October 2022 - Microsoft 365 US Public Sector Roadmap Newsletter
Published Oct 19 2022 02:51 PM 19.1K Views
Microsoft

 

Newsworthy Highlights

 

FedMake

Microsoft Federal's FedMake program delivers hackathon style events, exclusively for Federal (Civilian / DoD / Intel) organizations, where conditions are created, and facilitated, by Microsoft experts, for cross-organization teams to leverage Microsoft expertise and develop solutions that achieve their mission.

 

Where to Start with Microsoft Teams Apps in Gov Clouds

Customers in our Office 365 government clouds, GCC, GCCH, and DoD, are continuing to evolve how they do business in the hybrid workplace. As Microsoft Teams is the primary tool for communication and collaboration, customers are looking to improve productivity by integrating their business processes directly into Microsoft Teams via third-party party (3P) applications or line-of-business (LOB)/homegrown application integrations.

 

What are the biggest obstacles we face in achieving CMMC compliance?

There is no one-size-fits-all blueprint for how to achieve Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) compliance but only tools and guidance on how to get there.

 

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | August and September 2022

We are excited to tell you about the many new Teams features we have added in August and September.

 

Microsoft 365 Government Adoption Resources

Empowering US public sector organizations to transition to Microsoft 365

 

Release News

 

Exchange Online

 

Safe Attachment Action Changes

 

AntiSpam - Allowed Domains Authentication Enforcement

 

SharePoint / OneDrive for Business

 

Apply default sensitivity label to unlabeled files uploaded to SharePoint document library

 

With this update admins will have more control over whether users can create sites in the organizati...

 

These policy changes will make it possible for customers to enable the Request Files scenario on One...

 

We will implement a safeguard to prevent customers from exceeding standing limits for SharePoint

 

Apply granular conditional access policies to SharePoint Online sites via sensitivity labels

 

Teams

 

Automatically end stale Teams meetings

 

Users will be able to send a chat message at a convenient time, and the message will arrive to its d...

 

Automatically view up to 49 videos (7x7) in Teams meetings at once

 

Microsoft Purview

 

Collections progress, statistics, and workflow enhancements

 

Security/Identity

 

Productivity Score Renamed to Adoption Score - GCC

 

References and Information Resources

 

Microsoft 365 Public Roadmap
This link is filtered to show GCC, GCC High and DOD specific items.  For more general information uncheck these boxes under “Cloud Instance”.

 

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Stay on top of Microsoft 365 changes
Here are a few ways that you can stay on top of the Office 365 updates in your organization.

Microsoft Tech Community for Public Sector
Your community for discussion surrounding the public sector, local and state governments.

 

Microsoft 365 for US Government Service Descriptions

·     Office 365 Platform (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Office 365 U.S. Government GCC High endpoints

·     Office 365 U.S. Government DoD endpoints

 

·     Microsoft Purview (GCCGCCHDoD)

·     Enterprise Mobility & Security (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Security (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Microsoft Defender for Identity Security (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Azure Information Protection Premium

 

·     Exchange Online (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     SharePoint (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     OneDrive (GCC, GCCH, DoD) 

·     Teams (GCCGCCHDoD)

 

·     Office 365 Government (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Power Apps (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Power Automate US Government (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Power BI (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Planner (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Outlook Mobile (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Viva Insights (GCC)

·     Dynamics 365 US Government

 

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Be a Learn-it-All

 

Public Sector Center of Expertise

We bring together thought leadership and research relating to digital transformation and innovation in the public sector. We highlight the stories of public servants around the globe, while fostering a community of decision makers. Join us as we discover and share the learnings and achievements of public sector communities.

 

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Microsoft Teams for US Government Adoption Guide

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Message Center Posts and Updates for Microsoft Teams in GCC

 

Looking for what’s on the map for Microsoft Teams and only Teams in GCC?

Go right to the GCC Teams Feature Communications Guide

 

Message Center Highlights

SharePoint Online / OneDrive for Business

 

MC439273 — Microsoft Stream: Upload and Manage Files in the Stream Web App

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 100061

 

You can upload a new a video directly from the Stream Web app. If you have permissions, you can move the video file to a new location or make a copy. 

 

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We expect to begin rollout in late September and be completed by early October.

General Availability: We expect rollout to begin in early October and be completed by late October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

This feature will allow users to upload a new a video directly from the Stream Web app. Users can also move a video file to a new location or make a copy if they have permissions to the video file.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Admins do not need to take any action. Please visit this page for additional information.

 

MC428505 — (Updated) SharePoint app bar – Temporary window to disable is extended

Updated September 27, 2022: We have updated the content below to show as intended. Thank you for your patience.

 

The SharePoint app bar is designed to improve the global wayfinding experience while dynamically displaying personalized content. The app bar makes important content and resources more accessible no matter where you are in SharePoint.

 

While the app bar plays an integral role in the overall modern SharePoint experience, we acknowledge that for some customers there is a continued desire to disable the app bar. We previously shared that the SharePoint app bar can be temporarily disabled until September 30th, 2022 (MC343428 March '22). Today we are announcing that we are extending the window for the app bar to be temporarily disabled until March 31, 2023.

 

When this will happen:

March 31, 2023

 

How this affects your organization:

After this date, your app bar can remain disabled for a period up to one year. Once this timeframe has elapsed, unless you have chosen to enable it sooner, the app bar will become available within your tenant.

 

What you can do to prepare:

While the app bar plays an integral role in the overall modern SharePoint experience, we acknowledge that for some customers there is a continued desire to disable the app bar.

·       Learn more about how to use the new SharePoint app bar and set up global navigation.

 

MC435348 — SharePoint: Updated SharePoint App Bar My Sites for GCC High and DoD Environments

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93181

 

There has been an update to the underlying data source that powers the My Sites panel in the SharePoint app bar. Additionally, the SharePoint start page, (the landing page when you select SharePoint tile in the Microsoft 365 app launcher) will also show sites that users frequently access, recent sites, and news. This change will populate the sites panel in GCC High and DoD environments.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rollout out in early October and expect rollout to be completed by mid-October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

This new update will populate the My Sites panel of the SharePoint app bar with sites that have been frequently accessed or followed by the user. Additionally, the SharePoint start page will also show frequent sites, recent sites, and news for users. This update does not utilize MS Graph and will provide full functionality of sites in the SharePoint app bar in GCC High and DoD environments.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You do not need to do anything to prepare. The SharePoint app bar cannot be customized. If you have not already enabled and customized global navigation in the SharePoint app bar, it’s highly recommended that you do so to take advantage of the best navigational experience for end users.

 

Learn more:

·       Use the new SharePoint app bar and set up global navigation 

·       Discover content with the SharePoint start page

 

MC428259 — Granular Policies for Request Files

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98097

 

We are adding new policies to Request Files & Anyone links to better enable customers to configure sharing in their tenant to match their specific needs & scenarios. With this change, customers who have chosen to disable Anyone links for OneDrive will now be able to enable Anyone links for just the Request Files feature.

 

When this will happen:

Standard Release (if applicable): We will begin rolling out in late September and expect to complete by late October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

Today, when Anyone links are disabled for OneDrive, the Request Files feature is also disabled and unavailable. With this change, it will be possible to enable the Request Files feature (which uses Anyone links) without also enabling standard Anyone links for other files & folders. Customers who wish to manage these two features together will continue to do so with no changes.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

This change will roll out in two waves. In the first wave, which will rollout in early September, customers will be able to use the SharePoint Online Management Shell to enable the Request Files feature even when Anyone Links are disabled. You must download the latest verison of the SPO Management Shell to access this new parameter. To set this up, you will run Set-SPOTenant -OneDriveRequestFilesLinkEnabled $true. Note that changing this setting at this time will have no impact until the second wave of this feature rolls out in late September/October. This wave will cause the Request Files feature to look at the new setting to determine whether or not it is enabled. To learn more about the PowerShell parameters, you can read the documentation on Set-SPOTenant and Set-SPOSite. Please note that you will need to download SharePoint Online Management Shell version 16.0.22516.12000 or later.

 

If you are not interested in changing this setting, there will be no change in availability of Request Files or Anyone links, either now, or when this feature finishes rolling out.

 

MC428255 — Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle & Records Management: Upcoming change to retention labels published to SharePoint

Updated September 22, 2022: We have added additional information for clarity. Thank you for your patience.

 

In order to improve the consistency of how retention labels and policies work in SharePoint sites, going forward 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. Note: This change only impacts policies with static scopes; this will not impact adaptive scope policies and behaviors.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in early October and is expected to be complete by early November. 

 

How this will affect your organization:

Once this change rolls out, in order to see retention labels in group-connected sites, the labels need to be included in policies published to Microsoft 365 Groups locations. 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 after this change.

 

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.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

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.

 

If you have retention labels that you would like to only show on non-group connected SharePoint sites, confirm that the Microsoft 365 Groups location is not 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

 

No action is needed to enable this change; however you may want to communicate this change to your users or team responsible for Data Lifecycle Management and Records Management at your organization. 

 

You can access the Data Lifecycle Management and Records Management solutions in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal: 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments 

 

MC427171 — SharePoint admin center: Updates for site creation settings

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93427

 

With this update you will have more control over whether users can create sites in your organization. We are introducing an additional layer of control that will provide more granular decisions over what mechanisms sites can be created from by users.  

 

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: This will begin rolling out in early September.

 

Standard: will begin rolling out in late-September and complete in early October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

When configuring the site creation settings, you will have a new option to control creation of sites in addition to the current option of showing the option to create sites. This appears in the site creation settings panel within the SharePoint admin center. 

 

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The current default option is ON by default, this will have both checkboxes checked as shown in the above image.

 

If you have customized your settings to disable site creation in your tenant, the nested checkbox will be unchecked while the top level will remain enabled.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You do not need to do anything to prepare. Your changes to any other options in the Site creation panel won’t be affected.

 

Learn more:

Manage site creation in SharePoint

 

MC424416 — Information Protection: Apply granular conditional access policies to SharePoint Online sites via sensitivity labels

Microsoft 365 Roadmap IDs 8211582163, and 85979

 

With this update, administrators will be able to use Conditional Access policies and associated sensitivity labels to require additional user authentication for accessing sensitive SharePoint sites when the user's context does not meet the requirements of the site.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in late September and is expected to be complete by end of November. 

 

How this will affect your organization:

You might want additional authentication for accessing certain sensitive sites. For example, when a user visits a highly sensitive site labeled Confidential, you might want to enforce a step-up authentication with granular policies such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) when the user's context does not meet the access requirement of the site.

 

With this release, you will be able to create Conditional Access authentication contexts in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tailored to your organization's security posture.

 

You can then associate these authentication contexts with sensitivity labels in Microsoft Purview compliance portal > Information Protection. For example:

·       Low authentication context requires single factor authentication; this can be associated with a 'General' sensitivity label. 

·       High authentication context requires MFA such as one time passcode verification and/or IP network location policy. This authentication context can be associated with a Confidential sensitivity label. 

 

Once an admin configures the sensitivity label with authentication context, when a user applies a sensitivity label, the associated granular contextual and conditional policies are automatically enforced. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

This release has no impact on existing Conditional Access policies in Azure AD. Nor is there a change in how SharePoint Online sites use existing Conditional Access policies.

 

To benefit from this new feature:

1.     Create Authentication Context in the Azure AD portal

2.     Tag the Authentication Context name with a Conditional Access policy in the Azure AD portal 

3.     Choose the right Authentication Context name for a new sensitivity label in the compliance portal. Note: If you do not use labels that are applied to SharePoint sites, then you can directly apply the above authentication context to a given SharePoint Online site via PowerShell (download the latest SharePoint Online management shell). 

 

After you have completed these steps, you will see the option within your Information Protection sensitivity label configuration flow.

 

Access the Information Protection solution in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal:

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for Worldwide and GCC cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments 

 

Learn more: Manage site access based on sensitivity label - SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Docs 

 

MC408694 — (Updated) New 'Activity' Column in OneDrive 'My Files' list view

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88913

 

Updated September 21, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

We are introducing a new Activity column in OneDrive My Files list view. The goal of this feature is to help users stay up-to-date on the files that they are working on with others by surfacing relevant activity information. We will show file activity related to actions, such as, user comments, edits, share, and @mentions.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out this feature in mid-October (previously mid-September) and expect to complete rollout by late October (previously late October).

 

How this will affect your organization:

There is no impact to your organization. This feature will be delivered as a user interface update in the form of an additional column in My Files list view with activity information related to files (e.g., file shared, user comment, @mentions).

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC405984 — (Updated) Site Limits for SharePoint Lists, Libraries, and Subsites

Updated September 19, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

SharePoint recommends a maximum of 2,000 lists and libraries per site, and 2,000 subsites per site. These have been long standing limits for SharePoint but have not been formally enforced.

 

There have been cases where some sites exceeded these limits, resulting in poor site performance and low-quality viewing experience. One of the most impacted areas is the API performance that degrades significantly when users access data on the sites that exceed their recommended limits. The API calls may time out or get throttled, blocking the users from opening the site or resulting in unexpected failures. In some extreme cases, the issue can impact functionalities beyond these sites.

 

To ensure site performance and help customers have the best possible experience, Microsoft will implement a safeguard to prevent customers from exceeding these limits.

 

When will this happen:

The enforcement of the limits will start in early February (previously early November) and will be completely enforced by late April (previously late December).

