In this post we describe how to use a hidden taxonomy list to allow us to change the format and store metadata terms, plus their parents in SharePoint Online.
Intro
Lists and libraries in SharePoint Online have the ability to show a term or the term plus parents within a managed metadata column by editing said column and changing a neat little option called display format.
You can configure managed metadata columns in SharePoint to show terms plus parents.
However, when you turn on this option your term plus parents displays in the following way: Parent:Term. What if you wanted to change the way the parent plus child terms are displayed into either a different or user friendly format? Let’s do exactly that:
The taxonomy hidden list
There is a secret list within each SharePoint site called the taxonomy hidden list that, as the name suggests is a hidden list that stores cached managed metadata terms used within site. The taxonomy hidden list is unique to the site and each time terms are used within the site, they get stored within the taxonomy hidden list.
This list contains a lot of repeated stuff that might look confusing, but it does specifically contain the full path of a term including it’s parent, which is what we are looking for.
Solution
So in my example I want to replace the colon in the parent plus term with a comma and a space, so it looks like this: Parent, Term. In the below example my managed metadata column is called Department. Here’s how I did it step-by-step:
In your target list/ library, create a new single line of text column to store you formatted parent plus term (DeptCopy in my example).
Create a new flow in Power Automate based on the when a new item is created SharePoint trigger, making sure your site address and list name are added and configure the actions below:
Get item action
Set the site address as the target SharePoint site and the list name as TaxonomyHiddenList. Note: you will need to enter a custom value here and type this in.
Set the Id to equal the managed metadata column (Department) WssId from the when a new item is created trigger.
Initialize variable
Create a new variable to store the full path of the term from the get items action. Give the variable a name set the value to equal Path from the get items action.
Compose (optional)
Use the compose data operation to create an expression to replace the colon with a comma and space. You don’t have to do this step, I just use it for troubleshooting to easily see what the outputs are of my input value.
replace(variables('varDept'),':',', ')
Update item
Update your previously created column to show the newly formatted term plus parent with the output from the compose action. Note: If you don’t use the compose action from the previous step, just write the expression above directly in the column you want to update.
Notes
There is quite a bit online about seeing empty values in your managed metadata column. Although I’ve not personally noticed this, the taxonomy hidden list is set to have unique permissions by default and has the following permissions:
Anonymous users: view items
Everyone: read
There is a good write up of the taxonomy hidden list here.
Although there are a number of dynamic content options available, none of them seem to contain the parent + term like they do in the hidden taxonomy list. For example the path column that’s available from the ‘create an item’ trigger, outputs ‘null’.
The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
In SharePoint: 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.
The new video collections page in SharePoint Online.
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.
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.
memberOf “Nested” groups allow you to create Dynamic-Group-A with members of Security-Group-X and Security-Group-Y. Members of the groups inside of Security-Group-X and Security-Group-Y don’t become members of Dynamic-Group-A.
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.
Some list templates, such as the Work progress tracker shown above, come with flows that are automatically created when you create a list from that 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.
Color-code list items as they appear within Calendar view when they meet certain rules by your design through conditional formatting.
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.
Select “Open in review mode only” when sharing Word documents to ensure the recipient can add comments or make edits that have tracked changes on by default.
These are the most widely used solutions and their providers last month:
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.
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.
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.
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.
My Links – Dalikoo – My Links is a SharePoint app where you can add and manage your web links through an intuitive interface.
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.
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.
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.
Announcements Carousel – Compass365 – The Announcements Carousel by Compass365 allows you to display announcements in an automatic sliding carousel on your SharePoint team site.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Remove a call from call history in Microsoft 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Simplify and streamline Power Platform governance with Managed Environments.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Expanded support for NFC, and markup support in MR controls.
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.
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.
Announcing public preview of ESLint rules for Power Apps and Dynamics 365.
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.
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.
Power BI quick reports in Power Apps.
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
UI automation in a Citrix or RDP virtual desktop is now supported (Preview).
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.
Update Adaptive card in a chat or channel message.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can now purchase and manage licenses of licensed visuals through Microsoft AppSource.
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.
You can either create a new metric or add a metric from an existing scorecard as a visual in the report.
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!
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.
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.
Better Search in User-Friendly Interface for Power BI in Excel.
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,
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.
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.
The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
In SharePoint: Inline playback of videos in Hero web part, control vertical section reflow, updated site logo management, streamlining the multilingual user interface, Planner cards in activity feed, SharePoint 2013 Workflows migration assessment tool, LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group site template
Inline playback of videos in Hero web part
When you create a Communication site, the Hero web part is included on your page by default. It is pre-populated with default content that you change to display your own images, text, pages, links, documents, or videos. When someone clicks to play a video in the Hero web part section of a SharePoint site, the video will now play inline. No launch out of your established context, watch inline, return, browse, and continue to scroll through the other contents of the page uninterrupted.
When you add a video to a Hero web part on a communications site, it now plays inline (no longer launching out to the video’s Stream page).
Currently the vertical section in pages goes to the bottom of the page when viewed on smaller screens. We’re adding the ability for page authors to control this reflow and choose whether the vertical section goes to the top or bottom of the screen when the screen is condensed to a smaller size.
When you click to edit a vertical column, you’ll now see a new option to have the vertical column appear on the top or bottom when the full page resizes to a single column on smaller devices or low resolutions.
The SharePoint team are centralizing the management of your site logo. To update or manage your site logo, you will now exclusively visit the Header panel under the ‘Change the Look’ settings. Site owners will be able to navigate to the ‘Header’ panel from the ‘Change the Look’ settings, and then scroll to the bottom of the panel where the site logo options will be located.
Control all header options within the ‘Change the Look’ settings.
Streamlining the multilingual user interface when editing team sites
This new release includes other improvements to the navigation and site title editing experience for users whose preferred language differs from the site’s default language:
Additional language information is available when editors update navigational labels, site descriptions, footers, and the site’s name.
The new language information displays even if multilingual settings have not been enabled for the site.
When editors change site content that is not in their preferred language, it will modify the label instead of creating a translation.
Additional information appears in tool tips next to the content that’s being edited to confirm the language.
Streamlining the SharePoint multilingual user interface when editing team sites.
Planner cards now appear within the team site activity feed
Now, when a team member assigns a task to you within a plan, beyond the Planner user interface, a card will show up on your site activity feed if you are within two days of the due date. Timely tasks are visible when you need to see them.
When a task in Planner nears its due date, it will appear to your view in the team site activity feed.
The SharePoint team have developed a new, open-source Microsoft 365 Assessment tool – available to help you identify and evaluate your existing use of SharePoint 2013 workflows within your tenant and generating a Power BI report to help plan your migration of 2013 workflows to a modern workflow orchestration service.
By embedding Teams chat within Dynamics 365, Teams users can now seamlessly exchange ideas and collaborate directly and in context right in the workflow. You’ll be able to link existing or new chats to your Dynamics 365 records, such as sales opportunities and service cases, for convenient access for all participants.
Microsoft Teams chat embedded within Dynamics 365.
E-sign approvals fully embedded within Team Approvals
Users can now seamlessly create, view, review and e-signature approval requests that require a signature right from Teams. This update removes the need for users to log into each e-sign provider website. The login process has also been improved with users no only needing to login every 30 days.
E-signature approvals on mobile – view & take action.
E-signature approvals on mobile – view & take action
Users can now easily action e-signature approval requests from any mobile device. As a recipient users can view or review them, as a creator they can edit or cancel them.
DocuSign e-signature approvals in chats & channels
Users can now create DocuSign e-signature requests directly from the compose extension within a chat or a channel maintaining the context for the request. When users review the request, any updates will be shown in the adaptive card in the chat or channel meaning users respond faster as they understand the context of the request.
DocuSign eSignature for Approvals in Microsoft Teams
You can view and edit Adobe Acrobat PDF files right in Teams, removing the need to open another window which disrupts your workflow. This setting is in private preview and IT administrators can set Adobe as a default setting through the Teams admin center.
Users will be able to find the apps they use regularly via app flyouts, and just @mention their favourite bot to start using it seamlessly in a new chat/team. This capability will ensure that regularly used apps show up first and that the user doesn’t have to install them every time.
iPad users will have an updated Teams mobile meeting experience via a multitasking panel. Users will see a collapsible right panel during meetings, which enables richer experiences such as chat alongside the ongoing meeting, faster roster views, and more.
Chat bubbles are now available for iOS and Android users. When chat bubbles are enabled, chat messages appear on the mobile screen where you can preview the two most recent messages. You can temporarily turn them off in the current meeting by tapping on the snooze icon. Otherwise, you can also turn them off permanently by tapping on Don’t show chat bubbles on the More Actions (…) menu.
Organizers can share control by assigning the new “co-organizer” role to up to 10 meeting attendees. Co-organizers have most of the same capabilities as the organizer, including management of Meeting Options. Limitations of the co-organizer role include an inability to create and manage breakout rooms, manage meeting recordings, and view or download attendance reports. Organizers can add co-organizers through Meeting Options. Only invitees within the same tenant as the organizer are eligible for the co-organizer role.
Disable chat write access for anonymous/ unauthenticated users
IT administrators can disable chat write access for non-federated users and unauthenticated users who join Teams meetings through a shared link. This provides an added layer of security, especially in the financial sector where chat messages can be used as part of a data security breach.
Disable the chat write access via PowerShell using syntax [-MeetingChatEnabledType = Enabled, Disabled, or EnabledExceptAnonymous]. You can also do this through the admin portal under Chat in Meetings policy > Turn it on for everyone but anonymous users. This setting can be applied to a subset or all tenant users. Once this is set by an IT administrator, a meeting organizer cannot override this setting through meeting options.
Web users can view captions coming from a CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) provider within the Microsoft Teams meeting window instead of a secondary window. Users can follow along with what is being said without having to choose between the captions and presentation.
Live Captions and transcriptions for Teams meetings on Web
Real-time captioning and transcription are now available for web users in Teams meetings in 27 spoken languages. To enable, click on the More Actions menu […] and select Turn on live captions and/or Start transcription. Web users can see who is speaking along with what’s being said during and after the meeting, making meetings more inclusive and easier to follow.
Live Captions and transcriptions for Teams meetings on Web.
Additional spoken languages available for Live captions and transcriptions for Teams Meetings
Microsoft have added six more spoken languages for live captions and transcriptions, including Czech, Thai, Hebrew, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Turkish. Speakers of these languages will be more comfortable in a meeting, enabling a more inclusive environment.
Usability improvements to notifications in meetings for Android
Microsoft have added a notification drawer, which users will see at the top of their screen for in-meeting system messages. Users can preview, collapse, and clear all notifications with just one tap using the Clear All button. This helps reduce distracting clutter on your mobile device while you’re in a meeting.
Usability improvements to notifications in meetings for Android.
Support of Transcription for Teams on VDI for Azure Virtual Desktop
Transcription is available on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) for Azure Virtual Desktop users. Live transcription allows you to follow conversations alongside the meeting video or audio in real time, promoting inclusivity for participants who are deaf/hard of hearing or different levels of language proficiency. After a meeting, the transcript file is automatically saved in the chat tab for that meeting.
Give and Take Control for Teams on VDI for VMware and Azure Window Desktop
Give and Take Control for Microsoft Teams is now available on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) for VMware and Azure Window Desktop. Give and Take Control allows a meeting participant to control the presenter’s shared content during screensharing. A presenter can give control of the shared content to another meeting participant to take actions such as present or modify files. Both the presenter and the meeting participant have control of the sharing. The presenter can take back control at any time.
A meeting participant can request control while another participant is sharing content. The participant sharing content can approve or deny the request. When the requester has control, they can make selections, edit, and make other modifications to the shared screen.
Updates in Teams is an out-of-the-box app that enables users to create, submit, and review all their updates, check-ins, and reports in the flow of work. These can be recurring processes that happen on a regular basis, like a weekly update, store opening, or facility inspection. They can also be in the moment updates that might be needed at any time, like a shift handoff, maintenance request, or incident report.
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):
Suggested Replies on mobile for Government Clouds – Quickly respond to an incoming message by tapping one of the three suggested reply options. Suggested replies in Teams chat uses assistive AI to create short responses based on the context of the previous message.
Sensitivity labels for Teams templates for GCC – Sensitivity labels are supported when creating teams with templates in GCC. Sensitivity labels allow Teams administrators to protect and regulate access to sensitive organizational content created during collaboration within Teams.
Manage meeting options – Organizers can modify the user experience by using the new Meeting Options to customize their meeting safety and security settings. Meeting Options can be accessed in the Teams meeting invitations details in Outlook and Teams Calendar. Available in DOD.
Attendee restriction to remove another attendee from chat – Only meeting organizers can remove an attendee from chat. If a user has an attendee role from the participant roster, they will not be permitted to remove other attendees from the chat window. Available in GCC.
Channel owner(s) can delete meeting chat messages within channel meetings – Currently, Teams channel owner(s) are unable to delete chat messages in the meeting chat window. Now, IT administrators can enable Owners can delete sent messages and assign this Messaging policy to a user or group of users. Once this is completed, channel owner(s) see this option on Member Permissions through Manage Teams > Settings. Available for GCC. Learn more.
Anonymous meeting join across clouds – Join meetings in other clouds anonymously from your Teams desktop app. Previously, if you wanted to join a meeting hosted in a cloud different from your tenant’s, you were directed to use the Teams web experience. Now, GCC and GCC-High users will be able to join meetings in Commercial, GCC, DOD, and GCC-High clouds from their desktop, enabling an improved meeting experience. Available in GCC and GCC-High. Learn more.
Music Mode – High-fidelity music mode enables Teams users to experience richer sound experiences when sharing non-speech content such as live music, songs through other applications, or medical signals during a virtual appointment with a physician. High-fidelity music mode enables significantly improved audio quality in Teams calls and meetings. Available in DOD. Learn more.
Presenter mode: Controls to move and resize presenter video – There is a new enhancement to the Presenter mode feature. Now, a presenter can choose whether to show up on the left or right side of the content and resize their video feed while automatically adjusting content size accordingly. This can be applied to all modes on Desktop or Window sharing, including standout, side-by-side, and reporter. Available in DOD.
Integrated Communication Access Realtime Translation CART captioning in meetings – You can now view captions coming from a CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) provider within the Teams meeting window instead of a secondary window. Follow along with what is being said without having to choose between the captions and presentation. Meeting organizers and participants can enable CART captions from their meeting options. Available in GCC-High. Learn more.
Usability improvements to notifications in meetings for Android and iOS – A notification drawer, which you will see at the top of your screen for in-meeting system messages, allows users to preview, collapse, and clear all notifications with just one tap using the Clear All button. This helps reduce distracting clutter on your mobile device while you’re in a meeting. Available for GCC.
Improved meeting support in Firefox browser – Firefox browser users now experience the full audio and desktop and window screen sharing support in Teams meetings. Available in GCC.
Large Gallery Teams Meetings on Web – Web users can change the Teams meeting layout to Large Gallery. With Large Gallery, you can see up to 49 participants in a single screen, enhancing your overall virtual meeting experience. Available in DOD.
Together Mode in Teams Meetings on Web – Web users can change the Teams meeting layout to Together mode. In Together mode, participants are digitally placed in a shared background, making it feel like they are sitting in the same room with everyone else, even when participants are remote. Available in DOD.
Give and Take Control for Teams on VDI for VMware and Citrix – Give and Take Control for Microsoft Teams is available on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) for VMware and Citrix. Presenters are able to give control of their shared content to other meeting participants, allowing them to take actions such as presenting or modifying files. The presenter and the meeting participant both have control of the sharing and the presenter can take back control at any time.
Support of Live Caption for Teams on VDI for VMware – Live captions are now generally available in Teams on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) for VMware. Teams on VDI for VMware can detect what’s being said and who is saying it with real-time captions. See use live captions in a Teams meeting on how to get started. Available in GCC.
Multi-window support for Teams for VDI for Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365 and Citrix – Teams multi-window support is available for VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) for Azure Windows Desktop, Windows 365, and Citrix. Multi-window capability allows users to pop out chats, meetings, or calls into separate windows to help streamline their workflows.
Dynamic Emergency Calling for work from home on VDI for VMware – Dynamic Emergency Calling is now enabled for Teams on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) for VMWare, allowing users to make emergency calls (E911) while working from home. It also lets users validate (and if necessary, edit) the address that emergency responders receive. Learn more how to configure dynamic emergency calling. Available GCC and GCC-High.
Support of Transcription for Teams on VDI for Azure Virtual Desktop – Transcription is available on VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) for Azure Virtual Desktop users. Live transcription allows you to follow conversations alongside the meeting video or audio in real time, promoting inclusivity for participants who are deaf/hard of hearing or have different levels of language proficiency. Available in GCC and GCC-High.
Bots in GCC-High – GCC-High customers will be able to build and deploy bots in their Microsoft Teams environment through Azure bot Service. This release supports custom, line-of-business bots.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Power Apps for Windows GA, Dataverse Service Client GA, Dataverse experiences GA, Wrap GA, modern commanding GA, canvas components/ component libraries GA, portals update, developer tools refresh, command line updates v1.15.x
Power Apps for Windows General Availability
The Power Apps team have announced the general availability (GA) of our new Power Apps application for Windows. With Power Apps for Windows you can find all your canvas and model-driven apps including your Dynamics 365 apps and use them online or offline just like you can on iOS and Android! You can configure model-driven apps to work automatically offline by creating an offline profile. For canvas apps, you can use the LoadData/SaveData functions to create a seamless offline experience.
With the new Power Apps for Windows, you get device capabilities like camera, microphone, file picker, barcode scanning, geo-location and many others.
The Power Apps team have announced that the Dataverse service client is now Generally Available for developers to use. Dataverse Service client has been in preview for a while, which is why the team can provide developers with a Generally Available version of this SDK. This new Dataverse Service Client SDK has the following capabilities, which enables the community to extend the value of their applications:
Dataverse experiences on Power Apps General Availability
The Power Platform team announced the general availability of new data focused experiences for Dataverse, including:
Updated list of tables: An updated the list of tables to make it simpler to find what you need with extensive support for filtering, sorting, search and have provided some key pivots on this list.
Table hub: When you open a table, you’ll see a hub layout giving you an overview of the table with its properties and grouped links for related table components (like forms, views or columns).
Table designer: When you need to dive into the full data set, you can edit the table in a full-screen experience that gives you access to all the data in the table.
Create an app quickly: Now that you have found or built your table, it is just one-click away to create a new modern app over that table, whether you’re on the table hub or in the full-screen experience.
What’s using this table: You can select a command on the table hub to view the list of apps and flows that are using this table.
Columns, data types and formats: Focused on columns as they are key to storing meaningful data – the majority of columns created are text, whole number or date/time so these are all readily available in a single-click.
Choice columns: Enhanced management of these column types to make it easy to sort, drag/drop reorder, set colors and get access to all the other properties of the choice, including support for extending out-of-the-box Status Reasons.
Wrap for Power Apps – empowering makers to create secure, custom-branded, standalone Android and iOS enterprise mobile apps with Power Apps – has reached general availability (GA). Wrap for Power Apps is the next step, integrating low-code enterprise apps with Power Apps mobile technology to produce secure (Intune managed) enterprise mobile apps with rich native mobile experiences and seamless end-to-end branding suitable for customer-facing frontline worker scenarios.
The Power Apps team have announced modern commanding with Power Fx is now generally available (GA). Modern commanding provides a maker friendly low-code/no-code experience for customizing model-driven app command bars – with the first ever in-product command designer and the ability to use Power Fx (or JavaScript) for expressing business logic.
General availability of Power Apps modern commanding.
Canvas components/ component libraries general availability
The Power Apps team have announced the general availability (GA) of canvas components and component libraries. Canvas components enable low code/no-code developers to build reusable UX components using default Power Apps controls as core building blocks. These custom components can then be shared across app screens or multiple apps both within and across Power Apps environments.
Makers can now package their apps and component libraries inside a single or multiple solutions and import them into a different environment. If a canvas app is using a component library, it is now tracked as a solution dependency. ALM support ensures that the dependency relationship is maintained in the target environment and any further library versions imported via solutions can deliver the updated components to the app.
With the announcement of Power Pages, several capabilities within Power Apps portals are now been optimized, or depreciated. Changes include: OAuth 2.0 implicit grant flow, list OData feed, Portal content editor and more.
The Power Platform team have announced the release of a new update (Version: 1.16.5+gba7d6a4) for the Power Platform Command line. This refresh comes with capabilities ranging from support for single sign-on to things like showing whether solutions are managed or unmanaged when listing out the solutions.
You can now reassign a solution flow to a new owner from the Power Automate portal. This feature enables owners, co-owners, and admins to change the owner of a solution flow to enable business continuity when the original owner is switching teams or leaving the organization.
In May 2022, the Power Automate team launched 13 new verified connectors and 14 updates from different service owners. Let’s take a look at some of the new connectors:
Alkymi – Alkymi transforms enterprise workflows by placing machine learning and automation technology into the hands of business users, turning operational data headaches into a source of efficiency.
Cascade – Cascade is a cloud-based strategic planning and execution platform for teams to plan, execute, measure, and adapt their strategy all in one place.
Cyberday – Cyberday splits chosen security frameworks (e.g. ISO 27001, NIST CSF, ISO 27701) down to prioritized security tasks and guides you in implementing them directly inside Microsoft Teams.
DomainTools Iris Enrich – The DomainTools Iris Enrich API supports high query volumes of domain name attributes including Whois, DNS, SSL certificate, and risk scoring elements to help build out the needed context for appropriate disposition of indicators.
DomainTools Iris Investigate – The Iris Investigate API delivers dozens of domain name attributes on every result including Risk Score, DNS, Whois, SSL, and more.
Exasol – Exasol’s analytics database delivers next-level performance, ease of use and choice of deployment for diverse analytics use cases.
InQuba Journey – inQuba Journey offers a deep understanding into your customer journeys across channels and the ability to guide customer behaviour using real-time and personalised interventions.
My Acclaro – My Acclaro is a portal that streamlines translation workflows for your enterprise from order creation through review.
Progressus Advanced Projects – Use Progessus Advanced Projects connector to make OData calls to Progresssus Advanced Projects data.
Tribal – Tribal Edge modules, such as Tribal Admissions, provide staff and students the tools they need to succeed in the world of education.
TuxMailer – TuxMailer is a tool for email validation and marketing services.
Uber Freight – Uber Freight is a logistics platform providing 24/7 access to truckload freight with instant quoting + booking, price transparency, and real time visibility.
Vineforce – The Vineforce Power Automate Connector helps you build workflows by automating task creation and notifications triggered by actions in your favorite productivity apps.
15 new independent publisher connectors
In May 2022, the Power Automate team launched 15 new independent publisher connectors. Let’s take a look at some of the new connectors:
Aviationstack by Troy Taylor – The aviationstack API was built to deliver accurate data about global flights both in real-time as well as for historical flights.
BIN Checker by Troy Taylor – Checks and verifies BIN (Bank Identification Number). Available for both credit card and debit cards.
CDC Content Services by Troy Taylor – Content syndication allows CDC to offer web content to other sites and applications. Media, topics, and organizations data is available.
Lit Ipsum by Troy Taylor – Lit Ipsum is a dummy text generator for web designers and developers. As an alternative to boring old Lorem Ipsum generators, it chooses passages from copyright-free literature courtesy of the Gutenberg Project.
NHTSA vPIC by Troy Taylor – The NHTSA Product Information Catalog Vehicle Listing (vPIC) Application Programming Interface (API) provides different ways to gather information on Vehicles and their specifications.
OpenAI by Robin Rosengrün – OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory. The company conducts research in the field of AI with the stated goal of promoting and developing friendly AI in a way that benefits humanity as a whole.
ProPublica Campaign Finance by Troy Taylor – The Campaign Finance API includes information about electronic filings, which are submitted to the Federal Election Commission on nearly every day of the year. ProPublica Congress by Troy Taylor – Using the Congress API, you can retrieve legislative data from the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Library of Congress.
ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer by Troy Taylor – ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer provides summaries of 3 million tax returns from tax-exempt organizations and see financial details such as their executive compensation and revenue and expenses.
Reachability by Troy Taylor – Check reachability of any site/webpage from any country in the world.
Sessionize by Nanddeep Nachan – Sessionize is the smart way to manage Call for Papers, Speakers and Agenda for your conference.
Storm Glass by Paul Culmsee – The Storm Glass API allows you to fetch weather data for any coordinate on the globe in a simple, programmatic way using conventional HTTP requests.
Udemy by Nanddeep Nachan – The Udemy helps one to get the information about Udemy learning courses.
WorldTime by Andras Fordos – A simple API to get the current time based on a request with a timezone.
XSOAR by Landon Chelf – Provides the ability to submit content to XSOAR integrations when using instance.execute.external to expose integration instances over HTTPS. Tested to work with the Generic Webhook integration.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is the end-to-end lifecycle management of applications and automations, considerations like governance, development, and maintenance. Based on your feedback, Power Automate has two categories of enhancements that are improving the ALM story:
Solution cloud flow improvements
Core ALM improvements
Making application lifecycle management (ALM) easier in Power Automate.
In Power BI: Preview data in dataset details page, Power BI Desktop Feature Summary, email subscription updates for Premium Gen2, SQL Server Reporting Services 2022, Enhanced refresh Power BI REST API GA
Preview data is now available in the dataset details page
The dataset details page helps you explore, monitor, and leverage datasets. When you click on a dataset in the data hub, a workspace, or other place in Power BI, the details page for that dataset opens. A new feature – preview data, lets you select data from dataset’s tables on the side panel. If you do not see a side panel, click on “Show tables” from the action bar.
In this month’s desktop feature summary is the announcement of the general availability of the new Format Pane, error bars and information protection updates, table navigation improvements, Connect to datamarts, plus lots more!
SQL Server Reporting Services 2022 (Public Preview)
This release introduces the public preview of SQL Server 2022 Reporting Services (SSRS). In this new release of SSRS, Microsoft have done lots of accessibility work to make sure we are empowering people to achieve more. It includes enhanced Windows Narrator support, security enhancements, performance improvements, bug fixes, and reliability updates.
Reminder of features being removed with the next release of SQL Server.
Enhanced refresh with the Power BI REST API generally available
Enhanced refresh with the Power BI REST API (formerly asynchronous refresh) from public is now generally available in Power BI Premium, Power BI Premium per User, and Power BI Embedded. As noted in the public preview announcement, this feature not only eliminates the need for synchronous client connections to perform a refresh, but also unlocks enterprise-grade refresh capabilities.
The Microsoft Forms team have updated creating, editing and tracking experiences for educators, here are 4 new features:
Quickly create a form/quiz for your daily workflow – With this feature, teachers can quickly select and create templates including feedback surveys from students, daily workflow requests forms and assessment quizzes based on different needs through forms.office.com.
Convert paper tests into online ones – You can now import and convert paper tests into Microsoft Forms by using our latest “Smart convert” functionality.
Quiz is fully supported across all devices, including mobile – Whether you are creating a Form or Quiz from scratch, want to edit an existing one, or want to analyze the results, now you can do this fully end-to-end across your various devices.
Keep track and remind non-response people by one click – If you want to share a form or quiz directly to your class or anyone in your organization, you can easily use the invitation channel.
Microsoft have announced an improved Office.com experience with updates that will allow users to create, share, and collaborate all in one place with their favourite apps. A new sign-in and sign-up page greets you with a modern entry point to get your day started on the web. Additionally, with the new Create experience, you can access new creation templates in a single location.
The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
In SharePoint: Site template history panel, page section templates, calendar view item drag and drop, Mover.io to be retired, view & edit video/ file info in Stream, Inspiration Library in Microsoft Viva Insights
SharePoint site template history panel
The site template history panel is new to site settings for site owners to view the history of any site templates applied to their site, along with the ability to review related site script actions. Site owners simply go to the Site information panel and then select View template history.
Click into Site information and then click “View template history” to view all templates that have been applied to your site.
Authors of SharePoint Pages and News will now be able to access section templates from the plus menu in a new tab next to the sections tab. Users will be able to choose and add templates at the section level instead of just at the page level. Although users will still have access to blank sections, there are six templates to make section design easier and faster.
When adding a new section to your SharePoint page or news article, you can now use predefined section templates to save time and better organize your posts.
Now it’s easy to reorganize list items in a calendar view. Users will be able to reschedule items – changing the date – by dragging and dropping them from one day to another, or by pulling an item from the ‘Unscheduled’ pane that appears on the right, within Calendar view.
Easily drag and drop list items when in Calendar view. Moving items updates the Date column to the date you drag to.
On July 1st, 2022, Microsoft will be retiring the legacy Mover tool’s ability to migrate from Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and Egnyte. If you are currently in the middle of a Mover migration, you may continue using Mover until you finish your migration. However, you will not be able to create new moves. FastTrack led migrations are not impacted at this time.
The Microsoft Migration Manager now has the ability to move files and folders from third-party storage providers into Microsoft 365. This is Microsoft’s recommended tool for file migrations to OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams.
View and edit of video and/or audio file information in Stream
Now it’s even easier to adjust things like title, description, and thumbnails for people who have owner permissions for a video or audio file.
About will enable users, with edit permissions, to add and edit a title/description on their video or audio file. Viewers will be able to see this information along with non-editable fields like upload date, owner name, filename, and area path.
Custom thumbnail, located in Video Settings, will allow users with edit permissions to change the default thumbnail by uploading an image or selecting a frame from the video. This custom thumbnail will be used throughout Microsoft 365.
You can also add and/or update the thumbnail of a video or audio file.
The Inspiration library is a new feature available in preview through the Viva Insights app in Teams. It turns insights into action with access to curated content and best practices from top sources like Harvard Business Review and Thrive.
The Inspiration library turns insights into action with access to curated content and best practices from top sources like Harvard Business Review and Thrive.
In Teams: Choose your own status for a meeting, Mandatory Comments for Approvals App, Data export within Approvals App, additional language support for suggested replies, Together mode for everyone, brightness/ soft-focus video filters, VDI improvements, Direct Guest Join for Teams Rooms on Android, Horizontal participant gallery, enhancements to app usage report/ activity log
Organizers and participants of Teams meetings can choose a Calendar Show As status feature such as free, busy, or OOF to reflect their status for scheduled meetings. In addition, organizers can select private meeting functionality, which will allow users to hide meeting details from other users when their calendar is shared.
Teams admins and approval template creators can enable mandatory comments for when an approver responds to a request. Team admins can go through the Teams Admin Center under Managed Apps and select the corresponding setting.
Additional language support for Suggested Replies for mobile
Suggested replies are now supported in Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, French, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Italian, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Norwegian, Russian, Korean, Czech, Danish, Turkish, and Polish. The auto replies are on by default but can be turned off.
Together mode creates a virtual shared space in which attendees feel like they are sitting in the same room. Now, meeting organizer and presenters can start Together mode for all of a meeting’s participants. Previously, this view could only be enabled for your own personal view.
To enable this feature, simply check the Select Together Mode for Everyone option after you choose a scene. All meeting participants can then join this immersive experience together. This is currently only available for Teams Desktop users.
Enhance the video quality when lighting is poor by turning on the Adjust brightness filter. You also can use Soft focus to apply a subtle smoothing effect. Both filters are now available before joining meetings, as well as during meetings. Simply navigate to the device settings to enable these filters. Currently, Soft focus is not available for EDU tenants.
Multi-window support for Teams for VDI for Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365 and VMware – Teams multi-window support is available for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) for Azure Windows Desktop, Windows 365 and VMware.
Background Blur for VDI on Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 – Background blur effects are now available for VDI on Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365. Users on Teams for VDI on Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 can make meetings more personalized and avoid unexpected distractions by applying background effects.
Give and Take Control for Teams on VDI for Citrix – Give and Take Control allows a meeting participant to control the presenter’s shared content during screensharing.
Dynamic Emergency Calling for work from home on VDI for VMware – Dynamic Emergency Calling is now enabled for Teams on VDI for VMWare, allowing users to make emergency calls (E911) while working from home. It also lets users to validate (and if necessary, edit) the address that will be communicated to emergency responders. Learn more how to configure dynamic emergency calling.
Direct Guest Join for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android
Zoom meetings can now be joined directly through Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android devices. To use this feature, simply schedule a new meeting on Zoom or forward an existing meeting to your Microsoft Teams Room, and it will appear on the calendar. Click on “Join” from your Teams Rooms device to enter the meeting.
At this time, support is limited to controls such as camera and microphone, but additional functionality will be integrated in the future. Supported devices are currently the Poly Studio X30 and Poly Studio X50, with support for additional device manufacturers coming soon.
This feature is available as part of the May 2022 update (App version – 1449/1.0.96.2022051102).
To increase the flexibility of the meeting stage, the orientation of participant video feeds can be displayed horizontally and located below the meeting stage when content is shared, or participants are spotlighted. You can change the location of the participant gallery through the layout chooser experience on the Teams Rooms console.
Horizontal participant gallery for Teams Rooms.
This feature is available as part of the May 2022 update (App version – 1449/1.0.96.2022051102).
These features are currently launched, or rolling out to Microsoft Teams for Education customers:
Reading Coach – Reading Coach builds on Reading Progress by identifying the five most challenging words for each individual student and presenting those words with tools to support the learner in practicing independently.
Setting Language or Locale for a Reading Progress passage – Microsoft have now added an Edit Language feature to make changing a language or locale from, for example, French (France) to French (Canada), as easy as a couple of clicks.
Fifteen new auto-detect languages – Microsoft have announced that we have added support for fifteen new auto-detect languages in Reading Progress, bringing our total to 116. To see the full list of supported languages, please visit this site.
Assignments and Grades support for up to 1000 students – The Assignments and Grades features, Teams has now added support for classes up to 1,000 students and has updated the functionality to allow educators to return all submissions to their students, without needing to wait for the work to be complete.
Rubrics updated for Educators & Students on mobile devices – With this new upgrade, you can now create and edit rubrics directly from your mobile devices, and students can more easily read rubrics on their mobile devices, as well.
Apps Support in Grading Pane – Microsoft have now updated the Grading pane in Assignments to also support apps. This allows the educator to launch the app directly from the Grading pane if there is work the student has done within that particular app. Whenever there is an app added to an assignment, it will now be shown in the Grading pane.
Improved Educator Dashboard navigation – To create an easier entry point for drilling into this student data and reports, Microsoft have created a more intuitive navigation bar to the Insights tab app. To learn more, please check out this video.
Moodle LMS integration with M365 – In addition to integration with Canvas and Blackboard, Microsoft has now partnered with Moodle to deliver more seamless integrated learning experiences. Microsoft Teams Classes LTI and Teams Meeting LTI apps are now available within Moodle.
These features currently available to Microsoft’s commercial customers in multi-tenant cloud environments are now rolling out to our customers in US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and/or United States Department of Defence (DoD):
Together Mode in Teams Meetings on Web – Web users are now able to change the Teams meeting layout to Together mode by clicking the more options ellipsis […] in their meeting control bar. With Together mode, participants are digitally placed in a shared background, making it feel like you’re sitting in the same room even when you are apart. Available in DOD.
Anonymous meeting join across clouds – Join meetings in other clouds anonymously from your Teams desktop app. Previously, if you wanted to join a meeting hosted in a cloud different from your tenant’s, you were directed to use the Teams web experience. Now, DOD users will be able to join meetings in Commercial, GCC, and GCC-High clouds from your desktop, enabling an improved meeting experience. This feature leverages your existing Allow anonymous users to join meetings settings. If you already have these settings configured, no additional changes are required. Available in DOD. Learn more.
Presenter mode: Controls to move and resize presenter video – There is a new enhancement to the Presenter mode feature. Now, a presenter can choose whether to show up on the left or right side of the content and resize their video feed while automatically adjusting content size accordingly. This can be applied to all modes on Desktop or Window sharing, including standout, side-by-side, and reporter. Available in GCC and GCC-High.
Mirror my video – You no longer have to see the text in your video flipped. Imagine a primary school teacher with a small whiteboard in hand, or you have a virtual background with text in it. While the meeting audience sees the text correctly, you see the text flipped. By providing you with the option to un-mirror, you will be able to see the text correctly. Go to your Device Settings and toggle off “Mirror my video.” Available in GCC-High and DOD.
Music Mode – High-fidelity music mode enables Microsoft Teams users to experience richer sound experiences when sharing non-speech content such as live music, songs through other applications, or medical signals during a virtual appointment with a physician. High-fidelity music mode enables significantly improved audio quality in Teams calls and meetings. The optimized experience in Teams applies to signals captured by microphones, as well as audio played while sharing an application or desktop. Available in GCC-High. Learn more.
Support of Live Caption for Teams on VDI for Azure Virtual Desktop and Citrix – Live captions are now generally available in Teams on virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) for Azure Virtual Desktop and Citrix. Teams on VDI for Azure Virtual Desktop and Citrix (pre-requisite required) can detect what’s being said and who is saying it with real-time captions. See use live captions in a Teams meeting on how to get started. Available in GCC and GCC-High.
New default settings when opening Office files For Government clouds – Users can set their default preference as Browser, Desktop, or Teams when opening Office (Word, Excel, and Power Point) files that are shared in Teams. Desktop setting can be selected if the latest Office clients are installed and activated. The process of updating default settings is fairly simple. Learn how to set it up here.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Express Design, Power Pages, RTE for portals, Power Platform command line updates, modern app designer GA, Access migration GA, new data sources for the virtual connection provider
Express Design
The Power Apps team have announced the preview of express design in Power Apps: the ability to instantly generate low-code apps directly from design files and images. Power Apps express design is like an AI-powered co-pilot helping create apps alongside you. Here’s how it works:
Get going with a variety of content types: Start with a paper form, PowerPoint, PDF, a screenshot of a UI from a legacy app, or even a picture of a hand-drawn app that you’ve sketched out on paper. Or point to a design file in Figma.
Advanced AI will scan your file: Using cognitive AI models that are trained to recognize common application elements, Power Apps will automatically generate an app with a working user experience and data schema in Microsoft Dataverse.
Tune the model to get exactly what you need: From the AI-generated starting point, make quick inline adjustments. Need a dropdown control, or maybe a date picker? No problem.
Seamlessly connect to all of your data: Easily adapt and configure the application using low code. Use more than 675 prebuilt connectors to integrate with your existing systems including SAP, Salesforce, and SQL.
Add as many screens as you like: If you want to add more screens to the app, simply upload additional files, or create them easily in the low-code Power Apps Studio.
The Power Apps team have announced the preview of Microsoft Power Pages, the fifth product in the Microsoft Power Platform family. Power Pages empowers anyone, regardless of their technical background, with an effective platform to create data-powered, modern, and secure websites.
In addition to being low-code, Power Pages extends far beyond portals former capabilities to enable organizations of any size to securely build websites with exciting new aesthetic features such as a versatile Template Hub, Design Studio, and other advanced capabilities for customization with pro-dev extensibility.
Power Platform command line updates (April refresh) v1.15.x
Here are the new and updated features as part of the April refresh of Power Platform command line:
Solution command updates – In this release pac solution unpack and pack will also unpack Canvas apps using the parameter –processCanvasApps.
Packaging updates – The packaging construct within Power Platform allows a user to bundle multiple solutions into a package and can be deployed all together as one unit.
Administration improvements – For the administration commands, you can now create, update, and delete Microsoft Teams environments.
Power Apps modern app designer general availability
The Power Apps team have nnounced the general availability of the modern app designer, enabling a seamless, intuitive way to build robust model-driven apps with Dataverse grids, forms, and custom pages with just a few clicks. The modern app designer is now the default designer for model-driven apps and is at full feature parity with the classic designer.
Announcing the general availability of the Power Apps modern app designer.
Access Migration to Power Apps and Dataverse general availability
Microsoft Access users can migrate their data into Power Apps and Dataverse. Customers who have the current or monthly channel for Microsoft 365 and Office can update their Microsoft Access to build 16.0.15128.20248 or later to make use of the Dataverse Connector and migration tool.
The Access migration tool and connector provided within MS Access streamlines the process of migrating tables, relationships, and data with setup taking just a few minutes, and migration handled for you.
The workflow of migrating data from Access to Dataverse, with synchronous usage by Access forms and Power Apps.
New data sources for the Virtual Connection Provider
The Power Apps team have announced they are adding Excel and SharePoint to the virtual connection providers for virtual tables. Virtual tables connect to existing data outside of Dataverse allowing Power Apps and the Power Platform to treat it like local data. If you have a list that stores all of your product data in SharePoint, a virtual table lets you access that data within an app and also provide relationships between Dataverse tables and the SharePoint lists.
In Power Automate: New capabilities for AI Builder, Power Automate pane, process advisor updates, restore deleted flow, doubled chatbot coverage, 14 new verified. 36 independent publisher connectors, desktop update May 2022, bulk resubmit & cancel for cloud flows
New capabilities for AI Builder
Announced during Microsoft Build 2022, the following new and upcoming capabilities are coming to AI Builder:
Unstructured document processing: Microsoft are expanding Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) capabilities for Power Automate by adding support for unstructured document processing.
Model performance metrics for structured documents: A re-designed and re-structured document model page to include a global accuracy score.
General availability of Image Classification: Now generally available, Lobe is a free, easy-to-use app from Microsoft that helps you build image classification models on your own computer.
To improve transparency of AI Builder credits and facilitate capacity management, the Power Platform Licensing guide has been updated to include individual credit consumption rates for each AI Builder scenario.
AI Builder learning and training materials have been updated in the AI Builder in a day Lab. New training courses come complete with sample code and data sets to get you started building your first AI models easily.
Text Recognition: Support for up to 164 languages. The pre-trained model allows you to extract printed or handwritten text from images, such as photos or street signs and products, as well as from documents.
AI Builder is now available in South Korea
Extracting key-value pairs from a contractual agreement.
The new Power Automate pane in the Power Apps Canvas Studio is now available. Without leaving your app, you can now create, edit, view, or add an already built flow from the Power Automate pane.
Introducing the new Power Automate pane in Power Apps.
Take a look at the following new and upcoming capabilities are coming to process advisor:
Seamlessly generate Cloud flow Insights: With a few easy clicks, you can visualize your flow’s performance, identify bottlenecks and optimization opportunities, and monitor for business drifts.
Easily onboard data with Templates: With templates like Azure Dev Ops, Power Apps and Desktop Flows you can now visualize and manage the processes that are central to running your organization in a matter of clicks.
Visualize your process and act with deeper insights: With the new time analysis report you can drill down into time bottlenecks to understand the root cause and take the best action to optimize and automate your process.
Collaborate to amplify impact from learnings: For data processes, the viewer role grants the invited user read access to the process analytics and the ability to invite others with the viewer role. Recording-based processes have roles focused on managing recordings.
Get to Insights faster with Auto generated grouping: Process advisor now supports auto creating activities from the recording.
The Power Automate team have announced the capability to restore a flow (outside of a solution) with the latest version of the PowerApps Administration cmdlet. As an admin, you can now use PowerShell to restore a flow you deleted or on behalf of someone in your company without having to file a support ticket with Microsoft.
Doubled Power Virtual Agent chatbot content coverage
The Power Virtual Agents chatbot in the left navigation of the web site can answer even more of your questions! With this update, if the chatbot cannot find the answers to the questions you asked, it now provides a dropdown with all the topics and scenarios in Power Automate for you to get help from.
Doubled Power Virtual Agent chatbot content coverage.
BuildingMinds DigitalTwin Core – empowers customers to build a resilient and data-driven future for their real estate businesses.
CyberProof Actions – next generation incident management and response platform for building Security Operations Centers (SOCs).
IA-Connect JML – easy and robust automation solution for your Joiner, Mover, Leaver processes.
Jedox OData Hub – the world’s most adaptable planning and performance management solution.
Knowledgeone RecFind6 – RF6Connector, was designed specifically to integrate RecFind 6’s powerful EDRM functionality with SharePoint On-premises and Online
Lansweeper App For Sentinel – Integration of Lansweeper app on the MS Sentinel Platform implements the investigative actions.
nunify – nunify is a DIY Event Tech & Event App Builder Platform.
Replicon – self-driving professional services automation solution that uses advanced technology to analyze real-time data,
Revelation helpdesk – create and update items in your helpdesk such as tickets.
TrueDialog SMS – integrate text messaging (sending & receiving) into your business processes in a couple of clicks.
Verified – Automated and integrated solutions for e-signing enables smoother sales processes.
YakChat – Add SMS to your automated flows with the YakChat Power Automate Connector.
Datamotion – bridges Power Automate’s capabilities with our secure message delivery API functionality.
SurveyMonkey – automate critical workflows for a wide range of use cases and flow feedback data into key business apps.
Timeghost – includes the option for users to set up time tags and project tags.
Corporate Buzzword Generator by Troy Taylor – This generator randomly picks out phrases, which can help your application get ahead in an industry where spin and vagueness reign supreme
CraftMyPDF by Troy Taylor – CraftMyPDF’s drag & drop editor lets you design PDF templates in any browser and generate pixel-perfect PDF documents from reusable templates and JSON data.
Decentraland by Roy Paar – for connecting to the Decentraland API to search for metaverse LAND parcels.
DigitalHumani by Troy Taylor – A RaaS (Reforestation as a Service) which easily integrates with your products to reforest the planet.
Do Not Call Reported Calls by Troy Taylor – provides data every weekday about Do Not Call and robocall complaints reported to the Federal Trade Commission.
GeoDB by Troy Taylor – The GeoDB API focuses on getting global city and region data.
GitLab by Roy Paar – A connector for GitLab DevOps platform.
GlobalGiving Project by Troy Taylor – GlobalGiving connects nonprofits, donors, and companies in nearly every country in the world.
Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by Troy Taylor – Ice And Fire is the world’s greatest source for quantified and structured data from the universe of Ice and Fire (and the HBO series Game of Thrones).
Mintlify by Troy Taylor – Hate writing code documentation? Save time and improve your codebase by letting Mintlify generate documentation for you.
Mondaycom by Woong – monday.com is a cloud service provider to manage schedules and inventories.
National Park Service by Troy Taylor – designed to provide authoritative NPS data and content for internal and external developers creating apps, maps, and websites.
U.K. Government Check VAT by Andras Fordos – perform unverified and verified checks of UK VAT numbers and view additional details of the VAT registration such as name and address of business.
URLBae by Troy Taylor – seamlessly track your audience with simple and easy-to-remember yet powerful links.
Xkcd by Troy Taylor – webcomic created in 2005 by American author Randall Munroe.
Power Automate for desktop update – May 2022
The May 2022 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.20) has been released. Take a look at some of the new features and updates below:
All types of clicks are now supported in browser automation
A timeout value is now available for all browser automation actions
Tabular data extracted from a PDF file can now maintain their structure
Enhanced experience in the console for users with limited permissions
GA of ‘Display custom form’ action
All types of clicks are now supported in browser automation.
Now you can go to the Run history page, select the runs you would like to resubmit or cancel in the ribbon, and resubmit or cancel the runs. That’s it! Once you have resubmitted or canceled the flow run, you will be able to see your canceled and successful resubmitted flow runs.
In Power BI: On-prem data gateway, Power BI May 2022 feature summary, Report Server May 2022, ExecuteQueries REST API, automatic aggregations, Composite models on SQL Server Analysis Services, datamart, SQL Server 2022 Analysis Services CTP 2.0, Power BI integration for PowerPoint, Goals becomes Metrics, Exportable Formatted Data Tables (Preview), Action bar for interactive reports, SandDance Power BI Custom Visual updates, New Power BI Known Issue page, New data source and gateway management experience
On-premises data gateway May 2022 update
The Power BI team have announced the release of the May 2022 update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.126.8).
Updates include the general availability of Canvas zoom and Data point rectangle select features, Field parameters and Error bars for columns and line combination charts new preview features, plus lots more.
The ExecuteQueries REST API is now generally available. By using this REST API, you can query datasets in Power BI from practically any modern environment on any platform, as long as you can authenticate with Azure Active Directory (AAD) and construct a Web request.
Automatic aggregations is now generally available. By using automatic aggregations in Power BI Premium, you can unlock cloud-scale data volumes for interactive analysis. The fundamental idea is to import data into the dataset only at the aggregated level while leaving the detail data at the source to minimize data duplication.
Announcing general availability of automatic aggregations.
You can now create composite Power BI models by connecting to SQL Server 2022 Analysis Services tabular models. SQL Server 2022 is available now for public preview and when you upgrade or deploy tabular models to SQL Server 2022 Analysis Services. This DirectQuery connection becomes available in Power BI Desktop starting with May 2022 release. Existing or new tabular models hosted on SQL Server 2022 Analysis Services can be joined with other data in Power BI Desktop to create a composite model.
Datamart in Power BI is a new self-service capability included with Power BI Premium that enables users to uncover actionable insights through their own data without any help from IT teams. For the first time, we are empowering everyone with the right-sized ability to build a relational database for analytics using no code experiences for workloads up to 100GB, without compromising enterprise security and governance demands.
What’s new in SQL Server 2022 Analysis Services CTP 2.0
The public CTP 2.0 of SQL Server 2022 is now available at aka.ms/getsqlserver2022. This public preview includes the following enhancements for Analysis Services tabular:
Power BI support for SQL Server 2022 Analysis Services tabular models as a DirectQuery connection for composite models
Improved MDX query performance
Improved resource governance
Query interleaving now includes short query bias with fast cancellation
The Power BI team have announced the preview of Power BI data storytelling in PowerPoint. The team are thrilled to be shipping an add-in that lets you add Power BI reports and bookmarks to your slides and enjoy the delightful interactive experience of Power BI inside your presentations.
Goals in Power BI is becoming ‘metrics’ and is moving to general availability
Now generally available, metrics in Power BI (feature formerly known as ‘goals’) along with a ton of new features to make scorecarding in Power BI even more effective.
The Power BI team have announced the public preview of a low-code web authoring experience for exportable formatted data tables. You can use the formatted table feature to create paginated reports in any modern workspace, including workspaces that aren’t in a Power BI Premium capacity.
Action bar for interactive reports in the Power BI tab for Microsoft Teams
The Power BI tab in Microsoft Teams is getting a new action bar for interactive reports. The action bar enables users to use all the capabilities they have for interactive reports in the service when they’re added to channels, chats, or meetings as tabs in Microsoft Teams.
New action bar for interactive reports in Microsoft Teams.
SandDance is a data visualization tool developed by the VIDA (Visualization and Interactive Data Analysis) team at Microsoft Research and is available as a custom visual for Power BI. The VIDA team has made significant updates to the SandDance 2019 custom visual. The team have enhanced the ability to deliver richer and more compelling data-driven stories, both by adding support for Power BI bookmarks and making significant improvements to the rendering capabilities.
Microsoft have recently launched a new Power BI Known Issues page. This is an example of our continued effort to increase users’ confidence in our transparency, awareness of issues, and dedication to improve customers’ success.
The Power BI team have announced a new data source and gateway management experience in Power BI! The team recently replaced the “manage gateway” experience with a new interface, making it easier to manage your gateways and data sources. With this new experience, you also get the ability to manage and create the Vnet gateway and use the recently released additional security roles.
New data source and gateway management experience.
In this post we step through how you can use Power Automate to convert modern SharePoint pages into PDF files and save them to a document library.
Intro
Recently I got asked to come up with a way to turn SharePoint pages into PDF files for use in an offline scenario. The converted SharePoint pages didn’t need to be formatted as it was only the body content of a SharePoint page that was needed. Also part of the brief was that when the SharePoint page is updated, the corresponding PDF file also updates.
There are several posts online that cover very topic this that I’ll reference at the end, but they didn’t quite do exactly what I wanted – so here’s my take on how to convert SharePoint pages into PDF files!
What you’ll need
A modern SharePoint site pages library (these come with every SharePoint site!)
A OneDrive location to temporarily store the SharePoint page outputs
Power Automate to build the automation
A document library to store the output PDF files
A note on the site pages library
In my example I didn’t want all the site pages to be converted into PDF files, so I added a choice column to ‘tag’ all the pages that should be converted. I set the default value of the choice column to be ‘Site Page’, so that the only pages that get converted are the ones I’m interested in. This is reflected in the flow below with the condition step.
Add a choice column to ‘tag’ the pages you wish to convert to PDF.
Building the flow
The trigger action for our flow is when a file is created or modified (properties only). This allows us to re-run the flow when SharePoint pages are updated to also update the PDF files.
Select the site you are using to create the SharePoint pages in site address (If you don’t see it listed just press enter custom value and paste the URL in)
Select the Site Pages library under library name
Next, I’ve added a condition to only convert pages that have been tagged ‘Runbook’ to PDF.
Condition: if Document type value is equal to ‘Runbook’.
Note: make sure you select the Value dynamic content for your choice column, rather than the choice column itself as that will break your flow.
If yes, next is a send an HTTP request to SharePoint step. Here I’m using a REST API call to get the body content of the SharePoint page.
Use a send an HTTP request to SharePoint step to get the body content of your page.
Set the site address to the site in question
Set method to GET
Enter the following in Uri:_api/web/lists/GetByTitle('Site%20Pages')/items('ID')/CanvasContent1
Replace ‘ID’ with the dynamic content ID from the when a file is created or modified step
Note: The output of this step generates some additional stuff you probably won’t want in your PDF like this:
"d": { "CanvasContent1": "}}
I used the parse JSON step to remove the unwanted mark up and just get the plain text from the body content.
I added the body dynamic content from the send an HTTP request to SharePoint step in the content field in the parse JSON step
I copied the the output body from send an HTTP request to SharePoint of a successful run in flow history and pasted it into the parse JSON step
Output body from send an HTTP request to SharePoint to paste into the parse JSON step from a successful flow run.
I then pressed generate from sample, which output the following:
From this I then used a create file action to create a temporary HTML file in OneDrive (more on this later), with the following config:
Folder path: / (root of the OneDrive account)
File name: Name from when a file is created or modified step
File content: CanvasContent1 from the parse JSON step
Create file action to create temporary HTML page in OneDrive.
Next, a convert file step to convert the HTML page into a PDF file:
File:ID from the create file step
Target type: PDF
Now we can use a create file action to create a PDF in our output document library in SharePoint:
Set the site address to the site you want to store the PDF files in
Set the folder path to the document library, or navigate to the relevant folder within that library
Set file name to file name from the convert file step
Set file content to file content from the convert file step
The create file action creates the PDF file in the destination document library.
I then used an update file properties action to pass metadata from the site pages library to the destination document library – this step is optional. Finally, a delete file action to delete the temporary HTML file from the OneDrive we created earlier:
Delete file action to remove the temporary HTML file.
Here’s the flow in it’s entirety:
Issues & troubleshooting
Formatting issues with the send an HTTP request to SharePoint
As mentioned above, when just using the send an HTTP request to SharePoint action, the output contains mark up that isn’t going to make sense within the PDF. The parse JSON action cleans this up and just leaves the body content of the page.
Create file action creates corrupt PDF files
When testing this flow out I originally didn’t have the convert file action in place. In the file name I added ‘.PDF’, but every time the output PDF was corrupt and errored like this when trying to open:
The flow also failed on this step and the error said that “Conversion of this file to PDF is not supported. (InputFormatNotSupported / pdf)”. I decided to scrap this approach and create a HTML page and add in the convert file action which worked around this issue.
Overwriting existing PDF files causes flow to fail
During testing of this flow I also noticed that when triggering the flow based off updating a site page, the create file create file action would error with a status 400 error saying “A file with the name [file name] already exists”.
The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
In SharePoint: Create from the SharePoint app bar, comment on a video or audio file in SharePoint/ OneDrive, Lists for Android, ‘unscheduled’ calendar view in Lists, access to standard & private channels
Create from the SharePoint app bar
This new feature allows you to create sites, files, and lists right from within the SharePoint app bar. Select the Create command (the plus sign) on the app bar and then select an option from SharePoint sites, Microsoft Lists, or Office files (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote).
Site creation will launch the SharePoint site creation panel in the site you are in; if you are in a hub, the site will be associated with this hub when created
List creation will open in a new tab and take you to the create experience in Microsoft Lists
Office files will create the document in your OneDrive site until you select to save to a different location.
Comment on a video or audio file in SharePoint/ OneDrive
This feature allows you to have threaded conversations on a video or audio file saved in OneDrive or SharePoint through a cohesive and familiar commenting experience like the one used in Lists, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Comment on a video or audio file in SharePoint and OneDrive within the Microsoft Stream player experience.
With this new app, you can access your lists on the go anytime, anywhere. Manage events, track issues and assets, help with new-employee onboarding, and keep coordinated across inventory. With access on the go, easy sharing, and quick photo capture, you can keep everyone connected with the latest information using Microsoft Lists.
Microsoft Lists Calendar view experience: ‘Unscheduled’ Pane
You will see a new ‘Unscheduled’ tab within the events pane to the right within a list Calendar view. The items with missing start and/or end dates and those with start date later than the end date would appear on this pane. You can then select the items to open the edit form and make appropriate edits to schedule these items.
List items with missing start and/or end dates and those with start date later than the end date would appear on the Unscheduled pane.
SharePoint/ OneDrive: Access your Teams standard and private channel files
There is now an “In channels” section visible and collapsed by default. This “In channels” section includes all standard and private channels content within the Team, and private channels – if you have permissions to them – will be distinguished with a specific icon. The “In channels” section will only appear when a user navigates to the default document library of a SharePoint site that’s connected to a Teams team.
Note: The “In channels” section will not be visible if the SharePoint site is not connected to Teams. And when shared channels become available, they will also appear in this new section.
“In channels” section visible and collapsed by default.
In Teams: Text prediction for mobile, Power Automate templates, Fluent emojis, suggested replies, file upload for approvals, chat filter for non-meeting chats, admins can pin message extensions, Teams device store, follow office preview policy, user request flows for blocked apps
Anonymous meeting join, iOS improvements, share system audio on web, improved support in Firefox, move/ resize presenter, auto detect music, live caption support, Outlook contacts available for calling, emergency calling banner, config for call forwarding, present button for Teams Rooms Government Education Front line workers
Text prediction for Teams mobile
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.
Power Automate templates to be added to teams templates
Need to create a team? Use Team templates to create the right team with predefined channels and preinstalled apps. Select Microsoft provided team templates will include a new Power Automate tab where you can find a variety of Power Automate flow templates that support a template type.
New Fluent Emoji style coming to Teams emojis and reactions
Teams is joining M365 and Windows in updating all emojis and reactions to the new Microsoft Fluent emoji style, bringing users with over 1800 vibrant and expressive emoji experiences to choose from.
Suggested replies in Teams chat now in desktop uses assistive AI to create three short authentic responses based on the context of the previous message. Instead of typing a response, simply click on one reply that is most relevant to your conversation.
Quickly find chat messages and conversations you need most in your chat app with a new chat filter function. This new filter will find one-on-one or group chats and will filter out meeting chats and chat with bots.
Admins can manage the pin order of messaging extensions in the compose experience. Setup policies today allow admins to promote personal apps that show in the left rail of Teams Apps navigation. The apps that are handy while composing a message can differ from the personal apps, so we are bringing the ability to control these separately.
The Microsoft Teams device store resides in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center aimed to help IT admins to search for and purchase certified Teams devices in a familiar interface. IT admin accounts are authenticated and integrated, helping streamline and automate device setup—removing the need to manually register the devices. All major Microsoft partners offering devices certified for Microsoft Teams will be included in the device store, with fulfillment provided by a third party. The store is now available in the US and Canada and is expected to be available in other international markets later this year.
Public Preview has provided IT admins with the ability to allow their users to receive preview features before they are released to the public. The existing follow Office preview policy allows users to automatically be in the Public Preview Channel of Teams if they are in the Office Current Channel (Preview) on Windows.
The “follow Office preview” policy is now available to Mac users who are in the Office Current Channel (Preview).
Enable users to discover Teams apps in the store and request approval from administrators. When apps are blocked in the tenant, the end users were not able to discover them in Teams Client marketplace, while they are looking for tools to support their modern workplace. The ‘User request’ is going to act as an indicator of the user’s interest in the app.
The user will have an option to click “Request access”. When the request is submitted, the admin will see the aggregate count of the request Apps. This enables admins to have clear indicators or requested Apps.
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):
Attendance Dashboard – Measure meeting and webinar registration and attendance data in the new Attendance Dashboard. After the meeting, simply open the meeting invite and navigate to the Attendance tab. This feature is on by default. To disable, turn off the AllowEngagementReport policy within the Meeting policies section in the Teams admin center. Available in GCC. Learn more.
Teams webinar capabilities – Schedule and deliver webinars for up to 1,000 attendees with the same Teams app you use for meetings! Webinar capabilities support registration page creation, email confirmation for registrants, host management for attendee video and audio, attendee reporting, plus interactive features like polls, chat, and reactions. Available in GCC. Learn more.
Auto-answer meeting invites with video on for iOS devices – The ability for iOS devices to automatically answer incoming meeting nudges or invites with their video on is now here. Available in GCC-High and DOD.
Invite-only meeting options – A new meeting setting is now available in Teams meeting options that automatically sends those who were not originally invited by the organizer to the lobby. This helps prevent those uninvited from joining the meeting. Available in GCC. Learn more.
Share the system audio from meetings on web – Web users can now include audio when sharing their desktop or window during a Teams meeting. You can find this setting in the share content. Available in GCC.
Large Gallery and Together Mode in Teams Meetings on Web and VDI – Web and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) users are now able to change the Teams meeting layout to Together mode and Large Gallery. With Large Gallery, you have the ability to see up to 49 participants in a single screen, enhancing your overall virtual meeting experience. Available in GCC-High.
Voice enabled channels for GCC H and DoD – We added the ability to use a Teams channel with members as call agents for call queue call answering. Now we are bringing this capability to GCC H and DoD.
Roaming bandwidth control for GCC-High and DoD – Admins will now be able to set a bandwidth control policy to disable video calls when users are working in bandwidth constrained areas – this protects the reliability of the connection, automatically just based on where the users are located.
Dynamic Caller ID for Voice enabled channels, now available for GCC High and DoD – Last year we enabled the capability where agents can use Dynamic Caller ID to call on behalf of a Call Queue from within Voice Enabled Channels. We are now bringing this capability to Government clouds including GCC High and DoD.
Up to 25K members per team in DoD – Customers in DoD can now create a team with up to 25,000 participants, reaching broadly across your organization and beyond. Members of a team can cross-post a message into multiple channels at once, making it easy to share information across teams and workgroups.
New default for Teams notification style for DoD – Teams notification style will be defaulted to native notifications for new users. Currently the default style is Teams purple, with this change to native notifications the user will benefit from support for assist mode, action center, accessibility and more.
Teams for Education
Here’s what’s new in Teams for Education this month:
Students and educators get a notification when a new Class Notebook page is distributed – We are making a new update that will allow any Educator using Page Distribution in the OneNote client to ensure that all students get a notification in Teams after a page is distributed! This notification will work for educators using the Class Notebook Toolbar in OneNote Windows 10, iPad, Web and Mac.
Data reports after Teams meeting class – If a teacher has used Forms polls in a Teams meeting class, a summary report for all the polls used in this meeting will be generated and shared with teacher.
Frontline workers
Here’s what’s new for front line workers in Teams this month:
Virtual appointments through Microsoft Bookings in Teams – Microsoft Forms integration – Through the new integration of Microsoft Forms into the Microsoft Bookings app in Teams, organizations can now collect and review responses from customers for virtual appointments. This can help provide organizations with enhanced insights, reduce administrative burdens, and streamline the virtual appointment experience.
Walkie Talkie app in Teams is available on Kyocera 5G Rugged Smartphones – The Walkie Talkie app in Teams with a dedicated push-to-talk button on Kyocera’s DuraForce Ultra 5G and DuraSport 5G is available for frontline workers to enjoy clear, instant, and secure communication at their fingertips. Learn more.
New Tag Management Settings – This feature will update default tag management settings in the Teams Admin Center to include ”Team owners and members” and not just “Team owners,” reducing the burden of creating and maintaining Tags solely on Team owners. Learn more about the new Tag Management Settings.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: In-app notifications in Model-driven apps GA, support for SharePoint image column, String interpolation, Index function, RandBetween function in Power Fx, AAD User Virtual Table, Power Automate pane, wrap for Power Apps public preview, code components, Power Apps app on Windows, Dataflow refreshes in Power BI
General Availability (GA) for In-app notifications in Model-driven apps
The Power Apps team have announced that in-app notifications feature has reached General Availability (GA). In-app notifications enable a user to receive a notification while they are working within the web or mobile model-driven app. Notifications can be sent from Power Automate, app logic or web service calls allowing flexibility in where notifications are triggered.
In-app notification panel open in model-driven app.
Power Apps supports the new SharePoint list image column type
Power Apps now supports the SharePoint list image columns for read scenarios. You can create a Power App and see the images directly in a Power App, as well as choose from the full version of the image or various thumbnail sizes: Small, Medium, and Large.
Note:
The current implementation is Read only. Update capabilities are in progress.
The Small, Medium, and Large sized images are created on demand and temporarily cached. An image that has been cached too long will be removed and will be regenerated on demand.
Power Apps generally refreshes image meta-data every 30 seconds. If you are authoring an application and want to immediately refresh images, choose the “…” item on the data source and choose to refresh the data.
Images stored in a collection will not be rendered correctly. It is best to access them directly from the list with a Filter expression.
Images may still appear in the Power Apps field list even if the image column is hidden in the list
AAD User Virtual Table – Find and add any AAD user to your records
The Power Apps team have announced support for an Azure Active Directory – AAD User virtual table for Dataverse. The AAD User table makes it easy to retrieve any user in your organization’s Azure Active Directory – not just users who have a Dataverse license assigned to them. You can also retrieve details like job title, email, phone number and more.
The new AAD user table is available automatically with no additional configuration required.
The new Power Automate pane brings the ability to add flows to the left-pane, in the same way you add other resources like data and media to your canvas app. When you click the Power Automate button, a new pane appears allowing you to see flows already included in in your app or add existing flows.
You can also create new flows; selecting “Create new flow” now opens a new experience where you can choose from Power Apps based flow templates or start from blank.
Introducing the new Power Automate pane in Power Apps.
The Power Apps team have announced that the wrap public preview – enabling you to create mobile apps with Power Apps – is now open. Power Apps is now officially a Mobile Application Development Platform (MADP/MXDP) stuffed with great new capabilities:
React (virtual) and Fluent UI code components (Public Preview)
The Power Apps team have announced the public preview availability of React based virtual code components. 1st and 3rd party developers now have the ability to make use of platform provided libraries to build their diverse set of code components.
No more React or Fluent library packaging inside individual component bundles. Code components can now use one common set of platform provided React and Fluent UI React libraries.
React (virtual) and Fluent UI code components using platform libraries.
Power Apps application on Windows (Public Preview)
The Power Apps team have announced the public preview availability of Power Apps (Preview) for Windows. With the new Power Apps (preview) application, your will be able to run apps in offline within a brand new application fully integrated within the Windows OS and supporting the native Dataverse connector and native device capabilities like barcode scanner or Camera controls.
Monitor Dataflow refreshes with a Power BI dashboard
You can now use the managed Dataverse tables to report over your dataflow refresh history. You now get two new managed Dataverse table with details about refreshes of your dataflows in your environment. We populate the tables with new data automatically after each refresh.
DataflowRefreshHistory – Contains the overall dataflow refresh history data EntityRefreshHistory – Contains data of all entities involved in the refreshes
Using the new tables you are able to extract information about errors , duration of the refreshes and, how many new records got inserted into your Dataverse table.
Take a look at all the new and updated connectors released in March 2022 for Power Automate:
New connectors
allGeo – allGeo provides an enterprise-grade field service management platform that bridges the gap between operations and payroll.
Nodefusion Portal – A Nodefusion Portal Connector is used for various actions, such as opening support case, managing subscriptions, checking service roadmaps and more.
Open Experience – Open Experience GmbH provides innovative solutions for the digitization of construction work.
Take a look at all the new independent publisher connectors released in March 2022 for Power Automate:
EmojiHub by Troy Taylor – EmojiHub provides an opportunity to get random emojis from already sorted categories and groups.
Infura Ethereum by Sebastian Zolg – The Infura Ethereum Connector uses the Infura JSON-RPC API to access the Ethereum Blockchain.
AIHW MyHospitals by Paul Culmsee – The MyHospitals national reporting platform allows users to explore information about their local hospital and Local Hospital Network (LHN), as well as trends across Australia.
Share analytics and invite tenant users in process advisor
The Power Automate team have announced the ability to share data-based processes with others via a viewer role. The viewer role grants the invited user read access to the process analytics and the ability to invite others with the viewer role. This feature empowers process owners to share process insights with anyone who would benefit, such as teammates, analysts, managers, etc.
Share analytics and invite tenant users in process advisor.
In Power BI: On-prem data gateway, Power BI desktop feature summary, additional gateway security roles, update to required permissions for composite models
On-premises data gateway April 2022 update
The Power BI team have released the April 2022 update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.122.7). 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 April Power BI Desktop version.
The April update for Power BI desktop is out now – with updates for new format panes and Power BI Goals, tooltips drill actions support for more build-in visuals, plus lot’s more!
Additional security roles allow for more granularity in assigning roles for the gateway. The new change is that non-admins of the gateway can be allowed to create connections (data sources) on the gateway. This way, your gateway admins are not the bottleneck anymore for creating connections (data sources).
How to manage the gateway and connection (data source) roles.
Update to required permissions when using composite models on a Power BI dataset
For datasets in Premium or PPU workspaces, a user that consumes a report that leverages a composite model based on a Power BI dataset is required to have just Read permissions (or have the Viewer role) on all datasets in the chain.
Note: While this is great news for those that only use Premium or PPU workspaces, this is concerning to those that leverage Pro workspaces, or a mix of types. Microsoft plan to make the same change for Pro workspaces as well, but for technical reasons they have not announced that as of yet.
Microsoft have been working to cut down the noise by providing more ways to customize which notifications Microsoft Teams shows you and when, and new ways to protect time with Microsoft Viva Insights. They’ve also added new capabilities to support and improve reading and writing like text prediction options, voice control tools, and accessible authoring features—great for everyone, but a true game changer for workers with dyslexia and other learning disabilities.
A series of updates to Yammer have been released that help make it easier to find what you need, share ideas, and customize to your preferences. First, community members can now upvote a response if it’s a helpful or useful contribution to the question, making it easier for others to find answers. You can now also bookmark a conversation to see the post and its replies later. Finally, dark mode for Yammer web will be available soon.
Windows Autopatch as a feature of Windows Enterprise E3, enabling IT pros to do more for less. This service will keep Windows and Office software on enrolled endpoints up-to-date automatically, at no additional cost. IT admins can gain time and resources to drive value. For organizations who select this option, the second Tuesday of every month will be ‘just another Tuesday’.
The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
In SharePoint: SharePoint Syntex: Content assembly, management of content types, new taxonomy (managed metadata) column, list templates for MSA, top news card on Viva Connections dashboard, Viva Insights Enroll in Focus plan
SharePoint Syntex: Content assembly
With Content Assembly, you can build that new contract, invoice, letter, or other document from existing data sources, or, by leveraging AI, you can turn your existing document into a template to be used for your business-specific needs.
You will see a new Managed metadata option as a column type within the Add column menu in SharePoint lists and now libraries. On selecting the option, users will be able to specify the column information such as its name and description and select the desired term set or term that exists within your organization, to associate the column with.
L-R Managed metadata option visible in the Add Column menu, configuration options for Managed metadata column.
SharePoint admin’s can now enable management of content types directly from SharePoint modern document library and list views, instead of having to navigate to classic library settings.
Admin’s will see the Content Type option in the Add Column menu, even when they have not enabled Allow management of Content types from the Advanced settings option of Library Settings. Once the admin selects the desired Content types for the library and clicks on Apply, we will enable content types for the library automatically and then sync the content types to the library or list.
Enable content types within modern SharePoint libraries/ lists.
New list templates for the Microsoft Lists – MSA Preview
Three new list templates recently launched in Microsoft Lists for MSA (consumer) preview:
Gift ideas: Easily organize your gift planning for your family & friends in one list and make gift buying and giving a breeze.
Expense tracker: We all have expenses. This template helps you record all your expenses in one place.
Recipe tracker: Create your very own virtual recipe book. Preserve links for recipes to try and recipes you love and organize them with tags. Add images to the ones you’ve cooked and show them off in a customizable recipe card view.
New lists templates have been added to the Microsoft Lists – MSA Preview.
Authors can boost news posts to highlight important announcements to all employees. The update this month extends the value of the overall news service throughout Microsoft 365. Ensuring that important news expands its reach out to intended employees and peers.
Microsoft Viva Insights: Enroll in Focus plan from the Insights app in Teams
Viva Insights is introducing updates to better enable users to protect time for focus from the Viva Insights Teams app. These updates to the protect time page will allow users to enroll in a focus plan and adjust preferences to auto book focus time on one’s calendar from within the Insights app in Teams. Users enrolled in a focus plan will also see insights about their progress towards their focus time goals.
Microsoft Viva Insights: Enroll in Focus plan from the Insights app in Teams.
In Teams: New search results page, new search on mobile, customer lockbox, automated webinar invite + custom domain, calendar day view, auto-answer meeting invites with video iOS, live caption support on VDI, auto-expiration of meeting recordings, roaming bandwidth, hold music VoIP, casting from desktop to rooms Teams admin: Admin search phase 1, export teams list, virtual visits usage report, list of joined teams per user Teams (Government) Teams (Education) Teams (Firstline) Teams (Healthcare)
Search results page in Teams
A new search results page experience from Microsoft Search in Teams will make finding messages, people, answers, and files faster and more intuitive. A new All page will show top results from each domain, Bookmark, and Acronym.
When searching in the Teams mobile app, you will now have a new header, get suggestions as you type (top results show up as soon as you start typing and will be modified as typing progresses), and meetings will appear in search results as well. You also will be able to scroll to past and future dates in the calendar using a date picker.
Customer Lockbox ensures that Microsoft cannot access your content to perform a service operation without your explicit approval. Already available for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, Customer Lockbox brings you into the approval workflow for requests to access your content. This update brings the capability to Microsoft Teams as well.
Automated webinar invite, custom domain for communications
Two new updates for webinars. First, as webinars are set up, invites are sent to attendees to register. When attendees register, the webinar invite will now automatically be added to the attendee’s calendar, making it easy to plan ahead and to remember when the event takes place.
Once attendees have registered for a webinar, as confirmation emails are sent to keep attendees informed, the sender name and domain email will now include the tenant’s name. This will make it easy for attendees to recognize who is sending communications for the event.
Auto-answer meeting invites with video on for iOS devices
The ability for iOS devices to automatically answer incoming meeting nudges or invites with their video on is now here. This is most beneficial in the healthcare industry, especially in ICU and/or patient virtual rounding scenarios where patient rooms require a no-touch join capability for incoming calls. In this scenario, the Teams device in the room would be invited to a scheduled or ad-hoc meeting where both AutoAnswerwithVideo and video are enabled. The AutoAnswerwithVideo setting is disabled by default.
Support of Live Caption for Teams on VDI for Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365
Teams users on Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 on virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) are now able to enable live captions during a meeting. Live captions allow your audience to follow along with what is being said, providing additional clarity and inclusion.
Support of Live Caption for Teams on VDI for Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365.
Auto-Expiration of Meeting Recordings stored on OneDrive and SharePoint
Newly created Teams meeting recordings in OneDrive and SharePoint will be deleted automatically by the service based on a default Teams policy setting. Teams admins will be able to modify the default meeting recording expiration time via a setting in the Teams Admin Portal or by modifying policy attributes using Powershell scripts.
Newly created meeting recordings in OneDrive and SharePoint will be automatically deleted after this point unless the meeting owner extends the expiration. Meeting owners will be notified about expired recordings and may extend the expiration date in OneDrive/SharePoint. Compliance policies will override the expiration setting. This rollout will start in the March timeframe and will continue to roll out to tenants over the next few weeks.
Admins can now set dynamic bandwidth policies based upon the geographic location of users’ Teams clients. This capability allows admins to set more limited bandwidth controls and disable video calls when users are in remote or bandwidth-constrained locations to protect the reliability of the connection.
Music on hold is now available for calls on hold and consult-then-transfer scenarios for both VoIP and PSTN calls. Music on hold is enabled by default. The music that is played for callers on hold is either the default music provided by Microsoft or custom music that administrators can upload and configure.
Casting from Teams desktop client to Microsoft Teams Rooms
Now you can use Teams casting to wirelessly connect to Teams Rooms and display content from your Teams desktop client. You also can broadcast your screen and cast content stored locally on your device or accessible via Office 365.
Casting from Teams desktop client to Microsoft Teams Rooms.
Searching for a user call, a ‘team’ searching for an App by its name, or the name of the publisher. Search of the left navigation bar, allowing IT admins to easily find content from across the admin center and to be navigated to the corresponding page. The next phase that will be released in the coming month will introduce search for entities as documentation, policy, diagnostics and access the search history.
Export Teams list from Teams Admin Center
Administrators can export Teams and Users lists as a csv file from the Teams admin center.
Export Teams list from Teams Admin Center.
Virtual Visits usage report in Teams Admin Center
Customers can view detailed activity for virtual appointments scheduled through the Bookings app and the Microsoft Teams Electronic Health Records (EHR) connector. Customers also will be able to understand virtual visit appointment volume and key associated metrics to improve virtual visit adoption, to understand wait time and appointment duration for a given period, as well as evaluate quality customer experience and manage ROI.
List of the joined teams per user in Teams admin center
Teams administrators can view the list of teams that a user has joined via the User detail page in the Teams admin center. Previously, in order to find out whether a user is part of a team or not, admins had to go to the individual teams and search for a user. Using this feature, admins can view the list of teams that a user is part of from a single place and then take actions like “removing from a team.”
List of the joined teams per user in Teams admin center.
Teams (Frontline)
Task publishing editing – Task publishing enables corporate teams to create and publish tasks through Tasks by Planner and To Do. With this feature, corporate teams can edit published tasks so they can make easy adjustments without having to recall the entire task list and disturb the execution of tasks already in action.
Teams Shifts connector for Blue Yonder – The Microsoft Teams Shifts connector for Blue Yonder Workforce Management (WFM), now generally available, extends the value of Blue Yonder WFM for organizations that rely on it for precise labor scheduling, accurate time and attendance tracking, reduced associate turnover, and simplified compliance with labor laws and corporate policies.
Walkie Talkie app in Teams is available on Sonim XP8 – The Walkie Talkie app in Microsoft Teams is now available on Sonim XP8, with a dedicated push-to-talk button. Learn more about how frontline workers can enjoy clear, instant, and secure communication at their fingertips and collaborate seamlessly with anyone from anywhere across geographic locations.
Global sign in and sign out – Teams iOS app will support global sign in and sign out to simplify the experience for frontline workers. Employees can now use any device from the shared device pool to sign in with their credentials and sign out of it at the end of the shift. This will remove all their personal and company information from the device.
Approvals app in Teams now available in Microsoft 365 F1 SKUs for frontline workers – Get faster approvals by streamlining frontline worker requests with Approvals app in Teams in Microsoft 365 F3 and now Microsoft 365 F1. Easily create, manage, and share approvals directly from a chat, a channel conversation, or from the app. Create approvals from scratch, company-created templates with easy, repeatable structures and preset fields, or with e-sign through Adobe Sign and DocuSign. Learn more about Approvals.
Teams (Education)
Introducing Parent Connection – Parents & guardians, students, and educators all want the same thing – for every student to reach their potential. Educators carry a heavy portion of this responsibility, but they can’t do it alone. Parent Connection is generally available to all Teams for Education customers (included in all Office365 A-SKUS). Learn more here, or talk with your IT administrator about setting up Parent Connection using School Data Sync.
Take action on behalf of your student – Available for both individual & group assignments, educators can now turn-in and upload documents in the Assignments grading tool on behalf of their students.
Notify me when students turn in late work – We have added the ability for educators to be notified when students turn in a late assignment. You can get notified for any assignment that’s turned in late, or only specific assignments.
Assignments Notification customizations – You can now customize the notifications associated with Assignments using the settings menu in Microsoft Teams (in the 3 dots menu to the left of your photo). And you can also get direct access to the assignment from your Teams activity feed.
Giving you space to grade with the mini grader – With this update to the grading experience in Assignments, you can choose to collapse or expand the grading view, allowing you to allocate your screen real estate as you see fit.
Reading Progress –Last week we announced several significant updates, together forming a more well-rounded solution which supports reading fluency and literacy instruction, allowing schools and educators to optimize teacher-student interactions, and delivering the education support each student needs in an individualized, practical, and equitable way. We’re excited to again share the product experiences that will be available in the coming days.
Actionable Insights and personalized Reading Progress assignments – Reading Progress enables readers of all types to practice their skills in a safe, student-centric environment while providing educators with deep insights on each student’s strengths, progress, and challenges. With Actionable Insights, we’re helping educators quickly generate assignments based on the words that students struggled with most.
Return for Revision – We’ve made improvements to the student experience when an educator returns a Reading Progress assignment for revision. Reading assignments can now be returned for revision so students can see fully marked up passages from their teachers to learn from their mistakes and re-do the assignment.
Video recording for Reading Progress on iOS and Android – With this update, students using Reading Progress across the desktop, web, and mobile Teams applications can all record themselves performing Reading Progress exercises.
Use OneNote Class Notebook pages as reading passages – Currently, educators can pick reading passages from ReadWorks, a Teams file, OneDrive, or uploading from their computer. We have now added the ability to pick a page from a OneNote Class Notebook in your Class Teams! This will be rolling out starting today.
New languages supported in auto-detect – When Reading Progress launched this August, the auto-detect feature was only available in English. With this update, auto-detect capability will be available in over 100 languages. Find a list of languages supported here.
See Aggregated reaction tags for sticky notes in whiteboards – Now, you can “like” your favorite ideas or provide feedback to your colleagues during brainstorms. Previously, this was done by dropping sticker-like emojis on the board but these new reaction tags are easier to use because they follow the sticky notes, are easier to see, are aggregated into buckets, and give you greater visibility into each reaction.
Add photos and files to whiteboards on mobile devices – Take a picture of your whiteboard or your teaching material with your phone and quickly add it to your digital Whiteboard. Now, users on mobile devices will be able to share content directly from the photo gallery or camera on their mobile device to a Whiteboard in Teams.
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):
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) for one-to-one Teams calls for GCCH and DoD – Recently we shared that E2EE for 1:1 Teams calls was generally available for commercial and GCC tenants on desktop and mobile clients. We’re happy to share that we have now extended E2EE for 1:1 calls for desktop and mobile clients to GCC-H and DOD tenants. For more information on how to enable and manage E2EE for your organization, please see our docs page.
Guest access support on mobile for GCC-High – Teams now supports guest access between tenants inside the GCC-H Cloud.
Pin or hide your own video in Teams meetings – We have now expanded the ability to pin your own video on the meeting stage. This way, you can see your own video in the increased size on your screen. Inversely, you can hide your own video during a meeting on others’ screens. Available in GCC-High and DOD.
Large Gallery and Together Mode in Teams Meetings on VDI – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) users are now able to change the Teams meeting layout to Together mode and Large Gallery. With Large Gallery, you have the ability to see up to 49 participants in a single screen, enhancing your overall virtual meeting experience. In Together mode, participants are digitally placed in a shared background, making it feel like you’re sitting in the same room with everyone else even when you are apart. Available in GCC.
Video streams out via AJA or Blackmagic Design Hardware – Production teams now can better manage their workflow and use Microsoft Teams as a contribution source for their broadcasts. We have partnered with two industry leaders in the video and audio market, AJA and Blackmagic Design, to provide hardware-out functionality with Microsoft Teams and select hardware devices. When you connect a supported hardware device, Teams will recognize the hardware and enable sending of an individual’s media stream out to the hardware directly as a clean feed. Available in GCC. Learn more.
Isolated audio feed capabilities – Broadcasters can create a high-quality, clean audio mix with our new isolated audio feed capabilities in Microsoft Teams. As broadcasters use Network Device Interface (NDI) or hardware-out, they will be able to capture the isolated audio feed along with the isolated video feed from any Teams meeting, enabling full control of both the feeds going into their studio. This capability is enabled within the meeting settings and is available as a public preview in GCC.
Approvals templates for GCC-High and DoD – Looking to create an approval request quickly? There’s no need to insert your request approvers one by one. Now, users can choose a template provided by their admins or Teams owners to create a new approval request.
Teams (Healthcare)
Microsoft Teams EHR connector for Cerner—generally available – The new integration with Cerner expands the capabilities of the Microsoft Teams EHR connector, making it easier for clinicians to launch virtual appointments with patients or consult with other providers in Teams directly from their health record system. Organizations using Cerner can now easily integrate virtual appointments into their existing clinical workflows.
Virtual appointment device tester—generally available – The new device tester can help you reduce no-shows by allowing patients to test their hardware settings before their virtual appointment. This allows the patient and provider to focus on the appointment and spend less time on technical challenges. It’s now available through the Microsoft Teams EHR connector.
Teladoc Health Solo™ with Microsoft Teams—generally available – In collaboration with Teladoc Health, a global leader in virtual healthcare, we are announcing the general availability of Teladoc Health Solo™ with Microsoft Teams. This new offering transforms the virtual care experience by enhancing clinical collaboration, improving the user experience, increasing system efficiency, and expanding care delivery—making it easier for care teams to collaborate and manage their patients and resources at scale. Teladoc Health Solo™ with Teams simplifies the way healthcare organizations and care providers work by streamlining technologies and administrative processes.
OneDrive
In OneDrive: OneDrive/ SharePoint library dropdown, Sync activity center visual update
Library dropdown
A new dropdown has been added in OneDrive and SharePoint that allows you to easily switch between multiple document libraries associated with a Team or Site.
Library dropdown is available in OneDrive or SharePoint.
Sync activity center visual update
The Activity Center has received a visual update to more align with the Fluent Design language. This visual update applies a modern look to the Activity Center.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Power Platform API, runtime localization support for Code Components, Power Platform Tools GA, pas-as-you-go Power Apps GA, model-driven apps offline for makers
Microsoft Power Platform API (preview)
The Power Platform team have announced the public preview of Power Platform API, beginning March 31st, 2022. Power Platform API acts as a gateway or a single API surface that harmonizes the internal APIs from feature areas of the platform. This results in a single endpoint (ex. api.powerplatform.com) for customers to use along with a unified set of Permissions and claims that can be requested from Azure Active Directory.
Power Platform API acts as a gateway or a single API surface that harmonizes the internal APIs from each feature area of the platform.
Runtime localization support for Code components on Custom pages/ Canvas apps
The Power Apps team have announced the Public Preview of runtime localization for code components on custom page and standalone canvas applications. Inline with the model-driven application behaviour, custom pages and standalone canvas applications can now dynamically display themselves in user preferred language. This not just enables all code components to align seamlessly with the host application language but also provides significant runtime performance optimizations.
Power Platform Tools for Visual Studio Code general availability
The Power Platform team have announced general availability of Power Platform Tools for Visual Studio Code in addition to our monthly Power Platform CLI refresh. As well as the announced of the terminal interface for the Power Platform CLI in Visual Studio code, there are also added graphical elements, that lets you take advantage of the real estate that Visual Studio Code offers.
With a pay-as-you-go-option now generally available, customers now can use an Azure subscription to cover their Power Apps usage and Dataverse capacity costs based on actual usage. With the new pay-as-you-go plan, customers only pay for what they use, giving them more flexibility to get started with low code with low risk and then scale their investments over time based on the usage patterns of their solutions.
In this preview, you’ll now also be able to choose the offline mode for your mobile apps. The new offline-first mode is optimized to improve your device performance and it works better in low-network conditions than “classic offline” mode.
Previously, only admins were able to create an offline profile. Now, in just a few clicks, you, the maker, can enable offline for your mobile users, and you no longer need to manage a separate user access list just for offline support. When you configure offline in the app designer, all users who have access to your app will be able to work offline.
Last month saw the release of 23 new and updated connectors for Power Automate:
New
Actsoft Mobile Workforce Plus – Actsoft Mobile Workforce Plus is an all-in-one service management platform that helps you more effectively manage your remote teams of employees and general business operations away from the office.
Blackbaud Raisers Edge NXT Constituents – Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT is a comprehensive cloud-based fundraising and donor management software solution built specifically for nonprofits and the entire social good community.
The new AI Builder new home page is now available at https://aka.ms/tryaibuilder. The new homepage includes a getting started video, similar navigation to find models, plus lot’s more.
Microsoft have announced they are providing easy to use workflow automation powered by Power Automate directly within the Teams Store. Creating new automated workflows can all be done with new pre-configured templates in the Workflows section of the store.
New workflows section in the Microsoft Teams store.
In Power BI: Service principal profiles in Power BI Embedded GA, on-prem data gateway update, Power BI desktop feature summary
General availability of service principal profiles in Power BI Embedded
The Power BI team have announced a new method that allows a much larger number of customers per one service principal by introducing a new entity named service principal profile. Each service principal profile can administer a customer, and the number of profiles per service principal can reach hundreds of thousands.
Service principal profiles in Power BI Embedded are now generally available.
This month’s update for Power BI desktop includes error bars for line charts, dynamic format strings support for all chart elements, plus updates to the Azure Maps visual and Sensitivity labels, datasets hub and Power BI Goals.
In this post we explore a common error experienced when trying to update existing files in SharePoint using the create file step in Power Automate – and how to resolve it.
The problem
I recently ran into an issue seemingly many others have encountered when trying to update an existing file in SharePoint using the create file step in Power Automate. When running my flow, I received the following error:
Bad Request error in Power Automate when trying to use the create file step to update an existing file in SharePoint.
Bad Request status: 400
Message: A file with the name [NAME OF FILE] already exists. It was last modified by [NAME OF USER] on [DATE]
The solution
The solution to this has already been shared a fair few times via the Power Automate blogs, but here it is:
Press the ellipsis … > settings within the create file step
Open the ellipsis and press settings within the create file step.
Scroll down until Content Transfer > set allow chunking to off
Save and re-run your flow
That’s it, now when I use the create file step to update existing files, it runs successfully!
Note: Chunking of content is used for splitting up large content for downloads/ uploads. You may need to consider this before turning off chunking in your flow. More information on chunking can be found here.
The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
In SharePoint: My feed web part update, Viva Topics: Syntex taxonomy, pair Teams channel & SharePoint folder name
New content scenarios for My Feed Web Part on SharePoint
The My feed web part is the pathway to a very personalized experience in your intranet. The feed knows who is signed in and shows them content and activities relevant to them. The new content types are Suggested Tasks, People Highlights, Meetings out of routine and files shared in groups.
Examples of the new content types in the My feed web part.
Viva Topics: Use Syntex taxonomy to generate topics
Microsoft Viva Topics and SharePoint Syntex customers can build on their existing investments in classifying and organizing content with the ability to use the taxonomy service in Syntex and SharePoint to generate topics.
This new integration uses the term names, including those you are already using with SharePoint Syntex, descriptions, synonyms and tagged files to create topics that the AI can use as a seed to discover additional connections with people and files.
Viva Topics: Use Syntex taxonomy to generate topics.
Pairing the channel and the corresponding SharePoint folder name
This new release enables simultaneous rename of the corresponding folder in SharePoint sites whenever a channel in Teams is renamed – applicable to Teams desktop and web. NOTE:
For legacy Teams channels that were renamed prior to this rollout – There will be no change in experience. When a legacy channel is renamed after this release, it will simultaneously rename the corresponding SharePoint folder.
Upon renaming a channel, the new folder name will only reflect the same name in the corresponding OneDrive sync client when the whole document library has been synched. When only the channel folder is synched, the new name will not be reflected in the OneDrive sync client.
In Teams: Pin/ hide your video, open-text question polls, companion mode for iOS, Walkie Talkie, Teams panels check in, check in “knock knock”, Teams Rooms on Android, meeting improvements on Android, Wallpapers on Android, HDMI ingest, far end camera control, pairing the channel & SharePoint folder, mute notifications, local time, in chat messages, chat density, respond to group approval requests, mandatory comments, E2EE for 1-1 Teams calls, tag management
You can now pin or hide your own video in meetings. You can see your own video in the increased size on your screen. Inversely, you also can hide your own video during a meeting on others’ screens. This will reduce distractions during calls while still having your video available for other participants.
Support for open-text question polls for Teams meeting
For Microsoft Forms polls in Teams meetings, there is a new option for engaging with your attendees – Word Cloud Poll. You can use this type of poll to collect attendees’ open-ended responses before, during, or after a meeting, and the results will be automatically aggregated and displayed as a word cloud.
Support for open-text question polls for Teams meeting.
Now with a single tap you can join a meeting on both your iOS device and Microsoft Teams Rooms. Audio on your device will be automatically turned off to ensure echo does not happen. The landing experience on the iPhone will be optimized for engagement activities to make it easier to raise a hand or react, chat, see all participants, and access Microsoft Whiteboard.
You can use an instant push-to-talk communication that allows you to press and hold a button to speak to colleagues and release the button to listen. Walkie Talkie on Teams phone devices can only be used to communicate with colleagues that are part of the same Teams channel. Add Walkie Talkie to the App Set up Policy assigned to users from the Teams admin center to enable Walkie Talkie on Teams phone devices.
IT admins can now configure Teams panels to release reserved conference rooms that are not being used. Meeting attendees can claim their reserved meeting room by tapping the “Check in” button on the panel. If no one checks into the room, it will be released—allowing for others to reserve and use the room.
Check-in “knock-knock” notification on front-of-room display
When a Teams panel is paired with Microsoft Teams Rooms, the new “Check in” button on the panel can be used to send a notification to the front-of-room display—informing people in the room that their reservation has ended, and others are waiting for the space.
Check-in “knock-knock” notification on front-of-room display.
A new update with features including improved meeting experiences, content sharing, new reactions, and more is now available for Teams Rooms on Android. This update can be deployed via the Teams Admin Center and will be available to all Teams Rooms on Android devices.
Several updates are being added to the meeting experience on Android, including more videos on screen, multiple spotlighted participants, new reactions, and many others. Most notably, with the new and improved meeting experience, videos of remote participants span both screens (in meeting rooms with dual screens) when content is not being shared.
You can now customize the home screen for Teams Rooms on Android devices with five built-in wallpapers. These wallpapers will apply to the front-of-room displays in single and dual screen configurations. IT admins can set them from device settings, with Teams Admin Center support coming soon.
HDMI ingest sharing during and outside of a meeting is now available to all capable certified Teams Rooms on Android. You can now plug in an external device via HDMI into your Teams Room on Android and content will start sharing automatically.
Remote meeting participants can control the zoom and orientation of a camera in Teams Rooms on Windows, using PTZ Camera Controls (pan-tilt-zoom) during a meeting. Attendees can control a variety of mechanical pan-tilt-zoom cameras by sending control signals to the camera, as well as, offering 2.5X zoom for most other cameras via digital pan-tilt-zoom in Teams.
Far end camera control.
Pairing the channel and the corresponding SharePoint folder name
This new release enables simultaneous rename of the corresponding folder in SharePoint sites whenever a channel in Teams is renamed – applicable to Teams desktop and web. NOTE:
For legacy Teams channels that were renamed prior to this rollout – There will be no change in experience. When a legacy channel is renamed after this release, it will simultaneously rename the corresponding SharePoint folder.
Upon renaming a channel, the new folder name will only reflect the same name in the corresponding OneDrive sync client when the whole document library has been synched. When only the channel folder is synched, the new name will not be reflected in the OneDrive sync client.
Users will be able to mute notifications during meetings thereby helping focus during meetings. A user can choose to mute notifications for all meetings or per meeting basis.
To turn off notifications during all meetings, go to settings -> notifications-> meetings and calls and toggle the Mute Notifications during meeting button. To turn off notifications during a specific meeting, click on the ellipsis and choose mute/allow notifications.
We often work in distributed teams. To help you with scheduling messages, quickly check your colleague’s time zone, right from their contact card, enabling you to time your messages to get faster responses, while being considerate of your colleagues’ schedule.
Pin a Teams chat message to drive awareness and provide the chat members with quick access to important content. Pinning will help your team stay in sync on what’s relevant in a timely manner. Simply hover over the message you want to pin, click the ellipsis (…) and select the Pin option.
Whether you want to optimize to see more text at once or read less text at a more comfortable level, Teams lets you customize the chat density to suit your needs. Click on ‘settings’ -> ‘general’ and choose the right spacing for you.
Chat density feature lets you customize the number of chat messages you see on the screen with different settings. Compact setting lets you minimize the need to scroll up and down by fitting 50% more messages on the screen.
Respond to group approval requests within Teams Approvals app
Teams users will now be able to respond to approval requests that were sent to a group of approvers using Power Automate right from Teams Approvals app. We are committed to continue and expand this capability, and in a later release Teams users will be able to send an approval request to their Office 365 groups directly from Teams.
Respond to group approval requests within Teams Approvals app.
As a team owner or admin, you can now make your approval templates have mandatory comments for when a user responds to a request, creating transparency behind the approver’s decision. Admins can set all approval requests to have mandatory comments from the Teams Admin Portal settings. This will affect simple approval requests, and templated approval requests.
Mandatory Comments within the Teams Approvals app.
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) option for one-to-one Teams calls for mobile
Microsoft have announced that E2EE for one-to-one Teams calls is now generally available for iOS and Android Teams mobile apps. End-to-end encryption, or E2EE, is the encryption of information at its origin and decryption at its intended destination without the ability for intermediate nodes or parties to decrypt.
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) for one-to-one Teams calls for mobile.
This feature will update default tag management settings in the Teams Admin Center to include ”Team owners and members” and not just “Team owners,” reducing the burden of creating and maintaining Tags solely on Team owners. Now all team members can create, edit and adjust tags to fit their team’s needs. You can still update this to only “Team owners” at the tenant level and override the default.
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):
Tags in DoD: Tags are available in DoD. Tags in Teams let users quickly reach a group of people without having to @mention or type out everyone.
Press to unmute: You can now use a shortcut to unmute by holding down the Ctrl+Space keys (Windows) or Option+Space keys (macOS), then release the keys to go back to muted state again. This feature is on by default.
Updated companion mode for iOS users: Now with a single tap you can join a meeting on both your iOS device and Microsoft Teams Room. Audio on your device will be automatically turned off to ensure echo does not happen.
Music mode for Teams: High-fidelity music mode enables Microsoft Teams users to experience richer sound experiences when sharing non-speech content such as live music, songs through other applications, or medical signals during a virtual appointment with a physician.
Mirror my video: You no longer have to see the text in your video flipped. Imagine a primary school teacher with a small whiteboard in hand, or you have a virtual background with text in it. While the meeting audience sees the text correctly,
Pin or hide your own video in Teams meetings: We have now expanded the ability to pin your own video on the meeting stage. This way, you can see your own video in the increased size on your screen.
OneDrive
In OneDrive: OneDrive support for Apple silicon GA, KFM for macOS Public Preview, files on-demand on macOS update
Apple silicon support in GA
OneDrive sync for macOS will now run natively on Apple silicon. This means that OneDrive will take full advantage of the performance improvements of Apple silicon. This will be generally available starting with build 22.022 and users will be automatically updated over the next few releases.
Known Folder Move support for macOS now in Public Preview
The OneDrive team have announced that Folder Backup (Known Folder Move) support for macOS is now in Public Preview. People using OneDrive on macOS Monterey 12 will be able to move their Desktop and Document folders to OneDrive.
Known Folder Move support for macOS now in Public Preview.
A new version of OneDrive sync (22.002) on macOS 12.1+ was released in January 2022 with an updated Files On-Demand experience. Prior to this release, OneDrive used a kernel extension for Files On-Demand which is deprecated as of macOS 12.3. Updates include:
Removing conflicting icons for locally available files and enabling apps like Spotlight or Time Machine to index files
Enabling a preference to sync all content locally
Improving the experience when syncing to external drives
Removing conflicting icons for locally available files and enabling apps like Spotlight or Time Machine to index files.
In Power Apps: Power Apps portals as mobile apps GA, tenant-level analytics, Dataverse auditing features, Power Apps 2022 April Release Wave 1, portal support for query data Web API, code components GA, modern advanced find, localizing content on a custom page
General Availability (GA) of Power Apps portals as mobile apps
Microsoft have announced the General availability of portals as a progressive web app that was first introduced as a preview feature, enabling makers to enable portals into apps with native app like look & feel right from portal studio in just few steps.
General Availability (GA) of Power Apps portals as mobile apps.
To better accommodate the rapid expansion of Power Platform adoption across the enterprise, service administrators require resource hygiene management tooling to avoid accumulating bloat in the system. The latest updates to the Tenant-level analytics include interactive controls that make it a snap to identify stale and orphaned Power Apps deployed across multiple environments or the entire tenant.
A new set of auditing features have been released to help Dataverse administrators to stay compliant with internal and external auditing requirements and to manage log capacity at the same time. These include:
Audit data is now also stored in a separate physical log storage so an organization’s audit log can grow to many terabytes in size without limiting available physical database storage.
The auditing feature logs changes that are made to customer records and user access so you can review the activity later.
Administrators can select an audit retention period from a dropdown menu or specify a custom retention period.
Power Apps 2022 April Release Wave 1 updates for Model-driven apps
The Power Apps 2022 April Release Wave 1 for Model-driven apps is now available. This release includes: Power Apps grid, modern advanced find, in app notifications, co-presence in records plus lots more.
Power Apps grid as part of Power Apps 2022 April Release Wave 1.
General Availability (GA) of Power Apps portals support for Query data using portals Web API
Microsoft have announced the General Availability (GA) of Power Apps portals support for Query data using portals Web API that was introduced in November 2021 release as a preview feature. The feature includes the ability to query records, apply system query options, request specific properties, plus lots more.
General Availability (GA) of code components for portals
Microsoft have announced the General Availability (GA) of code components for portals that was introduced in April 2021 release as a preview feature. This feature provides the following:
Replace fields on portal forms with code components.
Modern advanced find with enhanced view management in model-driven apps
The Power Apps team have announced the availability of modern advanced find that not only replaces the legacy experience but also adds new enhancements to view personalization to help you be more productive with model-driven apps.
Using the global search bar in the header, you can now choose any table in the app to perform a structured search. Choosing a table navigates you to the familiar grid page, with filter options immediately available to work with.
Explore data through advanced filters on any table in an app.
Localizing custom pages will help you build multi-language Power Apps that align model-driven apps with custom pages that are needed for cross-regional deployments. We are excited to bring this capability as it will ensure you can seamlessly deploy a Power App that uses both model-driven forms and custom pages with multiple languages enabled by admins and set by your users.
In Power Automate: Power Automate desktop – Feb update, tenant-level analytics for cloud flows, new features for process advisor, 20 new connectors,
Power Automate for desktop – February 2022 update
The February 2022 update of Power Automate for desktop (version 2.17) has been released! You can download the latest release here. Some of the new features include flow designer performance improvements, new ‘display custom form’ action, convert a file to base64 and much more.
Tenant-level analytics for Power Automate Cloud flows
Tenant-wide analytics are built on service telemetry data derived from Power Platform apps, bots, and services. These solutions allow environment admins to effectively monitor activities related to Cloud flows across the organization. This update includes an expansion to the Data Export pipeline making Usage & Inventory metrics for Cloud flows available to Power Platform customers.
Tenant-level analytics for Power Automate Cloud flows.
The Power Automate team have made several enhancements to Process advisor in January 2022 to make it even easier and faster to visualize your processes and get to insights with task mining:
20 New Independent Publisher Connectors in November and December
Independent Publisher connectors are connectors developed, tested, published, and supported by connector developers that are independent from the backend service or API. 20 new Independent Publisher connectors that were published in November and December. Here’s a look at them:
AfterShip by Taiki Yoshida – this connector allows a user to track and receive notifications on shipments and integrate with other services such as Dynamics 365 and third party services.
Carbon Intensity by Hasan Ünlü – Uses Carbon Intensity API to provide an indicative trend of the regional carbon intensity of the electricity system in Great Britain.
Chuck Norris IO by Daniel Laskewitz – This connector is an API provided by ChuckNorris.IO and will provide you with a Chuck Norris fact when you ask for it.
Clearbit by Troy Taylor – Clearbit is the marketing data platform behind the fastest-growing B2B companies.
Coinbase by RoyPaarMS – A connector to the Coinbase platform to fetch cryptocurrency market rates and exchange rates.
Icon Horse by Troy Taylor – Get any site’s favicon with Icon Horse. Confidently use Icon Horse and get bulletproof favicons with fallbacks if no icon exists.
Launch Library 2 by Troy Taylor – The Launch Library 2 API is a product by The Space Devs with an up-to-date database of Spaceflight events.
Loripsum by Troy Taylor – Loripsum.net has an API to generate placeholder text. Sometimes you need lists, headings, long paragraphs, etc.
Mensagia by AfriSR – Mensagia offer reliable SMS, Email and Voice for business automation communication.
Microsoft D365CE v9 OnPrem by RoyPaarMS – Microsoft Dynamics 365 CE v9 Web API for interacting with on-premises D365 CE data from cloud D365 CE.
New York Times by RoyPaarMS – The New York Times allows anyone to search articles by keyword, date, section, and popularity. This connector allows a user to pull this data into their app, flow, or report.
Square Business by Troy Taylor – This connector contains actions for the following endpoints: Loyalty, Gift Cards, Bookings, Business, Team, Financials, Online and Auth.
The Weather Channel by RoyPaarMS – This connector allows a user to pull this data into their app, flow, or report.
Unix Timestamp by Troy Taylor – Converts Unix timestamps to DateTime objects and DateTime objects to Unix timestamps.
In Power BI: On-prem data gateway, Power BI desktop February feature summary, new mobile formatting options, export Power BI report to file API GA, new Admin APIs
On-premises data gateway February 2022 update
The Power BI team have announced the release of the February update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.114.6). Updates include:
All certified connectors can be used via the gateway
Amazon OpenSearch Service (New Connector)
OpenSearch Project (New Connector)
Digital Construction Works Insights (New Connector)
This months summary includes new features such as new mobile formatting options, Dynamic M Query Parameters support for more data sources, deployment pipeline enhancements and lots, lots more.
Introducing the visual formatting pane in mobile layout
As part of the Power BI Desktop February release, the Power BI team have announced the public preview of mobile-optimized Power BI reports with mobile layout’s new visual formatting pane.
Mobile-optimized Power BI reports with mobile layout’s new visual formatting pane.
Export Power BI report to file API General Availability
Export Power BI report to file API allows you to export Power BI reports to the following file formats: PDF, PPTX (PowerPoint) and PNG, by using a REST call. This feature is now generally available based on Premium/Embedded Gen2 capacities.
Admin APIs to retrieve email subscriptions and widely shared reports
The Power BI team are adding new APIs to provide an inventory of reports and dashboards that are delivered via email subscriptions, shared with the entire tenant, or published to web.
Microsoft have announced that a lightweight version of the Visio web app in Microsoft 365 to bring visual diagramming and collaboration to all teams—both of which are especially important in this hybrid work environment. But the best part? It’ll be available, at no additional cost, for all commercial license subscribers.
The Project team have announced that labels are currently rolling out in Microsoft Project. This new feature allows users to add up to 25 different coloured labels to your tasks in Project for the web for better visual organization.
Now, rolling out OneNote Live Captions lets students listen to a lecture, presentation or other meeting while live streaming captions in any of 100+ languages right within OneNote. OneNote Live Captions fuses the free Microsoft Translator with OneNote, to let educators set up a Translator session that any student with OneNote can then connect to, and allows each student to choose from 100+ available languages to translate the lecture into.
Now in Public Preview, Azure AD multi-stage access reviews allows you and your organization to enable complex workflows to meet recertification and audit requirements calling for multiple reviewers to attest to access for users in a particular sequence. It also helps you design more efficient reviews for your resource owners and auditors by reducing the number of decisions each reviewer is accountable for.
The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
In SharePoint: AAD dynamic groups for audience targeting, custom search verticals, lookup columns in Lists, manage connected teams + channels in admin center, markup ink for Edit HVC
Azure Active Directory Dynamic Groups for SharePoint audience targeting
Newly released support for dynamic groups gives you more control over how you target your SharePoint audiences. You can start to add them from the audience picker in the areas where targeting is supported in SharePoint, including navigation and selected web parts.
Use dynamic groups in AAD to target audiences in SharePoint.
Search verticals are tabs on the search result’s page that show results of a specific type or from select sources. New support for custom verticals in Microsoft Search allows you to customize out of the box verticals for Microsoft Search and add new verticals based on your SharePoint content.
Microsoft Search has two types of verticals, out of the box or default and custom verticals. The default verticals, such as All, Files, and People, create easy access to the most used search results.
Custom “Department” vertical showing in search results within SharePoint.
Lookup columns, a stable part of any SharePoint list for time immemorial – have been given a fresh coat of paint by way of the modern UI and can now be configured without going to the classic settings page.
Lookup columns allow you to connect a list to a column from another list you have on your site.
Manage Teams and channel connected team sites from in SharePoint admin center
Now, when you go to a teams-connected site in SharePoint admin center, you see all corresponding channel sites and can ensure that right optional security policies are inherited from the parent site. With this release, that means:
A new Teams view that filters the sites list to only sites that are Teams connected.
A new column identifying the site is connected to teams.
A new column identifying the team connected site has also
The Sharepoint admin center ‘Active sites’ page will include SharePoint team sites connected to various Teams channels (shared or private).
With markup(ink), users can draw and add notes on their photos to convey their messages and reveal the pattern and information perhaps unclear in an initial, surface look when self-teaching and even more important when sharing photos.
Markup images/photos in OneDrive and SharePoint in Microsoft 365.
In Teams: Important update for Teams Android app, order of raised hands, meeting recordings, Operator Connect Conferencing, alt text for images in chat, E2EE for 1-1 calls, Dynamic E 911, SIP Gateway, Teams Rooms updates, new Teams App Store
Important update for the Microsoft Teams Android app
Recently, an Android operating system issue was encountered that had the potential to impact emergency calling. An investigation was conducted and found that the issue, which is caused by an unintended interaction between the Teams app and Android operating system, is only present on a small number of devices with the Teams app installed when the user is not logged in. Microsoft has collaborated closely with Google to resolve this unintended interaction.
Microsoft have released an update to the Teams app, which is now available to all Android users, that keeps the app from triggering the underlying issue in the Android operating system. Google also plans to roll-out an Android operating system update in January. Any Android users with the Teams app installed take the latest update (1416/1.0.0.2021194504) that has been published via the Google Play Store. Note that this may require user action if app auto-updates are not enabled.
Now you can know the order of who to call on first to speak so that no participant is missed. Simply click on the Participants panel to see who raised their hand and in what order.
As well as shifting Teams meeting recordings to OneDrive and SharePoint to provide better control and sharing options, Microsoft have also added a number of improvements including:
Multi-speed playback – Now you can watch recordings at slower and faster speeds (0.5x up to 2x)
High-quality transcripts – Transcripts now have speaker attribution for meetings that have Teams Live Transcription turned on
Indexed recordings – Recorded meetings are indexed into easier-to-consume segments based on slide transitions
Auto-recording – Meeting owners can set meetings to automatically start recording
Auto-expiration – Coming soon, admins will be able to set a default number of days after which newly created Teams meeting recordings will be sent to the recycle bin.
Operator Connect Conferencing is now generally available. Using the same administrator interface as Operator Connect, this service allows tenant admins to add participating operator dial-in numbers to a Teams audio conferencing bridge. You can keep your existing contract with any of the participating operators or select from a list of partners within the Operators tab in the Teams admin center.
Similar to adding alternative text in Outlook, you now can add descriptions to images in Teams chat messages by right-clicking on the image and selecting “Add alt text.” This enables people who use screen readers to understand the full content of your message, even if they can’t see the image.
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) option for one-to-one Teams calls
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) for Teams calls is now generally available. IT admins will have the option to enable and control the feature for their organization once the update has been received.
By default end-to-end encryption will not be available to all users within the tenant. Once IT has configured the policy and enabled it for selected users, those selected users will still need to turn on end-to-end encryption in their Teams settings.
Teams Phone now supports dynamic E911 for U.S.-based users, allowing for auto-detection of their locations, or the ability to provide editable locations to alert personnel in the event of an emergency.
Administrators must enable the dynamic E911 policy for the user, and users must consent to location detection to enable. Users who have not turned on location detection can continue to add a dynamic emergency address manually.
Dynamic E (emergency)911 for US-based users.
SIP Gateway
Customers who are looking to leverage their existing telephone hardware as they move to Teams Phone can use SIP Gateway to enable core Teams calling functionality on compatible SIP phone models from Cisco, Poly, Yealink, and AudioCodes. Supported core Teams calling functionality includes inbound and outbound calls, call transfer, meeting dial-in and dial-out, device-based “do not disturb,” and voicemail with message waiting indicator.
Microsoft have rebuilt the Teams Store from the ground up, designing it with your needs as the priority – and centered around experiences that make discovering and installing apps them into your teams, chats and meetings simple.
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):
Breakout room managers’ support By taking control from the breakout rooms management panel, appointed presenters will be able to perform breakout room operations as managers or meeting organizers and join rooms as a breakout room manager. Only participants who are named as presenters can be appointed as breakout room managers. Previously available in GCC, this feature is now coming to GCC-High and DOD.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Microsoft Dataverse choices columns support, Power BI in model-driven apps, Power Platform Developer Tools: November Refresh
Power Apps portals : Support for Microsoft Dataverse choices columns (preview)
The Power Apps team have announced support for Microsoft Dataverse choices columns in Power Apps portals with version 9.3.11.x (Note : Updates are currently rolling out).
Choices control on a page allows users to select multiple options from a pre-configured list. Portals makers can design web pages with lists and forms that use the choices control to provide create, edit, and view experience for end users on this column type.
Visualize data in model-driven apps with Power BI (preview)
The Power Apps team have announced Power BI quick reports in model-driven apps in preview. This update combines the capabilities of Power Apps, Power BI and Dataverse in a seamless way to help you visualize and understand your data – with one click.
While charts and custom components allow you to create specific, custom visualizations in Power Apps, Power BI quick reports generate a report automatically based on the page context, combined with an understanding of underlying data types, with no prior set up required.
Visualize data in model-driven apps with Power BI (preview).
The Power Apps team have announced the November refresh for the Power Platform CLI to1.10.4, plus the previously announced deployment settings support for connection references becoming generally available.
In Power Automate: 27 new connectors, collaborative comments, Power Automate Desktop – December 2021 update
27 new & updated connectors in Power Automate
The end of 2021 saw the launch of 27 new and updated connectors. The release included 11 new connectors and 16 updates, and all of these updates have been submitted by the owners of these APIs. Here are the 11 new connectors:
ArcGIS – The ArcGIS Connectors for Power Automate connects your automated workflows to resources from your ArcGIS Online subscription. The actions allow users to leverage their ArcGIS Online identities to geocode addresses, enrich data with demographics, perform point-to-point routing, get data or geometry from hosted feature layers, and create new feature layers.
ArcGIS PaaS – The ArcGIS PaaS Connectors for Power Automate connect your automated workflows with the ArcGIS Platform. The actions allow users to leverage an API key to find address candidates, enrich data with demographics, and generate point-to-point routing.
Airmeet – Airmeet offers a virtual venue that allows your participants to navigate across multiple sessions, networking lounge, and exhibition booths to have meaningful interactions.
Spring Global – Spring Global enables users to serve with ease, monitor & control field execution, and leverage a single app with a 360° view for all.
Recorded Future V2 – Recorded Future integration with Microsoft Azure Sentinel helps to automatically detect risky IOCs and respond quickly with transparency and context.
Secure Message Delivery – The DataMotion Connector for Power Automate allows you to utilize DataMotion’s secure message delivery API within your workflows.
Dynamics Fraud Protection – Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection (DFP) connector enables customers who use PowerApps Portal to run their business online to integrate with fraud protection.
Ideanote – With the Ideanote connector for Power Automate you can build automated innovation workflows that streamline the way you collect and manage ideas across your teams, your customers, and your company.
Robots for PowerBI – Robots for PowerBI is a connector that allows DevScope PowerBI Robots clients the execution of simple actions like enable, disable, or execute Playlists configured in the application.
Spinpanel – Spinpanel enables organizations to sell, deploy, manage, and automate Microsoft 365 and Azure solutions.
Now, you can at-mention your co-workers in your comments and have others receive email notifications when you do so. As multiple users work on automating a business process, these capabilities will be critical in helping makers collaborate seamlessly and efficiently. We believe that these would result in helping build complex automations faster.
In Power BI: On-demand load capabilities, asynchronous refresh, Hybrid Tables, Power BI feature summary, on-premises data gateway, data protection update, CustomData feature, Power BI app for Teams in US GCC, visualize data from Power Apps & Dynamics 365, Power BI APIs .NET SDK v4
On-demand loading capabilities for large models in Power BI
The Power BI team have announced on-demand load capabilities to further ensure highly performant and reliable large datasets. With the new capability, relevant data pages are loaded on-demand (paged-in to memory) during subsequent query or refresh. Evicted datasets are then made available for queries more quickly and reliably.
On-demand loading capabilities for large models in Power BI.
The Power BI team have announced asynchronous refresh capabilities for Power BI Premium, Power BI Premium per User, and Power BI Embedded. As Power BI becomes a superset of Azure Analysis Services, the asynchronous refresh REST API for Power BI brings built-in features for reliability, such as auto retries and batched commits.
Hybrid Tables in Power BI Premium (public preview)
The Power BI team have announced Hybrid Tables in Power BI Premium, which enables us in turn to announce an equally exciting and ground-breaking enhancement to incremental refresh – incremental refresh augmented with real-time data. Support of hybrid tables in Power BI Premium offers the following benefits:
Blazing fast performance in import mode
Latest updates from the data warehouse always included
Better resource utilization especially for very large datasets
Incremental refresh policies with real time support
Announcing Public Preview of Hybrid Tables in Power BI Premium.
This months feature summary includes a new Sparklines preview feature, several new Format Pane updates, e-mail subscription access via Admin API plus many more features:
The Power BI team have announced the general availability of two new features: Mandatory MIP label policies and Default MIP label policies. Mandatory label policies enable organizations to ensure that MIP sensitivity labels will be applied to new content when it is created in or uploaded to Power BI.
Default label policies enable you to define a baseline level of protection to be applied to Power BI files and in the Power BI service. This capability is now generally available.
Mandatory label policies in Power BI – general availability
The capability to pass custom data for row level security is now available in Power BI Premium, Power BI Embedded, and Power BI Premium per User. You can natively utilize the CustomData feature to add row filters that pass free text (strings) to leverage dynamic row level security in embedded reports, dashboards, and tiles.
The Power BI app for Microsoft Teams now available in the US Government Community cloud
The Power BI app for Microsoft Teams is now available in the US Government Community cloud (GCC). This enables organizations in GCC to use Power BI as a data hub, enables users to find data without context switches, and to bring data into more collaboration to help make better decisions.
The Power BI app for Microsoft Teams is now available in US GCC.
Visualize data quickly from Power Apps and Dynamics 365 apps (preview)
There a new way to visualize your model-driven Power Apps and Dynamics 365 data stored within Dataverse. With a single click, Power BI automatically generates a set of visuals for you to explore and find insights within your data. This integration is great way to take advantage of the full power of the Power Platform.
Visualize your data quickly from Power Apps and Dynamics 365 apps.
The new SDK version provides clarity on the properties of Power BI artifacts returned by various APIs and makes it easier to understand which properties are returned by each API. The new SDK version provides clarity on the properties of Power BI artifacts returned by various APIs and makes it easier to understand which properties are returned by each API.
SharePoint Stuff 