It’s time for our end-user focused catch up of updates for the fortnight 5th – 19th June 2021 across Microsoft 365.
Who’s looking forwards to Windows 11? I can’t wait to see if it’s a proper new operating system or just ‘a glorified theme pack’. I’ll be following Mary Jo Foley’s blog to keep up.
Onto the updates, we have a handful of revised timelines, a few full updates, seven bite sized updates and a STACK of genuinely useful ‘ones to watch’…they’re probably the highlight this week.
Just a reminder to set the scene; these updates look at topics of interest to end users and anyone supporting them such as trainers, team/site owners and super users. Feel free to share this update with your colleagues at work.
Revised timelines
Office for the Web | Retiring File Share Embed – cancelled.
Based on your feedback Microsoft have made the decision to not retire the File Share Embed dialogue:
Teams | Join a meeting with digital meeting – on hold!
At this time Microsoft will not be moving forward with rolling out the feature as outlined. They are evaluating changes based on feedback and will announce their new plan at a later date.
Teams | Organisers can lock meetings – mid-June to late July.
Within the desktop app in-meeting experience, organisers can choose to lock their meetings to prevent subsequent unwanted join attempts.
Full updates
Microsoft Lists
@mention people in comments – You’ll soon be able to “mention” people you work with while adding a new comment to a list Item. This will help you share and collaborate on list items.
The person who receives a notification can click a link that takes them directly to the comment in context, review the comment, and take the requested action.
When you add a comment, you can type the @ sign in the comment textbox, which will suggest people to mention. You can choose to keep typing the name to narrow down suggestions or select someone from the suggestions.
When you send the comment, Microsoft verify whether all @mentioned users have edit permission on the list item. If not, a share & notify dialog will open listing all @mentioned users who don’t have these permissions. You can choose to share the list item with these users and notify them. The item will be shared with edit permissions to the mentioned people.
Below is a snapshot of this feature in action:
An email notification received by the mentioned user appears as shown above. When someone receives this email, they click the “Go to comment” button and are then directed to the appropriate comment in the list item.
Microsoft expect to begin rolling this out in mid-June and should complete the rollout by the end of June 2021. The @mention capability is not supported for Internet Explorer browsers. Please use a different browser to use this capability.
Learn more: Add and reply to comments in list items: Additional information.
Teams
Chat Bubbles – Previously, you needed to manually open a chat window to view the chat screen in a Teams meeting. Now thanks to this new feature, chats sent during a Teams meeting will appear overlaid on the screens of all meeting participants, making the chat more central to the meeting.
During Teams meetings it can be challenging to pay attention to video feeds, presentations, and chats all at the same time. With chat bubbles, you can follow chat on the main screen of a meeting:
This is on by default, but you have the option to hide chat bubbles during a meeting from the More actions ellipsis (…):
Microsoft will roll this out mid to late July.
Microsoft Search: Find a Teams meeting recording based on what was said – Previously, Teams meeting recordings were only searchable based on the Title of the meetings. This update will enhance the Microsoft Search experience for Teams meetings that were recorded to OneDrive & SharePoint. For Teams meeting recordings that were recorded and transcribed live during the meeting, you will be able to search in Microsoft Search to find the meeting recording file based on the transcript.
Only the attendees of the Teams meeting will have the permission to view these recordings in the search results and playback the recordings.
Microsoft will begin rolling this out in late July and expect to complete the rollout by early August for most of us.
(For the admins: These meetings will now be discoverable in eDiscovery as well, via the transcript. If you don’t want these meetings to be discoverable in Microsoft Search or eDiscovery via transcripts, you can turn off Teams transcription.Learn more here)
Teams Attendance Report – This new reporting dashboard will appear as a tab in the meeting detail and will provide:
- Attendance information for Teams regular meetings.
- Registration information for Webinar prior to the meeting and joined registration and attendance data after the meeting.
Once available, and enabled by your organisation, this will allow the meeting organiser to view the report without downloading, as well as the joined registration/attendance data.
Microsoft will begin rolling this out in early June and expect to be complete by the end of August.
(Admin stuff: Feature will be rolling out default OFF, IT admins can enable the attendance dashboard, turn on the AllowEngagementReport policy with the following command in PowerShell: Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -AllowEngagementReport Enabled. Visit this help documentation for more admin information).
Paging in Large Gallery for Teams meetings – This feature introduces paging to help you view up to 98 videos by choosing Large Gallery (Teams meetings currently supports up to 49 videos). When you choose Large Gallery, and if there are more than 49 videos, navigation controls < and > will appear below the Large Gallery and you can use these controls to view or engage with more video participants.
This is rolling out on Windows, desktop and Mac late June to mid-July. The same functionality of paging will soon (September) be available in normal 3×3 Gallery.
Bite sized updates
Teams | Immersive reader on mobile – in early July and be complete by mid-July.
Hear posts and chat messages read aloud using Immersive Reader in Microsoft Teams mobile apps on both Android and iOS. Immersive Reader was previously available only on the web and desktop apps.
M365 | New Service – Scheduler for Microsoft 365 – available now.
When you decide to enable Scheduler, purchase, and assign licenses, all licensed users will no longer have to find meeting times nor negotiate a time to meet with people. The assistant will do everything for them by simply adding the digital assistant’s email address to an email conversation. I have heard good things about this service, and I understand that there is some human intervention when needed…but $10 per person, per month on top of the normal 365 costs??? Learn more: MS blog and admin doc.
