Newsworthy Highlights |
How Azure Security can help Federal Agencies meet Cybersecurity Executive Order Requirements
The integration between Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel allows agencies to leverage an existing, cohesive architecture of security products rather than attempting to blend various offerings.
ProxyShell vulnerabilities and your Exchange Server
If you have installed the May 2021 security updates or the July 2021 security updates on your Exchange servers, then you are protected from these vulnerabilities. Exchange Online customers are also protected (but must make sure that all hybrid Exchange servers are updated).
Live Transcription in a Teams Meeting now available in GCC
We are pleased to announce that Live transcription in Teams meeting is now available in GCC. During a scheduled Teams meeting, you can start a live transcription of participant speech. The text appears alongside the meeting video or audio in real time, including the speaker's name and a time stamp.
What’s New in Microsoft Teams | August 2021 - 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).
Cybersecurity resources and training for U.S. public sector/government
According to industry predictions, almost six ransomware attacks will occur every minute in 2021.
Release News
Intune moving to support iOS 13/iPadOS 13+ and macOS 10.15+ later this year
Secure by Default Extended to Mail Flow Rules
Presenter support in breakout rooms - GCC Sep. 2021, GCCH Oct. 2021, DoD Nov. 2021
Advanced Delivery for Phishing Simulations and SecOps Mailboxes
We are rolling out some API improvements for working with files in the SharePoint recycle bin.
Quarantine Improvements for Microsoft Defender for O365
Tenant Allow - Block List for Files and URL's
Mailbox Receiving Limit enforcement - Hot Recipient Throttling
We are updating the options for subsite creation settings in the SharePoint admin center
References and Information Resources |
Microsoft 365 Public Roadmap
This link is filtered to show GCC, GCC High and DOD specific items. For more general information uncheck these boxes under “Cloud Instance”.
New to filtering the roadmap for GCC specific changes? Try this:
Stay on top of Office 365 changes
Here are a few ways that you can stay on top of the Office 365 updates in your organization.
Microsoft Tech Community for Public Sector
Your community for discussion surrounding the public sector, local and state governments.
Microsoft 365 for US Government Service Descriptions
- Office 365 Platform (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- Office 365 U.S. Government GCC High endpoints
- Office 365 U.S. Government DoD endpoints
- Compliance (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- Enterprise Mobility & Security (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (GCC, GCCH)
- Microsoft Cloud App Security (GCCH)
- Microsoft Defender for Identity Security (GCCH)
- Azure Information Protection Premium
- Exchange Online (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- SharePoint (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- OneDrive (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- Teams (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- Office ProPlus (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- PowerApps (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- Power Automate US Government (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- Power BI (GCC, GCCH)
- Planner (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- Outlook Mobile (GCC, GCCH, DoD)
- My Analytics (GCCH, DoD)
- Dynamics 365 US Government
Be a Learn-it-All |
Public Sector Center of Expertise
We bring together thought leadership and research relating to digital transformation and innovation in the public sector. We highlight the stories of public servants around the globe, while fostering a community of decision makers. Join us as we discover and share the learnings and achievements of public sector communities.
Microsoft Teams for Gov YouTube Video Series
The hub for teamwork in Office 365 GCC, GCC High, & DoD
Microsoft Teams for US Government Adoption Guide
Message Center Posts and Updates for Microsoft Teams in GCC |
Looking for what’s on the map for Microsoft Teams and only Teams in GCC?
Go right to the GCC Teams Feature Communications Guide
Message Center Highlights |
MC281157 – ProxyShell vulnerabilities and on-premises Exchange Servers
There have been reports of attackers compromising unpatched Exchange on-premises and hybrid servers to deploy ransomware or conduct other post-exploitation activities.
If you have installed the May 2021 security updates or the July 2021 security updates on your on-premises and hybrid Exchange servers, then you are protected from these vulnerabilities. Exchange Online customers are protected (but must make sure that all hybrid Exchange servers are updated).
Our recommendation, as always, is to install the latest Cumulative Update and Security Update on all your on-premises and hybrid Exchange servers to ensure that you are protected against the latest threats. If you have not already, please update now!
How this will affect your organization?
Your Office 365 tenant is configured with an Exchange Hybrid connector. Please check your Exchange Server environment and use this opportunity to validate that all of your on-premises and hybrid servers are up to date on Cumulative Updates and Security Updates.
Click Additional Information to find out more.
MC281145 – Retirement of (Azure AD) Graph and license assignment operations and updates to license management APIs and PowerShell
Today, as communicated on Tech Community, we are providing a reminder that the end of support for Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Graph will be on June 30, 2022. Apps using Azure AD Graph after this time will no longer receive responses from the Azure AD Graph endpoint.
Since the Azure AD Graph APIs are being retired, we are also retiring the license assignment operation in the MSOnline and Azure AD PowerShell modules.
Note: If you don't use Azure AD Graph API, do license management through MSOnline/AzureAD PowerShell, or manage licenses for your organization, you can safely disregard this message.
Key points:
· Timing: June 30, 2022
· Control type: user control / admin control
· Action: review, assess and update existing applications to access the license assignment APIs from the Microsoft Graph endpoint and update your scripts to use license assignment cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module to reduce the impact on operations. Other operations in the MSOnline and Azure AD PowerShell modules won’t be impacted.
Below are some of the operations that will no longer receive a successful response beginning on June 30, 2022.
What’s next: New license management platform:
The current license management features have grown to address the needs of our customers, with key innovations like group-based licensing. But as the needs of our customers have evolved, we decided to rebuild online services licensing platform from the ground up. Below is an early look into future changes to the platform, designed with four key goals in mind:
1. Flexibility: Expanding beyond a single administration structure, single megalithic pool of seats, or even a single tenant.
2. Simplicity: Reducing unnecessary complexity and simplify getting your licenses to your users.
3. Speed: Gaining quick access to what you’ve purchased.
4. Accuracy: Reflecting what you have purchased and the licenses you have available to assign.
Realizing the entire vision will take time, today we are sharing the first milestone in this journey. Starting in the first quarter of 2022, customers can opt-in to use the new license management platform. Here are the features you will see as part of this milestone:
· Allotments will help you separate your licenses into smaller batches so you can set limits on how many licenses are used, and delegate ownership to manage them.
· Group licensing will be extended. In the new licensing platform, Azure AD Premium or Office 365 E3 will no longer be required to use group-based licensing for license assignments. In addition, nested groups will now work for license assignments.
· New license types, including device-based licenses and ISV app licensing, will work natively on the new platform.
In the future, look forward to hearing more about the new license management platform via MC communications, including how to get started using it and details on new API and PowerShell options to leverage the new features.
MC281142 – We’re bringing Microsoft Search to GCC
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 72216
We are bringing Microsoft Search to GCC. This includes organization-wide search via the Search Box navigation header in SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, Office.com, and on Microsoft Search in Bing. This release includes customizable Bookmarks and Q&A Answers.
When this will happen?
We expect to roll out Microsoft Search to GCC customers beginning in late September and expect the rollout to be completed by early October.
How this will affect your organization?
Microsoft Search brings work answers and search results to familiar search experiences, like SharePoint and OneDrive for Business, Office.com, and Bing.
End users will be able to enter search queries and get organization-wide results and answers.
When enabled, users who go to Bing.com and sign in with a valid work account can easily and securely find the work information they need with Microsoft Search in Bing.
Search Admins will be able to customize Bookmarks and Q&A Answers via the Search & Intelligence admin center.
What you need to do to prepare?
For GCC customers, Microsoft Search in Bing is off by default.
· Search Admins can turn on Microsoft Search in Bing in the Admin Center (Settings > Search & intelligence settings > Configurations > Microsoft Search in Bing settings).
· Choose Change settings and turn on Allow your organization to use Microsoft Search in Bing.
Instructions to turn on Microsoft Search in Bing
Learn more about Microsoft Search and customizing Bookmarks and Q&A Answers here: Microsoft Search | Plan your content
Learn more about Microsoft Search in GCC here: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2169288
MC280921 – Introducing the Email summary panel for consistent navigation
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82101
We’re making it easier for security teams to see the full picture of emails within Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and Microsoft Defender 365. We launched a single, integrated view with the email entity page, and now we’re making it easier to see this information in multiple experiences. This feature release targets more consistency, and easier navigation, saving time and effort for the customers.
When this will happen?
We will start rolling out the email summary panel to our private preview customers first, then we will begin rolling out to Standard release beginning in late September and expect to complete by mid-November.
How this will affect your organization?
This will replace the traditional Explorer flyout / other flyouts with email summary panel for experiences: Explorer, Advanced Hunting, Threat Protection Status report, Submissions, Quarantine.
Experience from Explorer:
Integration with Quarantine:
What you need to do to prepare?
You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC280920 – Quarantine message preview enhancement
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82098
We’re changing the way users preview quarantined messages to provide additional security against embedded threats. With this change some components in quarantined messages will be distorted and not displayed by default. To see the full contents of the message, users can choose to reveal the full message.
When this will happen?
· We will begin rolling this out to standard release customers in mid-September and we expect to be complete by the end of September.
· We will begin rolling this out to government customers in end of September and we expect to be complete by the early of October
How this will affect your organization?
Users will not initially see all components of a message in quarantine until they click the button to load external resources within the message.
Initial View
Enhanced View
What you need to do to prepare?
No action required. You may want to update your documentation accordingly.
MC280918 – (Updated) Text formatting in Forms for GCC, GCC-High and DoD
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 68894
Updated August 25th, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
Forms users and educators can make more professional looking surveys and quizzes with highlighted and emphasized information inline. Now you'll be able to bold, italicize, underline, add bullets or numbering and even change the font size, font color when designing your forms and quizzes.
When this will happen?
We will begin rolling out in late August (previously late April) and expect to be complete in late September (previously May).
How this will affect your organization?
Consistent with Office 365 products, users can format text by using either a floating tool bar or keyboard shortcuts.
In the editing canvas of the form, designers can use the text format toolbar inline whenever they are composing text content.
What you need to do to prepare?
This Is a native feature, enabled by default.
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC280914 – Microsoft 365 Records Management – Announcing public preview of adaptive policy scopes for retention and label policies - GCC
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 70578
This new feature (preview), Adaptive policy scopes, will allow data administrators to scope retention policies and retention label policies to a dynamic set of users, SharePoint sites, or Microsoft 365 Groups. This is enabled by using the properties or attributes associated with these locations. Adaptive policy scopes work with all locations, including Exchange mailboxes, Microsoft 365 Groups, SharePoint sites, OneDrive accounts, Teams chats, channel messages (including private channels), and Yammer user and community messages.
· Before this release, admins had to manually manage what was included in each policy by creating multiple custom scripts to add or remove locations from a policy. Adaptive policy scopes will automatically add and remove applicable locations to a policy as properties change for the associated user, site, or group.
· Additionally, adaptive policy scopes are not subject to previous per-policy limits of only including 100 sites or 1000 mailboxes per policy which often caused duplicate policies in large organizations.
When this will happen?
Public preview: will begin rolling out in early September and be complete by mid-October.
Standard release: will begin rolling out in mid-October and be complete by mid-November.
How this will affect your organization?
When this feature rolls out, Compliance administrators will be able to create adaptive scopes and apply one or more of these scopes to retention policies and retention label policies.
None of your existing policies will be affected by this feature. If you plan to replace the existing policies with new adaptive policies, we recommend creating the new adaptive policies before deleting the existing policies.
What you need to do to prepare?
There is nothing you need to do to receive this feature and it will not affect your existing policies. You may consider updating any training or reference material for your Compliance administrators and determining if you have policies which would benefit from using adaptive policy scopes.
Learn more:
If you are interested in using adaptive policy scopes as they are enabled in your tenant, we recommend watching the webinar where we announced the private preview of this feature.
Note: We will be hosting a webinar on September 20th, 2021, which will describe in detail how to use this feature and we will be providing you a sign up link within a week or two in another MC update.
MC280614 – Microsoft Information Protection: Exact Data Match to support auto-labeling (client-side) (US Gov Clouds)
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82072
Organizations will soon be able to configure new or existing client-side auto-labeling policies using Exact Data Match (EDM) sensitive information types, enabling more granular control over labeling sensitive content.
When this will happen?
Rollout will begin mid-September and is expected to be complete by late September.
How this will affect your organization?
Tenant admins in the commercial cloud will be able to configure EDM sensitive information types in their client-side auto-labeling policies for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
What you need to do to prepare?
Tenant admins can create new or update existing client-side auto-labeling policies to use EDM sensitive information types, either from the Microsoft 365 compliance center or by using a cmdlet.
· Microsoft 365 Compliance Center for GCC
· Microsoft 365 Compliance Center for GCC High
· Microsoft 365 Compliance Center for DoD
Learn more:
· Create custom sensitive information types with Exact Data Match based classification.
· Automatically apply a sensitivity label to content in Microsoft 365.
MC280292 – Teams admin center: Left navigation improvements
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 83320
The left navigation in Teams admin center will be reorganized to make it easier for you to find content and navigate through Teams admin center.
When this will happen?
We will begin rolling this out to Teams admin center by mid-September and expect to complete the rollout by late September 2021.
How this will affect your organization?
We are updating the Teams admin center based on customer feedback, user studies, and community involvement. This change to left navigation organizes the Teams admin center into more closely related features. Plus, it makes it easier for you to find relevant and related tasks to complete set up and deployment within Teams admin center.
Key changes in this update include:
· Teams
o Teams section will be updated to include all pages related to Teams and Channels, Teams templates and Teams client. New additions to this section are, Teams settings page, Teams update policies page and Teams upgrade settings page.
· Users
o Users section is a newly introduced section that will include all aspects of User management.
o The current Users page will be renamed as “Manage Users”.
o Guest access, External access pages will now be found under the Users section.
· Teams devices
o Devices section will be renamed as “Teams devices” to clarify its purpose. In addition, we are renaming the following pages to ensure consistent branding of Teams devices:
§ “Teams Rooms” will be renamed as “Teams Rooms on Windows”
§ “Collaboration bars” will be renamed as “Teams Rooms on Android”
§ “Teams panels” will be renamed as “Panels”
§ “Teams displays” will be renamed as “Displays”
§ “IP phones” will be renamed as “Phones”
· Voice
o Voice section will be updated to contain all pages related to Teams Telephony, Teams Voice applications and corresponding policies.
o New additions to this section are Holidays page and Resource accounts page.
· Analytics & reports
o Analytics & reports section will be updated to include all pages related to reporting and analytics.
o Reporting labels page and Call quality dashboard will now be located under the Analytics & reports section.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your Teams administrators about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC280290 – Dynamic e911 for US WFH users
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82956
Dynamic e911 provides the ability to dynamically detect a Teams user’s location for emergency calling. Today, e911 is available for users in admin configured locations on enterprise networks only. With this new feature, we will extend the capability to users working remotely from other dynamic locations.
This is rolling out on Teams desktop, web and mobile.
Note: The release of this feature supports compliance to the United States FCC requirements for Ray Baum’s Act, and is not intended for use outside of the United States.
When this will happen?
· Standard and GCC: will begin rolling out late October and complete by mid-November.
· GCC-High and DoD: will begin rolling out late November and complete by mid-December.
How this will affect your organization?
With more and more Teams users working remotely, automatically obtaining the location in these scenarios is important to ensure timely response.
Dynamic emergency address now shows in calls app which users can edit
To enable this dynamic location lookup for non-admin configured locations:
· Admins must enable the ExternallocationLookupMode attribute in the TeamsEmergencyCalling policy.
· Users must consent to location detection.
· Users must be enterprise voice and emergency calling enabled.
Additional information:
· Admin or auto-detected dynamic addresses on Calls App depending on users’ current location.
· The ability to edit and save non-admin defined dynamic addresses.
· Users will not be able to edit admin defined location.
· Users will be prompted to add emergency addresses if it is not autodetected.
· Users can continue to manually add dynamic emergency addresses even if location auto-detection consent has been turned-off.
Dynamic emergency calling for non-admin defined locations is releasing default off.
What you need to do to prepare?
If you desire to utilize this capability, it needs to be enabled for all targeted enterprise voice users by appropriately configuring the TeamsEmergencyCallingPolicy and ExternalLookupMode.
Users should also be instructed to consent to sharing their location to Teams as well as ensure their location is accurate by acknowledging and/or editing and then saving it.
MC280286 – Retiring Teams mobile support for devices running on iOS version 13 and below
We will be retiring the Teams mobile support on iOS version 13 and below. Instead we recommend that users upgrade to newer iOS builds, which is where we will continue to invest our development resources. We will also begin encouraging users to update to the newest version of Teams if they're running builds older than 1 year.
Key points:
· Timing: The retirement will begin in early October and is expected to complete by mid-October.
· Action: Instead of using iOS 13 or below, we recommend updating to OS versions 14 and above.
How this will affect your organization?
You are receiving this message because one or more users in your organization might be using iOS mobile devices that are running on version 13 or lower.
The exiting Teams build 3.17.0 will continue to work on iOS 13 devices but there won't be any app updates going forward. In addition to this, you will not be able to reinstall the build from the app store if you uninstall Teams or reset your device.
MC280258 – (Updated) Live Captions and Live Transcript in Additional Spoken Language in Microsoft Teams Meetings - GCC
This message is associated with the following Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID's:
· Microsoft Teams: Live Captions in additional spoken languages for Teams Meetings - 70593
· Microsoft Teams: Live transcript in Teams meetings in additional spoken languages - 83615
Updated August 24, 2021: We have updated the content for additional clarity. Thank you for your feedback.
With this feature release, Microsoft Teams is expanding the language support for real-time captioning and real-time transcription.
When this will happen?
We will begin rolling this out in late August and expect to complete rollout mid-September.
How this will affect your organization?
We have expanded from just English (US) to include the below languages and dialects that are now supported by real-time captioning and real-time transcription.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC280012 – (Updated) PowerApps/PowerAutomate Retirement of Direct Links in the OneDrive and Business Connector
Updated August 26, 2021: We have updated this post for additional clarity. Thank you for your feedback.
Note: This only applies to Direct links in PowerApps/PowerAutomate. Using the Direct Link option in PowerApps/PowerAutomate does not provide the same experience as other services as the Direct links created expire after a short period of time.
The ‘Direct’ link option is being retired because rather than creating sharing links it creates file download links, which do not reflect the scope chosen by the user and may not be accessible after a short period of time.
If no users in your tenant are using the Direct Link option you can safely disregard this message.
Key points:
· Timing: Beginning September 25, 2021 we will start retiring the Direct Link option while using the ‘Create sharing link’ action in the OneDrive for Business connector in Power Apps and Power Automate
· Control type: user control / admin control
· Action: review, assess and update your apps and flows per the below directions
What you need to do to prepare?
If you are currently using the Direct link option, you have until September 25, 2021 to fix your apps and flows. After that, the action will return an error message. In order to create a long-lived Sharing Link as intended, please select "View" or "Edit" as the Link Type rather than "Direct".
Learn more about the connector:
MC279631 – Update to role-based permissions for Activity explorer
We are updating the permissions requirements for Activity explorer within the Microsoft 365 compliance center to ensure that only explicitly assigned role groups and specific roles have access to data sets in Activity explorer.
When this will happen?
Rollout will begin in late September and is expected to be complete by late October 2021.
How this will affect your organization?
Access to Activity explorer in the Microsoft 365 compliance center is currently based on membership in one of the following Microsoft 365 role groups:
Microsoft 365 role groups
· Global administrator
· Compliance administrator
· Security administrator
· Compliance data administrator
Microsoft 365 roles
· Compliance administrator
· Security administrator
With this update, we will enable Activity explorer access for the Security reader role.
What you need to do to prepare?
· This update will enable you to assign explicit access for additional roles that previously did not have the appropriate permissions to view Activity explorer. You can manage your user permissions here.
· Learn more about Activity explorer.
MC279625 – Microsoft Graph privacy controls to fully replace the classic Office Delve control – GCC
The rollout of the New Microsoft Graph privacy controls (previously announced in MC266073, June '21) was postponed for GCC. The new timeline is outlined below.
The New Microsoft Graph privacy controls allow administrators to more granularly configure the visibility of Graph-derived insights which includes documents and sites across Microsoft 365 apps and services. We also announced a six-month transition period before the new controls would replace classic Office Delve controls.
The transition and end-of-support for the classic Office Delve control and its respective settings will occur at the beginning of September. We are also introducing controls that allow people in your organization to customize insights that are available to them and to their colleagues.
When this will happen?
· Before September 1, we will transfer the opted-out statuses of any Office Delve privacy settings to the new Microsoft Graph privacy controls configuration.
· After September 1, you will need to use Microsoft Graph privacy controls to configure insights such as recommendations in the Outlook Mobile app and Office applications.
· After September 1, any Office Delve or other insights-based experiences that have been disabled will remain in a disabled state. Re-configure with Microsoft Graph privacy controls.
How this will affect your organization?
The Microsoft Graph privacy controls replace and improve on existing Office Delve privacy controls with the exception of a sub-set of controls.
We are also introducing controls when insights-based experiences are enabled either at the organization or to select users/groups. These controls allow your users to manage how their activities are used to calculate recommendations for themselves and their colleagues. These controls can be enabled via PowerShell (refer to additional information).
What you need to do to prepare?
Review the following:
If you have changed Office Delve or item insights privacy configurations within the past three months, you must thoroughly review the new item insights configuration at the administrator level.
Before September, you must ensure that you have the correct values for new item insights settings. Our transfer process migrates a single snapshot of your Office Delve privacy configuration which may have already occurred.
If you have disabled Office Delve at the organization level in the SharePoint Admin Center, we recommend implementing the Microsoft Graph privacy controls rather than the Office Delve settings. In addition, you can enable other insights-based experiences on a select group of users by using admin-controllable item insights settings.
Note: Disabling Delve does not disable Microsoft Graph. Office Graph and Microsoft Graph are different concepts despite their similar names. For more info about Microsoft Graph, see Overview of Microsoft Graph
Learn more:
· Customizing item insights privacy in Microsoft Graph
· Introducing new privacy controls with the Microsoft Graph (August 2020)
MC279469 – (Updated) 1:1 VOIP and PSTN call recording and transcription in Calls App V2 - GCC
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 83497
Updated August 24, 2021: We have updated the content to show as intended. Thank you for your feedback.
Microsoft Teams will now release ability to record and transcribe 1:1 VOIP and PSTN calls and show the recording and transcription in Call history in the calls details panel. This is a critical feature specifically for our Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) customers. In absence of chat, PSTN callees do not have a way to view call recordings and transcriptions.
When this will happen?
· We expect to begin this roll out to Standard and GCC tenants in late September and expect the rollout to be completed by mid-October.
· We expect to begin this roll out to GCC-High and DoD tenants in late October and expect the rollout to be completed by mid- November.
How this will affect your organization?
· Call Transcription for 1:1 PSTN and VOIP calls will show in call history in call details panel.
· Call Recording for 1:1 PSTN and VOIP calls will show in call history in call details panel.
· Users can delete recording from chat and the recording will not show in call history in call details panel.
· If there are multiple recordings in a call, they will show in a list form in call history in call details panel.
Meeting Recording Chicklet in Call details panel
Call Details Panel
Meeting Transcript in Call Details Panel
What you need to do to prepare?
Teams admins will need to make sure that AllowCloudRecordingForCalls and AllowTranscriptionForCallingis turned on to enable recording and transcription of 1:1 VOIP and PSTN calls.
MC279468 – Tenant setting to disable the creation of new SharePoint 2013 workflows
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82078
SharePoint tenant admins and global admins may disable the creation of new SharePoint 2013 workflows in their tenant by using a new parameter, -StopNew2013Workflows, in the Set-SPOTenant PowerShell command.
NOTE: Minimum PowerShell version required to run this command is: 16.0.21513.12000 (Shipped on August 10, 2021).
When this will happen?
This tenant setting will be generally available by late August 2021.
How this will affect your organization?
If the tenant setting is set to true, then users in that tenant will be unable to create new 2013 workflows. Please note that existing 2013 workflows can continue to run and be modified even if this tenant setting is enabled.
If the tenant setting is not enabled (i.e. the default state), the there is no impact to your organization and new 2013 workflows may continue to be created.
What you need to do to prepare?
If you enable this tenant setting, you may wish to inform your end users that they can no longer create new 2013 workflows. When they attempt to do so in SharePoint Designer 2013, they will see the following error: "The SharePoint admin has disabled the creation of new workflows. Existing workflows will continue to run."
MC279445 – Plan for Change: Intune moving to support iOS 13/iPadOS 13 and higher later this year
As mentioned in MC262974, later this year we expect iOS 15 to be released by Apple. Microsoft Intune, including the Intune Company Portal and Intune app protection policies (APP, also known as MAM), will require iOS 13/iPadOS 13 and higher shortly after iOS 15’s release.
How this will affect your organization?
If you are managing iOS/iPadOS devices, you might have devices that will not be able to upgrade to the minimum supported version (iOS 13/iPadOS 13). Provided that Office 365 mobile apps are supported on iOS 13/iPadOS 13.0 and higher, this may not affect you; you’ve likely already upgraded your OS or devices.
See the following Apple documentation for devices to check which devices support iOS 13 or iPadOS 13 (if applicable).
For instructions on how to check in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center which devices or users may be affected, read below.
What you need to do to prepare?
Check your Intune reporting to see what devices or users may be affected. For devices with mobile device management (MDM) go to Devices & All devices and filter by OS. For devices with app protection policies go to Apps & Monitor & App protection status & App Protection report: iOS, Android.
To manage the supported OS version in your organization, you can use Microsoft Endpoint Manager controls for both MDM and APP. For more information, please review: Manage operating system versions with Intune - Microsoft Intune | Microsoft Doc.
MC279444 – Plan for Change: Intune moving to support macOS 10.15 and later with release of macOS 12
As mentioned in MC262782, with Apple's expected release of macOS 12 Monterey in the fall of 2021, Microsoft Intune, the Company Portal app and the Intune MDM agent will be moving to support macOS 10.15 (Catalina) and higher shortly after the release.
How this will affect your organization?
This will only affect you if you currently manage, or plan to manage macOS devices with Intune. This may not impact you because your users have likely already upgraded their macOS devices. See macOS Catalina is compatible with these computers – Apple Support for a list of devices that are supported.
Note: Devices that are currently enrolled on macOS 10.13.x and 10.14 will continue to remain enrolled even when those versions are no longer supported. New devices will be unable to enroll if running macOS 10.14 or below.
What you need to do to prepare?
Check your Intune reporting to see what devices or users may be affected. Go to Devices & All devices and filter by macOS. You can add in additional columns to help identify who in your organization has devices running macOS 10.14 or below. Request that your users upgrade their devices to a supported OS version before the release of macOS 12.
MC279093 – Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Service Health and Message center Communications
To provide greater clarity in Service health and Message center, we are consolidating communications for Microsoft 365 Defender services under the service listing ‘Microsoft 365 Defender’. Once this change is in place, the service listing for ‘Microsoft Defender for Endpoint’ will be removed, and future communications related to the service will appear under ‘Microsoft 365 Defender’.
When this will happen?
This will begin rolling out in early September and complete by the end of September.
How this will affect your organization?
Service health and Message center communications related to Microsoft 365 Defender services, including Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, will appear under the ‘Microsoft 365 Defender’ service listing.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might consider updating your administrator training and documentation as needed.
MC279091 – Announcing new Device discovery capability in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint – Government (GCC)
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 85569
Device discovery will increase security visibility on unmanaged devices in the network and its impact will be minimal to negligible. This new feature will be turned on in Basic mode beginning in late August. On October 31st, the mode will be switched to Standard mode unless configured otherwise through the device discovery settings.
· Basic mode is a passive device discovery method that generates no network traffic and provides limited information on discovered devices.
o This mode will be enabled for all Microsoft Defender for Endpoint onboarded devices.
· Standard mode uses smart, active probing to discover even more devices and enrich existing device information.
Key points:
· Timing:
o In late August, Basic device discovery mode will be enabled by default. Standard mode can also be enabled, which uses active smart probing in addition to Basic mode.
o Beginning October 31st, Standard discovery will be on by default.
· Action: Review and assess impact for your organization.
How this will affect your organization?
Device discovery will be enabled in your Microsoft Defender for Endpoint tenant in late August.
Beginning October 31st, Standard discovery will be on by default for supported devices. This mode can be modified in the Device Discovery settings in the Microsoft 365 security center.
When Standard mode is enabled, minimal network activity generated by the discovery sensor might be observed by network monitoring tools in your organization.
What you need to do to prepare?
Discovered devices will appear in the device inventory list beginning late August. Once available, you can enable or modify Standard discovery settings.
Note: On October 31st, Standard discovery will be enabled unless configured otherwise. If there are sensitive areas in the network that need to be excluded from being probed, they can be added to an exclusions list. A Microsoft Defender for Endpoint admin can add exclusions through the settings page in Microsoft 365 Security Center. Visit Configure device discovery for discovery configuration information.
Learn more about Basic and Standard device discovery modes:
· Announcement blog introducing the feature on tech community
MC279090 – Microsoft Information Protection: New enhancements to auto-labeling for OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online
Microsoft 365 Roadmap IDs 85560 and 85557
Auto-labeling with Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels for data at rest in OneDrive and SharePoint Online helps you to automatically designate Excel, PowerPoint, and Word files as Sensitive based on policies and rules that you can configure. As part of enhancements to the feature, we are rolling out new capabilities that provide for a faster simulation experience, including faster content sampling and allowing you to deploy policies targeting all OneDrive and SharePoint Online sites within your tenant.
Auto-labeling for sensitivity labels in Exchange helps you to automatically classify and protect emails by applying labels to mail data in transit. As part of enhancements to the feature, we are introducing new conditions for auto-labeling in Exchange Online. A policy can now apply a label to mail based on sender, recipient, subject, or header matches without requiring you to scan for sensitive content.
When this will happen?
Rollout will begin in late October and is expected to be complete by late November.
How this will affect your organization?
Auto-labeling in SharePoint Online and OneDrive has been updated with improved performance and enabled to allow you to select all of your OneDrive and SharePoint Online sites. The configuration limit of 10 locations in a policy has been removed. Any new simulation will run more efficiently and results will render in hours rather than days.
There is no change to your existing enforced policies. You can edit existing policies to add more OneDrive and SharePoint sites and to leverage the enhanced simulation experience.
With auto-labeling in Exchange Online, you can currently auto-label mail by looking for specific sensitive content (such as credit card) in the mail or attachment. Now you can choose a policy to apply a label to identify sensitive information in an email that you want labeled and the label can be applied automatically.
The full list of new conditions includes the following:
· Sender address
· Sender domain
· Sender address word match
· Sender address pattern match
· Recipient address pattern match
· Recipient membership
· Header pattern match
· Subject pattern match
In addition, an exception condition for all new and existing conditions is also available.
What you need to do to prepare?
For auto-labeling in OneDrive and SharePoint Online, if you have existing policies in simulation, please re-run your simulations.
Global Administrator, Security Administrator, or Compliance Administrator.
Get started by reviewing documentation:
· Learn about sensitivity labels.
· Apply a sensitivity label to content automatically.
MC279089 – Lightweight Plans in Planner
With the upcoming “Meetings” solution: New hybrid work innovations in Microsoft Teams Rooms, Fluid, and Microsoft Viva, meeting participants can quickly capture tasks and expect them to automatically sync into the Microsoft 365 Task Ecosystem (Planner, To do/Outlook, and Teams Task app). To enable this, meetings create a plan in Planner for the captured tasks.
To support this more ad-hoc form of task tracking, Planner now supports plans that don’t require an M365 Group, which we are calling “Lightweight plans”. Instead of using Groups, access to these plans is determined by a simple list of members stored in Planner that can contain any user with a valid AAD ID in that tenant (more details below).
The basic functionality of Lightweight plans is:
· Lightweight plans can be created by meetings as described above, and through our Graph APIs. There is no current way to create them in Planner UI
· Once created, Lightweight plans appear in Planner alongside existing Microsoft 365 Group plans, and can be interacted with via UI the same way
· All members have equivalent permissions: Any existing member can add / remove other members, and create / edit / delete tasks and the plan itself
· Plan features tied to M365 groups are disabled in these plans, incl. links to OneNote / SP Site, comments on tasks, and uploaded attachments
· The Lightweight plan will be deleted when the last member is removed
· There are no other changes to plan functionality for Lightweight Plans compared to existing Microsoft 365 Group plans
Additional notes:
· There are no changes to Planner licensing or storage for Lightweight Plans compared to existing Microsoft 365 Group plans
· “Lightweight plans” do not result in the creation of any objects in AAD
When this will happen?
The APIs for Roster containers (which is how Lightweight plans are enabled, see below) will be enabled on Graph for all tenants starting in mid-September and expect to complete by mid-October.
How this will affect your organization?
When this feature is released, plans can be created outside of Microsoft 365 groups. Lightweight plans are not subject to existing Microsoft 365 group controls.
What you need to do to prepare?
If you would like your tenant to be able to utilize “Lightweight plans” (i.e., plans that aren’t contained by a Microsoft 365 Group), you will need to make sure Roster containers are enabled (since this is how we enable Lightweight plans, as described below).
Alternatively, there are tenant admin settings that can disable the creation of Roster containers (and thus Lightweight plans) in a tenant: Disable the creation of Roster containers in your organization's Planner tenant - Microsoft Planner | Microsoft Docs.
Note that disabling the creation of Roster containers means that your tenant will not be able to take advantage of the Meeting Notes integration with Task Ecosystem, such that tasks captured in a Meeting will not sync to M365 Task Apps.
In addition, see updated data export documentation that covers new Roster-related info.
How Roster containers relate to Lightweight plans
To enable Lightweight plans, we are introducing a new type of container in the Planner service, which we are calling “Roster containers”. Lightweight plans are simply the plans attached to Planner Roster containers.
Note that Roster containers are a Planner-only concept, and do NOT create objects in AAD. They are NOT an equivalent to M365 groups. A single “Roster container” can only contain a single Lightweight plan.
MC278894 – Updates to spam reporting
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 85561
We're working on creating consistent reporting experiences for customers, and as a result we're retiring the standalone spam detections report. A new Spam detections report view will now be available in the Threat Protection Status report.
Key points:
· Timing: We expect to begin rolling this out in to standard release and government customers in mid-September and we expect to complete the rollout by late September.
· Roll-out: Tenant level
· Action: Review and assess usage of Get-MailDetailSpamReport and begin usage of Get-MailTrafficATPReport and Get-MailDetailATPReport cmdlets once available.
How this will affect your organization?
Admins should note that the Get-MailDetailSpamReport standalone cmdlet will be retired and replaced with Get-MailTrafficATPReport and Get-MailDetailATPReport cmdlets.
Old Standalone Spam Report
New Spam Report Views
What you need to do to prepare?
Admins should update their report settings to start using the new cmdlets to properly view spam reporting that will be available in the threat protection status report.
MC278893 – Breakout Rooms Presenter support - GCC
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 81118
We are adding the ability for organizer to extend the management of Breakout Rooms to specific presenters. This feature will enable meeting organizers to add and remove presenters as Breakout Room managers.
By taking control from Breakout rooms management panel, appointed presenters will be allowed to perform Breakout room operations as manager or meeting organizer, as well as joining Rooms as Breakout Room manager.
This is rolling out on desktop only.
When this will happen?
Rollout will begin mid-September and should be complete by late September.
How this will affect your organization?
Organizers who will configure and manage Breakout Rooms on a Teams desktop client will have access to appoint Presenters as
Breakout Room managers. Currently, only users who are named presenters from the same tenant are supported to become Breakout rooms managers.
When Breakout rooms managers join the meeting, they will see the Breakout rooms icon in toolbar.
Presenter support toggle in Breakout Room settings
Breakout rooms managers will have to take control to manage rooms. (Only one manager can manage rooms at the same time).
Once in control, Breakout rooms managers can perform operations to manage Breakout rooms, such as:
· assign users to rooms
· add/delete rooms
· open/close rooms
· re-assign users to rooms
· send announcements
· recreate rooms
· set timer
· adjust other Breakout rooms settings
Presenter support Take control button
When rooms are started, all Breakout room managers (also those not in control) can join opened Breakout Rooms by clicking on the 
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
Learn more:
Use breakout rooms in Teams meetings will be updated after launch
MC278891 – Breakout rooms: Pre-meeting room creation and participant assignment - GCC
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 81390
We are adding the ability for meeting organizers to pre-create rooms ahead of a meeting start and perform participant assignment tasks (both auto and manual) in advance.
This is rolling out on desktop only.
When this will happen?
Rollout will begin mid-September and should be complete by late September.
How this will affect your organization?
Via this capability, organizers of Channel and Private meetings will be able to perform the following Breakout Rooms configuration tasks before a meeting begins:
· Bulk creating / deleting rooms
· Adding / deleting / renaming individual rooms
· Configuring meeting options for each room
· Adjusting settings for breakout rooms session (timer, selecting breakout rooms managers and more)
· Pre-assigning participants via both manual and automatic assignment options
Before a meeting starts, meeting organizers will be able to access a new tab in scheduling form called Breakout rooms that will enable them to pre-create breakout rooms and pre-assign participants.
Breakout Rooms pre-meeting panel
Note:
· During live session, rooms will only be managed via the Breakout Room panel in the meeting itself (organizer or BR manager are required to join the meeting)
· Only invited attendees will be available for assignment, up to 300 participants (At this time, invited channel members will not be available for pre-assignment)
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate
Learn more:
Use breakout rooms in Teams meetings will be updated after launch.
MC278885 – Plan for Change: Intune App SDK support for iOS/iPadOS 15 and Android 12
Later this year, we expect the release of iOS/iPadOS 15 and Android 12, and we will be releasing new versions of the Intune App SDK for iOS and Intune App SDK for Android.
How this will affect your organization?
Our service telemetry indicates you have applications using our Intune App SDK or Intune App Wrapper.
What you need to do to prepare?
For applications using the Intune App SDK or Wrapper for iOS:
· If you have an app using Azure Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL) ARKit, you will need to adopt the new version of the Intune App SDK (v 14.7) which will be released in August.
· If you choose to build apps with Apple's XCode 13, we will release a new version of the Intune App SDK for iOS shortly after XCode 13's official release that you will need to use.
· If you wrap the app, you'll want to use the latest wrapper (15.0.0 or higher) available in August.
For applications using the Intune App SDK or Wrapper for Android:
· If you choose to build apps targeting Android API 31, you will need to adopt the new version of the Intune App SDK for Android (v 8.0) which will be available in September.
· If you’ve wrapped your app and are targeting API 31 we will be releasing a new wrapper you will need to use, timeline is still to be determined.
You should also plan to update your documentation or developer guidance if applicable to include this change in support for the SDK.
Here are the public repositories:
· Intune App Wrapper for Android
MC278815 – Microsoft 365 apps and services support for IE11 has ended
As previously communicated, (MC220490 - August 17th, 2020), Microsoft 365 apps and services have been focusing their efforts on modern browser support over the last year. As of today, August 17, 2021, Microsoft 365 apps and services no longer support Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) and users may have a degraded experience, or be unable to connect to, those apps and services from IE11. These apps and services will phase out over weeks and months to help ensure a smooth end of support, with each app and service phasing out on independent schedules.
Microsoft 365 applications and services
· Timing: Microsoft 365 apps and services no longer support IE11 as of today, August 17, 2021.
· Action: To access Microsoft 365 apps and services using a supported platform, open with Microsoft Edge, another supported browser, or use an applicable Win-32 app (if available).
For a full list of Microsoft apps and services that have ended (or will end) support for IE11, please review Microsoft apps and services to end support for Internet Explorer 11.
Note: While Microsoft 365 apps and services no longer support IE11, the IE11 desktop application remains a supported browser by Microsoft until June 15, 2022. On June 15, 2022, the IE11 desktop application will be retired and go out of support on certain versions of Windows 10.
Please see our retirement announcement and FAQ page for more details.
How this will affect your organization?
Important: Support is now unavailable for Microsoft 365 apps and services on IE11. Additionally, you should expect no new features and that the daily usage experience for users could get progressively worse over time until the apps and services are disconnected. Banners will be used to communicate and to alert users to upcoming changes in experiences, such as app or service disconnection and/or redirection.
Initial degraded experiences beginning today, August 17, 2021, include:
· Outlook Web App: Users logging in with AAD accounts will have the full experience but will not receive new features moving forward. Users logging in with Microsoft Accounts (MSA) will be redirected to the Outlook Web App Light experience.
SharePoint’s Open with Explorer and View in File Explorer in IE11 features:
· These features only exist in IE11 and while some customers may continue to use them, they will remain in maintenance mode and will not receive further development. We recommend transitioning to Microsoft Edge and OneDrive Sync for a better user experience and will soon bring the View in File Explorer feature in the Modern SPO Document Library to Microsoft Edge as well (more details to come). Please read this article for more information.
What you need to do to prepare?
To avoid an unsupported and degraded experience, or one where you are unable to connect to Microsoft 365 apps and services, upgrade to Microsoft Edge as soon as possible. Microsoft 365 apps and services will continue to support Microsoft Edge.
Additional Information:
· If you’d like help upgrading your organization’s devices to Microsoft Edge, FastTrack can help.
o Self-service automated tools are also available through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
· For help with web app and site compatibility, learn more about the App Assure program.
· Read more about these changes in the Lifecycle announcement.
o Our blog also provides more information about these announcements.
· To learn about the IE11 desktop application retirement on June 15, 2022, please read this retirement announcement blog.
MC278676 – Change to the minimum iOS system requirements for Outlook for iOS and watchOS
If your organization does not use iOS or watchOS, you may disregard the below message.
We are changing the minimum iOS system requirements for Outlook for iOS and watchOS.
Outlook for iOS:
· Outlook for iOS is supported on the two most recent versions of iOS.
· With iOS 15 currently in beta, Outlook for iOS is preparing to remove support for iOS 13.
· Once iOS 15 is released to GA, the system requirements for Outlook for iOS will be updated to reflect support for iOS 15.
· Microsoft will update the minimum system requirements for the Outlook for iOS app from iOS 13 to iOS 14.
watchOS:
· Microsoft will remove support for watchOS 6.
· watchOS 7 and 8 will be the only supported versions for Apple Watch.
How does this affect me?
After iOS 15 is released, Outlook devices running iOS 13, or lower will no longer receive Office app updates. At that time, customers will be able to continue to use the older version of Outlook for iOS. Once they update their device to iOS 14 or above, they will receive the newest version of Outlook.
Over time, Outlook for iOS on iOS 13 devices will eventually stop synchronizing email and calendar data, unless they have a supported version of iOS.
This change does not affect anyone using Outlook for iOS apps on iOS 14 or above.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change?
You should consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate and communicate this change to your users to ensure they update their device operating system.
Please click Additional Information to refer to the current minimum system requirements for Office 365.
MC277640 – Spam Notification in Call Toast
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 85386
We are thrilled to bring you Spam Call Notifications. This unique, vanguard feature release will enable calls that are likely Spam calls to be identified in the call toast. This is rolling out to Teams desktop and web.
· All answered or missed calls that are likely Spam calls will be reflected respectively in the call history screen as well.
When this will happen?
We will roll this out in late August.
How this will affect your organization?
Users will be able to save time by not answering calls that likely spam. The spam notification label will automatically show up on calls that are likely Spam calls.
Spam notification
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
Note: This is rolling out default on however, although we do not recommend it, you can disable via PowerShell.
Set-CsTeamsCallingPolicy -Identity Global -SpamFilteringEnabledType "Disabled"
MC277639 – Microsoft 365 roadmap site updates
We will be making updates to the Microsoft 365 roadmap on how you view, filter, search for, and sort the information.
When this will happen?
We will roll this out in early September.
How this will affect your organization?
The below changes are coming to help your organization better organize and manage key information on the Microsoft 365 roadmap.
UI changes
· See last added will be removed from the header and can be accessed in the filters, under New/updated
· Filters will be moving just below the header image, in line with the search bar, so it’s easier to view your selected filters and if you have search turned on
· The features will be displayed on feature cards, as opposed to a table format, in order to optimize space and make information easier to view
· You will be able to sort the feature cards by either preview date or Generally Available (GA) date
· Status will be represented visually on the feature card to save space and make it easier to perform a quick scan
· Feature cards will be easier to collapse if you want to explore looking at the status, title, and preview and GA dates
· On the feature card;
o you will be able to see tags organized by category (product, release phase, platform, cloud instance)
o you will be able to initiate a feedback submission (the feedback experience does not change)
· Mobile view – the same changes will be applicable in mobile view so you can easily view, sort, filter, and search
API changes
· Preview date will be a new data point available to you
· The filters or tags will be prefaced by a category name
Understanding the new Preview data
· Not all features will have public previews, however when a public preview date is available, it will be displayed
· The status of a roadmap item (In Development, Rolling Out or Launched) will be in relation to the GA date and not the preview date
The Preview data will be available and the roadmap item’s description will be updated to read, “This item is currently available in Public Preview” when the following is true:
· Roadmap item has a Preview Tag, Preview Date and we are in the Preview Month
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about these changes and update any documentation as appropriate.
MC277638 – Integration of submission from quarantine with Admin and User Submission
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82097
Admin/ User Submissions coming from the quarantine portal were slotted into a separate submission channel than the channel that was used for the Admin submission coming from the submission portal and the user submission coming from the outlook report message Add-in.
Maintaining two different submission channel increases the time it takes for submissions made to Microsoft to be graded. With this integration, there will be a reduction in the times it take for submission made to Microsoft to be graded.
In addition, we provide End users with the ability to report messages to Microsoft from the quarantine console without giving the Admins the ability to disable this functionality. With this integration, Admin will now have the ability toggle the end user report message capability in quarantine On or Off.
When this will happen?
· We will begin rolling this out in to standard release customers in mid-August and we expect to be complete by the end of August.
· We will begin rolling this out to government customers in early September and we expect to be complete by the end of September.
How this will affect your organization?
Previous Admin View
New Admin View
Admin toggle button for end user reporting
End user view controlled by toggle button
What you need to do to prepare?
Admins should ensure that security personnel documentations are updated to reflect these changes.
MC277466 – SharePoint spaces adds styles for text and annotation icons
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 70733
This new SharePoint spaces feature enables the creation of immersive mixed reality environments that can be authored and published just like SharePoint pages. The new styles feature for text and annotation icons simplifies creation of consistent and great looking content. Text styles make consistent formatting easy to apply with just a click. Annotation icon styles allow customization of icon, size, and visual style for icons used to highlight specific content in the spaces 360° tour web part.
When this will happen?
Targeted release (entire org): will begin and complete rolling out in late August.
Standard release: will begin rolling this out in late August and expect to complete rollout mid-September.
How this will affect your organization?
For text styles, authors will see an option to select from four default styles in the property pane of the spaces text web part. They can modify these default styles and can also add four more custom styles. If they don’t need to use styles, they can still manually customize the formatting of a text web part using existing options.
In the 360° tour web part, authors will be able to adjust the size of the icon, select a different icon to display, and adjust the visual style of the icon display. This flexibility will allow 360° tour authors to categorize annotations more effectively, reduce the size of annotation icons to focus more attention on the 360° image, and better match the visual look and feel of the icons to the 360° image contents.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify SharePoint spaces users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
· SharePoint spaces text web part documentation
· SharePoint spaces 360° tour web part documentation
MC277465 – Improved API support for working with files in the SharePoint recycle bin
We’re rolling out some API improvements for working with files in the SharePoint recycle bin. These changes will not impact end-user experiences, but will make the contents of recycled files accessible by APIs with the use of a special request header. These updates will also result in some new change log behavior. Applications that consume operations from the change log may need to be updated to work as intended. More details about these changes can be found on the SharePoint: Developer Blog.
When this will happen?
· We expect these updates to begin rolling out to Targeted Release tenants in early September and expect the rollout to be completed by mid-September.
· We expect to begin rolling these updates out to Standard tenants in mid-October and expect that rollout to be completed by late November.
How this will affect your organization?
Since there are no changes to user experience, this update will only impact some API based solutions. Applications that consume operations from the change log may need to be updated to work as intended.
What you need to do to prepare?
Please read the detailed documentation on the SharePoint: Developer Blog.
MC277413 – General Availability of automatic labeling using trainable classifiers in Office apps for Windows and Web (gov clouds)
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82119
Within the Microsoft 365 compliance center, you will now be able to create sensitivity labels and corresponding automatic or recommended labeling policies in Office apps using built-in classifiers as well as your own custom trainable classifiers.
When this will happen?
Rollout will begin in mid-September and is expected to be complete by mid-October 2021.
How this will affect your organization?
The following Office applications will support automatic sensitivity labeling using built-in trainable classifiers (Resume, Source code, Threat, Harassment, Profanity), as well as your own custom trainable classifiers:
· Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (formerly Office 365 Pro Plus) for Windows, Current Channel in version 2009 and later:
o Word
o Excel
o PowerPoint
o Outlook
· Office Online Apps (Opt-in to enable sensitivity labels required)
o Word Online
o Excel Online
o PowerPoint Online
o Outlook Web
What you need to do to prepare?
Get started creating labels and policies in the Microsoft 365 compliance center:
· Microsoft 365 compliance center for GCC
· Microsoft 365 compliance center for GCC-High
· Microsoft 365 compliance center for DoD
Learn more by reviewing this documentation:
· Manage sensitivity labels in Office apps - Microsoft 365 Compliance | Microsoft Docs
MC277412 – Microsoft 365 compliance center: Data connectors from 17a-4, LLC and CellTrust available for GCC
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82120
You can use data connectors to import and archive third-party data from social media platforms, instant messaging platforms, documentation platforms, and to mailboxes in your Microsoft 365 organization. This enables you to extend various Microsoft 365 compliance solutions to the imported content, helping ensure that non-Microsoft data is in compliance with the regulations and standards that affect your organization. We're rolling out a new set of data connectors to expand this capability to an additional group of third-party data sources.
When this will happen?
Rollout will begin in late August and is expected to be complete by mid-September.
How this will affect your organization?
The following data connectors from 17a-4 LLC and CellTrust are being onboarded to the GCC environment:
17a-4 data connectors:
· Blackberry DataParser
· Bloomberg DataParser
· Cisco Jabber DataParser
· Cisco Webex Teams DataParser
· FactSet DataParser&
· Fuze DataParser
· FX Connect DataParser
· ICE DataParser
· InvestEdge DataParser
· LivePerson Conversational Cloud DataParser
· Refinitiv Messenger DataParser
· Saleforce Quip DataParser
· ServiceNow DataParser
· Skype for Business Server DataParser
· Slack DataParser
· SQL DataParser
· Symphony DataParser
· Zoom DataParser
Note: Before you can archive third-party data in Microsoft 365, you have to work with 17a-4 to set up their archiving service (called DataParser) for your organization.
Refer to documentation for additional details.
CellTrust data connectors:
· CellTrust SL2
Note: Before you can archive third-party data in Microsoft 365, you have to work with CellTrust to set up their archiving service (called CellTrust SL2) for your organization. Refer to documentation for additional details.
Additional third-party data connectors will be made available within the Microsoft 365 compliance center as they complete testing and attestation, and will be communicated via Message Center.
What you need to do to prepare?
MC277410 – Feature Update: Modern comments in Word (Windows)
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 76186
As originally announced in March of 2021, MC240609 introduced the Modern comments feature in Microsoft Word for Windows. This post extends that support content and contains updates to the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
We’re rolling out a new comments experience in Word with improved keyboard shortcuts as well as improved @mentions and notifications. This experience unifies how comments work across Word, Excel, and PPT.
Key points:
· Timing:
o Current Channel Preview, February 2021
o Current Channel, August 2021 (previously, June 2021)
· Roll-out: User-level
· Action: review and assess
How this will affect your organization?
When this has rolled out to your users, they will see the modern comments experience, which allows them to @mention and post comments without worrying that co-authors will see their comments before they are complete.
Modern comments provides a consistent commenting experience across Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Users will be able to respond to comments directly from an email notification. The new design provides a focused view of comments as well as an optional all comments view via the Comments pane. With the new post model, Ctrl+Enter is a keyboard shortcut for posting comments.
The new experience shows comments to the right of the page by default. This default focused view hides all resolved comments so you can focus on active comments. The Comments button in the upper right corner of your Word window lets you switch to the Comments pane. This shows all comments in the document including resolved comments.
Note: Modern comments will temporarily include support for an opt-out toggle in Word’s Options dialog. This will allow users to revert the comments experience to our legacy comments model while we continue to iterate on the new experience and listen to customer feedback. If you use Group Policy to manage Office settings, there will be a policy setting that admins can use to turn off the ability for users to opt-out of Modern comments.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC277112 – Introducing background effects on the web
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 85738
Introducing background effects on web. If you want to change what appears behind you in your video meeting or call, you can either blur your background or replace it entirely with any image you want.
Note: Blurring or replacing your background might not prevent sensitive information from being visible to other people in the call or meeting.
When this will happen?
We expect this rollout to begin in early September and expect the rollout to be completed by late September
How this will affect your organization?
Web users will now have the ability to use background effects for video calls. You can manage the Video effects policy via PowerShell or via the Tenant Admin dashboard.
MC276896 – Announcing automatic redirection from Office 365 Security and Compliance Center to Microsoft 365 Defender portal
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82107
We will soon begin redirecting users from the legacy Office 365 Security and Compliance center (protection.office.com) to Microsoft 365 Defender portal (security.microsoft.com), for all security workflows including: Alerts, Threat Management and Reports.
Items in the Office 365 Security and Compliance center that are not related to security will not be redirected to Microsoft 365 Defender. For compliance solutions redirection to Microsoft 365 Compliance Center, see (March 2021, MC244886).
This is a continuation of our migration of the security workflows to the Microsoft 365 Defender portal, which we started in March 2021.
For customers who have already enabled automatic redirection, as part of the previous communication when announcing the New Home for Microsoft Defender for Office 365, automatic redirection will now include alerts and alert policies redirection, in addition to all previously redirected features. As before, customers will still be able to turn off automatic redirection.
Please refer to the redirection support documentation here for additional details.
Key points:
· Timing: Rollout will begin in mid-September and is expected to be complete by late October.
· Roll-out: tenant level
· Control type: admin control
· Action: review and assess
How this will affect your organization?
Users accessing the security solutions in the Office 365 Security and Compliance center (protection.office.com) will be automatically redirected to the appropriate solutions in the Microsoft 365 Defender (security.microsoft.com). This change enables users to view and manage additional Microsoft 365 Defender security solutions in one portal.
· This change impacts all customers who use the Office 365 Security and Compliance center (protection.office.com). For the full list of impacted licenses, see Security & Compliance Center - Service Descriptions | Microsoft Docs.
· This change impacts all users who log into the Office 365 Security and Compliance portal (protection.office.com), including security teams and end-users (who access the Email Quarantine experience).
What you need to do to prepare?
Redirection is enabled by default, and impacts all users of the tenant.
Global Administrators and Security Administrators can turn off redirection in the Microsoft 365 Defender portal by navigating to Settings > Email & collaboration > Portal redirection and switch the redirection toggle.
MC276032 – OneDrive sync client will no longer update or be supported on macOS Sierra 10.12 and macOS High Sierra 10.13
If your organization is not using macOS you can safely disregard this message.
The OneDrive team is committed to bringing you the best, most secure experience possible across your devices. As such, we are ending support for the OneDrive Desktop application (sync client) on macOS Sierra 10.12 and macOS High Sierra 10.13 and focusing our resources on new technologies and supported operating systems. Going forward, only the three most recent versions of macOS will be supported. When a new major version of macOS is released, we will support the new version and the previous two versions.
Note: Both macOS Sierra 10.12 and macOS High Sierra 10.13 have been out of Apple’s mainline support since September 2019 and November 2020, respectively.
Key points:
· Timing: September 10th, 2021
· Action: review and update impacted machines as appropriate.
How this affects your organization?
How users will be impacted after this change has rolled out:
· Existing OneDrive sync client installations on unsupported operating systems will stop updating. These clients will continue to run, but their functionality will no longer be tested. It is not advised to continue to run on these unsupported operating systems.
· New installations on unsupported operating systems will be blocked.
· Bugs and issues found on or specific to unsupported operating systems will no longer be investigated or fixed.
What you need to do to prepare?
To ensure a smooth transition we recommend that you upgrade machines accordingly. We recommend you upgrade to macOS Mojave 10.14 or above. For the best user experience and longest support lifecycle, we recommend upgrading to macOS Big Sur 11.0 or above.
MC276031 – Up to 25,000 members per team in GCC-High
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 85339
We are pleased to announce that you can now add up to 25,000 members per team in GCC-High. Once this rolls out to your tenant, all new and existing teams will be able to grow and host up to 25,000 members.
We expect this rollout to begin early September and expect the rollout to be completed in October.
How this will affect your organization?
All new and existing teams will now be able to host up to 25,000 members.
What you need to do to prepare?
No special preparation needed. You may want to update your documentation as necessary.
MC276029 – SharePoint updates for disabling subsite creation
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82122
This new update will improve the options for subsite creation settings in the SharePoint admin center. Currently, SharePoint admins can control the ability for site owners to create new subsites. This update makes the setting options for new subsite creation easier to understand and prevents users from being able to create subsites using alternate paths when the subsite setting is disabled.
When this will happen?
· Targeted release (entire org): will begin rolling this out in early September and expect to complete rollout mid-September.
· Standard release: will begin rolling this out in late September and expect to complete rollout mid-October.
How this will affect your organization?
Admins in the SharePoint admin center can choose to either enable or disable subsite creation across sites or enable for classic sites only. Now, when disabling subsite creation, not only will the subsite option be hidden from the command bar including classic but also users will not be able to create new subsites directly through an URL or API.
· The option: Hide the Subsite command has been renamed to Disable subsite creation for all sites and will also hide the subsite creation command (including classic) and disable users from being able to create new subsites through a URL or API.
· The option: Show the Subsite command only for classic sites, has been renamed to Enable subsite creation for classic sites only.
· The option: Show the Subsite command for all sites, has been renamed to Enable subsite creation for all sites.
What you need to do to prepare?
Review the subsite creation options for your organization. You might want to notify users, update your user training, and prepare your help desk if users were relying on creating subsites using the URL or API previously.
Note: Instead of using subsites, we recommend that you use hub sites. SharePoint hub sites allow you to group similar topics and content together using modern architecture design. Plan to create hub sites and share hub site planning guidance with site owners instead of using subsites.
MC276028 – (Updated) Plus addressing to be enabled for all Exchange Online Customers
Updated August 12, 2021: Based on initial feedback, there are several scenarios where organizations do not wish to have plus addressing enabled. For those organizations, a new setting will be added to disable it before the change takes place in 2022. Thank you for your feedback.
Plus addressing support in Exchange Online was released in September 2020 as an opt-in feature. This was due to preexisting usage of plus signs (+) for email addresses in the service. At the same time, we made plus addressing on by default for new customers.
With the successful introduction of the feature, we are now making plus addressing an always-on feature and removing the opt-in setting. Due to legacy mailboxes with email addresses containing plus signs (+), we are announcing a long notice period to allow customers to transition away from these mailboxes or addresses. This includes mailboxes on-premises.
Key Points:
· Timing: Starting in January 2022, plus addressing will be turned on for all customers and the setting will be removed.
· Action: Retire any email addresses that contain plus signs (+) for hosted and on-premises mailboxes to avoid email delivery disruptions.
How this will affect your organization?
If you don't stop using email addresses with plus signs (+), Exchange Online may be unable to deliver emails to them when plus addressing is turned on for the entire service.
What you need to do to prepare?
To fix any potential problems, remove any addresses with plus signs (+) from your organizations' mailboxes.
If you are not blocked from using plus addressing, you can still enable plus addressing for your organization before January.
Review the following to learn more about plus addressing: Plus Addressing in Exchange Online
MC276024 – Announcing new preview features for insider risk management solution (gov clouds)
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82126
The following public preview features are now available or rolling out soon to government clouds for the insider risk management solution in Microsoft 365:
· Export alerts
· Azure Active Directory (AAD) account deletion triggering event
· Insider risk management audit log
When this will happen?
Export alerts and audit log are now available in public preview.
Azure Active Directory account deletion triggering event (preview) will roll out in mid-August and is expected to be complete by early September 2021.
How this will affect your organization?
Now available in preview:
· With Export alerts, insider risk management alert information is exportable to security information and event management (SIEM) services via the Office 365 Management Activity API schema.
· The insider risk management audit log enables you to stay informed on the actions that were taken on insider risk management features. This log allows independent review of the actions taken by users assigned to one or more insider risk management role groups.
Coming soon to preview:
· Azure Active Directory account deletion triggering event allows you to automatically detect account deletion in Azure Active Directory to start scoring for risk indicators in the Data theft by departing users template.
What you need to do to prepare?
Access the insider risk management solution within the Microsoft 365 compliance center:
· Microsoft 365 compliance center for GCC
· Microsoft 365 compliance center for GCC-High
· Microsoft 365 compliance center for DoD
Learn more:
· Data theft by departing users
· Insider risk management audit log (preview)
MC275807 – Removing Message Trace in SCC. Move Custom Queries to Message Trace in the new Modern EAC
Attention: We will be retiring Message Trace in the Security and Compliance Center (SCC) from the Security Portal beginning October 5th, 2021.
· In place of this feature, we recommend you use the Message Trace in the Exchange Admin Center (EAC), which is where we will continue to invest our development resources.
How this will affect your organization?
You will not be able to use Message Trace in the Security and Compliance Center after October 5th, 2021. Message Trace has the options to use default queries, custom queries, and autosaved queries.
· Custom queries in Message Trace in the Security and Compliance Center portal will not be migrated to the new Modern EAC portal. Message Trace custom queries in the Security and Compliance Center are stored differently from custom queries on Message Trace in the new Modern EAC.
Another key difference in Message Trace in the new Modern EAC portal is that your custom queries are stored on a per user basis unlike Message Trace on SCC where custom queries were being stored on a per-tenant basis. Therefore, in the new Modern EAC a user will not be able to see a custom query created by another user. In the SCC, when a user created a custom query, other users were able to see the custom query created due to it being stored at the tenant-level. This is due to privacy and security reasons for EAC.
What you need to do to prepare?
Note: If you have custom queries stored in Message Trace in the Security and Compliance Center that you want to keep, you will need to recreate these queries in Message Trace in the new Modern EAC. If not, they will not be able to be retrieved after Message Trace in the SCC is removed.
For more information, see Message Trace in the new Modern EAC.
MC275678 – In Development for Microsoft Intune is now available
The “In development for Microsoft Intune” page in our documentation has been updated.
How does this affect me?
The In development page provides a list of features in upcoming releases of Microsoft Intune to assist in your readiness and planning. The list has now been updated. You’ll start seeing these changes in the next month or in a subsequent release.
What do I need to prepare for this change?
You can inform your IT staff and helpdesk of the upcoming changes listed on this page. Plan to update your end user guidance, if you feel any of these features would be important to your end users.
MC275573 – Service Health and Communications API in Microsoft Graph V1 and legacy API retirement
The service communications API in Microsoft Graph is now available! Following the preview announcement (MC257688 in May 2021), this API provides access to Message center and Service health posts for your tenant, and replaces the previous Service Communications API.
With the new API now broadly available, we will be retiring the legacy version of the Service Communications API beginning December 17th, 2021.
When this will happen?
The legacy version of the Service Communications API will be retired on December 17th 2021.
How this will affect your organization?
Any users, applications or tools using the legacy Service Communications API endpoint via https://manage.office.com will no longer be able to pull service health or message center communications when this change goes into effect on December 17th 2021.
What you need to do to prepare?
Instead of using the legacy Service Communications API, we recommend using the new Service Health and Communications Graph API.
MC275570 – SharePoint: Title Region Gradient
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82091
This new feature will allow SharePoint page authors to remove the background gradient on title region images.
When this will happen?
Targeted release (entire org): will rollout beginning in mid-August.
Standard release: will begin rolling out from mid-August and be complete in late August.
How this will affect your organization?
Users with permission to author SharePoint pages will see a new toggle in the title region panel.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC275349 – The settings that allow users to create groups in the Azure portal have been improved
The Azure Active Directory settings that control how users can create security and Microsoft 365 groups have been updated.
In the Azure portal, if you set either Security Groups or Microsoft 365 Groups to No, your settings may have been updated to Yes. Please validate these settings are correct for your tenant.
Here are the previous settings:
Here are the new settings:
· The previous settings, when set to No, would still allow users to create groups in PowerShell and APIs and other portals, but not in Azure portals. To ensure this setting is honored consistently across the Azure portals, PowerShell, and API, we introduced an updated setting.
· The new settings, when set to No, will not allow users to create groups in Azure portals, PowerShell, or via the API.
· The new settings, when set to Yes, will allow users to create groups in Azure portals, PowerShell, and via the API.
Starting in May 2021, there was a transition period of a few weeks where you could select your preferred default values before the new settings took effect. If you did not specify your preferred default values during this transition period the new settings were set to the previous API settings. If you had previously set these values to No in the Azure portal, these values may have been reset during the implementation if the API settings still allowed users to create groups.
How this will affect your organization?
These new settings control how users are allowed to create security and Microsoft 365 groups in Azure portals, as well as PowerShell and API.
What you need to do?
Follow these steps to ensure these new settings are appropriate for how you would like groups to be managed in your organization.
