Play of the Week

Microsoft Forms is working on an update that would allow users to put a time limit on responses to a form. The most obvious use for this will be in the education sector for timed quizzes but the potential doesn’t end there. Be on the lookout for this useful update.

In Development

Outlook: Compose Your Messages with Microsoft Editor

This feature brings the goodness of Microsoft Editor to Outlook mobile. We’ll offer users spelling, grammar and refinement suggestions as they type. Users can disable this in Settings.

ID: 79326 Tags: Outlook – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC High, GCC Release: November CY2021

Microsoft Forms: Timed Quiz

Configure the time allotted for your students to complete a quiz.

ID: 79462 Tags: Forms – GCC, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: January CY2022

Microsoft Teams: Approvals eSignature DocuSign integration

To complement our existing Adobe Sign integration, users will now be able to choose DocuSign as their e-Sign provider when creating an eSignature request within Approvals. Admins will have the ability to turn off this connector within the Teams Admin Center.

ID: 81674 Tags: Microsoft Teams – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: November CY2021

Microsoft Project: Charts view

Visually assess the progress of your work through chart view.

ID: 82141 Tags: Microsoft Project – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: February CY2022

Microsoft 365 admin center: Software updates information

The Software updates page gives admins and business owners a high-level overview of the software update status for Office devices in the org.

ID: 82148 Tags: Microsoft 365 Admin Center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: December CY2021

Microsoft Teams: Embedded CART captioning support for Teams meetings for GCC-High and DOD

Teams meetings now support integration with real-time captioning providers and CART writers (Communication Access Real-Time Transcription) so that users who utilize CART captions can view the captions in the same window as their meeting.

ID: 83614 Tags: Microsoft Teams – DoD, GCC High Release: December CY2021

Microsoft Information Protection: Power BI sensitivity label data in Activity Explorer

Power BI will now send sensitivity label activity data to Activity Explorer for admins to search and review along with the rest of the Microsoft Information Protection (MIP), Azure Information Protection (AIP), and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) data sets from native Office apps and other cloud resources.

ID: 85685 Tags: Microsoft Information Protection – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC High, GCC Release: November CY2021

Microsoft Teams: Updated companion mode for iOS users

For a better hybrid meeting experience, Teams users on their iPhone can use a single tap to join a meeting on both their device and Microsoft Teams Room. Audio on their device will be automatically turned off to ensure echo doesn’t happen. Furthermore, the landing experience on the iPhone will be optimized for engagement activities to make it easier to raise hand or react, chat, see all participants, and more.

ID: 87869 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: November CY2021

Microsoft Graph: Microsoft 365 Compliance Records Management

The first release of Microsoft 365 Records Management Graph APIs will enable organizations to create and manage retention labels and events, and event types for event-based retention.

ID: 88276 Tags: Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC, GCC High Release:

Microsoft Teams: 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.” You can still update this to only “Team owners” at the tenant level and override the default.

ID: 88318 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High, GCC, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: November CY2021

Microsoft Teams: Tab actions are moving

Microsoft Teams tab actions are moving out of the tab header bar and into the tab dropdown to help declutter the user experience. This impacts all application tabs such as Assignments, Grades, Planner or the Website tab. These tab actions will be found by clicking on the tab name to show a dropdown menu and include: Reload tab, Go to website, Copy link to tab, Pop-out tab, and About this tab.

ID: 88341 Tags: Microsoft Teams – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC, GCC High Release: November CY2021

Outlook: Text Predictions on iOS

Outlook can suggest words and phrases as you compose messages. When Outlook offers a suggestion, swipe to accept it.

ID: 88477 Tags: Outlook – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: November CY2021

Outlook: Text Predictions on Android

Outlook can suggest words and phrases as you compose messages. When Outlook offers a suggestion, swipe to accept it.

ID: 88478 Tags: Outlook – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: November CY2021

Microsoft 365 admin center: Viva Learning Usage Report

This report will help IT admins can understand the activity of every user licensed to use Viva Learning, by looking at their interaction. It also helps IT admins understand the type of features being used within the Learning App.

ID: 88482 Tags: Microsoft 365 Admin Center – Germany, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: November CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Insider risk management – Policy health status

The policy health status gives you insights into any potential issues with your insider risk management policies. This is currently available in public preview.

ID: 88485 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC High, GCC Release: November CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Insider risk management – “Watch the watchers” audit trail

The insider risk management audit log enables you to stay informed on the actions that were taken on insider risk management features. This is currently available in public preview.

ID: 88486 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – GCC, GCC High, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: November CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Insider risk management – Intelligent detections: Domain settings

You can specify domains in global settings which helps you to increase or decrease the risk scoring for activity that takes place with these domains. Additionally, you can use wildcards to help match variations of root domains or subdomains. This is currently available in public preview.

ID: 88487 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC High, GCC Release: November CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Insider risk management – Policy customization

You can now customize the thresholds for the policy indicators that influence an activity’s risk score, which in turn determines whether an alert’s severity is low, medium, or high. This is currently available in public preview.

ID: 88488 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – GCC, GCC High, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: November CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Insider risk management – Enhancements to content explorer

The Microsoft 365 Insider risk management solution will have an improved performance and experience within the content explorer, including transparency of document loads and completeness. This is currently available in public preview.

ID: 88489 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC High, GCC Release: November CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Insider risk management – Device indicators

These include policy indicators for activities such as sharing files over the network or with devices. This is currently available in public preview.

ID: 88490 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – GCC, GCC High, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: November CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Insider risk management – User activity reports

User activity reports allow you to examine activities for specific users for a defined time period without having to assign them temporarily or explicitly to an insider risk management policy. This is currently available in public preview.

ID: 88491 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, GCC High, GCC Release: November CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Insider risk management – Native triggers for Azure AD account deletion

Automatically detect user account deletion in Azure Active Directory for your organization to start scoring for risk indicators in the Data theft by departing users policy template. This is currently available in public preview.

ID: 88492 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – GCC, GCC High, DoD, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: November CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Information Barriers – Segments and Policies landing pages

The Information Barriers solution within the Microsoft 365 compliance center enables organizations to restrict communication and collaboration between two user groups to avoid a conflict of interest from occurring. This user experience (UX) update adds solution landing pages for management of segments and policies.

ID: 88493 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release:

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Information Governance – Allow record label to start “unlocked” for manual records declaration

Organizations sometimes need the ability to declare a file as a record after a period of collaboration. This update allows records managers to apply a record label to content but allow collaboration. Users can then toggle a switch when ready to lock the file and prevent edits.

ID: 88509 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release:

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Information Governance – Configuration option to block the ability to edit metadata for records

This update allows records management admins to prevent users from editing metadata on items designated as records on SharePoint and OneDrive.

ID: 88510 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release:

Rolling Out

Visio: Viewer enhancements in Microsoft Teams

This capability enables both users with and without a Visio license to complete simple tasks on Visio files stored in Teams, like commenting, sharing, printing, downloading their Visio diagram as an image or PDF, and more from within Teams.

ID: 88513 Tags: Visio – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: November CY2021

Microsoft Teams: Top hits in Search Autosuggest

Top hits is a new section at the top of the autosuggest results in search where users will see the most relevant results across people, chats, files and more. This feature will improve discovery and reduce search times.

ID: 70563 Tags: Microsoft Teams – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC Release: October CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: New named entities SITs and enhanced unified policy authoring templates (Public Preview)

Named entities are sensitive information types (SITs) that can’t easily be identified by a regular expression or a function; these include person names, physical addresses, and medical terms & conditions. This update adds 52 new SITs representing named entities, and 10 enhanced policy templates that can be used in solutions such as DLP and auto-labeling, and cover important regulations, such as US HIPAA and EU GDPR.

ID: 72194 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release:

Microsoft Teams: Live Transcript in unscheduled Teams meetings

Now unscheduled/ad hoc Teams Meetings are supported by Live Transcript.

ID: 81808 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: October CY2021

Microsoft Teams: Live Transcript in Channels Teams Meetings

Channel meetings in Teams are now supported by Live Transcript.

ID: 81809 Tags: Microsoft Teams – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC Release: October CY2021

Outlook: Meetings online by default

Whether you’re working from home or meeting with people in other locations, all your meetings will automatically be online so everyone can attend. This setting can be disabled by users from Outlook, or by admins from PowerShell. In its initial release, only Teams and Skype will be supported, and 3rd party online meeting add-ins will not be included.

ID: 81995 Tags: Outlook, Exchange – GCC, GCC High, DoD, Germany, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: October CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Communication Compliance integration with Power Automate for GCC

Communication Compliance integration with Power Automate allows organizations to configure Power Automate flows to automate tasks for Communication Compliance cases and users.

ID: 85605 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – GCC Release: October CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Communication Compliance – DLP policy recommendation

We are surfacing Communication Compliance policy recommendations within the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) workflow, with the ability to apply DLP policy insights to your insider risk practice to better identify user behavior and intent. Customers will now be directed to configure a relevant policy in Communication Compliance at the end of the DLP policy configuration flow.

ID: 85651 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release:

Launched

SharePoint admin: New SharePoint admin center home page

When you first land in the SharePoint admin center, we want it to be both familiar and useful at a glance. The idea is to provide a familiar experience, taking a similar design approach as the Microsoft admin center. You’ll see more and more cards and graphs appear over time – so you can see insights on files, usage security, recommendations, training and so on. Better see what’s happening, and then take the appropriate action.

ID: 57318 Tags: SharePoint – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: May CY2021

Access: ODBC Interface Support (without ACE Redistributable Engine)

If you have O365, or click-to-run versions of Access 2016/2019 Consumer installed, you will no longer need to install the ACE Redistributable to use the ACE ODBC provider.

