Home Microsoft 365 Updates Microsoft 365 Update 1st – 31st January 2021

Microsoft 365 Updates

Microsoft 365 Update 1st – 31st January 2021

February 8, 2021

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It’s time for our end-user focused catch up of January updates across Microsoft 365. We’ll start with an update on delays, then look at January’s updates and have a sneak peak at what coming further down the line. Stand-out update is Viva…read on to learn more.

Delays

These four caught my eye:

Reactions in Teams Meetings (mid-March)
New meeting options for managing large (late-March > late-April)
Introducing an enhanced Teams Calling experience (late-February)
Increasing team membership to 25,000 members per team (late-February)

Outlook

Simplified Outlook mobile setup. Microsoft is simplifying the process to get Outlook, and your account, onto your mobile device. From Outlook on the web, you will see a notification to send yourself an SMS text message that includes a link to the Google Play or Apple App Store. A QR code will then appear in Outlook on the screen that you can scan with the Outlook mobile app to sign in. Outlook will use your identity from Azure Active Directory to securely log you into the app on your mobile device.

This feature will roll out enabled by default. The notification will only show if you do not currently use the Outlook mobile apps, it can be dismissed at any time, but may reappear after an extended period of time. Rolling out in the United States now and is expected to be completely rolled out worldwide in early 2021.

Outlook on the web – new file search and attach feature in compose mode. This release makes it easier to add files and notes from OneDrive and SharePoint, when composing an email message.

Key points:

Type “/” in an email message to get suggestions for files and notes
You will only get suggestions for files you have access to in OneDrive or SharePoint
You will only get suggestions for notes you’ve previously created

When this feature is rolled out, you will see “Try / to search files” or “Try / to search notes” in the compose area. When you type “/“, a pop-up window will appear offering file and or note suggestion you to attach to your message:

The rollout of this feature will start in late February 2021 and be complete by late May 2021.

Outlook on the web – Message reminders. After Outlook assesses that a user might have forgotten to respond to or follow up on emails, the user might start seeing these messages brought to the top of their inboxes. If applicable, a maximum of one email will be brought to the top of the user’s inbox at a time. Due early March through late July 2021.

Start Meet Now from Outlook desktop client. It is going to be easier than ever to start a Teams meeting through the addition of the Meet Now button in Outlook. You must have both the Teams desktop client and Outlook desktop client installed on a Windows machine, and also have the Teams add-in enabled in Outlook.

Roll out should be complete in mid-February.

Excel

One to watch: Ink and highlighter in Excel for the web. With this update, you will be able to use the ink capabilities and highlighter to annotate in Excel for the web. When using Excel for the web, you will see a new Draw tab in the ribbon.

In addition, when using Excel on the web, you will now see marked up spreadsheets. Prior to this update, Excel on the web did not display ink contained in a spreadsheet:

The standard rollout out of this feature will begin in late April and should be complete by late May 2021

Forms

Text formatting (bold, italic, underline) available in Microsoft Forms. You will soon be able to use text formatting (bold, italics, and underline) in Forms surveys and quizzes differentiate and emphasise content. This update will rollout automatically. Your experience will be consistent with other Office 365 products, you will be able to format text by using either a floating tool bar or keyboard shortcuts.

In the editing canvas of the form, you can also use the text format toolbar inline whenever they are composing text content.

This rollout has already started and should be complete by early-February (a little later for government customers).

iOS

Page rotation for iOS to view OneDrive PDF files. Microsoft OneDrive iOS app users will soon be able to rotate page orientation while viewing PDF documents and your changes made will be saved to OneDrive. Using the updated app, you will be able to rotate PDFs and perform bulk rotations using thumbnail mode in grid view:

This update will be rolling out to the App Store in late February and should be available for all by mid-March 2021.

Update to ink toolbox for iOS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint clients. iOS users of the ink toolbox within Word, Excel and PowerPoint clients will experience the following changes soon:

Lasso and Eraser tools will be moved inside of the toolbox
Users will be able to add additional pens by right clicking on existing pens
Their toolbox will be reset to the default number of pens and colours
- Any additional pens the user may have added will have been removed
- Most recently used colours will be reset to default
Pencil and highlighter are added to the toolbox rather than hidden behind the “+” pen option
Draw with touch, ink to text and ink to shape features are removed from under the dropdown (the arrow in the ‘current’ ribbon next to ruler)

This update is automatic…just look out for the change! The rollout will begin mid-February and should be complete by mid-March 2021

OneDrive: Bookmark for OneDrive for iOS. Microsoft are adding a bookmark that makes it easier for users of OneDrive for iOS to return to a specific page in a PDF document. This bookmark feature allows you to add or remove bookmarks using either the bookmark icon on the toolbar or via the context menu in long-press gesture, whether that press is on text or in a non-text area:

You can view bookmarked pages using thumbnail (grid view) mode:

This will roll out to the Apple Store in mid-February (previously mid-January).

Microsoft Teams: use an iPad to present in a live event. A little delayed; presenters will be able to use an iPad to make a live event presentation. Prior to this update, a Live event presenter could join only as an attendee when using an iPad. Microsoft are rolling out the updated Teams app for iPad by February late February.

Microsoft Lists app for iOS. With the new Lists app, you can:

Create new lists easily via templates.
Get to any lists—including lists they’ve already been using–from the recent, my list, and favourite sections or via search and deep links.
View lists, even in an offline state
Organise data using sorting, filtering, grouping.
Edit data on the list using mobile-friendly controls
Add new data to lists
Share lists as per organisation rules

Should be available now from the App Store.

