Play of the Week

Microsoft Purview Information Protection’s new Service Side Auto-Labeling Feature will show files needed to be labeled, files labeled (past 7 days), and all the files labeled in SharePoint and OneDrive. The service side auto-labeling will simplify classifying and protecting sensitive information, ensuring compliance with data governance regulations. This exciting feature will be rolling out soon.

In Development

Microsoft Teams: Frosted Glass Backgrounds in Teams Meetings

Frosted Glass is a type of background effect that helps users keep their privacy with a background blur, but in a more professional and creative way. It let users have graphics with a blur effect together. Frosted Glass can be activated with a PNG image, that usually comes with some graphics in a transparent background. With the new frosted glass effects, the transparent area is turned into a blur background while the graphic remains as the part of background effect.

ID: 114214 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, GCC, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: July CY2023

Microsoft 365 apps: Microsoft 365 Apps and Services update to AES256-CBC for encrypting emails and files with Purview Information Protection

Microsoft 365 Apps, Exchange Online, and SharePoint Online will begin to use AES256 in cipher block chaining (CBC) mode by default when emails and documents are encrypted with Microsoft Purview Information Protection.

ID: 117576 Tags: Azure Information Protection, Microsoft Information Protection, PowerPoint, Word, Exchange, Outlook, Excel, SharePoint – GCC High, GCC, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: August CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Information Protection – Configure inheritance of attachment labels to email messages (U.S. Government clouds)

Configure label policies for email messages with attachments to inherit labels that match the highest classification of those attachments.

ID: 124887 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, GCC, DoD Release: July CY2023

Microsoft Syntex: Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Customers will be able to turn on OCR for images in Exchange and Teams on a pay-as-you-go basis. The extracted text will be available for compliance scenarios, like DLP. The text will also be available to Microsoft search.

ID: 124936 Tags: – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Syntex: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for SharePoint and OneDrive

With this update, you will be able to turn on OCR for images in SharePoint and OneDrive on a pay-as-you-go basis. The extracted text will be made available to Microsoft Search and Microsoft Purview.

ID: 124937 Tags: – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Stream: Add videos to playlist from OneDrive and SharePoint

For videos stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, this feature will allow you to add videos to playlists. Upon selecting these videos, now users will also have an option to add this to playlists from a modal window that shows the user’s playlists and the recent ones that they have accessed.

ID: 124944 Tags: SharePoint, Microsoft Stream – GCC High, GCC, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Viva: Answers-focused view for Viva Engage

Shift into an Answers-focused view for Viva Engage customers that are only using Answers.

ID: 124946 Tags: Yammer, Microsoft Viva – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Viva: Viva Engage digest

This new weekly digest will showcase premium features from Viva Engage alongside content from communities and storylines. Premium customers will see their current storyline and discovery digests evolve into this new email.

ID: 124947 Tags: Yammer – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: eDiscovery (Premium) – Review set data minimization – Identify exact duplicates by default

Harness the built-in review set query within eDiscovery (Premium) review sets, specifically designed to pinpoint exact duplicates and encompassing email threads, to systematically reduce your review set data by an average of 30%, eliminating the need to trigger analytics manually post ingestion. Gain full visibility into all hash values utilized in de-duplication and email threading algorithms, ensuring a seamless and efficient review process.

ID: 124961 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, GCC, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: September CY2023

Microsoft Edge: Enhanced security mode on by default

Enhanced security mode is being turned on by default to “Balanced” mode for x64 Windows, x64 macOS, x64 Linux, and ARM64 systems. Also, administrators have 2 new policies to manage the Enhanced security mode user experience: EnhanceSecurityModeIndicatorUIEnabled and EnhanceSecurityModeOptOutUXEnabled.

ID: 124963 Tags: Microsoft Edge – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: July CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Insider Risk Management – Admin email notifications (U.S. Government clouds)

With this update, admins will have the ability to manage email notifications through the “Admin notifications” section of the insider risk settings. Admins will be able to control the types of emails they receive, including a daily notification for newly generated high-severity alerts, or weekly emails summarizing policies with unresolved warnings. 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: 124966 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, GCC, DoD Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Insider Risk Management – Sequence detections for obfuscation involving excluded events

This change enhances sequence detection to improve its effectiveness in identifying users who are performing obfuscation activities that may result in a data security incident, such as file renaming, to evade detection. With this improvement, Insider Risk Management can detect sequences that may result in potential data security incidents, even if the obfuscation activities in those sequences involve excluded events, such as an excluded keyword. 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: 124970 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: January CY2024

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Insider Risk Management – Cumulative exfiltration detection tuning

With this update, cumulative exfiltration activities will no longer be detected and scored if they have already been identified in a previous cumulative exfiltration alert. This change will reduce unnecessary alerts generated from cumulative exfiltration activities. 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: 124971 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: January CY2024

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Communication Compliance – Enhanced investigation and remediation experience (U.S. Government clouds)

Introducing enhancements to the investigation and remediation workflows to help designated investigators facilitate quicker and better-informed actions on policy matches. Enhancements will be available to designated Communication Compliance admins and investigators with the appropriate role-based access control permissions, and include bulk policy exports, interactive how-to demos, and additional context around policy settings and keywords/conditions flagged in a policy. Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance provides the tools to help organizations detect regulatory compliance violations (e.g. SEC or FINRA), such as sensitive or confidential information, harassing or threatening language, and sharing of adult content. Built with privacy by design, usernames are pseudonymized by default, role-based access controls are built in, investigators are opted in by an admin, and audit logs are in place to help ensure user-level privacy.

ID: 124976 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, DoD, GCC Release: August CY2023

Microsoft Viva: Deactivate and delete organisations in Viva Goals

IT admins or Viva Goals admins can deactivate organizations or delete them if required from the Viva Goals Admin portal. They can also configure to automatically deactivate inactive organizations.

ID: 124979 Tags: Microsoft Viva – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: June CY2023

Microsoft Teams: Click Through Collaborative Annotations Layer

Users are now able to click through the annotation layer to interact with content in meetings without restarting the current annotation session.

ID: 127900 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC Release: July CY2023

Microsoft Teams: QR code to reserve a room on Teams Panels

This feature lets users easily book a room for meetings now, in the future, or as part of a scheduled meeting by scanning a QR code on the scheduling panel with their mobile device. Requires the Teams mobile app on an Android or iOS mobile device.

ID: 129366 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC Release: August CY2023

Microsoft Teams: Pre-pin meeting apps via Admin Policy in TAC

Admins can now pre-pin meetings apps for users (much like personal apps and messaging extensions) in TAC.”

ID: 131169 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC Release: June CY2023

Rolling Out

Microsoft Teams: New channels experience

New channels experience, built with an intuitive design that help teams focus and actively engage. The new channels experience include: compose box and recent posts will appear at the top of the page, every post will now have a conversation view and a new right pane with the channel’s key information.

ID: 91683 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC, GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD Release: May CY2023

Universal Print: Secure release with QR code on Microsoft Office mobile app

Secure release prevents waste from unnecessary printing and maintains user privacy by holding their jobs until they show-up at the printer. Universal Print will allow secure release to be configured for any printer. Users can retrieve their print jobs by scanning a QR Code and using the Microsoft Office mobile app. Users need to be authenticated with their work or school account. QR code-based release will work with both Universal Print ready printers and printers using the Universal Print connector. We may add more secure release options in the future.

ID: 93403 Tags: Universal Print – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Teams: Expanded view for profile card

With the expanded view of the profile card, users will now be able to see a richer view of a person’s profile, such as their contact data, custom properties, and their LinkedIn information. This expansion also enables the user to view richer organization chart information about the person they are interacting with, without leaving the context they are in.

ID: 109526 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, GCC, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Information Protection – Service side auto-labeling shows file labeling progress for turned on policies in SharePoint and OneDrive (U.S. Government clouds)

Service side auto-labeling will show files to be labeled, files labeled (past 7 days), and files labeled (total) for turned on policies in SharePoint and OneDrive. Clicking on the auto-labeling policy will show files to be labeled and files labeled (total) broken down by the different sites. If a policy includes Exchange as a location, the number of emails that were labeled won’t be displayed because labels are automatically applied as messages are sent.

ID: 124850 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, GCC, DoD Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Search: People centric search in SharePoint and Office.com to DOD

People centric search is a pattern that lets you zoom in on a person to view, explore, and search the enterprise graph around them. This has the dual purpose of enabling you to find content through people, and to understand people through their content. When you pick a person, you will be able to search through their work; however this will only include items that you already have permissions to view or modify.

ID: 124882 Tags: Microsoft Search – DoD Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Teams: work hours and location

Set your work location for the day so your team can learn about your availability for in-office and remote collaboration. Click on a user’s avatar or profile photo anywhere in Teams and get an overview of their online status, the next available calendar slot in Outlook, work hours, local time, and work location (remote or office).

ID: 125375 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Teams: Allowing registered attendees to bypass the lobby in Webinars

Organizers can set a new lobby policy so registered attendees will now automatically bypass the lobby when they join the webinar.

ID: 125881 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC Release: May CY2023

Outlook: New Outlook for Windows and web – Message List Selection updates

In order to save space on the message list in Outlook, we are making a UI update: From “selection circles on the left side of each row” to a “Select mode that you have to get into before checkboxes appear”. This affects users who don’t have “Sender Images” enabled in the Message List. If you have “Sender Images” turned on, hovering over the images will still show the checkboxes, even if you did not get yourself into “Select Mode”. To review if you have “Send image” enabled, go to Settings/Mail/Layout and scroll to “Sender image”.

ID: 125905 Tags: Outlook – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC Release: May CY2023

Launched

Microsoft 365 admin center: Reports in the Admin Center – Visio Usage Report

A new report will be made available to help customers understand how Microsoft Visio is used within their organization.

ID: 88834 Tags: Microsoft 365 Admin Center, Visio – GCC, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: May CY2023

Whiteboard: Commenting

The ability to add comments on a whiteboard to aid in discussion with board participants. This will include a comments pane to see all comments on a given whiteboard.

ID: 98083 Tags: Whiteboard – GCC High, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC, DoD Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Teams: Avatars for Microsoft Teams

Avatars for Microsoft Teams gives you that much-needed camera break, while still allowing you to collaborate effectively. You can add a new layer of choice to your meetings and represent yourself the way you want with customizable avatars and reactions.

ID: 107969 Tags: Microsoft Teams – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Insider Risk Management – Policy wizard enhancements

The Insider Risk Management policy wizard will be revised to help simplify configuration of indicators, sequence detection, cumulative exfiltration detection, and risk score boosters. 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: 122283 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, GCC, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: May CY2023

Microsoft Purview compliance portal : Insider Risk Management – Recommended actions enhancements

Recommended actions enhancements will include the ability to turn on weekly or daily email notifications for key events such as high severity alerts and all warnings summary along with additional suggestions to help optimize policy configurations. 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: 122285 Tags: Microsoft Purview compliance portal – GCC High, GCC, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: May 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: June CY2023

Canceled

Microsoft Teams: Appointment queue in GCC

Empower employees to manage and service scheduled and on-demand appointments in one location with advanced capabilities to track wait times, live status of a meeting and more. Scheduling administrators and staff conducting virtual appointments can monitor incoming requests and process them appropriately.  This item is being removed as a duplicate of 121360.

ID: 122559 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC Release: June CY2023