more:

• Support of external tools in Power BI Desktop is GA

Power BI March 2021 feature summary

The Power BI March 2021 feature summary see’s several new features released by the Power BI team including DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services, Small Multiples, and the Model View UI.

Find out more:

• Power BI March 2021 Feature Summary

On-premises data gateway March 2021

The Power BI team have announced the March update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.77.7) is now available.

Find out more:

• On-premises data gateway March 2021 update is now available

ODBC support available for Paginated Reports in public preview

Power BI paginated reports will be able to connect through the on-premises data gateway to any data source with an ODBC option in Power BI Report Builder in public preview. This will allow you to migrate your reports from SQL Server Reporting Services to the Power BI service with the availability of a wider range of ODBC data sources.

Find out more:

• ODBC support available for Paginated Reports in public preview
• Power BI gateway and Report Builder support for ODBC data sources (preview)

Power BI as a superset of Azure Analysis Services

Azure Analysis Services (AAS) and SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) are based on mature BI engine technology used by countless enterprises. The same technology is also at the heart of Power BI datasets. The Power BI team have taken great strides to bring AAS capabilities to Power BI.

Find out more:

• Power BI as a superset of Azure Analysis Services

Premium Gen 2 Autoscale Preview

The Power BI team have started to roll out the preview version of the autoscale add-on capability for Gen 2 Premium capacities worldwide, first announced in November 2021. The autoscale add-on preview lets you use as much computing power as you need when you need it, by allowing your capacity to grow its amount of cores when the cores it has can’t supply the needs of your business.

Find out more:

• Announcing Premium Gen 2 Autoscale Preview
• Using Autoscale with Power BI Premium

Premium Gen2 utilization analysis app now available

The Power BI team have released the new self-service app for understanding your utilization of premium gen2 capacities – the most important tool to manage premium gen2 capacities. This app surfaces simple to understand utilization data that will highlight the drivers for your capacity’s utilization, help you plan your capacity needs and respond to changes in demand with confidence.

Find out more:

• Premium Gen2 utilization analysis app now available

VNet Connectivity for PBI Datasets (Public Preview)

The Power BI team have announced the public preview of VNet Connectivity for Power BI datasets. Virtual network (VNet) data gateways (Microsoft-managed) eliminate the overhead of installing, updating, and monitoring on-premises data gateways for connecting to data sources associated to a VNet.

Find out more:

• Announcing VNet Connectivity for PBI Datasets (Public Preview)

Power BI embedded analytics playground (preview)

The new Power BI embedded analytics playground is the home for Power BI embedded analytics, where you can get hands-on coding experience, embed your own reports, and interact with our client APIs to see instant results. In addition, you’ll find there our interactive showcases to get inspiration regarding how you can apply these features in your applications.

Find out more:

• Announcing the new Power BI embedded analytics playground (preview)
• https://playground.powerbi.com/

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The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: OneDrive settings in SharePoint admin center, 250GB uploads, Lists iOS app, List rules, List form customisation

OneDrive settings move to the SharePoint admin center

All OneDrive admin capabilities, including controls for sharing, access, sync, and storage, are now available from within the SharePoint admin center, consolidating admin tools in one place.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 65911
• Bringing OneDrive settings into SharePoint admin center for streamlined, centralized control

File upload limit increases to 250GB

Microsoft have increased the upload file size limit for Microsoft 365 from 100 GB to 250 GB – which includes uploads of files into SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70558
• Gain more flexibility with 250 GB file size support in Microsoft 365

Microsoft Lists app for iOS

Microsoft Lists helps you track information and organize work. List is simple, smart, and flexible, so you can stay on top of what matters most to your team and will now be available on your iPhone and soon your iPad.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID 64161
• Get the Microsoft Lists app for iOS

Microsoft Lists: Rules

Create simple if/then rules, based on changes to list information, to set reminders and send notifications. Users with edit permissions on the list can create and manage rules. Users with read-only permissions can’t create or manage rules.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 64163
• Create a rule for a list
• Configure forms and rules in Microsoft Lists

List form customisation: footer, header & body text with JSON

You can configure the list form in a list or library with a custom header, footer, and the form body with one or more sections with fields in each of those sections. The form configuration does not change the data in the list item or file; it only changes how the form is displayed to users who browse the list or library.