 

How this will affect your organization:

Once these limits are enforced, sites that exceed the limit of 2,000 lists and libraries will no longer be able to have new libraries or lists added to the site. Similarly, any site that exceeds the limit of 2,000 subsites will no longer be able to have new subsites added to the site.

 

When a site reaches these limits, users will see the following message on SharePoint web:

 

On the API request to create a new list or document library, SharePoint will return the error code, ERROR_SHARING_BUFFER_EXCEEDED on the API request.

 

Libraries, lists, and subsites that have been created before the enforcement rollout and exceed the corresponding limit, will continue to function and their access will not be blocked. The change will only impact the creation of new lists, libraries or subsites outside the approved limits starting in November. These new additions will get blocked at the time of creation once the site reaches the corresponding limit.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Share these limits with people who manage SharePoint sites in your organization. If the sites in your tenant are below the limits, this change will not impact you.

 

It is uncommon for the organic growth of site to reach these limits. However, there is a possibility that custom solutions can generate a high volume of lists and libraries. In that situation, our recommendation is to work with their solution providers to prepare an alternative solution in order to stay compliant with these limits.

 

Additional Information:

·       SharePoint limits - Service Descriptions | Microsoft Docs

 

MC403644 — (Updated) OneDrive: Sharing Experience - Share Menu Dropdown

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 83727

 

Updated September 27, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

We’re updating the Share button in Microsoft OneDrive to provide easy access to additional sharing options. When you select Share in OneDrive for Business on Web, you'll see a contextual menu with all choices available to you for sharing files or folders with your teammates.

 

When this will happen:

Targeted release: We will begin rolling this out in early October (previously mid-September) and expect to complete rollout by late October (previously late September).

Standard release: We will begin rolling this out in late October (previously late September) and expect to complete rollout by mid-November (previously mid-October).

 

How this will affect your organization:

Users who interact with the OneDrive/SharePoint share control will be able to see this new Menu.

·       Share link, Email link or Send link: Email the file link directly to a one or more recipients.

o   Note: users may see one of three different notations until finalized.

·       Copy link: Copy a link to share with recipients directly.

·       Manage Access: View and manage who has access to your files or documents.

 

Note: Some users may see this feature before others in your organization.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action needed from you at this time. You may want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC394844 — (Updated) Stream on SharePoint: Inline playback of videos in Hero web part

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93351

 

Updated September 8, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

When users click to play a video in the Hero web part section of a SharePoint site, the video will play inline. This feature allows users to watch a video without being taken off the SharePoint page and allows users to browse or scroll through the other contents of the page while the video plays.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out by mid-July and expect to complete by early October 2022 (previously early September 2022).

 

Note: Some users may see this feature before other users within your organization.

 

How this affects your organization:

Video consumers on Hero webpart will now be able to consume video on the same site page where they encountered the video. That allows them to browse through other site content while watching/listening to the video, thus saving their browsing time.

 

What you can do to prepare:

You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC394517 — (Updated) Run team-owned Office Scripts in Excel for the web

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93767

 

Updated September 9, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Office Scripts is an automation feature set in Excel for the web. With this update, users can save their scripts to a SharePoint site, in addition to their OneDrive for Business.

 

Note: External network calls made within a script that is saved to a SharePoint site are not supported at this time. If any SharePoint-based scripts do contain an external call, the script will return an error when ran and the external call will not be made. 

 

When this will happen:

This change will begin rolling out in late July and will be completed by early October (previously late August). 

 

How this will affect your organization:

Before this feature update, when a user created an Office Script, their script was saved to their OneDrive for Business, and the owner of the script was the only user who had edit permissions to that script. Now, team members can easily collaborate, edit, view, and run team-owned scripts on their Excel workbooks. Additionally, because script files saved to a SharePoint site follow SharePoint file retention policies, these scripts can be used even after the creator leaves the organization.

 

Note: SharePoint support for Office Scripts is continuing to be rolled out. You may not see the feature right away.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

If you do not want users to be able to save their scripts to a SharePoint site so that others can view and run their scripts, please visit the Office Scripts admin pane to disable the feature by late July. 

 

Learn more:

·       Manage Office Script settings 

·       Office Scripts File Storage and Ownership

 

MC362284 — (Updated) OneDrive sync app will automatically configure accounts

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93242

 

Updated September 19, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

This release will enable the OneDrive sync app to sign into an account even quicker. Users will experience an improved single sign-on experience by automatically being able to see their OneDrive files within their file browser upon sign in or OneDrive app update.

·       On Windows, users who are signed into the device with an Azure Active Directory (AAD) account will see their OneDrive folder start syncing without entering their account credentials.

·       On macOS, users who are signed into another Microsoft app (i.e., Office, Teams, Edge, etc.) will see their OneDrive folder start syncing without entering their account credentials.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out in early November (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by early December (previously early September).

 

How this will affect your organization:

If OneDrive is running in the background, it will periodically try to sign in with an existing AAD credential that is made available to Microsoft applications. This new capability will replace our existing Windows policy of SilentAccountConfig and is brand new for macOS. If you previously had SilentAccountConfig enabled, then you will see no difference in behavior. If you have never enabled this policy, then as long as OneDrive is configured to run in the background, you will have a more streamlined experience onboarding to OneDrive.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Ensure that your OneDrive is set up to run in the background. On macOS you can confirm this by setting the "OpenAtLogin" plist. OneDrive already runs in the background on Windows.

 

If you would like to disable this, then there is a new policy and plist item in build 22.065 called "DisableAutoConfig". If you set this to 1, it will disable this new automatic account configuration.

 

Microsoft Teams

 

MC439275 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams Detailed Call History Feature Update

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98455

 

Updated September 28, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Users will now get a more comprehensive view into whether calls were transferred or forwarded in Microsoft Teams' call history.

 

When this will happen:

General Availability: We will begin rollout in mid-October (previously late September) and expect rollout to be completed by late October (previously mid-October).

Government Clouds: Rollout will begin in late October and is expected to be completed by early December.

 

How this will affect your organization:

When users go into their call history in Teams, they will now see group calls, transferred calls, and forwarded calls. There will be no impact to user workflow when this feature rolls out.

 

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What you need to do to prepare:

Please check for updates once feature has been released. 

 

MC437558 — Updated and more comprehensive Microsoft Teams app usage report for administrators

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 7067782128

 

For Teams administrators, Microsoft product team is working on an updated version of Teams app usage report which has many enhancements (mentioned in detail below). This report will be available to our public\GCC cloud customers in late September and will eventually be made available to GCCH and DoD cloud customers.

 

The new app usage report brings in new enhancements like support for usage of line of business (LoB) apps, Tenant level install trend, enhanced quality of metrics reported, tenant wide usage of Microsoft, 3P and LoB apps etc. These enhancements will help the admin measure the usage of Teams app across their organization. 

 

As a result of which, the existing Teams app usage report available in Teams admin center will be retired by early October. 

 

When this will happen:

For Public/Worldwide and GCC cloud customers, this new app usage report will begin rolling out around late September in both Microsoft 365 admin center as well as Teams admin center. 

 

For GCCH and DoD cloud customers, the existing Teams app usage report in Teams admin center will stop working and eventually be removed in Mid-October. An updated version of the Teams app usage report will be made available to these customers in the next few months. 

 

How this will affect your organization:

Public/GCC cloud customers will start seeing an updated version of the app usage report for their organization. The new app usage report brings in new enhancements like support for usage of line of business (LoB) apps, Tenant level install trend, enhanced quality of metrics reported, tenant wide usage of Microsoft, 3P and LoB apps etc. These enhancements will help the admin measure the usage of Teams app across their organization. 

 

GCCH/DoD customers will stop seeing the existing Teams app usage report around Mid-October time and will receive the new app usage report in the next few months.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Considering the underlying metrics calculations are changing, the usage metrics in this report will change to be more accurate. This change is part of our ongoing commitment to offer reliable and accurate reporting for apps and in general product usage. 

 

For More Documentation with details for these changes, please refer app usage report in below documentation: 

·       Microsoft 365 admin center usage reports: Microsoft 365 admin center activity reports - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn 

·       Teams admin center usage reports: Microsoft Teams analytics and reporting - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

 

MC437554 — (Updated) Upgraded usage analytics for Teams administrators and users.

Updated September 27, 2022: We have updated this message to show as intended. Thank you for your patience.

 

As communicated in our earlier message center post (MC343434 March '22), we made updates to Teams related usage report in the Microsoft 365 admin center (and corresponding graph APIs) to be more accurate and upgraded. Considering the underlying data source was revamped, it also introduced differences in the usage data reported by Microsoft 365 admin center vs usage data in Teams admin center. 

 

As promised earlier, to bring in consistency across different reporting surfaces, we are updating the Teams admin center usage reports and end user analytics in Teams with same underlying data source as Microsoft 365 Admin Center Teams usage reports.

 

We apologies for the actual rollout delay than what was planned earlier.

 

When this will happen:

The changes to Microsoft 365 admin center usage reports are already available to all customers as preview.

 

We’ll be rolling out this change in late September through early October progressively for public and all government cloud customers.

 

Once this rollout is complete, these refresh changes will be called GA (general availability).

 

How this will affect your organization:

• Individual usage metrics reported in different reports will have data consistency across Teams and M365 admin center usage reports.

• Individual usage metrics presented in end user analytics in Teams will have data consistency with admin center usage report metrics.

• The Graph APIs for the usage data will have data consistency with the usage reports.

• Refresh frequency of reporting data will be consistent across all reporting surface to avoid inconsistent data reporting.

• In addition to 7/30/90 days of aggregated metrics, Teams admin center usage reports and end user analytics for teams will have additional 180 days aggregated metrics. Thus, historical usage data up to 180 days will be available for reporting.

• Teams app usage report is updated to include more reporting metrics, data quality fixes for reported metrics and usage for Line of business applications as well. (Available only for Public/worldwide cloud customers)

• Team App usage and Teams team usage report will be available in both Teams admin center as well as M365 admin center.

• Teams user activity report and Team usage report is updated to include shared channel related usage metrics.

 

How to prepare:

 

Considering the underlying data source powering Teams admin center usage reports, M365 admin center Teams usage report & end user analytics in Teams is changing, there might be some differences in historical data reported (less than 5%). However, the data across all these reporting surfaces will be consistent going forward. This change is part of our ongoing commitment to offer reliable and accurate reporting for product usage.

 

More Documentation with details for these changes:

 

• M365 admin center usage reports: Microsoft 365 admin center activity reports - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn 

• Teams admin center usage reports: Microsoft Teams analytics and reporting - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn (will be updated before actual rollout)

• End user analytics in Teams: View analytics for your teams (microsoft.com) (will be updated before actual rollout)

• Graph API for different Teams usage reports: Microsoft 365 usage reports in Microsoft Graph | Microsoft Learn 

 

MC437263 — Unread Toggle in Activity Feed

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88389

 

Unread toggle will help users quickly view all the unread activities in their activity feed.

 

When this will happen:

Preview: We will begin rolling out late September and expect to complete by early October.

Standard Release: We will begin rolling out early November and expect to complete by late November.

 

How this will affect your organization:

There are no tenant level settings. Defaults will not change.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_3-1665985032126.png

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What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action needed to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

 

MC437258 — Music on Hold for Voice Over IP Calls and PSTN Consult Then Transfer for GCCH and DoD

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 83503

 

This feature ensures that music can be played for VOIP calls placed on hold, as well as VOIP and PSTN consult then transfer scenarios.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out in mid-October and expect to complete rollout by late October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

There is no change for users as this feature will take place automatically. This feature will be applied to 1:1 VoIP and PSTN calls. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action required to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users and update training documentation as appropriate.

 

MC432478 — Microsoft Teams Outgoing Screen Share Support for Firefox Browser

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 99384

 

Microsoft Teams Meetings on the Firefox browser will now support outgoing screen sharing capabilities.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out in mid-October and expect to complete the rollout by late October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

Users joining Teams Meetings from the Firefox browser will now be able to share their screen.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action needed to enable this. For the best Teams Meeting experience on Firefox, ensure you have all of the correct and up-to-date browser plugins. More information can be found here.

 

MC430095 — Restricted access to Microsoft Teams data via Exchange Web Services

Microsoft will start restricting access via Exchange Web Services (EWS) to Teams message data starting on January 31st, 2023. Fully supported access to Teams message data is available through the Microsoft Graph Teams Export API. Teams Export APIs allow you to export 1:1, group chat, meeting chats, and channel messages from Microsoft Teams.

 

Note: If your organization has not developed an application leveraging EWS you can safely disregard this message.

 

When this will happen:

January 31, 2023

 

How this will affect your organization:

Organizations will no longer be able to access Microsoft Teams data via EWS, when this change is implemented.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

If your organization’s application needs to export Microsoft Teams messages, you can extract them using Teams Export APIs, refer to Teams Export API for assistance. 

 

For additional details:

Restricted access to Microsoft Teams data via EWS starts January 31, 2023

 

MC430094 — Microsoft Teams: Build and Deploy Connectors

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 96290

 

GCC customers are able to build and deploy Connectors in their Microsoft Teams environment. 

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out in early October and expect rollout to be completed by mid-October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

GCC customers will now have access to Connectors.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC429466 — Microsoft Teams: Music on Hold for Call Transfer

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98431

 

Microsoft Teams users can now play music to callers on hold when a call transfer is initiated. This feature ensures that music can be played to caller on hold when call transfer is initiated, feature applies to 1-1 VoIP and PSTN calls. 

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out mid-September and expect to complete rollout by late September.

