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.

• SharePoint
• Teams
• Power Apps
• Power Automate
• Power BI

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: What’s next for SharePoint?, Renaming File viewer web part to ‘File and Media’, New List Templates with Approvals, SharePoint supports the Loop app, review recent site actions, what’s new for SharePoint server, Microsoft Edge to replace built-in PDF engine with Adobe Acrobat PDF engine

What’s next for SharePoint – join the event this May!

The next step of SharePoint’s journey at the Microsoft 365 Conference in Las Vegas, NV in early May.  Join an in-person celebration of SharePoint’s past, present, and future – and build new connections with a full return of a vibrant in-person community event.

Find out more: What’s Next for SharePoint

Renaming File viewer webpart to ‘File and Media’

Microsoft are renaming the Files webpart to File and Media to make this webpart inclusive of more file types like videos. Users will see the new name for the webpart. Functionally, nothing changes w.r.t. the capabilities of the webpart. Note: Image files are not supported in the File and Media web part. However, if you want to insert an image on your page, you can use the use the Image web part.

Find out more: Use the File and Media web part

New List Templates with Approvals

We are introducing two new list templates that embed the Approvals app (service) into the Lists experience. With this change, two Microsoft Lists templates appear – specifically Travel Requests with approvals and Content Scheduler with approvals; both bring integration with the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams. You’ll see the new list templates within the Create list experience.

Note: This is an optional feature that users can leverage by using one of the two new list templates. If they opt out of the Approvals integration when creating the list, the value of each template carries through – minus the added approval functionality.

Find out more: Roadmap ID 100502

 SharePoint supports the Loop app – Components, pages, and workspaces

The Loop app is now in public preview, and SharePoint provides the underlying storage and collaboration technology for Loop:

• Tree Structured Storage – Optimizing for innovation and performance, SharePoint has moved from a traditional file stream architecture to tree-structured storage. Leveraging B-Tree graph nodes allows us to unlock powerful collaboration capabilities and unmatched flexibility in a data structure that works for existing file types but also natively supports Fluid Framework, the underlying tech for Microsoft Loop.
• Performance Optimizations – The Loop experience sets a new bar in editing and real-time collaboration, especially for speed and scale. This drives performance improvements – not only in core SharePoint – throughout our partners in Azure on Blob, SQL, Networking, as well contributions to Windows and Chromium http stacks.
• Personal and Work – Today’s Loop announcement is a major milestone because it is simultaneously available for both personal (MSA) and organization (AAD) accounts. This is the direct result of work inside SharePoint to support both authentication models.  
• Security and Compliance – By building on the core SharePoint platform, Loop components, pages, and workspaces inherit all of SharePoint’s industry-leading work on compliance and security.

Find out more: The SharePoint storage platform supports the Loop app – Components, pages, and workspaces

Review recent site actions

You can now review the most recent site changes you made from the SharePoint admin center in the last 30 days from the SharePoint admin center.

Find out more: Review recent SharePoint site actions

What’s new for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition – March 2023

Here’s the latest feature updates for SharePoint Server Subscription:

• Unified patches – To simplify the process for updating your SharePoint Server Subscription Edition environments, we’re introducing a single update each month for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, starting with the March 2023 public update. 
• Support for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) version 1.5.1 – To expand the customization scenarios that SharePoint Server Subscription Edition supports, the 23H1 feature update adds support for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) version 1.5.1. 
• New PowerShell cmdlets for variations feature – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 introduces 4 new PowerShell cmdlets that will replace the functionality of the “stsadm.exe -o variationsfixuptool” command. 
• SharePoint Server recompiled with Visual C++ 2022 – Microsoft have recompiled SharePoint Server Subscription Edition with the newest Visual C++ compiler: Visual C++ 2022.
• Private key management in certificate management – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition introduced a new certificate management feature that allows SharePoint farm administrators to directly manage the deployment and lifecycle of SSL/TLS certificates in their SharePoint Server farms.
• Support for wildcard host header bindings – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 adds support for specifying a wildcard host header binding for a web application. 
• Expanded usage of modern sharing dialog – To deliver a more intuitive sharing experience, these sharing entry points have been updated to use SharePoint’s modern sharing dialog.
• Column totals in modern list views – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 adds support for displaying column totals in modern list views just like in classic list views. This option can be enabled in the “save view” feature.
• Enhanced Quick Chart web part – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 enhances the Quick Chart modern web part by adding a “Get data from a list or library on this site” option. Users can now configure the Quick Chart web part to consume data from a list or library within the site.
• Improved file picker – The Quick Links web part file picker can now support more file types such as PDF, TXT, MP4, M4V, MP3, OGG, and WAV. The File Viewer web part file picker can now support PDF files.
• New product servicing policy for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition – Starting in January 2023, each public update for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition will be supported for one year after its release date (until the second Tuesday of the same month in the following year).
• Antimalware Scan Interface integration comes to SharePoint Server 2019 – Our 22H2 feature update for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition first introduced Windows Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) integration to SharePoint Server. 
• SharePoint 2013 reaches end of support on April 11, 2023 – As a final reminder for those customers who haven’t migrated to SharePoint Online or upgraded to a newer version of SharePoint Server yet, SharePoint 2013 will reach end of support on April 11, 2023. 

Find out more: What’s new for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition – March 2023

Microsoft Edge to replace built-in PDF engine with Adobe Acrobat PDF engine

As part of the Adobe and Microsoft collaboration to re-envision the future workplace and digital experiences, Microsoft are natively embedding the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine into the Microsoft Edge built-in PDF reader. With the use of the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine, users will have a unique PDF experience that includes higher fidelity for more accurate colors and graphics, improved performance, strong security for PDF handling, and greater accessibility – including better text selection and read-aloud narration. 

Find out more: Adobe and Microsoft collaboration 

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Teams

In Teams: New desktop app, collaborative notes, speaker coach, avatars, new channel experience, updated files app, video filters, closed captions in PowerPoint Live, Whiteboard innovations, auto-lowering of a users raised hand, meeting toolbar improvements, ultrasound howling detection, disable chat for anonymous or unauthenticated users, live transcript in all languages, expanded view for profile card

Dynamics emergency calling updates, busy-on-busy settings, user managed call queue, click-to-call, hotline phones, simplified call delegation, shared device license for Teams mobile Android, Teams phone devices UI updates, virtual front desk, PSTN support for Breakout Rooms DoD, GCC High, SIP Gateway support, leave meeting on all devices

Teams Management
Education
Government
Frontline workers

Teams (non-premium)

New Teams desktop app

At Enterprise Connect 2023 earlier this month, Microsoft unveiled the new era of Teams, including the introduction of a new Teams desktop app in public preview for Windows. New Teams is a reimagining of the app from the ground up to be faster, simpler, and more flexible. Follow the announcements at Enterprise Connect to learn more about new Teams. From some independent benchmarking, they found the new Teams app:

• Launch app up to 2X faster
• Join meetings up to 2X faster
• Switch chats/channels up to 1.7X faster
• Consume up to 50% less memory
• Consume up to 70% less disk space

Find out more: Introducing the new Microsoft Teams, now in preview

Collaborative notes in Microsoft Teams meetings

Coming to Public Preview in April, Collaborative notes ensure that each meeting helps you to drive your work forward with a collaborative agenda, co-edited meeting notes, and follow up tasks that sync with ToDo and Planner. The best part is these notes are Loop components, that can be copy/ pasted to places like Teams chat and Outlook.

Find out more: Roadmap ID: 101509

Speaker Coach in Teams Meetings

Speaker Coach provides private, personalized feedback on your speaking and presentation skills in both real-time as well as post-meeting in a summary. Now available in preview. Live insights are only seen by you and are not saved in recorded meeting transcripts.

Find out more: Preview: Speaker Coach in a Teams meeting

Avatars

A day of hybrid meetings can be exhausting, especially when you are distracted by how you or your background looks. Avatars for Microsoft Teams gives you a much-needed camera break, while still allowing you to collaborate. Represent yourself with customizable avatars and reactions. Maximize engagement by including more people in the conversation— whether they need a break due to video fatigue, are joining from a different time zone, or just feel more comfortable with their video off. Add a new layer of choice to your meetings. 

Find out more: Avatars for Microsoft Teams in Public Preview

New channel experience

Last year, Microsoft announced a new channels experience, built with an intuitive design that allows teams to focus, stay on task, brings everyone up to speed, actively engages real-time. Coming June 2023:

• The compose box and recent posts will appear at the top of the page.
• You can navigate to a conversation view that makes the discussion more engaging and synchronous, just like a chat. You can also pop out the post, keep an eye on the discussion, while continuing to work on other topics.
• Hashtags referencing Viva Topics will provide context right in the channel on organizational topics without having to ask anyone else.
• A streamlined information pane will include all the important contextual information like channel’s members and pinned posts so new team members can quickly on-board and for all members to find the information they need, right in the channel.
• Pin posts to make it easy for everyone to know what’s important in the channel and quickly reference it.
• Simplified badging is making it easier for users to understand when there are new unread activities in teams. In addition, the simplified design helps users focus on the specific channels which requires the most attention, like channels in which the user was @mentioned.

Find out more: Enhance collaboration with Microsoft Teams chat and channels features for the hybrid workplace

Updated files app

Whether editing a Word document or collaborating in PowerPoint with a team, a new files app experience with an updated navigation panel enables you to quickly discover, access and share your files from your chats, channels, or meetings:

• Home: Get back to your recently accessed files.
• My files: Access your personal files saved in your OneDrive.
• Shared: Find files shared with you and files you have shared with others across M365.
• Downloads: Locate files downloaded from Teams on your computer.
• Quick Access: Pin a Teams channel file tab or SharePoint document library to access quickly.

This new file experience brings consistency and familiarity with how files are stored, shared, and accessed across Microsoft 365 and OneDrive.

Find out more: Roadmap ID: 97677

Video filters in Meetings

Video filters in Teams meetings allow you to remove unwanted distractions and better express yourself by bringing your personality to each meeting. The filters enable participants in Teams Meetings to augment their video stream with visual effects ranging from animated frames to styles changing the video’s hue. You can apply these filters even before you join a meeting from the lobby.

Find out more: Introducing Video Filters in Microsoft Teams Meetings

Video Closed Captions in PowerPoint Live

Closed Captions in PowerPoint Live aim to help those who are Deaf or hard of hearing, have difficulty processing auditory information, have a language barrier, or who are simply joining the meeting from a loud environment, to better understand the auditory content being shared. Meeting attendees will now have the option to turn on closed captions for any video that includes a closed captions file.

Find out more: Introducing Closed Captions in PowerPoint Live for Microsoft Teams Meetings

Whiteboard innovations

During the meeting enjoy a breadth of Whiteboard innovations including the ability to open your existing whiteboard in Teams meetings, quickly set up your whiteboard using one of the 60+ templates, invite others to follow your viewpoint as you navigate, identify collaborators through sticky note attribution, automatically resize your sticky note text, and format it as you see fit.

You can also copy and paste Loop components into Whiteboard from Teams chat and soon from Outlook mail and Word for the web. The whiteboard you and your participants collaborated on, as well as shared comments, can be accessed in the Teams chat under the Whiteboard tab following the meeting.

Find out more: What’s new for Microsoft Whiteboard – November 2022

Automatic lowering of a user’s Raised Hand after speaking

To reduce the number of stale raised hands in meetings, Teams will now suggest you lower your raised hand after we detect they spoke in the meeting. You will be able to choose to keep their hand raised. If the you doesn’t take any action on the suggestion notification, we’ll automatically lower your hand. This should ensure smoother meeting facilitation for organizers and presenters.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Automatic lowering of a user’s Raised Hand after speaking

Meetings toolbar improvements

The updated Microsoft Teams meeting toolbar makes navigating meetings and discovering new features and capabilities easier than ever. For example, you are now able to raise your hand from the meeting toolbar with the dedicated raise hand button, you can navigate the More menu easier from sub-menu groupings, as well as navigate the More menu easier from sub-menu groupings.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Meeting Toolbar Usability Improvements

Ultrasound Howling Detection

When multiple people join a meeting in the same room then a feedback loop is created which causes an echo and in many cases the echo quickly escalates to howling (like when a musician holds the mic too close to a loudspeaker). If you a meeting with multiple other people on laptops join from the same location, we notify you that another Teams Device is detected in the vicinity and is already joined with audio to the current meeting. We will automatically mute the mic and speakers of the person who has joined after a you and has audio on.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Ultrasound Howling Detection in Teams Meetings

Disable chat write access for anonymous or unauthenticated users

IT admins can now disable chat write access at the policy level for non-federated users and unauthenticated users who join Teams meetings through a link that must be used in conjunction with disabled meeting chat policy to provide additional security against data exfiltration.

Find out more: Disabling Chat Write Access in Teams Meetings for Anonymous Participants

Live Transcript in all available languages in Teams Meetings on Web

During any Teams meeting, you can start a live transcription of the proceedings. The text appears alongside the meeting video or audio in real time, including the speaker’s name (unless they chose to hide it) and a time stamp. Live transcription can make your meeting more productive and inclusive for participants who are deaf or hard-of-hearing or have different levels of language proficiency. Participants in noisy places will also appreciate the visual aid. People can choose not to be identified in meeting transcripts.

Find out more: View live transcription in a Teams meeting

Expanded view for profile card

Microsoft are introducing an expanded view of the profile card in Teams, giving you the ability to view details and build stronger connections with your collaborators. From Teams chats, channels, calls or meetings, you can easily look up richer profile data and learn more about who you are collaborating with including, contact information, job title, organizational chart, and their LinkedIn profile. Insights like birthdays, career updates, suggested tasks will also be included in your profile card, helping form personal connections by celebrating important milestones.

Find out more: Profile cards in Microsoft 365

Dynamic emergency calling enhancements on Teams Phone

If you are in the US, you can now easily set your emergency location in the Calls app on Teams with location recommendations. Next quarter, you will be able to set the emergency location on your Teams Phone devices without needing to rely on administrators to set the emergency location.

Find out more: Plan and configure dynamic emergency calling

Busy-on-busy settings

If you are busy in a call or meeting, you can minimize distractions with the ability to manage how incoming calls are routed. Busy-on-busy settings can be set directly from your Calls settings in the Teams app. Choose from the option to allow calls to come through, play a busy signal, or to redirect the call based on your unanswered call routing preference. Next quarter, you will be able to set busy-on-busy settings on Teams phone devices as well.

Find out more: Busy on busy when in a call

User managed call queue and auto attendant greetings

To adapt to changing environments, you may need to adjust their call queue/auto attendant greetings and announcements. This is required more frequently than what the IT helpdesk can typically handle. To solve this, we introduced user managed call queue and auto attendant greetings. Next month, if you are an authorized user, as identified by Teams tenant admins, you can change greetings and announcements for their respective call queues and auto attendant without leaving Teams.

Find out more: Now in public preview: User-managed call queue and auto attendant greetings

Click-to-call

In a world where everything and everyone is connected, customers’ expectations have evolved. Customers want quick answers and seamless interactions. Click-to-call makes it easy for customers to reach your sales and support teams directly from your webpage or app. Developers can add, customize, and program the widget to connect customers to a specific Teams user, call queue, or auto attendant. Click-to-call will be available in public preview next quarter.

Hotline phones (Private Line Automatic Ringdown)

Next quarter, you will be able to program Microsoft Teams certified phone devices to directly dial a pre-configured phone number or contact, such as emergency services in a manufacturing plant or help desk in your organization. The hotline can be set up directly through the device settings or the Teams admin center. The device will need to be enabled with a Teams Shared Device License and set to common area phone mode.

Simplified call delegation UI and feature enhancements

Shared line appearance lets a user choose a delegate to answer or handle calls on their behalf. Next quarter, we will be launching a simplified experience in the Calls app and on Teams phone devices for users who have set up call delegation. Delegators will be able to view and join active calls handled by the delegate and grant delegates permission to join active calls.

Teams Shared Device license on Teams mobile app for Android

The usage, importance, and range of experiences conducted on shared devices continues to evolve. Mobility is becoming a must have and many segments of the workforce rely on mobile devices to keep their business connected. To support mobile and flexible work styles, later this year the Microsoft Teams Shared Device license will be available on the Teams mobile app on Android. This will enable Android phones to be set up as shared devices. Walkie Talkie, call queues, auto attendants, cloud voicemail, call park and all other features currently supported for common area phones will be available through the Teams Android app. 

Find out more: Microsoft Teams Shared Devices licensing

Teams phone devices UI updates

We are continuing to simplify the UI for Teams phone devices. Next quarter, we will be launching a redesigned dial pad to help with reducing unnecessary mistakes while dialing a phone number and offers a new dial pad only view in landscape mode if you primarily use their devices for placing outbound PSTN calls. The updated meeting experience and navigation will enabled you to more quickly join meetings and help them easily navigate across applications on their phone device.

Leave a meeting on all my devices

When you join a meeting using multiple personal devices, you can encounter friction when leaving the meeting, including forgetting to leave the meeting on one of their many devices. This functionality allows you to leave a meeting from all your devices with a single tap.

Find out more: TEAMS: LEAVE A MEETING FROM ALL OF YOUR DEVICES

Teams Management

The following features are currently available for the Teams Management Platform (admin center):

• Teams Admin Center: Simplified navigation – The new Simplified Left Navigation feature allows administrators to pin their preferred menu options to the navigation panel, reducing clutter and streamlining the process of finding the information they need. 
• View users and groups assigned to a policy – Admins can view the list of assigned users and groups for a policy.
• Teams Advisor guidance for Phone system deployment – Teams administrators can use Deployment Advisor for tailored guidance on deploying Teams Telephony to their organizations.
• Export Teams list from Teams Admin Center – Administrators can export Teams list as a csv file from Teams admin center.

Government

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

• SIP Gateway for GCC – SIP Gateway is now available for Government Community Cloud customers to enable core Teams calling functionality on legacy devices. For organizations with investment in SIP devices, SIP Gateway provides calling, meeting dial-in, voicemail and other core telephony features.

Frontline workers

• Virtual Appointments in Microsoft Teams – Virtual Appointments is a new Teams meeting type tailored for B2C meetings with people outside of your organization. Guests will get a meeting invitation that includes important appointment details and enables an easy join experience via SMS or email from any device—no need to install Teams. The Virtual Appointment app provides a single location where professionals and admins can create and manage scheduled and on-demand appointments as integrated with Bookings. It is further enhanced with Teams Premium, which unlocks a snapshot of the queue of appointments, a summary of appointment analytics, and options to manage appointments.

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Copilot, Enhanced security for shared connections, modern controls for canvas apps, selection checker enforcement, CoE starter kit backed by self-serve data, new Power Fx formula bar, request a premium license, CLI February update, tenant switcher in mobile, design data driven cards in Teams, admin-configured welcome experience, pipelines GA

Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps

Microsoft announced  a next-generation AI copilot in Microsoft Power Apps that will transform how we build and interact with software applications this month. With the power of large language models, we are advancing to the next step in the evolution of code abstraction—moving from custom code, to low-code, to natural language authoring where human and machine work side by side to build applications together.

Find out more: Announcing a next-generation AI Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps that will transform low-code development

Enhanced security for implicitly shared connections

The Power Apps team have announced an enhanced security for implicitly shared connections in Power Apps. With this feature, connections are no longer directly shared with the users of a Power App. Instead, a proxy connection object that only grants access to the underlying resource (e.g., a specific SQL Server table) is shared. End user authors cannot create new applications with either the connection or the proxy connection. This feature also limits the end-user to the actions (get, put/patch, and delete) that are defined in the corresponding Power App.

Find out more: Overview of connectors for canvas apps

Modern controls coming to canvas apps

Following on from the launch of the new look for model driven apps, the Power Apps team are making the same modern controls available to canvas apps through an opt in preview. The new controls bring the following improvements: 

• Modern – A focused and less cluttered design that supports richer interaction states and elevation, provides a higher usability baseline to build your low code apps from. These controls are based on Microsoft’s own Fluent design system which powers majority of Microsoft experiences across all products like Microsoft Teams, Word and more.
• Fast – Built for performance. We are making critical investments for this new suite to ensure your apps are fast and fluid. 
• Accessible – These controls are WCAG 2.1 compliant with accessibility built in by default. We will provide a comprehensive set of properties for our developers to configure. 
• Theming – Designed with theming in mind. Although not part of the initial launch, support for theming and per control styling is coming to the preview soon. 

Power Apps developers can turn on modern controls feature in Power Apps Studio by navigating to list of preview features in settings dialog.

Find out more: Overview of modern controls in canvas apps (preview)

Solution checker enforcement in Managed Environments

The Power Apps team have announced the public preview of solution checker enforcement, a new feature in Managed Environments that gives admins much more control over the customizations in their environments! Solution checker enforcement allows you to block or warn on solution imports with critical severity violations, as defined in the solution checker rules. There are two modes you can choose for solution checker enforcement:

• In Block mode, solutions can only be imported if they were checked with solution checker and they contain no critical violations. Solutions containing non-critical violations won’t be blocked.
• In Warn mode, solutions can be imported even if they weren’t checked with solution checker or if they contain critical violations.

Find out more: Solution checker enforcement in Managed Environments

improved barcode reader control general availability

Scanning barcodes is a critical part of many frontline worker workflows – whether you are managing shelves in a retail store, inventorying goods in a warehouse, managing assets on the factory floor, or accessing records in a hospital. We are excited to share the immediate general availability (GA) of the improved barcode reader control. Workers will now be able to scan barcodes quickly, accurately, and flexibly on their Android and iOS devices.

• Select to scan – Select which of the visible barcodes you want to be scanned, instead of only being able to automatically scan the first visible code.
• Multiple scan – Within a single barcode reading session, scan as many barcodes as you want, returned as a table output property.
• Better user experience – See what you are scanning and have scanned with barcode tracking indicators and a dropdown drawer showing your scan history.

Find out more: Digitally transform physical workflows by turning the devices you already have into cost-efficient scanning tools

CoE Starter Kit backed by data from self-serve analytics data export (preview)

The Power Apps team have announced that the CoE Starter Kit can now use data provided by self-serve analytics as a foundation for inventory and telemetry, enabling rich insights built for scale. The experimental preview of the CoE Starter Kit using data provided by the Data Export feature is a foundation for inventory and telemetry. You can export Power Platform inventory and usage data directly into Azure Data Lake Storage using the Data Export feature in the Power Platform Admin Center.

Find out more: Now in preview: CoE Starter Kit backed by data from self-serve analytics data export

New Power Fx Formula Bar in Power Apps Studio

The Power Apps team have announced a new formula editor is available an experimental feature that we encourage you to turn on in your apps and try out!  The new editor is based on the powerful Monaco shared code editor component which allows us to provide you with better performance, a consistent editing experience across Studio, and additional error highlighting improvements.  

Find out more: Try the new Power Fx Formula Bar in Power Apps Studio

Request a Power Apps premium license from org admins

Power Apps is excited to share that users can now request a license from their admin – directly in product! If a user is trying to run an app that requires a license, they will see the option to ‘Request a license’, in addition to the buy a license or start a trial option (if eligible). Once a request is submitted, a confirmation message will appear at the top of the page saying the request was successfully sent to their admin.

Find out more: New: Request a Power Apps premium license from org admins

Tenant Switcher in Power Apps Mobile

Tenant switcher in Power Apps mobile allows users to easily switch to a different directory, when using Power Apps on phones or tablets without logging out. Users see the list of directories they have access to on the profile page, and they can pick any directory to see apps shared with them as a guest user.

