It’s be beginning of fall! There are some important updates for you to prepare for this month. In keeping with a topic we’ve been trying to keep top of mind for the last few months, Basic Authentication Deprecation in Exchange Online will happen October 1st. Here is a great blog post from the Exchange team to read about this change and make sure your organization is prepared.
On to some other great updates you will see in your tenants soon…
Schedule Send for Teams Chat
As remote teams become more common and spread across multiple time zones, Teams is introducing the schedule send feature that allows users to schedule chat messages to be delivered in the future. With this feature, we can help build better work-life balance and support flexible schedules by scheduling chat messages so that they only deliver during our peer’s work hours. Users can schedule messages to be delivered both on desktop and mobile. Additionally, all scheduled messages can be edit and delete before they are delivered.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88281
When this will happen:
Production: will begin rolling out in late September and we are expected to complete roll out by mid October.
How this will affect your organization:
All users within your organization will be allowed to schedule chat messages. All scheduled messages can only be delivered no more than 7 days in the future and cannot be flagged as urgent or important. Inline images and attached files will only be accessible by others in the chat once the message has been delivered.
Video Clips in Teams Chat
Video Clips are a new way of working and connecting with coworkers using short video in Teams. Users can capture, send, and playback video messages in Chat on all Teams endpoints. Recording limited to 1min across all platforms.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 97158
When this will happen:
Preview: We will begin rolling out mid-September and complete by late September.
GA: We will begin rolling out late September and complete by early October.
How this will affect your organization:
Teams users can start using the feature.
The feature is enabled by default and can be configured through Messaging policies.
What you need to do to prepare:
Try out the feature and share it with your colleagues. Admins can disable this feature via the Teams Admin center.
Automatically view up to 49 videos (7×7) in Teams meeting
Microsoft Teams Meetings currently supports a maximum of 9 videos (3×3) on the screen by default (in Gallery view). For seeing more than 9 videos, user needs to manually select the ‘Large Gallery’ view. With this update, users will be able to automatically see up to 49 videos (7×7) on their screen by default without an explicit action. However, Large Gallery view will still continue to exist as an option.
The actual number of videos seen by a user in Gallery will depend on:
- hardware/device capabilities
- internet bandwidth
- whether content is popped out in a separate window or not.
Please note: This enhancement will be supported on devices that meet hardware requirements (CPU, memory etc.). Detailed information regarding hardware requirements will be shared by Sep 22, 2022 (before GA release).
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 86435.
When this will happen:
Public preview: Will begin rolling out early September.
Worldwide & GCC: Will begin rolling out in late September and complete in early October.
How this will affect your organization:
No explicit user action is needed to enable or use this feature.
What you need to do to prepare:
You may update your user documentation to inform users about this change.
Viva Engage
Inside Viva Engage, Microsoft has made available Storyline in Public Preview See the announcement here.
Storyline is a new way for people to share, connect, and contribute to their organization through Yammer and the Viva Engage app. Previously, the only way to share broadly through Yammer was through communities, but communities aren’t always a perfect fit for what people want to share. In some cases, there may not be a community that matches the subject the person wants to discuss. In other cases, the community’s audience may be too broad, or not broad enough. Enter storyline…
Storyline posts are posts to your followers and other interested people from within your organization. People interested in knowing what you have shared can go to your profile page in Yammer to view your storyline feed. Once there, they can choose to follow you and select through which clients, Teams and/or email, they want to be notified of new storyline posts. Because only people who follow you, and those who you @mention, will be notified when you make a new storyline post, you don’t need to worry about spamming people who aren’t interested in what you are sharing.
(Updated) Viva Topics in Teams
Microsoft has updated the rollout timeline for Viva Topics in Teams
Viva Topics in Teams allows users to mention topics in their chat conversations so that others in the conversation can easily learn more about a topic by hovering over the topic name and viewing the topic card. This feature requires users to have a Viva Topics license.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 72189
When this will happen:
- Public Preview: We began rolling out in April and will continue rolling out through June and expect complete rollout by late June.
- General Availability: We will continue rolling out through late June and expect complete rollout by mid-October (previously late July).
- GCC: We will continue rolling out in early July and expect complete rollout by late October (previously late August).
How this will affect your organization:
If your organization has users with Viva Topics licenses, those users will be able to mention topics by typing the # character and choosing a topic from the topic picker. The topic picker will narrow selections based on what the user types. Once a topic is selected, users can post the message.
What you need to do to prepare:
There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. The topics being displayed will be the same topics that are shown in Outlook Web and SharePoint.
SharePoint admin center: Updates for site creation settings
With this update you will have more control over whether users can create sites in your organization. We are introducing an additional layer of control that will provide more granular decisions over what mechanisms sites can be created from by users.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93427
When this will happen:
Targeted Release: This will begin rolling out in early September.
Standard: will begin rolling out in late-September and complete in early October.
How this will affect your organization:
When configuring the site creation settings, you will have a new option to control creation of sites in addition to the current option of showing the option to create sites. This appears in the site creation settings panel within the SharePoint admin center.
What you need to do to prepare:
You do not need to do anything to prepare. Your changes to any other options in the Site creation panel won’t be affected.
Learn more: