Below are all of the latest feature updates coming to Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365
1. Copilot Updates
How this will affect your organization
Copilot will begin to roll out in its early form as part of our free update to Windows 11, starting Sept. 26 — and across Bing, Edge, and Microsoft 365 Copilot this fall. We’re also announcing some exciting new experiences and devices to help you be more productive, spark your creativity, and to meet the everyday needs of people and businesses.
- With over 150 new features, the next Windows 11 update is one of our most ambitious yet, bringing the power of Copilot and new AI powered experiences to apps like Paint, Photos, Clipchamp and more right to your Windows PC.
- Bing will add support for the latest DALL.E 3 model from OpenAI and deliver more personalized answers based on your search history, a new AI-powered shopping experience, and updates to Bing Chat Enterprise, making it more mobile and visual.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot will be generally available for enterprise customers on Nov. 1, 2023, along with Microsoft 365 Chat, a new AI assistant that will completely transform the way you work.
- Additionally, we introduced powerful new Surface devices that bring all these AI experiences to life for you, and they are available for pre-order beginning today.
- CSP offerings will start at the end of Q1 2024
More info: Announcing Microsoft Copilot, your everyday AI companion – The Official Microsoft Blog
Microsoft Teams
1. Generate unique join links for external presenters so they can easily join events
How this will affect your organization
Organizers can set up events and effortlessly add external presenters, who will receive exclusive Teams join links. These links enable external presenters to directly enter the event, eliminating the need for organizers to manually admit them from the event lobby or modify their event role during the session. This creates a hassle-free event experience for organizers and presenters!
External Presenters are considered people outside of your organization, including guests (AAD/B2B/non-AAD), federated, unfederated, and anonymous users (non-AAD).
This feature is available for webinars only. This is not a Teams Premium feature.
When will this happen:
late October and expect to complete by early November.
2. Immersive spaces available soon for Public Preview
How this will affect your organization
We are bringing the power of Microsoft Mesh right into the flow of work – making it easier for Teams users to transform their meetings into a 3D experience. With just one click, you can now easily have fun and connect with your team in an immersive space. From your Teams meeting view menu, you will now see an immersive space option. Once you are in the space, choose from one of our 3D environments and experience Spatial Audio, which allows for multiple simultaneous conversations and effective communication without talking over each other. Play interactive games built for team-bonding and explore different ice breaker activities. Express yourself with live reactions to engage with others during discussions. Bring your team together, from any physical location, with a PC or Meta Quest VR devices.
This feature is available in Microsoft Teams on Windows PC and Meta Quest VR devices. Immersive spaces participants can connect with anyone in the Teams meeting, whether they are in the immersive space or not. This will be available to the following licenses: Teams Essentials, Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft 365 E3/E5, and Office 365 E1/E3/E5.
When will this happen:
October 2023
3. Introducing Microsoft Teams Town hall
How this will affect your organization
To simplify the virtual event experience on Teams, we are integrating our live event capabilities into our Teams meeting experience. This will create a unified experience for users whether they are hosting a small meeting, customer-facing webinar, or company-wide town hall. As a part of this integration, we are introducing Town halls in Microsoft Teams, a new experience to host and deliver large-scale, internal events to create connections across an organization. Town halls will provide a one-to-many format with advanced production capabilities and a structured approach for attendee engagement. With town halls, customers can host various types of internal as well as external events including company-wide town halls, all hands, global team meetings, internal broadcasts, fireside chats, and more.
After September 30, 2024, Teams Live Events will no longer be supported, and access will be discontinued
When will this happen:
Early October 2023
4. Teams Meeting Add-in in Outlook Support for Multi-Tenant Multi-Account Scenarios
How this will affect your organization
If Teams meeting scheduling is enabled in the tenant and if the user has the new Teams client installed, the user will have the ability to switch between their tenants or accounts to schedule a Teams meeting through add-in in Outlook.
When will this happen:
GA
5. Preview the new Microsoft Teams on Mac
How this will affect your organization
We’re rolling out the preview of the new Microsoft Teams desktop app for Mac to our users in the Public preview and Targeted release programs. Read MC533687 that we announced in March 2023 to learn about the benefits of new Teams for Windows.
The new app is built on a foundation of speed, performance, and flexibility, saving you time and helping your organization work together more efficiently. The new Teams app enables users that manage multiple work or school accounts to collaborate more effectively across organizational boundaries. You can seamlessly engage with users across multiple accounts and organizations without having to drop out of a call or meeting, ensuring no disruption to your workflow. With multi-tenant organization (MTO), users in organizations that manage employees across multiple tenants will have the ability to search for coworkers in another tenant, have single chat thread with other users, receive real-time notifications, join meetings, and calls in another tenant, and multitask from their home tenant.
When will this happen:
Early September 2023.
Entra ID (Azure AD)
1. Remediate User Risks in Microsoft Entra ID Protection Through On-premises Password Changes
How this will affect your organization
While we recommend mastering password changes in Entra ID to take advantage of Password Protection, hybrid customers who do password changes on-premises found it challenging to enable user risk policies. Users would get blocked when becoming risky and could not self-remediate by resetting passwords on-premises because the password change wasn’t visible to Entra ID, and so couldn’t dismiss the risk. This has resulted in a build-up of users marked at risk who may or may not have changed their passwords on-prem, making it challenging for some customers to take advantage of Entra ID Protection signals, and to leverage risk-based policies to protect their hybrid tenants.
To bridge this gap, we’re introducing the new setting called “Allow on-premises password change to reset user risk” in Entra ID Protection. Customers that have Password Hash Synchronization enabled on their tenants can now enable this setting. When enabled, users’ risks will be automatically remediated when their passwords are changed on-premises, and customers can confidently deploy user risk policy to effectively protect their hybrid users.
Full Announcement: Remediate User Risks in Microsoft Entra ID Protection Through On-premises Password Changes – Microsoft Community Hub
2. Conditional Access Overview and Templates are now Generally Available!
How this will affect your organization
Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Conditional Access overview dashboard and templates. Conditional Access protects thousands of organizations across the globe daily and customers often ask us about best practices and how to improve security coverage. Conditional Access overview dashboard and templates empower Microsoft Entra ID customers to gain insights into their security posture, assess the impact of individual policies, and simplify deployment of Microsoft’s recommendations.
Microsoft Intune
1. Advancing Remote Help
How this will affect your organization
**Requires Microsoft Intune Suite Add-On**
Firstly, Remote Help is now available on macOS! We’ve heard from customers that this is an essential feature of the Microsoft Intune Suite, and we’re excited to expand this capability to macOS. Helpdesk staff on macOS can now connect in view-only sessions to assist macOS users remotely.
Additionally, we’re now offering the ability to launch Remote Help for Windows from the Intune admin center. With this capability, helpdesk agents can seamlessly launch Remote Help on both their device and the user’s. Previously, both the helpdesk and the user had to launch Remote Help on their devices manually. With the new capability, the user receives a notification on their device that the helpdesk agent wants to begin a Remote Help session making it a more streamlined experience.
Full Intune Updates: What’s new in Microsoft Intune (2309) September edition – Microsoft Intune Blog
When this will happen:
GA
Outlook
1. Outlook on the Web: Meeting Participants Time-Zone Notification
How this will affect your organization
This update will be available in Outlook Web Application without any additional action. Every time you schedule a meeting in Outlook on the web or Monarch, you will get a tool tip message in case attendees that are in a different time as soon as open the new event compose form and add attendees. The tool tip will advise you to navigate to the scheduling assistant which will help the organizer on local time conversions thereby helping the organizer to take more informed decision.
When this will happen:
mid-October 2023 and is expected to be complete by late October 2023.
Microsoft Defender
1. Required Configuration for Phishing Simulation emails
How this will affect your organization
Exchange online protection (EOP)/ Defender for Office 365 (MDO) customers who want to send phishing simulation emails, need to configure advance delivery policy for optimal behavior. This policy will ensure that emails that match your conditions are delivered unfiltered to the Inbox and that safe links time of click protection and post-delivery actions are disabled. Previously, EOP supported this scenario for some phishing simulation vendors by honoring admin configured Exchange transport rules stamping SCL -1 or the header (X-MS-ExchangeOrganizationPhishTraining). But this was a temporary solution and will be discontinued soon. We advise all customers who use phishing simulation products to configure advance delivery policy for a smooth product experience..
More Information: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/skip-filtering-phishing-simulations-sec-ops-mailboxes?view=o365-worldwide
2. Tenant Allow Block List to Support URL Top-Level Domain Blocking
How this will affect your organization
Soon, you will be able to block URLs based on their top-level domain using block entries in the Tenant Allow Block List. You can create entries in the Microsoft 365 Defender portal or PowerShell, using the format “*.<TLD>/”, where <TLD> can be any top-level domain such as .net, .biz, .io, .movie, country codes (.in, .us, .ru) etc. The entry is not case sensitive, and can be in uppercase, lowercase, or mixed.
When this will happen:
late September 2023 and is expected to be complete by late October 2023.
Microsoft Purview
1. Audit – New default retention for Audit (Standard)
How this will affect your organization
The default retention period for Microsoft Purview Audit (Standard) will change from 90 days to 180 days. The default retention period for Audit (Premium) remains at 1 year. This update will benefit organizations by providing deeper visibility into security data.
Learn more: Learn about Microsoft Purview Audit
When will this happen:
early October and is expected to be complete by mid-October 2023.