Weekly digest: Office 365 changes – 5 to 9 October News #Office365 #186

(Updated) The Planner app in Teams will be renamed with an updated experience powered by Planner and To Do

MC211421 | October 9 – Updated October 9, 2020: Rollout of the Planner experience in Teams desktop and Teams web to all non-Government tenants, worldwide, has completed. Users can now see their individual tasks and shared tasks in a single app in Teams. Next we will change the app name in Teams from “Planner” to “Tasks by Planner and To Do” later this month. We will make this change over a weekend to reduce the likelihood of users seeing different names as the change rolls out. We will make an additional update to…

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My Apps ends support for Internet Explorer

MC223753 | October 9 – In order to provide the best experience for our customers, we will be focusing our efforts on modern browser support over the coming year. As a result, we will end support of Internet Explorer for My Apps, My Account, My Access, and My Groups beginning November 13, 2020.Instead we recommend the utilization of Edge, Chrome, or Firefox which is where we will continue to invest.Key Points:Major: RetirementTiming: November 13, 2020Action: Review and assess

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(Updated) New Microsoft Teams meeting pre-join experience

MC220785 | October 9 – Updated October 09, 2020: To ensure the best possible experience for our users, we are delaying some of our deployments to reduce the amount of change flowing into the services. Please see the updated roll-out timeline below Our new pre-join experience makes it easier for users to select audio and video sources before joining a Teams meeting.Key points Microsoft 365Roadmap ID 67089 Timing: end of October (previously early October) through end of November (previously mid-October) Roll-out: user…

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Forms is getting a new start page

MC223901 | October 9 – We are replacing the existing Forms portal page at forms.office.com with a new Forms start page at Office.com (Office.com > Forms).Key points Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 67143 Timing: Targeted release nowTiming: Standard release early November, complete late November 2020 Roll-out: tenant level Control type: user control Action: review and assess

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(Updated) Microsoft Teams: meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint

MC222640 | October 7 – Updated October 07, 2020: To ensure the best possible experience for our users, we are delaying some of our deployments to reduce the amount of change flowing into the services. Please see the updated roll-out timeline below We’re changing the storage for new Teams meeting recordings to be stored on, and served from, OneDrive and SharePoint (ODSP) – instead of Microsoft Stream (Classic). Customers are able to opt in, opt out, or take no action with regard to these changes.This change will apply…

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(Updated) Seamlessly share personal lists in To Do

Act by: September 25

MC220931 | October 6 – Updated October 06, 2020: To ensure the best possible experience for our users, we are delaying some of our deployments to reduce the amount of change flowing into the services. Please see the updated roll-out timeline below. In MC215678 (June 2020), we announced that Microsoft To Do would support list sharing between personal Microsoft accounts and work or school accounts. We paused the rollout to incorporate your feedback. We are pleased to announce we are moving forward with this feature.Key…

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Introducing Designer in Word

MC223444 | October 5 – We’re introducing Designer in Word for the web, a feature which offers formatting consistency and style variety for every document.Key points Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 63455 Timing: targeted release now, standard release early November Roll-out: tenant level Control type: user control Action: review and assess

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Upgrade macOS to access new Microsoft 365 for Mac updates

Act by: November 10

MC223176 | October 5 – As of the Microsoft 365 for Mac November 2020 update, macOS 10.14 Mojave or later is required to receive updates to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. Ifyou continue with an older version of macOS, your Office apps will continue to work but you will no longer receive any updates including security updates.Note:If your organization is not using macOS then you can disregard this message.Key Points:Major: RetirementTiming: November 10, 2020Action: Review and assess impact

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(Updated) Outlook mobile: S/MIME improvements and delegate permissions

MC220427 | October 9 – Updated October 09, 2020: We are pleased to announce that auto sign and auto encrypt with S/MIME are now available. To ensure the best possible experience for our users, we have delayed delegate mailbox permissions for end users. Please see the updated roll-out timeline below For Outlook mobile clients, Microsoft is adding automatic signing and automatic message encryption using Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail extensions (S/MIME) as well as providing end user options to extend delegate…

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(Updated) Admin setting for PSTN participant phone number masking in Teams meetings

MC220415 | October 9 – Updated October 09, 2020: To ensure the best possible experience for our users, we are delaying some of our deployments to reduce the amount of change flowing into the services. Please see the updated roll-out timeline below With MC209349 (April 2020) and MC217648 (July 2020), we added a level of privacy for participants who call in to a Teams meeting via audio conferencing (PSTN) by automatically masking any PSTN participant phone number to users from outside of your organization who might be…

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PowerPoint for Mac record slide show updates

MC223900 | October 9 – We are bringing a new workflow and tools PowerPoint for Mac that will make it easy to record a rich slide show session.If your users do not have Macs, you can safely ignore this message.Key points Microsoft 365Roadmap ID 67104 Timing: mid-November to early December Roll-out: tenant level Control type: user control Action: review and assess

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Organizers can manage meeting options in the meeting experience

MC223879 | October 8 – When meetings have their own window in a desktop Teams app, organizers will be able to see and change meeting options within the in-meeting experience. We announced this new meetings experience in May (MC212453).This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 67121.When this will happenWe will roll this out in mid-October.

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We’re improving Microsoft Search with personal query history

MC223795 | October 8 – As announced at Ignite, we’re adding a new option in Microsoft Search that allows users to view and manage their personal query history.This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 67133.When this will happenWe will begin rolling out personal query history to Targeted Release customers in late November 2020.We will begin rolling out to Standard Release customers in late December and expect to complete the rollout by late March 2021.

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Set duration on presence status in Teams

MC223792 | October 8 – Users will soon be able to set a duration for their presence status in Microsoft Teams.This feature is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 68726.When this will happenWe will begin the rollout at end of October and expect it to be complete by mid-November.

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Freehand by Invision available in the popped out meeting experience

MC223749 | October 7 – Note: If your organization is not using Freehand by Invision you can safely disregard this message.The Freehand by Invision whiteboarding experience was always supported in the original meeting experience but wasn’t supported in the new, popped-out meeting experience. Today, we are pleased to announce that users of Teams Meetings will be able to use Freehand by Invision during the meeting to draw and collaborate with meeting participants in the popped-out meeting experience.This message is…

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Enabling static parameters for the Power Apps web part

MC223660 | October 7 – With this change, users with editing privileges on a SharePoint page will be able to append parameters to the web link of a Power Apps web part. When this will happen Targeted release: begin early October through mid-OctoberStandard release: begin mid-October through end of October

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Forms: Specific user sharing for response collection

MC223656 | October 7 – With this update, Microsoft Forms owners will be able to easily collect survey responses from specific users or security groups.This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 67157.When this will happen We’ll be gradually rolling this out the end of October 2020 The rollout will be completed by the end of November 2020.

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My Feed web part

MC223652 | October 7 – SharePoint pages and site can be more relevant to individual users by adding the My feed web part. This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 67148. When this will happen Targeted release: begins rolling out mid-October Standard release: begins rolling out in late-October and should be complete in early November 2020

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(Updated) Records Management: Regulatory record labels

MC222757 | October 6 – Updated October 06, 2020: Note: this only applies to customers with these licenses. If your organization does not have these licenses you can safely disregard this message.Microsoft 365 E5/A5Microsoft 365 E5/A5 ComplianceMicrosoft 365 Information Protection and GovernanceOffice 365 E5/A5Office 365 Advanced Compliance As announced at Ignite, we’re introducing the public preview of regulatory record labels which further enhance immutability of labeled items. These new labels prevent metadata…

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(Update) Teams meetings, end of meeting notification

MC222346 | October 6 – Updated October 02, 2020: To ensure the best possible experience for our users, we are delaying some of our deployments to reduce the amount of change flowing into the services. Please see the updated roll-out timeline below We will soon be alerting Teams meeting participants when there are five minutes remaining in a scheduled meeting. This is an informational notification and will not automatically end the meeting.This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 67122.When this will…

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Toggle available to preview the new Outlook for Mac

MC223644 | October 6 – Your end users will soon be able preview the new Outlook for Mac. ANew Outlooktoggle provides an option for users to enable it and preview updates that enhance performance and user experiences across Mail, Calendar, People, and Search. We announced the toggle in July (MC219576).Note:If your organization does not use Outlook for Mac you can safely disregard this message.This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 27287.When this will happenOutlook for Mac Build 1013 will be…

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Exchange Online – Voicemail notifications journaling update

MC223643 | October 6 – We are introducing the ability to prevent the journaling of voicemail and call notifications in Exchange Online for organizations that utilize email journaling to send emails to a third party archiving solution.When this will happen We will enable this worldwide in early November.

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(Updated) New Feature: SharePoint, average time spent per user report

MC216146 | October 6 – Updated October 06, 2020: Based on learnings from our early rings, we have made the decision to make additional changes to the code before we proceed with the rollout. The roll-out timeline has been updated below. Thank you for your patience. We are adding a report on the SharePoint site usage page, Average time spent per user.This message is associated with Microsoft 365Roadmap ID 57159.When this will happenWe’ll be gradually rolling this out mid-November (previously mid-July).The rollout will…

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Create choice columns with formatting in Microsoft Lists

MC223567 | October 6 – Columns help your users group, categorize, and track information in a list or library in SharePoint. With this update, your users will be able to create choice columns with formatting.This message is associated with Microsoft Roadmap ID 67097. When this will happen We will begin rolling this out in mid-October 2020 and expect to complete the rollout the end of October 2020.

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Flow Admin Center unavailable

MC222178 | October 5 – Our internal monitoring has detected that you may have recently experienced failures when attempting to access Flow Admin Center. We have applied configuration changes to fix this issue. How does this affect me? You may have experienced failures prior to the changes. If you are still experiencing failures, please attempt to access the Admin Center through this link as a temporary workaround. For additional support, please contact Microsoft Support for assistance and reference ticket 205206374.

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