Power Platform

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2021 release wave 1 plans. Do you use Dynamics 365 and/or the Microsoft Power Platform? Microsoft have published the 2021 release wave 1 plans, which is a compilation of new capabilities that will be released between April and September 2021. At the moment, you just need to learn more about the latest product updates and plans, and even share your feedback in the community forum for Dynamics 365 or Power Platform. The plan is available now…the features start rolling out in April.

Teams

Large gallery view and Together Mode for web meetings in Edge and Chrome browsers. The browser version of Teams is getting boost: this new feature will allow you change the layout to Together mode or Large gallery during a meeting attended in Edge or Chrome browsers. This feature will be rolled out automatically. Both options are accessed via the ellipses (…) on the control bar.

Turn on Large gallery:

Turn on Together mode:

This feature rollout has begun and should be complete by late-February.

Microsoft Teams will queue sent messages when offline. Teams is going to start behaving better when it’s offline. Currently, if you attempt to send or edit Teams messages while offline, the messages fail and Teams later prompts you to retry or delete the message(s).

In phase one of this update, if you send a message whilst offline it will be queued on your device. Teams will automatically send the messages when the device resolves connectivity issues within 24 hours. However, leave it longer than 24 hours and the message will fail, Teams will prompt you to resend or delete the message.

In phase two, Teams will allow you to edit messages which are queued and ready to send after you reconnect.

Phase one of the rollout has started and should be complete by the mid-February and phase two should be complete by the end of February 2021.

Teams desktop app for Mac: Include computer sound in a meeting. MacOS Teams desktop app users will soon be able to include their computer’s sound (from a video, for example) when sharing either their desktop or a window in a meeting…just like their Windows colleagues.

This feature will become available to you unless your admin has set the ScreenSharingMode policy to None. But, this feature does require a one-time installation of an audio driver. You will be prompted to install the audio driver when you select Include computer sound from the Share content tray in a meeting (you might want to get this set up before that big presentation!). Once installed, you can freely toggle the functionality on or off before or after you start sharing a desktop or window:

This feature will start rolling out late January and should be complete by late-February (a little later for some government customers).

Change in display of hierarchical sensitivity labels. Microsoft are updating how the Teams channel header displays hierarchical sensitivity labels to provide improved exposure to the confidentiality status of content in a channel.

Currently, the Teams channel header displays the child label for hierarchical sensitivity labels (e.g., Confidential > Finance) in the channel header. We will now display the parent label rather than the child label. In this example, Confidential > Finance, we will display Confidential in the channel header rather than Finance:

This will provide improved exposure to confidentiality status of content in the channel. Timing: mid-February through end of March 2021.

Due any day now: Microsoft Teams introduces meeting recap in the calendar event details tab. The new meeting recap feature in Teams helps meeting attendees and those unable to attend a meeting stay up-to-date by providing the meeting recording, transcript, and chat all in one place. These are automatically shared in the Chat tab and viewable in the Details tab.

New Teams meeting lobby setting – only invited users join directly. As a Teams meeting organiser, you can have greater control over your meetings by enabling a new lobby setting where only Calendar meeting invited users will be able to join directly.

This update will automatically become available to you, once it does you will be able to ensure that only Calendar meeting invited users can bypass the lobby after you schedule a new meeting. Do this by changing the meeting option Who can bypass the lobby to People I invite. Anyone else with the meeting invitation will be sent to the lobby.

This feature roll out will start in early February and will be complete by mid-February 2021.

History menu in Microsoft Teams. Microsoft are introducing a history menu in the Microsoft Teams desktop clients that displays your recently visited locations.

By hovering over the backward and forward navigation buttons, you will be able to see recently visited locations in Microsoft Teams. The history menu makes it easier to navigate to previous locations, such as nested tabs and documents.

Roll out begins in early February, and we expect to be complete in late February 2021.

Theme and icon updates in Teams on the web, Windows and Mac. Microsoft are updating the default and dark theme colours in Teams on web, Windows, and Mac and will also update icons to align with other Microsoft 365 applications. When you access Teams on the web, the default and dark themes will be updated as well as the icons for all themes.

The changes to the app bar on the left are quite striking, but most changes are subtle, such as:

Added drop shadows between panels
Rounded corners for square graphical elements (like buttons)
Colour adjustments to the default and dark themes

This update is expected between the middle and end of February 2021, but you can get a sneak peak now…check out the below video for how.

Planner

Intelligent file recommendations for Planner. This new Planner feature allows you to quickly add attachments to your tasks from an intelligently curated list of relevant files. The recommendations are based on you and the task.

Running late: mid-February to late March.

SharePoint and Lists

SharePoint web part toolbox update for page authors. Microsoft are updating the web part toolbox to make it easier for page authors to find and use web parts on their pages and news posts. They have added categories, a toggle to switch between a grid view and list view, web part descriptions in list view, and a section for the user’s most frequently used web parts. This feature will be rolled out automatically. If you are a page author, you will see the updated toolbox when you select the plus sign (+) to add a new web part to a page you are editing.

The standard rollout will begin in mid-February 2021 and should be complete by the end of the month.

Microsoft Lists and SharePoint Lists: Support for thousands separator in Number column. Microsoft are providing Microsoft Lists and SharePoint lists owners and members with the ability to add a thousands separator to numbers. Due mid-January through early February 2021:

Microsoft Lists and SharePoint Lists: column settings in Grid view. Microsoft Lists and SharePoint lists owners and members are getting new capabilities in Lists Grid view (previously Quick Edit). The Lists “Grid” view (previously Quick Edit) will now allow users to pin a column to the filter pane, format the column, show/hide columns, and hide their column(s). Before this update, users were required to exit Grid view to accomplish these common tasks:

Standard Release will be early February through early March 2021.

SharePoint page authoring – new first run experience. Microsoft are introducing a first-run, optional interactive experience, to guide new users through the basics of creating their first SharePoint page or news post: