Office 365 Weekly Digest | September 29 – October 5, 2019

Weekly Digest  0 Comments

Welcome to the September 29 – October 5, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were nineteen features added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, with most updates for Outlook on Android and iOS. Other updates of note are SharePoint site URL rename, and cross-volume support for OneDrive Known Folder Move.

There were no new events listed last week, but there are tons of new sessions for existing series that have been added. The spotlight event of the week is the “Host Live Events in Microsoft 365” webinar on Tuesday, October 8th at 9am Pacific.

The monthly “What’s New” updates were the focus of last week’s blog posts, including the overall Microsoft 365 update, as well as information for Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint and Forms.

Noteworthy item highlights from last week include information on what’s new in the Microsoft 365 admin center and Office deployment for IT Pros, the general availability of SharePoint 2010 support in the SharePoint Migration Tool, and innovations in voice, digital ink, and touch within Microsoft 365 and Surface devices.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

DescriptionFeature IDEstimated ReleaseDetails
OneDrive and SharePoint email localization55557November CY2019Added: 30 September 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: OneDrive, SharePoint
We will now localize emails where possible to the preferred language of recipients as defined in their AAD and Exchange settings. In the case of multi-recipient emails ODSP has built logic to consume content and site languages to localize emails.
SharePoint site URL rename56205October CY2019Added: 30 September 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: SharePoint
As Business changes, so, too, can your sites, especially site URLs. In the SharePoint admin center you will be able to change site URLs by renaming them. These changes are opaque, meaning that access requests to the old URL are redirected – users will not need to have to update their links.
The ability to contact support through the Admin Center for GCC High / DoD55476Q3 CY2019Added: 30 September 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: M365 Admin
GCC High / DoD environments will have the ability to contact support and manage service requests using the “Need Help” service in the Admin portal.
Outlook for iOS53995November CY2019Added: 01 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – iOS
Outlook will automatically suggest locations for some recurring events on your calendar so you can access directions or receive Time To Leave reminders.
Outlook for iOS: Accept a new proposed time to meet53996November CY2019Added: 01 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – iOS
Respond to a proposed new time to meet.
Outlook for iOS: Propose a new time to meet53997November CY2019Added: 01 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – iOS
Quick reply to an event or meeting invitation with a new time proposal.
Outlook for Android: Meeting Insights54545November CY2019Added: 01 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – Android
Emails and documents that are relevant to your meeting or appointment are included in the Calendar event description.
Outlook for iOS: Up next54546November CY2019Added: 01 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – iOS
Events on your calendar that are coming up in the next 30 minutes and marked as Busy will be included in a new banner at the top of your inbox.
Outlook for iOS: iPad enhancements for iPadOS54547November CY2019Added: 01 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – iOS
With a larger screen, use the new split screen available with the iPadOS – open multiple messages or view your message list and calendar at the same time.
Outlook for Android: Up next54578November CY2019Added: 01 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – Android
Events on your calendar that are coming up in the next 30 minutes and marked as Busy will be included in a new banner at the top of your inbox.
Outlook for iOS: Suggested replies54806November CY2019Added: 01 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – iOS
Simply select from one of a few suggested responses to common email messages.
Outlook for iOS: Meeting Insights56327November CY2019Added: 01 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – iOS
Emails and documents that are relevant to your meeting or appointment are included in the Calendar event description.
Outlook for iOS: Keep notifications confidential56325Q1 CY2020Added: 01 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – iOS
Support the obfuscation or hiding email content in notifications based on your organization’s data protection policies.
Outlook for Android: Keep notifications confidential56326Q1 CY2020Added: 01 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – Android
Support the obfuscation or hiding email content in notifications based on your organization’s data protection policies.
Combining Services & add-ins, Security & privacy, and Organization profile on a single page in the Microsoft 365 admin center56352November CY2019Added: 03 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: M365 Admin
We’re combining the Services & add-ins or Apps, Security & privacy, and Organization profile pages under a single page in the admin center to simplify settings management. You’ll be able to search and manage all of your settings in a single page.
Tenant specific mailbox for sharing comms56361November CY2019Added: 03 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: SharePoint
Today all tenants share a common “no-reply” domain for various email communication scenarios. With this update, we will segregate tenant emails by domain removing the risk of emails being sorted into junk folders and segregating spam scores. Now, these emails will come from tenant-specific mailboxes. This will not impact emails that are sent on behalf of a user’s mailbox like file sharing, page promotion via email or comment @mentions. It will also not immediately impact legacy SharePoint alerts on document libraries or lists which will continue to use the standard domain for the foreseeable future.
Usage Analytics for Government Community Cloud High56351October CY2019Added: 03 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Usage Analytics
“Usage Analytics in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center helps understand your adoption of Office 365 solutions. The following reports will be made available to organizations with tenants in the Government Community Cloud High environment: (1) Email activity, (2) Email app usage, (3) Office 365 groups, (4) Office activations, and (5) SharePoint activity.
Group policy setting that shows the Office Insider option to end users56366October CY2019Added: 03 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Office
We’re making it easier for you to give selected users in your organization the option to use Office Insider builds on devices running Windows. You can now configure the “Show the option for Office Insider” policy setting to show those users the Office Insider option under File Account. You can configure the same policy to disable showing the Office Insider option to the users, For more information about the Office Insider program, see https://insider.office.com.
Cross-volume support when you enable backup of your important folders56383October CY2019Added: 03 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: OneDrive
OneDrive Known Folder Move support for migrations where the known folders are on a different volume than the OneDrive folder.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

This 60-minute session introduces you to the key activities needed to get started with Microsoft Teams today. From setting your profile, to running a meeting, users will leave this session with the foundation needed to use Teams with confidence. The session is also available on demand at https://aka.ms/teamsgettingstartedondemand.

Learn Tips for Taking Teams to the Next Level: Part 1 – Effective Workspaces

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips & Tricks sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. In Part 1 – Effective Workspaces, you will explore ways to determine the best approach for creating workspaces for projects and workgroups. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Decide if your team is best served by a team and channels or a group chat and meetings, (2) Create a workspace for your team to provide the best collaboration experience, (3) Use a personal team to simplify your productivity, and (4) Determine best practices for Teams. Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Make the switch from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams: End User Guidance

Designed specifically for Skype for Business end users, this course offers everything you need to help make the transition to Microsoft Teams. We’ll focus on the core communication capabilities you use today, chat and meetings, as well as provide an orientation to additional collaboration functionality Teams has to offer. The session is also available on demand at https://aka.ms/fromskypetoteamsondemand.

Webinar: Host Live Events in Microsoft 365

When: Tuesday, October 8, 2019 9:00am – 10:00am PT | Learn how to create, promote, and manage live events in Microsoft 365. This deep dive will walk through the best practices and technical steps so your organization can start empowering leaders to connect with their employees, deliver impactful training, and improve communication and culture using Microsoft Teams, Stream, and Yammer. Be sure to add the event to your calendar!

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Have you spent significant time and resources to prepare for a meeting and still felt it wasn’t productive? Have you attended a meeting only to leave feeling like not much was accomplished? Join this class to learn how to make your meetings engaging, productive and effective. Microsoft Teams can help make your meetings worth showing up for. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Use Teams for your entire meeting experience, (2) Record your meeting, making it easy for those who couldn’t attend to get caught up, (3) Keep important meetings at your fingertips by pinning them for easy access, and (4) Assess which audio and video devices are best for your meeting needs. You can access the recorded version of this session on-demand at Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams – On Demand.

Learn Tips for Taking Teams to the Next Level: Part 2 – Get More from Teams

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips & Tricks sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. In Part 2 – Get More from Teams, you will learn tips and tricks for managing and organizing work and communications in Teams. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Implement strategies to manage and organize your work, (2) Leverage formatting best practices to help get your messages noticed (and responded to), (3) Easily find files, chats and projects, and (4) Simplify your workday. Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Azure AD Webinar: Starting your journey to Zero Trust with Conditional Access & Identity Protection

Please join us for the Azure AD Webinar Series. Our engineering team is hosting these (free) sessions on deploying and configuring Azure Active Directory.  In this webinar, learn how to shore-up your environment by following zero trust methodologies and Azure AD technologies.

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

Your business needs to control how sensitive data is managed. Join us and explore how to assess your compliance risk, protect sensitive and business critical data, and respond efficiently to data discovery requests. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Simplify assessment of compliance risk, (2) Integrate protection and governance of data, and (3) Intelligently respond to data discovery requests. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft Teams: Seamless Collaboration with Microsoft 365

Are you still sending an e-mail with an attachment to your teammates when you want to collaborate on a file? How fast do they respond? How do you know if they are working on the file? How do you manage version control? With Microsoft 365 tools for teamwork, you can seamlessly collaborate on files with your team members. Using Microsoft Teams, you can invite your teammates into an environment where they can effectively collaborate and engage in a persistent conversation. Join us for this session and explore how to avoid productivity sinkholes and increase productivity. This interactive 2-hour session will give you the opportunity to test drive Microsoft Teams in a live cloud environment. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and experience how they can work for you. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft Teams: Ready your end users

Design a user readiness strategy to help your users love and adopt Teams. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Recognize factors that influence user acceptance and adoption, (2) Define core value messaging for Teams in your organization, and (3) Outline your awareness, training and support activities. The audience for this session is: User Readiness/Change Manager.

Microsoft Teams: Implement your upgrade approach

Execute your defined upgrade approach as part of your formal upgrade plan. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Recognize the upgrade settings in your O365 tenant admin portal, (2) Understand technical tips and considerations for a successful upgrade, and (3) Apply the appropriate settings in the Portal to execute your upgrade. The primary audience for this session is IT Admins.

Azure AD Webinar: Empower your users with better IT scalability

Please join us for the Azure AD Webinar Series. Our engineering team is hosting these (free) sessions on deploying and configuring Azure Active Directory.  In this webinar, learn how Azure AD enables your users to reset their passwords securely and manage their own IT security and allows you to scale IT management of groups.

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Discover everything you need to facilitate a successful upgrade to Teams. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Understand why a formal plan is crucial for upgrade success, (2) Identify the steps to the upgrade success framework, (3) Recognize common attributes of successful customers, and (4) Create and implement their own upgrade plan. The audience for this session is All (Business Sponsors, IT Admins, User Readiness/Change Manager, Project Lead).

Microsoft Teams: Identify your upgrade approach

Determine the most suitable approach based on your current Skype for Business implementation and upgrade goals. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Understand common scenarios and upgrade approaches, (2) Visualize the user experience for each approach, and (3) Determine the optimal upgrade approach for your organization.  IT Admins are the primary audience for this session.

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Non-native Teams Room Systems and Microsoft Teams Meetings

When: Monday, October 21, 2019 9:00am – 10:00am PT | This September and October Microsoft HLS will be hosting a series of 3 Microsoft Teams AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions. Each session will kick off with a brief update on any Teams news followed by a short 10/15-minute topic of consideration with Teams. The remaining 40-45 minutes will be wide open Q&A where our panel Microsoft Teams Technical Specialist will be on hand to answer your questions. Each session will begin at 12 noon eastern (9am pacific) and last for one hour. The focus of the second AMA session is on non-native Teams Room Systems and Microsoft Teams Meetings. Be sure to add the event to your calendar!

Microsoft Teams: Enabling Real-time Collaboration for Cross-functional Teams

How do you bring various stakeholders together across multiple teams to achieve your goal? Do you wish you could reduce the number of meetings or e-mails while still being able to solicit feedback, keep everyone informed, and get consensus? Join us to explore how to bring everything together in a shared workspace with Microsoft Teams. Learn how to chat, meet, share files, and work with other business applications to effectively engage others. This interactive 2-hour session will give you the opportunity to try it for yourself and test drive Microsoft Teams in a live cloud environment. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and experience how they can work for you. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft IT Showcase: IT Expert Roundtable – Upgrading to Microsoft Teams from Skype for Business

When: Wednesday, October 23, 2019 10:00am – 11:00am PT | Microsoft CSEO is meeting the needs of an evolving, increasingly modern workplace by upgrading employees from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams: the new hub for calls, chat, meetings, and file sharing in Office 365. After introducing users to Teams by configuring it to run alongside Skype for Business, we began upgrading employees to Teams-only mode. In this webinar, our experts will answer questions on how we used a phased approach emphasizing readiness and productivity to accelerate adoption and help ensure a smooth transition.

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Assets and Empowering Your Defenders

Today’s workforce can work from anywhere, on any device, and on any app. Security teams need to understand threat signals from disconnected products and optimize security with minimal complexity. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Safeguard users from malware attacks such as phishing and spoofing with Office 365, (2) Use the Windows Defender ecosystem to proactively monitor and protect your users, (3) Utilize Office 365 ATP to help protect users from bad links and attachments, and (4) Let machine learning and automation protect users from threats. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Teams and End User Preparedness

When: Monday, October 28, 2019 9:00am – 10:00am PT | This September and October Microsoft HLS will be hosting a series of 3 Microsoft Teams AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions. Each session will kick off with a brief update on any Teams news followed by a short 10/15-minute topic of consideration with Teams. The remaining 40-45 minutes will be wide open Q&A where our panel Microsoft Teams Technical Specialist will be on hand to answer your questions. Each session will begin at 12 noon eastern (9am pacific) and last for one hour. The focus of the third and final AMA session is end user preparedness for Microsoft Teams. Be sure to add the event to your calendar!

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Data needs to be protected wherever it’s stored and whenever it travels, and you need the tools to monitor policy violations and risky behavior. Join us to explore how to implement a comprehensive and integrated approach across devices, apps, cloud services, and on-premises. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Identify, monitor and automatically protect sensitive information across Office 365, (2) Help classify and protect documents and email, and (3) Use policies to enable BYOD scenarios by protecting data at the app level. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Identity, Apps, Data and Devices

Identity is at the center of security: don’t compromise when it comes to your company’s valuable information. Join us to explore how to use secure authentication, govern access, get comprehensive protection and set the right identity foundation. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Enable password protection, (2) Bring multi-factor authentication to your Windows 10 users, (3) Protect your users and data through Office 365 multi-factor authentication, and (4) Use conditional access to protect across devices, locations and apps. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft IT Showcase: IT Expert Roundtable – Our transformation to Microsoft Teams

When: Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:00am – 11:00am PT | A cultural change is taking place at Microsoft with the implementation of Microsoft Teams as the new hub for collaboration and communication. During this roundtable, you will learn how CSEO systematically drove the adoption of Teams across the company by implementing a change management plan that actively engaged executive sponsors as well as end users, creating training and evangelism programs, and promoting the transition to Teams through a comprehensive channel strategy—all supported by metrics-driven analytical tools.

BLOG ROUNDUP

New to Microsoft 365 in September—updates to Microsoft To Do, PowerPoint, OneNote, and more

Every update we make to Microsoft 365 is about helping our customers transform the way they work. And this month, we’re introducing updates and features designed to help you collaborate more effectively, work more efficiently, and protect your data more proactively. We updated the conversation experience for Yammer mobile, so it’s easier to discover and share the content that matters most, and a new PowerPoint for iPad feature makes it (finally!) easy to share a single slide. The updated Microsoft To Do app keeps you productive on the go, and now you can export Visio workflows to Microsoft Flow—a great way to streamline business processes and save your organization money and time. Also new in September: automated incident response with Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) for more effective, efficient security. | Related:  Video: What’s New with Microsoft 365 | September 2019

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | September 2019

Many of us are heading back to school or returning to work after a relaxing Summer break; but while you may have been on vacation, momentum in Teams has not slowed down! We are excited to share a ton of new features that have come to Microsoft Teams in the past month of September, including new ways to filter through chats, the ability to mute a conversation in a channel, Secondary Ringer functionality, enhancements to Cloud Voicemail, calling availability in Chrome, and more. | Related: 10 Things we love about the Teams mobile app | Collaborate visually with Lucidchart and Microsoft Teams | Recording – HLS Microsoft Teams AMA Episode 1

OneDrive Roadmap Roundup – September 2019

The OneDrive team is excited to share the latest functionalities that landed in production in the month of September-2019. New features include: (1) Differential sync for all file types, (2) AutoCAD-based previews of DWG files in OneDrive and SharePoint, (3) Common file sharing experience in Outlook web app, (4) Support for OCR in scans on iOS, and (5) Windows Virtual Desktop – General Availability.

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: September 2019

September was a month to remember, so we at Microsoft thought we’d bring a few early tech presents two months before December. This post includes all the SharePoint and related tech updates that rolled out this past month. This is the all-inclusive roadmap release recap for all things SharePoint and related technology. Highlighted features include new and updated SharePoint web parts, activity highlights in file hover cards, the ability to manage sharing and access request settings from the Site permissions panel, per-site Anyone link expiration policy, sharing reports, and more. All these features began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of September 2019 (possibly early September 2019).

What’s New in August-September in Microsoft Forms

With Forms, Microsoft strives to deliver the best user experience for form designers, respondents, and collaborators. We believe that a key element in creating the best user experience is starting with an intuitive design. We are excited to share two recent advancements in Forms’ design: Multilingual Support, and Office Suite Header. One of the most foundational components of an intuitive design is the ability to choose the language in which you are interacting with the tool. To achieve this, we have added Multilingual Support. With Multilingual Support, the form designer can add multiple language versions, which allows respondents to choose their preferred language. All responses will then be stored in a single form for easy analysis. To Improve navigation and coherence across the Office apps, a new suite header has been added for Microsoft Forms. With the new suite header, users can easily navigate between O365 apps and switch between accounts. Additionally, users will experience smoother transition between group forms and improved visibility of the save status.

NOTEWORTHY

What’s new in the Microsoft 365 admin center

Updated: 01 October 2019 | The September 2019 updates for the Microsoft 365 admin center are now published, but there were only a few new features released as we are ramping up for some exciting feature releases at Ignite 2019. The most important update is the option to convert a deleted user’s mailbox to a shared mailbox, a featured feedback fix!  There are also updates to a couple of the initial setup wizards. | Related: What’s next for the Microsoft 365 admin center | What’s new in the Microsoft 365 compliance center (Updated 01 October 2019)

What’s new in Office deployment for IT Pros

Updated: 02 October 2019 | This article lists new features, tools, and articles for IT Pros who deploy Office in the enterprise. For details on Office announcements and plans, see the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. The September 2019 updates include: (1) General Availability of Security Policy Advisor, (2) Windows 7 end of support and Office 365 ProPlus, (3) Delivery Optimization and Office 365 ProPlus, and (4) Security baseline for Office 365 ProPlus.

SharePoint Migration Tool now supports SharePoint Server 2010 (general availability)

October 2019 marks the beginning of the 12-month countdown before SharePoint Server 2010 reaches end of extended support (October 13th, 2020). It’s not too late to start planning an upgrade or migration to the latest version of SharePoint whether your plans are on-premises, in the cloud, or somewhere in between. The SharePoint Migration Tool is a simple and fast solution to help you migrate content from on-premises SharePoint Server sites and file shares to SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams in Office 365. It is designed to help you bring your information to the cloud and take advantage of the latest collaboration, intelligence, and security solutions within Office 365. With a few simple clicks in the intuitive user interface, you can migrate files from file shares, SharePoint sites, with support for bulk migrations. Now when using the SharePoint Migration Tool, you can start migrating your content from SharePoint Server 2010 to Office 365. You, too, can now select a sub-folder destination or create a sub-folder directly in the tool, allowing you to migrate your content directly into your preferred Microsoft Teams channel(s).

Microsoft 365 makes work and play more intuitive and natural with innovations in voice, digital ink, and touch

Last week at our Surface event, we announced several new devices to help make modern work more natural and intuitive for everyone, including busy professionals, parents, students, and teachers. Over the past several years, our engineering teams have invested countless hours of user research into understanding how people work in our apps and what they would like to see from Microsoft. We previously announced several new capabilities that bring new inking capabilities to our Office apps, including inking in Slide Show while in PowerPoint on the web and Ink Replay to bring your presentations to life. We’re excited to share our progress with you on a set of innovations to help people be more productive when away from their desk, utilizing voice, digital pen, and touch across Office 365 and our Surface devices.

Announcing rollout of MyAnalytics focus plan to Microsoft 365

Productivity preferences are different for everyone, but experts on deep work report that setting aside regular blocks of time to focus on challenging work can have massive benefits. With the focus plan, MyAnalytics will help you establish a daily focus time routine. The focus plan will offer you the flexibility to have daily focus time booked automatically based on your availability, or surface suggestions to book focus time manually as you work in Outlook. The automatic booking algorithm will prioritize booking morning hours, if they are open, so you can be at your peak capacity for tackling challenging analytics tasks. Earlier this year, we announced the MyAnalytics focus plan, which helps you block time every day for distraction-free work. We’re excited to announce this week that focus plan is now available for MyAnalytics users with an E5 license, and will become available to all MyAnalytics users in the coming months.

TC Finney

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