Microsoft 365 News 09-16-2021: Supplier Announces New Mobile-Friendly Microsoft Forms Experience

In Microsoft 365 news this week, the supplier is implementing a mobile-friendly experience for Microsoft Forms end users. Keep reading for details about the new experience as well as other recently introduced capabilities and updated features for Teams, SharePoint and other apps in the productivity suite.

New Features

• • Polls app in Teams
    • What’s happening: Based on telemetry and client feedback, Microsoft found that many people aren’t aware that they have access to polling capabilities through the Forms application in Teams. To improve the user experience, the supplier is implementing a new Polls app in Teams.

• • Indicator for end users in Teams Public Preview channel
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is adding a “P” next to the profile pictures of end users in the Teams Public Preview channel.

• • In preview for compliance center: Enhanced policy authoring templates, additional sensitive information types (SITs)
    • What’s happening: The supplier is introducing these preview features in the Microsoft 365 compliance center.
      • More SITs including named entities
      • Improved policy authoring templates with definitions including named entities

• • Option to delete chats in Teams supervised chats
    • What’s happening: Through the Supervised Chat feature in Teams, Microsoft previously made it possible to stop restricted users from initiating new chats without the presence of an appropriate supervisor. The supplier is now delivering an additional capability for supervisors: the ability to delete inappropriate chats within supervised interactions. Note: This new capability is only accessible to end users with the “Full permissions” role in the Chat permissions role policy.

• • Teams Admin Center direct third-party app purchasing capability
    • What’s happening: Admins will soon have the ability to buy third-party app subscriptions directly through the “Plans and pricing” feature in the Teams Admin Center.

• • Mobile-friendly form creation in Microsoft Forms
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is introducing a new mobile-friendly experience for creating forms and analyzing results to make it easy for end users to utilize Forms across all devices.

• • General availability: Retention policies for Teams private channels
    • What’s happening: Retention policies for Teams private channel messages have become generally available as part of Microsoft 365 Information Governance.

• • Policy setting allowing non-admin users to install language accessory packs
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has implemented a policy setting that you can leverage to allow end users without local admin permissions to install language accessory packs. The setting is available in the Office cloud policy service and Group Policy and applies to the following apps:
      • OneNote
      • Outlook
      • Word
      • Excel
      • PowerPoint

Updated Features

• • Updated public Open Graph Objects (OGOs) in Yammer
    • What’s happening: Starting December 1, 2021, Microsoft has announced that each public OGO will only be associated with its attached message. That means that instead of just one OGO per absolute URL in a Yammer Network, there will be numerous OGOs (one OGO for each message a URL is attached to).

• • Office Add-in dialog API security update
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has announced the implementation of updates to harden the security of the Office Add-in dialog API.

• • Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center support experience
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is improving the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center support experience. The enhanced experience will leverage virtual assistant functionality and in-console search.

• • Enhanced Text web part for SharePoint news and pages
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has reduced line spacing for text and is introducing the ability to paste inline images in the Text web part.

Announcements

• • Retirement of Excel Power View
    • What’s happening: In response to the end of support for Silverlight starting October 12, 2021, Microsoft will begin the process of retiring Power View. The supplier recommends utilizing Power BI Desktop instead.

• • Retirement of classic Exchange Admin Center (EAC)
    • What’s happening: Microsoft made the new EAC – which offers a faster and more efficient experience – generally available in April 2021. Subsequently, the supplier has announced that the classic EAC will be fully retired effective September 1, 2022.

For more information about Microsoft 365, please take a look at our blog series detailing the business value of the suite. Our expert techs also have extensive experience working with Microsoft 365, as well as other types of IT solutions. To learn more, give us a call at 877-599-3999 or email sales@stratospherenetworks.com.