1. Sign in to the Azure portal as Global Administrator or Privileged Role Administrator.
2. Navigate to Azure Active Directory > Groups > Settings General.
3. Verify and, if necessary, update the following settings:
o Security Groups: Users can create security groups in Azure portals, API or PowerShell
o Microsoft 365 Groups: Users can create Microsoft 365 groups in Azure portals, API or PowerShell
Learn more:
· Users can only create security and Microsoft 365 groups in Azure portal being deprecated
MC275159 – Skype for Business retirement update for customers using an attendant console solution
Note: If your organization does not use an attendant console solution that integrates with Skype for Business Online, please disregard this message.
As announced in July of 2019, Skype for Business will be retired as of July 31, 2021. If your organization uses an attendant console solution that integrates with Skype for Business Online, you may request an extension of the Skype for Business Online service through the Teams admin center.
Microsoft expects an Azure Communication Services-based solution to become available in 2022. As such, customers may request an extension of the Skype for Business Online service to maintain continuity of their attendant console applications until a solution is available for Microsoft Teams. Follow the steps within the Teams admin center to request an extension and mention “attendant console” and the name of the partner solution as the primary reason for requesting the extension. Ensure you submit your request prior to your assisted upgrade date to avoid a potential disruption of service. If you have already requested an extension of service for Skype for Business Online, there is no additional action for you to take at this time.
MC275152 – Ability to swap content and gallery is coming back
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 65943
This feature update will allow you, when in a Teams meeting and someone shares content, to now click on participant videos in gallery view to swap the content with gallery, effectively bringing videos to the center and content to the side or top.
Note: Unlike earlier, when Large Gallery was disabled when content was shared, you can now launch Large Gallery when somebody is sharing screen or other content.
You are also able to use the swap feature when using Together mode.
· When you swapped the content with video gallery, click again on content to bring the content back to the center.
When this will happen?
Rollout will start in mid-August and complete by end-August.
How this will affect your organization?
All users will now be able to swap between shared content and people gallery.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC274188 – (Updated) Teams Meeting Recording Auto-Expiration in OneDrive and SharePoint
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 84580
Updated August 19, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Additionally, We have updated this post to correct the setting modification capability limitations and will provide an additional update when those limitations are corrected.
As part of the evolution of the new Stream (built on SharePoint), we are introducing the meeting recording auto-expiration feature, which will automatically delete Teams recording files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint after a preset period of time.
Note: The cmd to preemptively change the MeetingExpirationDays setting in Teams is not available yet, we apologize for the inconvenience. It will be available for all tenants to set by September 1st before the expiration feature is enabled.
Key points:
· Timing: late September through mid-November
· Roll-out: tenant level
· Control type: user control and admin control
· FAQs: https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/cloud-recording#auto-expiration
· Action: review, assess and decide what you want the default expiration period to be for your organization
How this will affect your organization?
New recordings will automatically expire 60 days after they are recorded if no action is taken. The 60-day default was chosen as, on average across all tenants, most meeting recordings are never watched again after 60 days. However this setting can be modified if a different expiration timeline is desired.
To change the default expiration days at the tenant level, there will be two methods available.
1. You can use PowerShell to modify “MeetingRecordingExpirationDays.” This can be done at any time, as the setting is present in PowerShell today even though the feature is not yet enabled. An example command is: "Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global -MeetingRecordingExpirationDays 50”
2. As this feature is rolled out, a new setting will be available in the Teams admin center.
Users (except for users with A1 licenses) can also modify the expiration date for any recordings on which they have edit/delete permissions, using the files details pane in OneDrive or SharePoint. A1 users will receive a 30-day expiration default that can be reduced but not increased. To retain recordings for longer than 30 days A1 users will need to download the file to a non-synced folder.
At either the tenant or user level (excluding A1 users as noted above), the expiration timeline can range from one day to several years, or even set to never auto-expire.
Additional clarifications:
· The expiration setting is not a retention setting. For example, setting a 30-day expiration on a file will trigger an auto-deletion 30 days after the file was created, but it will not prevent a different system or user from deleting that file ahead of that schedule.
· When a recording is deleted due to the expiration setting, the end user will be notified via email. The SharePoint tenant or site admin, or the end user with edit/delete permissions will be able to retrieve the file from the recycle bin for up to 90 days.
· Any retention/deletion/legal hold policies you have designated in the Compliance center will override this feature. In other words, if there is a conflict between your designated Compliance policy setting and the expiration setting, the compliance policy timeline always wins.
· The admin does not have the ability to override end-user modification capabilities.
· This will not impact any existing meeting recordings created before the feature is deployed. Also, any changes to the default date in the admin console will only apply to newly created meeting recordings after the change is made.
· The min number of days that can be set on MeetingRecordingExpirationDays is 1 and the maximum is 99,999 (e.g. 273 years).
· This feature does not impact meeting recordings stored in Microsoft Stream (classic Stream) but will affect recordings stored in the new Stream (built on OneDrive and SharePoint).
· This feature is only available for Teams meeting recordings created by the Teams service in OneDrive and SharePoint. It is not available for other file types in OneDrive and SharePoint.
What you need to do to prepare?
Once we enable the setting modification, please change the default if you do not want to inherit the 60-day default we are setting for you. An updated message center post will be published when modification is possible.
If you are going to specify a tenant level expiration standard, inform your user base about the change before we deploy it so that they are aware they will need to take action to retain their new recording files past the specified time period once the feature is enabled.
Learn more about the feature in these FAQs.
MC271632 – (Updated) Registration available for View Only Attendees - GCC
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 65952
Updated August 24, 2021: An issue was found during testing and we will need to delay shipment of the feature. We will provide an updated timeline via Message center when we are ready to proceed. Thank you for your patience.
View-Only Attendees are now able to register for your Webinars as a normal attendee would. Previously, View-Only Attendees did not have registration support.
When this will happen?
We expect to begin rolling out this feature early August and expect to complete rollout by mid to late August
How this will affect your organization?
You will now be able to have your View-Only Attendees register for your Webinar.
What you need to do to prepare?
No action is required from you. If you would like to learn more about View-Only Attendees, please read this documentation.
MC271630 – (Updated) GCC Microsoft Forms: Correct Answer choice in Teams Meeting Forms Polls
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82095
Updated August 12, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
This new feature introduces Correct Answer choices to Polls within Teams meetings and will roll out across Microsoft Teams Desktop, Mobile and Web. The new update will make poll creation as frictionless as possible and gives presenters control of their meeting experience.
When this will happen?
Rollout will begin in mid-August (previously early August) and complete by the end of August (previously mid-August).
How this will affect your organization?
Presenters will be able to mark a correct answer for their multiple-choice polls in Teams meetings when performing a quick knowledge check or engaging colleagues during a training session and the correct answer choice will be shown after voting in the Results card.
This feature exists for Teams Meeting polls and will pop up as a window on the screen.
· Correct answer choices can be selected on multiple choice questions only.
· Correct answer can be a single option, or multiple if "multiple answers" is enabled.
Choosing multiple choice poll from three available options
Creating question and possible multiple choice answers + setting which is correct answer choice
After selecting answer, correct answer and poll results are shown
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC271075 – (Updated) SharePoint News Boost
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 70810
Updated August 24, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
This new feature will allow you to prioritize important news and announcements at the top of news feeds across Microsoft 365. Additionally, you can even prioritize visibility of a news article for a set time that you can control.
When this will happen?
We will begin rolling out in early September (previously late July) and expect to complete by the end of September (previously mid-August).
How this will affect your organization?
You can now boost important news posts on organizational news sites, to all employees & ensure higher readership.
Boost news in Command bar
Boost configurations
Boost article example
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify all organization news site admins and authors about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC270177 – (Updated) Releasing Fluid live components in Teams chat – GCC
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82779
Updated August 06, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
Co-authoring content in Teams just got easier. Now you can send a chat message containing a live component that can be edited inline—in real time—by everyone in the chat.
Key points:
· Timing:
o Standard: we will begin rolling this out in mid-September (previously mid-August) and expect to complete rollout late September (previously late August).
o GCC: we will we will begin rolling this out in late September (previously early September) and expect to complete rollout mid-October (previously late September).
· Roll-out: tenant level
· Control type: user control
· Action: review and assess
How this will affect your organization?
Fluid components in Teams chat allow end users to send a message with a table, action items, or a list that can be co-authored and edited by everyone in line and in the future will be shareable across Office applications like Outlook. Users will be able to quickly align across teams, and get work done efficiently by copy and pasting components across Teams chats.
With Fluid components users can ideate, create, and decide together, while holding fewer meetings and minimizing the need for long chat threads.
Steps on Desktop:
1. Go to the box where you type a chat message and click on Insert live components right beneath the box.
2. Select the type of component you want to insert into your message. (Make sure the box is empty—with no other text in it—when you do this.)
3. Enter content into the component. Change permissions if needed.
4. When ready, send your message.
Steps on Mobile:
1. Tap Compose options in the + menu , then tap Components , and select the type of component you want.
2. Enter content, and when ready, tap Send.
To co-edit a live component with other chat members:
1. Simply click inside the component and start typing.
2. See others editing with you in real time.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC268726 – (Updated) Real-time messaging protocol (RTMP) Streaming Support to Custom Endpoints
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 83562
Updated August 12, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
Microsoft Teams will support the ability for your users to stream their Teams meetings and webinars to large audiences through real-time messaging protocol (RTMP) including endpoints outside your organization.
This feature will rollout on desktop and Mac.
When this will happen?
· Standard: begin rolling this out in late September (previously late August) and expect to complete rollout by late October (previously mid-October).
· Government: We will begin rolling this out in late September and expect to complete rollout by late October.
How this will affect your organization?
With this feature enabled, Microsoft Teams will support the ability for your users to stream their Teams meetings and webinars to large audiences via RTMP, including endpoints outside your organization (such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube).
What you need to do to prepare?
This feature will rollout default OFF. If you would like to enable this feature, you can do so by turning on LiveStreamingMode user-level policy with the following command in Powershell:
· Set -CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -LiveStreamingMode Enabled
Visit this help documentation for more information.
MC268725 – (Updated) Microsoft Teams: webinars plus new meeting registration options for GCC
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 83611
Updated August 17, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
We are excited to announce the forthcoming availability of Teams webinar capabilities, beginning rollout in early August 2021
Associated features that apply to webinars and meetings, include:
· Registration page creation with email confirmation for registrants.
· Reporting for registration and attendance.
These capabilities will be available to users with the following licenses: Office 365 or Microsoft 365 E3/E5/A3/A5/Business Standard/Business Premium.
For the rest of 2021, we are offering temporary availability to Teams users to try the features with their existing commercial subscription.
Note: We will honor any existing meeting settings enabled within your organization.
Key points:
· Timing: beginning mid-September (previously August) through mid-November (previously early September)
· Control type: user control / admin control / admin UI
· Action: review and assess
How this will affect your organization?
When scheduling a meeting, your users will see the Webinar option on the Calendar drop down menu in Teams (desktop/web).
Additionally, users will be able to add registrations for meetings and webinars for people in your organization and outside of your organization.
The registration feature will be on by default For everyone. In order to view who attended the webinars, we recommended setting the “AllowEngagementReport” policy to true. Please see previous June (MC260565) for how to configure Attendance report policy.
Note: We will honor any existing meeting policies enabled within your organization:
· If allow scheduling private meetings is turned off, then users will not be able to schedule webinars.
· When anonymous join is disabled for the tenant, users can schedule a public webinar but it will fail on join.
· SharePoint lists are required in order to set up webinars. To set this up, learn more here: Control settings for Microsoft Lists
What you need to do to prepare?
By default, all users within your tenant will be able to schedule webinars unless current policy configuration prohibits it.
Should you wish to restrict who can host a webinar that requires registration for everyone, change the WhoCanRegister policy accessed in the Teams admin center.
· You can disable this policy tenant-wide
· You can enable this policy for specific users
You can manage the registration feature in the Teams admin center or with PowerShell commands. There are three options for admin management.
· Turn off registration for the entire tenant (set AllowMeetingRegistration to False)
· Turn off registration for external attendees (set AllowMeetingRegistration to TRUE and WhoCanRegister to EveryoneInCompany)
· Give select users the ability to create a registration page that supports external attendees. All other users would be able create a registration page for people inside the tenant. (Leverage the New-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet to create a new meeting policy that includes AllowMeetingRegistration to TRUE and WhoCanRegister to Everyone and then assign that to your specific users)
These policies are managed via PowerShell.
· Edit an existing Teams meeting policy by using the Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet.
· Create a new Teams meeting policy by using the New-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet and assign it to users.
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC268191 – (Updated) Meeting Join Custom Branding - GCC
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 79957
Updated August 03, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience. Additionally, this feature will be available as a preview until December 31, 2021. After that, an Advanced Communications license is required to continue using this feature, as noted below.
This new release of meeting Join Custom Branding will allow tenant admins to upload their company logo to the Teams admin portal so it appears on the meeting pre-join and lobby screens for meetings organized by members of their tenant.
The logo will be seen by users joining on desktop, web, and mobile.
When this will happen?
Rollout will begin at the end of August and be complete in early September (previously late July).
How this will affect your organization?
This update gives users who join your meetings a branded experience distinctive to your tenant. The feature is part of the Advanced Communications license, meaning the logo will appear only if the meeting organizer has the license. The feature has been implemented as a meetings policy to give tenant admins choice and the flexibility to apply the logo to certain members or globally.