Anyone who can create and manage views in a list can use form configuration to configure the form with header, footer, and body with sections.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 63519
• Configure the list form

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Teams

In Teams: Approvals, Yammer notifications, task publishing, offline autosend, 10K org-wide team members, Meeting chat moderation, shared calendars, Teams UI Design Kit & Library, Education policy wizard

Approvals in Teams

Approvals in Microsoft Teams enables everyone, from frontline workers to corporate headquarters employees, to easily create, manage, and share approvals directly from your hub for teamwork. You can quickly start an approval flow from the same place you send a chat, in a channel conversation, or from the Approvals app itself. 

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 68724
• Approvals in Microsoft Teams, Now Generally Available

Offline autosend

The offline experience for Microsoft Teams chat and channels helps you to continue be productive even without a network connection. Offline autosend identifies when Teams messages are sent or edited while the user is offline. These messages are automatically sent once the device is back online.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 64687
• Change send and receive settings when you work offline

Up to 10,000 users in an org-wide team

Administrators who manage tenants that have less than or equal to 10,000 members can now create an org-wide team, which automatically syncs all the tenant’s members with the team.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 68692
• Create an org-wide team in Microsoft Teams

Meeting chat moderation settings

Meeting organizers can now choose from three chat settings to help create a safe and inclusive meeting environment.

Chats can be “Disabled”, preventing the organizer and participants from using the meeting chat. Alternatively, they can be set to “Only during the meeting”, allowing participants to send messages only during the meeting and the organizer to send messages at any time. Lastly, the default will be set to “Enabled”, allowing chats for all meeting attendees at any time.  

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 67175
• Manage meeting settings in Microsoft Teams

Add a shared calendar to a channel in Teams

You can now create and share a calendar with members of a specific channel. When a channel meeting is created, Teams automatically creates a new post in the channel’s activity feed. If users don’t have notifications turned on, they will see the event when they open the channel’s calendar. Once a channel event is posted, you can add it to your personal calendar.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 68911
• Manage meeting policies in Teams

Yammer community notifications in the Microsoft Teams Activity feed

Microsoft released the Communities app for Microsoft Teams in 2020, bringing all your Yammer communities and conversations into Teams. Now you will receive Yammer notifications in the Teams Activity feed on web, desktop, and mobile.

You can then like, read, respond to the post, and react with our new inclusive reactions – without leaving Teams.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 64015
• Notifications from Yammer communities are now available in Microsoft Teams

Task publishing in Teams

Task publishing is now generally available. Your leadership can create tasks centrally at the corporate level and publish them to targeted frontline locations like stores, clinics, or factories. Tasks can be assigned to all frontline teams or specific locations based on customizable publishing characteristics like size or layout.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 59719
• Push tasks from corporate to frontline workers with task publishing in Teams

New Teams UI Design Kit and UI Library

The new Microsoft Teams UI Kit and Microsoft Teams UI Library helps designers, product managers or developers quickly understand the key design considerations for making quality Teams apps and also simplify the process by providing templates and tools to use.

Find out more:

• Microsoft Teams UI Kit
• Microsoft Teams UI Library
• Guides and tools to design your Microsoft Teams app effectively

Teams Education policy wizard

With the new Microsoft Teams for Education policy wizard, you can easily apply education tailored policies for a safe learning environment. The policy wizard allows you as an IT admin to quickly and easily apply the most relevant set of policies for students at a global (Org-wide default) level and apply a custom policy set to a group of educators and staff tailored to their needs. 

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 70661
• Introducing new policy wizard to easily apply admin policies in Teams for Education

Teams (Government)

The following features have been rolled out this month to customers in US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and/or United States Department of Defense (DoD):

• Together mode: Together mode reimagines meeting experiences to help participants feel closer together even when you are apart. Find out more.
• Multi-Window Chat: You can now pop out individual Teams chat conversations into a separate window. Find out more.
• Multi-Window for Meetings and Calling: Users will have the ability to pop out meetings and calling into separate windows to help them optimize their workflow. Find out more.
• Meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint: You can now save Microsoft Teams meeting recordings to OneDrive and SharePoint. 
• Simplified way to manage your channel notification settings: Through the teams and channels list or from the channel header, the users can quickly manage their channel notification settings by the means of a new fly-out design.
• Targeted communications: Targeted communication allows team members to message everyone in a specific role at the same time by @mentioning the role name in a post by using tags. Find out more.

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OneDrive

In OneDrive: Full fidelity shared libraries, create shared libraries, exclude specific files from sync

Full fidelity shared libraries in OneDrive web

Not only can you sync these shared libraries from SharePoint and Microsoft Teams to your PC or Mac using OneDrive, you can now view shared libraries with full fidelity from within the OneDrive on the web. This means you can create new documents, pin important ones to the top, add shortcuts to your OneDrive, create views, manage metadata, share and more. 

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 49093
• Find your SharePoint and Teams files in OneDrive

Create shared library in OneDrive web

It’s now easier and simpler to create new shared libraries from OneDrive on the web. The new streamlined experience backed by an Office 365 group, allowing you to specify the people you want to share with – and the new shared library appears immediately as a new content collaboration space for your team files.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 67163
• Create a new shared library from OneDrive

Exclude specific files from sync

OneDrive admins can now specify a file name or file extension you’d like to exclude from the OneDrive sync at the device level. This setting lets you prevent the OneDrive sync app (OneDrive.exe) from uploading specific files to OneDrive or SharePoint.  No errors appear for the skipped files, and the files remain in the local OneDrive folder.

So now as a part of “Known Folder Move” if you need to move a Desktop folder which might consist multiple shortcut files, just add .lnk files to the list of the excluded files and prevent them from syncing. End users will be notified about the exclusion in the activity center and will be able to recognize these files with “do not enter” status in the File Explorer.

NOTE: You can find the new setting in the admx/adml files that ship with OneDrive version 20.201.

Find out more:

• Roadmap ID: 66188
• Exclude specific kinds of files from being uploaded

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Intelligence in relevance search, Geospatial features GA, source code files, Innovation Backlog, model-driven apps push notifications, Monitor GA, share Dataverse for Teams apps more broadly, simple image control, new model-driven app controls

Intelligence in relevance search

Relevance search is becoming more intelligent through the infusion of machine learning. Moving forward, relevance search results will improve over time, thus making it easier to find the data you’re looking for.

Some of the new capabilties include:

• Spelling check
• Recognizing common abbreviations and acronyms
• Better understanding through common knowledge & synonyms

Find out more:

• Introducing intelligence in relevance search
• Using relevance search to search for rows

General Availability of Geospatial Features in Power Apps

The Power Apps team have announce the general availability of geospatial features in Power Apps, which include both the Address Input and the Interactive Map Component. Geospatial features empower app makers to introduce location-based capabilities into their apps to visualize and update geospatial data using tools they are already familiar with.

Find out more:

• Announcing the General Availability of Geospatial Features in Power Apps
• Add geospatial components to your app

Source code files for Canvas apps

The Power Apps team have announced the experimental release of source code files for Canvas apps. Source code of a Canvas app to be effectively managed in GitHub or Azure DevOps.  Diffs, pull requests, and comments can be based on lines of formula text rather than .msapp blob files.

Find out more:

• Source code files for Canvas apps

Innovation Backlog

Innovation Backlog is a new app that’s part of the Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit that gives your business users a place to record and prioritize their wish list of digital innovations. Your teams can use this app to submit ideas for apps and flows and describe pain points with the current process. 

Find out more:

• Use the Innovation Backlog to manage app and flow ideas
• Set up Innovation Backlog components

Model-driven app push notifications

You can now send push notifications to model-driven apps using Power Automate! With the updated Power Apps Notifications connector, you can direct users straight to a specified page or section of your app – like the relevant entity view or form.

Find out more:

• Now available: model-driven app push notifications
• Create push notifications for the Power Apps mobile app

Monitor in Power Apps now generally available

Monitor enables Power Apps makers to start viewing a stream of events from a user’s session to diagnose and troubleshoot app behaviour during development in Power Apps or to monitor published apps during runtime.

Now generally available (GA), the Power Apps team have introduced a new collaborative troubleshooting capability “Connect User” in Monitor to better facilitate team collaboration and troubleshooting.

Find out more:

• Announcing the general availability of Monitor in Power Apps
• Monitor overview

Broad distribution apps within Dataverse for Teams

Previously, apps built on Dataverse for Teams could only be used by other members within a team. The Power Apps team are introducing broad distribution apps within Dataverse for Teams which allows you to take an app that was built within a Teams team and share it with others inside of your company.

This makes it possible for a centralized development team to build an app on top of Dataverse for Teams and then share it with a bunch of users who don’t belong to the original development team.

Find out more:

• You can now share Dataverse for Teams apps beyond a team
• Share broad distribution apps with colleagues

Simple Image control for model-driven apps

The simple image control for model-driven apps consists of a file picker button, thumbnail along with open and delete buttons.  The open button will retrieve the full photo in a new browser tab. This experience simplifies the UI for users and saves additional overhead for displaying the larger images within the form.

Also included as part of the simple image control is the preview for our image annotation control, which allows for images to be added to a form and then the ability for them to be marked up with any additional information.

Find out more:

• Simple Image control for model driven apps
• Preview release of File and Image (with annotations) support in UCI Model Driven web applications

New Toggle & Calendar model-driven apps controls + deprecation of old controls

Two new controls are coming to model-driven apps in Power Apps, plus some older controls are being depreciated. Firstly, the new Toggle control will replace the current Flip Switch control, with many of the properties being the same as the Flip Switch, except for additional support for nulls  “—”.

The new Calendar control V2 brings a much needed refresh to UCI vs the existing calendar (Calendar Control V1). The new calendar control is also accessible, mobile and allows for items to be created directly from the control.

As well as the depreciation of the Flip Switch and Calendar Control (V1), the Power Apps team will also be deprecating some gauge controls, Linear Slider, Radio Knob, Arc Knob, Linear Gauge; along with the Website Preview control and the MultiSelectPicklistControl (v1).

Find out more:

• New Model Driven Apps controls, deprecation of old controls

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Desktop update Jan 21, in-product help, 11 new connectors, import from GitHub

Power Automate Desktop January 2021 update

The January 2021 Power Automate Desktop update has been released with several new features and updates added, including:

• Variable value viewers available in the flow designer
• Connection strings can now be built via Data Link Properties in SQL actions
• Several performance improvements in Power Automate Desktop
• Internet Explorer automation does not require disabling Protected Mode

Find out more:

• Power Automate Desktop January 2021 update
• Introduction to desktop flows

In product help for Power Automate

The Power Automate team have announced the availability of a new Power Virtual Agents-based chatbot and contextual help while building flows. A new set of documents by curating customer support asks and community asks to help you learn how to automate with top connectors in Power Automate has been launched that are accessible whilst building flows.

The team have also launched an assistant for Power Automate to aid in authoring workflows in the form of a Power Virtual Agent bot (PVA bot) that provides the next level of assistance for customers in a question/answer interaction format. 

Find out more:

• Discover, learn and create flows using in product help!
• Get contextual help with flows from the Power Virtual Agents bot

11 new connectors for Power Automate

December 2020 saw the addition of 11 new connectors in Power Automatem including:

• Adobe PDF tools – The Adobe PDF Tools Connector brings the power of Acrobat into automated document workflows without writing any code.
• Africa’s Talking Voice – Africa’s Talking Voice is a platform that allows developers to build scalable, dynamic, fully-featured voice applications that reside entirely in the cloud.
• AgilePoint NX – The AgilePoint NX connector opens up two-way communication between Power Automate and the AgilePoint digital process automation platform.
• Bitvore Cellenus – Bitvore Cellenus is a groundbreaking AI-powered platform that delivers leading indicators of business performance for companies, industries, markets and municipal obligors to the Financial Services industry. 
• Boomapp connect – Boomerang provides fully automated communication workflows seamlessly through boomapp connect, allowing intelligent messaging on the Microsoft Power Platform, without the end user having to change their behaviour.
• Cloud BOT – Cloud BOT is a cloud RPA that makes the web automation robot possible with no code. This connector allows you to pass data to the robot, or return data after the robot finished.
• Expensya – Expensya is a next-generation spend management service for B2B customers, offering the most advanced OCR and Approval Workflows. 
• Kanbanize – Kanbanize helps managers gain visibility across all projects, connects planning with execution, and guides the continuous optimization of the delivery workflows.
• LatinShareSHP Permissions – The LatinShare SHP permissions connector allows you to manage SharePoint security in a custom way at the site, list, and item level. Users will be able to assign, remove, and restore permissions to specific groups or users.
• Power Query Dataflows – Dataflows are a self-service, cloud-based, data preparation technology available in Power Apps, Power BI and Dynamics Customer Insights products and portals.
• Transform2All – With the Transform2All connector the transformation between data structures can be simplified to a single action in Power Automate.

Find out more:

• 11 New Connectors Released in December 2020!

Import a connector from GitHub as a custom connector

The Power Automate team have announced you can now import a connector from GitHub from the Power Platform connectors repository and deploy the connector as a custom connector all from the Custom connectors page.

Find out more:

• Import a connector from GitHub as a custom connector
• Submit your connector for Microsoft certification

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Power BI

In Power BI: On-premises data gateway, April 2021 feature summary, Charticulator visual, object-level security, new sharing experience, Dataflows update, Power BI Premium per user GA

Paginated Reports Feature Summary January 2021

Several exciting updates are rolling out this month for paginated reports,  including  an improved publishing experience in Power BI Report Builder, additional sample reports, Microsoft Dataverse connectivity and much more! 

Find out more:

• Paginated Reports January 2021 Feature Summary

Power BI Report Server January 2021 Feature Summary

Several new features are included in the January 2021 update to Power BI Report Server, including: visual zoom sliders, custom publish message and ArcGIS for Power BI support, plus more.

Find out more:

• Power BI Report Server January 2021 Feature Summary

Step Folding Indicators for Power Query Online

The Power BI team have announced they are now previewing step folding indicators in Power Query Online. These indicators will allow you to understand which steps fold, and which steps don’t. When you make a change that breaks folding, it will become obvious.

This allows you to resolve issues more quickly and easily, avoid performance issues in the first place, and have better insight into your queries.

Find out more:

• Step Folding Indicators for Power Query Online

General availability of read/write XMLA endpoints in Power BI Premium

Power BI inherits a large ecosystem of developers, partners, BI tools, and solutions built over the years. XMLA endpoints provide access to the Analysis Services engine in the Power BI service, allowing customers to leverage enterprise BI tools directly on Power BI datasets.  

Read/write XMLA endpoints introduced many additional enterprise BI scenarios for dataset management, application lifecycle management, governance, complex semantic modeling, debugging, and monitoring— all within Power BI!

Find out more:

• Announcing the general availability of read/write XMLA endpoints in Power BI Premium

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