Microsoft 365 Updates: Microsoft Teams multi window chat, Secure Score, Office 365, SharePoint, OneDrive, Intune, and Outlook
Key Updates and Announcements
Happy Friday, everyone. More updates from Microsoft this week.
Great news for those wanting multi window chat for Microsoft Teams, it’s on it’s way. Some tenants will start to see the functionality from early April, and the rollout will be finalised by end of May 2020.
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
Microsoft 365 preparedness for COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and guidance regarding best practices for Microsoft Teams
Click here for more information
MC205458, Stay Informed, Published date: Mar 4, 2020
Major Update: Announcement Applies To: All
Microsoft takes a broad approach to service continuity, including potential effects of an outbreak such as COVID-19. While there is currently no foreseen impact to Microsoft’s operation of our services, we wanted to provide some detail regarding our preparedness should the situation change. Recognizing customers will have plans in place for enabling remote work in a situation like this, we are providing guidance regarding best practices under the “Actions you can take” section that will help maximize the benefits of Microsoft 365.
Microsoft has a comprehensive business continuity program, details of which can be found in a PDF here (file name: “Microsoft Cloud - Enterprise Business Continuity Management (EBCM) Program”). This document outlines our efforts across a multitude of scenarios including pandemic response.
Specific to COVID-19, we are providing an outline of key preparedness activities to ensure continued service delivery during this event. The three areas of focus during any situation that challenges normal operations are as follows:
- Impact to systems – does the event have a potential impact on our systems used to deliver and support Microsoft 365?
- Impact to location – are the locations from which we deliver and support service effected and what is our response?
- Impact to people – are we prepared should there be impact to the individuals responsible for delivering service to our customers?
While the following provides the high-level efforts in each of these areas, there are significantly more activities that relate to our business continuity efforts for Microsoft 365 that are beyond the scope of this communication.
Updated Feature: Microsoft Secure Score improvement action updates
Click here for more information
C207565, Stay Informed, Published date: Mar 24, 2020
Major Update: Announcement Applies To: All
We’re updating Microsoft Secure Score improvement actions to ensure a more accurate representation of security posture.
- We’ll be rolling this out to customers beginning April 21, 2020.
- The roll-out will be completed by the end of April 24, 2020.
Updated Feature: Update available for Office 365 ProPlus on the Monthly Channel
Click here for more information
MC207861, Stay Informed, Published date: Mar 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 beginning March 25th 2020.
Updated feature: Structural navigation caching
Click here for more information
MC207740, Stay Informed, Published date: Mar 25, 2020
We’re continuing to optimize page performance for publishing-enabled SharePoint sites that use structural navigation with a caching model as outlined in MC194438 (October 2019).
We’ll gradually begin rolling this out to customers in late March 2020. The rollout will be complete in late April 2020.
Updated Feature: Syncing files that are used by your local computer
Click here for more information
MC207566, Stay Informed, Published date: Mar 24, 2020
We’re updating the behavior of how we sync machine specific files which are created by the operating system and that are used by File Explorer on Windows and Finder on MacOS.
- We’ll be gradually rolling this out in late March 2020.
- The roll-out will be completed by the end of April.
What’s New in the Microsoft Intune Service Update for March
Click here for more information
MC207562, Stay Informed, Published date: Mar 24, 2020
Your Microsoft Intune account has been updated to the latest service build
Co-editor chat access directly from Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents will be retired
Click here for more information
MC207547, Plan For Change, Published date: Mar 24, 2020
Major Update: Announcement Applies To: All
The ability to initiate a Chat directly with a co-editor of a Word, Excel, PowerPoint document will be retired over several weeks beginning mid-April (across web, Windows and Mac versions of Office).
Moving forward, to communicate with others working in Office documents, we recommend using document Comments when you want to attach a comment to a specific selection within a document (on the Review tab on the ribbon), and Microsoft Teams Chat when you want to communicate with others immediately.
New Feature: Multi-Window Chat for Microsoft Teams
Click here for more information
MC207218, Stay Informed, Published date: Mar 21, 2020
Updated March 23, 2020: The initial roll-out will be for Windows clients only. We will provide support for Mac and Linux clients in the coming weeks. Multi-Window Chat is a new Microsoft Teams feature which enables users to multitask more efficiently by popping out their chat conversations into separate windows.
We’ll begin roll-out to all customers starting in early April and expect to complete the roll-out by the end of May.
This enhancement is related to Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 57292.
New Feature: Poll added to Outlook
Click here for more information
MC205124, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 29, 2020
Updated March 24, 2020: To ensure the proper experience we are adjusting the roll-out plan and will only be deploying to Outlook on the web (desktop) at this time. We will communicate via Message center when we move forward with other platforms. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Your end users will no longer need to download the Quick Poll add-in from the store and manually install it in Outlook to create a poll after we pre-install the Poll add-in.
- The rollout for Outlook on the web (desktop) will begin in late April and be completed by the end of May.
- The rollout for Outlook for Windows and Outlook for Mac has been delayed. We will communicate with you again when we have an estimated timeline.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap IDs 61203 and 61372.
Updated Feature: SharePoint Site Swap
Click here for more information
MC204488, Stay Informed, Published date: Feb 22, 2020
Updated March 13, 2020: We have updated this message with additional details and resources.
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.
Awareness of Microsoft 365 temporary feature adjustments
Click here for more information
MC207439, Stay Informed, Published date: Mar 24, 2020
Major Update: Announcement
As a part of our commitment to customers and Microsoft cloud services continuity during these unprecedented times, we’re making temporary adjustments to select capabilities within Microsoft 365.
Last week, we shared details about adjustments in Microsoft Teams, such as how often we check for presence, the interval in which we show when the other party is typing, and reduced video resolution.
We are sharing a few other temporary changes you can expect.
OneNote:
- OneNote in Teams will be read-only for commercial tenants, excluding EDU. Users can go to OneNote for the web for editing.
- Download size and sync frequency of file attachments has been changed.
- You can find details on these and other OneNote related updates as http://aka.ms/notesupdates.
SharePoint:
- We are rescheduling specific backend operations to regional evening and weekend business hours. Impacted capabilities include migration, DLP and delays in file management after uploading a new file, video or image.
- Reduced video resolution for playback videos.
Stream:
- People timeline has been disabled for newly uploaded videos. Pre-existing videos will not be impacted.
- Meeting recording video resolution adjusted to 720p
We will continue to monitor our Microsoft 365 services on an ongoing basis and share any further updates here.
New Feature: Navigation update in desktop and mobile browsers
Click here for more information
MC207287, Stay Informed, Published date: Mar 22, 2020
We are changing how SharePoint and OneDrive display the collapsed navigation icon for desktop and mobile browsers.
- We’ll be gradually rolling this out to Targeted Release customers in late March and Standard Release customers in mid-April 2020.
- The rollout will be completed for all customers by end of May 2020.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 62448.
New Feature: OneDrive Sync Version History
Click here for more information
MC205517, Stay Informed, Published date: Mar 5, 2020
Updated March 20, 2020: We have extended the roll-out timeline to ensure the best experience. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Your Windows and Mac users will now be able to view and restore previous versions of their files directly in the desktop via File Explorer or the Mac Finder.
- We’ll be gradually rolling this out to customers in mid-March.
- The rollout will be completed by the end of April (previously March).
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 61527.
Updated Feature: Office 365 Message Encryption (OME) updates to enhance email authenticity
Click here for more information
MC207058, Stay Informed, Published date: Mar 20, 2020
We are rolling out updates to Office 365 Message Encryption (OME) that enhance the authenticity of OME email.
- We’ll be gradually rolling this out starting the end of March 2020.
- The roll-out will be completed by the end of April 2020
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 59001.