· Multiple logos can be upload at once, allowing you to assign different logos to different people or groups if that's helpful for your tenant.
· You will have an option to preview how the logo looks before uploading.
Manage customization policies
Custom lobby meeting customization
Custom lobby preview
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC267584 – (Updated) Microsoft Exchange Online – Configuration Change for online meetings by default
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 81995
Updated August 24, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
Whether you’re working from home or meeting with people in other locations, we will be making a change so that all meetings created in Outlook will automatically be online to allow everyone to attend. This will rollout on desktop, web, mobile and Mac.
When this will happen?
This will rollout starting in mid-September (previously August) and will complete by the end of October (previously late November).
How this will affect your organization?
If you want all the meetings in your organization to be online by default, there is nothing you need to do. You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
If you don't want all the meetings in your organization to be online by default, you will need to disable this feature using PowerShell. If you check your current organization settings, you’ll notice that PowerShell returns the organization’s effective setting value. The current default – if the organization has never explicitly configured this setting – is $false. Thus, if you run the cmdlet today, you will see $false unless you had explicitly changed the value to $true.
This update will change the default value to $true. So, if you have explicitly configured this to $false in the past, that value is locked in and will continue to be $false even after this update. If you have never explicitly configured this setting, you will see $false currently and that will change to $true with this update. However, if you explicitly set the value to $false before this update, it will remain as $false even after the update. To summarize, this change only changes the default value for organizations that have never explicitly changed this setting. If you have already configured this setting in the past, its value will not change with this update.
You can also disable this feature per mailbox using the Set-MailboxCalendarConfiguration cmdlet, which has similar default value logic. Please click Additional Information for a link to the Set-OrganizationConfig cmdlet.
MC266077 – (Updated) SharePoint Collapsible Sections
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 67147
Updated August 24, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. While in Targeted Release we received valuable feedback around the behavior of anchor links when used in collapsible sections as well as some formatting issues experienced by users of right-to-left languages. We feel that both of these issues are important for us to address prior to making the feature generally available. We are actively addressing these issues now and expect the solution to reach General Availability with all fixes in place by the end of September 2021. Thank you for your patience.
This new feature will allow users to create rich, information-dense SharePoint pages. As part of this release, we will enable the page author to configure sections within the SharePoint page to be able to expand, collapse and set the default page-load state for the section.
When this will happen?
We will begin rolling out to Targeted release (select users and organization) in early July (complete) and expect to be complete for Standard release in late September (previously late July).
How this will affect your organization?
This feature will give authors new ways to build rich and interesting SharePoint pages.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC265759 – (Updated) Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Extending Secure by Default for Exchange Transport Rules (ETRs)
Updated August 24, 2021: We have updated the content for additional clarity. Thank you for your feedback.
Microsoft believes it’s critical to keep our customers secure by default. We have determined that legacy overrides tend to be too broad and cause more harm than good. As a security service, we believe it's imperative that we act on your behalf to prevent your users from being compromised. This means these legacy overrides will no longer be honored for email messages we believe are malicious. We already apply this approach with malware messages and now we have extended it to messages with high confidence phish verdicts. We have been taking a very deliberate approach to rolling out these changes in phases to ensure customers are not surprised and there are no negative side effects. We began to rollout Secure by Default for high confidence phishing messages by the override type starting in December 2020 (Roadmap ID 60827). Today, we’re at a point in our Secure by Default journey where the following overrides are not honored for malicious emails (malware or high confidence phish emails):
· Allowed sender lists or allowed domain lists (anti-spam policies)
· Outlook Safe Senders
· IP Allow List (connection filtering)
We are now extending Secure by Default to cover high confidence phishing messages for the remaining legacy override type, Exchange mail flow rules (also known as transport rule or ETRs).
Key Points:
· Timing: We will begin rolling out Secure by Default for ETRs starting at the end of August (previously early August) and complete rollout by end of September (previously early September).
· Action: Review and assess impact.
How this will affect your organization?
After the last phase of Secure by Default is enabled in August for ETRs, Defender for Office 365:
· Will no longer deliver messages with a high confidence phish verdict, regardless of any explicit ETRs.
· Will no longer recommend using ETRs to configure third-party phishing simulations or Security Operations mailbox message delivery.
What you need to do to prepare?
If you are currently using Exchange mail flow rules (also known as transport rules or ETRs) to configure your third-party phishing simulation campaigns or delivery for security operation mailboxes, you should begin to configure these with the new Advanced Delivery policy when the feature is launched in July (Roadmap ID 72207). For more information, please refer to message center post MC256473. Administrators should also use the submission portal to report messages whenever they believe a message has the wrong verdict so that the filter can improve organically. We are further improving this experience with the integration of the Tenant Allow/Block List (TABL) in the Admin submission portal. With this update, you will be able to override filtering verdicts and allow similar messages while your submission is being reviewed. Please see message center post MC267137 to learn more.
Note: If your organization has compliance requirements that make it necessary to opt out of this change, that requirement is met by Microsoft Defender for Office 365 continuing to honor the ETR when MX record points away from us (not O365).
Learn more:
· Microsoft Defender for Office 365 tech community blog announcing the final phase of Secure by Default rollout: Mastering Configuration Part Two (microsoft.com)
· How we are keeping customers secure: Secure by default in Office 365 - Office 365 | Microsoft Docs
· MS documentation on the new Advanced Delivery Policy: Configure the delivery of third-party phishing simulations to users and unfiltered messages to SecOps mailboxes - Office 365 | Microsoft Docs
MC263839 – (Updated) OneDrive: Sharing experience – “Shared with”
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 83725
Updated August 06, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
At the bottom of the Share Dialog, the "Shared with" list of people will give you an at-a glance view of everyone you’ve given access to a file. This change should make it easier to know who has access and how many people have access to your files. Clicking on the "Shared With" list will lead you to the Manage Access view. Sending a file via the Share Dialog should also return a visual confirmation of who you've just sent it to.
When this will happen?
· Targeted release (entire org): Will begin rolling this out in early July and expect to complete rollout mid-July.
· Standard release: Will begin rolling this out in mid-July and expect to complete rollout mid-August (previously late July).
How this will affect your organization?
Users who have the right permissions and interact with the OneDrive/SharePoint share control will easily be able to jump into Manage Access by clicking on the "Shared With" list for more control and granularity.
Note: Some users may see this feature before other users within your organization.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your customers about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC263055 – (Updated) Paging in Large Gallery
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 84464
Updated August 12, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
This feature introduces paging to help you view up to 98 videos by choosing Large Gallery (Teams meetings currently supports up to 49 videos). This is rolling out on Windows, desktop and Mac.
When this will happen?
· Large Gallery (9x9): We will begin rolling this out in late June and expect to complete rollout by mid-July.
· Video Gallery (3x3): We will begin rolling out in mid-September and expect to complete by late September
How this will affect your organization?
When you choose Large Gallery, and if there are more than 49 videos, navigation controls < and > would appear below the Large Gallery and you can use these controls to view or engage with more video participants.
Note: The same functionality of paging will soon be available (September) in normal 3x3 Gallery.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC262781 – (Updates) Microsoft Defender for Office: Updates to investigations
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82056
Updated August 3, 2021: We have updated the external resources below for additional detail. Thank you for your patience.
We are improving Microsoft Defender for Office automated investigation email clustering and actions to ensure that actions only occur on malicious emails still in the mailbox. This will result in more accurate threat information, with fewer email actions, and refreshed actions/data.
When this will happen?
The rollout of the updated email clustering will begin in mid-June (June 21st) and will be complete by the end of August (previously late July).
How this will affect your organization?
Microsoft Defender for Office’s automated investigations improvements use all threats and the latest delivery location of an email, to provide clearer info and email actions.
Prior to this update:
Investigations analyzed emails using original delivery action (i.e. delivered to inbox). This meant an investigation for emails would proactively request email deletion even if emails were already removed from mailboxes.
Update improvements:
Microsoft Defender for Office automated investigations will now leverage the latest delivery location, the same as Explorer and Advanced Hunting. Investigations will now only queue actions for approval when malicious emails are still in the mailbox (latest delivery location is inbox or junk folder).
· If all malicious emails are not in the mailbox, then the investigation indicates the threats, but treats them as remediated with no action required.
· Email cluster details show how many emails are ‘in mailbox’, ‘not in mailbox’ and ‘on-premise/external’.
We are also improving email evidence, so it aligns with threats in Explorer like emails, email clusters, URLs, and files to indicate phish confidence level, as well as spam verdicts.
· Email clusters show counts for those threats and for deciding actions. Investigations only queue actions for malware or high confidence phish. Spam and normal phish are suspicious with no actions.
· Investigations’ pending actions focus on the most significant problems and reduce unneeded action on normal phish. This reduces the number of investigations requiring action and focuses them on the most significant problems.
To provide more updated and accurate information to security teams, investigations that are pending approval will update email results periodically, until either the investigation expires or actions are approved/rejected. Updating email data for the investigation will update threats found, the location of the emails, and any pending actions.
· If all malicious emails are removed from the mailboxes after an investigation is completed, but before the investigation’s pending actions are approved – then the pending actions will get closed.
· If email actions have been thus mitigated/taken due to actions elsewhere, then the investigation will change to remediated and alerts resolved for the investigation.
· This ensures security teams get clear visibility into present problems, not just previously identified issues that may have been resolved already.
What you need to do to prepare?
Notify your security operations team of this upcoming change that will reduce the number of actions they see, change data gathered during an investigation and update the deeplink from investigation/incident/action center to Explorer to use latest delivery location.
Learn more:
· Incident and Investigation Evidence
· Email analysis in investigations for Microsoft Defender for Office 365
MC259845 – (Updated) Teams meeting invite recipients limit from Outlook
Updated August 26, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
We're making some changes to limit the number of individual recipients allowed for scheduling a Teams meeting from Outlook (Win32 and Win64 client only at this time). We will apply this limit for meetings created with more than 750 recipients in the invite. This limit does not apply to the content of Distribution Lists and therefore we encourage users to use Distribution Lists when inviting a large number of attendees to a Teams meeting.
When will this happen?
We will roll-out this change beginning in late June and expect to complete by late September (previously late August).
How this will affect your organization?
Users using Outlook (Win32 and Win64) will see an error message dialog when trying to schedule or reschedule a meeting with a number of attendees larger than the new 750 recipient limit and will be required to reduce the number of recipients or user Distribution Lists to send the meeting invite.
Note: If using a client other than Outlook (Win32 or Win64), extra attendees will be automatically dropped.
What you can do to prepare?
You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC259495 – (Updated) End-to-end encryption for Teams calling - GCC
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 70780
Updated August 24, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
End-to-end encryption is the encryption of information at its origin and decryption at its intended destination without the ability for intermediate nodes to decrypt. Teams will support an option to use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for ad hoc 1:1 Teams VoIP calls. To support customer security and compliance requirements, IT will have full control of who can use E2EE in the organization.
When this will happen?
We expect to begin rolling this out in late September (previously late August) and expect the rollout to be completed by early October (previously mid-September).
How this will affect your organization?
· Admins:
o A new policy will be added and it will have parameter to enable E2EE for 1-1 calls, default value is OFF so no impact until enabled. Admin can enable E2EE for a set of users or entire tenant.
· End users:
o If allowed by admin, the end user will see E2EE option in their settings, by default it will be OFF until switched ON by end user. E2EE calls will only support basic calling features like audio, video, screen share, chat and advanced features like call escalation, transfer, record, merge etc. will not be available.
What you need to do to prepare?
· E2EE calls first release will only support basic calling features and many advanced features like escalation, call transfer, recording, captions etc. will not be available in E2EE calls, end users will be made aware of all the limitations when they opt-in.
· E2EE will work only when both caller and call receiver have enabled E2EE
· Feature will be available on Desktop and Mobile clients only
MC257468 – (Updated) Power Apps can now display images from Microsoft Lists
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 81986
Updated August 26, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
Power Apps image controls can now display images that are stored in image columns in Microsoft Lists. Images can be displayed in four sizes: small, medium, large, or full.
When this will happen?
· Targeted release will begin rolling out in early October (previously mid-July) and will be complete by mid-October (previously end of July).
· Standard release to all other cloud environments will begin mid-October (previously end of July) and be complete by end of October (previously early August).
How this will affect your organization?
New apps that use the SharePoint connector to add a list as a data source may display images from the list if they are present in the list. Existing apps can also be updated to show images.
What you need to do to prepare?
You might want to notify your users about this new functionality and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
Learn more:
· SharePoint connector documentation
MC257236 – (Updated) Saved feature is being retired from Microsoft Teams on web, desktop, and mobile
We will be removing access to the Saved feature within Microsoft Teams clients (web, desktop, and mobile) for the GCC, GCC-High, and DoD clouds.
Updated August 17, 2021: Based on customer feedback we have made the decision not to proceed with retiring the Saved feature at this time. You can safely disregard this message.
Key points:
· Timing: August 16, 2021
· Action: review and assess impact on your organization
How this affects your organization?
After the Saved feature is removed, users will no longer be able to save messages or posts, or view previously saved messages and posts.
· Web and Desktop: Any user who visits Saved (from the Me menu) will see a message informing them that the Saved app will be removed at least 30 days before the removal happens. After this notification period, all entrypoints to saved messages and posts will be removed, along with any entrypoints to the Saved feature.