 

How this will affect your organization:

There is no change for users as this feature will take place automatically. This feature will be applied to 1:1 VoIP and PSTN calls transferred. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action required to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users and update training documentation as appropriate.

 

MC428512 — View the Full Chat conversation thread after clicking on search message results

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 97510

 

When users search for a chat message in Teams and click on a message result, they are taken to a view that contains only the selected message, rather than the entire chat thread. This fix will now land the users on the full chat thread once the message search result is clicked, thereby providing full context of the conversation around the message result.

 

The feature will be rolling out for Teams Desktop and Web clients and is applicable to message results on the SERP page and the contextual search surfaces.

 

When this will happen:

Standard: We will begin rolling this out in early October and complete late October 2022.

GCC: We will begin rolling this out in early October and complete late October 2022.

GCC-H: We will begin rolling this out in late October and complete mid-November 2022.

DoD: We will begin rolling this out in early January and complete mid-January 2023.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action needed to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

 

MC428506 — (Updated) Expanded reactions in Teams

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88080

 

Updated September 28, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

This update will allow users to apply any emoji as a reaction to chat or channels messages. Users can choose from over 800 existing Teams emojis to express themselves the way they want. Browse all the reaction options or use the search bar to the find the reaction you want.

 

This feature update will also be delivered with a new reactions user experience to support the expanded reactions options. The reaction hover bar will now feature a reduced number of quick hover options to make space for an expanded reaction button. The reaction summary will also be moved from the top right of the message to the bottom of the message bubble to make space for the wide range of options that can now be added.

 

This will be available for Teams desktop apps (Windows and Mac), Teams mobile (Android and iOS), and Teams on the web.

 

When this will happen:

Preview: We will begin rolling out mid-September and expect to complete by late September.

 

Standard release: We will begin rolling out mid-November (previously mid-October) and expect to complete by late December (previously late November).

 

How this will affect your organization:

No action is required from tenant admins. Users will continue to be able to use the existing reactions, along with the expanded set. The feature does not have any associated settings or ability to enable/disable the feature. Users will also experience a new reactions UX to support the expanded experience.

 

Reaction Menu: Hover over a message to show the reaction menu.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_0-1666019199289.png

 

Open picker: Click on the expanded reactions button to open the full menu and browse all the emojis and reactions available.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_1-1666019210917.png

 

Reaction summary: Once you select a reaction, it will be shown in the reaction summary starting from the bottom left of the message.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_2-1666019225809.png

 

Reaction list: Hover over a reaction bubble to see who added this reaction. You can also click on reaction bubbles to add (or remove) this same reaction with a single click.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_3-1666019242599.png

 

Channels: This feature will be available on both chat and channels.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_4-1666019254240.png

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC427759 — Microsoft Teams Platform Apps in Group VOIP Calls

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 96189

 

Since launching apps in scheduled meetings, Microsoft Teams app developers have wanted to build similar experiences for Teams calls that enhance user productivity. Examples of collaborating in an ad-hoc group call include, collecting and acting on information, discussing and ideating, organizing and tracking, making decisions, and more.

 

If you already have a meetings app in Teams, we will be rolling out a new feature that will enable it to automatically start working in Teams Group VoIP calls. Alternatively, you can easily start building an app for Teams meetings and calls. We apologize for the delay of this notice and any inconveniences this may cause.

 

When this will happen:

Preview: We have rolled this out already in preview. The blogpost has detailed information about the release. 

Standard Release: We expect to begin rolling out in late August and expect to complete rollout by mid-September.

 

How this will affect your organization:

All the familiar functionalities of meeting apps - tabs, bots, in-meeting dialogue, and meeting stage - will be supported in Teams VOIP Calls. Users of your apps will enjoy the same familiar app experience as seen in Teams Meetings, in their Teams VOIP Calls.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC427758 — (Updated) Schedule Send for Teams Chat

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88281

 

Updated September 30, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

As remote teams become more common and spread across multiple time zones, Teams is introducing the schedule send feature that allows users to schedule chat messages to be delivered in the future. With this feature, we can help build better work-life balance and support flexible schedules by scheduling chat messages so that they only deliver during our peer’s work hours. Users can schedule messages to be delivered both on desktop and mobile. Additionally, all scheduled messages can be edit and delete before they are delivered. 

 

When this will happen:

Production: will begin rolling out in early November (previously late September) and we are expected to complete roll out by late November (previously mid-October).

GCC: roll out will start in mid-November and complete by late November.

GCCH: roll out will start in late November and complete by late December.

DoD: roll out will start in late January and complete by late February.

 

How this will affect your organization:

All users within your organization will be allowed to schedule chat messages. All scheduled messages can only be delivered no more than 7 days in the future and cannot be flagged as urgent or important. Inline images and attached files will only be accessible by others in the chat once the message has been delivered. 

 

Desktop: Right click on the send button to access the scheduling menu and select a date and time within 7 days from now:

 

Jesse_Tedoff_0-1666120841365.png

 

See the schedule details in the compose experience:

 

Jesse_Tedoff_1-1666120874828.png

 

Select send and the message will be scheduled to deliver at the later date and time. At the delivery date and time, the message will be sent like any other message:

 

Jesse_Tedoff_2-1666120890140.png

 

Mobile: Write a message and long press on the send button to schedule the message. Select a date and time to deliver within 7 days to deliver the message:

 

Jesse_Tedoff_3-1666120901207.png

 

Once you’ve selected a date to send in the future, the message will be scheduled to deliver at the later date and time. At the delivery date and time, the message will be sent like any other message:

 

Jesse_Tedoff_4-1666120915040.png

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You may want to notify your users about this new feature within chat so that they can help build better work life balance for their teams while supporting the flexible schedules that your organization supports. 

 

MC424898 — Automatically view up to 49 videos (7x7) in Teams meeting

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 86435

 

Microsoft Teams Meetings currently supports a maximum of 9 videos (3x3) on the screen by default (in Gallery view). For seeing more than 9 videos, user needs to manually select the ‘Large Gallery’ view. With this update, users will be able to automatically see up to 49 videos (7x7) on their screen by default without an explicit action. However, Large Gallery view will still continue to exist as an option.

 

The actual number of videos seen by a user in Gallery will depend on:

·       hardware/device capabilities

·       internet bandwidth

·       whether content is popped out in a separate window or not. 

 

Please note: This enhancement will be supported on devices that meet hardware requirements (CPU, memory etc.). Detailed information regarding hardware requirements will be shared by Sep 22, 2022 (before GA release).

 

When this will happen:

Public preview: Will begin rolling out early September.

 

Worldwide & GCC: Will begin rolling out in late September and complete in early October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

No explicit user action is needed to enable or use this feature.  

 

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What you need to do to prepare:

You may update your user documentation to inform users about this change.

 

MC420060 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Leave a Meeting From All of Your Devices

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 97397

 

Updated September 14, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

We will be rolling out a new feature in Microsoft Teams that will allow multi-device users to leave all of their devices at once when leaving a meeting.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout began out in early August and is expected to be completed by early October (previously early September). 

 

How this will affect your organization:

When a Teams user attempts to leave a meeting or call from multiple personal devices, there have been challenges to fully disconnect from the meeting or call on all devices. With this new feature, there will now be an option displayed to multi-device users in a call that will prompt the user to leave the meeting or call from all devices when selected.

 

This feature will be enabled for desktop, iOS, and Android clients. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC420056 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows store application 4.14 update

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 95258

 

Updated September 2, 2022: We have updated the content below with additional details. Thank you for your patience.

 

Teams Rooms on Windows application version 4.14 includes key new features and improvements to existing functionality as follows:

·       Front row experience update

·       Pin and hide the room video

·       Turn off split gallery with XML setting

·       18 videos support for dual display Teams rooms

 

When this will happen:

Microsoft Teams Rooms application version 4.14 with these changes will start to roll out on September 2, 2022, and complete rollout in 2 weeks. The application updates are delivered through Windows store and Teams service. The application and Teams service components are installed automatically within this 2-week timeframe.

 

This is rolling out on Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows only.

 

How this will affect your organization:

Front row experience update

 

Front row will now have the larger content size with smaller video height, shorter top bar, and one panel by default on Front of Room display narrower than 21:9. Its default video heights will be configurable via XML between small, medium (default), and large. The previous video height is similar to the large option.

 

1.     Single display mode

o   Front of Room displays narrower than 21:9

§  The default number of panels on Front of Room displays narrower than 21:9 will be one. The default gallery height became smaller to maximize the content size. The right panel will be open with chat by default, and you will see the raised hand notification when there is a new raised hand.

 

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 o   Front of Room displays with 21:9 or wider aspect ratio

§  The default number of panels on Front of Room displays with 21:9 or wider aspect ratio will be two as before. The default gallery height became smaller to maximize the content size.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_7-1666120994145.png

  

2.     Dual display mode

o   The default number of panels on dual Front of Room displays will be two as before. The default gallery height became smaller to maximize the content size.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_8-1666121032116.png

 

3.     Configurable Small/ Medium/ Large video height

o   The default height is Medium, and you can change the default using XML.

§  <FrontRowVideoSize>small</FrontRowVideoSize> 

§  <FrontRowVideoSize>medium</FrontRowVideoSize> 

§  <FrontRowVideoSize>large</FrontRowVideoSize> 

 

4.     Addressed known limitation

The maximum number of videos will not be limited to four on a single front-of-room display and to nine on dual front-of-room displays. Your Front of Room display will show as many videos as possible on the Front row layout until each remote video becomes 1:1 aspect ratio.

 

Pin and hide the room video

·       Room users can pin or hide room video on the front of room screen. In-room participants can control these options by selecting the room from the roster on the console. This added capability provides greater personalization for room users who feel the room video to be potentially distracting or not needed.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_9-1666121135739.png

 

Turn off split gallery with XML setting

·       To avoid splitting the video gallery across multiple screens, when content isn’t being shared, IT admin can set to turn it off via XML.

o   <SplitVideoLayoutsDisabled>true</SplitVideoLayoutsDisabled> 

 

18 videos support for dual display Teams rooms

·       Teams rooms with dual front of room displays can now show up to 18 video participants (3x3 on each screen) when there is no content shared in the meeting. This is an increase in the number of incoming videos from 10 to 18 and allows in-room users to have immersive video conferencing experience for meetings with more video participants. Room users can pin or spotlight up to 9 video participants on one screen while viewing the others on the 2nd screen when there is no content in the meeting.

·       If your meeting has more than 18 video participants, the existing Together mode and large gallery layouts will continue to work and support up to 50 video participants. 

 

Jesse_Tedoff_10-1666121152248.png

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about this updated experience and update your training and documentation as appropriate. 

 

MC411679 — (Updated) My Activity retirement in Teams mobile Activity

Updated September 27, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

We will be retiring the support for 'My activity' in Teams mobile Activity App. This will be retired from other clients in the future. 

 

Activity will now support only activities directed to you (the option to view activities initiated by you will be retired).

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling this out early September and expect to complete by early November (previously mid-September).

 

How this affects your organization:

Once this change is implemented Teams mobile users will no longer see the "My activity" dropdown.

 

Note: there is no additional impact and all activities across the app can be accessed from the respective apps (like chat app for chat send, calls made from calls app etc.)

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC402940 — (Updated) Language Interpretation in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 87547

 

Updated September 29, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Language interpretation will allow professional language interpreters to translate what the speaker says into another language in real time without disrupting the original flow of delivery of the speaker. This will allow more inclusive and efficient meetings, where participants who may not speak the same language can fully collaborate with each other without waiting for an interpreter to repeat what was said after the fact.

 

When this will happen:

This feature is already available in public preview.

 

We will begin rolling out in August and expect to complete rollout by mid-October (previously late August).

 

How this will affect your organization:

The policy for this feature will be default on, but user action is needed to toggle on this feature for meetings.. Tenant admins should ensure the policy for language interpretation is enabled in order for their users to be able to schedule meetings with language interpreters assigned. If admins do not want to this feature to be available they will need to turn this feature off via policy.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You may want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

Learn more:

·       Now in Public Preview: Language Interpretation

 

MC402120 — (Updated) Enable media logs remotely with PowerShell cmdlets for Microsoft Teams desktop client

Updated September 6, 2022: We have updated the content below with additional details. Thank you for your patience.

 

Enable Media Logs Remotely policy can be applied to a user or entire tenant and allows IT admin to update user’s settings for desktop client.

 

Applied via PowerShell cmdlets, the policy overrides client settings and sets Settings > General> Enable media logs to turned on. When applied, the setting is displayed as greyed out and can’t be updated via the client.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out in late July and expect to complete by late August.

 

How this will affect your organization:

Unless the user’s client runs on a high-end machine (Media logs), the media logging setting is turned off by default. For cases when user’s client media logs are required, the existing experience requires the user to manually update their settings via Settings > General> Enable logging for meeting diagnostic. This policy allows IT admin to remotely update this setting for their users via PowerShell cmdlets. 

 

When Teams Media Logging policy sets user’s setting “Enable logging for meeting diagnostic” to turned on, the media logs generated are stored locally on user’s machine (Media logs - To Collect Logs section). When policy is removed, the setting rolls back to the state it was in before it was manipulated. 

 

Possible use cases:

 

Media logs contain diagnostic data about audio, video, and screen sharing in Teams meetings. They are required for support cases that are linked to call-related issues. To improve the experience for end users, IT admins may choose to remotely enable the media logs and ensure to include them when submitting the support case. Alternatively, IT admins can choose to set a policy to be turned on regardless of whether the additional information for support case is required at the moment. 