Find out more: Announcing Tenant Switcher in Power Apps Mobile

Cards for Power Apps can be sent automatically via flows

Cards for Power Apps is a recent addition to the low code lineup, announced as public preview in September, that empowers business users and developers alike to create interactive, embeddable, data-driven, lightweight mini-apps that bring context and actions directly into Teams conversations.

Now, cards for Power Apps can be sent automatically via flows using our new connector and the updated Teams connector! The cards authoring experience has also been significantly improved, making it easier to design cards that suit your business processes. With these new features, anyone can use cards to bring conversations and workflows together like never before.

Find out more: Easily design and automatically send actionable, data-driven cards in Teams

Admin-configured maker welcome experience in Power Apps

Admin-configured maker welcome content is now available for the Power Apps maker portal. Today, admins rely on sending welcome emails, creating wikis, and setting up internal portals to educate makers. Since this information can be presented in so many different places, makers may miss important communication.

With the maker welcome experience, admins can customize content that is displayed to users in the maker portal, proactively communicating information such as security policies, knowledge bases, the environment’s purpose, and support information to makers.

Find out more: Announcing admin-configured maker welcome experience in Power Apps

Pipelines in Power Platform is Generally Available

Pipelines within Power Platform are now generally available. Pipelines aims to democratize application lifecycle management (ALM) for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 customers by bringing deployment automation capabilities into Managed Environments in a manner that’s more approachable for all makers, admins, and developers.

Find out more: Pipelines in Power Platform is Generally Available (GA)

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Copilot in Power Automate, 2 new verified + 11 independent publisher connectors, dataverse solutions by default, Power Automate connector for updates in Teams

AI Builder and Copilot in Power Automate

Power Automate will make it possible for you to not just describe a flow to create, but also improve and iterate on your flows with AI-driven conversations. This next-generation AI based Copilot in Power Automate will sit right inside of the flow studio and help out with every flow that’s being built or changed.

Copilot in Power Automate will allow open ended and conversational experiences while authoring your flows. As you build, you’ll be able to ask questions and get assistance making improvements and changes. You won’t need any special knowledge of how Power Automate works – simply by using natural language you’ll be able to build and enhance everything from a simple flow to a complex, robust enterprise-wide process.

Find out more: Automate smarter than ever before with AI Builder and Copilot in Power Automate

2 new verified, 11 new independent publisher connectors

There were 2 new verified and 11 new independent publisher connectors released in the past few months. These connectors have solutions and tools for Communication, Marketing, Collaboration, Productivity and much more.

Find out more: 2 New Verified Connectors and 12 Updates released in February 2023 | 11 New Independent Publisher Connectors in February 2023

Dataverse solutions by default capabilities for Power Automate

A new environment setting is available to administrators that ensures that all cloud flows will be created in Dataverse and added into the Default solution, when Dataverse is available in the environment.  There are multiple ways to create cloud flows. The following table summarizes which entry points are currently supported by the switch for create in Dataverse solutions by default:

ENTRY POINT	AVAILABLE?
Create a cloud flow from blank in portal	Yes
Create a cloud flow from template in portal	Yes
Create a cloud flow from Power Automate Management connector	Yes
Create a cloud flow from PowerShell	Yes
Create a cloud flow from Power Automate mobile app	Coming soon
Create a cloud flow from OneDrive	Coming soon
Create a cloud flow from SharePoint	Coming soon
Create a cloud flow from other integration points, such as the Excel add-in	Coming soon

Find out more: More manageable cloud flows with Dataverse solutions by default

Power Automate connector for Updates in Microsoft Teams

Updates is a Microsoft Teams app which allows you to create, submit, and review employee updates, surveys and work reports in one place, to keep your team on track for success. The Power Automate connector for Updates which allows Power Automate users to leverage Updates and address use cases like daily update, project progress, shift handoff, checklists, inspection, store visits, etc. as a part of their flows. For example, a common scenario is to collect inventory count during a store walkthrough. With this connector in place, when a frontline/store worker submits a daily or weekly update for store inventory in the Updates app, the Updates connector will automatically trigger the embedded workflow which can automatically aggregate all the inventory into a dashboard. 

Find out more: Automate workflows with Power Automate connector for Updates in Microsoft Teams

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Power BI

In Power BI: Pin workspaces, on-premises data gateway, analysis services server properties GA, Power BI March 2023 Feature Summary, On-object, Power BI data from different regions, Scanner API, Power BI org apps with multiple audiences, Power BI & PowerPoint, query parallelization

Pin workspaces

The Power BI team have announced that the pin workspace feature is now available! You can pin your workspaces on top of the list. And unpin them anytime as needed. This functionality enables you to easily navigate to the workspaces that are most relevant to you without searching through the workspace list. 

Find out more: Create a workspace in Power BI

On-premises data gateway March 2023 release

The Power BI team have announced the March 2023 update for the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.166.9).

Find out more: On-premises data gateway March release

Analysis Services server properties in Power BI Premium are now in general availability

Analysis Services server properties in Power BI Premium are now in public preview. At this time, we’ve transitioned this capability to general availability with full support in Power BI Premium and Power BI Embedded. As mentioned in the public preview announcement, the Analysis Services (AS) server properties gives administrators granular control to optimize and alter query behavior in their workspaces.

Find out more: Analysis Services server properties in Power BI Premium are now in general availability

Power BI March 2023 Feature Summary

In this month’s release there are updates for the On-object interaction, updates to the way you can apply slicers on your reports using a new Apply All Slicers button, Multiple Audiences in the Power BI app and more.

Find out more: Power BI March 2023 Feature Summary

On-object | Public Preview (Opt-in)

Introducing On-object! The new way to build and format your visuals releasing with March 2023 Power BI Desktop. Aligning to our new “Office-like” strategy we bring you, on-object. A new way to build and format visuals directly on the visual.

Find out more: On-object | Public Preview (Opt-in)

Use Power BI data from different regions in your Power Apps solution

The Power BI team have announced that its now possible to use the capabilities of the Power App Solutions/Power BI integration even when the Power Apps environment and the Power BI workspaces it’s integrating with are located in different geographic regions. 

This Power Apps Solutions/Power BI integration is controlled by two admin feature switches – one in the Power Platform admin center and the other in the Power BI admin portal. Both switches are enabled by default. Both switches must be enabled to allow cross-geo operation. 

Find out more: Use Power BI data from different regions in your Power Apps solution

Scanner API now includes even more data

The Scanner API is part of the Power BI admin API. It enables administrators to efficiently and automatically retrieve valuable information about their organization’s Power BI assets, such as inventory, metadata, and lineage. To further meet your needs and follow up on your requests, the Power BI team have added several new capabilities over the past few months, inlcuding:

• Artifact metadata
• RDL data source properties
• Dataset sub-artifact metadata content
• RLS configuration
• Dataset sub-artifact coverage
• Datamarts

Find out more: The Scanner API now includes even more metadata, such as scheduled refresh settings, RDL, RLS configuration, and more

Power BI Org Apps with Multiple Audiences Generally Available

The Power BI team announced the launch in Public Preview of Multiple Audiences for Power BI org apps in August 2022. This feature is now generally available and with this, the multiple audience feature will now be supported by Power BI Mobile.

Find out more: Power BI Org Apps with Multiple Audiences now Generally Available

Power BI integration with PowerPoint Generally Available

Power BI and PowerPoint are now better together than ever before. We’re excited to announce the general availability of the Power BI integration with PowerPoint, which brings the world’s most powerful data visualization tool to the world’s most popular presentation program. The value of this integration is clear: it lets people easily add interactive Power BI data visualizations to their PowerPoint presentations, making them more interactive, more informative, and more engaging.

Find out more: Power BI and PowerPoint: A Powerful Combination for Data Visualization is now generally available

Query parallelization helps to boost Power BI dataset performance in DirectQuery mode

The Power BI team have announced significant query processing improvements in the Power BI engine around query parallelization in DirectQuery mode, which can help to accelerate query response times, specifically for DAX and MDX expressions that generate multiple storage engine (SE) queries. 

Find out more: Query parallelization helps to boost Power BI dataset performance in DirectQuery mode

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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.

• SharePoint
• Teams
• Power Apps
• Power Automate
• Power BI

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM), Workflow Manager, Stream on SharePoint: Create, View & Share Playlists, External File Request, SharePoint email notification rules update, Dropbox migrations, Export list as a dataset, Yammer becomes Viva Engage, Viva Topics integrations into Engage

Microsoft Syntex | SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM)

Microsoft have announced the general availability of SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) add-on, a new set of advanced security and content management capabilities. SAM helps when working with advanced access policies for secure content collaboration and advanced sites content lifecycle management.

• Advanced access policies for secure content collaboration
  • Data access governance (DAG) insights for SharePoint sites
  • Restricted access control (RAC) policy for SharePoint sites
  • Restricted access control (RAC) policy for OneDrives
  • Conditional access policy for SharePoint sites and OneDrives
  • Secure SharePoint Document Libraries
• Advanced sites content lifecycle management
  • Sites lifecycle management policy for inactive sites
  • Recent SharePoint Admin Actions
  • Sites history
  • Block download policy for SharePoint sites and OneDrives

Find out more: Microsoft Syntex – SharePoint Advanced Management overview

SharePoint Workflow Manager for SharePoint Server

Microsoft recently announced the release of SharePoint Workflow Manager, a new workflow engine to power the SharePoint 2013 Workflows platform for SharePoint Server and replace Service Bus and Microsoft Workflow Manager. Compatible with SharePoint Server 2013, 2016, 2019, and Subscription Edition, Microsoft recommend that all SharePoint Server customers using SharePoint 2013 Workflows upgrade to SharePoint Workflow Manager as soon as they’re able to.

Microsoft will focus all future investments and maintenance on SharePoint Workflow Manager rather than Microsoft Workflow Manager, including providing support beyond the year 2026. 

Find out more: Announcing the release of SharePoint Workflow Manager for SharePoint Server

Microsoft Stream (on SharePoint): Create, View and Share Playlists

This feature allows users to organize their video and audio files into a playlist for easy organization, sharing and playback. Playlist creators can share their playlist with others, and people with access to the playlist and to the files in the playlist can watch/listen to the video/audio files in order or skip back and forth between items in the playlist – along with the full player capabilities with chapters, closed captions, playback speeds, and more.

Stream playlists are both built and accessed via Microsoft Lists and can use other Lists capabilities. Playlists can be created directly from Stream and via Lists creation flows across Office, SharePoint, and Lists. Users can add any video and audio files to a playlist that they have access to. Playlists can be accessed from stream.office.com or from the Microsoft Lists home page in Microsoft 365.

Find out more: Use Playlists to create collections of video or audio files in Microsoft 365

External File Request in SharePoint Document Library

Initially, this feature was released for OneDrive, but the Microsoft team have announced this secure way to request and obtain files from anyone is now here for SharePoint document libraries. Just choose a folder in a SharePoint Document Library where others can upload files to – this accomplished with a unique, secure share link that you share with them.

Recipients who upload files to you upon your request can only upload files; they can’t see the content of the folder, edit, delete, or download files — or even see who else has uploaded files. To use this feature in the SharePoint Document Library: 1) Admin enables Anyone links at the tenant level, and 2) Admin configure view, edit, and upload permission for Anyone links.

Find out more: Create a file request

Update to Rules Email Notifications for SharePoint Lists and Libraries

Rules can be created for lists and libraries to send automatic email notifications based on events in the target list or library. Previously, these email notifications were sent from SharePoint Online <no-reply@sharepointonline.com>. To improve the security of the rules feature, email notifications will now be sent from the email account of the user who last modified the rule. If the rule was newly created, this will be the creator’s email address.

Find out more: Create a rule to automate a list or library

Migration Manager: Dropbox migrations

Microsoft have announced an expanded set of capabilities to allow moving content from Dropbox into Microsoft 365. When you’re ready to move your content, click on the Migrate tab in the SharePoint admin center to start scan discovery, assessment, and migrate. You’ll get detailed reports and the rest in a seamless transition of files and folders to Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and/or Teams).

Find out more: Migrate Dropbox to Microsoft 365 with Migration Manager

Export list as a dataset to Power BI

Microsoft are adding a new option under the “Export” menu for Microsoft Lists: Export to Power BI. With this feature, users can easily and quickly create a dataset based on their list in the Power BI service, in their environment of choice. Datasets are sources of data that are ready for reporting and visualization in Power BI. This adds to the options of inline reporting with Power BI in Lists, and now the ability to export list data as datasets and use them in the Power BI app.

Find out more: Create a Power BI dataset directly from a SharePoint list

Yammer becomes Viva Engage

Microsoft announced the rebranding of Yammer into Viva Engage this month. This change will happen across all existing Yammer surfaces – including web, mobile, and integrations (Embed, SharePoint, and Outlook) and will occur throughout 2023. In the coming months you can expect Yammer to become Viva Engage through the update of brand elements like logo, app icon and name.

Find out more: Yammer is evolving to Viva Engage

Viva Topics brings new integrations with Viva Engage

Engage is integrating with and adopting Viva Topics to make community-sourced knowledge easily accessible across an organization and support a consistent experience in Microsoft 365. Among others, this brings: 1) Topic cards will show in Engage when you hover over a highlighted topic, and 2) Topic pages and cards will include content from Engage such as questions and answers, and conversations from the relevant community. 

Find out more: Viva Topics brings new integrations with Yammer

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Teams

In Teams: Premium: Teams Premium, intelligent recap, live translation, meeting templates, branded meetings, org backgrounds, customer user policy packages, watermarking, sensitivity labels for meetings, registration waitlist + custom start/ end times, virtual green room, virtual appointments (premium) updates

In Teams: Tab support for guest users in meetings, in-meeting notifications, virtual appointments (basic) updates, picture-in-picture, co-organizer breakout rooms, presenter window improvements, authentication improvements, survival branch appliance, Android support for Teams Rooms Pro Management, chat with groups, edit/ delete bot chats, schedule send suggestions, mention everyone, missed call notifications,

Teams Management
Education
Government
Frontline workers

Teams (Premium)

Teams Premium is a more personalized, more intelligent, and more protected version of Microsoft Teams. Here are the latest features released this month for Teams Premium:

Intelligent Recap

With Intelligent Recap, you can now save time spent reviewing meeting recordings. Available now, AI-generated chapters based on PowerPoint Live divide the meeting into sections using the contents from the presentation, so it’s easy to pick and choose the segment most relevant to you. Intelligent Recap also will automatically generate meeting chapters based on the meeting transcript in the future.

Find out more: Intelligent recap in Microsoft Teams Premium

Live translation

With live translations for captions in meetings, now available in Teams Premium, you get AI-powered real-time translations in 40 spoken languages. By default, regular closed captions are displayed in the language that’s spoken during the meeting. Live translated captions allow you to see captions translated from the spoken language into the language you’re most comfortable with, saving money and making meetings more productive and effortless. Only the meeting organizer needs to have Teams Premium for all meeting attendees to enjoy live translations for captions in meetings.

Find out more: Use live captions in a Teams meeting

Meeting templates

Now with Teams Premium, IT admins can create customized meeting templates—like a client call, brainstorming meeting, or help desk call— to automatically include the correct settings, reducing the time and thought process it takes to create and get the meeting right. Also with templates, leaders can ensure that their meetings adhere to company best practices and policies.

Find out more: Overview of custom meeting templates in Microsoft Teams

Branded meetings

With Teams Premium, you can unlock advanced personalization experiences, which can help your organization have a professional and unified impact in meetings. Branded meetings let everyone see the logo and colors of your company when you join the meeting and allow your brand colors to be infused in the meeting itself.

Find out more: Meeting themes for Teams meetings

Organization backgrounds and organization together mode scenes

During the meeting, you can enable brand-approved organization backgrounds and organization together mode scenes, so that what makes your company—and your people—unique will shine through in every part of the meeting.

Find out more: Custom Together Mode scenes in Teams

Custom user policy packages

Just like meetings are not “one size fits all,” different Teams policies often are assigned based on your groups or departments. Assigning meetings, messaging, and app policies individually can be a complex task. But with custom user policy packages now available, IT can save time by creating a customized bundle of policies for users with similar roles in the organization. It’s a simplified, streamlined tool that provides consistency when managing policies for groups of users across your organization.

Find out more: Managing policy packages in Teams

Watermarking

Watermarking is a new meeting option, can help to deter leaks when sharing sensitive or confidential meeting content. Meeting organizers can leverage a unique watermark over attendee screen shares and video feeds to confidently present and display sensitive information.

Find out more: Watermark for Teams meetings

Who can record

With who can record, you have additional protections to keep discussions private and can limit who can record specific meetings. Find out more: Record a meeting in Teams

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) for online meetings

For those rare, extremely sensitive meetings that require disabling core meeting features like recording for an advanced encryption option, you can apply end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to the meeting. As a reminder, data exchanged during Teams calls or meetings always is secured using industry-standard encryption in transit and at rest. Find out more: Use end-to-end encryption for Teams meetings

Sensitivity labels for Teams meetings (for Microsoft 365 E5 customers)

Microsoft 365 E5 customers with Teams Premium can now enable Microsoft Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels for Teams meetings. Meeting organizers can leverage sensitivity labels to automatically apply the most relevant and important meeting options based on the sensitivity of meeting content. Compliance admins can configure this integration with Teams meetings in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal to determine which meeting options should be enforced if the label is used in a meeting. Find out more: Sensitivity labels for Microsoft Teams

Advanced webinars: Host events with seamless registration and customized experiences

Teams Premium includes webinars to easily host these events while also saving you time and money by eliminating the need for add-on solutions or working across different platforms. Find out more: Advanced Webinars

Registration waitlist and manual approval

Once registration is set and invites are sent to attendees, you can enable registration waitlist and manual approval to make it easier to manage registration ahead of a webinar. Enabling the waitlist will keep webinar registration open even after the event has reached the capacity set by the organizer. This allows additional people to register and be automatically added to the list. As new spots open up, people will be automatically moved to the pending approval state, which enables the organizer to review their registration information and manually approve or reject each of the registrants.

Find out more: Manage webinar registration

Customize registration start and end times

Webinar hosts also have the ability to customize registration start and end times to specify when you want registration to start and end, making it easier to plan for and manage your event. Find out more: Manage webinar registration

Virtual green room

Webinars allow presenters to join the virtual green room so that preparation before the webinar is seamless. Presenters have the time and space to connect and do a quick briefing or test run without disturbing attendees. While attendees wait for the event to start, they can engage with the presenters and one another through chat and Q&A.

Find out more: Green room for Teams meetings

Manage what attendees see

During a webinar, presenters can more effectively manage what attendees see. These host controls create more professionally produced events and make it easy to create more dynamic engagement for presenters and attendees.

Find out more: Manage what attendees see in Teams meetings

RTMP-in (Real-Time Messaging Protocol)

To elevate your presentation and deliver more dynamic content, integrate different external media feeds into your webinar using RTMP-in. By leveraging an external encoder and enabling RTMP-in, you’ll be able to livestream a custom RTMP source, whether it’s a professionally produced video or high-quality screen sharing, to all attendees in the meeting.

Find out more: Broadcast audio and video from Teams with RTMP

Microsoft eCDN: Improve live event experiences

To improve live event experiences within your organization, Microsoft eCDN (Enterprise Content Delivery Network) is now included in Teams Premium. With Microsoft eCDN, you can seamlessly and securely live stream global meetings, all-hands gatherings, and town halls and distribute company-wide training using Teams Live Events. Microsoft eCDN helps reduce the load on the corporate network, helps prevent connectivity failure and poor video quality, and does not require any additional installation on your endpoints and devices. Find out more: Scale video delivery and monitor network traffic by using eCDNs with Microsoft Teams

Advanced Virtual Appointments: A new Teams Meeting type for business-to-customer (B2C) meetings

Virtual Appointments is a new Teams meeting type tailored for B2C meetings with people outside of your organization. When using Virtual Appointments, guests will get a meeting invitation that includes important appointment details to make joining easy via SMS or email. They can join from any device—no need to install Teams—and experience a comfortable pre-appointment virtual lobby until they are ready to begin. To learn more about the entire solution, check out this Microsoft Tech Community blog.

Virtual Appointments app

This app provides a single location where professionals and admins can create and manage scheduled and on-demand Virtual Appointments in Microsoft Teams. It includes a comprehensive dashboard that gives a quick view of an employee’s schedule as integrated with Bookings. It is further enhanced with Teams Premium, which unlocks a snapshot of the queue of appointments, a summary of appointment analytics, and options to manage appointments. Download the Virtual Appointments app today through the Teams app store.

Queue view of scheduled and on-demand appointments

Enable employees to manage and service Virtual Appointments in one location with advanced capabilities to track wait times, check on the status of a meeting, and more. Scheduling admins and staff conducting virtual appointments can monitor incoming requests and process them appropriately. Scheduling admins also can set up an on-demand entry point for customers to request services and appointments on demand through a hosted, self-service website with company branding.

Custom virtual lobby for Virtual Appointments

Create a custom waiting room for your external attendees so they receive a branded, first-class experience from the start. This virtual lobby can be customized with your company’s logo, branding, and more.

Virtual Appointments individual and departmental analytics

Individuals or departments can focus on key metrics—no-shows, wait times, and calendar-level analytics—to drive business outcomes and improve customer experiences. Reports include trends over time and the ability to drill down into individual appointment data.

Virtual Appointments organizational level analytics

As a Virtual Appointments admin or operations supervisor, you can view aggregated analytics across your department and the entire organization. You also can see detailed activity for appointments created and conducted through multiple scheduling entry points and date ranges. Reports also include active user information for capabilities unlocked in Teams Premium, including SMS, two-way waiting room chat, and queuing. This data can be easily exported into Excel for additional analysis.

Teams (non-premium)

Teams Management

The following features are currently available for the Teams Management Platform (admin center):

• Manage Surface Hubs as Teams devices from Teams admin center – As an admin, you can manage the entire lifecycle of Surface Hubs as Teams devices from the Teams admin center. Available features include remote restart, download of logs, configuration of settings, and detailed device information.
• Notification granularity – You can use Intune to determine the types of content users can see in notifications on their mobile lock screens.
• Ability for Teams users to manage their third-party app subscriptions from within Teams Client – Teams users now can view and manage in a single place all third-party app subscriptions purchased in the Teams app store—all without leaving the Teams client. This allows users to easily add more licenses for purchased subscriptions, cancel, upgrade and downgrade subscriptions, and access invoices.
• Delete or rename files in a channel and in your OneDrive folder in Teams – To rename or delete a file in a channel, go to the files tab and find the file you want. Then select “more options” (the three dots) on the file. To rename or delete a file from your OneDrive, select “more” at the bottom of the app, then select “files.” Once you find the file you want, select the three dots, and choose to rename or delete it.
• Surface Message Actions by most recently used menu – This feature surfaces the most recently used Message Actions into the level one menu for you to access quickly.
• License management in Microsoft Teams and Teams admin center for SaaS offers built by ISVs – With Microsoft’s license management solution for SaaS offers built by independent software vendors (ISVs), customers can easily assign, use, and track SaaS licenses in Teams and the Teams admin center. This also provides ISVs with a ready-to-use solution without the need to develop their own license management and enforcement system.
• Upload files to your approval request via Power Automate portal – Files that you upload within the Power Automate portal will now be shown within the view details window of an approval request within Teams.
• Enhanced flyout design for app engagement and discovery – Enhanced visual layout helps you quickly launch apps that you have in addition to discovering new ones to help you complete your day-to-day tasks in Teams.

