This month we are sharing a few updates to Microsoft Teams that are sure to add value to large meetings. In addition, we have a few things that will be of interest to Administrators, like changes to retention policies, changes to values in the ProcessorArchitecture column in the Intune Export API, and managed environments coming to Power Platform. Aside from all that the message center is full of updated announcements. So, if you are waiting for a new feature, be sure to check that out so you can stay up-to-date.

Enable Q&A in Teams Meetings via Meeting Options

The Question and answer (Q&A) feature lets you manage questions from attendees as an organizer. Q&A is best for large, structured meetings—like town halls, webinars, all hands, and company trainings—where presenters take questions from participants and respond them in real time. As an organizer, you can choose to have a moderated or unmoderated Q&A.

With questions and answers now available through the Meeting Options, the Q&A app in the Teams App Store will be removed in August.  

Going forward, meeting organizers and co-organizers must use Meeting Options to enable Q&A in their meetings. If there are existing meetings where Q&A was added from the Teams App Store, please remove the Q&A app and switch to using Q&A enabled through Meeting Options. Not using Meeting Options to enable Q&A will result in two Q&A icons showing in the meeting with instructions on how to remove the Q&A app that was added from the Teams App Store.

Note: There is no data lost when switching Q&A from the Teams App Store to enabling via Meeting Options. All questions, conversations, comments, etc. will continue to be available in the Q&A experience enabled via Meeting Options. 

Assign Seats in Together Mode

By late-September, Microsoft Teams users in a meeting will soon have the option to assign seats in Together Mode for all participants in a meeting. Once available, while turning on Together Mode or later from scene selection dialog box, Teams meeting organizers will see an option to assign seats to participants.

Meeting organizers can assign seats to meeting invitees and all the participants currently in the meeting by dragging the user to the preferred seat. Once assigned, organizers can apply the newly created layout and everyone in the meeting will see the participants organized by the seating assignment.

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle

By mid-October, you should see this change to retention labels in your tenant. Retention labels published to a group-connected SharePoint site will require the retention label publish policy to select the “Microsoft 365 Groups” location. Once this change rolls out, only those retention labels published to “Microsoft 365 Groups” locations will appear within the dropdown selection menu for the corresponding group-connected sites. If you previously had retention labels that were not published to Microsoft 365 Groups and were visible for group-connected sites, these will no longer be visible.

Retention labels already configured as default for document libraries and folders will not be impacted by this change, and will continue to be applied as default to items per the current behavior. Items already labeled previously by this default are not affected and will continue to be labeled. When the default label is changed, only labels published to the site will be available to be selected.

Retention labels that are already applied to items within these sites will continue to stay applied, even if they are not published to the site, and are not impacted by this change.

If you have retention labels that are only published to SharePoint site locations and need them to be visible for group-connected sites, make sure that the Microsoft 365 Groups location is selected on the policy.

Labels published to Microsoft 365 Groups will apply to group-connected SharePoint sites as well as the group mailboxes. If you do not wish to have labels available in the group mailboxes, this can be configured by using PowerShell cmdlets. Learn more here: Create and publish retention labels by using PowerShell 

Update to ProcessorArchictecture column in the Intune Export API

The ProcessorArchictecture column is part of the DeviceWithInventory report of the Intune Export API. The column currently contains macOS and Windows device processor architecture as numerical values. Based on customer feedback, starting in mid-July, Microsoft will be updating this field to display more readable values. The numerical values will be updated to the following:

Windows 10 and later

• 9 -> x64
• 5 -> ARM
• 12 -> ARM64
• 0 -> x86 

macOS

• 9 -> x64
• 12 -> ARM64 
• Default -> Unknown

Note: Both the previous data type and new data type are string values.

If you have automation or reporting that relies on the ProcessorArchictecture API, you will see the updated field name after this change rolls out.

Managed Environments for Power Platform Public Preview

Managed Environments for Power Platform is in preview. Managed Environments offer a set of enhanced governance capabilities that will simplify, automate, and streamline IT administration of the Power Platform at scale. Below are some of the new features that admins will now have access to:

• Activation in any environment with just a few clicks
• Weekly admin digest that provides proactive adoption insights, such as apps and flows that have not been active for a while and may need to be cleaned up.
• Easy-to-use sharing controls to limit how widely canvas apps can be shared. Admins can specify how many people an app can be shared with and block sharing with security groups if so desired.
• Easily see the list of Data Policies that apply to the selected Managed Environment

Over the coming release waves, Managed Environments will continue to increase the visibility, and the control they offer to low code administrators. This in turn will allow admins to manage their Power Platform adoption with a lot less effort.