Welcome to the August 19 – 25, 2018 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.
There were seven additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Outlook, Office, SharePoint Online, Stream, and To-Do.
Don't miss "Teams Tuesday" this week on Tuesday, August 28, 2018 at 10am Pacific. New this week is a SharePoint Mobile Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) on Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 9am Pacific.
The big news from last week is that Microsoft Teams is now at feature parity with Skype for Business Online. Updates for SharePoint hub sites, Office 365 URLs and IP addresses, and Workplace Analytics are other highlights in the blog roundup.
Noteworthy item highlights include remote viewing for live Microsoft Ignite 2018 events, a Microsoft IT Showcase featuring Microsoft's Chief Information Security Officer, updates to Office Lens, and a notification about the retirement of Sway for iOS in December 2018.
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 |
| 33006 |
Automapping on Mailbox Full Access |
Customers can enable automapping when assigning Full Access permissions to cross-premises mailboxes in an Exchange Hybrid deployment. |
In development
|
08/21/2018
|
Q1 CY2019
|
n / a |
| 33019 |
Microsoft Stream available in Office 365 SMB |
Microsoft Stream will be available by default in all Office 365 Business Essentials, Business Premium and Microsoft 365 Business plans. |
In development
|
08/23/2018
|
August CY2018
|
n / a |
| 31086 |
DLP Availability in Microsoft 365 Business |
DLP policies to help identify, monitor and restrict sensitive information like SSNs, Credit Card Numbers etc from being transmitted |
Rolling out
|
08/25/2018
|
September CY2018
|
n / a |
| 33017 |
AutoSave for Semi Annual |
AutoSave will be enabled by default in the upcoming semi-annual release of Office. This change means that for documents stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, your users will not have to worry about losing their changes. Changes will be stored in the cloud automatically, and users will no longer have to explicitly press Ctrl + S or the Save button. |
Rolling out
|
08/25/2018
|
September CY2018
|
n / a |
| 33039 |
Modern library content types and document templates |
In SharePoint document libraries, we are adding the streamlined ability to add document templates to library content types. We're also adding the ability to edit the New menu to add, hide or reorder the new file type options. |
In development
|
08/25/2018
|
September CY2018
|
n / a |
| 33018 |
New design for To-Do for Web |
To-Do for Web 's design is getting updated to simplify the experience and align it more closely with the other experiences inside Microsoft 365. |
In development
|
08/25/2018
|
September CY2018
|
n / a |
| 31807 |
Tasks side panel on Outlook.com |
Quick access to your Tasks on Outlook.com via a side panel you open using the new top bar design |
In development
|
08/25/2018
|
September CY2018
|
n / a |
UPCOMING EVENTS
Microsoft 365 Engineering Webcast: Improvements in Office 365 endpoint publishing and network connectivity guidance
When: On-demand, registration required | Microsoft is updating the publishing of Office 365 network endpoints and has new guidance about optimizing network connectivity for end users to achieve optimal performance. In this talk we will describe the new network principles and guidance and share how the updated endpoint publishing makes end user performance easier to achieve. We will outline the timeline and transition from the current manually published data to the new system and how customers can take advantage of this. | Resource: Office 365 endpoint categories and Office 365 IP Address and URL web service
Teams Tuesdays
When: Tuesdays, August 21, 2018 – October 30, 2018 from 10am – 11am PT | Whether you're managing a new project or starting your own business, it helps to have a team behind you to brainstorm ideas, tackle the work together, and have some fun along the way. Now you can use Microsoft Teams to do just that. Join our team LIVE every Tuesday from 10-11am PDT to learn how you can get started with the free version of Teams. In this hour, we'll walk you through the product and key features, share best practices for getting started, and answer any questions you may have. We look forward to meeting you!
Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): SharePoint mobile - "Smart productivity while on the go"
When: Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 12pm ET | Microsoft is introducing a new design for the SharePoint mobile app based on your feedback, and you may have questions. Bring your curiosities about using the updated SharePoint mobile app to find and discover the content you care about: sites, people, files, news – all with fewer taps and more AI smarts powering the experience. An AMA is a live online event similar to a "YamJam" on Yammer or an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit. The AMA will take place on Thursday, August 30, 2018 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT. Join the SharePoint mobile team on the Microsoft Tech Community! SharePoint leads, Nate Clinton, Andy Haon, Tom Resing, Debjani Mitra, Mark Kashman and others will be primed and ready to answer all your mobility questions – tell your friends. Join in the SharePoint AMA Space, or add it to your calendar. We look forward to seeing you there!
Productivity Hacks to Save Time & Simplify Workflows
When: Wednesday, September 26, 2018 at 12pm ET and 3pm ET | This 90-minute hands-on experience will give you the opportunity to test drive Windows 10, Office 365 and Dynamics 365. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they work for you. During this interactive session, you will: (1) Discover how you can keep your information more secure without inhibiting your workflow, (2) Learn how to visualize and analyze complex data, quickly zeroing in on the insights you need, (3) See how multiple team members can access, edit and review documents simultaneously, and (4) Gain skills that will save you time and simplify your workflow immediately. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.
BLOG ROUNDUP
Microsoft Teams is now a complete meeting and calling solution
Last year we announced plans for Microsoft Teams to become the primary client for Intelligent Communications in Office 365, replacing Skype for Business Online over time. In recent weeks, we added many new communications features to Teams and we are pleased to announce we have completed our roadmap for bringing Skype for Business Online features and functionality into Teams, and Teams is ready to meet your messaging, meeting and calling needs. Today, more than 200,000 organizations are using Teams, including nearly 70% of enterprise customers who use Skype for Business Online. Also, over the last few weeks, we have released resources, tools and guidance to help current Skype for Business Online customers with their upgrade to Teams.
Related:
SharePoint hub sites updates, plus new page and web part improvements
What is the one thing that we can guarantee is going to happen in every business? Change. And when it happens, you want to be in control of how it happens, and how efficiently you can make it happen – in style – while maintaining a level of automation to ensure certain aspects happen consistently. Your SharePoint intranet is your intranet to design and control. To help, we're getting ready to release updates to SharePoint hub sites, news, pages, and web parts: (1) Create more SharePoint hub sites – up to 100, (2) Adjust sites automatically when they get associated to a SharePoint hub site, (3) Modify the color of your site header, (4) Spread news from anywhere, (5) Page editing improvements, and (6) New web part layouts. Let's dive into the details… plus FAQs and links to key, related resources at the end.
Workplace Analytics - August 2018: New custom meeting metrics, space planning, and more
The Workplace Analytics team is excited to announce the following new features for August (see past blog articles here): (1) Custom metrics for meeting queries in Workplace Analytics, (2) Workplace Analytics helps with meeting space planning, (3) More flexibility with chart data in Workplace Analytics, and (4) Improved analysis of low-quality meeting hours with Workplace Analytics. Workplace Analytics is also now available in French and Japanese. | Related: Using MyAnalytics Outlook Add-In to Increase Productivity
New Office 365 IP/URL tables published
Microsoft has IP Address and URL information for Office 365 in a variety of formats including HTML tables, XML download file, RSS feed, and others. The data is needed in scripts and network devices and that is best served by web services rather than web pages and we're working on a larger project to validate and publish this data through web services. We're replacing these publishing points and focusing on REST based web services. It will continue to be possible to get HTML and RSS formats of the data. We are adding attributes to the web services output including a required attribute, an ExpressRoute attribute, and a network endpoint criticality category attribute. All of this is expected to result in simpler and faster network connectivity onboarding for Office 365 and fewer customer concerns with the data. This project is described at http://aka.ms/ipurlblog. As a part of this project on Tuesday August 21st, 2018 we migrated the HTML tables of IP Addresses and URLs for Office 365 to a new publishing platform. The new pages are generated from our web services automatically and look a little different to the old ones. Any links to the old pages will automatically redirect to the new ones.