Education

These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:

• Invite parents via SMS for Communication – To enable parent-teacher communication, admins can now choose either email or SMS as their preferred Parent Connection invitation channel. Learn more details here. 
• Parent-teacher meetings – This enables teachers to easily schedule virtual meetings with parents or guardians of students through Teams.

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Simple and scalable portal navigation, call Dataverse in Power Fx, Wrap wizard, new look model driven apps

Power Apps portal left navigation pane

Microsoft have announced the new and simplified left navigation pane is now available to our makers. With this new experience, you get to see your most used items pinned to your left nav., customize those items by reordering them based on need, unpin items from the left navigation pane, discover a list of features available to you in Power Apps and so much more.

Find out more: Discover the breadth of the Power Platform with simple and scalable navigation

Call Dataverse actions directly in Power Fx

Microsoft have announced direct access to Dataverse actions in Power Fx formulas as an Experimental release. As a part of the Power Fx language, authors can now directly invoke a Dataverse action within a formula. A new Power Fx ‘Environment’ language object that authors can add to their app enables access to Dataverse actions. It is available with Power Apps release version 3.23022.

Find out more: Connect to Microsoft Dataverse

Wrap for Power Apps wizard (Public Preview)

Turn your Power Apps app into a native mobile app with the new wrap for Power Apps step-by-step wizard, available to all makers in Public Preview! The step-by-step guided wizard can “wrap” any existing canvas app(s) into a native mobile app shell and produce an Android or iOS mobile package that is ready to be digitally signed and distributed.

New look model driven Power Apps (Public Preview)

Microsoft have announced a public preview of the new model driven app experience and providing an update on new controls coming to canvas apps in the spring timeframe. The initial preview is launching with updates to the most heavily used model app experiences. The pages included in this initial launch cover 70% of scenarios in use today and we will be frequently updating the preview over the coming months.

Find out more: The new look for model driven Power Apps is available now in preview

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Desktop flow activity GA, desktop flows in Dataverse updates, February 2023 Power Automate desktop, 11 new verified, 9 independent connectors

Desktop flow activity (Generally Available)

Desktop flow activity is now generally available. Desktop flow activity is the new area in Power Automate to monitor in real-time your desktop flows automations. Three new pivots —  “Last runs”, “Machines” and “Current runs” — have been added these last weeks to get more control on your RPA automations and orchestration.

Find out more: Monitor your RPA automations with desktop flow activity (Generally Available)

Power Automate desktop flows in Dataverse updates

Power Automate desktop flows are stored in Microsoft Dataverse, which lets you securely store and manage data that’s used by business applications. This enables you to leverage features like Solutions for Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). However, we have received feedback from customers that the way data is stored can be difficult to work with.

A new storage schema for desktop flows in Dataverse (v.2) has been implemented. This will be much easier to work with when you are using Dataverse APIs and will enable future product enhancements with Power Automate for desktop. This new storage schema is publicly available along with the February 2023 application release (v.2.29).

Find out more: Power Automate desktop flows in Dataverse updates

Power Automate desktop – February 2023 update

The February 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.29) has been released! This version includes:

• Regions have now been introduced in the designer
• You can now bring your own connection in SharePoint actions

Find out more: February 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop

11 verified, 9 new independent publisher connectors

In January 2023, Microsoft launched 11 new verified connectors and 18 updates from different service owners. These connectors have solutions and tools for Communication, AI, Business Management, Sales and CRM, Commerce. In addition, 9 new Independent Publisher connectors were published in January. These connectors have solutions and tools for IT Operations, Productivity, Lifestyle and Entertainment, Communication, and much more. 

Find out more: Starting the year of 2023 with 11 New Verified Connectors and 18 Updates | 9 New Independent Publisher Connectors in January 2023

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Power BI

In Power BI: Power BI February 2023 feature summary, Power BI Datamart – February 2023 Feature Summary, multi-tasking in Teams & Power BI, streaming dataflows retirement, on-prem data gateway update, export to excel improvements for matrix visuals GA, SSRS migration tool expansion, Power BI embedding capabilities, new report color themes, new workspace metadata for excel

Power BI February 2023 Feature Summary

In this month’s update Microsoft have added TypeScript support in the developer playground sandbox, several new formatting features for reporting, and so much more.

Find out more: Power BI February 2023 Feature Summary

Power BI Datamart – February 2023 Feature Summary

Microsoft have shared a list of features that we’ve shipped for Datamarts during the month of February 2023, including:

• Manage default dataset
• Visualize results
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Open with Azure Data Studio
• Header updates – Sensitivity label

Find out more: Power BI Datamart – February 2023 Feature Summary

Multi-tasking in Microsoft Teams with Power BI

Microsoft have announced several enhancements to multitasking for the Power BI app for Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and Office have started rolling out now, these include the ability to go back to a previous Power BI app in Teams, Improved back stack navigation and more.

Find out more: Multi-tasking in Microsoft Teams with Power BI is getting better

Announcing the retirement of Streaming Dataflows

Streaming dataflows allows authors to connect to, ingest, mash up, model, and build reports based on streaming, near real-time data directly in the Power BI service. Microsoft have announced that starting mid – March of 2023 they will no longer support the creation, editing or running of streaming dataflows.

Find out more: Announcing the retirement of Streaming Dataflows

On-premises data gateway February release

Microsoft have released the February 2023 update for the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.162.9). This update brings the on-premises data gateway up to date with the February 2023 release of Power BI Desktop.

Find out more: On-premises data gateway February release

Export to Excel Improvements for Matrix Visuals (General Availability)

Microsoft have announced that the export to Excel improvements for Matrix visuals feature is now generally available (GA). This feature allows you to export data to Excel from a Power BI matrix visual while keeping the structure of the data intact in Excel.

Find out more: Export to Excel Improvements for Matrix Visuals (GA)

Expansion of the SSRS Migration Tool to Power BI

Microsoft have announced the expansion of the migration tool functionality for SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). The migration tool is now available in SSRS 2019 – version 15.0.1102.1047 and SSRS 2017 – version 14.0.601.20. You can download the updated application from the download center.

Find out more: Announcing Availability Expansion of the SSRS Migration Tool to Power BI

New Power BI embedding capabilities

There is a new form of Power BI embedded analytics that enables you to embed an interactive data exploration and report creation experience in your applications. With this solution, you’ll be able to provide your users a similar experience to our integrations in Dynamics 365 and SharePoint.

Find out more: Empower your application users to quickly explore their data with the new Power BI Embedding capabilities

Better, accessible reports with new color themes

Five new color themes have been released to support accessibility (Accessible Default, Accessible City park, Accessible Tidal, Accessible Neutral, Accessible Orchid). These new themes make it easier than ever to create stunning reports with accessibility in mind.

Find out more: Create stunning and more accessible reports in minutes with our new color themes!

New Workspace Metadata for Excel Scenarios

Microsoft have announced additional improvements that helps you and your organization easily track usage of live Power BI content in Excel based on where the content is saved. New metadata has been added to the Power BI activity logs that enables you to easily filter activity events by workspace name. This saves you valuable time while ensuring your organization continues to meet its compliance requirements and other data auditing needs.

Find out more: Power BI Activity Logs: New Workspace Metadata for Excel Scenarios

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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.

• SharePoint
• Teams
• Power Apps
• Power Automate
• Power BI

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: Calendar week layout, Microsoft Feed, Planner integration with Viva Goals

Microsoft Lists: Calendar Week Layout

There is a provision to create multiple calendar views – using both month and week layouts. Week Layout also supports all features from the month layout including the drag and drop operations to reschedule items and conditional formatting to color code items on the canvas. Once you create the view, you can drag and drop items in a calendar to schedule, reschedule or unschedule them.

Find out more: Create a calendar view from a list

Microsoft 365: Microsoft Feed

Microsoft Feed provides users with a mix of relevant content from across Microsoft 365 that helps users discover and learn about people and interests relevant at work. The feed is personal to users and will show users content based on what’s likely to be most relevant to the current user at any given time.

Find out more: Search made simple

Planner integration with Microsoft Viva Goals

This allows you to view your team tasks and update the relevant Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) in Viva Goals. As you update and complete your day-to-day plans and tasks in Planner, everything gets update and helps show progress in Viva Goals automatically.

Find out more: Make Your Goals a Reality with OKRs and New Capabilities from Microsoft Viva Goals

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Teams

In Teams: View full chat thread, view video recordings inside LMS, paging on video gallery, meeting toolbar updates, live stream meetings to Meta, federated group calling, edit/ delete events support for messages – bot chats, update files to your approval request, notification granularity

Education
Government
Frontline workers

View the full chat conversation thread

When users search for a chat message in Teams and click on a message result, their search will now display the full context of the conversations related to the result, regardless of the age of the messages.

Find out more: Now in public preview: View the full chat conversation thread after clicking on search results

View video recordings and attendance reports inside LMS

Teachers and students will be able to access video recordings and attendance reports inside their LMS itself. The Microsoft Teams Meeting LTI app has enabled availability of these artifacts inside LMS. This feature will be available to use in all the LMSs incorporating Teams Meeting LTI app.

Find out more: View and download meeting attendance reports in Teams

Paging on Video Gallery

When you are in Gallery view, and there are more videos than can be shown at once on the meeting stage (the maximum number varies depending on your device configuration and internet bandwidth), navigation controls will appear below the Video Gallery to see additional videos of the attendees. You can use these controls to view more video participants.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Paging on Large Gallery

Meeting Toolbar Usability Improvements

The Meeting toolbar in Microsoft Teams just got a usability upgrade! With new features that include dedicated buttons for raising hands and switching between view modes, navigating your next meeting just got a little easier.

Find out more: Meeting toolbar usability improvements

Live stream Teams meetings and webinars to Meta Workplace Live

Live stream your Teams meetings or webinars directly to Meta Workplace Live using the new Workplace Live app integration. This allows attendees to watch live meetings and webinars within their Workplace groups or catch up later by watching a recording on Workplace. Simply add the Workplace Live app to your Teams meeting or webinar, sign in using your Workplace account, and select the Workplace Event you’d like to live stream.

Find out more: Delivering new webinar experiences with Microsoft Teams

Enhanced webinar management experience with customized options

Now when you select the webinar template, you’ll see a new structure and expanded options to customize registration details and settings specific to each event. The new management experience will offer capabilities around setup, registration and reporting.

Find out more: Get started with Teams webinars

Federated group calling

Easily start a group Teams call from a chat with federated colleagues outside your organization, including video and screen sharing — all over an internet connection without any PSTN usage charges.

Find out more: Native chat experience for external (federated) users in Microsoft Teams

Start Whiteboard from a Teams meeting for Teams Rooms on Windows

Teams Rooms on Windows users can now start a Microsoft Whiteboard in Teams meetings using the one-touch in-meeting share content function from meeting room consoles. With our new patterns of work, whiteboarding is a key feature to enable collaboration between in-room and remote users. 

Find out more: Manage the Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams

Meeting chat on Gallery, Large gallery, and Together mode for Teams Rooms on Windows

In-room users can use meeting room consoles to show or hide chat on the front-of-room display alongside meeting participants and/or content when in Gallery, Large Gallery, or Together mode. The functionality is available to users through the View Switcher on meeting room consoles, and IT admins can configure whether to hide meeting chat entirely for a room.

In-meeting notification improvement for Teams Rooms on Windows

New enhancements to in-meeting notifications for Teams Rooms on Windows create closer alignment with the familiar Teams desktop experience. Critical notifications that require a user action will continue to be available and actionable with informational notifications on the front of the room screen.

Edit and delete events support for messages in user: bot chats

Currently, message events can be accessed by developers. This feature allows developers to access, edit, or delete event updates on messages in user:bot chats.

Upload files to your approval request via Power Automate portal

Files that are uploaded within the Power Automate portal will now show within the view details window of an approval request within Teams.

Notification granularity

Admins can use Intune to determine the types of content a user can see in a notification on their mobile lock screen.

Education

These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:

• Jupyter Notebook integration with Assignments – Python Jupyter Notebooks (.ipynb) and Python Script files (.py) is now able to be rendered in Teams Assignments. This allows you and your students to distribute, edit, and execute python code directly in Teams Assignments.
• Insights for Rubrics in Assignments – Rubrics can be added to assignments to help educators to provide a consistent set of criteria and support students by outlining expectations for them to align to.  
• New Updates in Reflect – Updates include breathing exercises, updates to promote inclusivity, check-in ideas & Make check-ins a routine with one click.
• Phonics Rules Challenge Assignments in Reading Progress – Educators can turn personalized lists of practice words into Reading Progress assignments in one click with the Challenge assignment feature.
• Forms / Quiz support for images in multiple choice questions – We are excited to share that you are now able to use images as an answer in Microsoft Forms and Quiz. Visualization is a crucial form of support that helps students process content and create connections, particularly for learners who are still developing their language skills. 
• Microsoft Forms’ new cover page and distribution experience – Forms now allows you to get creative with your cover page using AI capability that suggests thousands of themes based on the topic of your form.
• New Updates in Teams Meetings – Sign language view, multiple questions/ quizzes poll, images in polls.
• Parent Meeting Scheduler – To allow teachers to engage in more frequent, and easier communication with parents and guardians, we have included the capability for a *virtual* Parent/Teacher meeting, integrated within the Parent app.

Government

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

• Teams calendar now includes scheduling form pop-outs for GCC-High and DoD
• View attendance report on Microsoft Teams for Android and iOS for Government clouds
• Express yourself in Teams meeting for DoD
• Disable or Enable all Attendees’ Video for DoD
• Automatically view up to 49 videos (7×7) in Teams meeting for GCC-High and DoD
• Manage attendee audio permissions for DoD

Frontline workers

• Frontline workers using shared devices can use Edge and Yammer apps on Android alongside Teams – Microsoft’s shared device mode allows frontline workers to easily authenticate by automatically signing users in and out of all the apps that have enabled this feature. In addition to Microsoft Teams and Managed Home Screen being generally available, Edge and Yammer apps on Android are now in public preview. 

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Dataverse available with a Developer environment, IP based cookie binding, shared device mode, virtual tables creation wizard,

Making Dataverse available for all makers

You can work on Power Platform using Dataverse for building applications where now you can work with relationship modeling in Canvas applications, leverage Model driven applications, build virtual tables, Power FX, formula columns, ALM and much more.

Developer environment is great place for you to build and run the apps with Dataverse in your own personal space, without restriction and then eventually share and deploy to production environments. Developer environment honors tenant’s default DLP policy and hence a secure place for makers to start the experience while honoring their organization policy.

Find out more: Power Apps Developer Plan

IP based cookie binding in Dataverse is Generally Available

IP based cookie binding is a security technique that helps protect Dataverse against cookie replay attacks. A cookie replay attack occurs when an attacker intercepts a valid cookie and exploits it to impersonate the user who originally created the cookie.

IP based cookie binding addresses this threat by evaluating the IP address associated with the cookie in the request. If the IP address in the request does not match the IP address of the device where the cookie was originally created, the Dataverse API will automatically reject the cookie and prompt the user with a message indicating that their session may have been compromised. 

Find out more: Block cookie replay attacks in Dataverse

Power Apps Shared Device Mode (SDM)

Microsoft recently announced the public preview of Shared Device Mode (SDM) on Android. Frontline workers will now be able to quickly, easily, and securely log in and out of their devices when handing off mobile devices or sharing kiosks. This single login will apply to Power Apps, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Managed Home Screen, Microsoft Edge, and Yammer. This feature is particularly useful for industries like Retail, Healthcare and Manufacturing where multiple users share devices, often within a shift with tight time constraints. 

Note: Public Preview of Shared Device Mode for Power Apps for Android starts with availability beginning with the 3.23011.13 version.  IOS availability will be announced at a later date.

Find out more: Introducing shared device mode

Virtual tables creation wizard now in Public Preview

Microsoft have announced that makers can now create virtual tables directly in the maker portal in just a few minutes using a guided creation wizard. With this new experience, you can create virtual tables from SharePoint and SQL without any code, and without leaving the maker portal. In minutes, you can set up your connection, pick your SharePoint Site or SQL Database, select your SharePoint List or SQL Table, and your virtual table will appear in table hub ready to use. You can optionally choose to configure your connection references and table details, such as column and table names, which was not possible for virtual tables until now.

Upon creating the virtual table, it will act like a standard Dataverse table, from which you can create relationships with other data in Dataverse, build apps, or use it in a flow. 

Find out more: Create virtual tables using the virtual connector provider (preview)

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Power Automate Desktop update, manage flows via web APIs, 13 new verified connectors, 20 new independent publisher connectors, Power Automate hosted RPA, Excel’s new automate tab

Power Automate for desktop update January 2023

The January 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.28) has been released. Here’s a summary of the latest new features and updates:

• Power Automate now performs a certificate check during login
• Error screenshots can now be prevented from being captured
• More SharePoint connector actions are now available in Power Automate for desktop
• Captured UI elements will now be more efficient
• Text-based selectors have now been introduced

Find out more: January 2023 update of Power Automate for desktop

Manage Power Automate Desktop flows using Web APIs

Microsoft have recently introduced Web APIs, which can let you manage desktop flows without the need of using UI – allowing administrators and Automation Center of Excellence teams to manage at scale. Power Automate Web API allows you to:

• List available desktop flows
• Get the schema for desktop flows
• Get the status of a desktop flow run
• Get desktop flow outputs
• Trigger a desktop flow run
• Cancel a desktop flow run

Find out more: Work with desktop flows using APIs

13 New Verified Connectors and 12 updates

The Power Automate team announced that in December, we launched 13 new verified connectors and 12 updates from different service owners. These connectors have solutions and tools for Business Management, Sales and CRM, Marketing, Content and Files, Productivity, Communication and much more.

Find out more: 13 New Verified Connectors and 12 Updates released in December 2022

20 New Independent Publisher Connectors

20 new Independent Publisher connectors were published in December. These connectors have solutions and tools for Social Media, Human Resources, Productivity, Lifestyle and Entertainment, and much more.

Find out more: 20 New Independent Publisher Connectors in December 2022

Microsoft Power Automate hosted RPA

Power Automate now supports two hosted RPA scenarios that provide developers and Center of Excellence admins a simple way to set up and scale automations:

1. Individual hosted machines, now available in preview, enable developers to build or test automation and business users to run automation.
2. Hosted machine groups are generally available and automatically scale workloads to optimize unattended automation in production, delivering improved business process continuity and governance at scale.

Find out more: Announcing new releases for Microsoft Power Automate hosted RPA

Excel’s new Power Automate tab

xcel’s new Automate tab allows you to tackle your automation needs quickly using Power Automate. Within this tab, you can now build Office Scripts and enhance their capabilities using Power Automate.

Office Scripts in Excel allows you to automate your Excel tasks by recording and replaying your actions on different workbooks and worksheets. Use Office Scripts to combine multiple workbooks into a single workbook, control when calculations happen within your workbook, and so much more.

Find out more: Get more done with Excel and Power Automate

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Power BI

In Power BI: Datamart January 2023, Report Server January 2023 Feature Summary, multi-language reports for Power BI, embed Power BI org-wide apps into Teams, back/ restore updates for large datasets, connected Excel Tables, my workspace governance improvements, Dataset Scale-Out, on-premises data gateway, Viva Goals + Metrics integration

Datamarts are a public preview feature in Power BI Premium (and Premium Per User) that enable self-service users to securely collect, store, analyze, and share their data in a unified, low code solution. This months update includes:

• Updates to the datamart editor
• Takeover ownership
• Connectivity to any SQL client

Find out more: Power BI Datamart – January 2023 Feature Summary

Power BI Report Server January 2023 Feature Summary

The January 2023 Power BI Report Server release has updates to features like the Report Server web portal, Modeling, Reporting and much more.

Find out more: Power BI Report Server January 2023 Feature Summary

Building Multi-language Reports for Power BI in 2023

The Power BI team recently announced an essential function in DAX named USERCULTURE which provides the ability to write measures which implement report label translations dynamically, plus another new feature named Field Parameters which offer a much better foundation for implementing data translations.

Following this, there is now new guidance for building multi-language reports that embraces these new Power BI enhancements. This guidance has been designed to teach content creators using Power BI Desktop the skills required to add translations and multi-languages support to PBIX project files. 

Find out more: Building Multi-language Reports for Power BI in 2023

Embed your Power BI organizational apps in Microsoft Teams

You can now embed entire Power BI organizational apps in Microsoft Teams tabs. Until now, this has been one of the top feature requests for Power BI integration with Microsoft Teams. It helps teams and organization put the full Power BI org app experiences directly where people work every day. By adding Org apps in channels and meetings, you enable everyone to access the data they need.

Find out more: Announcing – Embed your Power BI organizational apps in Microsoft Teams Channels and Meetings

Backup and restore improvements for large datasets near the size limit

In August 2021, the Power BI team announced general availability (GA) of backup and restore for large datasets. Rolling back large datasets was not without challenges for large datasets near the max dataset size. But thanks to the latest improvements, you can now even restore a backup file when the dataset size is near the SKU limitation. You no longer need to be concerned that size limits impact restorability.

Now, you can now use a new /forceRestore option with the restore command to overcome this limitation. 

Find out more: Announcing backup and restore improvements for large datasets near the size limit

Connected Excel Tables from Power BI (Public Preview)

Before now, you could only analyze live Power BI data in Excel using PivotTables (with the Analyze in Excel feature) but with this new experience, you’ll be able to use Excel tables to analyze live Power BI data and answer critical business questions with familiar spreadsheet functions. This new connected experience enables you to export refreshable data to Excel from a Power BI visual. 

Find out more: Announcing Connected Excel Tables from Power BI (Public Preview)

My workspace governance improvement (Public Preview)

My workspace is the personal workspace every Power BI user has for working with their own content. The Power BI team have announced the Public Preview of several features that address these friction points. These new features allow admins to gain access to the contents of any user’s My workspace, designate a capacity for all existing and new My workspaces, and prevent users from moving My workspaces to a different capacity that may reside in a non-compliant region.

Find out more: Announcing My workspace governance improvement (Public Preview)

Power BI Dataset Scale-Out (Public Preview)

The Power BI team have announced the public preview of Power BI Dataset Scale-Out, a dataset feature enabling enterprise customers to support large-scale Power BI solutions without any additional administrative overhead or infrastructure complexity.

The idea is to let Power BI scale the number of dataset replicas and load-balance client connections dynamically to meet query processing demands at critical times up to the maximum available compute resources (vCores) of the underlying Premium capacity. During low-demand times, Power BI can automatically scale back to decrease the number of replicas again. 

Find out more: Announcing the Public Preview of Power BI Dataset Scale-Out

Viva Goals + Metrics integration

The Power BI team have announced the general availability of the Viva Goals Power BI integration and three new Metrics features specifically answering common customer asks. A new, optional column for milestones, scorecard time zones, and a handy auto collapse / auto expand feature.

Find out more: Announcing: Viva Goals + Metrics integration, scorecard time zones and more

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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.

• SharePoint
• Teams
• Power Apps
• Power Automate
• Power BI

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: Syntex pay-as-you-go, search transcript for Stream (on SharePoint), add apps to teams when enabling, sensitivity labels inside the sharing dialog, OneDrive sync reports in admin center, sites coverage in search usage analytics

Microsoft Syntex Pay-as-you-go (Preview)

This preview allows you to track unstructured document processing events at no cost to assess usage and estimate costs for a future pay-as-you-go license. Start by entering your Azure subscription in the Microsoft 365 admin center, you will join the preview of the pay-as-you-go functionality for unstructured and prebuilt document processing (formerly document understanding).

Processing events will be sent to the Azure meter in your account so that you will be able to view the pages processed for unstructured and prebuilt document processing models. For the duration of the preview, you will not be charged anything. The billing meter will function only to show you pages processed in your organization.

Find out more: Configure Microsoft Syntex for pay-as-you-go billing in Azure (Preview)

Search video transcript for Stream (on SharePoint)

This feature allows users who are viewing a video to search for keywords contained in the video transcript. Users can navigate through the search results and click on a portion of the transcript to be taken to the respective spot in the video.

Note: This feature is for searching the transcript of a single video AND people need view or edit permissions on a file to search the transcript.

Find out more: View, edit, and manage video transcripts and captions

SharePoint Apps: Add to teams when enabling an app

As a SharePoint Administrator or Global Administrator in Microsoft 365, you can acquire solutions from the SharePoint Store or distribute custom apps that can be used across SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Viva Connections. Microsoft are also improving the process of adding SharePoint Framework solution app to Teams in the modern SharePoint apps site (formerly known as App Catalog). 

Find out more: Manage apps using the Apps site

File sharing experience – sensitivity labels inside the sharing dialog

Sensitivity labels are used to classify and protect your organization’s data. These labels are completely customizable, and admins can apply a label to a specific file based on the organization needs. Microsoft have now added sensitivity labels inside the Sharing dialog, to provide you the ability to see what labels have been applied to your files before sharing them. 

If the Admin chooses to set Sensitivity labels for the organization, users who interact with the OneDrive / SharePoint share control will be able to see these labels displayed inside the sharing dialog.

Find out more: Enable sensitivity labels for Office files in SharePoint and OneDrive

SharePoint sites coverage in Search usage analytics

Microsoft have announced that SharePoint sites are now included within Usage Analytics in the Microsoft 365 Search & Intelligence Admin Center. Visualize insights from queries from your SharePoint-based intranet and other hub and communication sites.

On the ‘Query analytics‘ page, you can now see the top queries, abandoned queries and 0-result queries. SharePoint sites include both classic and modern SharePoint queries, aggregating search query data across Hub sites, Communication sites, team sites, and various search centers in classic mode: at the Enterprise, Site and Basic levels.

Find out more: Microsoft Search Usage Reports

OneDrive sync reports in the Apps Admin Center (GA)

Admins now can use the OneDrive sync health dashboard in the Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center to get an executive summary of everything happening with OneDrive so that you can resolve common issues quickly and focus on other strategic tasks as an administrator.

The dashboard provides you with sync health reports for tracking relevant health issues and advisories, checking the sync status and app version of individual devices, and monitoring Known Folder Move roll out across devices throughout the organization.

Find out more: OneDrive sync reports in the Apps Admin Center

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Teams

In Teams: Teams Premium, Delete chats, expanded reactions, add people to chats @mention, recommended people, receive group chat with RSC, sign language view always-on, approvals as PDFs, Acrobat improvements

Education
Government
Frontline workers

Teams Premium preview now available

Microsoft have announced that Teams Premium is broadly available for preview as a limited trial for commercial customers through the Microsoft 365 admin center. The features under this offering began rolling out this December and will continue to roll out through January 2023. With Teams Premium, you can:

• Extend your organization’s brand and company culture across meetings with branding, organization backgrounds, and organization together mode scenes.
• Use AI to make the meetings you attend (and miss) more productive and impactful through live translation for captions to remove language barriers and intelligent recap features that offer smarter recordings with autogenerated chapters, AI-suggested action items, and insights to quickly catch up on missed meetings where your name was mentioned.
• Apply advanced meeting protection such as Watermark, End-to-end encryption for meetings, and Sensitivity labels for meetings with prevent copy/paste of meeting chat to better protect your virtual meetings.
• Deliver a high-quality webinar experience through advanced capabilities to streamline event workflows with registration waitlist and manual approval, facilitate behind-the-scene actions through virtual green room for presenters (separate from attendees) before the event begins, and manage the attendee experience so they only see shared content and participants brought on-screen.
• Manage the end-to-end virtual appointment experience with advanced features like text reminders, custom branded virtual appointments, and a centralized Virtual Appointment dashboard for a quick view into schedules, queues, and analytics to keep track of key usage insights such as no-shows and wait time information per appointment.

Find out more: Microsoft Teams Premium preview now available

Delete chats

Organize and easily remove chat conversations you no longer need without impacting other participants in the same chat. Users can now delete 1:1 chats, group chats, and meeting chats if they are a participant in Microsoft Teams. This permanently deletes the chat only for the user, other people in the chat and conversation history for them is not impacted.

Find out more: Microsoft roadmap

Expanded reactions

Expanded reactions allows users to apply any emoji as a reaction to chat messages! Pick from over 800 Teams emojis to react the way you want. Communicate reactions to celebrate, express your agreement, or emphasize the completion of tasks.

Find out more: Microsoft roadmap

Add people to a group chat with @mention

Add new participants to the chat with @mention, removing the need to navigate to the add-dialog. When adding new participants, you can control how much of the chat history to share.

Find out more: Microsoft roadmap

Recommended people when creating a new message

Using AI, Teams chat will assist you in initiating new conversations by recommending colleagues based on your previous collaborations.

Receive all group chat messages with resource-specific consent

The resource-specific consent (RSC) permissions model, originally developed for Teams Graph APIs has been extended for chat and channel scope. Using RSC, you can request team owners to consent for a bot to receive user messages across standard group chats without being @mentioned.

Find out more: Receive all conversation messages with RSC

Sign Language View and always-on captions in meetings

Prioritize up to two other participants’ videos for sign language in meetings so they stay visible even while content is shared. Additionally, you can set captions to stay on across all meetings.

Find out more: Use Sign Language View in Microsoft Teams

Approvals as PDFs can be saved, printed, and transferred

Approval creators can save a completed approval request to a PDF file and have the option to print it. This feature allows customers to easily transfer their proof of approval as a PDF to another system or store it as a file.

Find out more: Approvals in Microsoft Teams

Adobe Acrobat streamlines the PDF experience in Teams

Building on the momentum of collaborative apps in Teams, Adobe has released the new integration of Adobe Acrobat into Microsoft Teams. Adobe Acrobat can now be set as the default PDF app in Teams. This makes it easier to share and review PDFs, collaborate with comments and annotations, easily access PDFs stored in Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft OneDrive, and more.

Find out more: Adobe Acrobat streamlines the PDF experience in Microsoft Teams

Education

These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:

Government

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

• View meeting transcripts on Microsoft Teams on Android and iOS for Government clouds – You can now start transcription for your meetings and view meeting transcripts on Microsoft Teams for iOS and Android.

Frontline workers

• Frontline workers using shared devices can use Edge and Yammer apps on Android alongside Teams – Microsoft’s shared device mode allows frontline workers to easily authenticate by automatically signing users in and out of all the apps that have enabled this feature. In addition to Microsoft Teams and Managed Home Screen being generally available, Edge and Yammer apps on Android are now in public preview. 

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Delegate mailbox approval process, pipelines (preview), Developer tools update

Delegate the mailbox approval process

The Power Apps team have announced that that the mailbox approval process can now be delegated to another user instead of always requiring a Global or Exchange admin. A new security role named Delegated Mailbox Approver is now available. A Global or Exchange admin can assign (delegate) this role to one or more users. A user with this role will be able to approve a mailbox without being a Global or Exchange admin.

Find out more: Delegate the Mailbox Approval Process

Power Platform pipelines, now in preview

Pipelines aims to democratize application lifecycle management (ALM) for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 customers by bringing deployment automation capabilities into Managed Environments in a manner that’s more approachable for all makers, admins, and developers.

Pipelines can be setup and run entirely within Power Platform – with governance, visibility, and safeguards automatically built in so that your business solutions can come to market faster with less effort and higher quality. The system handles all the heavy lifting and ongoing maintenance so you don’t have to.

Find out more: Automate deployments with pipelines in Power Platform, now in preview

Power Platform Developer Tools November update

The November update for Power Platform CLI, Azure DevOps, and GitHub actions is out now. This month’s update includes:

• Support for Managed Identities in Azure DevOps
• Assign groups to environments
• Support for Power Platform Pipelines
• Virtual Agents

Find out more: Power Platform Developer Tools November update

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Deeper SAP integration, 10 new verified, 13 independent publisher connectors, Power Automate Desktop December 2022 update

Deeper SAP Integration for the Power Platform

The Power Automate team have recently announced the General Availability (GA) of a broad set of new functionality in the Power Platform that will make it easier for organizations running SAP to digitally transform and automate their business processes. Here’s a look at what this entails:

• Prebuilt Power Apps for Common SAP Processes
• Prebuilt Power Automate Flows for Common SAP Processes
• Advanced SAP System Connections
• New On-Premises Data Gateway
• New SAP Connector and Action
• New Logic Apps Functions

Find out more: Announcing Deeper SAP Integration for the Power Platform

10 new verified and 13 independent publisher connectors

In November, Microsoft launched 10 new verified connectors and 16 updates from different service owners, as well as 13 new Independent Publisher connectors. These connectors have solutions and tools for Commerce, Human Resources, Data, Content and Files, and much more.

Find out more: 10 New Verified Connectors | 13 New Independent Publisher Connectors in November 2022

Power Automate desktop update – December 2022

The December 2022 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.27) has been released and includes the following new features/ updates:

• Selector parsing is now available
• Edge and Chrome extensions for browser automation are now migrated to Manifest V3

Find out more: December 2022 update of Power Automate for desktop

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Power BI

In Power BI: Power BI December 2022 feature summary, unified v-cores, dataset refresh cancellation, subscribe to filtered report, enterprise scorecards

Power BI Feature Summary – December 2022

This month’s update includes a variety of new features including: updated DAX functions, updated slicer type formatting, and brought Metrics to the Windows app.

Find out more: Power BI December 2022 Feature Summary

Simplifying capacity management with unified v-cores

The Power BI team have announced a platform update that will simplify the way customers manage Power BI Premium capacities.  Starting on December 11th 2022, the team are rolling out changes to unify the concepts of front-end and back-end virtual cores for capacity management.

This change will simplify the model used by customers to both manage capacities and rationalize usage metrics against capacity sizing decisions.

Find out more: Simplifying capacity management with unified v-cores

Dataset refresh cancellation now available in Power BI Premium

Earlier this year, the Power BI team released the Enhanced refresh with Power BI REST API, that – in addition to XMLA based refreshes – allows refresh cancellation. However, it requires the refresh operation to be triggered by the API. Today, users can cancel an ongoing scheduled or on-demand refresh using a contextual button in the Power BI service.

Find out more: Dataset refresh cancellation is now available in Power BI Premium

Subscribe to a report with filters applied

The Power BI team have announced a highly anticipated update to subscriptions: you can now create a subscription to a view of a Power BI report uniquely relevant to you. When creating a new subscription, you’ll see a new Include my changes option if you have made changes to the report (e.g., applied filters or selected a slicer value). 

Find out more: Subscribe to a report with filters applied

Enterprise scorecards with hierarchies and linked metrics in Power BI Metrics

The Power BI team have announced two much anticipated releases in the Metrics experience. With hierarchies and linked metrics, it’s easier than ever to automate your metric values so you can spend less time crafting multiple scorecards and connections, and more time analyzing your metric performance.

Hierarchies is a premium or PPU feature, and linked metrics is a Pro feature. These two features enable easy, large scale enterprise scorecard deployment, allowing automated views of cascading scorecards and linked metrics that show up and are sync’d on multiple scorecards.

Find out more: Announcing: Enterprise scorecards with hierarchies and linked metrics in Power BI Metrics

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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.

• SharePoint
• Teams
• Power Apps
• Power Automate
• Power BI

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: Tenant URL rename GA, New site templates, streamline site info SP admin center,

SharePoint Tenant URL Rename – General Availability

This capability is now generally available to organizations that have less than 10,000 total sites (including OneDrive and SharePoint sites). With the tenant rename capability, you will be able to have the SharePoint domain in all site URLs updated to the new name you choose and continue with that new name going forward. 

Find out more: Change your SharePoint domain

New SharePoint site templates

The SharePoint team are introducing 3 new SharePoint site templates dedicated to helping you create sites for your HR department, to showcase Events, and a template powered by Microsoft Syntex to do contract management.

Find out more: Apply and customize SharePoint site templates

SharePoint admin center: Streamlining management of site information across Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups

SharePoint is updating the site detail panel to include Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups information. Admins that have permissions to SharePoint, Teams and Groups admin centers can now manage all related attributes (membership, group name, description, etc.) from a single site detail panel in the SharePoint admin center ‘Active Sites’ tab.

Note: SharePoint admins with SharePoint only permissions will have read-only access to the new attributes. 

Find out more: Roadmap ID: 100053

Most used SharePoint Framework solutions – October 2022

Here are the top 10 most widely used SharePoint Framework solutions, in past month, which were installed from the app store:

• Ichicraft Widgets: Your Digital Workplace – Ichicraft Widgets allows users to personalize their digital workplace in SharePoint or Microsoft Teams.
• Poll by WM Reply – Poll easily allows you to create a short and snappy question so that you can engage with your audience.
• Bitalus-StockQuotes – Show Stock information on your SharePoint Homepage with a couple of clicks. 
• Navigator 365 – Sharepointalist, Inc. – SharePoint & Teams content aggregation with search, grouping and filtering. 
• Employee Directory Plus – Support | HR365 – SharePoint Employee Directory Plus is free, fully featured 30 days trial for one office 365 tenant upto 999 users.
• Cerkl Broadcast for SharePoint – Ensure your internal communications are seen with SharePoint push alerts and newsfeed.
• Image Map – APPS 365 LTD – Supercharge your processes and navigation by using any image to deliver interactive visual content. 
• HM Munich GmbH – Table of Contents – Dieses WebPart hilft Ihnen qualitativ hochwertige Dokumentationen zu erstellen. 
• Modern FAQ – The Modern FAQ app provides users a better way to search for the answers to the questions they have in mind. 
• Smarter Event Booking – Smarter Event Booking allows you to create events and offer them to your users for registration.

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Teams

In Teams: Accept/ block chat invite, scheduled send, start chat with groups, view chat history via search, unread toggle, upload documents via e-signature approvals, 1-click instant poll, PSTN dial-in breakout rooms, 7×7 videos, modern meetings on web, screen pop for incoming PSTN, transcription for calls on Android

Education
Government

Accept or block a group chat invitation from an unmanaged user

This feature brings the ability to accept or block a one-on-one chat from an unmanaged user that already exists in Teams. Microsoft are extending and additional safety layer for Teams users to also accept or block a group chat invitation from an unmanaged user.

Find out more: Microsoft roadmap ID: 95051

Schedule send

Similar to delaying the delivery of emails in Outlook, you now can manually select the future date and time you would like a chat message to be delivered. Users can simply right-click the send button to schedule send and have the confidence their message will be delivered as scheduled.

Find out more: Schedule chat messages in Teams

Start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-enabled Security Groups, and Office 365 Groups

You will now be able to start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-enabled Security Groups, and O365 Groups. This feature will respect the limits on members in a group chat, currently set to 250 members.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Chat with groups (M365, distribution & mail-enabled security groups) in Teams

Click on search message results to view the entire chat conversation history

Users who click on the chat message search result will now be presented with the entire message thread, regardless of the age of the message. This update creates efficiency as it ensures the user has the full context of the conversation.

Find out more: Search for messages and more in Teams

Unread toggle

Users will now find it easier to view, triage and catch up with their unread chat message notifications by easily turning on the unread toggle button in their activity feed panel. Alternatively, users will also be able to turn off the unread toggle to view both read and unread notifications.

Find out more: Unread Only Toggle Available for Teams Activity Feed

Upload documents from OneDrive for E-signature Approvals

When creating an e-signature request in Approvals, users can now upload a document to be signed from OneDrive for Business directly. This enables access to your document from anywhere and on any device.

Find out more: Create an e-sign approval

1-click Instant Poll during Teams meetings

Defined binary responses to get immediate answers to your spoken poll question (yes/no, thumb up/down, heart/broken heart). Presenters can launch these polls without preparing in advance – say your question out loud then click the corresponding response icon.

Find out more: Poll attendees during a Teams meeting

Support PSTN dial-in, dial-out, and call-me attendees in meetings to join Breakout Rooms

Enabling dial-in, dial-out and call-me PSTN participants to join breakout rooms and come back to the main room when breakout rooms end.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Support PSTN attendees in meetings to join breakout rooms

Screen pop for incoming PSTN calls

Admins can enable this policy in the Teams Admin Center, so that on acceptance of a PSTN call, an automatic browser launch can happen alongside Teams, displaying relevant information (CRM data, case data, etc.) to the user. This feature can also now be turned off in user settings.

Automatically view up to 49 videos (7×7) in Teams meeting

With this update, users will be able to automatically see up to 49 videos (7×7) on their screen by default without an explicit action. The actual number of videos seen by a user will depend on hardware/device capabilities.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Automatically view up to 49 videos (7×7) in Teams meeting

Modern meeting experience on the web

The modern meeting and calling experience will be available for Teams on the web in Chrome and Edge browsers – including improved pre-join, dynamic view, and the updated control bar.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Modern meetings and calls on Teams web client

Transcription for calls on Microsoft Teams for Android

Transcription for 1:1 calls and group calls is now available on the Teams app for Android for whenever you’re on the go or just don’t have a notepad handy.

Find out more: View live transcription in a Teams meeting

Education

These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:

• Updated Assignment List view for Teachers/ students – The Assignments list for teachers and students has been updated to a set of tabs for easy view of upcoming and past assignments.
• Grade Trends and Distribution view in the Gradebook – In the Gradebook for Assignments, we’ve added the average grade for the class, all assignments, and for each student.
• OneNote Class Notebook viewer for Teams Mobile – Through this new feature, users will be able to open and view OneNote notebooks right within their Teams Mobile apps.
• Instant Poll in Teams Meeting – With Instant Poll, users can launch a pre-defined binary question (Yes/No, Thumbs Up/Down, Heart/Heartbroken) with just a single click in the Polls side pane during a meeting. 
• Intelligent chat message translation in Teams for iOS and Android – When you receive a message in Teams that is not in your preferred language, Teams asks if the text should be translated to your preferred language
• Open Existing Whiteboards in Teams Meetings – Pull up the whiteboard you prepared before class with Open existing board in Teams meetings, and save time by no longer having to start your whiteboard from scratch.
• Embed online videos in Whiteboard in Teams – Avoid fussing with Tab and Window switching that interrupts the flow of a meeting by including supplemental videos directly on the whiteboard with embedded online videos.
• View Parent Contact Details on Teams Mobile – From the Parent App, teachers can now view a list of each student’s parent or guardian contact details listed in a Contact Card.
• Assign Seats in Together Mode – With this latest innovation, meeting organizers and presenters can now assign seats to participants in Together mode.
• Career coach updates – A few steps within the Career Coach set up and customization requirements in Teams Admin Center (TAC) have been reduced and transitioned into optional steps to simplify upfront configuration load on IT admins.

Government

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

• Connectors in GCC – Teams Connectors, which support webhook integrations, will be made available in GCC.
• Casting from Teams desktop client to Microsoft Teams Rooms in GCC-H – For quick ad-hoc sessions that don’t require setting up a formal meeting, users can leverage Teams casting to wirelessly connect to a Teams Room and display content from the Teams desktop client (Windows and Mac). Users can broadcast their screen and cast content stored locally on their computer or accessible via Office 365.

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Formula repair (preview), 25% of new customer licenses, new ways to share ideas, release of modern learn page, developers tool update, table support for message/ individual publish, SharePoint virtual table updates, custom/ new views & forms on AAD user table, custom multi-table lookups support virtual tables, locked tabs on mobile apps, optimised command bar on tablet apps

Formula repair now in preview

With formula repair, now you may skip some of the troubleshooting effort as whenever you have a formula error, Power Apps will try to come up with a fix suggestion leveraging the power of AI. Once there’s a fix, a single click on the apply button will help you get rid of the error.

Find out more: Formula repair in Power Apps (preview)

Power Apps licenses 25% off for the first year for new customers

There is a new 25% off offer on Power Apps Per user licenses. New customers of Power Apps, who don’t have any Per user licenses already, can save 25% on their first year. The offer is available now through March 31st, 2023. To purchase, speak with your Microsoft representative, or contact a Microsoft specialist or CSP partner from the Power Apps pricing page. Click on Contact Sales.

New ways to share Power Apps community forum ideas 

As of November 29th 2022, Power Apps Ideas is now on a brand-new platform powered by Dynamics 365 Customer Service Community. On top of providing our community with a brand-new interface to share ideas, the migration will enable our product teams to be much more responsive to user feedback and better integrate your ideas into our product roadmap. 

Find out more: https://ideas.powerapps.com 

Modern Microsoft learn page in Power Apps

The Power Apps team have announced the release of the modern Learn page in Power Apps. The new Learn experience has consolidated content from all Microsoft resources to help with your onboarding and upskilling journey.

Find out more: https://make.powerapps.com/learn

Power Platform Developers tool – October 2022 update

The Power Apps team have shared the October update for the Power Platform Developer tools. With this update, we are releasing some capabilities that have been in high demand by the developer community including: command line updates, solution pack, unpack and sync, Azure DevOps/ GitHub actions and more.

Find out more: Power Platform Developers tool – October update

Tables now support configuring Messages and individual Publish

Messages (also known as displaystrings) are messages seen in the Dynamics apps built on Power Apps. You can now configure these messages to match your own names for tables and direct users to do the right thing in various situations when they are presented with these tailored messages. You can also translate these messages into any of the languages installed in your environment. 

With this update we’re also bringing a Publish command to the table level, meaning you can publish changes made to Forms, Views or Messages at the table level – avoiding a Publish of the whole solution (or all customizations). This will mean you can publish just your changes and complete that faster than publishing everything all at once.

 Find out more: Edit system table messages with Power Apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Improvement to SharePoint Virtual Tables – Multi-Select choice fields and Boolean fields

Multi-Select choice fields and Boolean fields in SharePoint Lists are now fully functional in Dataverse virtual tables. You can see all options labeled properly, Dataverse allows for multiple option selection, filtering of the column to display rows now works properly. 

Find out more: Get started with virtual tables (entities) (Microsoft Dataverse) – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Customize or create new Views and Forms on the AAD User Table

The AAD User virtual table previously did not allow users to modify which fields are displayed in views and forms, and users were unable to build custom views and forms. This restriction has been relaxed and users can modify forms and views or create new forms and views using any of the available AAD User fields. 

Find out more: Overview of the model-driven app form designer – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Custom Multi-Table Lookups now support Virtual Tables

Custom Multi-table lookups allow users to build a lookup that retrieves data from multiple tables at once. An out of the box example is Customer that looks up data from Account and Contact. Users can build their own lookups using SDKs or the APIs to have custom multi-table lookups.   

Tables can only participate in one of these lookups if they are not already part of an existing multi-table lookup.  

Until now, only local tables could be one of the referenced tables. Now Virtual Tables can be used as a referenced table. This includes the out of the box AAD User Virtual Table.  

Find out more: Use multi-table lookup columns (Microsoft Dataverse) – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Locked tabs at the top of forms on Mobile apps

App makers can now choose to lock the form tabs at the top as they scroll. Form tabs will always be visible and will help users to visualize and update data in larger form context. This also provides ability to switch tab at any time.  

Find out more: How to use a model-driven app on a mobile device – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Optimized command bar for tablet apps

The command bar for tablets mobile application is at the bottom of the screen and can only display four commands. With this change app makers can configure tablet command bar to be displayed at the top and utilize full space to show more commands.  

Find out more: How to use a model-driven app on a mobile device – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: 7 new verified, 16 new independent connectors, Power Automate Desktop update, new process mining capabilities

7 new verified & 16 independent publisher connectors released in October 2022

There were 7 new verified connectors and 7 updates from different service owners released in October, as well as 16 new Independent Publisher connectors. These connectors have solutions and tools for Commerce, Finance, Social Media, AI, Lifestyle and Entertainment and much more.

Find out more: 7 New Verified Connectors and 7 Updates released in October 2022

16 New Independent Publisher Connectors in October 2022

Power Automate desktop update November 2022

The November 2022 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.26) has been released. This month’s updates include:

• A home page is now available in the console
• A license request form has been introduced in Power Automate for desktop
• Warnings have been introduced in Power Automate for desktop
• More SharePoint connector actions are now available in Power Automate for desktop
• Captured UI elements will now be more efficient

Find out more: November 2022 update of Power Automate for desktop

New process mining capabilities within Power Automate (Preview)

Microsoft have announced the preview of new process mining capabilities from Minit available in process advisor within Microsoft Power Automate. In this update, the process advisor powered with Minit introduces templates that enable customers to seamlessly drive powerful business process insights from cloud flows in Power Automate as well as insights from Microsoft Power Virtual Agents and other systems of records like SAP.

Find out more: Microsoft announces preview of new process mining capabilities within Power Automate

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Power BI

In Power BI: On-premises data gateway release, Power BI November 2022 feature summary, paginated reports support in Power BI Pro, new cache refresh settings Power BI Premium, save copy of report & collapse navigational pane

On-premises data gateway November 2022

The Power BI team have announced the release of the November update for the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.150.11). This version of the gateway will ensure that the reports that you publish to the Power BI Service and refresh via the gateway will go through the same query execution logic/run-time as in the November version of Power BI Desktop.

Find out more: On-premises data gateway November release

Power BI November 2022 Feature Summary

In this month’s update there are several updates including an optimize ribbon, Linked Metrics and a new EvaluateAndLog DAX function and much more.

Find out more: Power BI November 2022 Feature Summary

Paginated reports support in Power BI Pro

The Power BI team have announced support for paginated reports in Power BI Pro. Now, Microsoft Power BI customers have the flexibility to create and consume interactive reports as well as paginated reports using Power BI Pro.

Paginated reports are traditional operational reports best used for multi-page list-type reports for operational processes with document-like output requirements. One key benefit of paginated reports is that they are programmable which gives report authors more flexibility and control of the structure and formatting of their reports. 

Find out more: Announcing support for paginated reports in Power BI Pro

New cache refresh settings in Power BI Premium

The Power BI team have announced that ClientCacheRefreshPolicy is now a configurable property for your Power BI Premium workspaces. Admins can override scheduled cache refresh settings for an entire workspace, improving the performance of their semantic models.

The default behavior in the Power BI service is to automatically cache dashboard, tile, and report queries upon refresh to provide an optimal report viewing experience. For enterprise semantic model deployments, where hundreds of reports and artifacts are built from a single Power BI dataset, automatic caches may cause performance issues. With the ClientCacheRefreshPolicy property, admins can disable the automatic cache refresh setting to optimize the behavior of their Power BI datasets.

Find out more: New cache refresh settings available in Power BI Premium

Save a copy of a report/ collapse navigation pane in organizational app

After listening to customer feedback, the Power BI team have decided to bring back the feature in the org app that allowed you to save copies of reports. App consumers who have build permissions can now save copies of reports to their “My workspace” from the app. Further, app authors can now by default collapse the app navigation pane for their app consumers. Enabling this feature would allow your app consumers to land on full screen mode.

Find out more: Save a copy of a report & Collapse navigation pane in Organizational App

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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.

• SharePoint
• Teams
• Power Apps
• Power Automate
• Power BI

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: Stream (on SharePoint), Storyline for Viva Engage/ Yammer, OneDrive folder backup for macOS, Conditional Access Improvements for Lists app on Android, Lists support for Android tablet, rules in custom List templates, create list from CSV, RAC policy for OneDrive GA, Conditional access policies for SharePoint sites, default sensitivity label for libraries (preview), anti-malware scan on file download, Forensic malware identification and extraction, migration manager updates, SPMT improvements, SharePoint data access governance (DAG) insights V1, Tenant rename, OneDrive Cross-tenant User Data Migration

Stream (on SharePoint) is now generally available

Stream (on SharePoint) is deeply integrated with Microsoft 365. Now, video can be a part of your everyday work and school apps: you can search, discover, play, share, embed, and record videos directly in Microsoft Office.

Find out more: Stream (on SharePoint) is now generally available | Do more with video in Microsoft 365

Storyline for Microsoft Viva Engage and Yammer generally available

Storyline is a new way for people to share, connect, and contribute to their organization through Yammer and the Viva Engage app. Previously, the only way to share broadly through Yammer was through communities, but communities aren’t always a perfect fit for what people want to share. In some cases, there may not be a community that matches the subject the person wants to discuss.

Note: Storyline is supported only in Microsoft Viva Engage and Yammer enterprise networks that enforce Office 365 identity.

Find out more: Overview of storyline for Yammer and Viva Engage

OneDrive: Folder Backup for macOS

older Backup enables an admin and/or end-user to redirect the local macOS Desktop and Documents folder to OneDrive. This allows you to keep using those folders to save their content while delivering the protection and access anywhere promise that OneDrive offers. The feature and relative list entries are very similar to the Folder Backup experience that has been on Windows for a while.

Find out more: Redirect and move macOS Desktop and Documents folders to OneDrive

Conditional Access Improvements for the Microsoft Lists App for Android

Microsoft recently announced the launch of the Microsoft Lists app for Android. The app was launched with App Protection Policy (APP, also known as MAM) and its support for the Require app protection policy grant control. Microsoft Lists will now also support the Conditional Access (CA) grant control, like other Microsoft 365 apps, such as SharePoint.

Find out more: How to create and assign app protection policies

List rules packaged into out-of-the-box templates

You can create rules to automate tasks such as sending someone a notification when data changes in the list or a new file is created in the library. You’ll choose a condition that triggers the rule and the action that the rule will take. Some list templates will soon come with rules pre-packaged into them to help you keep you and your team members notified of changes to data in the list. This is just another way to help keep data in Lists complete, accurate, and up to date.

Find out more: Create a rule to automate a list or library

Create a list from comma-separated values (CSV) files

You can now create new lists from data inside CSV files –often used for exchanging complex data between different applications. In Lists, select the “From CSV” option when creating a new list. When you use the Export to CSV command in a list, you get a special CSV file that includes information about the list you exported. That means if you import that same CSV into another site, you get a list that has the same column types, formatting, and data as your original list.

Find out more: Create a list from Microsoft Excel

Restricted access control (RAC) policy for OneDrive in your organization – General Availability

The OneDrive team have announced that restricted access control (RAC) policy for OneDrives is now generally available. With this policy, you can now restrict access to all OneDrives in your organization to a set of users, say all your employees only and no one else. You simply create security groups in Azure Active Directory that contains all your employees, then in SharePoint admin center configure the Limit OneDrive Access to those groups.

Find out more: Limit OneDrive access by security group

Conditional access policies for SharePoint sites, OneDrives, and Teams – General availability

Microsoft have announced the general availability of conditional access policies for SharePoint sites, OneDrives, and Teams. Simply use the SharePoint Online PowerShell to set appropriate access policy for a site, which dictates the conditions required for accessing that site. For example, for your 2025 Strategy site that is expected to have business critical content you can configure the policy to require MFA (multi-factor-authentication) for all users.

The key benefit of this capability is that users need to go through additional credential gates only when they try accessing sites or teams that contain business critical information. If your organization already has sensitivity labels deployed, then you can also associate this policy with the sensitivity labels and simply label the sites or teams appropriately.

Find out more: Conditional access policies for SharePoint sites

Default sensitivity label for document libraries (Public Preview)

The SharePoint team have announced default sensitivity label for SharePoint Document Libraries comes to public preview. With this new capability you can now protect your Office documents from the day they are created or uploaded to SharePoint document libraries. Simply set the appropriate sensitivity label for your document libraries using the Library Settings in the information panel. From that point onwards all documents, newly created or modified, in that library will be automatically labelled.

Find out more: Configure a default sensitivity label for a SharePoint document library

Forensic malware identification and extraction – General availability

Microsoft have anounced the general availability of malware identification and extraction capability. With this capability, using simple SharePoint PowerShell cmdlet administrators can find out what type of malware is present in a file that was marked as infected and extract that file from the site to perform further analysis. All this is possible without needing to elevate their access to the SharePoint or OneDrive site where the content is present.

Find out more: Built-in virus protection in SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams

Migration Manager updates

Migration Manager was made generally available in 2019 and now enables you to migrate content from file shares, Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, and Egnyte. Several new features were announced during Microsoft Ignite 2022 and include: Bulk download reports, Migration filters, and Estimated time to migrate. All these new features are planned to be made generally available by the beginning of the calendar year 2023.

Find out more: What’s new in Migration Manager

SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) improvements

The SharePoint Migration Tool can help you migrate from on-premise server sources including SharePoint 2010, 2013 and 2016. Now you can streamline scan and migration jobs within one tool. Secondly, the page navigation flow is revamped to make it intuitive for you to manage your migration jobs and create migration-by scenarios.

Find out more: Release Notes: SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT)

SharePoint data access governance (DAG) insights V1 – General Availability

The SharePoint team have announced that V1 of data access governance (DAG) insights feature is generally available. DAG insights empower you to discover top-100 and top-10,000 sites that matter the most among millions of sites you may have and monitor/validate/tailor sharing and access policies for those sites.

Find out more: Data access governance reports

SharePoint Tenant Rename – General Availability

The SharePoint team have announced the general availability of SharePoint Tenant Rename, for tenants with less than 10K sites. This allows you to rename your tenant’s SharePoint URL let’s say from contoso.sharepoint.com to fabrikam.sharepoint.com. In future, we are looking to expand this support to large tenants that have more than 10K sites.

Find out more: Change your SharePoint domain name

OneDrive Cross-tenant User Data Migration – General Availability

The OneDrive team have nnounced the general availability of OneDrive cross-tenant user data migration. With this capability you can now move users’ OneDrives across two tenants using a simple set of SharePoint PowerShell cmdlets. You can also move users’ mailboxes across tenants.

One another notable capability is, upon OneDrive move although the URL of the OneDrive has changed the sharing links to old URLs will continue to work! This is made possible by the cross-tenant redirect capability that ensures any hit to old URLs is redirected to new URL.

Find out more: Cross-tenant OneDrive migration

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Teams

In Teams: Assign seats in together mode, pop out shared content, live translated captions, updated companion mode, call history, contact groups in calls app, M365 connected templates, PDF experience, suggested replies in group chat, video clip, delete/ rename files in a channel or OneDrive folder, calendar includes scheduling form, upgraded usage analytics for admins, app usage report update

Education

Assign seats in Together mode

Together mode makes meeting participants feel more like they’re in the same room during virtual meetings. With this latest innovation, meeting organizers and presenters can now assign seats to participants in Together mode.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Assign Seats in Together Mode

Pop out shared content into a separate window

Previously, you could pop out individual Teams chat conversation, meeting, and calling experiences into a separate in window to help streamline the workflow. We are now bringing the ability for users to also pop out shared meeting content in a separate window so you can see both shared content and meeting participants with ease.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Pop out shared content into a separate window

Live Translated Captions in Teams Premium

Live translated captions for Microsoft Teams delivers AI-powered, real-time translations from 40 spoken languages so meeting participants can read captions in their own language. This helps break down language barriers for your global meetings and calls to be productive and effortless.

Find out more: Use live captions in a Teams meeting

Updated companion mode for Android users

Microsoft have updated companion mode in Teams mobile to give in-room attendees quick access to engagement features like chat, live reactions, and Microsoft Whiteboard. We are making it easier to access meeting and device controls, like the ability to join a meeting, cast a PowerPoint, mute the room, turn room cameras on and off, and more. Here are some areas companion mode in Teams mobile makes hybrid meetings better:

1. Users can use a single tap to join a meeting on both their device and Microsoft Teams Room.
2. Users can easily access chat, participant list (see who’s in the meeting), live reactions, and raise hands to easily participate from the room
3. Audio on the mobile device will automatically turn off to ensure echo doesn’t happen.

Find out more: Mobile Sharing and Companion Experiences for Microsoft Teams Meetings

Detailed call history

Get a more comprehensive view of your call history to see how calls arrived, whether calls were transferred or forwarded, and how they were controlled once received. This detailed call history, combined with the ability to access call recordings and transcriptions from within call details, gives you the context you need to be efficient and productive.

Find out more: View your call history in Teams

Creation of Contact Groups in Calls App

Creation of Contact Groups is now available in the right rail pane of the Calls App. Users can now create new groups, and edit the membership of existing groups via the Calls App.

Find out more: Create, edit, or delete a contact group in Teams

Microsoft 365 connected templates

We are combining the best of Microsoft Teams templates with SharePoint site templates – into the same flow of creation. When you create a new team using a default template – for example the Manage a Project template, the project management channels and apps, and the connected SharePoint template gets applied automatically.

Find out more: Create a custom team template in Microsoft Teams

Adobe PDF experience

Tenant admins can set Adobe Acrobat as the default app in Teams admin center to view and edit PDF files in the Microsoft Teams. End-users can view, search, comment and annotate PDF files without an Adobe Acrobat subscription or an Adobe ID. This feature is in public preview.

Find out more: Adobe Acrobat as the default app

Suggested Replies in Group Chat

Instead of spending time typing a routine response to an incoming message, simply reply with one click by choosing a suggested response to your group chat. Suggested replies uses machine learning to generate responses that are most relevant to the conversation.

Find out more: Use suggested replies to respond to messages without typing in Teams

Video clip

You can now create short, lightweight, rich video clips allow you to express yourself, deliver a more personal touch and strengthen your connections. Simply record, send and view a video clip in chat. The recipient of the video clip can easily reply with a chat message or a video clip of their own. Generally available in desktop and will be in public preview in mobile by end of the year.

Find out more: Record a video clip in Teams

Delete or rename files in a channel and in your OneDrive folder in Teams

To rename or delete a file in a channel, go to the files tab and find the file you want. Then select More options (the three dots) on the file. To rename or delete a file from your OneDrive, select More at the bottom of the app, then select Files. Once you find the file you want, select the three dots and choose to rename or delete it.

Teams calendar now includes scheduling form pop-outs

In a Teams calendar, users will now be able to pop-out an existing meeting using the pop-up icon in a Teams calendar scheduling form. Users will be able to pop out the meeting and have it visible while creating a new meeting. This feature will allow users to view multiple meetings in separate windows while also being able to check their chats or edit their files without the need to switch apps.

Find out more: Manage your Teams calendar

Upgraded usage analytics for Teams administrators and users

Updates and improvements were made to Teams related usage report in the Microsoft 365 admin center (and corresponding graph APIs) to be more accurate and upgraded. Microsoft are bringing consistency across different reporting surfaces, updating the Teams admin center usage reports and end user analytics in Teams with same underlying data source as Microsoft 365 Admin Center Teams usage reports.

Find out more: Microsoft 365 admin center activity reports – Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn , Microsoft Teams analytics and reporting – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn, View analytics for your teams (microsoft.com), Microsoft 365 usage reports in Microsoft Graph | Microsoft Learn 

Enhancement to app usage report - support for Line of Business apps

An updated version of Teams app usage report with support for Line of Business (LoB) apps in alignment with Teams app usage in M365 admin center. The new enhancements includes the support for usage of Line of Business apps, Tenant level install trend, enhanced quality of metrics reported, tenant wide usage of Microsoft, 3rd party and LoB apps etc. These enhancements will help the admin measure the usage of the Teams app across their organization and to categorize them.

Find out more: Microsoft Teams app usage report

Education

These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:

• Education Insights – Student Support Card – New AI-based Student Support spotlight in Education Insights helps educators better support students before they fall behind.

Frontline workers

These features are currently available for frontline worker customers:

• Approvals as a PDFs can be saved, printed and transferred – Approval creators will be able to save a completed approval request to a PDF file and have the option to print it. This feature will also allow customers to easily transfer their proof of approval as a PDF to another system or store as a file.
• Approvals in integrated SharePoint Lists – List users will now be able to create and manage simple approval requests directly within integrated SharePoint Lists.
• Assign Approvals to a Tag in Teams – For an approval assigned to a tag, the tag will expand and send to the correct members when the approval requestor hits submit.
• Rich notes in Tasks field – Tasks will also support rich text support in the notes field, so you can include more detailed instructions with the help of rich formatting such as bold, italic, and underlined text, bulleted and number lists, and hyperlinks. Learn more about how to get started with Tasks in Teams.

Government

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

• Enhancement to app usage report – support for Line of Business apps – An updated version of Teams app usage report with support for Line of Business (LoB) apps in alignment with Teams app usage in M365 admin center. This will help admins track all app usage metrics over time.
• Music on hold for Voice over IP calls, consultative transfer, and call transfer for GCCH and DOD – Music on hold is available for Voice over IP (VoIP) calls placed on hold, as well as VoIP and PSTN placed on hold for a call transfer and consultative transfer.
• Live Share SDK support for meeting extensions – Live Share is a new developer capability designed to transform Teams meeting apps into collaborative multi-user experiences without writing any dedicated back-end code. Support for meeting extensions in the Live Share SDK enables general-purpose collaboration features, including turn-key media synchronization to co-watch videos, inking, cursors and annotations in meetings.
• Text prediction for Teams mobile in GCC-High and DoD – When you compose or reply to a message in Teams, Editor Text Predictions anticipates your writing and suggests a suitable word or phrase inline. This saves time and helps you reduce typos.
• Connectors in GCC – Teams Connectors, which support webhook integrations, will be made available in GCC.
• Firefox Meeting Support for Outgoing Screen Sharing – Extend outgoing screen sharing capabilities for Teams Meetings from the Firefox browser.
• Updated companion mode for Android users for GCC, GCC-High and DoD – For a better hybrid meeting experience, we have updated companion mode in Teams mobile to give in-room attendees quick access to engagement features like chat, live reactions, and Microsoft Whiteboard. We are making it easier to access meeting and device controls, like the ability to join a meeting, cast a PowerPoint, mute the room, turn room cameras on and off, and more.

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Test engine, dynamic group members in Dataverse, content security policy GA, ESLint rules GA, modernized business units, coauthoring public preview, maker matching public preview, communication site template, Ideas GA, modern command bar, PDF function, Teams link unfurling, read barcodes, model-driven UI updates, mobile commanding updates, Power Platform Tools, Managed Environments GA

Test Engine: An open platform for automated testing of canvas apps

Test Engine is an evolution of Power Apps testing tools. Test Engine builds upon the key use cases of Test Studio, but takes it in a new, powerful direction through open source collaboration and use of the Playwright browser testing platform. The goals of Test Engine are to provide customers with a robust testing platform for all types of Power Apps, and to make it super easy to integrate automated testing into your app development processes. 

This initial release supports the ability to author tests for Power Apps canvas applications, with plans to add support for model-driven apps, as well as enhanced tooling to facilitate integration into your CI/CD systems like GitHub and Azure DevOps. We welcome you to exercise this tool and give us feedback as we continue to build out the platform. 

Find out more: Power Apps test Engine

Azure AD Dynamic user membership group in Dataverse group teams support

Microsoft Dataverse supports Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) security and office groups, including the ability to differentiate Owners, Members, and Guests. To complete the full Azure AD group functionality, Microsoft have extended the Azure AD group support to include dynamic user membership group type.

The dynamic user membership type leverages business rules to manage the group membership. Group members are added/removed dynamically based on the business rules, eg where Department = “Sales” for all users from the Sales department.  Power Platform Dataverse authentication and authorization were extended to support this Azure AD group type. 

Find out more: Manage group teams

Content Security Policy for Power Apps now generally available

In September this year, Microsoft announced the public preview of Content Security Policy. When you turn on Content Security Policy for an environment, you can enable protection for clickjacking attacks for apps in that environment and receive policy violation reports to your custom reporting endpoint. You can control the Content Security Policy for Model-driven apps and Canvas apps separately.  

Content Security Policy for Power Apps is now generally available. It is recommended you turn on the Content Security Policy in production environments after testing your apps in a sandbox environment with this setting turned on. 

Find out more: Content security policy

ESLint rules for Power Apps and Dynamics 365 now generally available

In July this year, Microsoft announced the public preview of ESlint rules for Power Apps and Dynamics 365. This brought the solution checker rules to your development environment, which helped you find and address issues in your JavaScript and TypeScript code directly in your VSCode before packing them into the solution file.

ESLint rules for Power Apps and Dynamics 365 is now generally available. It is strongly recommended you include the ESLint for Power Apps npm package in your development environment to improve the quality of your customizations and avoid packaging unsafe customizations to the solution.

Find out more: Use solution checker to validate your model-driven apps in Power Apps

Modernized Business Units

Microsoft have extended the business unit security model by allowing security roles from different business units to be assigned to a user/team. This allows a user/team to access data from different business units based on their security roles to support the Matrix data access structure vs the traditional hierarchical data access structure. 

User can update the Owning Business unit column to set the record’s ownership, and other users who are assigned with a security role from this Owning Business unit can access the record. User can also change the record ownership to another user without the need for the new record owner to have a security role from the record’s Owning Business unit. This reduces the operation overhead to manage and assign security role from different business units for easier collaboration while maintaining the high level of security compliance.  

Find out more: Matrix data access structure (Modernized Business Units)

Coauthoring in Modern app designer (Public Preview)

The Power Apps team have announced that Coauthoring is now available in most of the regions allowing fusion teams to build better apps faster. With coauthoring you can see who is working on the same app at the same time, and you can see their applied changes in real-time. You don’t need to worry anymore about your changes, because coauthoring helps you avoid the unintentional overwrite of each other’s changes.

Find out more: Announcing public preview of coauthoring in Modern app designer

Maker matching (Public Preview)

Connect with experienced makers in your organization to help you during app development! The virtual agent will also surface your organizations internal community channels and resources to help you stay connected. 

Find out more: Connect with other makers in your organization via maker matching, now in public preview!

Power Platform communication site template

The Power Platform team launched the Power Platform communication site template this month. The Power Platform communication site template is a SharePoint communication site that provides you with a starting point of content and page templates as you’re setting up your internal Power Platform wiki and hub site.

This communication site is designed to be the place where the Power Platform maker and user community within your organization can find the news and resources they need, including digital governance and compliance guardrails, upcoming events, success stories and more. 

Find out more: Create an internal Microsoft Power Platform hub

Power Apps Ideas now generally available

Power Apps Ideas are now generally available. Now you can easily write a Power Fx formula using natural language or examples.  

We know that Power Fx is a low code programming language, makes it possible for hundreds of millions of people with the Excel-like skills to add advanced logic to their apps. However sometimes it’s not easy to write a formula, even for the most experienced Power Fx users, as it may sometimes take a lot of time searching for, learning about and debugging complex formulas.  

Find out more: Announcing general availability of Power Apps Ideas

Modern command bar is on by default for existing apps in Canvas

The modern command bar will be enabled by default for all existing apps in Canvas in North America on 11/07/22. The new command bar not only has a modern look and feel, but is also designed to improve your authoring experience. It allows a seamless customization experience of editing common controls by dynamically displaying the common properties directly within the command bar. 

Find out more: Understand Power Apps Studio

Introducing the PDF function

In 2021, the Print function was released to accommodate scenarios where app users needed to print physical copies of a screen’s contents. We’re taking that concept a step further this month with our release of the PDF function.   

This experimental release unlocks many scenarios where app users need to send screen content. The PDF can be configured to include an entire screen’s contents or a specific part, and they can expand to include tabular data that extends beyond the visible area of the screen, extending onto multiple pages.   

Find out more: PDF function in Power Apps (experimental)

Teams link unfurling for canvas apps

The Power Platform team have announced the launch of link unfurling in Teams for canvas apps. Previously, when a user copied an app URL & pasted the link into a Teams message to send to colleagues, users would only receive the app’s full link or a shortened vanity URL. Additionally, a click on the app’s link would launch the app in a browser, forcing the user to leave Teams to view and use the app. Now, starting with canvas apps, the Power Apps app link will unfurl into an adaptive card from which recipients can directly add the app to Teams or open the app in a browser.

Find out more: Share apps using Teams

Read selected barcodes using your device’s camera

Scan barcodes – include QR, data-matrix, CODABAR, and more – on Android and iOS devices using the new experimental Barcode Reader control. This new control supports more types of barcodes and enables users to select which barcode in view to read instead of automatically reading the first detected barcode.  

Find out more: Barcode reader control in Power Apps (experimental)

Model-driven app form UI enhancements

Form UX enhancements target improvised data presentation. These include set of multiple small changes:

• Light grey form-background and shadows are added to form sections to make it easier to visually navigate the page.
• Forms now have consistent use of fonts and higher data density via reduced white space and removal of field dividers.
• Also, quick view form labels are displayed on top instead of icons.

Find out more: Create and design model-driven app forms

Mobile commanding improvements

Mobile commanding improvements provide easy access to contextual commands when you’re using Power Apps mobile via opt-in settings. Delete and process commands are only displayed when they are relevant. Global injected commands such as Edit columns, Edit filters, and Show Chart have been moved from the main set of commands to overflow menu.

The command bar on Power Apps mobile for tablets is now located at the top like to the web app. This helps with more commands available to user utilizing the larger tablet viewport.

Find out more: Use model-driven apps on Power Apps mobile

Power Platform Developer Tools monthly release (September Refresh)

The Power Platform team have announced a new update for the month of October i.e., “September Refresh”. Those of you who have been following us already know of this trend, because the work our team does in the prior month gets released in the following month. Hence in October, we release the September Refresh. With that statement aside, here is what’s included in this release:

• Integrating PRT, CMT, PD into the Power Platform CLI
• solution export with “_managed” added to the name
• Package deploy defaults to async for solution import
• Admin commands update

Find out more: Power Platform Developer Tools monthly release (September Refresh)

Managed Environments now generally available

Managed Environments are now generally available. Enabling people with diverse technical and nontechnical skills to contribute to the development process through low-code tools has unlocked an explosion of apps. While low-code has accelerated companies’ abilities to innovate, it has also introduced new dimensions to scaling and managing your developer community.

Find out more: The future of low-code governance with Managed Environments for Power Platform

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: 14 new verified, 10 independent publisher connectors, Power Automate Desktop update, automate document processing, Ignite 2022 updates

14 new verified, 10 independent publisher connectors released in September 2022

There were 14 new verified and 10 new independent publisher connectors released through September 2022 for Power Automate. Let’s take a look:

Verified connectors

• Centrical – Brings together real-time performance management, personalized micro-learning, augmented coaching, and advanced gamification to personally guide employees and their managers to success.
• ConsenSys Ethereum – A fully-managed proxy service that allows power apps and flows to integrate with the Ethereum blockchain and the Quorum Blockchain Services (QBS).
• DQ on Demand  – A complete suite of functions providing you with easy access to a data quality marketplace through the Microsoft Power Platform. 
• FactSet – Delivers superior content, analytics, and flexible technology to help more than 170,000 users globally and is continuing to open up its powerful workstation content and analytics with API access.
• iManage Work – Industry-leading provider of document and email management solutions for knowledge workers.
• IN-D Invoice Data Capture – IN-D Invoice Data Capture connector converts static documents (scanned, PDFs, screenshots, etc.) into usable information to fuel your business processes.
• Power Assist – Elevate Digital’s Power Assist connector offers actions to manipulate data in familiar ways that are currently difficult or unsupported within Power Automate and Power Apps.
• SmartCOMM Doc-Gen ap10-sb – Allows businesses more control over their business-critical customer communications. 
• Talkdesk – Global cloud contact center leader for customer-obsessed companies. 
• Tesseron ASM Ticket – This connector allows you to create, edit and search Tickets in your Tesseron ASM Instance.
• Text Request – Text Request is a service to help businesses reach customers through texting and conversation management. Use
• Tikit – Tikit is a Microsoft 365 Service Desk that matures with your Microsoft 365 technology adoption and revolves around the center of where you work every day – Microsoft Teams.
• Vocean – Retrieve the insights gathered within Vocean for further use with programs already tightly involved in your organization. 
• Yarado – Helps Power Automate users increase productivity, using RPA to connect users to processes outside the Power Automate environment

Independent Publisher connectors

• Connpass by Miyake Hideo – Using the connpass, you can search and collect information about IT workshops and events.
• Fantasy Premier League by Joe Unwin – Fantasy Premier League stats, events and league information.
• HTTP Garden by Troy Taylor – Gardening for every Hyper Text Transfer Protocol response status code. Provides an image for each status code.
• Mapbox by Simone Lin – Mapbox allows you to access its navigation, location search and static map generation services to create interactive/static maps in your application.
• Mockaroo by Rick Wilson – Mockaroo can be used to generate realistic sample data to help test applications.
• Near Earth Object Web Service by Troy Taylor Near Earth Object Web Service (NeoWs) is a service for near earth asteroid information.
• Owlbot by Troy Taylor – Owlbot searches the internet to index information and making them accessible. 
• PrexView by Troy Taylor – PrexView makes it simple to convert your data to different formats. 
• USGS Earthquake Hazards by Troy Taylor – The United States Geological Survey (USGS) monitors and reports on earthquakes, assesses earthquake impacts and hazards, and conducts targeted research on the causes and effects of earthquakes. 
• You Need A Budget by Troy Taylor – You Need A Budget (YNAB) allows you to build a personal application to interact with your own budget or build an application that any other YNABer can authorize and use.

Find out more: New ways to innovate with AI and Microsoft Power Automate | 10 New Independent Publisher Connectors in September 2022

Power Automate for desktop – October 2022 update

Automate for desktop (version 2.25) has been released. Let’s take a look at some of the updates:

• Multiple selection of flows is now available in the console
• GA of UI automation for desktop apps in a Citrix or Microsoft RDP virtual desktop

Find out more: Power Automate for desktop – October 2022 update

Automate Document Processing end-to-end with AI Builder

At Ignite 2022, the Power Automate team shared advances in Intelligent Document Processing as well as new AI capabilities that will allow you to automate more scenarios with better performance, using Power Automate and AI Builder:

• Unstructured Document Processing
• Improved accuracy and language support with Azure Form Recognizer 3.0
• Multi-page Tables
• Multi-Line Tagging
• Feedback Loop
• Governing and sharing models

Find out more: Automate Document Processing end-to-end with AI Builder

AI and Power Automate updates from Microsoft Ignite 2022

At Ignite 2022, the Power Automate team shared some exciting innovations for Microsoft Power Automate, empowering makers and pro-coders with new ways to automate and scale enterprise-wide with AI, including:

Describe it and let AI build it – Creating flows is the foundation of Power Automate, and now you can describe what you want to automate in a sentence, and an AI-based copilot will build your flow in seconds.

Format data by examples – Now, we’ve made this super simple for users by allowing them to format data by examples. Like what we’ve done with Power Apps Ideas (preview), we’re bringing this similar experience to Power Automate, powered by PROSE.

Advancements in AI Builder – Document processing has been the most frequently used feature in AI Builder due to how mundane and time consuming the nature of processing documents can be. We are pleased to share that we are improving the experience even further with our newest feature updates to Intelligent Document Processing.

Automate through conversation with Power Virtual Agents – Starting November 10, 2022, a new bot authoring experience will automatically turn on in preview for users. This new experience unifies the sophistication of low-code and pro-code capabilities, which is a fusion of the Microsoft Azure Bot Framework Composer and Power Virtual Agents’ bot building experience. Pro-code and low-code users can build together with multi-authoring and commenting capabilities, while taking advantage of the latest functionalities, such as Power Fx and code views.

Automate SAP with reimagined connect and new solution – Microsoft announced details about the enhancements that have been made to the SAP ERP connector that support SAP system connectivity to Power Platform and the ability for a flow maker to work with SAP’s complex application program interfaces (APIs) within Power Automate flows.

Automate natively in Excel Online – The Power Automate team are integrating Power Automate natively into Excel Online, letting you create custom flows using pre-built templates, tailored to what you can accomplish with Excel. Excel Online now has an “Automate” tab in the ribbon. 

Automate with embedded experiences – WorkFusion and DocuSign are joining the Cloud Embed program for Power Automate. Cloud Embed allows independent software vendors (ISV) to embed Power Automate directly into their user experience (UX).

Scale with the hosted RPA bots – Hosted RPA bots allow you to run unattended RPA at scale and is fully hosted in the cloud. It’s easy to setup your hosted RPA bots, just provide a few parameters: Just give it a name, the maximum number of parallel bots allocated to this group, which base image and account to be used and you’re all set.

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Power BI

In Power BI: Power BI feature summary, Power BI Ideas site updates, on-premises data gateway, submetric roll ups, Ignite 2022, cross-tenant dataset sharing, Power Query SDK for VS Code, development history for deployment pipelines,

Power BI October 2022 Feature Summary

This month’s update includes updates to features like Power BI metrics, Modeling, Deployment pipelines, and more.

Find out more: Power BI October 2022 Feature Summary

Power BI Ideas site improvement updates

Several enhancements have been made to the Power BI Ideas site, including:

• Search for related ideas during new idea creation
• Enable personal MSA accounts

Find out more: Power BI Ideas site improvement updates

On-premises data gateway October release

The Power BI team have announced that we have just released the October update for the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.146.10).

Find out more: On-premises data gateway October release

Submetric roll ups in Power BI Metrics

The Power BI team have announced a much anticipated release in the Metrics experience: With submetric roll ups, it’s easier than ever to aggregate your metric values so you can spend less time crafting multiple scorecards and connections, and more time analyzing your performance.

With the release of current and target roll ups, you can set automatic aggregations of your submetric values to show in your parent metric. You can select from aggregation types of sum, average, min and max values.

Find out more: Announcing submetric roll ups in Power BI Metrics

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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.

• SharePoint
• Teams
• Power Apps
• Power Automate
• Power BI

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: Navigation links open in new tab, manage site access based on sensitivity label, Viva learning cards, Quick Access Teams and Sharepoint Document Libraries in Office Win32 backstage, What’s new SharePoint Server

Configure Navigation Links to Open in a New Tab

With this update, you configure how you would like your navigation links to open. You will have the option to be able to choose to open in the same tab or in a new tab for your site, hub, and global navigation items.

Find out more: Customize the navigation on your SharePoint site

Manage site access based on sensitivity label

With this update, administrators will be able to use Conditional Access policies and associated sensitivity labels to require additional user authentication for accessing sensitive SharePoint sites when the user’s context does not meet the requirements of the site.

Find out more: Conditional access policies for SharePoint sites

Microsoft Viva Learning cards for the Viva Connections Dashboard

Viva Learning is an enterprise learning and training experience that acts as a one-step solution for all the learning needs of your organization. You’ll be able to integrate Viva Learning and Viva Connections experiences by using the Viva Learning card on the Viva Connections Dashboard. This new feature will enable users to track their learning assignments directly within Viva Connections dashboard.

Find out more: Create a Viva Connections Dashboard and add cards

Quick Access Teams and Sharepoint Document Libraries in Office Win32 backstage

The Quick Access feature will allow users to access shared libraries from both their SharePoint and Teams locations. When the user opens files from shared libraries, these libraries will show up in the form of a list which will encourage users to save and open files to these libraries with ease. This helps deliver a more consistent, coherent storage location experience across M365 apps.

What’s new for SharePoint Server

Microsoft have recently announced updates to SharePoint Server, including: SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, SharePoint Workflow Manager, SharePoint Server 2013, 2016 & 2019 and the SharePoint Technology Adoption Program.

Find out more: What’s new and what’s next for SharePoint Server

Top 10 SharePoint Framework solutions September 2022

These are the most widely used solutions and their providers last month:

1. Ichicraft Widgets: Your Digital Workplace – Ichicraft Widgets allows users to personalize their digital workplace in SharePoint or Microsoft Teams. 
2. Bitalus-StockQuotes – Show Stock information on your SharePoint Homepage with a couple of clicks.
3. Poll by WM Reply – Poll easily allows you to create a short and snappy question so that you can engage with your audience. You can use the Poll web part for a daily opinion poll and interact with your employees on what’s happening at your organization or test your user’s knowledge with an end-of-topic question. 
4. Navigator 365 – Sharepointalist, Inc. – SharePoint & Teams content aggregation with search, grouping and filtering. 
5. Employee Directory Plus – Support | HR365 – Employee Directory Plus displays information of employees in the organization in visually manner and allows you to find any user in fraction of seconds with various filters to select, departments, skills, Job title, manager, location, etc. 
6. Cerkl Broadcast for SharePoint – Ensure your internal communications are seen with SharePoint push alerts and newsfeed.
7. Image Map – APPS 365 LTD – Supercharge your processes and navigation by using any image to deliver interactive visual content.
8. Modern FAQ – The Modern FAQ app provides users a better way to search for the answers to the questions they have in mind.
9. HM Munich GmbH – Table of Contents – This WebPart helps you to create high-quality documentation.
10. Orangehill Birthdays – Birthdays from user profiles. Orangehill Birthdays is a modern web part that shows all upcoming birthdays from user profiles for people in the organization. 

Find out more: Most used SharePoint Framework solutions from the Store – September 2022

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Teams

In Teams: Cameo in PowerPoint Live, collaborative annotations, music on hold, early media support for compliance recording, block inbound federated VoIP calls, choose preferred download location, intelligent chat translation iOS/ Android, Teams admin center dashboard, user request config, policy propagation

Education

Cameo in PowerPoint Live

Cameo is a new PowerPoint experience that seamlessly integrates your Teams camera feed into your presentation, letting you customize how and where you want to appear on your slides and offering layout recommendations for optimal viewing. When it’s time to present, use PowerPoint Live in Teams for an immersive remote presentation.

Find out more: Presenting with cameo

Collaborative annotations in Teams meetings

Collaborative Annotations in Teams meetings, powered by Microsoft Whiteboard, lets everyone in a meeting quickly annotate whatever is on a shared screen in a Teams meeting. While you’re sharing your full screen in a meeting, select Start annotation. Everyone in the meeting can begin annotating right away. You can add notes, shapes, text, and reactions to express yourself.

Find out more: How to use the annotation mode in Microsoft Teams

Music on hold for call transfer

Music on hold is available for calls placed on hold for a call transfer. The music is either the default music provided by Microsoft or custom music that administrators can upload and configure.

Find out more: Music on Hold

Early media support for compliance recording

Music on hold is available for calls placed on hold for a call transfer. The music is either the default music provided by Microsoft or custom music that administrators can upload and configure. 

Find out more: Policy-based recording solutions certified for Microsoft Teams

Block inbound federated VoIP calls

Reduce interruptions while you’re in the flow of work by blocking inbound calls. Previously, you could only block inbound calls from specific phone numbers. You can now block inbound VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls from Teams users outside your organization.

Find out more: Block inbound calls

Choose preferred download location for files

You can now select the default download location where you would like downloaded files to be saved. Your setting will only for files downloaded in the Teams desktop client. Teams on the web will continue to honor the download setting in your browser.

Find out more: Custom download location for files in Teams

Intelligent chat message translation in Teams for iOS and Android

When you receive a message in Teams that is not in your preferred language, Teams asks if the text should be translated to your preferred language. For example, if your preferred language is English and you receive a message in French, Teams detects the language difference.

Find out more: Announcing intelligent message translation in Microsoft Teams for mobile devices

Dashboard customization in Teams admin center

Administrators can now personalize the Teams admin center dashboard with information that is relevant for them. Simply drag and drop new cards (widgets) on the dashboard. Reposition cards on the page or remove the ones you don’t need.

Find out more: Manage teams in the Microsoft Teams admin center

User request configuration to external systems (URL redirect) 

As a Teams admin, you can now customize the instructions someone receives when they request to use a blocked app. You can also configure external request systems. You can provide a URL that opens in a browser when users click the Request approval button to gain access to an app, for example, an IT support ticketing system, user education pages, or corporate policy pages.

Find out more: Manage user requests

Policy propagation in Activity log

The enhanced Activity log now displays more detailed information around policy operation such as activity name, group name, policy type, policy name, submitted by, submitted time, completion time, impacted users, and overall status. The detailed information provides more clarity and understanding on policy operations such as batch policy assignment of more than 20 users, group policy assignment, and group policy removal.

Education

These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:

Timed Quiz support in Assignments – A highly requested feature for those of you that use Form Quiz in Assignments is the ability to set a timed duration for your quiz. This gives your student a set time to complete the quiz. You can define the time for each quiz, and the student will only get the allotted time to complete the quiz.

Hide Comments until assignment is returned to students – We have changed the behavior when a teacher is working with Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents that are submitted by students through Assignments.

Updated Export to Excel – We have updated the Export to Excel feature for Assignments and Grades. 

Reading Progress – Phonics Rules Insights dashboard – We know how important it is to start with the fundamentals, that’s why we’re building Insights dashboards that will reflect students’ understanding of phonics rules. Our Reading Progress auto-detect software has the ability to analyze each word at the phoneme level and give an accuracy rating per phoneme. 

Reflect – Now a Featured Tab in all Class Teams – Strong relationships and a sense of safety are the foundation of an impactful school year – both for students and educators. Recently, we’ve updated Reflect to appear as a featured tab in each of your classes, and now it is enabled also for each staff member! This way, leaders can support educators in building a school-wide culture of trust and growth and provide opportunities to reflect and be heard.

New distribution experience from Forms to Teams – Teams channel and group chat have become the new popular place for teachers and students to communicate. After creating a quiz or survey, teachers can easily search the chat group or channel they want to share the form in the centralized people picker. For better efficiency, teachers can also share it with the same group of people by using 2 channels at the same time.

New question type – rating, ranking and Instant Poll in Teams meeting – To help teachers gain a better understanding of the opinions of their students, they are now able to add Rating and Ranking questions directly into a class poll. IN these polls, they can add pre-defined Yes/No, Thumbs Up/Down, Like/Dislike choices to quickly identify the point of view of their class.

Parent Connection for Teams mobile – We are enabling Parent Connection through mobile devices to allow teachers to communicate with parents or guardians, whenever or wherever. The Parent App can be found within an individual class team, along with the other apps enabled for your class (Assignments, Grades, Class Notebook, and Insights).

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Power Platform Conference Announcements, Power Fx: named formulas, ParseJSON, Power Platform Administration Planning, Content Security Policy (Public Preview), Creator Kit, Developer Tools monthly update

Three big announcements from the Power Platform Conference 2022

The first ever Power Platform Conference took place this month and three new ways to collaborate were announced:

• Cards for Power Apps are a completely new way to design and deliver mini-apps directly inside Microsoft Teams and Outlook using low code. By embedding essential micro-experiences directly in Teams, you can bring your conversation and workflow together like never before. 
• Coauthoring is coming to Power Apps as well, using the same realtime collab capabilities that millions of people are using in Office 365. This is a big step forward for software development, allowing multiple makers to collaboratively build and edit the same app simultaneously. 
• Maker matching, delivered with a new integrated virtual agent, will help guide makers to the learning content they need while also connecting them with experienced advisors from within their organization. In-context help together with well-connected internal communities means more successful low code solutions at scale.

Find out more: Power Apps brings collaboration to center stage with 3 big announcements

Power Fx: Named Formulas

Named Formulas derives from Excel, in the “Name Manager.” In Excel, you can name any cell and refer to that name throughout the workbook. Today in Power Fx, you write formulas for the properties of the controls in your app. Named Formulas is a powerful concept that has been in Excel for a very long time, that we are now bringing to Power Fx. With it, you can simplify your app’s initialization, reduce app load time, reuse logic, and improve the maintainability of your apps.

Find out more: Power Fx: Introducing Named Formulas

Power Fx: ParseJSON

The Power Apps team have announced the experimental release of our ParseJSON function, which can parse JSON strings into Power Fx objects and types. This new function dramatically simplifies working with JSON in Canvas apps.

Find out more: Power Fx: Introducing ParseJSON

Power Platform Administration Planning

The Power Apps team have put together a simple solution (Power Platform Administration Planning) that is designed to help you better:

• Plan your team structure
• Review where you spend time and look for automation or innovation opportunities

The solution is built on Microsoft Dataverse and is a new stand-alone component in the CoE Starter Kit. Admin tasks are defined in a model-driven app and insights are provided in a Power BI dashboard.

Find out more: Power Platform Administration Planning

Content Security Policy for Power Apps (Public Preview)

Power Apps has had Content Security Policy (CSP) support for model-driven apps since the beginning of the year, which was configured by running script as a System Administrator. With these new capabilities, you can now control the CSP header for model-driven as well as canvas apps in the environment in Power Platform Admin Center. CSP can be configured in both enforced and report-only mode.

Find out more: Announcing public preview of Content Security Policy for Power Apps

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Trigger outputs, Power Automate desktop update, Automation Kit for Power Platform, SAP integration, desktop flow activity, 10 new independent publisher connectors

Trigger Outputs as identifier columns

The Power Automate team have introduced a new way to easily identify and troubleshoot a cloud flow. With this new capability, as a flow author, you can easily distinguish between flow runs with customizable columns in All Runs page and Flow Runs view in Flow Details page.

Once you build a flow, and it starts automating your tasks, you might need to identify to confirm your flow instance ran as expected. Today, by default, a flow owner can look at the Start, Duration, and Status columns in the run history view in Power Automate to help them identify the flow run they want to debug. 

Find out more: A new way to troubleshoot cloud flows – Trigger Outputs as identifier columns

Power Automate Desktop – September 2022 update

The September 2022 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.24) has been released! Here is a summary of this month’s new features:

• Improved performance and design of the recorder
• A new option to create desktop shortcuts for desktop flows has been introduced

Find out more: Power Automate for desktop – September 2022 update

Automation Kit for Power Platform

The Power Platform team have announced the Automation Kit for Power Platform, now available to the public as an open source GitHub project. The Automation Kit for Power Platform is designed to help organizations manage, govern, and scale automation platform adoption based on industry best practices. The toolkit is a collection of components and tools based on HEAT concepts and built using Power Apps and Power Automate, so you can easily extend and customize the kit to your needs.

