Welcome to the June 24 - 30, 2018 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.
Only four updates to the Office 365 Roadmap, including additions for Outlook on Windows and in-line message translation for Microsoft Teams. The last update is a cancellation for Microsoft Stream, due to duplication with another roadmap entry.
The July Azure Active Directory webinars are now available for registration, although there are fewer offered in July due to upcoming holidays and conferences. There haven't been any new sessions added for the online customer immersion experiences at this time.
Highlights from last week's blogs include some big announcements, including the general availability of direct routing in Microsoft Teams, the availability of Microsoft Teams for Government Community Cloud customers starting on July 17, 2018, and updates to OneDrive for Business that make it easier to move known folder content to OneDrive for Business.
Noteworthy items from last week include the season finale for Teams On Air, a webinar on using Microsoft Teams for Education, and new updates to Planner, Office 365 for Windows Desktop, and Microsoft Flow.
OFFICE 365 ROADMAP
Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week:
|
Feature ID
|
Title |
Description |
Status
|
Added
|
Estimated Release
|
More Info |
|
26934
|
Outlook for Windows: Add attendees in Scheduling Assistant |
Add additional meeting attendees in Scheduling Assistant without returning to main New Meeting screen. |
In development
|
06/26/2018
|
July CY2018
|
n / a |
|
26313
|
Outlook for Windows: Show URL in Safelinks |
Hover over a link in Outlook to see the original URL even when protected by Safelinks. |
In development
|
06/26/2018
|
July CY2018
|
n / a |
|
31475
|
Microsoft Teams: In-line message translation |
In-line message translation will ensure that every worker in the team has a voice and facilitate global collaboration. With a simple click, people who speak different languages can fluidly communicate with one another by translating posts in channels and chat. |
In development
|
06/29/2018
|
July CY2018
|
n / a |
|
31092
|
Live event broadcasting capability in Microsoft Stream |
Cancelled as duplicate of Live event broadcasts in Microsoft stream - Feature ID: 31090 |
Cancelled
|
06/29/2018
|
Q4 CY2018
|
n / a |
UPCOMING EVENTS
Azure Active Directory Webinars for July
When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled from July 10 - 12, 2018 | Are you looking to deploy Azure Active Directory quickly and easily? We are offering free webinars on key Azure Active Directory deployment topics to help you get up and running. Sessions include Getting Ready for Azure AD, Managing Enterprise Apps with Azure AD, and more. Each 1-hour webinar is designed to support IT Pros in quickly rolling out Azure Active Directory features to their organization. All webinars are free of cost and will include an anonymous Q&A session with our Engineering Team. So, come with your questions! Capacity is limited. Sign up for one or all of the sessions today! Note: There are also some sessions available on-demand.
BLOG ROUNDUP
New to Microsoft 365 in June—streamlining teamwork and security
As a reminder, we're kicking off a new approach and moving from our monthly "What's new in Office 365" blog to "What's new in Microsoft 365." We're also consolidating updates from across Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security on the new Microsoft 365 site. In June 2018, we introduced several new capabilities that improve user experience, streamline the management of common tasks, and enhance identity-driven security measures. Some of the new capabilities include updates to the Office 365 user experience, connect Office 365 groups to SharePoint sites, dictation in OneNote, baseline security policies in Azure Active Directory, block legacy authentication using Azure AD conditional access, and many more. | Related: Microsoft Teams – Archive or Restore a Team
Direct Routing is now Generally Available for Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Phone System Direct Routing is now generally available. Direct Routing allows customers to choose their telecom provider to enable their users to make and receive calls in Teams. If your country is supported by Teams and Phone System you can start planning and deploying Direct Routing in your organization today. Direct Routing and Calling Plans are now your 2 choices for dial tone in Microsoft Teams. There are two primary approaches to deploying Direct Routing for you to consider - (1) Customer Deployed Scenario, and (2) Partner Hosted Scenarios. We will continue to enhance Direct Routing including plans to deliver improved support for escalating calls, media bypass, and enhanced trunk support to help our partners scale their solutions. | Resource: Direct Routing Deep Dive
Microsoft Teams will be available July 17 for the US Government Community Cloud (GCC)
We are announcing that Microsoft Teams—the hub for teamwork in Office 365— will begin rolling out for the US Government Cloud Community (GCC) on July 17th and will be available for all eligible customers by the end of August 2018. Note: We are working to bring Microsoft Teams to the other US government clouds (GCC High and DoD) coming soon. Teams in GCC has been built to meet the enhanced security and compliance requirements of our GCC customers allowing them to transform communication and collaboration. Implementing modern collaboration and communications capabilities in the government sector can streamline your daily work so you can more efficiently deliver against your mission and provide services to citizens and constituents. In Microsoft Teams, enterprise grade security, compliance and manageability capabilities are built in. Teams is built on the Office 365 hyper-scale cloud, delivering the advanced security and compliance capabilities our customers expect. Microsoft Teams now meets the federal compliance requirements of GCC customers, including FedRAMP Moderate, CJIS, IRS 1075, and HIPAA, in addition to supporting global standards, including SOC 1, SOC 2, EU Model Clauses, and ISO27001. We also added support for audit log search, eDiscovery, retention policies and legal hold for channels, chats and files as well as mobile application management with Microsoft Intune. To accommodate the requirements of our government cloud customers there are a few features differences between the GCC cloud and that of commercial customers. For more information and to find out more about the features available, go to aka.ms/teamsgccsetup. Going forward, new features for Microsoft Teams will arrive to GCC after release to commercial customers due to increased audit requirements and activities to meet the needs of the GCC environment. We are dedicated to honoring our compliance commitments laid out in the Office 365 Compliance Framework. We are working to shorten this time where possible.