Migrating to the new web services based publishing for Office 365 IP Addresses and URLs
We announced in April that the Office 365 IP Addresses and URLs page was being replaced with access to the data from new web services. We've heard a few requests for guidance on how to migrate to the new web services. We publish network endpoint data for Office 365 across the five service instances and each has separate network connectivity. For each of these we publish am HTML page with tables that list the URLs and IP Address ranges that must be accessible. We also publish an XML file for each and have an RSS feed which is updated to show changes. These are all planned to be deprecated and no longer updated from October 2nd, 2018. Depending on how you use the current data, you will have a different recommended path for migrating to the new web services which provide the data. The new web services provide IP Address and URL network endpoint data in JSON format along with other attributes that were previously only available in the HTML tables and some new attributes. We will be providing new published HTML tables and RSS feeds that are based off the web services data. Here are some existing scenarios where customers use the data along with how we recommend migrating to the new web services.
NOTEWORTHY
Tune in to Ignite Remotely!
Microsoft's Ignite Conference, running September 24–28, is Microsoft's premiere event for interfacing with customers around "the latest insights and skills from technology leaders and practitioners shaping the future of cloud, data, business intelligence, teamwork, and productivity." With the event sold old the opportunity to attend onsite has run out but there is still a great opportunity to attend the sessions of your choice remotely as they will be streaming live! With 700+ sessions taking place there is something for everyone at this year's Ignite. To facilitate remote attendance Microsoft has enabled folks to leverage the event schedule builder to begin adding key sessions to be streamed. Individuals not registered and wishing to attend remotely can log in to the MyIgnite portal with just their techcommunity.microsoft.com community credentials. Once logged in you can then read through the sessions and add those you are interested in to your schedule. | Related: Exchange Team – Get Ready for Microsoft Ignite 2018!
Text Annotations in Office Lens
We are pleased to announce an exciting new feature for your most loved scanner app - Office Lens. On Office Lens for Android, you are now able to annotate photos with text of different styles and colors. In Android and iOS, we also have larger and improved previews of your scans in My Files. You can quickly find your scans by visually searching through them allowing for an easy recall experience.
Sway for iOS is retiring
Microsoft is retiring the Sway for iOS app December 17, 2018. We're advising all our valued iOS users to use Sway online at sway.office.com. With this change, we're consolidating our Sway experience. Sway online provides the same, most up-to-date feature set across platforms and devices. All Sways that you have created or edited on Sway for iOS will continue to exist, and you access them on Sway online. You can use the iOS app until December 17, 2018. After that date, when you open the app you will be greeted with a message directing you to Sway online.
Microsoft IT Showcase: Speaking of security - A discussion with Bret Arsenault, CISO at Microsoft
Format: Video (60 minutes) | Published: August 22, 2018 | The PowerApps team has released a whitepaper to provide guidance to those administrators responsible for planning, securing, deploying, and supporting applications built on the PowerApps platform. In this whitepaper, we will cover key concepts, platform architecture, and decisions that will be necessary. Where possible we will help you develop best practices for your organization to ensure successful deployments and high productivity for users using the platform. In the end, this paper will help give you a better understanding of what currently is in your environment, how to proactively plan for applications being developed and deployed and finally how to handle day to day administrative tasks to manage deployments.
Announcing new Admin and Maker Connectors for PowerApps and Flow
Now available in public preview are four new Connectors that let you access resources in the Power Platform in an Admin or Maker scope. These Connectors are accompanying the Flow Management Connector, which gives you just about as much control over access to these resources as we have. Similar to the PowerShell cmdlets for PowerApps, we have exposed the Power Platform APIs as Standard Connectors, so you can more easily interact with PowerApps and Flow resources within PowerApps and Flow. The Admin Connectors (Powerplatform for Admins, Microsoft Flow for Admins and PowerApps for Admins) will give the user access to resources tenant-wide, whereas the Maker Connector (PowerApps for App Makers) only gives access to the resources if the user has some ownership of the resource (e.g., Owner, Editor, Shared with, etc.). | Related: Microsoft Flow - Improved Calendar, SharePoint, Approval, Button and Connector capabilities
