Release News

Teams

Retirement of Auto install approved apps in Teams admin center

Windows 365

Inbound Access to Port 3389 Closed by Default for Windows 365 Cloud PCs

Newsworthy Highlights

Elevating Government Productivity: Microsoft 365 Copilot at the Forefront

The digital transformation within government sectors is accelerating, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing a pivotal role in this evolution. Microsoft is leading the charge, deploying innovative AI solutions tailored for public sector needs. At the heart of this transformation is Microsoft 365 Copilot, a groundbreaking tool set to redefine how government agencies work.

Where to Start with Microsoft Teams Apps in Gov Clouds

Customers in our Office 365 government clouds, GCC, GCCH, and DoD, are continuing to evolve how they do business in the hybrid workplace. As Microsoft Teams is the primary tool for communication and collaboration, customers are looking to improve productivity by integrating their business processes directly into Microsoft Teams via third-party party (3P) applications or line-of-business (LOB)/homegrown application integrations.

Microsoft 365 Government Community Call

Watch past episodes of Jay Leask and other members of the Government Community on LinkedIn!

Microsoft 365 Government Adoption Resources

Empowering US public sector organizations to transition to Microsoft 365

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | July 2024

Government users can now set up and host large scale events across a GCC organization with the familiar Teams app using town hall

References and Information Resources

Microsoft 365 Public Roadmap
This link is filtered to show GCC, GCC High and DOD specific items.  For more general information uncheck these boxes under “Cloud Instance”.

Stay on top of Microsoft 365 changes
Here are a few ways that you can stay on top of the Office 365 updates in your organization.

Microsoft Tech Community for Public Sector
Your community for discussion surrounding the public sector, local and state governments.

Microsoft 365 for US Government Service Descriptions

·     Office 365 Platform (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Office 365 U.S. Government GCC High endpoints

·     Office 365 U.S. Government DoD endpoints

·     Microsoft Purview (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Enterprise Mobility & Security (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Security (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Microsoft Defender for Identity Security (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Azure Information Protection Premium

·     Exchange Online (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     SharePoint (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     OneDrive (GCC, GCCH, DoD) 

·     Teams (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Office 365 Government (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Power Apps (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Power Automate US Government (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Power BI (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Planner (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Outlook Mobile (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

·     Viva Insights (GCC)

·     Dynamics 365 US Government

Be a Learn-it-All

Public Sector Center of Expertise

We bring together thought leadership and research relating to digital transformation and innovation in the public sector. We highlight the stories of public servants around the globe, while fostering a community of decision makers. Join us as we discover and share the learnings and achievements of public sector communities.

Microsoft Teams for US Government Adoption Guide

Message Center Highlights

Please note: This section is for informational purposes only. It is presented as is and as available with no warranty and no supportability given expressly or implied. Questions, comments, concerns and all other feedback must be presented in the comment section below the post, thank you!

SharePoint Online / OneDrive for Business

MC847880 — Microsoft SharePoint: News template updates

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 393335

Coming soon for Microsoft SharePoint: We will simplify the templates for creating News pages and all templates will support sharing by email by default.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out mid-August 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide, DoD, GCC High, GCC): We will begin rolling out late August 2024 and expect to complete by early September 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

After this rollout: Users sharing SharePoint News posts will have a greater opportunity to share those pages as fully rendered email instead of sharing as links.

When creating a new News post, all templates will be grouped and users will no longer need to select from a specific email-ready category.

This rollout involves changes to the user experience when authoring News. Customers should consider whether these changes will require them to update their documentation or instructions for News authors.

News page templates before (left) and after (right) this rollout:

Example of preview (left) and email in In box (right):

This feature is on by default and accessible to all SharePoint authors. 

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Before rollout, we will update this post with revised documentation.

MC846391 — Microsoft SharePoint: Feed for Viva Connections web part and Video news link retires starting September 1, 2024

We will begin retiring the Feed for Viva Connections web part and the Video news link on September 1, 2024.

On September 1, 2024, we will remove the Feed for Viva Connections web part from the toolbox. Also, we will remove the Video news link from the + New menu in the organizational site. Site editors will not be able to add a new feed for Viva Connections web part to a site or embed new video links to the Viva Connections feed.

On November 5, 2024, we will end support for feed for the Viva Connections web part and the Video news link. Site editors are encouraged to use the web parts News, Viva Engage, File and Media, and Highlighted content, as well as video pages as alternative solutions.

Note: Any Feed for Viva Connections web parts that have not been replaced with the recommended alternative solutions by November 5, 2024, will result in an empty web part that no longer displays content or any Video news links that have not been removed. Visitors to the site will instead see an error message.

What you need to do to prepare:

This change will happen automatically on the specified dates.
Site editors and SharePoint admins should plan for the retirement and update and/or replace the affected SharePoint sites with the recommended alternatives.
Notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

For more information, refer to the Viva Connections Feed web part and Video news link retirement support guidance.

MC837080 — Microsoft SharePoint: Section Design Ideas for Pages (GCC, GCC High, DoD)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 124846

Coming soon for Microsoft SharePoint: Authors can use the new Design ideas feature to rearrange and reformat their Page sections containing images and text.

When this will happen:

General Availability (GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out late August 2024 and expect to complete by early September 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: SharePoint authors did not have access to Design ideas.

After this rollout

Authors will now be able to use Design ideas on their compatible sections. Design ideas identifies the text and webpart composition of the section you are currently authoring, and then suggests new layouts, backgrounds and text formatting to enhance your section.

When you move your cursor into a new section with one blank text webpart, Design ideas will offer formatting options you can add to get started.

 >

After your section has content, Design ideas will analyze the types of webparts in your section and offer ways to rearrange and format the webparts.

When you first start an editing session, a red dot will appear next to the Design ideas icon in the content pane to let you know it has ideas available. Select this icon to open the Design ideas panel:

For this release, Design ideas will only be available for sections containing:

1, 2, and 3 text and image webparts
1 blank text webpart

This feature is on by default and accessible to all SharePoint authors.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this improvement and update any relevant documentation.

Before rollout, we will update this post with revised documentation.

MC808855 — (Updated) Microsoft OneDrive: How to ensure/manage background syncing on macOS

Updated July 8, 2024: We have updated this message to show as intended. For Microsoft 365 operated by 21Vianet customers, please refer to MC808854. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Coming soon to Microsoft OneDrive for macOS: We are excited to announce an enhancement to how OneDrive runs in the background. Before this rollout, the OpenAtLogin plist controlled whether the OneDrive Sync app launched upon device startup. However, this setting could be overridden by a MacOS System Setting in Login Items, allowing users to modify their experience.

With our latest update, we are streamlining this process. OneDrive Sync will no longer support the Open at login setting. Instead, it will listen to the macOS System Setting Login Item, ensuring that it launches seamlessly in the background when your device starts up. This Login Item is now managed via configuration profile, accessible under Background Services.

We believe this change will improve the overall user experience and provide greater app reliability. This message does not apply to mobile.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out early July 2024 and expect to complete by late July 2024.

The rest of the channels will follow in line with their normal cadence.

How this will affect your organization:

Administrators will no longer need to configure the OpenAtLogin plist setting. Instead, admins can manage the background behavior of OneDrive Sync directly through a Background Services configuration profile that can be deployed via Microsoft Intune, Jamf, etc.

This feature is off by default.

What you need to do to prepare:

Review the Background Services configuration profile and deploy it.

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC803891 — (Updated) Microsoft SharePoint: New content pane for Pages and News

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 124827

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to Microsoft SharePoint a new content pane for Pages and News. The content pane serves as a convenient hub for various panes that support authors in crafting their publications.

In Microsoft Viva Amplify, the content pane includes more tools such as the distribution channel selection, writing guidance, and audience selection.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out late July 2024 (previously mid-July) and expect to complete by late August 2024 (previously mid-August).

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-August 2024 (previously late July) and expect to complete by early September 2024 (previously late August).

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: Users access section tools and templates on the left side of the canvas. Web parts can only be added through the on-canvas plus buttons.

After this rollout

Users will see the new content pane when editing SharePoint Pages and News. This centralized space now has a user-friendly toolbox so authors can explore and insert content into their Pages and News. Users can navigate the content pane with the three icons on the right side of the screen for Toolbox, Properties, and Design ideas.

Users can access essential tools for page creation in the toolbox, which includes three content categories: web parts, media, and section templates. Authors can click and drag web parts and media onto the canvas. Items from any category can also be added to the canvas with a click. To view more options for any of the categories, select the See all and See more buttons.

The preexisting Properties pane is now in the content pane. Users can access properties for a web part or a section by selecting the Properties icon on the right of the content pane or by selecting the Edit properties button in the web part or section toolbars.

Users will now see updated section controls on the authoring canvas. To add a section, select the plus button on a section border and then select a section to add. Use the section toolbar in the top left of a section to move sections, edit properties, and duplicate or delete sections.

The control pane is on by default and accessible to all SharePoint authors. The three icons for Toolbox, Properties, and Design ideas are on the right side of the screen.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You might want to notify users, update your user training, and prepare your help desk.

Before rollout, we will update this post with revised documentation.

Microsoft Viva

MC843110 — Microsoft in Viva Engage: New layout for video and images will be GA in August 2024

Coming soon for Microsoft Viva Engage: As announced in July 2024, users will have an enhanced layout for featuring videos and images above the text in storyline posts.

When this will happen:

Public Preview: We began rolling out in January 2024 and expect to complete in early August 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out early August 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: Users were not able to display images or videos above the text in storyline posts.

After this rollout, a user can create a new post on their storyline, attach an image or video, and add text. After selecting Post, the user can choose the layout that best suits their intent and preview the layout.

A storyline post with a single video above text. Select Post to choose the layout:

Select and preview the layout. Then select Post:

The default (preselected) layout is based on the length of the post:

When the text is 200 characters or fewer, Video (or image) above is preselected.
When the text is more than 200 characters, Text above is preselected.
If the post has no text, the creator will not be prompted to choose layout and images will be placed above the text.

The post’s creator can change the preselected layout. After a thread with Image (or video) above is posted, the image (or video) will display above the text.

Storyline post with a video featured above the text:

The enhanced layout provides the same features as the classic layout with media attached. For example, users can react, reply, and share the post to other storylines or communities.

The enhanced layout can also display the video or image in an immersive view, where people can enjoy and engage with the media full screen. To open the immersive view, select the image or the text of the post.

Immersive view available for threads with images above the text:

What you need to do to prepare:

Notes for admins

The enhanced layout is supported only for users with Storyline enabled. Storyline is enabled by default, but admins can disable it or assign it to specific users in the Viva Engage admin center. Learn more: Manage and set up storyline in Viva Engage | Microsoft Learn

This new media experience is only available for:

Storyline posts. We may add support for communities in future releases.
Discussion posts. We may add support for questions, polls and praise in future releases.
Posts with one image or video: We may add support for multiple media items in future releases.
Posts with media attached. We may add support for links in future releases.

As we move this feature from public preview to general availability, we will be removing the toggle to Enable stories from the Viva Engage admin center.

There’s more coming to Viva Engage storylines and communities soon, so stay tuned!

Learn more: New experiences for video and images in Viva Engage – Microsoft Community Hub

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

MC809597 — Microsoft Viva: Import navigational links from Microsoft SharePoint into Resources in Viva Connections

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 397890

Coming soon for Microsoft Viva Connections on desktop: Users with editing permissions will be able to import SharePoint links from their home site navigation and global navigation directly into the Resources section of Viva Connections. Users with editing permissions will be able to preview their updates in Resources before saving them.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-July 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-July 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before the rollout: Users with editing permissions were not able to import navigation links into the Resources section of Viva Connections. They added links manually.

After the rollout: Users with editing permissions will be able to access the new Import SharePoint links button at Viva Connections > Edit > Import SharePoint Links > Select links to import > Import:

This feature is on by default and accessible to all Viva Connections users with editing permissions

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC809596 — Microsoft Viva: Choose custom images as icons for resources in Viva Connections

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 402188

Coming soon to Microsoft Viva Connections: Users with editing permissions will be able to personalize Viva Connections by adding custom images as icons to links in the Resources section.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-July 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-July 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before the rollout: Users were not able to use images to personalize links in the Resources section of Viva Connections.

