Microsoft 365 Updates: SharePoint, Azure Active Directory, Advanced Threat Protection, Teams, Office 365, and Intune

Date:Friday, Feb 28, 2020
Author: Paul Maggs
Reading Time: 12 minutes
Tags: SharePoint Online Azure Active Directory Security and Compliance Microsoft Teams Office 365 Microsoft Intune
Categories: M365 Updates

Key Updates and Announcements

Happy Friday, everyone. Microsoft have announced more updates, several of which are major and may have implications for many organisations.

  • Microsoft is retiring basic authentication. Whilst the expected implementation time is later in the year, 13 October 2020, those still using basic authentication for Exchange Online connectivity, including EWS, EAS, IMAP, POP, and RPS, should begin planning to move away from basic authentication to OAuth 2.0. The Exchange blog team has provided more information here.

  • Teams account administration is to be simplified when assigning policies to batches of users or groups from early March 2020. The process involves PowerShell cmdlets requiring minimal code to grant policies, which may be assigned against batches of accounts, security groups, or an organisational unit. Docs.microsoft.com has more information about the new processes here.

  • Campaign views for Advanced Threat Protection is now generally available. Campaign views, available from the Office 365 security and compliance center, provides additional insights into phishing attacks against your organisation so you can understand the source of the attack, the content of the messages in question, recipients, and the malicious payload. Find out more about campaign views here.

  • Microsoft made a major announcement on 26th February stating they had retired the Teams twitter connector 5 days earlier! OOPS! This functionality has been moved to Microsoft Power Automate. You can try the Microsoft Power Automate template here.

List of Updates

Note: Please ensure you’re signed into your Office 365 Administration portal to access the links referenced below. Also note, some tenants may not have all the below updates currently published to them

New Feature: SharePoint Pages and Lists Tabs allow users to paste URL to tab SharePoint content in Teams Channels

Click here for more information

MC204986, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 27, 2020

Your end users will soon see a new SharePoint Pages app and an improved SharePoint app, which will allow them to tab pages and lists to channels by pasting a link.

  • We’ll be gradually rolling this out in early March 2020.
  • The rollout will be completed by early April.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 60614.

Updated Feature: New Default Background Image for Microsoft 365 and Azure AD Login Screens

Click here for more information

MC204985, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 27, 2020

We’re updating the default background image for Microsoft 365 and Azure AD login screens to reduce bandwidth requirements and improve perceived page load times.

  • We’ll begin gradually rolling this out in early April 2020.
  • The rollout will be complete in all environments in early May.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 61054.

New Default Background Image for Microsoft 365 and Azure AD Login Screens
New Default Background Image for Microsoft 365 and Azure AD Login Screens

New Feature: Advanced Threat Protection campaign views generally available

Click here for more information

MC204907, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 27, 2020

We announced the public preview of Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) campaign views in MC197802 (December 2019). We are pleased to announce that Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) campaign views is now generally available.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 53661

Advanced Threat Protection campaign views generally available
Advanced Threat Protection campaign views generally available

Basic Authentication Retirement - Updated Info

Click here for more information

MC204828, Plan For Change, Published date: Feb 26, 2020

Action required by Oct 13, 2020

Major Update: Announcement Applies To: All As previously communicated in MC191153, beginning October 13, 2020, we will retire Basic Authentication for EWS, EAS, IMAP, POP and RPS to access Exchange Online. Note: this change does not impact SMTP AUTH.

We have published an updated blog with more information about this change - Basic Auth and Exchange Online – February 2020 Update

There are several actions that you and/or your users can take to avoid service disruptions on client applications, and we describe them below and in the blog. If no action is taken, client applications using Basic Authentication for EWS may be unable to connect after October 13, 2020.

Any application using OAuth 2.0 and connecting using any of these protocols, will continue to work without change or interruption.

Teams Twitter Connector has been retired

Click here for more information

MC204830, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 26, 2020

Major Update: Announcement

Applies To: All We retired the Twitter connector from Teams on February 21, 2020. If your organization enjoyed using the Twitter connector, we recommend using Microsoft Power Automate for integration. We apologize for the late communication and any inconvenience.

NOTE: Our telemetry indicates limited use of the connector to Twitter. If your organization is not utilizing the connector to Twitter then you may disregard this message.

Update available for Office 365 ProPlus on the Monthly Channel

Click here for more information

MC204751, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 26, 2020

We’ve released an update to the Office 365 ProPlus Monthly Channel.

We’ll be gradually rolling out this update of Office 365 ProPlus to users on the Monthly Channel starting February 25th 2020.

New Feature: Assign policies to a batch of users or a group

Click here for more information

MC204727, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 25, 2020

Teams administrators will soon be able to assign policies to a batch of users or to a group. We’ll be releasing this in early March 2020.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 61185.

Updated Feature: Publishing commands added to Pages library

Click here for more information

MC204627, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 25, 2020

Your SharePoint end users with page editing permissions will soon have new publishing commands and visual cues in the Pages library.

  • The rollout for the new publish button on the command bar will be completed by mid-March.
  • The file card rollout will begin with Targeted Release customers at the end of March.
  • The rollout will be completed by the end of April.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 61191.

Publishing commands added to Pages library

New Feature: New organization switcher for partners of record, Azure B2B admins

Click here for more information

MC204620, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 24, 2020

Unless you are a partner of record or use Azure business-to-business (B2B), this message does not apply to you.

A new organization switcher is available in the Microsoft 365 admin center for partners of record and customers who have enabled Azure B2B support.

  • The feature is now available for partners of record in Targeted Release. The roll-out will be completed for all customers by mid-March.
  • Azure B2B support will begin rolling out to Targeted Release customers in March. The roll-out will be completed to all customers by the end of April.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 60975.

New organization switcher for partners of record, Azure B2B admins

What’s New in the Microsoft Intune Service Update for February

Click here for more information

MC204618, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 24, 2020

Your Microsoft Intune account has been updated to the latest service build. You will see the service release number updated in the Tenant Status blade of the Intune console soon.

Updated Feature: SharePoint Site Swap

Click here for more information

MC204488, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 22, 2020

We are gradually enabling the capability to swap the location of a SharePoint root site with another site using a new PowerShell cmdlet, Invoke-SPOSiteSwap, as announced in MC187289 (August 2019) and MC189866 (September 2019). We are pleased to extend this feature to customers that have more than ~10,000 licenses. Customers with fewer than ~10,000 licenses already have this capability.

  • We will be gradually rolling this out to customers with ~10,000 licenses or more beginning in mid-March 2020.
  • The rollout will be complete by the end of April.

This message is associated with Office 365 Roadmap ID 51259.

Click here for more information

MC205044, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 28, 2020

We’re improving your ability to manage unhealthy sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive.

  • We’ll be gradually rolling this out to Targeted Release customers in early March 2020.
  • The rollout will be completed by the middle of April.
Managing unhealthy sharing links in SharePoint and OneDrive