Below are all of the relevant MSP related Microsoft announcements from July
Microsoft Teams
1. Shared Channels now Generally Available
How this will affect your organization
Powered by B2B direct connect, shared channels provide the flexibility to collaborate with parties both inside and outside an organization and work effectively as one extended team in a channel without the need to tenant switch. With shared channels you can:
- Collaborate with members who are not part of the team in which a channel is created.
- Provide a gateway for both parties to share files, hold conversations, meet, and review documents in a secure and deliberate way, without switching tenants.
- Retain your flow of work, as external shared channels show up alongside channels from your organization.
- Attain access to the full suite of Teams collaboration capabilities with external partners in other Azure AD orgs, just as you would with colleagues from your organization.
2. Video Clip In Chat
How this will affect your organization
Video clip is a new feature that allows you to easily record and send a short, lightweight video message in chat, making a lasting impression and capturing a viewer’s attention as opposed to plain text. Currently available in Teams (Free) and Essential purchased directly through Microsoft.
When will this happen:
Public preview in August and generally available in September.
3. Collaborative Annotations
How this will affect your organization
Collaborative Annotations lets all meeting participants draw, type, or react on top of the content being shared in the meeting using a rich toolset powered by Microsoft Whiteboard. During desktop screen sharing, and with Annotation mode enabled, meeting attendees will see the Annotations toolbar and can start adding annotations to get input and drive discussion.
When will this happen:
GA
4. Digital Contact Center Platform
How this will affect your organization
With the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform, contact centers are equipped with modern digital tools to engage customers across voice, video, and other digital engagement channels—powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Power Platform, and the newest member of the Microsoft family, Nuance.
Inspire Video: Introducing Microsoft Digital Contact Center
When will this happen:
TBD
5. Excel Live
How this will affect your organization
Excel Live revolutionizes the way you can collaborate in Microsoft Teams meetings – with a click, everyone has access to edit the workbook in real time – right within the meeting itself. Excel Live also supports Sheet Views, which means everyone co-editing the workbook can sort or filter however they need, without disrupting others. Excel Live will be available for public preview in August. Learn more here.
When will this happen:
Public preview in August
6. External Access Chat Invitation Flow for Managed Organizations
How this will affect your organization
When receiving a new one-on-one chat from an external user, Teams users will receive an invitation to accept or block the external user. This also provides the ability to block external users at any point, which revokes access to presence and incoming messages
When will this happen:
Mid-August and expect rollout to be completed by early September.
7. Pop Out Shared Content Into a Separate Window
How this will affect your organization
Microsoft Teams now supports the ability to pop out shared content (e.g., screen sharing, PowerPoint Live, Whiteboard) into a separate window while in meetings.
When will this happen:
Early August and expect to complete rollout by the end of September.
Microsoft SharePoint
1. Review mode for Word documents
How this will affect your organization
When you open a document that was shared with you for review, you are automatically placed in Review mode.
In Review mode, you won’t have full edit control but instead are allowed to add suggestions to the document in the form of comments or tracked changes. Document owners or other collaborators who have full edit permissions will then need to approve the incorporation of any suggested changes to the document. Users who wish to share Word documents on Web through OneDrive, SharePoint or directly from Word online will be able to see this change.
When this will happen:
Late-July and expect to complete early August.
Microsoft Viva
1. Meeting Category Insights Coming to the Viva Insights App in Teams
How this will affect your organization
Meeting categories in Outlook allow users to easily tag, label, and group calendar events. Meeting category insights is a new feature coming in the Viva Insights app in Teams that will help users understand how they are allocating their time across these meeting categories. Users can view data for the last 3 months, the last 4 weeks, and the next 4 weeks. The feature will be available in an Effective meetings tab being introduced in the app.
With future updates, users will see more personalized insights and suggestions in this tab to help improve meeting habits and will be able to create and share meeting plans to set team meeting norms.
When this will happen:
mid-August and is expected to be completed by the late August.
2. Viva Engage, replacing Yammer Communities app for Teams
How this will affect your organization
At Microsoft Inspire, Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, announced Microsoft Viva Engage, the newest app in Microsoft Viva, designed to help people and teams to be their best, have a voice, and feel included in the workplace. The new Viva Engage app replaces the Communities app in Teams. This change does not make any underlying changes to any existing functionality provided by existing Yammer services. On web, mobile and desktop, Yammer.com and the Yammer apps for iOS and Android remain the hero standalone experiences for employee engagement. In Teams, Viva Engage will directly replace the Communities app, such as in the app bar or in the Teams admin center. There are no changes to administrative controls.
Viva Engage will continue to show the same network, home feed, and communities as you see today as in Yammer. Viva Engage will also continue respecting any custom re-branding done for the Communities app.
As a part of this release, posts in storylines will also be released under preview. See MC402424: Storyline available for public preview in Yammer and Microsoft Viva Engage beginning late August. As with the Communities app, the new Viva Engage app will continue to require an existing Yammer license.
When this will happen:
Late August.
Microsoft Admin
1. OneDrive sync health reports now support macOS devices
How this will affect your organization
The OneDrive sync health dashboard now supports macOS devices in addition to Windows devices. The dashboard provides both a high-level and detailed view of the health of OneDrive sync in your organization.
When will this happen:
GA
2. Unassign Policies in Bulk in Microsoft Teams Admin Center
How this will affect your organization
Using the new Unassign policies in bulk feature, you will be able to fetch all users associated with a policy individually, before removing the assignment so that users can get the correct policy
The Unassign policies in bulk lets you fetch the count of all directly assigned users for a selected policy and execute the process in batches of up to 500 users at once. This un-assignment operation may take some time to complete and the details can be checked in the Activity log. After completion, all users associated with the selected policy will be removed and will inherit the correct effective policy either via a group assignment or Global (org-wide default). The same can be viewed from the manage users tab available in Microsoft Teams admin center.
When will this happen:
late August
3. Retirement of Exchange Online PowerShell with MFA
How this will affect your organization
If you are still using the “the Exchange Online PowerShell module with MFA”, (described in this document – V1 module – Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell using MFA we recommend that you move to the latest GA version of V2 Module (v2.0.5) to avoid a situation where you need service or support that is no longer available after 31 Aug 2022.
When will this happen
December 31, 2022.
4. Partner Program Changes
How this will affect your organization
On Oct. 3, 2022, the existing Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) will become the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program. Long-term, legacy competencies ad well as Gold and Silver partner status’ will no longer be valid (late 2023)
The new Microsoft Cloud Partner Program will aim to drive and promote partners’ proficiency in six technology areas:
- Data & AI (Azure)
- Infrastructure (Azure)
- Digital & App Innovation (Azure)
- Business Applications
- Modern Work
- Security
More Information: Solutions Partner (microsoft.com)
Partner Center Dashboard: Solutions partners – Overview (microsoft.com)
I will unpack this more in a complete blog post as there is a lot to cover.