Major Updates
US and EU Yammer External Collaboration
Yammer will now fully allow external collaboration of members who are both in the US and EU. Previously, EU and US external collaborators we siloed. This change will allow for greater collaboration of users across the two continents. We aren’t fans of Yammer, relative to Teams, but happy to see Microsoft is broadening their security updates on a global scale.
Updated Timeline to mid-February: Project and Visio Trials
The timeline has been extended until mid-February to so users can still have trial plans of MS Project Online and MS Visio Online for 30 days before making a self-service purchase. This means that global and billing admins have about 1 more month to enable or disable self-purchasing of these two add-ins. If it is not disabled, users will be able to automatically sign up for Project Online and Visio plans without consent from the global or billing admins. This will automatically add to the overall Office monthly bill that companies receive. As an admin, you may want to disable self-service purchases in Office 365 to ensure your Office 365 bill doesn’t grow unexpectedly. See here. We highly advise companies to investigate this feature as it can have a dramatic impact on billing.
Microsoft Disabling Office 365 Basic Authentication
Microsoft is warning companies about the upcoming retirement of basic authentication in October 2022. Part of that warning is giving each company a list of basic authentication attempts within the last month so companies can investigate who is still using those protocols ahead of the October 2022 date and ensure those users will not be affected. If you need to investigate the types of logins, you can do so in Azure Active Directory here. We highly recommend companies investigate their login sessions as we have seen an uptick in hacking attempts in Office 365 globally.
OneNote 2013 and 2016 Learning Add-Ins Deprecated
If your company has procedures to add the OneNote 2013 or OneNote 2016 Learning Add-Ins for new users, then this feature will be deprecated in March, 2022. Update your procedures accordingly and consider upgrading to a newer edition of OneNote, such as OneNote Online, to get the latest training materials from Microsoft.
Updated Timeline to Chat with External Personal MS Teams Users
MS Teams is enabling the ability to chat with personal MS Teams accounts. Users will be able to chat both 1:1 and in group chats with external personal MS Teams users. The full rollout of this feature has been extended from December until mid-January. We expect this will go live soon since the timeline has not been extended drastically.
Other Updates
Microsoft Search in Bing to Incorporate Email Messages
If you use Microsoft Bing to search, you can search for email messages in Bing as well as MS Teams and Yammer conversations. Take that, Google!
Mute Notifications in MS Teams Meetings
The ability to enable and disable notifications during MS Teams meetings will become easier to find. Going forward, you can mute notification during meetings by:
- Click the 3 dots next to your profile picture in MS Teams
- Click Settings
- Click Notifications
- Click Edit next to Meetings and Calls
Kanban Board View in Microsoft Lists
If you are a lover of Kanban boards, you will love this update. Users will finally be able to work with Microsoft List data in a board view! This is listed as “Other Updates” by Microsoft, but we feel this is a HUGE win for users and lovers of Kanban boards. We cannot wait to update some business processes to incorporate this new feature.
Combined MS Teams and SharePoint Online Templates
This is another neat update if you are an administrator. You cannot use a template for both MS Teams and SharePoint Online. This update will make that feasible and will greatly help companies in choosing how to properly setup MS Teams and SharePoint together.
Updated Timeline for OneDrive ARM on Windows
The timeline for when OneDrive ARM will come to windows has been extended until late January. This update has some heightened security implications since it related to access management. We are happy Microsoft is taking their time with this update and ensuring the ARM policies are implemented properly.
Tasks in My Feed SharePoint Online Web Part
Tasks from various areas of Office 365 will aggregate in the My Feed web part in SharePoint Online. This update is in its early stages, but we look forward to seeing how task aggregation can be displayed on a SharePoint Online page. Currently, you have to navigate to a tasks-related area to see all tasks. Embedding it in SharePoint Online, as well as MS Teams, will open even more personalized content for user engagement.
Even More MS Teams Emojis!
Very important update here… Microsoft will be expanding t0 800+ emojis! If you felt you couldn’t express yourself well enough, your time will be coming soon.
Updated Timeline for Suggested Replies in MS Outlook
Microsoft is pausing the full rollout of suggested replies for Microsoft Outlook indefinitely. Issues were discovered during the testing of this feature. Likely people got suggestions they were not expecting and therefore the calculations need to be adjusted to make the suggestions smarter. This may take a while to fully rollout and the benefit of this feature is not high and more a nice to have.
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