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Microsoft 365 and Teams update 8th – 13th February 2021 and what is Teams Pro?

19 February 2021

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It’s time for our end-user focused catch up of updates from the 18th – 13th February 2021 across Microsoft 365. We’ll have a look across Office, SharePoint and Teams as well as answer the question “What is Teams Pro?”.

Generally, these updates look at topics of interest to end users and anyone supporting them such as trainers and super users. Remember to scroll all the way to the end if you prefer your updates in podcast or video form.

Excel

Performance Improvements in Excel for the Web – recent improvements, in their own words:

Loading – We’ve significantly reduced the time it takes to load a workbook, making it faster for you to start working in Excel for the web
Scrolling – Scrolling is a fundamental part of working in Excel. Now, even in incredibly complex sheets, scrolling is smooth and fast
Selection – Even more fundamental than scrolling, is the need to interact with content in your workbook. We have optimized the speed of cell selection, so you’ll experience less lag and a more fluid experience when working in the grid
Navigating – We optimized several navigation actions: find/search, Go-To, page-up and page-down are all now faster
Modifying – We developed faster cell editing and formatting experiences

Office

Delayed: We’re improving Microsoft Search with personal query history. With personal query history, you will see recent search queries across SharePoint Online and Outlook (web) as you begin typing in the search box. This prompt makes it easier to return to recently accessed insights and information. No need to bookmark or memorise your frequent queries.

Personal query history can be managed and downloaded through the Microsoft 365 My Account settings:

Microsoft are adding a new option in Microsoft Search that allows you to view and manage your personal query history. Settings. A new option enables you to manage your personal query history, such as downloading your history for future reference:

For most of us, this feature rollout will begin early April and should be complete by late April 2021.

Outlook

Running late: Start Meet Now from Outlook desktop client (Windows) – The ability to start a Teams meeting through the addition of the Meet Now button in Outlook will now be available late February.

New: Outlook – Reactions and new notification experience – reactions to email messages is coming to Outlook on the web, Outlook for iOS, and Outlook for Android. With this release, Outlook for iOS and Outlook for Android will also add an in-app notification experience where users can view reactions from others.

You will be able to react to email messages with like, love, laughter, celebration, surprise, and sadness. Upon applying a reaction to an email message, the reaction will be visible in the reading pane for users with an Office 365 for work or school account within the same tenant on supported Outlook apps. When someone reacts to their message, users will see an indication on the existing bell icon in Outlook on the web.

Apply reactions in Outlook on the web:

Email message detailing which sent messages received a reaction.

Reactions appear in Outlook for iOS.

This feature rollout will begin early March and should be complete by the end of March 2021.

There are some limitations though; Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, Mail for Windows 10, older versions of Outlook for iOS or Android, and non-Microsoft email clients, as well as Exchange Server with hybrid modern authentication are not supported in this initial release. Users with these apps and services will not be able to apply or see reactions, but they will receive one email per day alerting them of reactions applied to their sent emails.

Reactions applied to emails from outside your tenant are not supported in this release. Users on a different tenant will not see reactions applied to their emails, nor will they receive an email alerting them of reactions applied to their sent emails. This is expected to be improved upon in a future release.

Outlook: iOS and Android Extension of suggested replies worldwide – Outlook on iOS and Android is rolling out suggested replies to customers worldwide in the following languages: French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Rolling out late February to late March 2021

SharePoint

List rules make it easy to set up notifications of changes in SharePoint – if you are a SharePoint with edit permissions on a list you can create simple if/then rules, based on changes to list information, to set reminders and send notifications. Users with read-only permissions can’t create or manage rules.

Once the feature is available to user, you’ll be able to create a rule by selecting Automate and then Create a rule in the list command bar near the top of the page:

These notifications emails will be sent from Microsoft 365 to you:

This feature rollout has begun and should be complete by the end of February 2021 and will be available to all list users in Microsoft Lists and SharePoint. You will be able to create a maximum of 15 rules per list.

Related Microsoft Pages:

New: Adding taxonomy columns for modern SharePoint library views – This new feature gives you the ability to add taxonomy columns directly to library views in modern SharePoint libraries. Previously, you had to create managed metadata columns from within More options in the Add column experience. You will see a new Managed metadata option as a column type within the Add column menu in SharePoint lists and libraries. By selecting the Managed metadata option, you will be able to specify column information such as name and description as well as choose your organisation’s desired term set or term, to associate the column with:

New column creation taxonomy panel appears after selecting Managed metadata:

This feature rollout will happen early March to late March 2021.

New lists will have versioning enabled by default – Your users will soon be able to track and manage SharePoint list information over time with list versioning.

