Microsoft 365 News 03-25-2021: Teams Presenters Gain Ability to Stop Attendees From Sharing Video

In Microsoft 365 news this week, the supplier announced the implementation of various new Teams features, including an option for meeting presenters and organizers to stop attendees from turning on their cameras and sharing video. Through integration with Microsoft Forms, Teams meeting presenters now also have more polling options. Keep reading for more news about Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps.

New Features

• • Excel Trust Center setting for macro usage restriction
    • What’s happening: Microsoft plans to implement a new setting in the Excel Trust Center. This setting will impose further restrictions on Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro utilization. This deployment will involve a registry key retirement and renaming of a group setting.

• • New Yammer Desktop experience
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is making a new Yammer experience available to desktop app users via the Teams Communities app or a Progressive Web App (PWA), i.e., the new Yammer Desktop experience. The Communities App in Teams is already available, and all customers will have access to the new installable Yammer Desktop Application by the end of March 2021. Microsoft plans to retire the current Yammer Desktop Application effective June 30, 2021.

• • Microsoft 365 Activity explorer data loss prevention (DLP) data sets
    • What’s happening: The Microsoft 365 compliance center Activity explorer will soon give end users the ability to see DLP data sets.

• • Slide translation for PowerPoint Live in Teams desktop app
    • What’s happening: With the implementation of this new feature, all attendees of Teams meetings will have the option to translate presentation content into their preferred language in their private view.

• • Teams support for outgoing video in Safari
    • What’s happening: Previously, Safari didn’t support all of the Microsoft Teams web app meeting and calling features. The latest Teams web app feature release will support camera usage during meetings for macOS end users in Safari.

• • Power Platform DLP policy for all Dataverse for Teams environments
    • What’s happening: A PowerShell solution that implements a data loss prevention policy for all Dataverse for Teams environments within a tenant is now available. This increases admins’ ability to control data without limiting the creation of low-code and no-code solutions in Teams.

• • New Teams poll features in meetings
    • What’s happening: Teams meeting presenters now have more options for polling attendees due to the integration of Teams and the Microsoft Forms app. Specifically, polls now deliver a better mobile experience and support guests.

• • Teams presenter ability to stop attendees from sharing video
    • What’s happening: Teams meeting presenters and organizers will soon gain the ability to stop attendees from sharing video.

• • Teams templates gain custom website tabs
    • What’s happening: The most recent Teams release will enhance team templates by giving admins the option to add specific URLs for website tabs for channels.

• • Viva Connections for Teams desktop clients
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is introducing Viva Connections – which allows end users to discover and search intranet content and sites – for Teams desktop clients. Viva Connections was formerly called the Home site app and combines Teams chat and collaboration features with SharePoint intranet capabilities.

• • Advanced eDiscovery predictive coding module
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is introducing a new predictive coding module for eDiscovery managers. With the enhanced module, managers will gain the ability to establish and train models utilizing as little as 50 documents in Advanced eDiscovery.

• • Modern SharePoint pages focus mode
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced that in the coming release, SharePoint page viewers and authors will be able to hide the site header, site navigation and global navigation bar with just one click in order to focus on more content at once.

• • OneDrive/SharePoint Share Control Quick Permissions
    • What’s happening: This new feature will make it easier for end users to alter permissions when sharing links.

• • Products containing Teams: Management of auto-claim policies
    • What’s happening: Auto-claim policies allow admins to manage products for which end users have the ability to automatically claim licenses, in addition to controlling which products the licenses originate from.

• • Teams PowerShell Module 2.0 now available
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced the release of Version 2.0.0 of Teams PowerShell Module. It’s available via PowerShell Gallery | Microsoft Teams 2.0.

• • Custom policy packages for Teams
    • What’s happening: Microsoft previously introduced policy package assignment for groups, which allows you to carry out role-based assignment of multiple out-of-the-box policies for groups of end users. The new custom policy packages release includes the ability to craft a set of policy packages specifically for end users who have similar roles.

• • Customized quarantine notifications
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is introducing the ability to customize quarantine notifications by adding a custom display name, company logo and custom disclaimer.

• • New quarantine policy allowing end users to request message release
    • What’s happening: The new policy will give end users a way to request the release of messages quarantined by Exchange Online Protection (EOP) anti-spam, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (MDO) safe attachment, and MDO anti-phishing policies. Tenant admins will also have the ability to configure user access to quarantined messages.

• • Streamlined multilingual communication site editing in SharePoint
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is giving end users with the necessary edit permissions the ability to alter selected aspects of the multilingual user interface (MUI) in all the enabled languages in a SharePoint multilingual communication site in a single editing session.

• • Teams admin usage reports: Option to de-identify personally identifiable information (PII)
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is giving Global admins the ability to de-identify PII in Teams usage reports via an Anonymization setting. This setting is available in the M365 admin center.

Updated Features

• • New link to SharePoint classic site usage reports
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is moving classic popularity and usage reports in the SharePoint admin center classic site collection settings.

• • Microsoft To Do Support Experience Enhancements
    • What’s happening: The supplier has altered the Microsoft To Do support experience. The experience will stay the same but the app will need to be updated to implement Support module changes for Android, iOS, Windows and Web versions of the app. The macOS version will no longer support in-app chat to raise support tickets. End users must click on “Get support” from “Help” and navigate to a web page to raise tickets.

• • Microsoft 365 Apps: Updates released for Current Channel
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has issued updates to Microsoft 365 Apps to the Current Channel.

• • Planner mobile app push notification delivery method
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is altering how end users receive push notifications for the mobile Planner apps. You’ll get notifications through a direct push method via Google and Apple push notification services.

• • Usability improvements for Excel for the Web
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is improving the performance of Excel for the Web in response to customer feedback. These enhancements will make it easier for end users to navigate and manipulate Excel files in their browser.

• • Enhanced info around email detections in Office 365 Management API
    • What’s happening: Microsoft plans to deploy updates to Microsoft Defender for Office events in the Office 365 Management API in order to accommodate clients who utilize the supplier’s detection info in custom tools.

Announcements

• • Upcoming service name update for Dynamics 365 in Microsoft 365 admin center
    • What’s happening: Effective April 19, 2021, the Microsoft 365 admin center Service name shown for both Message Center Information and Service Health for Dynamics 365 will change to Dynamics 365 Apps.

• • Access Alert: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Omnichannel Engagement Hub
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is informing customers that the following URL must not be included in any of your URL filters in order to ensure access to the Omnichannel for Customer Service app: https://*.service.signalr.net. If you need help, contact Microsoft Support in relation to ticket 232617916.

• • Upcoming Advanced eDiscovery licensing check
    • What’s happening: Effective April 16, 2021, you must have the necessary licensing to continue creating new cases in Advanced eDiscovery. Organizations that maintain Advanced Compliance or E5 licenses can disregard this alert.

• • Redirection of compliance solutions to Microsoft 365 compliance center
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced plans to redirect end users from the legacy Security & Compliance Center portal to the Microsoft 365 compliance center for the Data loss prevention, Audit log, Records management and Information governance solutions. This is part of the larger migration to Microsoft 365 compliance center, the supplier’s recommended compliance solution portal.

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