 

PowerShell documentation:

·       Get-CsTeamsMediaLoggingPolicy

·       Grant-CsTeamsMediaLoggingPolicy

 

MC400204 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: External Access Chat Invitation Flow for Managed Organizations

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 94646

 

Updated October 3, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Teams users will now see an invitation pop-up to accept or block an external user when receiving new chats from external users.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rollout for this feature in mid-August and expect rollout to be completed by mid-November (previously late September).

 

How this will affect your organization:

When receiving a new one-on-one chat from an external user, Teams users will receive an invitation to accept or block the external user. This also provides the ability to block external users at any point, which revokes access to presence and incoming messages.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC397435 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-Enabled Security Groups, and O365 Groups

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 62354

 

Updated September 29, 2022: We have updated the content below with additional information. Thank you for your patience.

 

You will now be able to start a Teams Chat with Distribution Groups, Mail-enabled Security Groups, and O365 Groups. This feature will respect the limits on members in a group chat, currently set to 250 members.

 

Organizations rely on Distribution Lists (DLs) as a tool to create groups of users that mirror organizational knowledge and workflows. Bringing this awareness to target audiences for specific content will enhance the core Teams experience. Allowing our customers to leverage DLs can increase workflow efficiency and bridge the gap between legacy knowledge of organization structure and a new Teams structure. 

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rollout in early November (previously late September) and expect to complete rollout by late November (previously late October).

 

How this will affect your organization:

With this update, users will now be able to select Distribution Lists as an audience to begin a chat within Teams. 

 

Admins will be able to toggle this feature on or off for their tenant in the Teams admin center.

 

This feature will support starting a chat with Distribution lists, Office 365 groups or mail enabled security groups

 

As a part of this feature user can only initiate chat if Distribution lists, Office 365 groups or mail enabled security groups having <=250 members. This feature does not allow to initiate chat in situation where member list is >250.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC391950 — (Updated) Viva Topics in Teams

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 72189

 

Updated September 7, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Viva Topics in Teams allows users to mention topics in their chat conversations so that others in the conversation can easily learn more about a topic by hovering over the topic name and viewing the topic card. This feature requires users to have a Viva Topics license.

 

When this will happen:

·       Public Preview: We began rolling out in April and will continue rolling out through June and expect complete rollout by late June.

·       General Availability: We will continue rolling out through late June and expect complete rollout by mid-October (previously late July).

·       GCC: We will continue rolling out in early July and expect complete rollout by late October (previously late August).

 

How this will affect your organization:

If your organization has users with Viva Topics licenses, those users will be able to mention topics by typing the # character and choosing a topic from the topic picker. The topic picker will narrow selections based on what the user types. Once a topic is selected, users can post the message.

 

Recipients with Viva Topics licenses will see the selected topic's name as highlighted text and will be able to hover over the highlight and see details of the topic in the topic card such as the alternate names for the topic, descriptions, associated people and resources.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. The topics being displayed will be the same topics that are shown in Outlook Web and SharePoint.

 

MC390413 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams Connect shared channels general availability

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 94820

 

Updated September 21, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Teams Connect Shared channels will be generally available in the coming weeks. Shared channels is a new channel type, in addition to the existing standard and private channel types. Shared channels enable users to collaborate seamlessly with internal and external partners beyond the boundaries of a team.

 

Invite individuals or entire teams to a shared channel. These can either be from your org or from an external Azure AD org. Once added to a shared channel external users can access the channel right from their Teams account without having to switch organizations.

 

Note: External collaboration is off by default.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling this out in mid-July and expect to complete it by mid-August. - Complete

 

Rollout to GCC cloud will begin early August and complete by late September (previously mid-September).

 

How this will affect your organization:

Shared channels will be generally available in the coming weeks. Team owners will see shared channels as an additional channel type while creating a channel. They will be able to share the channel with anyone in the tenant.

 

Key callouts

·       Each shared channel is backed by a dedicated SharePoint site collection. We have improved the SharePoint admin experience to help you manage sites collections associated with shared and private channels better.

·       Shared channels support both meet now and scheduled meetings, making it easy to bring the team together.

·       Shared channels support tabs, bots and message extensions.

·       Graph APIs and PowerShell cmdlets have been updated to support shared channels.

·       Shared channels support full range of Microsoft 365 Information Protection capabilities - eDiscovery, Legal Hold, Information Barriers, Retention, DLP, Audit Logs, & Communication compliance.

 

External collaboration in shared channels is powered by Azure AD B2B direct connect, a new way to collaborate with other Azure AD organizations. With B2B Direct connect, there's no need to add the external user as a guest in your organization. Cross-tenant access policies let admins manage B2B direct connect for their organization. A shared channel can be shared with as many organizations that can be specified in the Azure AD cross-tenant access policy. External collaboration is off by default.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You may consider updating your user training; notifying your help desk; and updating your user level policy around shared channel creation.

 

You can manage shared channels and external collaboration for your organization via the policy managed through the Teams Admin Center or via PowerShell (New-CsTeamsChannelsPolicy).

·       Who can create shared channels (-AllowSharedChannelCreation)

·       Who can invite external users to a shared channel (-AllowChannelSharingToExternalUser)

·       Who can participate in an external shared channel (-AllowUserToParticipateInExternalSharedChannel)

 

Note: Public preview customers  - Once GA rollout is complete users will no longer need to opt-in to public preview to create shared channels. There will be no impact on existing shared channels.

 

Admin: Shared channels in Microsoft Teams | B2B direct connect overview

 

Users: What is a shared channel in Teams?

 

MC387640 — (Updated) Dynamic Caller ID in Calls app for Call Queue Agents

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 86992

 

Updated September 14, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Call queue agents can now place calls from the Calls app using a call queue phone number, defined in resource account, as their caller ID. This ensures the call is properly identified by the recipient and that the call back number is the call queue number rather than the agent's personal line.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out in early June and complete rollout by late October (previously late August).

 

How this will affect your organization:

You can assign outbound caller ID numbers for agents by specifying one or more resource accounts with a phone number. Agents can select which outbound caller ID number to use with each outbound call they make.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

The resource account used for calling ID purposes must have a Microsoft Teams Phone System Virtual User license and one of the following assigned:

·       A Calling Plan license and a phone number assigned

·       An Operator Connect phone number assigned

·       An online voice routing policy (phone number assignment is optional when using Direct Routing)

 

Learn more:

·       Create a Call Queue

 

MC387038 — (Updated) Call control with Bluetooth headsets and speakerphones

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 84309

 

Updated September 7, 2022: We have updated the timeline and provided additional details for clarity. Thank you for your patience.

 

This new feature allows users to use the buttons on Bluetooth headsets, speakerphones or certified devices that don't require a USB dongle to answer, end and even mute calls.  

 

Note: This feature supports both Windows 10 and Windows 11. Mac support will be upcoming in first half of 2023.

 

When this will happen:

Public preview: began rolling out in mid-March but support was limited to Windows 10.

 

Standard and GCC: will begin rolling out in late August (previously late July) with support for Windows 11. Support for Windows 10 versions above 1803 (April 2018) will be enabled late September.

 

GCC-H: will begin rolling out in late July and be complete in late September (previously late August) for Windows 10 and late October (previously late August) for Windows 11.

 

How this will affect your organization:

This feature uses industry standard communication protocol called Hands Free Protocol (HFP) and will work with most headsets that have an answer/end call button.

·       If users can use the headset to answer cellular calls with their cell phone, then it indicates that the headset supports HFP and the user should be able to use it to answer calls with Teams.

·       Mute control leverages industry standard mechanism so will also work for most devices that support a mute button.

 

Teams button support, which can be used for actions like meeting join, and raise/lower hands during meeting will only be available on certified models. 

 

At this time, if a user has two or more audio devices connected to their PC, answering the call using device button is not supported (this is to avoid activating the wrong device). This limitation will be removed in upcoming updates to Windows that will allow Teams to know which device triggered the call answer action,but we do not have an estimated time at this time.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate. Watch for announcements soon about full certification for native Bluetooth headsets which will validate device performance for things like audio quality, and Teams button support.

 

MC379024 — (Updated) Suggested Replies in Teams Desktop

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 92674

 

Updated September 13, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Suggested Replies present users with an option of three responses to choose from for selected messages and is now available to your users in Teams Desktop.

 

We apologize for not informing you about this change prior to it being released. We continue to work to ensure we are being proactive in our communications. Thank you for your patience.

 

When this will happen:

·       Standard: Complete

·       GCC: mid-May through early June - Complete

·       GCC-High: late July (previously early June) through late October (previously late August)

·       DoD: late July (previously early July) through mid-November (previously early September)

 

How this will affect your organization:

Once available, users will be able to quickly reply to a given message by tapping on a suggested reply.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

This feature ships default on; review Manage messaging policies in Teams.

 

If you wish to disable this feature in your tenant, please disable the Suggested Replies setting that is found in Messaging Policies.

 

Users also have a setting within the app so they can disable the feature.

 

MC376244 — (Updated) Retiring Call Quality Dashboard (CQD) v2 -- Get ready for CQD v3 today – GCCH & DoD

Updated September 6, 2022: We have updated the timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

We will be retiring Call Quality Dashboard (CQD) v2 beginning on October 31, 2022 (previously August 30th). On that day, we will cut over to Call Quality Dashboard v3, which is where we will continue to invest our development resources.  

 

You are receiving this message as this change will impact all GCC-H and DoD tenants using the Microsoft Teams Call Quality Dashboard v2. Accessing the CQD v3 is the same as you currently access CQD v2 today.

 

Note: We request that you perform the below steps (1 and 2) prior to October 31st (previously August 30th) as Microsoft support staff will not be able to assist in retrieving these files after this date.

 

How this will affect your organization:

Once this change takes place, you will no longer be able to access any custom reports you have created in CQD v2, and any building data files uploaded to CQD v2 will not be available.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Before October 31, 2022 (previously August 30th), you need to:

 

1.     Download any custom reports created in CQD v2. We recommend each administrator using CQD v2 should perform this if they wish to keep their custom reports. If desired, a designated administrator may also perform this by visiting https://cqd.dod.teams.microsoft.us/cqd/#/Users (DoD) or https://cqd.gov.teams.microsoft.us/cqd/#/Users (GCC-H) and downloading each user's custom reports manually.

2.     Download your current building data files. Where you have multiple building data files, please ensure you capture the date range for which each file applies. These data files are tenant-wide, so only one administrator with the 'Upload building data' permission must perform this step. See this page for information on which admin roles have the appropriate permissions.

 

What you need to do once the change is complete:

Once the cutover to CQD v3 has completed:

1.     Add your building data files to CQD v3 using an administrator account with the 'Upload building data' permission. Only one administrator needs to perform this step. Verify that the correct date ranges are applied to each data file to ensure your building mapping is accurate in your reports.

2.     Administrators can import their custom reports back into CQD v3 if they desire.

 

MC364307 — (Updated) Show As now available in Teams Meetings

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93145

 

Updated September 2, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Microsoft Teams users will soon be able to set individual "Show As" statuses to meetings. Currently the default "Show As" value for all the meetings an organizer creates is "Busy".

 

When this will happen:

We expect to begin rolling this out in late April and expect the rollout to be completed by late September (previously late August). 

 

How this will affect your organization:

As an organizer, while creating the meeting in the action bar you can choose to set Show As status of the meeting, when the participants RSVP, this status will automatically reflect for the meeting for them. You can also create private meetings and appointments for one-self and with participants using Show As.

 

As a participant, you can choose to set your individual status of the meeting through Show As independent of status set by RSVP. The updated status will reflect on your calendar.

 

Note: No impact for admin users.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

No action required but you may want to update your documentation accordingly.

 

MC346909 — (Updated) Customer Lockbox for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 86190

 

Updated September 29, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Customer Lockbox is available today for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. With this update, we are enabling Customer Lockbox for Microsoft Teams as well.

 

Note: If you are already using Customer Lockbox today, no extra steps are needed to take advantage of this update.

 

When will this happen:

·       Standard: We will begin rolling this out in late March and expect to complete rollout by late April. - Complete

·       GCC: We will begin rolling this out in mid-June and expect to complete rollout by late December (previously late June).

·       GCC-H: We will begin rolling this out in early September and expect to complete rollout by late December (previously late September).

·       DoD: We will begin rolling this out in early-September and expect to complete rollout by late December (previously late September).

 

How this will affect your organization:

Occasionally, Microsoft engineers help troubleshoot and fix issues that arise with the service. In some cases, resolving an issue requires a Microsoft engineer to access your content to determine the root cause and fix the issue. Customer Lockbox requires the engineer to request access from you as a final step in the approval workflow.

·       For end users: There is no impact.

·       For admins: If there is a service request on the Microsoft Teams product that requires a Microsoft engineer to access your content to determine the root cause and fix the issue, the admin will need to approve or deny such a request.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

If Customer Lockbox is already enabled for your organization, then there is no additional configuration you need to make for this update.

 

Learn more:

·       Customer Lockbox in Office 365

 

MC341572 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Text Predictions for Teams Mobile (Android)

Updated September 8, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Text predictions is coming to Teams for Android.

 

When you compose or reply to a message in Teams, Editor Text Predictions anticipates your writing and suggests a suitable word or phrase inline. This saves time and helps to reduce typos.

 

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 81573

 

When this will happen:

We expect the rollout to begin in early April and expect the rollout to be completed by late September (previously late August).

 

How this will affect your organization:

This feature will be enabled on by default via a tenant and user setting. The feature can be disabled through messaging policies or users can disable for themselves via an in app setting.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Review your messaging policies and the policy setting for this feature.

 

MC337332 — (Updated) Export feature in Teams Admin Center

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 85704

 

Updated September 12, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Teams admin center is adding support for downloading the data from the list pages like teams list page, members list page, channels list page and users list page. The downloaded data will be in the form of a CSV file. Admins can click on the “Export” icon placed on the table headers in these pages to generate the data and download the CSV from the downloads section in the header of the Teams admin center.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling this out in early March and expect to complete the rollout by late November (previously late August).

 

How this will affect your organization:

Admins will now see a downloads icon in the header.

 

The downloads section will display the list of all entries that were generated in the last 24 hours. This section also is personalized for each admin in an organization but they cannot see exported files from other admins in their organization.

 

This new feature will enable admins to apply filters on these list pages and then export the filtered list of items instead of exporting the entire list.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your Teams administrators about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC333941 — (Updated) New Fluent Emoji style coming to Teams emojis and reactions

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88277

 

Updated September 1, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

This update will have Teams joining Microsoft 365 and Windows in updating all emojis and reactions to the new Microsoft Fluent emoji style, bringing users a more vibrant and expressive emoji experience.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling this out in late February and expect to complete rollout by late September (previously late August).

 

How this will affect your organization:

This update will only change the styling of the emojis and reactions in Teams. There is no functional change to the features.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

Learn more:

·       An Emoji For Your Thoughts

 

MC317766 — (Updated) Live Captions in all available languages and CART Captions on Teams Meetings on Web

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 8490684001

 

Updated September 7, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Live Captions in all available languages will now be available on Teams Meetings on web browsers. CART Captioning support will also be available on web browsers. Chrome/Edge/Safari on Win/Mac/Linux platforms will be supported. 

 

When this will happen:

·       Live captions for web: We expect the rollout to begin in mid-June (previously late March) and expect the rollout to be completed by early July (previously mid-April). - Complete

·       CART captions for web: We expect the rollout to begin in early June (previously early April) and expect the rollout to be completed by mid-January (previously mid-August).

 

How this will affect your organization:

Users will now have all live captions and CART caption options that are available on the desktop version of the app available when they join via web browser.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

IT Admins should update documentation for their organization as necessary.

 

MC298824 — (Updated) Transcription in 1:1 VOIP Calls

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 68774

 

Updated September 2, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Transcription in 1:1 VOIP Calls will soon be available.

 

When this will happen:

We expect this release to begin in early January (previously mid-November) and expect the rollout to be completed by mid-September (previously early August).

 

How this will affect your organization:

Transcription capabilities will be available to capture the text version of your Call and save it for later use. This can be enabled via the control bar within the Call window.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

No action required but you may want to update your documentation as needed.

 

Microsoft Purview

 

MC442111 — Microsoft Purview Information Protection: User-defined permissions support domain name restrictions

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98131

 

Coming soon to public preview and general availability, we're updating the options for custom permissions, also referred to as user-defined permissions, to support domain name restrictions.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout to public preview will begin in mid-October and is expected to be complete by late-October.

Rollout to general availability will begin in early November and is expected to be complete by end of November. 

 

How this will affect your organization:

Within Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), when you choose a sensitivity label configured for user-defined permissions, you can now use domain names to restrict file access to specific individuals, or to all individuals from that domain. For example, you can specify "someone@example.com" or "@example.com" and permissions will be restricted based on those parameters.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_0-1666122043064.png

 

What you need to do to prepare:

If you have previously configured user-defined permissions for your organization, no further action is needed to enable this feature.

 

Configure and manage sensitivity labels in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal

 

Learn more: 

·       Let users assign permissions 

·       Support for organization-wide custom permissions 

 

MC441774 — Microsoft Purview Records Management: Availability of adaptive policy scopes for retention and label policy – GCCH & DoD

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93329

 

This new feature, Adaptive policy scopes, will allow data administrators to scope retention policies and retention label policies to a dynamic set of users, SharePoint sites, or Microsoft 365 Groups. This is enabled by using the properties or attributes associated with these locations. Adaptive policy scopes work with all locations, including Exchange mailboxes, Microsoft 365 Groups, SharePoint sites, OneDrive accounts, Teams chats, channel messages (including private channels), and Yammer user and community messages.

·       Before this release, admins had to manually manage what was included in each policy by creating multiple custom scripts to add or remove locations from a policy. Adaptive policy scopes will automatically add and remove applicable locations to a policy as properties change for the associated user, site, or group.

·       Additionally, adaptive policy scopes are not subject to previous per-policy limits of only including 100 sites or 1000 mailboxes per policy which often caused duplicate policies in large organizations.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in late October and is expected to be complete by end of November.

 

How this will affect your organization:

With this feature, Compliance administrators will be able to create adaptive scopes and apply one or more of these scopes to retention policies and retention label policies.

 

None of your existing policies will be affected by this feature. If you plan to replace the existing policies with new adaptive policies, we recommend creating the new adaptive policies before deleting the existing policies. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to receive this feature and it will not affect your existing policies. You may consider updating any training or reference material for your Compliance administrators and determining if you have policies which would benefit from using adaptive policy scopes.

 

Get started with Records Management in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal:

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments 

 

Learn more: Adaptive or static policy scopes for retention 

 

MC441070 — Microsoft Purview compliance portal: New cmdlet for exporting Activity explorer logs

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93316

 

We're introducing a new cmdlet option in Security & Compliance PowerShell to enable export of all Activity explorer log data.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in late October and is expected to be complete by late November.

 

How this will affect your organization:

Activity explorer in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal provides a historical view of activities on your labeled content.

 

The Activity explorer Export feature has a limitation of 10,000 rows of data. This update will allow admins to use a new cmdlet within Security & Compliance PowerShell, Export-ActivityExplorerData, to export all rows of data for up to 30 days of historical activity.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

To use this cmdlet in Security & Compliance PowerShell, you need to be assigned permissions. For more information, see Permissions in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.

 

Get started with Activity Explorer in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal: 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments 

 

Learn more: 

·       Get started with Activity explorer 

·       Export-ActivityExplorerData (ExchangePowerShell) | Microsoft Learn 

·       Security & Compliance PowerShell 

 

MC439280 — Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Premium): Review set usability enhancements (GA)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 99945

 

We're rolling out several usability enhancements to Review sets for the eDiscovery (Premium) solution in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in late October and is expected to be complete by end of November. 

 

How this will affect your organization:

The following user experience and workflow enhancements will soon be available for eDiscovery (Premium) Review sets to improve usability of the document list viewer and document viewer:

 

1.     Reading row reference – come back to the document where you left off last time

2.     Search metadata name

3.     Formatting updates for metadata list values with bullet points 

4.     Formatting updates for rendering JSON 

5.     Show document in a new window 

 

Jesse_Tedoff_1-1666122076918.png

 

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Search and filter metadata name 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

No action is needed to enable these updates.

 

Get started with eDiscovery (Premium) in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal: 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for WW and GCC cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments 

 

Learn more: 

·       Manage review sets in eDiscovery (Premium) 

·       Query the content in a review set 

 

MC437550 — Microsoft Purview | Communication Compliance: New features coming to general availability for U.S. government clouds

Microsoft 365 Roadmap IDs 88996 and 93195

 

New features are coming soon to general availability for the Communication Compliance solution in the Microsoft Purview compliance center.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in mid-October and is expected to be complete by mid-November.

 

How this will affect your organization:

The following features will soon be generally available:

 

Detect customer complaints: Available as an option in the Communication Compliance policy setup, this new classifier helps detect messages that might indicate customers are submitting complaints about an organization’s products or services. This classifier can help customers manage regulatory compliance obligations such as FINRA Rule 4530, FINRA 4513, FINRA 2111, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Code of Federal Regulations Title 21 – Food and Drugs, Federal Trade Commission Act.  

 

Jesse_Tedoff_3-1666122123019.png

 

Recommended policy actions: Recommended policy actions help organizations discover data risk trends they might not be aware of, like the sharing of sensitive information. Insights for both sensitive information types and trainable classifiers are designed to help organizations identify potential areas of risk and determine the type and scope of policies to be configured. Recommended policy actions displays the aggregate number of matches per classification type, with none of the insights containing any personally identifiable information. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance helps organizations detect explicit regulatory compliance violations (e.g. SEC or FINRA obligations), such as inappropriate sharing of sensitive or confidential information, harassing or threatening language, and sharing of adult content. Built with privacy by design, usernames are pseudonymized by default, role-based access controls are built in, investigators are explicitly opted in by an admin, and audit logs are in place to ensure user-level privacy.

 

Get started with the Communication Compliance solution in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal: 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments 

 

Learn more:

·       Learn about Communication Compliance 

·       Learn about trainable classifiers 

·       Get started with communication compliance - Recommended actions 

 

MC437271 — Microsoft Purview | eDiscovery (Premium): Usability enhancements for list pages in compliance portal

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98192

 

We're introducing several usability improvements for list pages in the eDiscovery (Premium) service. These enhancements will enable easier navigation experiences to support day-to-day workflows across the eDiscovery (Premium) solution in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in mid-October and is expected to be complete by mid-November.

 

How this will affect your organization:

The following usability updates will soon be available for your users:

 

Favorite cases. This update introduces the ability to mark an eDiscovery (Premium) case as a favorite from within the case. Favorited cases can be accessed quickly via the eDiscovery (Premium) Overview page or can be sorted to be shown at the top of the cases list for ease of access.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_4-1666122142042.png

 

Favorited cases can be accessed from the eDiscovery (Premium) overview page

 

Jesse_Tedoff_5-1666122154888.png

 

List of cases can be sorted by favorite status

 

View state persistence. With this update, list pages will support user configuration including search, sort, filter, and group by. Additionally, the user-configured session list state is remembered so users can continue their work with the same list state after logging back in to a new session. 

 

Auto-refresh job status. We’re also introducing an auto-refresh capability of in-list fields such as job status. With this change, without using the “Refresh" button on the page or refreshing the browser, the status of the job will automatically refresh as the job changes state. 

 

Jesse_Tedoff_6-1666122172877.png

 

Auto-refresh job status on job list page

 

Common collection actions. Within the collection list page, you'll see easier access to common collection operations such as re-run collection estimate and commit collection directly. 

 

Jesse_Tedoff_7-1666122188214.png

 

Quick access to rerun collection estimate and commit collection

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about these usability experience updates, and revised any related training and documentation as needed.

 

Access the eDiscovery (Premium) solution in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal: 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments 

 

Learn more: Microsoft Purview eDiscovery solutions   

 

MC437257 — Microsoft Purview | Records Management: User experience update for Disposition Review dashboard (preview)

Coming soon to public preview, we're adding a "Progress" column to the Disposed Items tab in the Records Management > Disposition Review dashboard.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in mid-September and is expected to be complete by early October. 

 

How this will affect your organization:

This feature will add a "Progress" column to the Disposed Items tab in the Disposition Review dashboard. This will give Records Management admins and designated Disposition Reviewers insight into the status of the deletion process for an item that was approved for deletion.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

No action is needed to enable this new feature.

 

Get started with Records management in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal

 

Learn more: Disposition of content - Microsoft Purview (compliance) | Microsoft Docs 

 

MC435352 — Microsoft Purview compliance portal: eDiscovery (Premium) supports Teams reactions (GA)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88922

 

Currently available in public preview (MC412837), eDiscovery (Premium) will soon support discovery of reactions to Microsoft Teams chat and channel messages.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in late September and is expected to be complete by end of October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

You will soon be able to discover Teams reactions in eDiscovery (Premium), including heart, thumbs up, thumbs down, laugh, surprised, and angry. This detail can provide additional user sentiment context for items captured in an eDiscovery (Premium) collection. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Get started with eDiscovery (Premium) in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal:

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC cloud environments

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments 

 

Learn more: 

·       eDiscovery (Premium) workflow for content in Microsoft Teams 

·       Learn about collections in eDiscovery (Premium) 

 

MC432836 — Microsoft Purview Information Protection: Maintain protection when creating PDF files from Office apps – GCCH & DoD

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98194

 

We're introducing the ability to maintain label and protection for PDF files created from Microsoft Office apps.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in mid-September and is expected to be complete by mid-October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

Labels and protection applied on Office documents will be persisted to the output file when converting to PDF in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on PCs using File|SaveAs, File|Export, and File|Share Office add-ins.   

 

What you need to do to prepare:

To enable users to label PDFs created in Office, admins can create sensitivity labels and define policies and settings in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal:

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments

 

Learn more: 

·       Learn about sensitivity labels 

·       Apply sensitivity labels to PDFs created with Office apps (blog post) 

 

MC432476 — Microsoft Purview | eDiscovery (Premium): Retirement of classic case format

We’re retiring the "classic" case format option from the eDiscovery (Premium) case creation page starting November 1, 2022. Instead we recommend the utilization of the eDiscovery (Premium) "new" case format, which features improved performance and additional capabilities, and where we will continue to invest our development resources.  

 

How this will affect your organization:

You are receiving this message because your organization has access to the eDiscovery (Premium) solution.

 

Starting November 1, 2022, all new eDiscovery (Premium) cases created will take the new format by default. The option of classic format will not be available on the case creation page. Any existing eDiscovery (Premium) cases in your tenant will still be accessible and can be operated as normal. 

 

Jesse_Tedoff_8-1666122209218.png

 

Starting February 1, 2023, existing collections and review sets in active classic cases will become view-only. This means any existing collections and review sets cannot be edited but will still be accessible. New collections and review sets can be created in these classic cases if needed. Newly created collections and review sets in existing classic cases will take advantage of the new case format processing pipeline and enjoy benefits such as increased collection and review set limits (1TB instead of 300GB). 

 

For existing active classic cases with collections and review sets that will need to be preserved but won’t need to be edited, data will still be accessible and can be exported beyond February 2023. The classic case format retirement should not affect this scenario. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

If your organization has not yet evaluated the new case format, please do so to ensure you have enough time to assess how these changes will impact your organization’s eDiscovery workflow. Be sure to provide training to all eDiscovery users in your organization on the new case format and update relevant documentation if needed.

 

Access the eDiscovery (Premium) solution in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal:

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for WW and GCC cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments 

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments 

 

Learn more: New case format in eDiscovery (Premium) 

 

MC429470 — New service plan: Data classification in Microsoft 365

You will soon see a new service plan associated with your Microsoft 365 or Office 365 license: Data classification in Microsoft 365.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in mid-October and is expected to be complete by late November.

 

How this will affect your organization:

A new service plan, Data classification in Microsoft 365, will be added to your Microsoft 365 or Office 365 license. This service plan enables backend capabilities to optimize the performance of data classification in Microsoft 365 services. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

No action is required as this update will not impact user workflow or admin experience. You may wish to make a note of the new service plan name for your records.

 

Learn more about data classification in Microsoft 365.

 

MC428256 — Microsoft Purview | Exact data match to support 10 primary (searchable or indexed) fields

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98094

 

We're rolling out an update for exact data match (EDM) sensitive information types (SITs) that will enable organizations to configure EDM SITs to include more primary fields.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in mid-September and is expected to be complete by late September.

 

How this will affect your organization:

Currently, exact data match can be configured to include 5 primary fields. With this update, this will increase to 10 primary (searchable or indexed) fields, enabling organizations to have more flexibility in configuring EDM SITs. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Get started with sensitive information types and explore configuration for EDM SITs in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal:

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for WW and GCC cloud environments

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments 

 

Learn about exact data match-based sensitive information types 

 

MC424407 — Microsoft Purview | Records Management: Trigger a Power Automate flow at the end of retention period (preview)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88816

 

To provide greater process flexibility, we have integrated Microsoft Purview Records Management with Power Automate. Compliance administrators will now be able to create retention labels and choose a Power Automate flow to run when an item labeled with it expires in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout to public preview will begin in mid-September and is expected to be complete by mid-October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

Once this feature rolls out, Records Management administrators in your organization will have the ability to execute custom workflows they have created in Power Automate after the contents in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange reach the end of their retention period.

 

Retention labels that are already created in Records Management will remain unaffected by this. There are no changes to the retention settings in the retention label creation wizard. In addition to the current label actions in the retention label creation wizard, administrators will have the ability to select a pre-existing flow from the Power Automate solution to be triggered after the retention period expires.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to receive this feature. You may consider updating any training or reference material for your Records Management administrators and evaluate if you would like to use this new capability.

 

Explore the Records Management solution in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.

 

Learn more: Learn about records management 

 

MC424403 — Microsoft Purview Information Protection: Maintain protection when creating PDF files from Office apps (GA)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88516

 

Currently available in public preview (MC387639), we're introducing the ability to maintain label and protection for PDF files created from Microsoft Office apps.

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in late August and is expected to be complete by end of September. 

 

How this will affect your organization:

Labels and protection applied on Office documents will be persisted to the output file when converting to PDF in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on PCs using File|SaveAs, File|Export, and File|Share Office add-ins.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

To enable users to label PDFs created in Office, admins can create sensitivity labels and define policies and settings in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.

 

Learn more:

·       Learn about sensitivity labels

·       Apply sensitivity labels to PDFs created with Office apps (blog post)

 

MC422158 — (Updated) Feature Update: Service health admin notifications in Outlook

Updated September 9, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

We’re improving Service health admin notifications in the Microsoft Outlook client experience. This feature is available to Global administrators and Office Apps administrators, who are signed into the Outlook desktop client (for Windows). We’ve heard your feedback and have implemented some improvements, including:

·       Notifications are now separated by “Latest notification” and “Previous notifications”, to more easily distinguish new information.

·       New icons have been added to easily identify active versus resolved issues.

·       Admins now can provide feedback on specific notifications, versus a generic bucket.

·       Ability to fully manage (enable or disable) admin notifications within the notification pane.

 

When this will happen:

These enhancements will begin rolling out at the beginning of October 2022 (previously September 2022) and be made available to all customers by the end of the same month. Admin notifications are accessible to Global administrators and Office Apps administrators who have the feature enabled in the Outlook desktop client experience.

 

How this will affect your organization:

Global admins and Office Apps admin who already have admin notifications enabled in Outlook desktop client, will observe the above enhancements once the roll-out is complete.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

If you are a Global administrator or an Office Apps administrator and would like to receive Service health notification in the Outlook desktop client, use the following steps to ensure the feature is enabled:

·       Before deployment: Navigate to File -> Options -> Advanced, and enable admin notifications.

·       After deployment: Navigate to Help -> Admin notifications, and toggle “Show Admin Notifications”.

 

MC390412 — (Updated) We're adding more features to Microsoft Search in GCC

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93248

 

Updated September 28, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

We are expanding Microsoft Search in GCC. You already have:

·        Organization-wide Search via the Search Box navigation header in SharePoint and OneDrive, Office.com, and on Microsoft Search in Bing

·        Search suggestions based on Files, Sites, People, and Groups in SharePoint, OneDrive, Office.com

·        People Answer, and Customizable Bookmarks and Q&A Answers

 

New features for GCC include:

·        New search suggestions based on Bookmarks, Q&A and History on Microsoft Search in Bing

·        Calendar, Files, and Acronyms Answers

·        Image search in Microsoft provides a new search vertical to provide better search capabilities for images in your organization

·        A new action menu with search results will allow an item not only to be opened in the web experience, but directly opened in the client application, downloaded, shared or copy the link to the item

·        Microsoft Search Usage Analytics recently enabled in the Search and Intelligence Admin Center

 

When this will happen:

We expect to begin rolling out the new Microsoft Search features to GCC customers in August 2022 (previously July 2022) and we expect to finish by late October (previously late September 2022). 

 

How this will affect your organization:

Microsoft Search brings work answers and search results to familiar search experiences, like SharePoint Online, Office.com, and Bing. End users can already enter search queries into the Search Box in SharePoint and One Drive and Office.com and get organization-wide search results. Our new features improve the search suggestions and search results pages, add Calendar, Files, and Acronyms Answers, and provide Search Usage Analytics and Reports from the Search and Intelligence admin center.

 

Search Admins will be able to customize Acronyms Answers (similar to the existing customizable Bookmarks and Q&A Answers) via the Answers tab in the Search & Intelligence admin center.

 

Search Usage Analytics and Reports can be found under Insights > Usage Analytics in the Search & Intelligence admin center.

 

When enabled, users who go to Bing.com and sign in with a valid work account can easily and securely find the work information they need with Microsoft Search in Bing. For GCC customers, Microsoft Search in Bing is off by default. Search Admins can turn on Microsoft Search in Bing in the Admin Center (Settings > Search & intelligence settings > Configurations > Microsoft Search in Bing settings). Choose Change settings and turn on Allow your organization to use Microsoft Search in Bing. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

For GCC customers, Microsoft Search in Bing is off by default. If you haven't enabled Microsoft Search in Bing yet for your organization, you can take these steps:

·        Search Admins can turn on Microsoft Search in Bing in the Admin Center (Settings > Search & Intelligence settings > Configurations > Microsoft Search in Bing settings).

·        Choose Change settings and turn on Allow your organization to use Microsoft Search in Bing.

 

Instructions to turn on Microsoft Search in Bing

 

Learn more about Microsoft Search and customizing Answers here

 

Find information about Microsoft Search in US Government environments here This documentation will be updated to reflect the new features as part of the release process.

 

Microsoft Defender

 

MC424409 — Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Experiences in Microsoft 365 Defender (Preview)

We are happy to share that the SecOps user experience for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps that is now part of Microsoft 365 Defender is available for public preview for Gov customers.

 

When this will happen:

The preview began rollout in late August and is now available. 

 

How this will affect your organization:

This feature provides security teams a central experience for discovery, investigation, mitigation, and handling of incidents.

 

The same functionality will co-exist in the standalone Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps portal. During the preview, you can choose to use each of the portals or both.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this preview. We recommend reviewing the additional information and update documentation as appropriate.

 

MC429467 — Microsoft 365 Defender: Tenant Blocks via Admin Submission

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98920

 

We are excited to announce that in Microsoft 365 Defender, you can now block suspicious entities when submitting emails, URLs, or attachments for Microsoft to review.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out in late September and expect to complete by early October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

This won't affect your organization in any way other than making it easy to create blocks via Tenant allow/block list while making a malicious URL, email attachment or email submission. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You need to inform the individual or organization who is making submissions today. We recommend updating training documentation as appropriate. To learn more, please visit this page

 

MC427157 — Reminder - Enhanced antimalware Engine capabilities for Linux: Validate to ensure continued protection

This message is a continued reminder (previously MC399488 Jully '22) about the enhanced anti-malware Engine for Linux and macOS that we have been rolling out. A few months back we announced the general availability and gradual roll-out of our enhanced anti-malware engine for Linux and macOS.

 

The new engine has been deployed across thousands of systems already and has been running successfully! You can verify whether you are running the enhanced engine by checking the engine_version from the output of "mdatp health". If the engine_version starts with"1.x" you are already on the new version.

 

As a reminder, to ensure Microsoft Defender Antivirus cloud-delivered protection works properly with the new engine, your security/IT team must configure your network/proxy/internet settings to allow connections between your endpoints and certain Microsoft URLs. To support the new Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux and macOS anti-malware engine enhancements, you must allow-list within the proxy ecosystem in your environment the following URL endpoints:

·       go.microsoft.com

·       definitionupdates.microsoft.com

·       https://www.microsoft.com/security/encyclopedia/adlpackages.aspx

·       *.wdcp.microsoft.com

·       *.wd.microsoft.com

 

Please note that access to these URLs is *required* to ensure uninterrupted cloud-delivered protection on your Linux and macOS systems behind a proxy. Organizations that do not allow-list access to the above-mentioned URLs will be unable to download threat definition updates required for effective anti-malware protection.

 

Further info is available at our documentation and also on our blog.

 

Note: No action is required, if the above steps have been taken already based on our announcements and previous communications.

 

Timeline and Version Requirements:  We began rolling out the enhanced anti-malware engine in June and this activity is scheduled to complete by the last week of September.

 

Minimum version requirements to enable a smooth transition:

1.     The minimum Microsoft Defender for Endpoint version number must be 101.62.64 [Feb 2022 build]. However, we recommend upgrading to the latest and greatest version available at the point in time for most updated capabilities.

2.     Soon after migration begins, versions older than 101.62.64 will stop getting protection updates .

 

Note:

1.     Additionally, to support definitions storage in non-standard locations (outside of /var) for definition updates please ensure that you are at least on version 101.71.18.

2.     If you are running builds that are older than 101.62.64, please update defender to continue to stay protected.

3.     If you notice any issues or need any assistance during the course of this roll-out, please do contact Microsoft through our regular support channels.

Refer to our blog for more information.

 

MC362283 — (Updated) Updates to the Zero-hour auto purge (ZAP) alerts

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93206

 

Updated September 2, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

We will be updating the current zero-hour auto purge (ZAP) alerts and introduce a new ZAP alert that will notify you if a message has not been removed by ZAP.

 

Updates to the ZAP alerts will include:

·       Scoping the success ZAP alerts for only ZAP related scenarios. You will no longer be alerted as part of the ZAP alert for Dynamic Delivery scenarios.

·       A new failure ZAP alert is being introduced. You will receive an alert when a message was not successfully removed from the mailbox. Manual action will be required to remediate the message. The alert will be correlated and linked to both Automated Investigation and Response (AIR) and Incidents. The alert will be on by default and can be configured in alert policies.

 

When this will happen:

We expect these updates to roll out in mid-September (previously late August) and expect to be complete by mid-October (previously late September).

 

How this will affect your organization:

Due to these new changes, you can expect a change in the volume of the successful ZAP alerts. The new ZAP failure alert will be on by default and can be configured in the alert policy settings. You can review both default alerts in the portal. However, if you’re exporting these alerts into external systems, you will need to include the new alert generated by the new policy.

 

What can you do to prepare:

 

Review the following resources below to Learn more:

·       Microsoft 365 alert policies 

·       Zero-hour auto purge in Microsoft Defender for Office 365

 

Exchange Online

 

MC441772 — Announcing Retirement of Legacy Exchange Data Loss Prevention

As communicated previously, we will be retiring Data Loss Prevention experience from the classic Exchange Admin Center. Instead, we recommend the utilization of Data Loss Prevention (DLP) in the Microsoft 365 compliance center which enables you to extend your protection to locations such SharePoint online, OneDrive for Business, Teams chats, Devices, and more. Microsoft 365 compliance center provides access to advanced classification capabilities like EDM, ML etc. along with rich alerts, incident management features, and more.

 

When this will happen:

·       Starting November 1, 2022, administrators will no longer be able to make configuration changes to DLP policies in the classic Exchange Admin Center as they will move to read-only mode 

·       Starting December 1, 2022, policy management experience in Exchange Admin Center will be retired. Administrators will still be able to view rules that are associated with a policy using the mail flow rules experience.

 

How this will affect your organization:

To use the Migration Wizard for moving DLP policies, please follow the below steps:

 

1.     Launch the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center DLP console.

2.      

3.     A banner will appear if there are Exchange DLP policies that can be migrated.

4.     Click on the Migrate policies button in the banner to open the migration wizard.

5.     Select the Exchange DLP policies to be migrated individually or in groups and click on Next.

6.     Resolve any issues with regard to warnings or messages that may appear on the flyout pane.

7.     Select between Active, Test, or Disabled mode for migrating the policies to the Microsoft 365 compliance center.

8.     Click on Complete import after reviewing the migration wizard session settings and the migration report for warnings and errors.

9.     The selected Exchange DLP policies will appear in the compliance center DLP console.

What you need to do to prepare:

If you currently have DLP policies being maintained in the classic Exchange admin center, you can use the migration wizard which will help you migrate policies to the Microsoft 365 compliance center in just a few clicks, and then you can disable/delete policies from the classic Exchange Admin center.

 

Please click Additional Information to learn more.

 

MC441064 — Exchange Online Customizable Message Expiration Timeout Interval Coming Soon

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93315

 

A common request from Exchange Online admins is for the ability to customize the message expiration timeout interval for messages sent by users in their organization. When a message in Exchange Online can't be delivered or sent due to a temporary error, the message is queued for subsequent retries until either the message is delivered or sent, or until the message expires after the message expiration timeout interval has passed. In Exchange Online the service-wide default setting is 24 hours. With this update, we'll now give admins the ability to customize the message expiration timeout interval for their organization from 12 hours to 24 hours.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out in mid-October and expect to complete rollout by late November.

 

How this will affect your organization:

If you change the default 24 hour message expiration timeout to a lower value, messages sent by your users that are queued for retry will expire faster, and they will receive a bounce message (NDR) faster. For example, customizing it to 12 hours means senders will receive a bounce message after only 12 hours of retrying a message that can’t be sent, instead of 24 hours.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this.

 

Once the setting is available for your tenant if you want to change it for senders in your organization you can run the following Remote PowerShell cmdlet:

 

Set-TransportConfig -MessageExpiration <12..24>

 

MC429469 — Microsoft 365 Defender: URL and Attachment Allow and Block via Submissions

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98132

 

In government clouds, we honor the data residency commitments aligned with these environments. As a result, submissions are not sent to Microsoft. Admins can still create allow or block rules in the tenant allow/block list for emails via admin email submission. With this change, customers in our government cloud environments will be able to create allow and block entries for URLs and attachments in the tenant allow block list via admin URL and email attachment submission. The data submitted via the submissions experience will not leave the customer tenant just as is standard for admin email submissions.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out in late September and expect to complete rollout by early October.

 

How this will affect your organization:

This will help tenants create allows and blocks in Tenant allow/block list for URL and file using admin submission.

 

The submission won't be leaving the tenant boundaries as it happens with email admin submissions.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You need to inform the individual or organization who is making submissions or creating allow/block today. 

 

MC427760 — Outlook on the web - Update locations to message compose options

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98114

 

Outlook on the web is updating where some message-compose options are located, depending on how you use Outlook.

 

1. For all users - The formatting bar will be relocated to the top of the message compose window, similar to the common "ribbon" you see in other Microsoft apps.

 

2. For all users - When composing a new email message, the "Send", "Discard", and formatting bar will now be located at the top of the compose window.

 

3. For users with "newest on top" option - When you reply to a message, the "Send", "Discard", and formatting bar will be located at top of the compose window.

 

Previously, those buttons and bar were located at the bottom of the message compose window.

 

This update will make the experiences across web and both classic and new Outlook for Windows have a similar UX.

 

The shortcut to send an email message will not change.

 

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out mid-September and complete late September.

Standard Release (WW): We will begin rolling out late-September and expect to complete by mid-October

 

How this will affect your organization:

Users will notice that some buttons have been updated with new locations to make the experience across Outlook more seamless.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_9-1666122255577.png

 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do for this update, but you might want to update your documentation and help desk.

 

MC406647 — (Updated) General availability of Advanced Message Encryption - Office 365 Message Encryption portal access logs

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93372

 

Updated September 21, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

With this update, admins will be able to enable logging of external user activities accessing the Office 365 Message Encryption Portal to retrieve encrypted mail.  

 

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin in mid-October (previously mid-September) and is expected to be complete by end of November (previously end of September). 

 

How this will affect your organization:

This feature will enable logging of external user activities accessing the Office 365 Message Encryption Portal to retrieve encrypted mail. These logs can be retrieved using the Audit Logs functionality in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal. You can also access these audit logs through the management API.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

This feature is not available by default unless you have enabled auditing. To enable the feature, go to Microsoft Purview compliance portal > Audit log search page and select Turn on auditing.

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC cloud environments

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for GCC-High cloud environments

·       Microsoft Purview compliance portal for DoD cloud environments 

 

You can enable the portal logs using Exchange PowerShell: 

·       Set-IrmConfiguration -EnablePortalTrackingLogs $true

 

Learn more: 

·       Search the audit log in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal 

·       Advanced Message Encryption 

 

MC389620 — (Updated) block delegates or shared mailbox members from accessing protected messages in Outlook

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88888

 

Updated September 28, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Outlook will provide consistent access control on protected emails (Protected by MIP Sensitivity labels, or RMS protected emails) for Microsoft 365 delegates and shared mailbox members. For delegates or shared mailbox members, when they have full access of the owner's mailbox but are not allowed to read encrypted email, Outlook will have a new cmdlet setting to block the owner's protected email access which covers ad-hoc encrypted email as well as email with protected MIP sensitivity labels.

 

When this will happen:

·       Preview: We will roll out the preview in early June

·       Standard: We will begin rolling out in early July and expect to complete by early October (previously late August)

 

How this will affect your organization:

Based on customer feedback, we are introducing new Get/Set/Remove-MailboxIRMAcess cmdlets that provide admins with more granular access control of encrypted content, including in scenarios where delegates or shared mailbox members have FullAccess to the shared mailbox

 

We will introduce new Get/Set/Remove cmdlets which tenant admins to use to limit delegate access to RMS messages at mailbox level.

·       Check who is blocked from accessing mailbox owner’s encrypted messages:

 

Get-MailboxIRMAccess -Identity <MailboxIdParameter> -User <SecurityPrincipalIdParameter>

·       Blocked a user from reading encrypted messages in a shared or delegated mailbox:

 

Set-MailboxIRMAccess -Identity <MalboxIdParameter> -User <SecurityPrincipalIdParameter> -AccessLevel <Block>

·       Remove a user from the block list and allowing them to read encrypted mail:

 

Remove-MailboxIRMAccess -Identity <MalboxIdParameter> -User <SecurityPrincipalIdParameter>

 

After any of the above mailbox settings are changed, the Outlook client must be restarted.

 

Parameter definitions:

·       -Identity: The target mailbox. You can use any value that uniquely identifies the mailbox.

·       -AccessLevel: Specifies what delegates can do with IRM-protected messages in the specified mailbox. Currently we only support “Block.”

·       -User: Specifies the delegate or shared mailbox member who is blocked from reading IRM-protected messages in the mailbox or shared mailbox. The user’s login ID must be used.

 

Once delegate is blocked to view the owner mailbox's protected email, the delegate will see the following when they trying to open the protected mails

 

Or Shared mailbox member is blocked to view the mailbox's protected email, the login user will see the following when they trying to open the protected emails.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

If you do not do any cmdlet settings, there will be no impact on your existing delegate or shared mailbox protected message reading experience. But if you choose to block some of the full access delegate or shared mailbox members to read the protected email, you could configure through the cmdlet above.

 

MC385450 — (Updated) Advanced Room Finder Coming to U.S. Government Clouds

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93293

 

Updated September 15, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Room Finder is a web-based feature that you can set up for your users to find available meeting rooms and workspaces that are suitable for their use. Every meeting room and workspace must be set up in Exchange Online and added to a room list for it to display properly in Room Finder.

 

The Advanced Room Finder enables users to browse or search for Buildings/Room Lists by city and then filter by room type, capacity, floor and features.

 

When this will happen:

The Advanced Room Finder is currently available in WWMT. It will begin rolling out to U.S. Government Clouds in early June and be completely rolled out by late September (previously early September). 

 

How this will affect your organization:

Users will be able to browse and search for Buildings/Room Lists and then filter for rooms in a Building/Room List by type, capacity, floor and features.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Admins should ensure Room and Workspaces Mailbox properties are set to ensure users can browse and filter, especially location and feature related properties. The Advanced Room Finder currently uses: City, Capacity, Floor, AudioDeviceName, VideoDeviceName, DisplayDeviceName, IsWheelChairAccessible, and Tags.

 

Learn more:

·       How to Configure the New Room Finder in Outlook

·       Use the Scheduling Assistant and Room Finder for Meetings in Outlook

·       Configure rooms and workspaces for Room Finder in Outlook

 

MC384330 — (Updated) Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Password protected download of quarantined messages

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93305

 

Updated September 1, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

With this change we are giving the ability to password protects items they download from quarantine. We want users to be confident that the items they are downloading to their systems will not execute involuntarily without their consent, and this capability will allow them to safely transport the items to external analysis tools.

 

When this will happen:

·       Standard: will begin rolling out in early July (previously mid-June) and be completed by mid-October (previously late August).

·       Government: will begin rolling out in mid-October (previously late August) and be completed by early November (previously mid-September).

 

How this will affect your organization:

This new feature will enable tenant Admins and users to download quarantined messages and embed a password in those downloaded items.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate. 

 

MC384326 — (Updated) Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Quarantine asynchronous update

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93303

 

Updated October 3, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is introducing a new way of interacting with quarantined messages through an asynchronous approach. Previously, quarantine operations were carried out in a synchronous model on the technical execution side.

 

Note: This change is a major step towards introducing partial string search functionality and 1,000 message bulk operation support in quarantine.

 

When this will happen:

Standard: will begin rolling out in late July 2022 (previously late June 2022) and be completed by late February 2023 (previously late August 2022).

Government: will begin rolling out in early March 2023 (previously early September 2022) and be completed by early April 2023 (previously late September 2022).

 

How this will affect your organization:

Previously, an Admin from Contoso.com could release a quarantine message to a User in Tailspintoys.com. However, to eliminate the risk that comes with such behavior we will be disabling it. Moving forward an Admin will need to download the item from quarantined with the password protected feature and use the download item for the specific workflow they want to accomplish. Please note that we will continue to support an Admin release to recipients who are in the same organization as the Admin.

 

We will be introducing two new quarantine statuses namely “Preparing to release” and “Error.” The “Preparing to release” status will indicate that the messages are in the process of being released while the “Error” status will indicate that a message release has failed, and the user needs to retry.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

The goal for this communication is mostly for informational awareness. You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC382821 — (Updated) Custom organization branding for quarantine notification (custom sender address and Custom subject)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93301

 

Updated September 1, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

We will be adding capabilities to making it possible for Security Operations (SecOps) to customize end user quarantine notifications with their respective organization sender address and custom subject.

 

When this will happen:

Standard: will begin rolling out in late August (previously late July) and is expected to be complete by early October (previously early September).

 

Government: will begin rolling out in early October (previously mid-September) and is expected to be complete by late October (previously late September).

 

How this will affect your organization:

This change will enable admins to customize the sender address of the quarantine notification as well as the subject of the notification.

 

Jesse_Tedoff_10-1666122296364.png

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC373880 — (Updated) Migrating the Safe Links Block List to Tenant Allow Block List

Updated September 1, 2022: We have stopped the automated migration efforts to migrate all entries from your Safe Links Block List to the Tenant Allow Block List. Organizations will have the ability to review and take action on the entries that were unable to be migrated. Any entries that are unable to be migrated will be marked as such and organizations will have the ability to resolve that entry and run the migration again. Tenants will have until January 2023 to complete this activity, at which point the Safe Links Global Block List will be retired.

 

Note: Any entry migrated from the Safe Links Block List to the Tenant Allow/Block List will adopt the behavior of TABL. This means that any message with the URL present will be moved to Quarantine. If deleting an already migrated entry from TABL, it needs to be removed from BlockURLS to avoid migration.

 

As a reminder beginning in June tenants will no longer have the ability to add to the Safe Links Block List in the Global Setting menu. Then we will attempt to migrate the Safe Links Block List to the Tenant Allow Block List (TABL) on behalf of the organization. Any entries that are unable to be successfully migrated, they will be marked as such in the Block List and organizations will have the ability to take action as needed beginning in July.

 

Another update will be sent closer to July as a reminder for tenants to review the migration status of the Block List. Beginning in June organizations will no longer have the ability to add to the Safe Links Block List in the Global Setting menu. Following this, we will attempt to migrate the Safe Links Block List to the Tenant Allow Block List (TABL) on behalf of the organization. For any entries that we are unable to migrate, they will be marked as such in the Block List and organizations will have the ability to take action as needed.

 

When this will happen:

·       Early June: Organizations will no longer have the ability to add to the URL/Domain entries to the Safe Links Block List in the Global Settings flyout and we will attempt to migrate all the entries in an organization's Safe Links Block List to TABL on their behalf

·       Mid-June through December: Organizations will have the ability review entries that were not able to be migrated and resolve the issue(s)

·       January: The Safe Links Block List will be retired

 

How this will affect your organization:

Organizations who are utilizing the Safe Links Block List will need to review the list to ensure all entries were migrated successfully. Any entries that are unable to be migrated will be marked as such and organizations will have the ability to resolve that entry, at which point migration will run again.

 

Organizations will use the Tenant Allow Block List to manage URL/Domain blocks moving forward.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

In June an update to this Message center post will be sent notifying organizations that the first migration has been completed and they will need to review their Safe Links Block Lists for potential actions.

 

Power Platform

 

MC442077 — Power Platform admin center - Planned maintenance impacting support case creation

We have maintenance planned for the Power Platform admin center and Lifecycle Services, which will impact the creation of support cases during the maintenance window, as we perform infrastructure changes.

 

Maintenance window start: 8 October 2022, 15:00 UTC

Maintenance window end: 8 October 2022, 23:00 UTC

 

During this window, ticket creation will be unavailable for an hour, but we are unable to provide an exact timeframe at this time.

 

How does this affect me?

During the maintenance window, you may encounter an error when attempting to create a support case using the Power Platform admin center or in the Lifecycle Services portal. All other aspects of the Help + Support page, as well as other areas of the Power Platform admin center and the Lifecycle Services portal will remain functional during the maintenance window.

 

What action do I need to take?

Please communicate this maintenance window to users in your organization responsible for creating support cases. If one of those users attempts to submit a case and receives an error, please wait for the end of the maintenance window and attempt to create the case again. For critical cases that need immediate support, please call Customer Support.

 

MC424902 — (Updated) Add, update, or delete images in Microsoft Lists via Power Apps

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98119

 

Updated September 12, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

We are strengthening the integration of Power Apps and Microsoft Lists. Power Apps can now be used to add, update, or delete images that are stored in image columns in lists. Images up to 30MB are supported. Supported image formats can be found here.

 

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out late September 2022 (previously early September 2022) and expect to complete by mid-October 2022 (previously mid-September 2022).

Standard Release: We will begin rolling out mid-October 2022 (previously mid-September 2022) and expect to complete by late October 2022 (previously late September 2022).

 

How this will affect your organization:

New apps that have a SharePoint data connection and are connected to a list may use controls that can add, update, or delete images from the list. To obtain the same functionality on existing apps, the SharePoint data connection must be deleted and then re-added to refresh the data schema.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about this new functionality and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

Learn more:

·       Image control in Power Apps

·       SharePoint connector

 

Microsoft 365

 

MC440118 — Consolidating OneNote apps on Windows

We are consolidating OneNote and OneNote for Windows 10. OneNote for Windows 10 listing in the Microsoft Store is being removed and replaced by the OneNote app on Windows listing going forward. For all future Microsoft Store downloads, OneNote will be installed instead of OneNote for Windows 10.

 

How this affects your organization:

Existing OneNote for Windows 10 users will not be impacted. OneNote for Windows 10 will continue to function for them. But no new feature will be coming to OneNote for Windows 10 as it will reach End of Life by Oct 2025. We recommend users to switch to using OneNote instead of OneNote for Windows 10 so that they can receive new feature updates and continued support.

 

If you still need to access OneNote for Windows 10, you can download it from here

 

MC439634 — Header and footer content mark changes for Microsoft Purview Information Protection in Word

We're improving behavior of Microsoft Purview Information Protection (MIP) content markings for headers and footers in Word to be more closely aligned with the behavior implemented by the Azure Information Protection (AIP) plugin for Office apps. This includes inserting header and footer content with the “in front of text” configuration so content markings won’t rearrange existing document content.

 

When this will happen:

This will happen starting rolling out on November 1st the following App versions:

·       Windows version: 16.0.15703.10000

·       Mac version: 16.66.902.0 (16.66.22090200)

·       iOS version: 2.66.902.0 (2.66.22090200)

·       Android version: 16.0.15703.10000

·       Web version: November 1st

 

How this affects your organization:

You are receiving this message because our reporting indicates one or more users in your organization are using this Microsoft Purview Information Protection.

 

Once this change is implemented, new content markings added when applying a sensitivity label will insert header and footer content markings with the new properties. Content markings previously inserted in a document will not be impacted unless the label is changed.

 

If your organization is using a mix of clients, including clients that haven't been updated to receive the new behavior, content markings applied in the updated clients will implement the new behavior when viewed regardless of the client application that is used to view the document, while content markings applied in clients without this update will implement the old behavior even when viewed in updated applications. 

 

Users may see content markings applied by labels render in a different way that may overlap with existing headers or footers in documents, when this change is implemented.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You can test the new behavior by applying sensitivity labels with content marking elements using the Office apps Beta channel starting October 11, 2022, to ensure your content behaves as desired with the label change and to make any adjustments to label properties in the admin center.

 

If this change produces undesired results, you can adjust the positioning of content markings in your labels, adjust the text in the content markings or modify the font size and or color to add in visibility of the content markings. See Modify the look of sensitivity labels in your document for steps on how to make those changes in impacted documents. 

 

For more information about Content Markings in Office sensitivity labels see When Office apps apply content marking and encryption

 

MC437557 — (Updated) Reminder: Microsoft Office default change – Blocking VBA macros in files from the internet

Updated September 26, 2022: We have updated the content to show as intended. Thank you for your patience.

 

VBA macros are a common way for malicious actors to gain access to deploy malware and ransomware. As a reminder (MC322553 in Feb 2022, MC393185 in June 2022), to help improve security, we are changing the behavior of Office applications to now block macros in files from the internet. Learn more in this blog post.

 

This change only affects Office on devices running Windows and only affects the following applications: Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and Word.

 

The change described in this post is scheduled to be included in the following channels:

·       Monthly Enterprise Channel: Version 2208 on Tuesday October 11, 2022

·       Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel (Preview): Version 2208 on Tuesday October 11, 2022

·       Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel: Version 2208 on Tuesday January 10, 2023

 

Note: If you ever enabled or disabled the Block macros from running in Office files from the Internet policy, your organization will not be affected by this change.

 

Key points:

·       Timing: Available in Monthly Enterprise Channel and Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel (Preview) in October 2022, available in Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel in January 2023

·       Action: Review and assess impact

 

How this will affect your organization:

Previously, it was possible for end users to enable these macros by simply clicking a button on the Trust bar.

 

Now, with this change, once a user opens an attachment or downloads from the internet an untrusted Office file containing macros, a message bar displays a Security Risk that the file contains VBA macros obtained from the internet with a Learn More button.

 

VBA Macros Blocked Trust Bar

 

The Learn More button goes to an article for end users and information workers that contains information about the security risk of bad actors using macros, safe practices to prevent phishing and malware, and instructions on how to enable these macros (if absolutely needed).

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Enterprises should evaluate their use of macros in files obtained from the internet to determine how this new default behavior will affect their users.

 

To learn more about how to get ready for this change and recommendations for managing VBA macros in Office files, read this article for Office admins.

 

MC428511 — (Updated) Grid view for Planner "Assigned to me" and plan drill-down views in Planner Web

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 98104

 

Updated September 21, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

In addition to the existing board, chart, and schedule views, customers can now view their tasks in a grid/list format.

 

When this will happen:

The grid view will be available in Planner web in the late October timeframe (previously early September).

 

How this will affect your organization:

Once available, users can now view more tasks on your screen at once and more easily compare task metadata like like "Priority" with one another. This applies to the Web version of Planner and is available for both the "Assigned to me" and the plan drill-down views. 

 

What you need to do to prepare:

You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.

 

MC394516 — (Updated) We're bringing Microsoft Search to GCC High

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93249

 

Updated September 21, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

Beginning late August 2022 (previously late July 2022), we are bringing Microsoft Search to GCC High. This includes:

·        Organization-wide Search via the Search Box navigation header in SharePoint and OneDrive, Office.com, and on Microsoft Search in Bing

·        Search suggestions based on Files and Sites in GCCH for Office.com, SharePoint and OneDrive; and on Bookmarks, Q&A, and history in GCCH on Microsoft Search in Bing

·        People Answer and Customizable Bookmarks and Q&A Answers

·        Search and Intelligence Admin Center

·        Search Usage Analytics enabled in the Search and Intelligence Admin Center

 

When this will happen:

We expect to begin rolling out Microsoft Search to GCC High customers in late August 2022 (previously late July 2022), and we expect to finish in late October 2022 (previously late September 2022).

 

How this will affect your organization:

Microsoft Search brings work answers and search results to familiar search experiences, like SharePoint Online, Office.com, and Bing.

 

End users will be able to enter search queries into the Search Box in SharePoint and One Drive and Office.com and get organization-wide search results. They'll see People, Bookmarks, and Q&A Answers in the search results.

 

When enabled, users who go to Bing.com and sign in with a valid work account can easily and securely find the work information they need with Microsoft Search in Bing. For GCC High customers, Microsoft Search in Bing is off by default. Search Admins can turn on Microsoft Search in Bing in the Admin Center (Settings > Search & intelligence settings > Configurations > Microsoft Search in Bing settings). Choose Change settings and turn on Allow your organization to use Microsoft Search in Bing. 

 

Search Admins will be able to customize Bookmarks and Q&A Answers via the Search & Intelligence Admin Center. Search Admins will find Search Usage Analytics in the Search & Intelligence Admin Center.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

For GCC High customers, Microsoft Search in Bing is off by default.

·        Search Admins can turn on Microsoft Search in Bing in the Admin Center (Settings > Search & Intelligence settings > Configurations > Microsoft Search in Bing settings).

·        Choose Change settings and turn on Allow your organization to use Microsoft Search in Bing.

 

Instructions to turn on Microsoft Search in Bing

 

Learn more about Microsoft Search and customizing Answers here

 

Find information about Microsoft Search in US Government environments here This documentation will be updated to reflect the upcoming changes during the release process.

 

MC390753 — (Updated) Personal query history in Microsoft Search

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93347

 

Updated September 27, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

 

We're adding a new option in Microsoft Search that allows users to view and manage their personal query history.

 

When users get results for a search in Outlook, SharePoint Online, and Office.com, the issued query is recorded in their search history. A user’s search history is personal, it isn’t shared with your organization or with Microsoft. Their search history helps them quickly get back to things they’ve found before. As they type a query, matches in their search history are suggested back to them in the search box.

 

Users can review their search history at any time by downloading it. They can also clear their history at any time. Both actions are done from the My Account portal of their work or school account. Go to the Settings & Privacy page and open the Microsoft Search section. Recording of history can’t be paused.

 

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out personal query history in mid-August (previously early July) and expect to complete the rollout by late November (previously mid-September).

 

How this will affect your organization:

With personal query history, users will see recent search queries across SharePoint Online and Outlook (web) as they begin typing in the search box.

 

This prompt makes it easier to return to recently accessed insights and information. No need to bookmark or memorize your frequent queries.

 

Personal query history is managed and downloaded through the Microsoft 365 My Account settings.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

Review the Microsoft Search documentation for US Government environments at and the Microsoft Search documentation.

 

MC295027 — (Updated) Rich text and images in Planner task notes

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 85688

 

Updated September 22, 2022: We have updated the content below to reflect support for images will be coming in the future and we will communicate via Message center when available. Thank you for your patience.

 

We are adding support for rich text (bold, italics, underline, etc.) in the Planner task notes field. Support for images is coming in the future.

 

NOTE: We will update this post once we have Microsoft Graph documentation for the new rich text task notes field available.

 

When this will happen:

We expect to begin rolling out the new rich text task notes field in late October (previously early September) and we expect to complete the rollout by mid-November (previously late September).

 

How this will affect your organization:

To support this capability, we are introducing a new rich text enabled task notes field in the Planner Microsoft Graph API. This will result in two task notes fields in our API – the new “rich text task notes field” and the existing “plain text task notes field.” When this feature launches, Planner for the Web and for Teams (Tasks app) will support rich text in task notes. Other Planner experiences in iOS, Android, SharePoint, and Power Automate will only support plain text task notes, but we plan to update these apps to support rich text at a later date.

 

When this feature update is deployed, all existing task notes content will be preserved in the new rich text enabled task notes field, so users will be able to continue viewing and editing notes without interruption.

 

We will maintain compatibility between the rich text task notes field and plain text task notes field by ensuring both fields’ contents stay in sync.

 

If a user edits the rich text task notes field, all content is synced to the plain text task notes field automatically. Any rich content is converted to plain text and synced to the plain text task notes field.

 

If a user edits the plain text task notes field via the Microsoft Graph API or via a client which only supports the plain text field, the contents in the plain text task notes field is synced to the rich text task notes field without modification. Therefore edits to the plain text task notes field will result in the removal of any pre-existing rich text, or text formatting in the rich text notes field.

 

What you need to do to prepare:

If your organization has custom applications interacting with our Microsoft Graph Planner API, make sure to update the apps to support the rich text task notes field as soon as it is available to take advantage of the new notes capabilities. We will maintain support for the existing plain text task notes field in our Microsoft Graph Planner API for at least 36 months.

 

If your organization has applications or workflows which parse the task notes to trigger logic based off contents in the notes field, we recommend users continue to input only plain text in task notes and not apply text formatting into task notes. Such apps should also be updated to avoid parsing task notes or applying logic to contents in the task notes as these are not recommended uses of the task notes field in our API.

 

Microsoft 365 IP and URL Endpoint Updates

 

September 29, 2022 - GCC

September 29, 2022 – GCC High

September 29, 2022 - DOD

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