It’s time for our end-user focused catch up of updates for the week 17th – 24th April 2021 across Microsoft 365.
During the video version of this post we also have a look at a blog post by Tom Arbuthnot to check out some new Microsoft kit.
Generally, these updates look at topics of interest to end users and anyone supporting them such as trainers, team/site owners and super users.
Revised timelines
Text formatting (bold, italic, underline) Forms: late April to late May
Introducing macOS native notifications in Teams: on hold!
Prevent attendees from sharing video feed in Microsoft Teams Meetings: early to mid-May
Increasing interactive meeting participants and chat from 300 to 1000: early to mid-May
Microsoft Teams: Dynamic View: mid to late May
Multiple Spotlights coming to Teams meetings: early to mid-May
Teams
Set out of office within Microsoft Teams: With this update, you can create an out of office message from within Microsoft Teams desktop or Microsoft Teams on the web. This out of office message will sync with your Outlook calendar, presence, and contact card information.
There are two ways to access the Out of Office setting:
1. Access the Out of Office setting through the “Set status message” panel accessible from your profile image:
2. Access the Out of Office setting through the Teams application settings accessible from your profile image:
Rollout will begin early May and is expected to be complete by the end of May 2021.
MAC users: Reduce background noise in Microsoft Teams Meetings: The AI-based, real-time noise suppression that was added to Windows desktop client for Microsoft Teams in Nov 2020 will soon also be available on MAC. This feature will automatically remove background noise from your meetings.
You can set the noise suppression level before a meeting. Once changed, the setting applies to the next call.
The four settings are Auto (default), Low, High, and Off.
They are accessible from the profile image > Settings prior to a meeting and from More options … > Device settings during a meeting.
When left on the default setting, Auto, the Teams app sets noise suppression based on ambient sound.
- Low is designed for persistent background noise like an air conditioner, computer fan, or music.
- (New) High suppresses all background sound that is not speech; this setting uses more computer resources.
- Off disables the noise suppression feature.
Note: The high setting is unavailable for Mac Users with M1 Arm Processor
SharePoint and Teams: Folder in site visibly connected to channel: This new Microsoft Teams release will make it easy to tell which folders within your SharePoint library have a Teams channel associated with them. Additionally, you’ll be able to see this right from within the SharePoint user interface. This new feature will roll out to Teams desktop and web.
This shared association between Teams channels and the corresponding SharePoint folders will help eliminate confusion across all Microsoft 365 endpoints. In addition, it will provide greater clarity allow you to easily move from a SharePoint folder directly to the corresponding Teams channel. To maintain this association, you will not be permitted to rename and delete any folders within your SharePoint library that have an associated Teams channel.
Rolling out late May to late June.
Bite sized updates
Microsoft Teams | Organizers can lock meetings: Mid to late May.
Within the desktop app in-meeting experience, as a meeting organiser you can choose to lock you meetings to prevent subsequent unwanted join attempts:
SharePoint | Audience Targeting capability for Events Web Part: Mid-May to mid-June.
This new audience targeting release will allow the ability to target specific audiences per event within the SharePoint Events Web Part. This can help you to target specific events to different audiences, helping you provide more personalized experiences on SharePoint pages:
OneDrive on macOS | Exclude specific files from OneDrive sync: Late April > mid-May.
For the admins: This new feature setting will allow you to exclude newly added OneDrive files from syncing to the cloud by file name or extension on macOS devices. This setting lets you enter keywords to prevent the OneDrive sync app from uploading certain files to OneDrive or SharePoint. You can enter complete names, such as “setup.exe” or use the asterisk (*) as a wildcard character to represent a series of characters, such as *.pst. Keywords aren’t case-sensitive:
Office| Office App for Desktop Improvements: Early to late June.
The new version of the Office App for Desktop will bring improved performance, reliability, and includes the ability to open multiple instances of the app at the same time:
OneDrive | Outline for PDF viewing: Early to late May.
This new OneDrive for Android/iOS release will allow you to view a table of contents that you can use for easy and concise navigation in a PDF document. Just press a title in the table of contents and you’ll navigate directly to the page:
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