Migrate Your Files to OneDrive Easily with Known Folder Move
We've heard requests from several customers asking to make it easier to move their user data into OneDrive. To have a single button that they could push that would move content from the Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders to OneDrive. We are now making this a reality with the announcement of Known Folder Move (KFM) for OneDrive that will start rolling out to Targeted Release customers this week. Known folders are global pointers in Windows representing a location on the user's drive. They help users to organize their most important files and access them across different applications. KFM helps you move your docs, desktop, and pictures into OneDrive. Even the Screenshots and Camera Roll folders are included when the Picture folder has opted into KFM. User content is automatically synced to OneDrive with no disruption to productivity. Behind the scenes, KFM moves content into OneDrive so it's always synced to the cloud, protected, and accessible from all your devices.
Resource Based Throttling and Prioritization in Exchange Online Migrations
We often get questions about throttling in Mailbox Replication Service (MRS) based migrations in Exchange online. When migrating, you may see messages such as StalledDueTo_TargetDiskLatency for some periods of time. These messages come from our resource-based throttling infrastructure in Exchange Online. We throttle and prioritize work in the Exchange Online service based on priority and resource load. The highest priority is the end-user experience, so some workloads like OWA access, Outlook access, and email delivery are the highest priority. Other things, like select mailbox assistants and customer migrations, are in the second tier but with lower priority than client access and mail flow. There are also some even lower-priority workloads such as load-balancing mailbox moves, maintenance, and other discretionary tasks. We throttle lower priority workloads at the point where they could degrade the end-user experience or the performance of higher priority workloads. For instance, we throttle migrations when they might negatively impact OWA access or email delivery.
NOTEWORTHY
Teams On Air: Ep. 70 - Remote Assist with Microsoft Teams and HoloLens
Format: Video (14 minutes) | In this season finale of Teams On Air host, Delanda Coleman, and Principal Product Manager, Sandhya Rao, demo mixed reality for Microsoft Teams to help first-line workers solve problems faster. With Microsoft Remote Assist for HoloLens, firstline workers who need help can collaborate remotely in a heads-up and hands-free environment to make video calls, share images, and create mixed reality annotations with a remote expert who is using Teams on their Windows 10 PC.
Microsoft Teams for Education Webinar L100
Format: Video (58 minutes) | Learn how to leverage Microsoft Teams for Education in your classroom to simplify your work with students and collaborate with faculty. View this webinar to get an introduction to all the features that Microsoft Teams for Education has to offer. | Related: What's New in EDU: Live from ISTE 2018
New updates to Planner comment notifications and settings
We've received a lot of great feedback on Planner notifications from our users, and over the last few months we've rolled out some updates to address this feedback. Specific changes include improvements on who receives task comment email notifications, adding more context to the comment notifications, and improved plan notification settings. For more information on how our notifications work, please consult our Planner notifications help article.
Office 365 for Windows Desktop - June 2018 release details
On June 25th, 2018, Microsoft released Office for Windows Desktop version 1806 (Build number 10228.20080). Did you notice the strange looking 10 digit build number above? This is the first release using the 5.5 build number. Find out more about 4.4. build numbers versus 5.5. build numbers in this help article. Our Office International team translated this update into 44 languages. Here are some of the new features that shipped to Office 365 subscribers in this release: (1) In Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word…you now have one-click fixes for accessibility issues, (2) In PowerPoint title your slide with a pen, (3) In Outlook, you can invite others to join a group by sharing a URL or sending an email with an embedded link, and (4) In Outlook, the new default setting for recurrence is "End by" instead of "No end date". More information and help content on this release can be found in the What's New in Office 365 page.
Microsoft Flow: Introducing "Request sign-off" for SharePoint users, four new connectors and other improvements
This post highlights recently released features for Microsoft Flow, including: (1) Request sign-off flow built into SharePoint, (2) four new connectors, and (3) refreshes to the "Run history list". The Flow team has also released a video that demonstrates how to get started with a new flow from blank. | Related: Flow of the Week - Stay Up To Date With The News
Centralized Deployment for Outlook add-ins is now generally available
Outlook add-ins bring you the business apps you already use, right in email so you can accomplish tasks faster. Earlier this year we began rolling out a preview of Centralized Deployment for Outlook add-ins, to enable administrators to quickly and easily deploy add-ins to their organization and users. We are bringing Centralized Deployment for Outlook add-ins out of preview and making it generally available to Office 365 commercial customers. With Centralized Deployment, administrators can deploy Outlook add-ins to individual users, groups or an organization with ease, right from the Office 365 administration center or using PowerShell scripts. Both Microsoft AppSource add-ins as well as custom add-ins built internally for use within your organization can be deployed using Centralized Deployment to tenants worldwide. Please refer to our Tech Community post for more details and frequently asked questions.
