Thirty-one features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, December 14 – 20, 2020. In an effort to keep the weekly digest post from being extraordinarily long, I have separated the Office 365 Roadmap updates out for this week.
Note: The Estimated Release dates listed below are subject to change. The direct link provided for each item can be used to determine if the estimated release date has been updated since the time of publication.
| Description | Feature ID | Estimated Release | Details |
| Outlook for Windows: Send email from your proxy email address (alias) | 64123 | March CY2021 | Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Windows Send email from a proxy email address or account alias rather than your primary email address. The alias email address will be preserved in the FROM and REPLY TO for the recipients. |
| Excel: Change Regional Format settings in Excel for the web | 66956 | December CY2020 | Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel – Web Regional format settings in Excel affect dates, currency, formula delimiters and more. If you are using your organization account, the default regional format settings in Excel for the web are the site regional settings of the host site where the Excel workbook is hosted. This feature enables you to change your regional format settings in Excel for the web. During your Excel for the web sessions, the regional settings will be overridden. Your preferences are stored using a third-party cookie. Your regional settings will only apply to your view of Excel workbooks – it will not affect how other people view these workbooks. |
| Outlook: Outlook on the web – Share to Microsoft Teams | 68909 | March CY2021 | Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Web Send a copy of email messages or conversations, including attachments, into Teams chats and channels or start a Teams chat related to a specific email message. When sharing to Teams from Outlook on the web, a popup window will appear to confirm to which channel or person you want to share, you can also select whether you want to include attachments or not. |
| Excel: Switch Office themes automatically to match Windows 10 | 68954 | December CY2020 | Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel If you are using Windows 10 in Dark Mode then Office can now switch themes to match automatically – just choose “Use system setting” as your Office Theme. |
| Microsoft Teams: Simplified Global Notification Settings for GCC-High and DoD | 70663 | March CY2021 | Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams, GCC High, DoD Government users can now configure and customize their notification settings through a newly designed notification settings section. |
| Forms: Default alert policies for phishing activities added to Microsoft 365 security and compliance center | 76911 | January CY2021 | Added: 15 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Forms We are now adding Microsoft Forms’ phishing activities alert (for blocked forms and users due to confirmed and suspicious phishing) to the default alert policies in Microsoft’s Security and Compliance Center (SCC). If there is any user restricted from sharing forms and collecting responses from Microsoft Forms because of confirmed phishing activities, or any form identified/detected as phishing form, IT admins will receive an alert in the SCC Alert center. |
| Microsoft Teams: Simplified way to manage your channel notification settings for GCC | 77796 | March CY2021 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams, GCC Through the teams and channels list or from the channel header, the users can quickly manage their notification settings by the means of a new fly-out design. Users can turn on all activity on or off with a single click or diving deep into custom to set their preferred permutations. |
| Excel: Notes in Excel on the web | 61187 | December CY2020 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel – Web Create Notes to share and track important information in your online workbooks. |
| Excel: Use ink and highlighter to annotate in Excel on the web | 66260 | December CY2020 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel – Web Use ink and highlighter to naturally annotate over worksheets in Excel on the web. |
| Excel: AutoFill with touch screen in Excel for the web | 51826 | December CY2020 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel – Web You can now use AutoFill with touch screen. |
| Microsoft Teams: Add a shared calendar to a Teams channel for GCC, GCC-High and DoD | 68910 | February CY2021 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams, Gov Create and share a channel specific calendar for members to view events. Teams automatically creates a new post, which will appear in the activity feed, when a channel meeting is created. Any user who has notifications turned off will see the event only when they open the channel calendar. |
| Microsoft Teams: Add a shared calendar to a Teams channel | 68911 | January CY2021 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams Create and share a channel specific calendar for members to view events. Teams automatically creates a new post, which will appear in the activity feed, when a channel meeting is created. Any user who has notifications turned off will see the event only when they open the channel calendar. |
| Microsoft Information Protection: Coauthoring in MIP labeled protected files (Preview) | 68913 | February CY2021 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: MIP Multiple authors can edit labeled and protected documents in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint simultaneously, frictionlessly, and with auto-save, as if they were regular documents. |
| Microsoft compliance center: Advanced eDiscovery Search tab is evolving to Collections tab | 68914 | February CY2021 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: M365 Compliance Now eDiscovery managers will see Collections in the top navigation of the Advanced eDiscovery solution in place of Search. Collections will provide an enhanced experience for collecting content for the case, including generating preview estimates and options for quickly collecting content directly into a new or existing review set. |
| Microsoft Information Protection: Upgraded data classification confidence levels | 68915 | January CY2021 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: MIP We are upgrading the confidence levels (match accuracy) from a numerical scale of 1 to 100 to three distinct levels: high, medium, and low. Each level reflects how much supporting evidence is detected along with primary element. A high confidence level looks for the most supporting elements and has the fewest false positives but the most false negatives, while a low confidence level has most false positives but fewest false negatives. All existing polices will automatically be migrated to these upgraded confidence levels. |
