Microsoft 365 News 07-08-2021: Teams Desktop App Experience to Include Ability to Lock Meetings

In Microsoft 365 news this week, the supplier announced plans to give organizers the ability to lock Teams meetings as part of the desktop app in-meeting experience. Keep reading for details about other new and updated Microsoft 365 features.

New Features

• • Office 365 email changes: New outbound relay pool
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced plans to update special relay pools, a separate IP address pool for forwarded or relayed emails sent via domains that aren’t designated as accepted domains in your tenant.
      • Rollout date: July 27, 2021

• • Recommendation for Microsoft Outlook Extension for Edge
    • What’s happening: With this new release, some Windows 10 users who leverage Outlook for Windows or Outlook on the web will see a clickable recommendation to install the Outlook for Edge browser extension.
      • Rollout date: Late July 2021 for Targeted release customers; Early August 2021 for Standard release customers

• • Advanced delivery capability for SecOps mailboxes and phishing simulations
    • What’s happening: The new Advanced Delivery capability for Microsoft Defender for Office 365 will support the configuration of simulated phishing campaigns and the delivery of messages to SecOps mailboxes.

• • New Lists guided authoring experience for creation of Power BI reports
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced a new Lists authoring experience that will streamline the process of creating Power BI reports based on list schema and data.

• • Designer in Word for the web
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced plans to introduce Designer in Word for the web. This tool will allow for consistent formatting and style variety.

• • For Citrix users: Dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) for Teams
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is making DTMF for Teams available for end users on Citrix VDI.

• • Admin ability to customize properties of Yammer Communities app in Teams
    • What’s happening: Admins will soon be able to customize App name, App description, App icons and Accent color.

• • Option to lock Teams meetings
    • What’s happening: As part of the desktop app in-meeting experience for Teams, organizers can lock meetings to prevent unwanted participants from joining.
      • Rollout start: Mid-July 2021
      • Rollout finish: End of August 2021

• • Collapsible sections in SharePoint
    • What’s happening: To facilitate the creation of more information-dense pages, this SharePoint feature will allow page authors to configure sections with the ability to expand and collapse.

• • Slide translation for PowerPoint Live in Teams
    • What’s happening: This new feature for the desktop version of Teams will allow meeting attendees to translate presentations made with PowerPoint Live in Teams. Note: The supplier is not moving forward with the rollout of this feature in the DoD environment at this time.

• • Teams meeting reactions
    • What’s happening: Teams meeting attendees will soon have the ability to react to other participants.

• • Inclusion of computer sound while sharing via Teams desktop app for MacOS
    • What’s happening: The Teams desktop app for MacOS will soon allow end users to share their computer’s sound along with a visual of their desktop or window.

• • Teams Speed Dial for Android and iOS
    • What’s happening: Microsoft Teams will soon allow mobile device users to make calls more efficiently with a Speed Dial feature.

• • Real-time telemetry via the Call Health Panel for Teams users
    • What’s happening: The Teams Call Health Panel now gives end users greater insight into issues during Teams VoIP calls and meetings. This includes diagnostics needed for the resolution of video, audio, network and content-sharing problems.

Updated Features

• • Graph connector results in All tab in Office.com, SharePoint and Microsoft Search in Bing
    • What’s happening: Graph connectors result clusters enable enterprises to search third-party connector data sources in the default view, Office.com, SharePoint, the All tab and Microsoft Search in Bing. With this update, organizations with correctly configured Graph connectors will see results in the All tab.

• • Teams Guest Access settings
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced plans to alter Guest Access in the settings for Microsoft Teams. The app currently doesn’t allow guest collaboration within the guest tenant if the setting Allow Guest Access is turned off via the M365 Admin Center.

• • In Development for Microsoft Intune page
    • What’s happening: The supplier has updated the “In development for Microsoft Intune” page in their documentation.

• • Intune app protection policies to support Android 9 and higher this fall
    • What’s happening: Intune app protection policies will move to support Android 9 and higher starting Oct. 1, 2021. This is linked to the upcoming release of Android 12.

• • Modernized SharePoint Store in SharePoint Online
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has enhanced the SharePoint Store, which now includes a streamlined acquisition flow for third-party applications.

• • Intune app protection policy requirement for Microsoft 365 service access from Teams
    • What’s happening: This new release of Conditional Access in Teams based on app protection policy will improve data security on employee devices.

• • Microsoft Stream Web player for video
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is updating the web player for video and audio files stored via SharePoint and OneDrive. The new player experience will include improved accessibility for screen readers and keyboard navigation.

• • Office App for Desktop
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is releasing a new version of the Office App for Windows that’s more reliable and allows end users to open more than one instance of the app. Other enhancements include an updated app header and faster loading time.

Announcements

• • Retirement of Recommended slab from old versions of Outlook iOS
    • What’s happening: Effective Aug. 5, 2021, Microsoft will remove the Recommended slab from the search view in Outlook iOS versions older than 4.31.0.

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