ID: 65407 Tags: Access – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: January CY2021

Access: DAO Interface Support (without ACE Redistributable Engine)

If you have O365, or click-to-run versions of Access 2016/2019 Consumer installed, you will no longer need to install the ACE Redistributable to use the ACE DAO provider.

ID: 65408 Tags: Access – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: January CY2021

Microsoft Search: Query variable support on Keyword Query Language (KQL)

Profile attributes can be used as Query variables on Keyword Query Language (KQL). This will be resolved for both SharePoint and Graph connector verticals.

ID: 81953 Tags: Microsoft Search – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: October CY2021

Microsoft 365 admin center: Allow Non-Admin User to Install Language Access Packs

This new group policy, AllowNonAdminUserInstallLAPs, setting controls whether users can install language accessory packs for Office even if they don’t have local administrator permissions on their devices. By default, Office users must have local administrator permissions on their devices to install language accessory packs.  This policy will be applicable to the following products: Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

ID: 81957 Tags: Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, Microsoft 365 Admin Center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: October CY2021

Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Admin review and feedback

Responding to reports about phishing or junk emails from end users can be very time consuming. With the new admin review feature, your security team will be able to quickly review reported messages and choose appropriate responses, automatically sending predefined but customizable emails to your end users. Coupled with automated investigation & response (AIR), you’ll be able to free up time for more critical work.

ID: 82025 Tags: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: August CY2021

Microsoft Viva: Accelerated publishing for topic curation

Edits on topics or new, manually added topics will appear in Manage Topics view and for end users to discover within minutes.

ID: 82045 Tags: Microsoft Viva – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: October CY2021

Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Investigation updates for improved email threats and actions

We have new updates and improvements to the Automated Investigation and Response (AIR) playbooks to better capture the state of the emails and entities that are being investigated. This results in more accurate threat data and actions – which are better for security operations workflows.

ID: 82056 Tags: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), DoD, Germany, GCC High, GCC Release: July CY2021

Microsoft 365 admin center: Send users Edge adoption emails

We’ll be adding a feature titled “Get fast, secure browsing with Microsoft Edge”, on the Setup page in the Microsoft 365 admin center. This feature will let admins send a promotional email to encourage the adoption of Microsoft Edge. It will also provide the option to include instructions to turn on security and performance features in Microsoft Edge.

ID: 82146 Tags: Microsoft Edge, Microsoft 365 Admin Center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: October CY2021

Microsoft Teams: Guest Access in GCC – High

Teams now supports Guest Access between tenants inside the GCC-H Cloud.

ID: 82803 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High Release: October CY2021

Microsoft Teams: Enable Teams users to purchase Teams apps through the Teams store

Microsoft Teams users have now the ability to purchase third-party Teams app subscriptions from the Teams store.

ID: 83502 Tags: Microsoft Teams – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: October CY2021

Microsoft Teams: New assignment experience in modal window for Breakout Rooms for GCC-High

Enhanced UX for participant assignment. This includes new capabilities such as sorting participants and rooms and performing multiple selections and assignments to rooms.

ID: 85323 Tags: Microsoft Teams – GCC High Release: October CY2021

Microsoft 365 Compliance center: Advanced Audit – Search term events in Exchange Online and SharePoint Online for GCC High

Addition of Advanced Audit events that provide information on when and what a user searched for in Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

ID: 85550 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – GCC High Release: October CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: OneDrive data in Content Explorer

Display sensitive information, sensitivity labels, and retention labels detected on files and documents in OneDrive within the Content Explorer.

ID: 85626 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC Release: October CY2021

Microsoft Yammer: Restrict Yammer community posting

Gives network managers the ability to restrict who can start a thread in a community. Once this setting is enabled, only admins will have the ability to post in the community while members can only reply and react to conversations.

ID: 87114 Tags: Yammer – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: October CY2021

Microsoft 365 compliance center: Privacy management – Privacy API

To meet customers where they are in their privacy journey, we have built programmatic access to APIs so that customers can use their homegrown app or an ISV app to automatically create and manage subject rights requests in the Privacy management solution within the Microsoft 365 compliance center.

ID: 88494 Tags: Microsoft Compliance center – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: October CY2021

Canceled

Visio: Map your process data and automatically transform it into a Visio diagram

This item is being cancelled and removed from the roadmap but will be republished when the plans solidify in the future. Use the process mapping pane to map your process data and provide custom settings for automatic creation of  process flowcharts using the Data Visualizer Excel Add-in.

ID: 49979 Tags: Visio – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: December CY2021

Microsoft 365 admin center: Global Usage report for Microsoft Teams

This roadmap item has been incorporated into roadmap entry 85540. Please check this roadmap item for future updates. A new report will be made available with both tenant level aggregation and per-team level details to enable admins to get an overall picture of how the organization is using teams within Microsoft Teams.

ID: 70552 Tags: Microsoft 365 Admin Center, Microsoft Teams – Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) Release: October CY2021