Find out more: Introducing the Automation Kit for Power Platform

Deeper SAP Integration for the Power Platform

Microsoft’s acquisition of Clear Software has led to new functionality for organizations running SAP in Power Apps, Power Automate, and Logic Apps that will enable large-scale adoption of the Power Platform. The Power Automate team have announced the Public Preview of a broad set of new SAP functionality in the Power Platform, including:

• Prebuilt Power Apps for Common SAP Processes: order to cash, procure to pay, record to report, make to stock/ make to order (MRP)
• Prebuilt Power Automate Flows for Common SAP Processes
• Advanced SAP System Connections
• New On-Premises Data Gateway
• New SAP Connector and Action
• New Logic Apps Functions

Find out more: Announcing Deeper SAP Integration for the Power Platform

Desktop flow activity (Preview)

The Power Automate team have announced the new desktop flow activity section (in preview) in the Monitor section of Power Automate for all customers. This “desktop flow activity” section provides to RPA users dashboards, tables and graphs to better understand desktop flows usage, measure effectiveness and quick identify issues.

Find out more: Introducing desktop flow activity (preview)

10 New Independent Publisher Connectors in August 2022

10 new Independent Publisher connectors were published in August. These connectors have solutions and tools for Business Management, Productivity, Lifestyle and Entertainment, and much more:

• Abortion Policy API by Vivek Bavishi – The Abortion Policy API is an up-to-date tool that categorizes state laws on abortion access for accurate representation.
• Climatiq by Troy Taylor – Climatiq helps you calculate the environmental footprint created by a broad range of emission-generating activities.
• Datamuse by Troy Taylor – Datamuse is a word-finding query engine for developers. You can use it in your apps to find words that match a given set of constraints and that are likely in a given context. 
• Moosend by Troy Taylor – The ultimate email marketing software and marketing automation platform that will not break your bank.
• Open Charge Map by Troy Taylor – The Open Charge Map service provides access to the world’s largest registry of charging locations.
• Refuge Restrooms by Troy Taylor – Refuge Restrooms is a web application that seeks to provide safe restroom access for transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming individuals. 
• ReliefWeb by Troy Taylor – ReliefWeb is a humanitarian information service provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). 
• Shadify by Troy Taylor – Shadify is a powerful service for generating data and executing various logic to create different applications and games.
• SHRTCODE by Chandra Sekhar Malla – With this free Link Shortener, you can make Links shorter and easier to remember.
• SOS Inventory by Harold Anderson – Retrieves and updates information in SOS Inventory

Find out more: 10 New Independent Publisher Connectors in August 2022

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Power BI

In Power BI: Power BI feature summary, Report Server feature summary, On-premises data gateway, Horizontal Fusion, USERCULTURE DAX, report/ dataset management in Power Apps Solutions, AAD filtration for Datamarts, Power BI Vue.js

Power BI feature summary September 2022

The Power BI team have announced a variety of new features this month such as hierarchical axis by default, translations for composite models, mobile formatting options and much more.

Find out more: Power BI September 2022 Feature Summary

Report Server September 2022 Feature Summary

The Power BI team have announced a new version of Power BI Report Server this Fall! This release introduces Power BI Report Server (PBIRS) for SQL Server 2022. In this new release of PBIRS, we’ve done a lot of accessibility work to make sure we’re empowering people to achieve more. The release includes enhanced Windows Narrator support for the new Windows OS (Operating Systems) and Windows Server, security enhancements, browser performance improvements with Angular, accessibility bug fixes, support for SQL Server 2022 (16.x) Preview instances report server catalog and feature updates.

Find out more: Power BI Report Server September 2022 Feature Summary

On-premises data gateway September release

The Power BI team have released the September update for the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.142.14). This update brings the on-premises data gateway up to date with the September release of Power BI Desktop.

Find out more: On-premises data gateway September release

Announcing “Horizontal Fusion”

The Power BI team have announced “Horizon Fusion”, which is the initial release of a query performance optimization aimed at processing Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) queries more efficiently than previously possible by reducing the number of data source queries required to generate the results.

Fusing data queries together and avoiding unnecessary roundtrips is a tried and proven approach to boost query performance in Power BI. Several performance optimizations in the query engine aimed at reducing the number of data source queries per DAX or MDX query, known as DAX Fusion and MDX Fusion, significantly improved query performance for DAX and MDX clients regardless of a dataset’s storage mode. Horizontal Fusion now takes things to the next level.

Find out more: Announcing “Horizontal Fusion,” a query performance optimization in Power BI and Analysis Services

USERCULTURE DAX function now supported in Power BI Premium

The Power BI team have nnounced support for the DAX UserCulture function in Power BI Premium. Combined with the field parameters feature, customers can create reports that natively translate table data to the locale defined by the viewer’s preferences in the Power BI service. Although this support is limited to Power BI Premium (for architectural reasons), the team are hoping to support customers on non-Premium workspaces at some point in the future.

Find out more: USERCULTURE DAX function now supported in Power BI Premium

Power BI report and dataset management in Power Apps Solutions

Now App makers can add Power BI reports and datasets as Dataverse components in Power Apps solutions, improving the export, import, and customization process. Solutions are a Power Platform tool that enables users to deploy applications built using Power Apps, Power Automate, Dataverse, and other Power Platform services.

When you add a Power BI report or dataset to a solution, it will stay connected upon deployment across environments and tenants. The report or dataset can also be seamlessly managed as part of your Application Lifecycle Management process across environments and tenants.

Find out more: Announcing Power BI report and dataset management in Power Apps Solutions

AAD-based filtration for Power BI Datamarts

The Power BI team have announced the introduction of AAD-based filtration to the Power BI Datamart preview tenant setting, enabling Power BI Service Admins to limit the ability to create Datamarts to certain groups or individuals.

Find out more: Introducing AAD-based filtration for Power BI Datamarts

Power BI component for Vue.js applications

The Power BI team have announced a new component for embedding Power BI content in Vue.js applications is now available. Vue is an increasingly popular JavaScript framework for building front-end user interfaces and websites. The new component for Vue makes it possible to embed Power BI content in your Vue application in a simple way, allowing you to make the most of both Vue and Power BI embedded for bringing analytics to your users wherever they are quickly and easily.

The new component supports embedding of reports, dashboard, Q&A and more, and is now publicly available on npm and GitHub.

Find out more: Power BI component for Vue.js applications is now available

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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.

• SharePoint
• Teams
• Power Apps
• Power Automate
• Power BI

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: New site templates, new/ updated web parts, new site theme, Lists MSA Preview, most used SPFx solutions

New site templates for SharePoint team sites

Microsoft are introducing three new SharePoint team site templates so you can quickly create sites for your IT helpdesk, crisis communication team, and new employee onboarding team. These site templates expand what’s possible with content, pages, and web parts while helping you quickly get started building your own site.

Find out more: Apply and customize SharePoint site templates

New/ updated web parts

There is one new and three updated SharePoint web parts this month, including:

• Assignments web part | Customers using Teams Assignments will be able to add the assignments web part to pages to provide students with a one-stop, personalized resource for all their class needs. The assignments web part can also be used on communication sites like a home site to display the upcoming assignments due across multiple classes.
• Group calendar updates | The Group calendar web part is getting visual updates, an indicator informing users when a meeting is a recurring meeting, and the capability to join upcoming Teams meetings online.
• Quick links in the toolbar | Users are now able to easily explore the different layouts available for the Quick links web part. We’re surfacing layouts as a dropdown option in the toolbar to make it easier for authors to get the look and feel they want.
• Highlighted content web part | This dynamic web part now adheres better to a two-column section if you chose the ‘Compact’ layout – aka, the layout preference it retained.

New site theme

There is now a new, Periwinkle site theme in SharePoint. When applied, this new site theme option brings a ‘lavender blue’ visual site theme to your SharePoint site. It adjusts to dark or high-contrast mode when viewed in Teams, too.

Find out more: Change the look of your SharePoint site

Microsoft Lists – MSA preview for iOS (beta)

This month Microsoft are introducing Microsoft Lists – MSA Preview access from your iOS device – via a beta version of the app installed through TestFlight; once installed, it brings the lightweight version of the Microsoft Lists app designed for small business and individual use in conjunction with your Microsoft account (MSA).

Find out more: Microsoft Lists – MSA Preview

Top 10 SharePoint Framework solutions July 2022

These are the most widely used solutions and their providers last month:

1. Ichicraft Widgets: Your Digital Workplace – Ichicraft Widgets allows users to personalize their digital workplace in SharePoint or Microsoft Teams. 
2. Bitalus-StockQuotes – Show Stock information on your SharePoint Homepage with a couple of clicks.
3. Navigator 365 – Sharepointalist, Inc. – SharePoint & Teams content aggregation with search, grouping and filtering. 
4. Cerkl Broadcast for SharePoint – Ensure your internal communications are seen with SharePoint push alerts and newsfeed.
5. Employee Directory Plus – Support | HR365 – SharePoint Employee Directory Plus is free, fully featured 30 days trial for one office 365 tenant upto 999 users. 
6. HM Munich GmbH – Table of Contents – This WebPart helps you to create high-quality documentation.
7. Modern FAQ – The Modern FAQ app provides users a better way to search for the answers to the questions they have in mind.
8. Image Map – APPS 365 LTD – Supercharge your processes and navigation by using any image to deliver interactive visual content.
9. Qualtrics Feedback – Add a way for your employees to easily give you feedback from within Viva Connections.
10. My Links – Dalikoo – My Links is a SharePoint app where you can add and manage your web links through an intuitive interface. 

Find out more: Most used SharePoint Framework solutions from the Store – July 2022

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Teams

In Teams: Teams optimised for Apple silicon, language interpretation, together mode for everyone, pre-assign channel members to breakout rooms, transcription created automatically, ranking poll to re-order items, in-meeting notification improvements, leave a meeting on all devices, one-click convert Word/PDF to Forms,

Government
Education
Front line workers

Microsoft Teams optimized for Apple silicon

Microsoft are rolling out a production grade universal binary version of Teams, which means it will run natively on the entire Mac lineup, including those with Apple silicon. For Mac users, this means a significant boost in performance, ensuring efficient use of device resources and an optimized Teams experience even when using multiple high-resolution monitors during calls or meetings.

Find out more: Announcing Microsoft Teams optimized for Apple silicon

Language Interpretation

This feature allows language interpreters to translate what the speaker says into another language in real time without disrupting the flow and delivery of the speaker. This allows for more inclusive meetings where participants who do not speak the same language can still fully collaborate with each other.

Find out more: Use language interpretation in a Teams meeting

Together mode for everyone

Together mode makes virtual meeting participants feel more like they’re in the same room together during virtual meetings. Now, meeting organizers and presenters can also select Together mode for everyone in the meeting to have the same view.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Select Together Mode for everyone

Pre-assign channel members to breakout Rooms

Now, as the meeting organizer you can preassign participants within channel meetings for members not explicitly invited to the meeting.

Find out more: Now in public preview: Pre-assign channel members to Breakout Rooms

Transcription created automatically during recordings

You can now create meeting transcriptions automatically during meeting recordings. If IT admins enable transcriptions for the organization and the meeting organizer sets the Record automatically meeting option to on for a meeting, transcription of the meeting will start when the meeting starts.

Find out more: Transcribe your recordings

Ranking polls to prioritize or re-order items

Respond to a poll by clicking the up or down arrow or by dragging and dropping a selection. If you’ve enabled the results sharing, everyone can see the updated results as they come in. 

Find out more: Rating and Ranking – Better engage with your audience with new poll types in Teams

Usability improvements to in-meeting notifications

Notifications show up in the top center of the meeting stage and notification bubbles stack on top of each other as new notifications pop up. This avoids notification overlaps, and you have a cleaner visual experience. In addition, you can also snooze repeat notifications like chat bubbles.

Leave a meeting on all my devices

When you join a Teams meeting using multiple personal devices, you typically want to leave the meeting from all of the devices. With just one click, you now can leave a meeting from all your devices.

One click convert a Word/PDF form or quiz to Microsoft Forms

Save time by converting your existing Microsoft Word or PDF surveys or quizzes into Microsoft Forms. Simply upload a PDF or Word document directly into Microsoft Forms and continue to edit until you’re ready to collect responses.

Find out more: Convert a Word/Pdf Form or Quiz to a Microsoft Forms

Education

These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:

Parent Connection  – With Parent Connection, educators can initiate a Teams chat with student guardians (information provided by School Data Sync) with a single click. Instead of the twice-yearly parent-teacher conference or sporadic email, educators and guardians can have more iterative conversations through Teams chat to help manage and track student progress.

LTI apps integration with Schoology LMS  – Schoology’s Learning Management System (LMS) integration with Teams provides teachers and students an easy way to create, access, and collaborate using Teams meetings within the Schoology LMS.

Brightspace (D2L) LMS integration with Microsoft 365  – Microsoft has partnered with Brightspace (D2L) LMS to deliver more seamless integrated learning experiences. Educators can create a team for their Brightspace course using the roster information using the Teams Classes LTI. 

Home page for Teams for Education class teams – With Home page, educators and students have a centralized an customizable place for announcements, resources, upcoming assignments, class files, and meetings for their specific class.

Activate a class from inside the Teams Classes LTI app within your Learning Management System (LMS) – Now educators can activate a class from the Teams Classes LTI app without leaving the LMS. Activation is intuitive and easy to discover. A notification banner highlights classes that have not been activated.

View video recordings and attendance reports inside LMS – Teachers and students can access video recordings and attendance reports directly in their LMS. The feature is available all the Learning Management Systems incorporating the Teams Meeting LTI app.

Timed quiz – Use a digital timed quiz instead of pen and paper to save time and increase consistency. A teacher sets a timer for a quiz which gives all students the same constraints, but allows them to take the quiz on their own schedule. Students learn time management and the experience is fair and consistent to all. Learn more about enabling time limits for students in your test.

Frontline

Deploy Microsoft Teams at scale for frontline workers – Deploy a large workforce of frontline workers in significantly less time. As a Teams admin, you can deploy up to 500 teams and add 25 users per team using one Teams PowerShell command and 2 csv files. You can also use add and remove members from existing teams at scale.

Additional filters added to the Approvals list – Within the Approvals app, you can use additional filters on approval lists. For example, you can filter on approval status or keyword in the title to find the right approval more quickly.

Government

Isolated audio feed for GCC-High and DoD – When using NDI or hardware-out in Teams, you can access an isolated audio feed along with the isolated video feed from any Teams meeting.

Attendance Dashboard for GCC-High and DOD – Measure meeting and webinar registration and attendance data in the Attendance Dashboard.

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Azure B2B maker, Experimental Application Insights Features, ESLint rules, canvas apps as dataverse solutions, table designer, Power App from REST API, modern command bar, install apps via CLI

Build apps across multiple tenants with Azure B2B maker

Makers can now build apps as a guest in another tenant: apps can be built in the Azure Active Directory tenant it is expected to be hosted. For example, it is now possible for maker@contoso.com to build apps directly in the ContosoSubsidiaryA.com tenant.

Find out more: Power Apps support for B2B guest maker (preview)

Application Insights features

Two new experimental features are now available for canvas apps connected to Application Insights. The first feature reports unhandled errors experienced by end-users. The second enables correlation tracing across canvas apps and connected custom connectors. Both features can be enabled in the upcoming features menu.

Find out more: Analyze telemetry of a canvas app using Application Insights

ESLint rules for Power Apps and Dynamics 365

The Power Apps team have announced the public preview of ESLint rules for Power Apps model-driven apps and Dynamics 365 CE. ESLint rules are configured in the eslintrc file, any violations in the code will be caught and listed in the problems console automatically. Hovering over the issue in code will show a detailed description of the violation, corrections needed, and a link to a document that provides more details.

Find out more: Announcing public preview of ESLint rules for Power Apps and Dynamics 365

Canvas apps as Dataverse solutions by default

The Power Apps team have announced the release of canvas apps creation as Dataverse solutions by default in public preview. Solutions are used to transport apps, flows, tables and other components from one environment to another and are a key mechanism for implementing healthy application lifecycle management (ALM) in the Power Platform.

Find out more: Creating canvas apps as Dataverse solutions by default (preview)

Table designer now in preview

You can now create new Dataverse tables and edit them using the table designer in the standalone model-driven app designer. This new feature allows you to have a one stop shop for all your table creation and data editing needs by saving you the time it takes moving between designers. 

Find out more: Create and edit tables using the table designer

Automatically create a Power App from a REST API

With this feature, a single command line function will let developers generate a canvas app from their API definition.  The app can then be imported into Power Apps Studio for further edits or customization. Makers and developers alike can benefit from the productivity of low code and Power Apps to quickly build rich user experiences over their APIs.

Find out more: Automatically create a Power App from a REST API

Modern command bar in Canvas

The modern command bar is now officially available behind the preview toggle in Settings for canvas page authoring. The new command bar not only has a modern look and feel but is also designed to improve your authoring experience. It allows a seamless customization experience of editing common controls by dynamically displaying the common properties directly within the command bar. 

Find out more: Understand Power Apps Studio

Install Apps via Power Platform CLI & Install API

This capability enables automation of install and update experiences that are offered only through the Power Platform Admin Center experience today. Installs can also be automated for applications available from AppSource provided at least one such install of the said application has been made to another environment within the tenant.

Find out more: Announcing Public Preview for Power Platform App Install API & Tools Support

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: New Android app GA, desktop update – August, 2 verified, 10 independent publisher connectors, SharePoint cloud actions in desktop

Power Automate Android app generally available

A new version of the Power Automate Android app is now available. The app has been redesigned to deliver a new UI that is more consistent with the look and feel of the Power Automate web portal, while also improving some existing experiences. You will also noticed some upgrades like quicker response times, easier navigation, and improvements to previous login issues that some of you encountered.

Find out more: Power Automate’s newest Android mobile app version is now generally available 

Power Automate desktop update – August 2022

The August 2022 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.23) has been released with updates including a new excel action, cropping text action, SharePoint connector actions and much more.

Find out more: Power Automate for desktop – August 2022 update

2 verified, 10 new independent publisher connectors

New verified connectors:

• Microsoft Bookings – Booking connector is a solution for these asks. With this connector we are exposing all appointment booking actions – like Create/Update/Delete of Bookings.
• Secret Server – With Secret Server, you can automatically discover and manage your privileged accounts through an intuitive interface, protecting against malicious activity, enterprise-wide. 

New independent publisher connectors:

• ConvertKit by Troy Taylor – ConvertKit is the go-to marketing hub for creators that helps you grow and monetize your audience with ease.
• CPSC Recalls Retrieval by Troy Taylor – The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission provides accessibility to recalls via this recall service.
• Every by Troy Taylor – Use Every.org’s free fundraising services to create innovative nonprofit experiences. 
• File.io by Troy Taylor – Simply upload a file, share the link, and after it is downloaded, the file is completely deleted. 
• OK dokument by Solitea Slovensko a.s. – OK dokument delivers an easy to use and customizable electronic signature and digital document distribution platform that integrates seamlessly into your existing systems.
• OneNote Consumer by Troy Taylor – Microsoft OneNote is your digital notebook. One cross-functional notebook for all your notetaking needs.
• RescueGroups by Troy Taylor – Since 2002, RescueGroups.org has provided animal welfare organizations with easy to use, free and low-cost services like the Pet Adoption Portal to help maximize animal adoptions.
• SchoolDigger by Troy Taylor – Get detailed data on over 120,000 schools and 18,500 districts in the United States.
• SignUpGenius by Troy Taylor – SignUpGenius simplifies scheduling, volunteer and member management, event planning and fundraising.
• Zenler by Troy Taylor – Zenler is an all-in-one course creation, delivery, and marketing platform.

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Power BI

In Power BI: What’s new in Datamarts, Multiple Audiences Public Preview, DLP updates, PostgreSQL connector, Power BI August 2022 feature summary, Power BI app in Teams mobile

What’s New in Datamarts

Datamarts are a preview feature in Power BI Premium (and Premium Per User) that enable self-service users to securely collect, store, analyze, and share their data in a unified, low code, solution – delivering SQL and unified analytics –  all in a web-based experience, for the first time.

Updates to Datamarts are shipped monthly, and several updates launched in May 2022, including: Datamart availability in new regions, Data connectivity and preparation updates, Collaboration enhancements and more.

Find out more: What’s New in Datamarts – August 2022

Multiple Audiences for Power BI Apps (Public Preview)

The Power BI team have announced the public preview of Multiple Audiences in the Power BI Apps, one of the highly requested features from the community. With multiple audiences for an App, now Power BI App author can create multiple audience groups within the same App and assign different permissions to each group.

Find out more: Announcing Public Preview of Multiple Audiences for Power BI Apps

Updates to Microsoft Purview data loss prevention policies in Power BI

Data loss prevention (DLP) policies help you govern the sensitive information managed in your Power BI tenant. Two significant enhancements to DLP policies have recently been released in Power BI:

• CPU metering for DLP policy evaluation
• Overriding policy tips and reporting false positives

Find out more: Updates to Microsoft Purview data loss prevention policies in Power BI

PostgreSQL connector for the virtual network data gateway

The Power BI team have announced a new PostgreSQL connector for the virtual network data gateway! You can now connect to all your PostgreSQL workloads in the cloud using basic authentication. Just select PostgreSQL in the connection type dropdown menu when creating a new connection to your virtual network data gateway from the manage gateways page on the PBI service.

Find out more: PostgreSQL connector for the virtual network data gateway

Power BI August 2022 Feature Summary

The Power BI August 2022 feature summary is out now with updates including conditional formatting for data labels, new “Select sensitivity label” dialog, DAX editor improvements and more.

Find out more: Power BI August 2022 Feature Summary

Power BI app is available in Microsoft Teams Mobile

 Power BI in Microsoft Teams is available for Teams mobile. This helps users stay up to date and never miss activity in their Power BI reports and scorecards. Users who have the Power BI app for Microsoft Teams installed and have Teams Mobile installed on their phone or tablet will automatically get the new capability.

Find out more: Announcing: The Power BI app is available in Microsoft Teams Mobile

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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.

• SharePoint
• Teams
• Power Apps
• Power Automate
• Power BI

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SharePoint

In SharePoint: Video collection page, one-time passcode change, nested security groups in AAD, flows from list templates, calendar view conditional formatting, review mode for Word documents, top ten SPFx solutions June 2022

Video collections page

Whenever people create a new site, the service auto-generates a static layouts page for video collections. This is a collection of all videos from the site’s document library. For now, to access this new page, you need to append /_Layouts/15/Video_Collections.aspx to the end of the site url. You can then edit and publish this page as you would any other, it will start appearing in the site pages as well.

more: SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: July 2022

SharePoint/ OneDrive external sharing ‘One-Time Passcode’ email address change

To improve reliability for delivery of the one-time passcode e-mails that are sent as part of the external sharing flow, Microsoft will be updating the sending address for these mails from no-reply@sharepointonline.com to no-reply@notify.microsoft.com.

NOTE: If your organization is using Azure B2B Integration with SP in Microsoft 365, this change will not impact your organization. No other e-mails sent from OneDrive or SharePoint are being changed at this time.

Find out more: SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: July 2022

a: “Nested” groups in Azure Active Directory (Public Preview)

The ‘memberOf’ component of dynamic Azure Active Directory, or Microsoft 365 groups allows you to “nest” groups within a group. The groups that define the membership of the dynamic group can be any group type represented in Azure Active Directory – user or device security groups, Microsoft 365 groups, and groups synced from on-premises, or a mix of all three. And, unlike existing nested security groups today, memberOf dynamic groups return a flat list of members, so can be used for licensing assignment and application assignment.

