Microsoft 365 News 06-03-2021: PowerPoint Live in Teams Adds Virtual Laser Pointer, Annotations

In Microsoft 365 news this week, the supplier announced the introduction of additional features for presenters utilizing PowerPoint Live in Teams. Keep reading to learn more about those capabilities as well as other new and updated Microsoft 365 features.

New Features

• • Communication Compliance solution support for Teams conversation context
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced plans to introduce support for Teams conversation context (public preview) as well as new reporting for sensitive information types in the Communication Compliance solution within the Microsoft 365 compliance center.

• • Teams Admin center (TAC) “App Security & Compliance” feature
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced the introduction of a new feature for all Microsoft 365 certified apps that allows admins to easily view info about third-party apps within the TAC.

• • Channel post translation for Teams mobile app users
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced the implementation of on-demand channel post translation for Teams for Android and iOS. End users can utilize this feature to translate posts into their preferred language.

• • Option to lower all raised hands during Teams meetings
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is introducing a feature that lets meeting organizers and presenters lower all raised hands in a Teams meeting.

• • 2×2 gallery view in Edge and Chrome for Teams meetings
    • What’s happening: End users attending Teams meetings via the browsers Chrome and Edge will soon be able to view up to four participant videos in the new gallery view.

• • Teams roaming bandwidth control
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced the deployment of a new roaming bandwidth control feature that will give admins the ability to establish dynamic bandwidth policies dependent on geographic location. For instance, an admin can implement limited bandwidth controls for end users in remote areas.

• • Exact Data Match (EDM) data encryption via Customer Managed Key (CMK)
    • What’s happening: Following the public preview of this feature, Microsoft has announced the new release will allow for enhanced data security with the deployment of EDM support for CMK.

• • Rich Yammer link previews in Teams
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is adding support for rich Yammer link previews in Teams chats. End users with the Yammer Communities apps for Teams will see a rich preview in Teams when adding a link to a Yammer conversation in a public community from their home network.

• • Virtual laser pointer and ink annotations in PowerPoint Live in Teams
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced that this new release will include new capabilities for users of PowerPoint Live in Teams. Presenters will be able to virtually point to draw the audience’s attention to specific locations and information.

• • Additional columns on Active sites page in SharePoint admin center
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced plans to add columns to the Active sites page in the SharePoint admin center, including a “Teams” column displaying which sites are connected to Teams and a “Created from” column specifying the apps utilized to create sites. There will also be a new built-in view: “Sites connected to Teams.”

• • Additional admin capabilities for Teams meetings
    • • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced plans to give admins greater troubleshooting abilities to support the recent introduction of 1,000 person meetings in Teams. The Teams Admin Center now includes these functionalities:
        • “Search” via partial text match (participant UPN, username and other information)
        • “Sort” via selected fields
        • “Export” call quality information and the participant list for offline assessment

     

  • Customized Together Mode scene creation
    • What’s happening: With the new web app Scene Studio in the Microsoft Teams Development Center, you can now put together customized Together Mode scenes. You also have the option to share these custom scenes with others via a link.

• • File recommendations in Planner
    • What’s happening: This new capability makes it easy for end users to attach relevant files to their tasks from an intelligently assembled list.

• • Message pinning in Outlook mobile app
    • What’s happening: Outlook for iOS and Android will soon allow end users to pin messages.

• • New Teams Direct Routing endpoints
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is increasing capacity with two new Teams Direct Routing endpoints located in Japan. This expansion affects Teams IP ranges and domains that have already been published.

Updated Features

• • SharePoint page details panel
    • What’s happening: With these updates, SharePoint users will be able to edit the page URL, delete their page, and copy links to their page via the page details panel.

• • Microsoft Secure Score improvement actions
    • What’s happening: The supplier has announced plans to update Microsoft Secure Score improvement actions to represent security posture as accurately as possible.

• • Expanded availability for Play My Emails in Outlook
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced plans to make Play My Emails in Outlook for Android and iOS available globally in English. The feature was already available in Canada, India, Australia and the U.K.

• • Replace root site feature availability expands to all clients in the SharePoint admin center
    • What’s happening: All customers now have access to the root site replacement capability in the SharePoint admin center. Those with over 10,000 end users were previously required to utilize PowerShell for root site swapping.

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

• • Streamlined process for migrating users from on-prem Skype for Business Server to the cloud
    • What’s happening: Starting June 7, 2021, when admins run Move-CsUser to migrate end users from on-premises Skype for Business Server accounts to the cloud, they’ll no longer need to specify the -MovetoTeams switch to transition directly from on-prem to Teams-only. The supplier is making this change in anticipation of the retirement of Skype for Business Online.

Announcements

• • Retirement of File Share Embed dialog in Office for the Web
    • What’s happening: Microsoft plans to retire this dialog effective July 1, 2021. The supplier advises using existing Graph APIs or the SharePoint File Viewer Web Part instead.

• • Delayed: Teams meeting storage switch from Microsoft Stream (Classic) to OneDrive and SharePoint
    • What’s happening: Microsoft previously announced that new Teams meeting recordings would be stored on SharePoint and OneDrive starting July 7, 2021. To ensure the best possible user experience (including transcript-driven captions and the option to block downloads), the supplier has delayed this transition to Aug. 16, 2021.

• • “In development for Microsoft Intune” page updated
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has issued updated documentation via the “In development for Microsoft Intune” page.

• • Reminder: Transition to TL 1.2 protocol for Azure Active Directory (AD)
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is reminding clients to enable support for TLS 1.2 and modern cipher suites, as the supplier plans to retire support soon for these protocols and ciphers in Azure AD:
      • TLS 1.1
      • TLS 1.0
      • 3DES cipher suite (TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA)
    • Retirement date: June 30, 2021, in public instances

• • General availability: Microsoft 365 Dynamics 365 Sales mobile app
    • What’s happening: This new mobile app – which brings together Teams, Outlook and Dynamics – is now generally available.

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