After the rollout: Users with editing permissions can add a custom image as an icon in Viva Connections: On the Resources screen, select Edit > Select Edit from the three-dot menu next to the Resource (first screenshot) > Select Change (second screenshot) > Select Edit at the bottom of the screen to implement changes:

This feature is on by default and accessible to all Viva Connections users with editing permissions.

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no need for extensive preparation. Users with editing permissions should start considering which custom images they would like to use as icons for the links in the Resources section.

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users with editing permissions about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC791877 — (Updated) Microsoft Viva: Connections now available on the web

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 394276

Updated July 10, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Viva Connections will be directly available in the browser, offering all the same functionalities that exist in Microsoft Teams. This integration surfaces directly in the browser, providing a consistent experience with other Viva Modules. 

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out mid-May 2024 and expect to complete by late May 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCCHigh, DoD): We will begin rolling out late May 2024 and expect to complete by mid-July 2024 (previously late June).

How this will affect your organization:

All the functionalities that exist in Viva Connections in Teams are now also available directly in the browser, providing a consistent experience with other Viva modules. The web experience offers an additional entry point for Viva Connections, catering specifically to customers who do not rely on Teams.

What you need to do to prepare:

No action is required to use Viva Connections on the web. It is recommended that you share more information about this release with your employees so that they can use Viva Connections more effectively.

Additional Information: 

Overview: Viva Connections | Microsoft Learn

Microsoft Teams

MC847513 — Microsoft Teams: How to retrieve Wiki Meeting Notes after they retired in July 2024 (GCC High)

We previously announced in MC714167 Wiki Notes Retirement (February 2024) that we retired Wiki-based Meeting notes in early July 2024. We understand Wiki Notes has been a valuable collaboration tool for many users. We are offering a way for users to retrieve their Wiki-based Meeting notes in the .mht file format after Wiki Notes have retired, to prevent data loss. This message applies to private meetings. A meeting is private when it isn’t published to a channel in a team.

Wiki-based Meeting notes are stored in the personal Microsoft OneDrive owned by the user who created the notes.

To find the OneDrive link to the meeting notes in the .mht file format if you created the notes:

Go to your personal OneDrive. The link should look like this: https://-my.sharepoint.us/personal/.
On the left side of the screen, select My files.
Navigate to Microsoft Teams Data > Wiki.
Use the meeting title to search for the desired .mht file.

To find the OneDrive link to the meeting notes in the .mht file format if you did NOT create the notes:

In your Teams calendar, find the meeting for which you want to retrieve the notes. Open the invitation and select Copy link to copy the Join link. Paste the link into a Notepad or Word doc.

Now we need to find the thread ID. First, find a URL decoder on the web. Paste the Join link into the decoder and select Decode. Paste the decoded Join link into a Notepad or Word doc. Extract the thread ID and paste that into the Notepad or Word doc. The bold part in this example is the thread ID: [Editor’s note – line breaks added for formatting requirements]

https://gov.teams.microsoft.us/l/meetup-join/
19:gcch:meeting_588f3f8883ef4be09f9813e112ff0cb9@thread.v2/
0?context={“Tid”:”fef24bbe-18d9-453d-a4c9-3471d278af0c”,
“Oid”:”00e034ed-bdf5-4f4b-8f3b-f7d254a5c558″}

Sign in to gov.teams.microsoft.us and select F12 on your keyboard to open Dev Tools. It does not matter what page you’re on in Teams. This screenshot is an overview of the Dev Tools Window. We will cover the individual steps in detail here:

In Dev Tools, go to Application at the top of the screen. (If needed, widen the Dev Tools window or select the + sign at the top of the Dev Tools window to find Application.) In the Application menu on the left side of the screen, scroll down to Storage. Under Storage, expand IndexedDB:

 >

In IndexedDB, scroll down to Teams:conversation-manager:react-web-client and expand it. Then, expand conversations:

 >

At the top of the Dev Tools screen, find the Filter field, and paste in the thread ID that you found in Step 2.

On the right side of Dev Tools, in the Key (Key path: “id”) column, find the value that matches the thread ID. Expand the window as needed to find the Value column to the right of the Key column. In the Value column, find and expand the entry for the thread ID. Scroll down to find the value that begins with “tab::”. Copy the “tab::” value and paste it in your Notepad or Word doc. If no notes were taken for a meeting, you will not find an entry that starts with “tab::”.

The “tab::” value should look like this: [Editor’s note – line breaks added for formatting requirements]

tab::19:gcch:meeting_588f3f8883ef4be09f9813e112ff0cb9@
thread.v2:: {“id”:”tab::19:gcch:
meeting_588f3f8883ef4be09f9813e112ff0cb9@thread.v2″,
“name”:null,”definitionId”:null,”directive”
:null,”tabType”:null,”order”:0,”replyChainId”
:0,”settings”:{“meetingNotesPageId”:2,
“sharepointPath”:”https://quovadimus-my.
sharepoint.us/personal/meganb_quovadimus_ms”}}”

The “tab::” value in Step 7 contains https://quovadimus-my.sharepoint.us/personal/meganb_quovadimus_ms, which is the OneDrive link for the Wiki meeting notes. (Note: The backward slash at the end of the “tab::” value in Step 7 is not part of the link.) If this OneDrive link does not belong to you, ask the link owner to get the meeting notes for you using the first set of four steps in this message. The OneDrive link contains the email address of the link owner. In this example, the notes were created by meganb.

MC846390 — Microsoft Teams: New Queues app service plan (Teams Premium for GCC)

Microsoft Teams: Your Office 365 subscription is being updated with a new service plan: Queues app for Microsoft Teams. Powered by Teams Phone, the Queues app enables team members to make and receive customer calls without having to leave Teams, with tailored experiences for users and leads that are designed for efficiency in call handling and resolution.

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out early September 2024  

How this will affect your organization

Once we begin rolling out the new service plan (early September), Queues app will be listed as a service plan under the Teams Premium license. This is to prepare for the GA release of the Queues app for Microsoft Teams. The rollout plan outlining the availability of Queues app will be communicated via the Message Center and the roadmap.

What you need to do to prepare

There is no action required.

Additional Resources:

Admins: Set up Auto attendant and Call queue authorized users – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn
End Users: Use the Queues app for Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support

MC844920 — Microsoft Teams devices: App-only updates for Android-based Teams devices

With this rollout, updates for Android-based Teams devices will become more flexible. All software components (Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Authenticator, Company Portal, and Teams Admin agent) will be available for updates as stand-alone applications. This rollout makes it easier and faster for the devices to receive the latest features, fixes, and performance improvements.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out early August 2024 and expect to complete by early September 2024.

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out late September 2024 and expect to complete by late October 2024.

General Availability (GCC High): We will begin rolling out late October 2024 and expect to complete by late November 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before the rollout: Android-based Teams devices [Teams Rooms on Android (MTR-A), Panels, Phones, and Displays] are updated through the bundled firmware or the Teams app. They are updated automatically or manually by admins through the Teams admin center.

After the rollout

With this rollout, the devices will also be able to update through app-only releases of Company Portal, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Authenticator, and the Teams admin agent.

For firmware and the Teams app, the experience of updating the devices will not change. The experience will be the same for all apps.

When a new version of Company Portal, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Authenticator, or the Teams Admin agent is released for the devices, the update will be available through the Teams admin center. Admins can select one or more devices and then select the relevant app and update the devices on the desired schedule. Admins can then monitor the progress of the update operation in the device’s History.

Automatic update details

Automatic updates for Teams devices ensure that the devices are updated without the need for any intervention. Microsoft automatically rolls out the updates on the eligible devices when a new version is available.
Automatic updates will happen for Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Authenticator.
Support for automatic updates of Teams admin agent will be available later and a separate MC post will follow.
Automatic updates will not happen for Company Portal.
Automatic updates rollout will follow the update phases already configured for the devices. Learn more about update phases. The timeline will be the same as the timeline for the Teams app.
Automatic updates will happen only during the configured maintenance window of the devices. Learn more about configuring maintenance windows.
Admins can track the details of update operations in the History section for the device in Teams admin center.
Information about the active automatic update rollouts will be available through the Software auto-updates widget on the Inventory page in the Teams admin center.

Both manual and automatic updates for these apps will happen in sync for paired MTR-A and consoles. Refer to App updates for paired devices for more details.

What you need to do to prepare:

The new changes will automatically take effect upon release. Administrators don’t need to do anything to prepare. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation.

When new versions are released, they will be announced through the public release notes. After that, the administrators can visit the Teams admin center for updating the devices or let the devices get automatically updated, as applicable.

Learn more: Update Microsoft Teams devices remotely – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

MC834148 — New Teams – Pre-installation Check Script

This post provides a pre-installation check script that identifies issues which may prevent new Teams installation. You may have users still on classic Teams if a prior installation failed or your organization has not completely moved over to new Teams. We recommend running this script to identify and mitigate issues before initiating the installation of the new Teams.

This script can be run in Intune or via other device management software to help you identify the issue and the machine associated with that issue. We will continue to update the script for any issues that are not already covered.

How this will affect your organization:

This pre-installation script will make the installation of new Teams seamless by identifying any issues before the update is attempted.

What you need to do to prepare:

Run the script locally on a device, in Intune, or via other device management software. Please refer to Pre-installation script for new Teams client – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn for details.

MC830247 — Microsoft Teams: Text and UI resizing for Teams Rooms on Windows

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 400707

Coming soon for Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows: As an additional accessibility option, you will be able to adjust the size of the text and all other on-screen elements on the Teams Rooms on Windows front-of-room display and touch boards by updating the display scaling settings. The app user interface is adjusted for all supported display resolution and scaling combinations. This feature is included in all Teams Rooms licenses and requires the Teams Rooms on Windows app version 5.1.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out this feature early August 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before the rollout:

You can only adjust the display scaling settings of a traditional Teams Rooms on Windows front-of-room display.
When you set the scaling percentage to be greater than 100%, the overall app user interface may not look as refined.

After the rollout:

While it is recommended to keep your displays at their native resolution (100% scaling), if you want to increase the size of the text and all other on-screen elements of the Teams Rooms on Windows app on your front-of-room display or touch board display, you will be able to do this by adjusting the scaling settings of your display.

You may set the display resolution and scaling settings to any of these supported display resolution and scaling combinations:

1080p resolution: 100% and 150% scaling
4K resolution: 100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, 200%, and 300% scaling

You can update your display scaling settings using either of these methods:

Windows display settings: Learn more in the Display and resolution scaling section of Microsoft Teams Rooms maintenance and operations – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn 
XML configuration profile: Learn more at Remotely configure layout, scale, and resolution on Teams Rooms displays – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn 

NOTE: This setting only affects the size of the text and other on-screen elements on front-of-room displays and touch boards. The size of the text and other on-screen elements on touch consoles are fixed.

This feature will be off by default and available for Teams admins to configure. If you have already configured the display scaling before this rollout, then your device users will see an improved interface.

What you need to do to prepare:

After your devices are updated to the 5.1 app, you can make the display setting configuration changes as desired.

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout.

MC823306 — VDI: Classic Teams for end of support and end of availability timelines and warning dialogues

Classic Teams in VDI will reach end of support on October 1st, 2024, and end of availability on July 1, 2025.

How this will affect your organization:

Classic Teams will reach the end of support starting October 1st, 2024

Starting late July 2024 World Wide and GCC VDI users will see dismissible warning dialog messages informing them about the upcoming end of support.
Starting early August 2024 GCCH and DOD VDI users will see dismissible warning dialog messages informing them about the upcoming end of support.
 

Starting October 1st, 2024, classic Teams will become unsupported. Users still running classic Teams will experience in-app dialog messages informing them that the client is no longer supported. These messages are dismissible but will reappear periodically.

Classic Teams end of availability (blocked from using classic Teams)

Starting July 1st, 2025, users will not be able to access the classic Teams desktop clients. Users will experience non-dismissible in-app dialogs informing them about end of availability, with an option to use the new Teams web app as an alternative.
End of availability details can be found here: End of availability for classic Teams client.

What you need to do to prepare:

Make sure your VDI environment meets the minimum requirements as described here.

MC818888 — Microsoft Teams: Intelligent meeting recap with AI-generated notes and tasks (GCC)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 399938

Coming soon for Microsoft Teams: We will enable AI-generated notes and tasks in intelligent meeting recap for GCC customers, expanding on intelligent meeting recap features (such as personalized timeline markers, speaker timeline markets, chapters, and topics) already available to GCC customers [and communicated in MC780742 (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Speakers, Topics, Chapters, and Mentions are available in the Intelligent Recap tab for GCC, December 2024]. A Teams Premium license or a Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 license is required to use the new features.

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out mid-August 2024 and expect to complete by late August 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: Only Speakers, Topics, Chapters, and Mentions are available in Teams Meeting Recap tab in the Teams calendar invitation.

After this rollout: AI-generated notes and tasks will be added to the Recap tab. For screenshots and more information: Meeting recap in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support

The new features will be available by default to all users with a Teams Premium license or a Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 license.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Learn more

User support: Meeting recap in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support
Admin support: Data, privacy, and security for intelligent recap in Teams Premium – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

MC818885 — Microsoft Teams: Multiple camera view for Teams Rooms on Windows

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 402517

Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows will be soon able to send up to four single-stream USB camera feeds to render on the receiver side, so remote meeting participants can view all cameras simultaneously. This opt-in feature requires admins to first enable the multiple camera view and map cameras to the desired order that will be displayed on the receiver side. With multiple camera view enabled, remote meeting participants will be able to follow all the action in the room and manually switch to the desired room. This message applies to Teams for Desktop (Windows, Mac).

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 and expect to complete by late September 2024.

General Availability (GCC, GCCH, DoD): We will begin rolling out in mid-October 2024 and expect to complete by late October 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before the rollout

Multiple camera views are not available in Teams Rooms on Windows.

After the rollout

A multiple camera view can create more visibility and coverage for large and complex spaces, such as multipurpose rooms, classrooms, and executive boardrooms. Admins can set up multiple camera views in two ways:

Admins can configure settings on a local device by turning on the Multiple camera view toggle and using the dropdown menu to map the cameras.
Admins can configure multiple camera view in the Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro Management portal.

After the feature is enabled, in-room participants can disable multiple camera view with the Camera chevron button on the meeting console. This action will return the device to a single camera view, and all receiver-side participants will see a single camera view. This in-room setting will only affect that meeting and the device will revert to the admin settings for the next meeting.

Remote participants will see the multiple camera view by default. On the top right corner of the room’s video tile, a remote participant can use the arrows to switch to the desired camera view. This toggle will only affect the remote participant’s own view and will not affect other meeting participants.

Admin setting to configure Multiple camera view on a local device:

In-meeting console setting with Multiple camera view toggle:

What you need to do to prepare:

To prepare for the change, create a plan for the rooms that may require multiple cameras in consideration of the space, meeting scenario, and the desired experience for in-room and remote participants. Then, configure the multiple camera view on the local device or in the Teams Pro Management portal and notify your users about this new experience. You may want to update relevant training documentation.

Before rollout, we will update this post with revised documentation.

MC816179 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Bidirectional Support for Teams Live Interpretation

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 403103

Updated August 1, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

With bidirectional support in Teams Live Interpretation, interpreters can now switch the translation direction between two languages by clicking on the button of the language they want to interpret into at the bottom of the screen. The highlighted language button will be the language the interpreter is translating into and attendees hear.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously early August) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024 (previously mid-August).

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by late September 2024 (previously late August).

General Availability (GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out late October 2024 (previously late September) and expect to complete by early November 2024 (previously early October).

How this will affect your organization:

The new bidirectional capability allows tenants to hire fewer interpreters to do live translation in Teams meetings, reducing the operation costs for tenants.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically with no admin action required. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC814586 — (Updated) Reactions in Microsoft Teams Town Hall (Premium)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 381447

Updated July 23, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Currently in Microsoft Teams Town Hall, participants cannot send or receive reactions in the event. With this new feature, all participants including organizers, presenters, and attendees can send and see reactions in a Town Hall if the organizer of the event has a Teams Premium license. Participants can send a love, laugh, thumbs up, surprise, and applause reaction in the event and will see the reactions as a stream at the bottom right of their screen.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We began rolling out late-July 2024 (previously early July) and expect to complete by early August 2024 (previously mid-July).

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out mid-August 2024 and expect to complete by late August 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Reactions will now be available to participants in Microsoft Teams (Premium) Town Hall.

What you need to do to prepare:

Please ensure that if the organizer wants reactions in their Town Hall, that they turn on reactions via meeting options before or during the Town Hall.

MC814584 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Q&A will be generally available in late August 2024

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 395935  

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience

In Microsoft Teams, organizers of meetings, webinars, and town halls will soon be able to enable a Q&A feature for their events. This interactive tool allows for real-time engagement, enabling organizers to field and answer questions from attendees. It is particularly effective for large, structured gatherings such as all-hands meetings or training sessions.

When this will happen:

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously late August) and expect to complete by late September 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Organizers can enable the Q&A feature in their Microsoft Teams meetings via Meeting Options by toggling on Q&A. This provides structured dialogue, allowing attendees to ask questions, reply, and react by clicking the Q&A icon within the meeting interface.

Moderators can enable moderation to review questions before publishing them live. Additionally, they can allow attendees to submit questions anonymously by turning on the anonymous posts option.

This Q&A feature be automatically enabled upon rollout. 

Enabling Q&A through Meeting Options while setting up your meeting:

Moderate attendee questions in Q&A as the organizer:

What you need to do to prepare:

Please inform the meeting organizers at your organization that they can use the Q&A feature in their meetings, webinars and town hall.

Additional Resources:

Follow these instructions to enable the Q&A feature:

Q&A in Microsoft Teams meetings – Microsoft Support

Your organization may have requirements to limit which users can enable the Q&A feature. Please use Meeting Policies in the Teams admin center to manage which users can enable the Q&A feature in their events:

 Manage Q&A in Teams meetings and events – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

Using Teams Town Hall with Teams Q&A:

Get started with town hall in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support

MC814583 — Microsoft Teams: Ability to rename General channel

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 395931

Based on customer feedback, we are introducing the ability to provide a meaningful name to the General channel in a new or existing team. The General channel can be renamed by the team owners to show up in the teams’ and channels’ list of all members in alphabetical order. 

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early August 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August 2024.