· Mobile: Any user who visits Saved will see a message informing them that their saved messages and posts will no longer be available. This message will be shown to Saved visitors at least 30 days before they will no longer be able to access their saved messages and posts. After the notice period, all entrypoints to save messages and posts will be removed. Users will still see the Saved entrypoint, which will show a notice that their saved posts and messages are no longer available.
What you can do to prepare?
We recommend that users save messages and posts using Tasks, a Teams app. Messages saved as tasks can be accessed through the Tasks app through the app bar.
You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.
You can learn more about the Tasks app here: Use the Tasks app in Teams.
MC257150 – Delayed – Changes to the way EOP moves email to Junk folder
Attention: The rollout for the below changes, which were communicated earlier (March MC248005), has been delayed. The new timeline is late September through late October 2021.
Updated April 29, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
Note: This change will only effect EOP customers with Exchange online mailboxes. EOP standalone customers with hybrid environments will have no impact.
Today EOP depends on the junk email rule to move spam/phish messages to a user's Junk folder based on the spam confidence level set by EOP. Going forward EOP will use its own mailflow delivery agent to move malicious emails to the Junk folder depending on the policy set by security admins in Antispam policy. EOP will continue to honor the user safe sender/block sender preferences set in outlook just as the junk email rule does today.
Key points:
· Timing: This change will be rolled out starting in mid-May (previously late-April) through mid-June (previously end of May).
· Action: review and assess impact for your organization.
How this will affect your organization?
If your organization has users or mailboxes where the Junk email rule is disabled either due to an Exchange admin disabling it using the Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration PowerShell command or a user using a legacy(now removed) outlook web setting to disable junk, EOP will not honor that setting. EOP detected spam or phish emails will still be routed to Junk.
What you need to do to prepare?
If you do not want EOP to perform spam filtering for a mailbox, please use the Anti-spam policies or Exchange transport rules(set SCL to -1) to manage accordingly.
MC256832 – (Updated) Advanced Audit – Search term events in Exchange Online and SharePoint Online
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 68718, 85550, 81969
Updated August 4, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
We're introducing new search term events within the Microsoft 365 Advanced Audit solution to aid in your forensic and compliance investigations.
When this will happen?
· GCC rollout is complete.
· GCC-High: Rollout will begin in early October (previously early July) and is expected to be complete by the end of October (previously end of July).
· DoD: Rollout will begin early December (previously early September) and complete by late December (previously late September).
How this will affect your organization?
The following search term events will soon be available within the Advanced Audit solution:
The SearchQueryInitiatedExchange event is triggered when a person uses Outlook to search for items in a mailbox. Events are triggered when searches are performed in the following Outlook environments:
· Outlook (desktop client)
· Outlook on the web (OWA)
· Outlook for iOS
· Outlook for Android
· Mail app for Windows 10
Similar to searching for mailbox items, the SearchQueryInitiatedSharePoint event is triggered when a person searches for items in SharePoint. Events are triggered when searches are performed in the following types of SharePoint sites:
· Home sites
· Communication sites
· Hub sites
· Sites associated with Microsoft Teams
What you need to do to prepare?
Access the Advanced Audit solution by visiting the Microsoft 365 compliance center:
· Microsoft 365 compliance center for GCC
· Microsoft 365 compliance center for GCC-H
Learn more about search term events by reviewing documentation.
MC256466 – (Updated) Information barriers feature and service plan coming to GCC-High and DoD
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 70729
Updated August 4, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
With this feature release, you will now be able to configure and apply information barriers policies. You will also see a new service plan, Information Barriers, as part of your licensing details.
Key points:
· Timing: Rollout will begin in mid-August (previously early July) and is expected to be complete by end of August (previously late July).
· Roll-out: tenant level
· Control type: admin control per below roles
· Action: review and assess
How this will affect your organization?
The information barriers compliance feature enables restricting communication and collaboration between two groups to avoid a conflict of interest from occurring in your organization. After this change takes place, you’ll be able to prevent users in your organization from interacting with and viewing other members of your organization. This is particularly helpful for organizations that need to adhere to ethical wall requirements and other related industry standards and regulations.
What you need to do to prepare?
Note: To define or edit information barrier policies, you must be assigned one of the following roles:
· Compliance administrator
· IB Compliance Management
· Microsoft 365 global administrator
· Office 365 global administrator
You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.
Learn More:
· Define information barrier policies
· Learn about information barriers in Microsoft 365
MC255080 – (Updated) PowerPoint Live: Present to Teams from PowerPoint for Mac
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82712
Updated August 17, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
This new feature release will bring the PowerPoint Live in Teams entry point into PowerPoint for Mac. Clicking the "Present in Teams" button in PowerPoint will be the only step you need to take to present the deck in your Teams meeting.
When this will happen?
We will begin rolling this out in late June (previously early June) and expect to complete the roll-out mid-November (previously end of July).
How this will affect your organization?
Users can click the Present in Teams button in PowerPoint for Mac to present their slides into an ongoing Teams meeting in the PowerPoint Live mode.
There are two entry points users can choose from, one in the top right corner and the other under the Slide Show tab.
Requirements:
· Have the latest Teams desktop app installed.
· Have the latest PowerPoint for Mac installed
· Store the presentation on OneDrive for Business or SharePoint.
· Join a Teams meeting before clicking the Present in Teams button in PowerPoint for Mac.
· Be using an Office 365 E3/A3, Office 365 E5/A5, or Microsoft 365 for Government license.
MC252704 – (Updated) PowerPoint Live: Present to Teams from PowerPoint for Windows
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 80599
Updated August 17, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
This new feature release will bring the PowerPoint Live in Teams entry point into PowerPoint for Windows. Clicking the Present in Teams button in PowerPoint will be the only step you need to take to present the deck in your Teams meeting.
When this will happen?
· We will begin rolling this out to Standard release in mid-May and expect to complete the roll-out at the mid-November (previously end of July).
· We will begin rolling this out to Government at the mid-November (previously end of July) and expect to complete in at the mid-December (previously end of August).
How this will affect your organization?
Users can click the Present in Teams button in PowerPoint for Windows to present their slides into an ongoing Teams meeting in the PowerPoint Live mode.
There are two entry points users can choose from, one in the top right corner and the other under the Slide Show tab.
Requirements:
· Have the latest Teams desktop app installed.
· Have the latest PowerPoint for Windows installed
· Store the presentation on OneDrive for Business or SharePoint.
· Join a Teams meeting before clicking the Present in Teams button in PowerPoint for Windows.
· Be using an Office 365 E3/A3, Office 365 E5/A5, or Microsoft 365 for Government license.
MC248201 – Quick Create – Easily Create Power BI Reports from lists
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 72175
Updated August 17, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below for Government organizations. Thank you for your patience.
We are excited to announce the arrival of a new guided authoring experience in Lists that will make it easy to quickly create business intelligence reports in Power BI using your list schema and data.
Key points:
· Timing:
o Targeted Release: rolling out in early May.
o Standard Release: rolling out from early June (previously late May) to mid-July (previously early June).
o Government: we will begin rolling out in mid-September and expect to complete by mid-October.
· Roll-out: tenant level
· Control type: admin control
· Action: review and assess
How this will affect your organization?
List users will see a new menu option in Integrate > Power BI > Visualize this list, which allows users to create a new Power BI report using that list. With just one click, you'll be able to autogenerate a basic report and customize the list columns that are shown in the report. To take further advantage of Power BI’s advanced data visualization capabilities, just go into Edit mode. Once a report is saved and published, it will appear in the same submenu under Integrate > Power BI.
MC247656 – (Updated) PowerPoint Live: Present to Teams from PowerPoint Web App
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 80600
Updated August 17, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
This new PowerPoint for the web feature release will provide access to PowerPoint Live in Teams and with just one click, will make it easier for presenters to present their presentations from PowerPoint directly to their remote meeting audience.
When this will happen?
We will begin rolling this out in early May and complete rollout by mid-November (previously end of July).
How this will affect your organization?
While in a Teams meeting, users will be able to present their slide presentations with one click of the Present in Teams button in PowerPoint for the web to the remote audience in Teams in PowerPoint Live mode.
MC240613 – (Updated) Feature Update: Modern comments in Word (Mac)
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 76166
Updated August 10, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
We’re rolling out a new comments experience in Word with improved keyboard shortcuts as well as improved @mentions and notifications. This experience unifies how comments work across Word, Excel, and PPT.
Key points:
· Timing:
o Current Channel Preview, March
o Current Channel, August (previously June)
· Roll-out: User-level
· Action: review and assess
MC235180 – (Updated) Teams desktop app for Mac: Include computer sound in a meeting
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 67168 and 67169.
Updated August 03, 2021: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
The Microsoft Teams desktop app for MacOS will soon allow users include their computer’s sound when sharing either their desktop or a window in a meeting.
When this will happen?
· Rollout for production and GCC tenants begins in mid-May (previously early April) and should be complete in mid-June (previously late April) Complete.
· Rollout for GCC-High and DoD tenants begins in early August (previously early July) and should be complete by early September (previously early August).
How this will affect your organization?
With this update, Mac users can share audio from their speakers with other meeting participants, such as when they share a video with sound as part of a collective viewing experience.
This feature will be available to all Mac users in your tenant unless you have set the ScreenSharingMode policy to None.
This feature requires a one-time installation of an audio driver. Users will be prompted to install the audio driver when they select Include computer sound from the Share content tray in a meeting. Once installed, users can freely toggle the functionality on or off before or after they start sharing a desktop or window.
MC229363 – (Updated) Microsoft Teams: meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint - GCC
Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 67138
Updated August 4, 2021: This post has been updated with new information regarding the move of Teams meeting recordings being saved to OneDrive and SharePoint, which is on track starting August 16th, 2021.
We’re changing the storage for new Teams meeting recordings to be stored on, and served from, OneDrive and SharePoint (ODSP) - instead of Microsoft Stream (Classic). Customers are able to opt in, opt out, or take no action with regard to these changes.
This change will apply to customers who either opt in or take no action following this announcement.
Key points:
· Timing:
o January 11 2021 (Complete): Unless you delay this change, all new Teams meeting recordings will be saved to ODSP.
o Rolling out incrementally starting August 16th, 2021 (previously July 7th): All meeting recordings will be saved to ODSP.
· Rollout: Tenant level
· Control: Admin via PowerShell
How this will affect your organization?
This change impacts your organization in several ways:
· New features
o The move to ODSP immediately unlocks long-awaited features such as external and guest sharing, applying retention policy automatically, and support for GoLocal.
· Meeting storage
o Non-channel meetings: stored in the OneDrive of the person who clicked the record button and located in a new folder labeled Recordings.
o Channel meetings: stored in a new folder labeled Recordings.
· Permissions
o Non-channel meetings: all meeting invitees, except for external users, automatically get a shared link to access the meeting recording. The meeting organizer or the person that clicked the record button will need to explicitly add external users to the share.
o Channel meetings: permissions will be inherited from the owner and member list in the channel. If block downloads is enabled, channel owners will have full rights on the recordings in this folder, but channel members will have read access without ability to download.
Important feature updates for block downloads, live transcription, and more:
· Blocking the downloads of meeting recordings is now available in advance of the mandatory move to ODSP on August 16th.
o Non-channel meeting recordings: has been rolled out and turned on by default for all recordings. (Roadmap ID: 70543)
o Channel meeting recordings: Admins are now able to turn on this feature through a new Teams policy setting in PowerShell (Coming soon: Roadmap ID: 82053)
· Teams Live Transcription must be turned on during a meeting to ensure closed captions and transcripts are available in the recording playback.
o Teams Live Transcription with Speaker Attribution has now been expanded to all Office and Microsoft 365 license types (previously only available to Enterprise E3/E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium customers). . (Roadmap ID: 82029)
o Once admins enable the Teams policies to turn on meeting recording (AllowCloudRecording) and live transcription (AllowTranscription), live transcription will always be generated when a user clicks ‘Start recording’ on desktop client (currently live transcription needs to be started separately from the recording). This is being rolled out and targeting before August 16th cutover.
o Live Transcription will be available across all meeting types (including non-channel, channel & ad-hoc meetings). These are currently being rolled out. There is a chance that all the rollouts will be completed by end-August and may not be available for a brief period of 1-3 weeks after our August 16th cutover. (Roadmap ID: 82836, Roadmap ID: 81809 and Roadmap ID: 81808)
· Users can now search and manage meeting recordings from the new Stream start page (preview).
· Coming soon: Watch recordings in the new Stream video player.
· Coming soon: View the transcript next to the meeting recording.
· Coming soon: Auto-expiration of meeting recordings.
What you need to do to prepare?
Rolling out incrementally beginning August 16, 2021: All meeting recordings will be saved to OneDrive and SharePoint. We recommend that customers roll out the feature via their Teams policy in PowerShell before this date to control the timing of the release.
Customers who wish to have closed captions for Teams meeting recordings will need to turn on the Live Transcription policy.
Customers who wish to have block downloads of channel meeting recordings will need to turn on the ChannelRecordingDownload policy.
Learn more: Use OneDrive for Business and SharePoint or Stream for meeting recordings
Microsoft 365 IP and URL Endpoint Updates |
Documentation - Office 365 IP Address and URL web service
Posted at https://sl.advdat.com/3AmyxOW
