It’s time for our end-user focused catch up of updates for the week 10th – 17th April 2021 across Microsoft 365.
Generally, these updates look at topics of interest to end users and anyone supporting them such as trainers, team/site owners and super users.
It’s been a bit quiet over the past couple of weeks…only a few new features, but plenty of delays to discuss.
Revised timelines
Windows 10 native notifications in Teams: now due late March and should be complete by early May (previously mid-April):
Multiple Spotlights coming to Teams meetings: this feature will rollout from early May (previously mid-April) through mid-May (previously end of April).
Planner’s New Roster Containers: – on hold! Microsoft: “At this time we will not be moving forward with rolling out the feature as outlined”. I was so looking forward to this feature. I’ll keep you posted…
Microsoft Teams Room: share wirelessly from iOS or Android Teams app: rollout begins end of April (previously mid-April) and will be complete mid-May (previously late April).
Outlook mobile clients will soon provide access to delegate mailboxes: late April and should be complete in early May. MS will begin rolling this out in early May (previously late April) and expect to complete rollout by early June (previously late May).
Microsoft Teams Revised In-meeting Share Experience: end of April (previously mid-April) through mid-May (previously end of April). I feel like I’ve been teasing you with this one for months!
Microsoft Forms: Correct Answer choice in Teams Meeting Forms Polls: rollout will begin in early to late May (previously April):
Microsoft Lists: new Integrate drop-down menu: standard Release rollout should be complete at the end of April (previously mid-April):
Create and use approval templates in the Teams Approvals app: mid to late May:
Forms
Microsoft Forms data insights – Word Cloud for open text question: Microsoft are introducing a new AI based data insight type Word Cloud for open text question in Forms. The key phrases from the open text responses will be extracted and be visualised with word cloud. This can help users to get a quick view on the top text phrases people answered with.
The Forms end user will be able get a quick view on the top text phrases people answered for the open text questions.
Note: If you do not have a word cloud generated for their open text question, it’s because the service has not found any meaningful results to show at this point, especially when the total number of responses is small. Additional results should generate word cloud. Microsoft will begin rolling this out at the end of April and expect to complete in mid May.
Teams
Create tasks from Teams chats or channel posts:
This new feature will allow you to create Tasks from Teams chats or channel posts and enable you to identify tasks that arise naturally in Teams conversations while ensuring important work isn’t overlooked.
This feature will unify tasks in the Teams Task app in your organisation. Select More options on a Teams message to choose Create task and track in the Tasks app in Teams. All tasks created from chats and posts will appear with all of a users tasks in the Teams Tasks app. Individual tasks can be added to My tasks and collaborative tasks can be added to any shared plan.
Both will include a link back to the original chat or channel post to provide context. You will be able to add accountability by assigning tasks, setting due dates, priority, assignments, and even add notes right from the chat or channel post.
The Tasks app must be installed in Teams to use this feature. Tasks is on by default unless your organisation has made explicit changes to exclude Tasks.
Rollout will begin early May and be complete in late May on Microsoft Teams desktop and mobile.
Webinars plus new meeting registration options in Teams: Microsoft have announced the forthcoming availability of Teams webinar capabilities. 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, Microsoft are offering temporary availability to Teams users to try the features with their existing commercial subscription.
When scheduling a meeting, you will see the Webinar option on the Calendar drop down menu in Teams (desktop/web).
Additionally, you will be able to add registrations for meetings and webinars for people in your organisation and outside of your organisation.
This feature rollout will begin late April and should be complete in May 2021
Admin stuff:
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 who can host a webinar that requires registration for everyone, change the WhoCanRegister policy accessed in the Teams admin centre.
- 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 centre or with PowerShell commands. There are three options for admin management.
- Turn off registration for the entire tenant
- Turn off registration for external attendees, the For everyone option
- 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.
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.
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.
Note: MS will honour any existing meeting policies enabled within your organisation:
- 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.
Teams meetings to support view-only attendees: Currently (April 2021), Teams meetings are limited to 300 users (1000 coming soon). If someone tries to join a meeting after it reaches capacity, they are unable to do so. With this update, meeting organisers who are assigned an appropriate license will be able to host a Teams meeting that has overflow capacity.
Up to 20,000 view-only attendees may join a meeting until the end of June (2021) in order to accommodate heightened remote work scenarios. After July 1, 2021 MS will support only 10,000 view only attendees.
When a tenant enables this overflow feature:
- After a meeting reaches capacity (300 users), people will be able to join as view-only attendees, with the maximum number limited by the phase.
- Organisers cannot remove view-only attendees from a meeting.
- View-only attendees will not impact the normal interaction available for regular attendees (those who joined before the meeting reached capacity).
- Once the view-only attendee limit is reached, no additional view-only attendees will be able to join.
- View-only attendees will follow all lobby and security policy mechanisms.
- View-only attendees will have limited access to meeting features. For example, view-only attendees will be able to listen to all audio and view a screen or window shared during the meeting. However, they will be unable to share audio or video, and they will be unable to see chat or other applications that are shared during the meeting.
- Meeting organisers will not see view-only participants in attendee counts or reports; this feature does not support the e-discovery of data
Microsoft have started to roll this out and expect to complete by end of April.
Related posts:
Admin stuff:
This feature is OFF by default for your users.
You may use PowerShell to enable this feature for your entire tenant while you prepare to assign the licenses.
- Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global -StreamingAttendeeMode Enabled
This capability 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, MS are offering temporary availability to Teams users to try the features with their existing commercial subscription.
The view-only attendance feature is provided using Teams streaming services.
Yammer
New Design and functionality for Yammer Discovery and Digest Emails: Building on last year’s interactive email notifications launch from Yammer in Outlook, this update expands Yammer interactive emails to include daily community digest and weekly discovery emails. As a Yammer community member, you will be able to engage and react to Yammer digest and discovery emails directly from your Outlook Inbox.
Previously, the daily community digest and weekly discovery emails were static and required you to click through to Yammer in order to reply or react. With this update, you can now share, react and reply to Yammer digest and discovery emails directly from within Outlook and will no longer be required to click through to Yammer to reply or react.
This is default on. You can turn on/off the daily community digest and weekly discovery emails from the Notifications tab in Yammer Settings.
Rollout will begin in late May and is expected to be complete by late June 2021 on Outlook Web App, Windows, Mac, and iOS and Android Outlook Apps.
Links:
Related blog: Additional information
Note:
This new interactive ability that is accessible through Yammer in Outlook is expected to cause an increase in Seen count numbers (the number of unique users who have seen a Yammer conversation) due to:
- Increased community engagement.
- Yammer conversations viewed in Outlook Web App are now counted towards the total seen count.
Bite sized updates
Outlook mobile | Clients will soon provide access to delegate mailboxes: late April to early May.
With this update, you can manage delegates from within your Outlook mobile app. Colleagues with delegate permissions can add and view delegate mailboxes in their Outlook mobile app:
Tasks by Planner and To Do | App name to be shortened to “Tasks” within Teams: early to mid-May.
This update reflects the final stage (of a three-stage naming sequence) where Microsoft shorten Tasks by Planner and To Do to simply Tasks for simplicity, brevity and to better reflect the app combining the To Do and Planner experiences. You’ll still be able to find the app by searching Planner or To Do and this will not impact the functionality of the app.
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