With numerous updates for Yammer, Exchange Online, Outlook, Teams, Excel and Forms, the December 1 – 7, 2019 roadmap update has been separated from the normal Office 365 Weekly Digest post.
Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week…
| Description | Feature ID | Estimated Release | Details |
| Natural Language Queries in Ideas in Excel for the Web | 54632 | December CY2019 | Added: 03 December 2019 Status: Rolling out App/Service: Excel – Web Ask a question of your data using natural language query in Ideas in Excel for the web. Ideas will populate with formulas, charts, or PivotTables that help you glean insights from your data. |
| Natural Language Queries in Ideas in Excel on Windows | 54633 | December CY2019 | Added: 03 December 2019 Status: Rolling out App/Service: Excel – Windows Ask a question of your data using natural language query in Ideas in Excel on Windows. Ideas will populate with formulas, charts, or PivotTables that help you glean insights from your data. |
| Natural Language Queries in Ideas in Excel for Mac | 54634 | December CY2019 | Added: 03 December 2019 Status: Rolling out App/Service: Excel – Mac Ask a question of your data using natural language query in Ideas in Excel for Mac. Ideas will populate with formulas, charts, or PivotTables that help you glean insights from your data. |
| Outlook for Windows: Administrator notification of Outlook incidents | 58085 | January CY2020 | Added: 03 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Windows Microsoft 365 tenant administrators will be notified about Outlook incidents affecting their users with a new Outlook for Windows right side panel notification. |
| Outlook on the web – progressive web app | 59250 | December CY2019 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Web Outlook on the web can be installed/added as a progressive web app in Chromium based browsers. |
| Outlook on the web – new experience in mobile browsers | 59334 | December CY2019 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Web We are releasing the new Outlook on the web experience to mobile browsers. Similar to the new Outlook on the web on PC, users accessing Outlook in mobile browsers will see a new experience. You can opt out by switching a toggle in Settings. |
| Introducing Multilingual Support for Government | 59343 | December CY2019 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: Rolling out App/Service: Forms Multilingual support is now available for GCC. 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. |
| Introducing File Upload | 59344 | December CY2019 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Forms A type of question that allows responders to upload files, such as Office documents, images, and video, to their answers. These uploaded files are safely stored in your SharePoint or OneDrive for you to access with ease. With file upload, you can, for example, create a recruiting form that collects resumes or a photography competition form that requests images. |
| Add additional participants to meeting chats | 59386 | December CY2019 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Teams Today in private meeting chat threads, user don’t have functionality to easily add more participants to chat. This feature will add an entry point “Add participants” in the meeting chat header and users who are already part of the chat thread will be able to add more users to the meeting chat using this feature. This functionality currently exist in group chat and it will work exactly the same way as group chat. |
| Outlook for iOS: Search results presented in a tabbed view | 53118 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – iOS Keyword search results presented across All, Mail, Contacts and Events tabs. |
| Outlook for iOS: Top results | 53120 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – iOS The best 3 results from your keyword search is presented on the top of Search in Outlook in addition to results in chronological order. |
| Outlook for Android – Top results | 53299 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Android The best 3 results from your keyword search is presented on the top of Search in Outlook in addition to results in chronological order. |
| Pinned conversations in Yammer communities | 52551 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer Community managers (admins) can now pin a conversation to the top of the feed. Help orient users by pinning a welcome message, sharing best practices, or extend the longevity of announcements by pinning polls, praise, and questions. |
| Customize All Company community branding | 52554 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer Customize the All Company feed to bring your organization’s unique branding and culture into the default Yammer community. One of the top UserVoice requests, new All Company capabilities like cover photos and read-only conversations mean you can use this prominent community to land key messaging, welcome new members, promote company-wide initiatives, or even just reinforce company values in the only community that all Yammer users belong to. |
| Community cover photos in Yammer | 52555 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer New community branding gives you the power to style your community your way. Upload a cover photo to show off your community’s identity, share a campaign, or publicize a community event. |
| Close a conversation in Yammer | 52556 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer Along with pinning, we’re also giving community managers the ability to close conversations. Use this to share messages as read-only, steer feedback to an alternative location, or prevent further responses to discussions. |
| Improved Network Branding | 59281 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer The new Yammer homepage will inherit the Office 365 suite navigation and allow network admins to upload a company logo that gets displayed on the web and in the mobile apps. |
| New Publisher for Yammer Web App | 59282 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer We are expanding the use of announcements so you can have the same reach with polls, questions, or praise. We’re making improvements for gifs, videos, link previews, and file attachments to make sharing content simple. |
| Attach recently used files in Yammer | 59283 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer When attaching files to a Yammer post, we’ll display your three most recent files using the Office graph. |
| New Yammer Home Feed | 59319 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer A new, personalized discovery feed powered by AI connects you with conversations from across the organization and prioritizes the conversations that are most relevant to you. We’ve overhauled conversation styling and added colorful framing and iconography that distinguishes questions and best answers. New treatments for praise and polls also show beautifully in the feed whether you’re on a mobile app or in the browser. The Feed is powered by machine learning and designed to help you keep a finger on the pulse of the company and discover trending conversations. |