After this feature rolls out, when a user creates a new list in SharePoint, that list will have versioning enabled by default. End users will be able to view and recover previous versions from the list item history.

By default, new lists will retain the 50 most recent major versions. Users can change how many versions are retained or disable versioning on any list they manage.

This feature rolls out mid-February 2021.

SharePoint to support lightbox for images – SharePoint pages will soon support a lightbox for images, making it possible for end users to easily see a larger version of an image.

A lightbox popup is a window overlay that appears on top of a webpage. With this update, when SharePoint users click or tap on an image, they will be able to see a larger version of the image in the lightbox. When the lightbox is engaged, the remainder of the page is inactivated and dimmed. Users tap or click to disengage the lightbox and return the page to its normal functionality.

This feature rollout will begin mid-February and should be complete by early March 2021

Skype for Business

Reminder: Skype for Business Online retires on 31st July 2021 – access to the service will end on this date.

This does not apply to:

Skype consumer service
Skype for Business Server

If this applies to your organisation you have probably already started using Teams…get used to using it. If you have a choice between setting up a Skype meeting or a Teams meeting, go with Teams unless you have a reason not to. Learn more: Related Microsoft blog.

Teams

What is Teams Pro? A new Teams service plan will enable users licensed for the applicable SKUs to receive forthcoming Teams capabilities. Rather than being a way to charge more for a ‘higher Teams’, is it more of a bucket to deploy profession features into, for the existing paid subscriptions?

On 9^th February 2021 Microsoft published a message centre post regarding a new Teams Pro service plan. This was shared on Twitter by Vesa Nopanen:

Microsoft have since updated the message as follows:

“Based on early feedback we have updated this post to provide additional clarity. Thank you for your feedback.

On Feb. 9, we published an MC [MC238782] post regarding a new Teams Pro service plan. To clarify, there is no change to existing product licenses with the addition of this new service plan. Rather, the service plan will be added automatically to Microsoft 365 and Office 365 E5/E3/A5/A3, and Microsoft 365 Business Standard/Business Premium licenses, and will enable users who are licensed for these SKUs to automatically receive capabilities rolling out to Teams in the near future.”

This topic was brought up by Mary Jo Foley on the Windows Weekly podcast at the weekend, she also covered this on her blog.

What you need to do? Nothing; by default, the Teams capabilities included in this service plan will become automatically available to all users with the licenses listed above. Microsoft: “There is no action required by admins, and no additional purchase is necessary for Microsoft 365 and Office 365 E5/E3/A5/A3 and Microsoft 365 Business Standard/Business Premium licensed users to acquire the new Teams capabilities that will be part of the Teams Pro service plan”

This new Teams service plan to be added to select M365 and O365 SKUs Mid-March 2021.

New Share to Teams from Outlook – Microsoft are updating the Share to Teams capability in Outlook for Windows, Mac (preview) and Outlook on the web. The Share to Teams from Outlook button enables users to share an email conversation from Outlook, including attachments, to any chat or channel in any Teams client. The feature creates a copy of the email and any attachments which are stored in the “Email Messages” sub-folder within SharePoint for channel and in the sender’s OneDrive for chats.

When you are sharing an email from Outlook, Share to Teams in Outlook will either launch a window in the Teams desktop client if it is installed or open a window within Outlook. Within Teams, recipients will see a preview of the email message which they can open to view the full contents by clicking on the preview. Share to Teams leverages an Outlook add-in to drive; it will be installed the first time a user uses the Teams web or desktop client after this capability has rolled out.

This feature rollout will begin mid-March and should be complete by late March 2021. This feature is not yet available for Outlook mobile. The Share to Teams feature does not support sharing Individual Rights Managed (IRM) and Do Not Forward (DNF) emails.

Running late: Revised In-meeting Share Experience – this was due to be rolling out early February to mid-March but will now be late-March to late-April 2021:

Introducing an enhanced Teams Calling experience – Microsoft are simplifying the calling experience in the Teams desktop app (Windows and Mac) by providing a streamlined view that combines contacts, voicemail, and calling history.

Additional enhancements are also coming to Teams Calling:

CarPlay support for Teams Calling
Teams Admins can take advantage of the Teams and OneDrive or SharePoint integration and make OneDrive or SharePoint the default calls recording storage location, in lieu of Stream.
Teams will identify potential spam calls and digitally attest to outgoing calls to prevent them from being rejected by external recipients.

Once your Teams desktop app is updated, you will see the new calling experience. A streamlined view shows contacts, voicemail, and calling history at once, making it easier to initiate or return a call with a single click: