Play of the Week

Microsoft Teams has a new feature getting ready to roll out that provides a new view to participants in their meetings. The Active Speaker feature will make identifying which participant is currently talking easier by highlighting their square. Participants can switch to this new view mode through the view switcher during the meeting.

In Development

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Data Loss Prevention – Visibility into configuration and policy sync status of devices

Provide visibility to admins about configuration status and solution health in addition to providing policy update sync status.

ID: 109584 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Viva: Viva Topics Teams app

Viva Topics Teams app as the new destination for discovering new and trending topics in the organization, providing feedback on suggested topics, catching up on activities on topics of interest and more.

ID: 118492 Tags: Microsoft Viva – GCC Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Viva: Follow a topic

Users can now follow topics from experiences across Microsoft 365 and the Viva suite to receive personalized experiences and notifications of activities around topics of interest.

ID: 118493 Tags: Microsoft Viva – GCC Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Teams: Together Mode Usability Improvements

We are bringing new usability improvements to Together Mode. Participants in Together Mode will now have name labels attached to their videos. Name labels will also support status icons that indicate microphone, active speaker, spotlight or pin within the meeting. Second, your own video in the gallery will now be removed while Together Mode is active to avoid duplication of the self preview. Lastly, Together Mode will now display raised hands and reactions within the view.

ID: 122127 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Teams: An improved search experience in chat and channels

A new search experience will allow users to search in a specific chat or channel and reach relevant results faster. The results will appear in the right handrail so you can stay in the flow of your work. Enhancements like highlighted key words will make it easier for user to scan their results.

ID: 122550 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Teams: Hotline phones

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

ID: 123749 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC Release: June CY2023

Planner: Plan sharing with file container

A new authorization model is implemented for Planner plans,?which will be a ‘shared container-based’ authorization model, where OneDrive and SharePoint Online files can be linked to plans to provide users with access to the plan if they have access to the shared container. This means that file-based authorization for plans will provide streamlined access to roster-backed plans that are connected to one or more SharePoint Online/OneDrive files.

ID: 124791 Tags: Planner – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: May CY2023

Outlook: Create User Profiles

Users can now create a distraction free experience by creating profiles which helps set boundaries within the accounts like notifications, theming, etc. Note: Users need to have at least two accounts to create profiles.

ID: 124793 Tags: Outlook – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Information Protection – Configure display colors for sensitivity labels (U.S. Government clouds)

This feature will simplify the policy management experience by enabling administrators to set a label color in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal for their sensitivity labels. Once applied, labels will display this coloring within first-party and third-party applications that support reading the color property, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (Win32 native apps), or Power BI.

ID: 124794 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, DoD, GCC Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Insider Risk Management – Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) ML Classifier support

Leverage trainable classifiers from Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) to recognize various content types specific to your organization. Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management correlates various signals to identify potential malicious or inadvertent insider risks, such as IP theft, data leakage, and security violations. Insider Risk Management enables customers to create policies to manage security and compliance. Built with privacy by design, users are pseudonymized by default, and role-based access controls and audit logs are in place to help ensure user-level privacy.

ID: 124795 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: eDiscovery (Premium) – Review set: Advanced filters

Updates to eDiscovery (Premium) review filters experience that allow admins to construct compound nested filters with either “AND” or “OR” conditions, go back and forth (undo/redo) between different iterations of filters, manage saved filter queries without navigating to a different panel, and use “Is empty/Is not empty” condition for each filter.

ID: 124796 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Data Lifecycle Management – Disposition review auto-approval

Admins can enable automatic approval of items pending disposition if the reviewer doesn’t act within a specified number of days. Items will advance to the next stage of approval or auto-approved for deletion if in the final stage.

ID: 124798 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: April CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Endpoint Data Loss Prevention – Detect if a label is not assigned (not labeled as a condition) – U.S. Government clouds

With this capability you will be able to configure specific restrictions for PDF and Office files that are not labeled on the endpoint devices.

ID: 124799 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, DoD, GCC Release: April CY2023

Microsoft Teams Admin Center: New widget for unspent Azure consumption commitment

New widget in the Microsoft Teams admin center (TAC) helps admins quickly view unspent Microsoft Azure consumption commitment (MACC) that they can apply when making purchase of Teams apps that are Azure benefit eligible. It will only be available to organizations that have an existing MACC agreement with Microsoft.

ID: 125173 Tags: Microsoft Teams – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: May CY2023

Outlook: SMS on Outlook Lite

Available only in India. Outlook Lite now presents a modern, powerful SMS experience for users who prefer to have all their messaging needs in one compact platform.

ID: 125289 Tags: Outlook – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: July CY2023

Outlook: New Outlook for Windows and web – Reading pane background image

To offer more personalization to end users, Outlook on the web and the new Outlook for Windows will now have the ability to display a background image in the reading pane whenever emails are not selected. This feature will be turned off by default for commercial customers. A user will be able to turn on a background image by going to Settings General Appearance from Outlook.

ID: 126221 Tags: Outlook – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: June CY2023

Rolling Out

Microsoft Teams: Upload files to your approval request via Power Automate portal

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

ID: 89106 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: April CY2023

OneDrive: Updated Files On-Demand Settings on Windows

We are updating the OneDrive sync app settings for Files On-Demand for users who have the feature enabled.

ID: 101520 Tags: OneDrive – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC Release: April CY2023

Minecraft Education: Wild Update (1.19)

Get ready for the Wild Update for Minecraft Education! With useful new blocks and items, charismatic mobs, and mangrove swamps, explore and survive in amazing new worlds. This update improves the user experience with smoother sign-in, library search, and tooltips.

ID: 106094 Tags: – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: April CY2023

Microsoft Teams: Active speaker view in meetings

Active speaker is a new view added to Microsoft Teams meetings. It highlights the active speaker while still showing the rest of the participants in the meeting. Users can use this new view through the view switcher in a meeting.

ID: 116009 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC Release: April CY2023

Outlook: Video Unfurl and Playback

Video links will be unfurled into a thumbnail for easy and delightful recognition when reading an email that contains a video link. Upon tapping the thumbnail, the video will be opened in an in-app player (OnePlayer) to view the video in the full mobile screen.

ID: 117586 Tags: Outlook – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: April CY2023

Outlook: Video Capture and Upload to OneDrive

Users will be able to capture a video from their phone while in the Outlook Mobile app, then seamlessly upload it to their email. Uploading the video will leverage OneDrive for Business, allowing users to benefit from increased storage space and large limits for video size and length.

ID: 117588 Tags: OneDrive, Outlook – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: April CY2023

Microsoft Teams: Front Row layout in Teams Rooms on Android

Additional functionality with the Front Row experience, a layout for hybrid meetings that enables users to see remote attendees at eye level and on dual screens. Users can see Chat in the right panel and participants with raised hands on the left panel. And, Meeting Chat is added in the Gallery, Large Gallery, and Together Mode layouts.

ID: 119620 Tags: Microsoft Teams – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: April CY2023

Microsoft Teams: Meeting join and extension enhancements for Teams Rooms on Android

Users can start an ad-hoc meeting in one touch with the ‘Meet’ button, join a Teams meeting with a meeting ID and passcode, and extend a current room reservation within in a meeting.

ID: 119621 Tags: Microsoft Teams – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: April CY2023

Microsoft Teams: Content sharing and Admin controls for Teams Rooms on Android

Enhanced content sharing capabilities with PC audio shared via HDMI and IT Admin controls on automatic sharing of HDMI content. Users can view and add annotations to shared content when a desktop user starts a session in a meeting. And, for Teams Premium users, there is support for watermark-enabled meetings to safeguard confidential information.

ID: 119622 Tags: Microsoft Teams – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC Release: April CY2023

Launched

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: eDiscovery – Certificate based authentication support for eDiscovery PowerShell cmdlets

Official support for eDiscovery PowerShell cmdlet with certificate-based authentication (CBA).

ID: 106112 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC Release: April CY2023

Planner : Task Email Notifications for GCC and DoD

Task Email Notifications for GCC and DoD aims at bringing existing Planner email notifications to customers in GCC and DoD. The two main categories of notifications are: Assignment email notifications and Due date digest email.

ID: 122286 Tags: Planner – DoD, GCC Release: April CY2023

Canceled

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Information Protection – SIT Feedback Loop for Content explorer and DLP alerts (U.S. Government clouds)

[This feature is delayed indefinitely.] Admins can provide feedback for sensitive information type (SIT) False Positives via Content explorer and DLP Alerts. This feedback can be provided in a compliant manner and users can see a summary view of the feedback in the SIT overview page. The feedback will be used to make systematic fixes to SITs for improved accuracy.

ID: 117534 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, DoD, GCC Release: April CY2023