| Renaming of Groups to Communities in Yammer | 59345 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer Community is the driving force of Yammer, and to better reflect the purpose and role of Yammer within Microsoft 365, we’re renaming Yammer groups to communities. |
| Pin your favorite communities in Yammer | 59346 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 04 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Yammer Pin your favorite Yammer communities to the left navigation bar for fast access. |
| Microsoft Teams – Number Normalization Rules | 59410 | December CY2019 | Added: 07 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Teams Tenant administrators often need to change the callee or caller number for inbound/outbound numbers in order to ensure interoperability with SBCs. A Number Translation Rules policy can be used to alter these numbers. The policy can translate either callee or caller number to a desired format. Policy can then be applied using PowerShell in inbound and/or outbound directions. |
| Outlook on the web – room feature card | 59430 | December CY2019 | Added: 07 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Web You will be able to see room features and details in the room card in Outlook on the web. This feature uses the same data used for room filters in Set-Place which admins can set in PowerShell. |
| Teams-Outlook Email Integrations | 57389 | January CY2020 | Added: 07 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Teams, Outlook Teams-Outlook Email Integrations make it easy to share information between email and chat with three new features: Share email to Teams – Share an email from Outlook, including any attachments, to a channel or chat in Teams. Share conversation via email – Share a Teams conversation via email without leaving the app. Reply to missed activity emails – See the latest messages and respond to Teams missed activity emails from within Outlook. |
| OneNote integration in Teams (GCC, GCC High) | 57708 | Q2 CY2020 | Added: 07 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Teams, OneNote Users will have the ability to add a OneNote notebook tab to their Teams channels. |
| Reply-All Storm Protection | 59440 | Q3 CY2020 | Added: 07 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Exchange Online When a Reply-All mail storm happens in your organization it can disrupt business continuity and even cause unexpected throttling of your organization’s mail flow within Office 365. While Exchange Online has several features designed to help prevent Reply-All storms (e.g. Distribution List (DL) allowed sender lists and recipient limits) that reduce the severity and impact of reply-all storms, they can still happen, especially if the DLs haven’t been locked down tightly. Reply-All Storm Protection in Exchange Online will detect when a Reply-All storm is happening (or likely to happen) and will temporarily block users from replying to everyone on the thread. During this “cool down” period the service will send anyone who tries to reply to everyone a bounce message (or NDR) that effectively tells them to not try to reply all to the message. The temporary block will be active for several hours, usually enough time to dampen end-user enthusiasm to reply to the thread, and thus curtail the storm before it gets started or before it gains much momentum. |
| Support for Plus Addressing in Office 365 | 59441 | Q4 CY2020 | Added: 07 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Exchange Online Plus Addressing is a great way to quickly create custom (or disposable) email address based off your standard email address, by simply adding a ‘+’ suffix string to an existing email address in Office 365. Plus Addressing support in Office 365 is also a great way to more easily manage your Inbox, and even track mail like marketing and sales campaigns. |
| Message Recall in Exchange Online | 59438 | Q4 CY2020 | Added: 07 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Exchange Online The Outlook for Windows Message Recall feature is extremely popular with users, yet it doesn’t always work so well. Part of the problem is that the recall is client-based, and the recall can only happen if the recipient also uses Outlook. With millions of users with mailboxes in Office 365, we’re now able to improve upon that feature by performing the recall directly in the cloud in Office 365 mailboxes, so it doesn’t matter which email client the recipient uses, the recall takes place in their Office 365 mailbox, and when their client syncs their mail, the message is gone. While there are still some conditions where the recall still won’t happen (like the message being read by the recipient), moving the recall to the cloud significantly improves the recall success rate. Additionally, we’ll now also offer an aggregate message recall status report, to make it simpler to see for whom the recall succeeded and for whom it failed. |
| Securing SMTP Authenticated Submissions – Per Mailbox and By Default | 59439 | Q4 CY2020 | Added: 07 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Exchange Online We’re kicking off a multi-phased effort to better secure SMTP authenticated submissions. SMTP authenticated submission is commonly used by applications or devices (printers, scanners, etc.) to submit email into the Office 365 service. It only requires login credentials, and doesn’t support modern authentication. So this leaves any account that’s using SMTP authenticated submission more vulnerable to abuse and hacking than accounts that exclusively use the other protocols that do support modern authentication. Last year we introduced Remote PowerShell cmdlets to disable SMTP authenticated submission for your entire organization or for individual mailboxes, and recently we released a switch in the Exchange Admin Center (EAC) to toggle it off for individual mailboxes. In Q2 CY2020 we’ll start to disable it for existing Office 365 organizations who aren’t using SMTP Authenticated Submission at all, and starting in Q4 CY2020 we’ll start to judiciously disable it for existing organizations in Office 365 who have it enabled for some mailboxes, working closely with them to transition away from this less secure protocol while ensuring the continuity of their critical business email workflows. |
| Send from proxy addresses (aliases) from OWA | 59437 | Q4 CY2020 | Added: 07 December 2019 Status: In development App/Service: Exchange Online, Outlook – Web The ability to send email from a proxy address (aka alias) other than the sender’s primary SMTP address is useful in multiple scenarios, such as mergers and acquisitions when you need the to send from multiple branded domain names, or sending on behalf of a team or department, like info@contoso.com. And of course, having the FROM and REPLY TO boxes preserve that alias when the recipient sees it is just as important. So to kick-off our journey to provide you and your users with the flexibility to send email using alias, we’re excited to announce that soon Outlook on the web (aka OWA) will natively support the ability to choose the sender or FROM from a drop-down list right within the compose pane. And when the recipient receives that message, the FROM and REPLY TO will show that alias, regardless where the recipient’s mailbox happens to live. |
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