Microsoft Office 365 News 09-23-2020: Teams Introduces Templates, End-of-Meeting Notifications and More

In Microsoft Office 365 news this week, Microsoft Teams will soon gain new features including templates for creating news, custom app store branding, end-of-meeting notifications and more. Read on to learn more about new and updated features coming soon for Teams and other Microsoft applications.

New Features

• • Next phase of new Yammer experience rollout
    • What’s happening: All end users of classic Yammer will soon see the opt-in toggle for the new Yammer.
    • Rollout date: Mid-October

• • New Threat Explorer features
    • What’s happening: Microsoft is updating Threat Explorer to enhance efficiency and data enrichment.
    • Rollout start: Mid-September 2020
    • Rollout finish: End of October 2020

• • Teams templates
    • What’s happening: Teams end users will soon have access to templates that allow them to quickly create news. Custom templates are currently unavailable for EDU customers, although there are plans to implement them in the future.
    • Rollout start: First week of October 2020
    • Rollout finish: End of October 2020

• • Teams custom apps store branding
    • What’s happening: You’ll soon have the option to add your organizational branding to the Teams Apps store for line-of-business apps in your custom apps store.
    • Rollout date: Late September 2020

• • End of meeting notifications in Teams
    • What’s happening: Teams will soon alert attendees when there are five minutes left in a scheduled meeting.
    • Rollout start: Mid-September 2020
    • Rollout finish: Late September 2020

• • Option to turn off Teams message previews
    • What’s happening: End users will soon have the option to turn off previews for their Teams message notifications.
    • Rollout start: Early October 2020
    • Rollout finish: Late October 2020

• • Show/hide option on Service Health page
    • What’s happening: End users can now customize which services they see on the Service Health page by changing their preferences.

• • Yammer content search via Teams Communities app
    • What’s happening: End users will soon have the ability to search for Yammer content in the Teams Yammer Communities app.
    • Rollout start: End of September 2020
    • Rollout finish: End of October 2020

• • Windows 10 and macOS native notifications for Teams
    • What’s happening: End users will soon have the option to choose to receive Teams notifications via the Teams built-in system or their native OS system.
    • Rollout date: Mid-October through late October 2020 for Windows 10; Late October 2020 through early November 2020 for macOS

Updated Features

• • OneDrive for Business feedback changes
    • What’s happening: Microsoft plans to change how end users contact support directly in the OneDrive Sync app and provide feedback to the engineering team.
    • Rollout date: Oct. 19, 2020

• • Outlook incident notification opt-out option
    • What’s happening: In April, Microsoft implemented Outlook incident notifications for Office Apps admins and Microsoft 365 Global admins. Based on user feedback, the supplier has now introduced the ability to opt out of this feature.

Announcements

• • On-premises sync-enabled user contact number updates no longer permitted
    • What’s happening: Microsoft will no longer allow updates to the mobilePhone property of on-premises sync-enabled users with PowerShell, Azure AD Graph or Microsoft Graph, effective near the beginning of October 2020. The supplier is disallowing these updates because they’ll be overwritten during the next Azure AD Connect sync cycle. Customers are advised to make updates in on-premises Active Directory instead and sync them to the cloud.

• • Delayed rollout for organizer only option for bypassing Teams meeting lobby
    • What’s happening: Microsoft previously announced the implementation of the option to create a default setting for your organization so only Teams meeting organizers can bypass the lobby. To ensure the best possible user experience, the supplier has delayed this rollout.

• • Delayed rollout for roaming Outlook signatures
    • What’s happening: Microsoft previously announced the planned introduction of email signatures for Outlook for Windows that are stored in the cloud instead of locally on the end user’s Windows device. To ensure the best possible user experience, the supplier has delayed this deployment.

• • Delayed rollout for Teams speaker attribution in live captions
    • What’s happening: Microsoft previously announced plans to introduce speaker attribution to live captions in Teams. To ensure the best possible user experience, the supplier has delayed the implementation of this feature.

• • Delayed rollout for Teams live transcription
    • What’s happening: Microsoft previously announced plans to implement live transcription for Teams meetings. To ensure the best possible user experience, the supplier has delayed the rollout of this feature.

• • Retirement of Office Win32 client IDCRL-based sign-in
    • What’s happening: Microsoft has already implemented an OAuth-based authentication mechanism for ProPlus Win32 and Office 2016 clients. However, the supplier has allowed clients to choose to override that modern mechanism by setting a regkey EnableADAL to 0 and continue using the legacy authentication method for Microsoft 365 resources. In March through July 2021, the supplier plans to discontinue support for IDCRL-based authentication in newer Office ProPlus builds. This retirement will not affect Outlook, which uses basic authentication in the event that the EnableADAL regkey is set at 0.

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