General Availability

Worldwide: We will begin rolling out mid-August 2024 and expect to complete by late August 2024.
GCC: We will begin rolling out early September 2024 and expect to complete by mid-September 2024.
GCC High: We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 and expect to complete by late September 2024.
DoD: We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 and expect to complete by late September 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

You can encourage your users to provide a meaningful name to General channels in their teams. 

What you need to do to prepare:

You may consider updating your internal documentation to inform your users that this feature is now available. 

MC814579 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: The new Queues app for customer call management in Teams

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 379980

Updated August 1, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience

Microsoft is pleased to announce the general availability of Queues app, a new native Teams app designed to improve the management of customer calls. Integrated with Teams Phone, Queues app will allow team members to manage call queues more efficiently without leaving Teams. Queues app is available by default to all Teams Premium licensed users. This message applies to Teams for desktop.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide and GCC): We will begin rolling out mid-October 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by late October 2024 (previously late August).

How this will affect your organization

Before the rollout: Teams users can receive and answer calls from Call queues directly from their Teams client, just like any other incoming call.

After the rollout: In addition to receiving and answering Call queue calls, Teams Premium licensed users will be able to select View more apps in the left side of Teams and then select the Queues app. Key features of Queues include:

Real-time statistics: Provides an overview of Call queue, Auto attendant, and agent performance.
Historical reporting: Track past performance of Auto attendant, Call queue, and agents.
Agent opt-in and opt-out: Allows team members to join or leave call queues based on availability. Authorized users can opt in or opt out on the behalf of agents.
Collaborative call handling: Facilitates teamwork with call transfers and team communication through the People list.
Outbound calls: Enables calls on behalf of call queues or auto attendants.
Enhanced management: Authorized users can configure teams, Call queues, and Auto attendant.

Queues app with call management options and an incoming call in the bottom right:

What you need to do to prepare

We recommend that you:

Review your existing app setup policies and consider pre-pinning this app for your call queue agents. Learn more: Manage app setup policies in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn 
Configure Authorized users for Call queues and Auto attendants if you have not already done so. Plan for Auto attendant and Call queue authorized users 
You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Learn more

Admins: Set up Auto attendant and Call queue authorized users – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn 
Admins: Introducing the Queues app: Enabling customer engagement in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Community Hub 
Users: Use the Queues app for Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support

MC814577 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Roster grouping for in-room participants through Proximity Join for Teams Rooms on Windows

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 400702

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

When joining a meeting in Teams Room on Windows with a companion device (laptop or mobile), in-room participants will be grouped under the room node. Participants must join through Proximity Join. This update includes additional UI elements to create visual clarity of the in-room participants who are together.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024 (previously late August).

General Availability (GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 and expect to complete rollout by late October 2024 (late September). 

How this will affect your organization:

This update is available by default if the companion device has enabled the Bluetooth setting and the Teams Room device has any one of the following XML <SkypeSettings> configuration settings enabled:

<BluetoothAdvertisementEnabled>true</BluetoothAdvertisementEnabled>
<UltrasoundAdvertisementEnabled>true</UltrasoundAdvertisementEnabled>
<RoomQRcodeEnabled>true</RoomQRcodeEnabled>

On the roster, in-room participants will automatically be grouped under the room node. The two scenarios in which in-room participants can be ungrouped from the room node are:

Raised hand: For raised hand, we continue to follow the sequential order of raised hands. Therefore, in-room participants who use their companion device to raise their hand will be broken up and ordered accordingly.
Role assignment: For changes in roles (Presenters/Attendees), in-room participants can be broken up and placed in the appropriate category on the roster.

In both scenarios, the room information will be listed below the participant’s name.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC814576 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Legal hold and eDiscovery support for webinars and town halls

Updated August 2, 2024: We have updated the content to show as intended. Thank you for your patience.

Before this rollout, compliance admins can place Microsoft Purview eDiscovery legal holds on Microsoft Teams webinar and town hall data using Team’s ability to target SharePoint locations where Teams content is housed. Due to heightened security requirements and the need for specialized compliance support, we are moving legal holds in Teams from the SharePoint integration to a more direct integration with Purview.

When this will happen:

The more direct integration of Teams legal holds with Purview will begin July 31, 2024. Legal holds through SharePoint will not apply to any new Teams webinars or town hall meetings created after July 31, 2024, because newly created Teams town hall and webinar data will not reside in SharePoint. Legal holds on events created before July 31, 2024 will continue to work through SharePoint. Full support for Purview eDiscovery legal holds is anticipated by early 2025. Purview eDiscovery will continue to work for all events, even after July 31, 2024. Only eDiscovery legal hold will be affected by this integration.

How this will affect your organization:

after this rollout, legal hold through Microsoft Purview will be on by default and accessible to all admins with appropriate permissions.

What you need to do to prepare:

Articles will be updated when legal hold and eDiscovery are available through Purview in early 2025:

Learn about Microsoft Purview | Microsoft Learn 
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery solutions | Microsoft Learn 

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation.

MC810411 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams Rooms: Enhanced cross-platform meetings via SIP join

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 400703

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon: Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows will be enabled to join meetings like Google Meet, Zoom, Cisco Webex, Amazon Chime, RingCentral, and others from conferencing services that support SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) join.

You’ll experience the look and feel of a Teams Rooms meeting with access to some third-party platform in-meeting controls (depending on the platform being used). Features include up to 1080p video quality, dual screen support, different meeting layouts, and HDMI ingest. This capability requires a SIP calling plan from a Cloud Video Interop (CVI) partner; this plan is currently available through Pexip in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

This message applies to Teams Rooms customers with a Pro license.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously late August) and expect to complete by late September 2024

General Availability (GCC High): We will begin rolling out mid-November 2024 (previously late September) and expect to complete by late November 2024 (previously mid-October).

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: Teams Rooms does not support third-party SIP conferencing services to join meetings. Teams Room does support dialing into SIP endpoints.

After the rollout: The default state of this feature is off.

Device settings with all conferencing services enabled. Teams Rooms Pro license and plan with CVI provider needed:

What you need to do to prepare:

If you do not want to use this feature, no action is needed. This rollout will not impact you.

