Microsoft 365 News 08-12-2021: Microsoft Search to Gain People-Centric Features

In Microsoft 365 news this week, the supplier announced plans to implement people-centric features for Microsoft Search. Keep reading for news about other new capabilities coming to apps in the Microsoft 365 productivity suite.

New Features

• • Plus addressing to become an always-on feature for all Exchange Online clients
    • What’s happening: Microsoft previously added support for plus addressing in Exchange Online as an opt-in feature. The supplier plans to make the feature always-on and getting rid of the opt-in setting starting in January 2022.

• • Now available: Service Health and Communications API in Microsoft Graph
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced the availability of the new service communications API in Microsoft Graph. It allows access to Message center and Service health posts and will replace the previous service communications API, which the supplier plans to retire starting December 17, 2021.

• • Title region gradient in SharePoint
    • What’s happening: With the rollout of this new feature, SharePoint page authors will be able to remove the background gradient from title region images.

• • People-centric features for Microsoft Search
    • What’s happening: With the deployment of people-centric search, end users will have the ability to find content via people as well as better understand people through content.

• • Early access for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform 2021 release wave 2
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced that early access for the Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform 2021 wave 2 release is now available. It includes new features scheduled for release between October 2021 and March 2022.

• • Coming back: Option to swap gallery and content in Teams
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is bringing back the ability to click on videos in gallery view to swap content someone is sharing with the gallery, so the videos are in the center and the content is at the side or top of the screen. Previously, when someone shared content in a meeting, Large Gallery was disabled.

Updated Features

• • Advanced hunting data updates for Microsoft Defender for Office 365
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is enhancing the advanced hunting data to surface more information related to email. The supplier is issuing the updates – which include new data points and columns for a better investigation experience – as a public preview. The updated experience should be available via the EmailAttachmentInfo, EmailPostDeliveryEvents and EmailEvents tables.

• • Improved auto-labeling for data at rest in SharePoint Online and OneDrive
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is enhancing the Microsoft Information Protection feature that helps clients automatically label Excel, PowerPoint and Word files in OneDrive and SharePoint Online as Sensitive in accordance with set rules and policies. The improvements include faster content sampling.

• • Enhanced options for subsite creation in the SharePoint admin center
    • What’s happening: SharePoint admins can currently control site owners’ ability to establish new subsites. Microsoft is updating the setting options for subsite creation to make them easier to comprehend as well as stop end users from leveraging alternate methods to get around subsite setting disablement.

• • Yammer conversation updates
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is improving Yammer conversations with new features such as nested replies.

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

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

• • Updated Azure Active Directory settings that let users create groups
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has made improvements to the settings related to end users’ creation of security and Microsoft 365 groups. Previously, when the settings indicated “No,” users could still create groups in APIs, PowerShell and other portals but not Azure portals. The enhanced settings apply across Azure portals, PowerShell and APIs.

Announcements

• • End of support for OneDrive sync client on macOS Sierra 10.12 and macOS High Sierra 10.13
    • What’s happening: As Microsoft shifts to focusing on new technologies and operating systems, the supplier has announced the end of support for the OneDrive Desktop application on macOS Sierra 10.12 and macOS High Sierra 10.13 effective September 10, 2021.

• • Retirement of Message Trace in the Security and Compliance Center (SCC)
    • What’s happening: Starting October 5, 2021, Microsoft plans to retire Message Trace from the Security Portal. The supplier recommends utilizing the Message Trace in the Exchange Admin Center (EAC) instead.

• • Delayed rollout for changes in how Exchange Online Protection (EOP) moves messages to the junk folder
    • What’s happening: Microsoft previously announced changes to the way EOP moves emails to the junk folder. The new timeline for the rollout is late September through late October 2021.

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