| Microsoft Information Protection: Copy and edit built-in info types and other improvements | 68916 | January CY2021 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: MIP Delivering on a common request, you can now copy built-in sensitive info types and edit the copied versions to fine-tune them to for your organization. Also, when creating a custom info type, you’ll notice an improved user interface and new capabilities. Highlights include the ability to use validators (like a Luhn check) for regular expressions and additional checks to help refine detection, including options for excluding text, defining starting and ending characters, and more. |
| Microsoft Teams meeting recordings saved to OneDrive & SharePoint for GCC-High and DoD | 70664 | March CY2021 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams, GCC High, DoD Ability to save Microsoft Teams meeting recordings to OneDrive and SharePoint for improved sharing capabilities, basic governance, automatic retention labels, go local, bring your own keys and, more that comes from recording video files and storing them in SharePoint and OneDrive. |
| Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Email entity page | 70665 | January CY2021 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: Rolling out App/Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Email entity page brings a new look to your email investigations, designed to provide a 360 degree view of an email. These updates eliminate the need to traverse multiple experiences to view email details. The email entity page will contain information in parity with existing email details flyout in protection.offfice.com from Threat Explorer, along with new information regarding authentication and detections, a revamped email preview capability for cloud mailbox emails, and detonation details for related files or URLs. |
| Microsoft Information Protection: Data classification analytics for GCC-High and DoD | 70666 | March CY2021 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: MIP, GCC High, DoD Data classification capabilities in Microsoft 365 compliance center help you get a holistic understanding of the sensitive data in your digital estate and related user activities. Overview shows you the locations of your digital content and most common sensitive information types and labels present. Content Explorer provides visibility into amount and types of sensitive data, and allows you to filter by label or sensitivity type to get a detailed view of locations where the sensitive data is stored. Activity Explorer shows activities related to your sensitive data and labels, such as label downgrades or external sharing that could expose your content to risk. |
| Excel: iPad Fluent redesign – Ribbon header and commands | 71348 | January CY2021 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel The Fluent Design System brings a more coherent, productive experience to customers. |
| Excel: Ink editor support in Excel Online | 71436 | December CY2020 | Added: 16 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel Pen Tool to help you handwrite to enter data and make quick edits to your data. |
| Excel: 3D Model Support in iOS | 59909 | February CY2021 | Added: 17 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel Add 3D models to your Excel worksheets, adjust their size and position, and change their rotation. |
| Office app: New Ink Toolbox for iPhone and iPad | 67356 | February CY2021 | Added: 17 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Office app – iOS New visual improvements to the ink experience in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 on iOS. |
| Excel: Paste options in Excel for the web | 51388 | January CY2021 | Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel – Web Now get all the Paste Options right where you paste your content. |
| Outlook on the web: Extension of suggested replies worldwide | 68919 | January CY2021 | Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Outlook – Web We are rolling out suggested replies to customers worldwide in the following languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and German. Suggested replies will appear if people are having a conversation in any of those languages. |
| Microsoft 365: License management in the Microsoft 365 Admin app | 68920 | February CY2021 | Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: M365 Admin app In the next release of the Admin app, license management will be added, enabling you to manage licenses from your mobile or tablet device. As a part of this feature, you’ll be able to: View all products and licenses for your organization with details such as the number of purchased and available licenses and expiration dates; Buy more or remove licenses based on current usage and needs; Assign or release licenses; and View and download detailed invoices. |
| Microsoft Information Protection: Auditing and Analytics in Office apps | 70542 | January CY2021 | Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: MIP Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) will now send user label activity data to the Audit Log and Activity Explorer for admins to search and review. |
| Microsoft Teams: Block Downloads for Teams meeting recordings on OneDrive and SharePoint | 70543 | February CY2021 | Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Teams All users with view-only permissions of a Teams meeting recording uploaded to OneDrive & SharePoint will now be blocked from downloading the recording by default. |
| Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Improvements to Alerts and Hunting | 70544 | March CY2021 | Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 We’re releasing a number of updates to alerts and hunting, including: Extending data retention for Threat Explorer and Real-time detections from 7 days to 30 days for trial tenants, after which you will be able to search for data for 30 days. We’re also expanding export limits for email records in Threat Explorer and Real-time detections from 9990 to 200,000. And, we’re introducing Alert ID to hunting experiences: Going forward you will able to filter for exact messages which were associated with an alert. From Alert, you will be able to navigate to a filtered view of Explorer (filtered by Alert ID), to see the relevant messages. |
| Excel: Import data from dynamic arrays | 76297 | February CY2021 | Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel You can now import, shape and refresh data from dynamic arrays in the current workbook. |
| Excel: Power Query Data Types Tutorial | 67390 | December CY2020 | Added: 18 December 2020 Status: In development App/Service: Excel Learn how to create data types using Power Query. |
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