Stream (built on SharePoint) | Updated Web player for video – June to August.
The web player for audio & video files that are stored in OneDrive and SharePoint (including when those files are embedded in Teams, Yammer, and SharePoint web parts) is being updated with a new user look and feel and adheres to greater levels of accessibility for keyboard navigation and screen readers. Microsoft expect the rollout of this new feature to begin in late June and expect the full rollout to be completed for all environments by late August.
New:
Old:
OneDrive on Android | PDF night-time reading mode for – early June to early July.
With 3 new colour modes for viewing PDFs (day, night, and sepia) you will have more control over the appearance of PDFs and how much blue light you see. Microsoft will begin rolling this out to the Google Play Store in early June and expect to complete rollout by early July.
OneDrive and Lists | Install web version as a Progressive Web App (PWA) – mid-July to early July.
As a big fan of web apps, I’m looking forward to this…you will soon be able to install the web version of OneDrive as a Progressive Web App (PWA) in Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Firefox or other browser that supports Progressive Web Apps (with the exception of Safari). After you install the web version of OneDrive as a Progressive Web App, you can launch it from your desktop, and it will work the same way as it does in your web browser. Microsoft will begin rolling this out in mid-July and expect to complete the rollout early August for most of us.
Lists | Sync your lists for improved performance and offline access – early July to early August.
Your lists will automatically sync to your Windows device, improving performance when you work with your lists and allowing you to continue your work even when you’re offline or lose your internet connection. Due July to early August. Specific ‘how-to’ info to follow.
Teams | Live transcription with speaker attribution in Microsoft Teams meetings licencing update – July.
Live transcription with speaker attribution is a written record of the conversations available during and after the meeting and provides another way to both follow and review meeting conversations in Teams desktop. Already available on Enterprise E3/E5 and Business Standard/Premium, now coming to most other licences/SKUs.
Ones to watch
A great selection this week. The highlight for me is recurring tasks in Planner…I’ve heard people repeatedly ask for this. That said, I looking forward trying a few of these:
Microsoft Planner | Recurring tasks – November.
Configure your tasks to occur on a regular basis in Planner.
3 x OneDrive on Apple | Sync client support for Apple Silicon, Files On-Demand refresh for macOS, Known Folder Move for macOS – November.
Details to follow.
Microsoft Stream | Block downloads for channel meeting recordings saved to SharePoint – July.
There is a new admin setting for channel meeting recordings saved to SharePoint that determines if the recordings are saved to the channel in the “Recordings” folder (as they are today) or to a “Recordings\View only” folder. The new option for the “View only” folder will restrict the editing and download of the channel meeting recordings by team & channel members. Only team & channel owners will have full control over the files with this new option.
Microsoft Teams | Teams Webinars integrate with Dynamics 365 Marketing to enable lead nurturing – June.
With this feature, webinar organisers can drive post event engagement with registrants by leveraging Dynamics 365 Marketing. The attendee engagement data syncs with Dynamics 365 Marketing org and enabled automated user journeys. This is only available for users who also have Dynamics 365 Marketing SKU.
Microsoft Teams | New default for Teams notification style – June.
Teams notification style will be defaulted to native notifications for new users. Currently the default style is Teams purple, with this change to native notifications the user will benefit from support for assist mode, action centre, accessibility and more.
Outlook and Exchange for Business | Microsoft Outlook browser extension for Edge – July.
The Microsoft Outlook browser extension brings you the power of mail, calendar, contacts, and tasks using an icon in Microsoft Edge. Quickly access your Outlook work account or your Outlook.com or Hotmail account without switching to another tab or app. The extension will be available in the Chrome Store soon as well.
Whiteboard (Teams and web) | User Experience – August.
Participants in Teams and on Whiteboard for the web will see a new, refreshed user experience.
Whiteboard (Teams and web) | Web Templates – June.
Participants in Teams and on Whiteboard for the Web can add a variety of built-in templates for meetings, workshops, decision making, planning, design thinking and more.
Whiteboard | Inking improvements – June.
New improvements and capabilities have been added to the inking experience win Whiteboard for the web. Users can now: Change pen colours, change pen thickness, use highlighter, intelligently convert their ink shapes, use keyboard shortcuts to switch between tools.
Microsoft Teams | Teams Meetings Auto Recording – June.
This feature allows you to auto record meetings by choosing auto record option in meetings options.
Outlook | Rich Event Description ToolBar – July.
You will be able to format the text in your event descriptions. Options include bold/italics/underline, numbered/unnumbered lists, font style and links.
Outlook | Rich AutoReply Toolbar for Android – July.
You will be able to format the text in your autoreplies. Options include bold/italics/underline, numbered/unnumbered lists, font style and links.
Microsoft Teams | New default settings when opening Office files – May (May? Have I missed this???)
You can set a default of browser, desktop or Teams when opening Office files (Word, Excel, and Power Point) that are shared in Teams. The desktop setting can be selected, if you have Office version 16 or newer installed and activated.
Microsoft Teams | Fluid components in Teams chat – June.
Fluid components in Teams chat will allow you to send a message with a table, action items or a list that can be co-authored and edited by everyone in line.
Microsoft Teams | Pin chat messages – June.
Pin a Teams chat message to drive awareness and provide the chat members with quick access to important content. Pinning will help your team stay in sync on what’s and relevant in a timely manner. This already works will with Channel messages.
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