Microsoft Office 365 News 03-17-2020: Office 365 ProPlus Updates, Temporary Feature Adjustments and More

Microsoft logo outside of building.In this week’s Microsoft Office 365 news, we cover interoperability between Teams and Skype for consumers, the release of Office 365 ProPlus updates, temporary feature adjustments for Microsoft 365 end users, and more.

New Features

    • Skype Consumer and Teams VoIP and chat interoperability
      • What’s happening: Teams and Skype for consumers end users will soon gain the ability to make VoIP calls and chat with each other.
      • Rollout start: End of March 2020
      • Rollout finish: End of April 2020
    • SharePoint metadata editing from web parts
      • What’s happening: End users will soon gain the ability to make changes to SharePoint metadata in a list or file from the web part.
      • Rollout start: Early March 2020 for Targeted Release customers
      • Rollout finish: End of April 2020

Updated Features

    • Updates to Microsoft Secure Score improvement actions
      • What’s happening: Microsoft is updating Secure Score improvement actions for increased security posture representation accuracy.
      • Rollout date: March 16, 2020
    • Office 365 ProPlus updates released
      • What’s happening: Microsoft has issued updates for the Office 365 ProPlus Semi-Annual Channel, Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted), and Monthly Channel.
      • Rollout date: March 10, 2020
    • Forms Activity Reports
      • What’s happening: End users will now be able to access Forms Activity Reports in the Microsoft admin center. These reports will include information on how Forms is used by your business.
      • Rollout start: March 11, 2020
      • Rollout finish: March 13, 2020
    • Additions to blocked file types for Outlook on the web
      • What’s happening: Microsoft is adding more file extensions to the BlockedFileTypes list of attachment file types users can’t save locally or view in Outlook on the web.
      • Rollout start: Early April 2020
      • Rollout finish: End of April 2020

Announcements

    • Be aware of Microsoft 365 feature adjustments
      • What’s happening: To better accommodate customers and growing demand during these difficult times, Microsoft is making temporary changes to some non-essential features – such as video resolution, the frequency at which Microsoft checks for presence, and so on. These adjustments aren’t expected to have a significant impact on end users.
    • Delayed rollout timeline for modern SharePoint team site home page template
      • What’s happening: Microsoft previously announced plans to update classic SharePoint team site home pages that haven’t been customized to a modern template. The supplier has adjusted the rollout timeline to give clients extra time to prepare for this automatic update.
      • Rollout date: May 2020 for Targeted Release customers (previously March 2020)
    • Outlook mobile privacy controls change rolled back
      • What’s happening: Microsoft previously announced an update to Outlook for iOS and Android making it so they would follow privacy controls on diagnostic and related data that Office sends to the supplier. However, when the change took place, end users received in-app notifications that their privacy settings had changed, which wasn’t Microsoft’s intention. As a result, the update was rolled back.
    • Dynamics 365 CE admin center experiences migrating to Power Platform admin center
      • What’s happening: To improve the admin operations experience, Microsoft will move all admin experiences on Dynamics 365 CE admin center to Power Platform admin center. In the Power Platform admin center, users can configure and manage Dynamics 365 instances, monitor usage, manage capacity and more.

If you’d like to learn more about Microsoft Office 365, please take a look at our blog series about the solution. Additionally, our trusted advisors have extensive knowledge of and experience working with the Office 365 suite and various other IT solutions and can provide you with more information. Connect with our advisors today by calling 877-599-3999 or emailing sales@stratospherenetworks.com.

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