Find out more: Create “nested” groups with Azure AD Dynamic Groups

Create Power Automate flows embedded within Microsoft Lists templates

To help improve automation of information, you now have the option to install pre-created Power Automate reminder flows whenever you create a list from select list templates: Work progress tracker, Content scheduler, and the Recruitment tracker.

You’ll be prompted to install the included Power Automate reminder flow after the list has been created. The reminder flow is an automated flow that runs on a schedule in the background, so it does not appear in the Lists menu, and you can further refine it using the Power Automate flow designer. With a Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license, or a Power Automate per-user plan, you can create and use the reminder flow that is included with these select ready-made Lists templates.

Find out more: Create a business application from a list template

Calendar view conditional formatting in Microsoft Lists

Now you can better customize the calendar view by colour coding items based on conditions or rules. You manage the rules and colouring within the ‘Format current view’ in the top-right section of Calendar view.

Find out more: Create a calendar view from a list

Review mode for Word documents

When sharing a link to a document in SharePoint or OneDrive, you can assign someone to ‘Review Mode’ in the Share Dialog by using the new ‘Can Review’ option in the permission dropdown. They’ll then have access to review the document – to make edits with tracked changes intact and leave comments.

Find out more: Roadmap ID: 93400

Top 10 SharePoint Framework solutions June 2022

These are the most widely used solutions and their providers last month:

1. Ichicraft Widgets: Your Digital Workplace – Ichicraft Widgets allows users to personalize their digital workplace in SharePoint or Microsoft Teams. It offers the user a canvas that can be filled with configurable widgets (blocks) that clearly display up-to-date and personalized information.
2. Navigator 365 – Sharepointalist, Inc. – SharePoint & Teams content aggregation with search, grouping and filtering. 
3. Cerkl Broadcast for SharePoint – Ensure your internal communications are seen with SharePoint push alerts and newsfeed. Cerkl Broadcast for SharePoint provides unique notifications to employees through your existing SharePoint.
4. Employee Directory Plus – Support | HR365 – SharePoint Employee Directory Plus is free, fully featured 30 days trial for one office 365 tenant up to 999 users. Employee Directory Plus displays information of employees in the organization in visually manner.
5. Image Map – APPS 365 LTD – Supercharge your processes and navigation by using any image to deliver interactive visual content. Create hotspot navigation with image maps.
6. My Links – Dalikoo – My Links is a SharePoint app where you can add and manage your web links through an intuitive interface.
7. HM Munich GmbH – Table of Contents – This Web Part helps you to create high-quality documentation. The Modern Pages are ideal for your documentation of content (as a kind of Wikipedia) in Office 365.
8. Modern FAQ  – The Modern FAQ app provides users a better way to search for the answers to the questions they have in mind. It also helps the organizations to prepare the frequently asked questions, and answers categorized and presented in a readable format. 
9. Qualtrics Feedback – Add a way for your employees to easily give you feedback from within Viva Connections. Easily add a card to your Viva Connections surface to allow your employees to give you feedback in their flow of work.
10. Announcements Carousel – Compass365 – The Announcements Carousel by Compass365 allows you to display announcements in an automatic sliding carousel on your SharePoint team site. 

Find out more: Most used SharePoint Framework solutions from the Store – June 2022

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Teams

In Teams: Forms enhancements for meetings, LinkedIn integration, remove call from history, call recording announcement, common area phone license updates, DECT device integration with SIP, Teams panels updates, automatic groupings for channel posts, UX updates for iPad, bulk removal for policy assignments, export API support for message reactions

Government
Education
Front line workers

ms enhancements in Teams meetings

Microsoft Forms is excited to introduce a number of new features and improvements to existing features within Teams meeting polls. Here’s a quick summary:

• The “Forms” app within Teams is being replaced with a new app named “Polls” – making it much easier for people to find and add polls to their chats and meetings.
• UI improvements to the poll suggestions pane, including the ability to:
  • Re-position the list of suggested polls from the bottom to the side pane
  • Provide an entry point in the polls portal page, where users can show/hide the side pane as needed
  • Provide the poll results view (previously, it only showed the voting view), which allows the poll creator to see how the poll will look to the meeting audience after it’s launched
• You can now see a list of your recently created polls so that you can re-use your past polls created in new meetings and save time.
• A new poll animation appears after people have entered a response, providing a dynamic confirmation that their votes have been successfully submitted.
• A new poll question type, Rating, which allows you to provide feedback by rating on the scaled symbols.
• We’ve improved the poll result view to be a more intuitive and easy-to-read experience, with enrichments such as color indication and dynamic results.

Find out more: What’s New in Microsoft Teams | July 2022

LinkedIn integration

Use LinkedIn profiles, now integrated with Teams, to get to know your colleagues, connect directly and build deeper relationships. From Teams chat, channels, calls, or meetings, you will now be able to view your colleague’s LinkedIn profile, including their current role, past experiences, and other insights.

Find out more: Use LinkedIn in Teams

Automatic groupings available for channel posts

When creating a message post in a team channel, users are now able to notify owners of the team all at once by mentioning “@Team Owners,” removing the need to mention team owners individually. “Team Owners” is automatically grouped and doesn’t require any manual maintenance.

Find out more: Send a message to a channel in Teams

Remove a call from call history

Streamline your view with the ability to hide calls from your call history list on Teams for desktop and mobile. NOTE: Your call history is available if you have an Enterprise Voice or Business Voice license as part of your Microsoft 365 subscription.

Find out more: View your call history in Teams

Call recording announcement played in your default language

Call recording announcements will now be played in your default language for Teams calls to or from a phone number. Both parties will hear the announcement in the same language, at the same time, for both standard and compliance recording scenarios.

Find out more: What’s New in Microsoft Teams | July 2022

Common Area Phone license enhancements

The Common Area Phone offering has been enhanced to serve a wider variety of scenarios for customers without increasing the price.

Find out more: What’s New in Microsoft Teams | July 2022

Spectralink Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) device integration with SIP Gateway

DECT devices from Spectralink have been integrated with SIP Gateway, allowing frontline workers to use Teams calling functionality on DECT devices to communicate with colleagues on the go. DECT device integration with SIP Gateway is available on the following compatible handset models from Spectralink:

• IP-DECT 200/400/6500/Virtual IP-DECT/IP-DECT Base Station
• Handsets 72xx/75xx/76xx/77xx

Find out more: Configure SIP Gateway

Microsoft Teams panels updates

Here is a summary of the recent updates to Teams panels:

• Check out for Microsoft Teams panels
• Extend room reservations for Microsoft Teams panels
• Peripherals: Camera on/off feature

Find out more: What’s New in Microsoft Teams | July 2022

Bulk removal for individual policy assignments

Admins can clean up individual policy assignments from users in bulk so that those users can inherit the correct policy either via a group policy assignment or global organization-wide default. Individual policies are always prioritized, in order to clean those induvial policies and make sure that users are getting the correct policy we created this procedure to clean them all in one operation.

Find out more: Assign policies to users and groups

Export API support for Teams message reactions

The Teams Export API allows organizations to support Enterprise Information Archiving (EIA) for Teams to solve for retention, indexing, e-discovery, classification, and regulatory requirements. Teams Export API also will now support Teams reactions (heart, thumbs up, laugh, surprised, angry, sad) on a message using the Export API. This is in addition to Teams Messages (1:1 and group chat), attachments (file links and sticker), emojis, GIFs, and user @Mentions.

Find out more: Export content with the Microsoft Teams Export APIs

Education

These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:

Reflect is now a featured tab in your class team – To help foster social emotional learning in your class, we’ve updated Reflect to appear as a featured tab in each of your classes – just like Assignments or Grades! Get started with the updated version of Reflect in Teams.

Additional enhancements to Assignments and Grade Reports – The Insights team has been working to highlight student learning data in Assignments and Grade Reports in a richer, more informative, and easier to use format. Find out more: Changes to Assignments and Grades view in Insights

Summary Average Grade for Teachers – In the Gradebook for Assignments, you’ve been able to view a summary of all assignments and student grades for each course. Now, we added an average grade for each student, assignment, and all-up class view. As a teacher, you can change the date filter to see updated average grades for your selected date period. Find out more: What’s new in Teams

Adding Images in Assignment Instructions – A picture is worth a thousand words, and a GIF even more (some say). Now, you can embed pictures and GIFs into your Assignment instructions on both mobile and desktop to make them more engaging and easier to understand for students. Find out more: What’s new in Teams

Updated Video Options for Students and Educators – This last year we have added the ability to add Video recording to the assignments for both educators and students and added the ability to do Video Recording when given grades or feedback for an assignment. We have updated the video recorder to now support ink and images in your recording, and added options for Mirror recording and Audio recording. Find out more: Video in the Flow of Work

Challenging Words assignment improvements – Extend your students’ learning by creating a rigorous assignment from the most challenging words. When you navigate to Reading Progress reports in Insights, you can see which words students missed most frequently, select words from the passage, or additional challenge words recommended based on data from students with similar reading challenges. Find out more: create a challenge assignment from Insights.

Multi-select of words in Teacher Review – Save time with the ability to select multiple words to adjust the error category or mark as correct in bulk. Select any word, then from the dropdown choose Text tools then Select multiple words to manage several words at once. Find out more: What’s new in Teams

Improvements to Timed Passage –  Now, whenever a timed passage is set and the student doesn’t finish their reading in the allotted time, a small marker will show on the page and gray out the words the student didn’t reach. Find out more: What’s new in Teams

Create and Review Assignments on iPad and Android tablets – In the past, educators have been able to create and review Reading Progress assignments on Teams for Desktop PC, Mac and Web Browser, but not on Teams for iPad or Android tablets. Support for assignment creation and review on these two mobile platforms is now available. Find out more: What’s new in Teams

Frontline

Easily deploy frontline teams at scale – Administrators can deploy up to 500 teams with 25 users per team using one PowerShell command. This enables your organization to roll out teams at scale within a day so your frontline workforce can collaborate and be productive across different stores, locations, and roles. Learn more about deploying frontline teams at scale.

Device Test for virtual appointments – Device Test allows virtual appointment users to validate and configure hardware components before joining an appointment through Microsoft Teams. Users will be able to validate camera, microphone, and browser compatibility, as well as the internet connection at any moment before the scheduled appointment start time. Learn more about device testing.

Virtual appointment SMS notifications for UK customers – Now UK customers can send and receive SMS confirmations and reminders with a Teams Meetings link for any virtual appointments that are created from the Bookings app in Teams. Learn more about SMS notifications.

Government

These features are currently available to in multi-tenant cloud environments: US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and/or United States Department of Defense (DoD):

Manage Meetings options for DoD  – Organizers are now able to modify the user experience or customize the safety and security settings for their Teams Meetings using the new “Meetings options” feature.

Large Gallery for Teams on VDI in government clouds – By default, Teams Meetings supports up to nine videos in Gallery. Now, using Large Gallery, users can view up to 49 videos at once in Meetings on virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). This is available for GCC and GCCH.

Together Mode for Teams on VDI in government clouds – Together Mode lets you see all your colleagues against a shared background, making you feel like you are all together in a virtual online room. This is now available in Meetings on virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) for GCC and GCCH.

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Power Apps

In Power Apps: Managed environments, auto updates, app insights, find/ replace, review feedback, more components, Power Apps on Windows GA, embed an app in Teams, NFC/ markup support, Dependent assemblies for plugins, ESLint rules, formula columns in Dataverse, visualising views

Managed Environments (Preview)

This month Microsoft announced the preview of Managed Environments, a set of built-in governance capabilities that will simplify and automate IT administration of the Power Platform at scale. Managed Environments offers out-of-the-box simplicity with premium administration capabilities for low-code asset management at scale. It is designed to streamline governance, increase IT trust, and significantly reduce the burden on IT.

Find out more: Managed Environments overview (preview)

Auto updates for Power Apps & Dynamics CE (Preview)

The new feature allows automatic updates of third-party apps installed through AppSource, helping both ISVs and customers keep software up to date in a simple and controlled way, with minimal administrative overhead. Customers can control whether to opt-in to enable the feature and indicate which publishers are permitted to automatically update apps in their environment, providing flexibility to pause auto updates based on their needs.

Auto app updates (preview)

Application insights generally available for Dataverse plugins

The Power Apps team have announced that Application insights is now Generally Available for Dataverse plugins. To ensure that you can monitor your production workloads anywhere in a trustworthy manner, Microsoft have enabled state-of-art monitoring solution built on the Azure Monitor ecosystem designed to help prodevs to diagnose plugin timeouts, create custom alerts and reports, monitor global usage, and automatically detect patterns and anomalies in the telemetry data using the built-in Smart Detection feature, thus helping you to keep it always available, reliable and performant.

Find out more: Improve monitoring of Dataverse plugins using Application insights

Find and replace in the Power Apps Studio (Preview)

In July, the Power Apps team introduced the “Replace” capability to the Search Pane, now in  preview. This new addition to the Search Pane means you can now find and replace variables, collections, media, flow, formula content and more. This new pane allows you to be as broad or as granular with your search as you need – find all of the things you’re looking for in your canvas app or exactly the thing you are looking for.

Find out more: Use the Search pane (preview)

Review feedback and ratings (Preview)

This feature is currently available only for model-driven apps as part of preview. The mechanism to capture feedback for the apps is completely managed by Microsoft and is compliant with all international privacy and security standards. The feedback is processed to generate satisfaction score of an app on a scale of 0 to 200 which is displayed to makers for their apps.

Find out more: What are app ratings? (preview)

Form customisation with more components

You can now add more components to your model-driven forms through the modern form designer! Try customizing the look and feel of your forms with custom components built by Microsoft or other providers available through the marketplace.

Find out more: Add, configure, move, or delete components on a form – Power Apps | Microsoft Docs

Find business data in Microsoft Search

Allow your Dynamics users to easily locate information from Bing.com, Office.com, and Sharepoint.com by enabling the Dynamics 365 connector. Make your Dynamics users more productive by eliminating switching apps to get to quickly needed business data.

Find out more: Dynamics 365 results in Microsoft Search | Microsoft Docs

Power Apps on Windows generally available

Find all your canvas and model-driven apps in one place. Just sign in, choose an app, and you’re ready to go! Use your apps wherever you are with or without network thanks to offline support. It works just like it does on iOS and Android. With Intune for application management, you can manage the devices and people in your organization that have access to Power Apps on Windows.

Find out more: Install Power Apps for Windows – Power Apps | Microsoft Docs

Embed an app to Teams

Currently, customers can add their favourite apps to Teams by using the “Add to Teams” button at make.powerapps.com/apps. Now, they can launch their favourite canvas apps and pin these apps in Teams straight from the Web Player’s header. This capability prevents a user from having to leave the app context & return to make.powerapps.com/apps to add the app to Teams. 

Find out more: Embed an app in Teams – Power Apps | Microsoft Docs

Expanded support for NFC, and markup support in MR controls

The ReadNFC() function has been improved to return all records on the NFC tag as well as the identifier. These records and identifier make it easy to build Power Apps around asset tracking, inventorying, and attendance tracking.

The Markup in MR control enables users to paint 3D lines and draw arrows in context of physical space on top of a device’s camera feed. These mixed reality markups can be used during inspections, audits, walkthroughs and more to point out features of the environment and certain objects anchored in space.

Find out more: Use the Markup in MR control in Power Apps – Power Apps | Microsoft Docs and ReadNFC function – Power Platform | Microsoft Docs

Dependent Assemblies for Plug-ins

This feature is designed to boost developer productivity by eliminating the overhead of using ILMerge to manually merge dependent assemblies. With dependent assemblies, rather than register an individual .NET assembly, you will upload a NuGet Package that contains your plug-in assembly AND any dependent assemblies. Unlike ILMerge, you can also include other file resources, such as JSON files containing localized strings.

Find out more: Dependent Assembly plug-ins (preview)

ESLint rules for Power Apps and Dynamics 365 (Preview)

The Power Apps team have announced the public preview of ESLint rules for Power Apps model-driven apps and Dynamics 365 CE. In 2019, Solution Checker launched helping customers analyze solution for any issues. The ESLint rules for Power Apps and Dynamics 365 takes this a step further, bringing these validations to your development environment to help you find and fix issues in your JavaScript code before being added to a solution. 

Find out more: Use solution checker to validate your model-driven apps in Power Apps

Formula columns in Dataverse (Preview)

Formula columns are based on Power Fx. Power Fx provides a much richer set of functions than were previously available with calculated columns, especially for text processing and also provides a lowcode way to perform app extensibility. Now you are empowered with the same capability inside Dataverse where you can express your business logic on top of existing columns and reference column from other tables.

As calculations are done at the Dataverse level, results can be seen and used in all Dataverse endpoints, including the Dataverse for Teams table view, canvas and model-driven Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, the Dataverse APIs, to name just a few.

Find out more: Boost maker productivity inside Dataverse using formula columns!

Visualize views in Power Apps with Power BI generally available

The Power Apps team have announced that Power BI quick reports in Power Apps are now generally available. Power BI quick reports in Power Apps represent a seamless integration of Power Apps, Power BI and Dataverse into a single experience to enable every business user turn data into insights inside business apps. 

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Power Automate

In Power Automate: Power Automate desktop update, two new bot actions, 44 new verified connectors, 19 new independent publisher connectors, pay-as-you-go, ideas

Power Automate Desktop – July 2022 update

The July 2022 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.22) has been released and can be downloaded here. Here is a roundup of all the new features and updates:

• UI automation in a Citrix or RDP virtual desktop is now supported (Preview)
• New datatable actions are introduced in Power Automate for desktop
• Flow details are now available in the desktop console
• Detailed release notes will now be available for each new version

Find out more: Power Automate for desktop – July 2022 update

Two new bot actions in Power Automate

The Power Automate team have announced two new bot actions that have been highly requested which will help take your flows a step further:

• Update adaptive card messages in Teams – This action allows makers to update a Flow bot message which contains an adaptive card . Allowing you to make updates to reflect the latest changes in near real time to Microsoft Teams.
• Trigger a flow when an adaptive card action is submitted – A new trigger that lets you collect inputs from multiple users across a group chat or channel. 

Find out more: Create advanced bot scenarios with Power Automate and Microsoft teams

44 New Verified Connectors released in June 2022

The Power Automate team launched a huge number of verified connectors in June 2022, including 44 new and 19 updates from different service owners. These connectors have solutions and tools for Content and Files, Productivity, Collaboration, Business Intelligence, IT Operations, Security, and much more. Here are just a few:

• Azure AD App Registration – Azure Active Directory is an Identity and Access Management cloud solution that extends your on-premises directories to the cloud and provides single sign-on to thousands of cloud (SaaS) apps and access to web apps you run on-premises.
• Azure AD Identity and Access – A connector for Azure AD Identity and Access. This connector will contain multiple actions to manage Azure AD Identity and Access.
• Azure Communication Services Chat – Azure Communication Services Chat allows you to add real-time text communication to your cross-platform applications.
• Azure Communication Services Email – Azure Communication Services Email allows you to send high volume transactional, bulk and marketing emails enabling Application-to-Person (A2P) use cases. 

Find out more: 44 New Verified Connectors and 19 Updates released in June 2022

19 New Independent Publisher Connectors in June 2022

The Power Automate team have announced that 19 new Independent Publisher connectors were published in June 2022. These connectors have solutions and tools for Human Resources, Social Media, Lifestyle and Entertainment, Data, Finance and much more. Here are a few examples:

• BitlyIP by Troy Taylor – Bitly is the most widely trusted link management platform in the world. By using the Bitly API, you will exercise the full power of your links through automated link customization, mobile deep linking, and click analytics.
• DHL Shipment Tracking by Woong Choi – The Shipment Tracking API provides up-to-the-minute shipment status reports. Users of this API can: Retrieve tracking information for shipments, Identify the Deutsche Post DHL (DPDHL) service provider involved with the shipment, Verify DPDHL is using the correct delivery address. 
• Nationalize.io by Tomasz Poszytek – Nationalize.io predicts the nationality of a person given their name. Use the API for analytics, ad segmenting, demographic statistics etc. The API is free for up to 1000 names/day.
• RegEx Matching by Mitanshu Garg – This connector checks whether a text string matches a specified pattern.

Find out more: 19 New Independent Publisher Connectors in June 2022

Power Automate pay-as-you-go (Preview)

The Power Automate team have announced pay-as-you-go for Power Automate. A easy way for users to only pay for what you use, giving you more flexibility to get started with Power Automate with low risk and then scale your investments over time based on the usage patterns.

Currently, admins must predict licensing needs in advance, purchase licenses and assign them to makers for them to start using premium features of Power Automate. While it works for situations where admins understand the licensing needs in advance, we’ve heard from customers that there are many scenarios where they don’t yet know their needs, or where they need to scale up/down usage.

Find out more: Announcing public preview of pay-as-you-go for Power Automate

Power Automate Ideas

Between July 18 and July 20, 2022, Power Automate Ideas was migrated to a brand-new platform powered by Dynamics 365 Customer Service Community. On top of providing our community with a brand-new interface to share ideas, the migration will enable our product teams to be much more responsive to user feedback and better integrate your ideas into our product roadmap.

Find out more: https://ideas.powerautomate.com/

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Power BI

In Power BI: New license purchase/ management via AppSource, metric visual, desktop feature summary, data in space, improved Power BI in Excel

Purchase and manage licenses of licensed visuals through Microsoft AppSource

You can now purchase and manage licenses of licensed visuals through Microsoft AppSource. Now, when you look at licensed visuals in AppSource, you can see all the available licensing plans for each visual. Licensed visuals are visuals marked with price tag “Starts at Free” and has the “Plans + Pricing” tab.

Find out more: Introducing a new way to purchase licensed Power BI visuals and manage licenses through Microsoft platforms

Metric visual (Preview)

The Metric visual is now available in preview in the Power BI Service. You can now include individual metrics instead of the entire scorecard and create report pages showcasing metrics alongside other visuals, in the context of the rest of the report data.

Find out more: Metric visual is now available in preview

Power BI desktop feature summary July 2022

The July 2022 update for Power BI desktop is out now and includes Error Bars general availability, Metric visuals, Datamarts updates and much, much more!

Find out more: Power BI July 2022 Feature Summary

Data in space

Data in space is a new Power BI Mobile feature that uses augmented reality to create spatial anchors in the real world and attach Power BI data to them, so that data can be connected to the physical environment it describes. Using Data in space, you can connect your business data to your real-world scenarios, such as facility management, manufacturing, or retail.

Find out more: “Data in space” in preview: Now Power BI can be truly everywhere

Improved Power BI Experience in Excel

The Power BI team have announced several improvements to the Power BI experience in Excel that will help business users easily search data artifacts (including Power BI datasets and Power BI datamarts) and uncover better data insights all inside a spreadsheet environment.

Find out more: Improved Power BI Experience in Excel

BONUS – more updates!

Viva Sales

Microsoft Viva Sales reimagines the selling experience, giving salespeople AI-driven insights and data automation right in the flow of work. Sellers will be able to automatically capture, access, and register data into any customer relationship management (CRM) system. Enriched with data from Microsoft 365,

Learn more about Viva Sales announcement.

Bookings with me

With Bookings with me in Outlook, you can create, customize, and share a personal Bookings page where people can book time with you based on your personal preferences. Start customizing your Bookings page in the web calendar by clicking on Create bookings page.

Find out more: Bookings with me

Improvements to Office.com

The newly designed Office.com sign-in and sign-up page greets you with a modern entry point to get your day started on the web. We are introducing a new onboarding experience that helps you understand how to better use and engage with Office. Additionally, with the new Create experience, you can access new creation templates in a single location.

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