Microsoft June 2023

• This month Microsoft has lots of new features and feature enhancements.

Microsoft Teams Updates

1. New Channels Experience

NEW FEATURE
How this will affect your organisation:

• The compose box and recent posts will appear at the top of the page. It'll now be much easier to start a new post, keep up with the latest conversations and participate - giving users the confidence that they’ve not missed anything.  
• Every post is now a true conversation that users can focus on. Users can navigate to a conversation view that makes the discussion more engaging and synchronous, just like a chat. Users can also pop out the post, keep an eye on the discussion, while continuing to work on other topics. 
• A streamlined information pane will include all the important contextual information like channel’s members and pinned posts so new team members can quickly on-board and for all members to find the information they need, right in the channel.
• Pin posts to make it easy for everyone to know what’s important in the channel and quickly reference it. 
• Simplified badging is making it easier for users to understand when there are new unread activities in teams. In addition, the simplified design helps users focus on the specific channels which requires the most attention, like channels in which the user was @mentioned. 

2. A new experience to search within chat and channels.

NEW FEATURE

How this will affect your organisation:

The new in-chat and in-channel Search experience will now be available in the right handrail, making it possible to see your chat/channel list and your new search results in one single view

When this will happen:

Early June 2023 and expect to complete rollout by early July (previously mid-June)

3. Set your Work Hours and Location

NEW FEATURE

How this will affect your organisation:

We are highlighting Microsoft 365 features that will bring transparency and focus on where you and your colleagues are working: work hours and location. These features will appear in Outlook on the web and Teams and bring the flexibility of enabling users to share where they are working. You’re already accustomed to managing and sharing your schedule in Outlook and Teams. With these additional features, Microsoft 365 is now location-aware – giving more information to you and colleagues to work better together.

When this will happen:
early June and expect to complete rollout by early August.

4. Install apps based on user activity with Auto install approved apps (AAA)

NEW FEATURE

How this will affect your organisation:

1. Microsoft Teams Auto install approved apps (AAA) uses activity from your users to install and surface apps that admins have already allowed for the tenant. An admin can enable AAA to help users naturally discover and use apps that are highly relevant to their needs within Microsoft Teams. Specifically, when a user signs into specific SaaS apps using Azure AD (e.g. in web browser), the app will be installed for that user on Teams.
   
   

When this will happen:

mid-May 2023 and we expect to complete by early June 2023.

5. New Lobby Policy for Webinar

NEW FEATURE

How this will affect your organisation:

Currently in Public webinars, you are unable to distinguish registered users in the lobby. This means that you cannot allow registered users to directly bypass your lobby and enter your webinar. With this new change, we will be offering two new lobby options that will allow you to better control security in your webinar. These new lobby options are:

• A new 'Allow registered users to bypass' lobby policy that allows registered users to bypass the lobby in your webinar.
• A new 'Reject users who cannot bypass the lobby' that rejects users who cannot bypass the lobby.

When this will happen:

mid-May and expect to complete rollout by early June.

6. Block Anonymous Users' Meeting Chat Read Access in Addition to Current Write Access

NEW FEATURE

How this will affect your organisation:

Microsoft Teams IT Admins will soon be able to block anonymous users from accessing the chat in internally hosted meetings by disabling their read access on top of the existing disabled write access.

When this will happen:

mid-June and expect to complete rollout by late June.