Microsoft 365 Weeky Roundup

Date:Friday, Jan 3, 2020
Author: Paul Maggs
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Tags: Microsoft 365 Roadmap
Categories: M365 Updates

Microsoft continually refine features and release updates to their Microsoft 365 platform. Ensuring you’re aware of these changes, when they will occur, and the expected impact provides you the ability to successfully plan and execute these changes with the least amount of impact and disruption to your organisation.

Microsoft 365 Roadmap Updates rolling out January 2020

Description: Public Preview of Fluid Framework for Office 365 customers Status : Rolling out Tags: Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), Insider, Monthly Channel (Standard), Semi-annual (Standard) Release: January CY2020


Description: Microsoft Teams - Phone System Administration Enhancements Status: Rolling out Tags: Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), Microsoft Teams, O365 Targeted Release (Entire Organization) Release: January CY2020


Description: Outlook for iOS: Support .ics and .ical attachments Status: Rolling out Tags: GCC High, GCC, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), Monthly Channel (Standard), DoD, Outlook, Education, Android Release: January CY2020 More Information: New events can be created by opening and saving .ical or .ics file formatted email attachments.


Description: Updated SharePoint start page experience Status: Rolling out Tags: All environments, General Availability, Online, SharePoint Release: January CY2020 More Information: The SharePoint start page, previously known as SharePoint home, is getting a UX refresh. We are also adding new experiences to the start page to help users discover and get back to their content.


Description: Outlook for iOS: Meeting Insights Status: Rolling out Tags: Monthly Channel (Standard), DoD, GCC, iOS, Outlook Release: January CY2020 More Information: Emails and documents that are relevant to your meeting or appointment are included in the Calendar event description.


Description: Enabling Modern Auth for Managed Tenants Status: Rolling out Tags: Exchange Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), General Availability Release: January CY2020 More Information: We’re constantly improving the security of Office 365 products and services. Modern Authentication is one of the best ways of ensuring that your clients can take advantage of authentication features like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and third-party SAML identity providers. All new Office 365 tenants created on or after August 1, 2017 have Modern Authentication enabled by default in Exchange Online for all clients. We’re making a change so that Modern Authentication will be enabled for the Windows Outlook client and Skype for Business client in all managed (non-federated) tenants that were created before to August 1, 2017. Those tenants already have Modern Authentication enabled for Outlook mobile, Outlook for Mac and Outlook on the Web, so there are no changes to any of those clients.


Description: Differential sync for all file types in OneDrive for Business Status: Rolling out Tags: General Availability, All environments, OneDrive for Business Release: January CY2020 More Information: OneDrive will synchronize large files significantly faster and considerably reduce network utilization for all file types


Microsoft 365 changes to be addressed within in the next month

Microsoft provide substantial information regarding updates and changes from the Office 365 message center. 8You must be signed into your Office 365 administration portal to review the links provided below.

06 January 2020 - Reminder: Introducing ‘High confidence phishing email’ to the spam filter policy

As communicated in MC193076 we added High confidence phishing email to the spam filter policy. Starting January 6, 2020 we will enable the policy.


10 January 2020 - Updated Feature: Yammer uses your Office profile

We’re updating how Yammer uses Office profiles. User profiles in Yammer will now use the Office profile rather than the standalone Yammer profile.

This message is associated with Office 365 Roadmap ID 53554.

We’ll be gradually rolling this out to customers in early January 2020, and the roll out will be completed worldwide by the end of March.


10 January 2020 - Updated Feature: Microsoft Search Change to suggested Q&As

For the last year, we’ve been providing a set of suggested Q&As to help you set up Microsoft Search. We learned from customer feedback that customers prefer to create their own Q&As, so we are removing the suggested set on January 10, 2020 to clean up the list. The ability to create, edit, and publish your own Q&As will remain unchanged.


14 January 2020 - Windows 7 End of Support and Office 365 ProPlus

As announced previously, Windows 7 will be out of support after January 14, 2020. Because Office 365 is governed by the Modern Lifecycle Policy, customers are required to stay current as per the servicing and system requirements for the product or service. This includes using Office 365 ProPlus on a Windows operating system that is currently in support.

Using Office 365 ProPlus on older, unsupported operating systems may cause performance and reliability issues over time. If your organization is using Office 365 ProPlus on devices running Windows 7, we strongly recommend your organization move those devices to Windows 10.


01 February 2020 - Updated Feature: Kaizala administration roles

We’re updating the Kaizala administrative roles. The Kaizala Administrator role will be the primary management role starting February 2020.

We expect to complete the roll out by the end of January 2020.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 59706