With Microsoft Inspire and SPFest Chicago in our rearview mirrors, it is time to look forward to the latest features and enhancements being rolled out to Microsoft 365. Before doing that though, we suggest checking out the Inspire Book of News to see if there is anything you may be interested in taking advantage of in the future. FYI: We are very intrigued by the announcement of tighter integrations between Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams.
If you are involved in Microsoft 365, you likely already know about the 365 Message Center Show. If you do not already, we highly recommend subscribing. That said, when we first saw this announcement, we had a feeling it would be discussed on that show, and we weren’t wrong. This has been a common request from folks who want to pack a lot of information on single SharePoint page for quite some time. While it is nice to see it coming out, we have some concerns about users not recognizing the expandable/collapsible sections, specifically when the section is collapsed by default. As noted in the message center post: “You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.”.
This new feature will allow users to create rich, information-dense SharePoint pages. As part of this release, we will enable the page author to configure sections within the SharePoint page to be able to expand, collapse and set the default page-load state for the section.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 67147.
We will begin rolling out to Targeted release (select users and organization) in early July and expect to be complete for Standard release in late July.
This feature will give authors new ways to build rich and interesting SharePoint pages.
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC267952 · Published Jul 8, 2021
We have long felt Delve is one of the more underutilized applications in the Microsoft 365 service. It seems like organizations are either “all in” or not at all when it comes to having users fill out their profile details in Delve, but hopefully this update will incentivize folks to update some details about themselves. Previously, surfacing that content in SharePoint or Teams required a developer and with these new feature’s users should be able to add them directly to the profile card, previously referred to as people card. Unfortunately, it still looks like filling in the profile details falls to the individual users though, which makes a lot of sense given the information being input, but for many organizations that is likely still a roadblock.
We’re adding new features to the profile card in Microsoft 365 and beginning in early August. Users in your organization will be able to add topics directly to their profile card in Microsoft 365 apps and services or through Office Delve.
Users in your organization will be able to add topics to their profiles by either updating their information in the profile card in Microsoft 365 apps and services or Office Delve.
Note: If you have a closed term set up for “Responsibilities”, please see below.
If you have a closed term set up for “Responsibilities”, also known as topics, please note that the setting of that term set does not apply to topics shown on profile cards in Microsoft 365 apps and services and is limited to Office Delve. Users will be able to add topics on their profile cards in Microsoft 365 apps and services without restriction even where you have a closed term set up for “Responsibilities”.
To disable topics on profile cards in Microsoft 365 apps and services where you have a closed term set up for “Responsibilities”, please contact Microsoft support at LPCTopicsOptOut@microsoft.com with your request and tenant Id. LPCTopicsOptOut
MC268957 · Published Jul 13, 2021
Do you hate having to click on an ellipses hover over Open and selecting Open in app every single time you open an Office document in Microsoft Teams? If so, this feature is for you😉. We are not shy about our disdain for Office Online when dealing with any complexity in Office files and have pushed syncing content via OneDrive for Business to get the “Open in App” functionality by default for quite a while. This is a great feature to enable users to continue to stay within the context of Microsoft Teams and cut a second or so of time when opening office files…does not seem like much but if you are opening hundreds of files a day it is a big deal!
This new feature allows users to set a default of browser, desktop or Teams when opening Office files (Word, Excel, and Power Point) that are shared in Teams.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 82662.
Targeted Release: We will begin rolling this out in end July and expect to complete by end of August
Standard: We will begin rolling this out in mid-August and expect to complete by late September
GCC: We will begin rolling this out in early September and expect to complete by early October
GCC High: We will begin rolling this out in early September and expect to complete by early October
DOD: We will begin rolling this out in early September and expect to complete by early October
To change your default setting, go to your profile picture then select Settings > General >. Scroll to the bottom of the general section to Files. There’s a dropdown menu where you can choose between Teams, Desktop app, and Browser. The default location is the Teams app. The option to choose Desktop app is only available when using the Teams desktop app for Windows or macOS and only applies to that device. If you’re only using Teams on the web, you’ll be able to choose between Teams and Browser.
You can manually choose where a file is opened without changing your default setting by going to the file and selecting More options … > Open in.
Additionally, within the manual selection page, you have the option to change the default settings that will apply to the overall setting for opening the Office files.
You need to ensure that this information is communicated within your organization and ensure all users have Office version 16 or newer installed and activated.
MC270177 · Published Jul 14, 2021
Before we dive into this feature, let us first take a moment to point out that we should all get used to hearing and seeing the word “Fluid” coming from Microsoft over the next year, potentially longer. If you are a developer that probably is not much of a surprise but to the rest of the Microsoft 365 community that might seem a bit odd. If you are unfamiliar with Fluid we highly suggest checking out the Fluid Framework open-source announcement blog post from last September.
The feature itself is straightforward, users will be able to co-author chats in MS Teams. We will wait to see the implementation to pass judgment on it from an IT Pro/Admin standpoint, but we can see some benefits to enabling this functionality. Every week we send our customers weekly status reports containing the work completed the previous period. That process is almost entirely automated and pulls the data directly from our time management system; however, not all the folks who receive the status reports are technical, so we modify some of our work descriptions each week to be more concise and less technical in nature. Those updates are posted in the various Teams and each team member validates the updates via Teams chats, which results in a lot of scrolling up and down when there are many tasks updated. Making that initial message author-able by the other team members will be hugely beneficial for us by condensing the chat threads considerably.
Co-authoring content in Teams just got easier. Now you can send a chat message containing a live component that can be edited inline—in real time—by everyone in the chat.
Fluid components in Teams chat allow end users to send a message with a table, action items, or a list that can be co-authored and edited by everyone in line and in the future will be shareable across Office applications like Outlook. Users will be able to quickly align across teams, and get work done efficiently by copy and pasting components across Teams chats.
With Fluid components users can ideate, create, and decide together, while holding fewer meetings and minimizing the need for long chat threads.
To co-edit a live component with other chat members:
You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC271075 · Published Jul 17, 2021
Another callout to the 365 Message Center Show on this one. We believe that is the biggest win on this one is the ability to set the visibility prioritization time. We are still migrating customers to SharePoint Online from legacy editions of SharePoint On-Premises that are pushing back on moving from the classic announcements lists because they have expiration in place on them. Hopefully, this will eliminate having to do a cost benefit analysis on transitioning to the News experience moving forward!
This new feature will allow you to prioritize important news and announcements at the top of news feeds across Microsoft 365. Additionally, you can even prioritize visibility of a news article for a set time that you can control.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 70810.
We will begin rolling out in late July and expect to complete by mid-August.
How this will affect your organization:
You can now boost important news posts on organizational news sites, to all employees & ensure higher readership.
Boost news in Command bar
Boost configurations
Boost article example
You might want to notify all organization news site admins and authors about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
MC271769 · Published Jul 20, 2021
Consider this a friendly reminder that the Power Platform supports DLP and has for a while. This is especially important for folks in large organizations or highly restricted industries to take note of as it was a major hurdle for full adoption of Power Apps and Power Automate. If the lack of these capabilities was stopping your organization from taking advantage of these services, it is time to reevaluate that stance and put together a strategy for the implementation. Your business user will thank you.
Additional capabilities are being added to allow you greater control and customization of your Power Platform data loss prevention (DLP) policies:
The following DLP capabilities will be available by the end of July 2021:
In addition to these PowerShell capabilities, column filtering will be available on the Data Policies page within the Power Platform admin center. This will allow you to filter by the “Blockable” category to help identify connectors more-quickly and classify them into the appropriate buckets.
As always, there are a lot of things happening in Microsoft 365, so be sure to check out the Tech Community Blogs and the Microsoft 365 Roadmap for more of what’s new.