To enable SIP dialing from the Teams Rooms on Windows:

Ensure the Teams Room has a Pro license assigned
Ensure the Teams Room has a license to dial SIP from one of our certified CVI providers
Run the PowerShell commands to assign the right policy to the Teams Room
Change the settings in the device to enable one or more conferencing services to dial from the Teams Room

Learn more

What’s new from Teams Rooms and Devices at InfoComm 2024 – Microsoft Community Hub 
Enable Teams Rooms devices to join third-party meetings – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn (will be updated just before rollout begins) 

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. If you enable the feature, you may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC810407 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows: A Teams Room can be a Breakout Room participant

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 95680

Updated July 24, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows will soon support Breakout Rooms as a participant. This will allow a Teams Rooms on Windows to be participate in Breakout Rooms if they are used by a meeting organizer. The room can be assigned to any particular Breakout Room and will respect any related settings or actions defined by the organizer, such as automatically being moved into a Breakout Room, permission to return to the main meeting, being reassigned to a different Breakout Room, or receiving announcements from the organizer. This release is applicable to Teams Rooms on Windows.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously late August) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024.

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 and expect to complete by early October 2024.

General Availability (GCC High): We will begin rolling out early October 2024 and expect to complete by early November 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: Teams Room did not support Breakout Rooms as a participant, and participants joining meetings through Teams Room on Windows were not able to participate in Breakout Rooms sessions.

After this rollout, meeting organizers using Breakout Rooms will be able to manage a Teams Room on Windows in the same way they manage individual participants. Participants joining a meeting using Breakout Rooms from a Teams Room on Windows will be able to participate in Breakout Rooms sessions. Note: A Teams Room cannot take on the organizer role for Breakout Rooms.

By default, this feature is on and accessible to all Teams Rooms for Windows users.

A Teams Room in the list of attendees to assign to Breakout Rooms:

A prompt that confirms the Teams Room is assigned to a Breakout Room:

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Learn more: Use breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams meetings – Microsoft Support

MC809602 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: New skin tone settings and reactions

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 323766

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

With skin tone settings and reactions in Microsoft Teams, users will be able to set a preferred skin tone for relevant emojis and reactions. Each user can change their own skin tone setting in the Teams app Settings > Appearance and accessibility menu or in the emoji/reaction menu on Desktop or web. The skin tone rollout will apply to emojis and reactions in chats, channels, and meetings on all Teams platforms (Teams for Desktop, Teams for web, Teams for Mac, and Teams Mobile).

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously early August) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024 (mid-August 2024).

General availability (Worldwide, GCC): We will begin rolling out mid- September 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by late September 2024 (previously late August).

General availability (GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out early October 2024 (previously mid-September) and expect to complete by late October 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Changing skin tone in the emoji menu in Teams for Desktop:

Changing skin tone in Teams Settings > Appearance and accessibility in Teams for Desktop:

Changing skin tone in Teams Settings > Appearance on Teams Mobile:

The selected skin tone appears in reactions in chats, channels, and meetings:

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

We will update this post before rollout with revised documentation.

MC809595 — Planner: New Microsoft Planner app for Microsoft Teams in GCC

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 402889

The new Microsoft Planner is a single, unified work management experience. It brings together Microsoft To Do, Planner, and Microsoft Project for the web into a single solution that spans from individual task management and frontline task management to enterprise and professional project management.

We are updating the existing Tasks by Planner and To Do apps in Microsoft Teams to the new Microsoft Planner app, which will maintain all existing app functionality and add new options and features to help users be more productive.

When this will happen:

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out late July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

We are updating the app name for the Tasks by Planner and To Do apps in Microsoft Teams to Planner.
Planner in Teams will maintain all existing functionality of the Tasks app while adding support to access all your plans and the capabilities of Microsoft Project for the web.
If your organization does not have a Microsoft 365 license, users must use the To Do app to create new lists. If your organization purchases at least one Microsoft 365 license, users can access the full functionality of Planner.

The following capabilities will not be available as part of the initial rollout. The timeline for availability of these features will be announced later in Message Center.

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 in Planner.
Tasks in Premium Plans appearing in the Assigned to Me view in My Tasks.

Learn more about the new Microsoft Planner announcement.

This update is available by default.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Please review The new Microsoft Planner begins roll out to General Availability in preparation to update any internal documentation to reflect the new Planner app.

For more information, visit Manage the Planner app for your organization in Microsoft Teams.

MC808164 — Microsoft Teams: Teams Live Events temporary capacity limit extension

To ensure that organizations have access to the tools to run large-scale events, we are extending the expiration timeline for the previously announced hybrid work capacity limit increases for Teams Live Events until further notice. In MC698896 (Updated) Teams Live Event capacity limit extension (originally published December 2023, updated January 2024), we extended the temporary capacity increases for live events from December 30, 2023 to June 30, 2024. These temporarily increased capacity limits included raising the live events capacity from 10,000 up to 20,000 attendees in a single event instance, the possible number of concurrent live events instances from 15 to 50 simultaneous events, and the live events duration from 4 to 16 hours.

While Teams town hall will continue to be the platform for our new large-scale digital events features and value, we would like to make sure organizations have adequate time to transition to town halls. The extension of the Teams Live Events capacity limits follows our recent announcement that Teams live events will continue to be available to customers after the previously announced date of September 30, 2024.

When this will happen:

This extension is effective immediately and is available by default to all Teams Live Events users. We will alert you at least 6 months before we formally end the extension.

How this will affect your organization:

Your organization can continue to use Teams Live Events with

a broadcast experience for up to 20,000 attendees (up from 10,000 attendees)
50 events hosted simultaneously across a tenant (up from 15 events)
an event duration of 16 hours per broadcast (up from 4 hours)

As a reminder, Teams Live Events will continue to be available after September 30, 2024, and customers who are still using Teams Live Events can continue using and scheduling the platform after September 30, 2024. We are committed to making it as easy and beneficial as possible for customers to adopt and implement town hall as their destination for large-scale digital events, as well as allow customers to upgrade from Live Events to town hall on their own schedule.

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing you need to do to receive this extension. It will automatically be applied to all Teams Live Events.

MC808162 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Proximity Join via ultrasound

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 380681

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Microsoft Teams Rooms on Microsoft Windows will soon support Proximity Join via ultrasound. It will be an alternative to using Bluetooth or QR codes and typically will not penetrate walls, therefore improving the quality of detected rooms by personal devices. This release will be rolling out to Microsoft Teams Desktop (Windows and MacOS) for receivers and to select Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows. 

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously late August) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024.

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 and expect to complete by early October 2024.

General Availability (GCC High): We will begin rolling out early October 2024 and expect to complete by early November 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

The user experience for Proximity Join on Microsoft Teams Rooms will not change as a result of this feature. The suggested room in the room list will be improved using ultrasound.

Previous tenants that were not able to leverage the Proximity Join feature due to Bluetooth restrictions will be able to use Proximity Join via ultrasound with this release.

This new feature will be enabled by default.

What you need to do to prepare:

You may want to notify your users about this new capability to detect nearby rooms using the laptop microphones, which will receive the ultrasound signal broadcasted from select Microsoft Teams Rooms that have consoles built with a dedicated ultrasound speaker. Audio peripherals connected to laptops may affect the device’s ability to detect the ultrasound signal.

MC808160 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Office 365 Connectors feature retires starting August 15, 2024

Updated July 23, 2024: We understand and appreciate the feedback that customers have shared with us regarding the timeline provided for the migration from Office 365 connectors. We have decided to extend the retirement timeline through December 2025 to provide ample time to migrate to another solution such as Power Automate, an app within Microsoft Teams, or Microsoft Graph. Please see below for more information about the extension:

All existing connectors within all clouds will continue to work until December 2025, however using connectors beyond December 31, 2024 will require additional action.

Connector owners will be required to update the respective URL to post by December 31st, 2024. At least 90 days prior to the December 31, 2024 deadline, we will send further guidance about making this URL update. If the URL is not updated by December 31, 2024 the connector will stop working. This is due to further service hardening updates being implemented for Office 365 connectors in alignment with Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative

Starting August 15th, 2024, all new creations should be created using the Workflows app in Microsoft Teams

We will be retiring the Microsoft Office 365 connectors feature in Microsoft Teams starting August 15, 2024, and ending October 1, 2024. For similar functionality, we recommend using the Workflows app in Microsoft Teams, where we will continue to invest our development resources. As we strive for continuous improvement, the shift toward Power Automate workflows represents our commitment to providing scalable, flexible, and secure solutions. Power Automate workflows not only offer enhanced capabilities but also ensure that your integrations are built on a platform that can grow with your business needs.

How this will affect your organization:

We will gradually roll out this change in two phases:

Effective August 15, 2024: All new connector creation will be blocked in all clouds.
Effective October 1, 2024: All existing connectors in all clouds will stop working.

What you need to do to prepare:

This change will happen automatically on the specified dates listed above. No admin action is required. Please notify your users about this change, update relevant documentation as appropriate, and share the Browse and add workflows in Microsoft Teams support article.

Learn more about the retirement of Microsoft Office 365 connectors and migrating to Workflows

MC804766 — Teams Rooms on Android and Teams Phones impacted by retirement of legacy notifications infrastructure: UPGRADE REQUIRED!

Updated July 10, 2024: We have updated the timing of this change below. Thank you for your patience.

MC798318 Reminder | Microsoft Teams Mobile: Support is retiring for legacy services infrastructure for chat messaging (June 2024) also impacts Teams Devices including Teams Rooms (Android) and Teams Phone devices, because these devices use the same chat notification service infrastructure as Teams Android mobile clients.

To avoid disruption, these updates must be completed before September 30, 2024.

An update to Teams rooms application version 1449/1.0.96.2024020802 or greater is required for Teams Rooms on Android devices.
An update to Teams phone application version 1449/1.0.94.2024011003 or greater is required for Teams Phone devices.

Microsoft Teams devices are governed by the Modern Lifecycle Policy and require users to stay on the most up-to-date version of the Teams Rooms application. Automatic updates ensure that users have the latest capabilities, performance and security enhancements, and service reliability. Learn more about the Modern Lifecycle Policy under the Servicing agreement for Microsoft Teams.

When will this happen:

On September 30, 2024, Microsoft will stop supporting the legacy services infrastructure for chat messaging, which impacts Teams Rooms on Android devices on earlier app version than 1449/1.0.96.2024020802 and Teams Phone devices on earlier app version than 1449/1.0.94.2024011003.

How this will affect your organization:

The retirement of the CNS service API impacts incoming call (including notifications for one-on-one calls and group calls) and proximity-based meeting join scenarios from the Teams Rooms on Android. The retirement also impacts incoming calls, voicemail, and missed call notifications on Teams Phone devices.

Team rooms application version 1449/1.0.96.2024020802 and later versions are not impacted as they use the new and improved notification service APIs. Similarly, Teams phone devices app versions 1449/1.0.94.2024011003 and later are not impacted.

This change will not affect Teams Rooms on Windows or Surface Hub devices as well as Teams Panels.

What you need to do to prepare:

Update your Teams Rooms on Android device to latest Teams rooms application version or app version greater than 1449/1.0.96.2024020802.
Update Teams Phone devices to latest Teams Phone app or an app version greater than 1449/1.0.94.2024011003.

Update process

In Teams admin center, select the device category under Teams Devices group. Select devices from the list and then select Update.
Under Manual Updates, select the Teams application and then select the Update button to update to the latest application. If all your devices are eligible to receive Automatic Updates, use that option to get to the latest Teams app version.

MC803293 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Enhanced Chat contextual info and Search

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 398956

Updated August 2, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams: As in the General channel, chat users will have access to contextual information including People, Pinned messages, Shared files and links, and will be able to search from chat. This message applies to Teams for Desktop, web, and Mac.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out late July 2024 and expect to complete by late July 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide and GCC): We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously mid-Augus) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024 (previously late August).

General Availability (GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 and expect to complete by early October 2024 (previously late September).

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: Users lacked one place to find contextual information in chat.

After this rollout, users can select the new entry point in the top right corner of the chat window to access contextual chat information (People, Pinned messages, Shared files and links). Users can also search the chat and pin multiple messages.

The default state of this feature is on and is accessible to all Teams users (Desktop, web, Mac).

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Before rollout, we will update this post with revised documentation.

MC803007 — (Updated) Teams in VDI: Expiring “UseNewTeamsClient” policy and updated new Teams rollout schedule (Worldwide, GCC)

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

As we approach October 1, 2024, when support ends for classic Teams in VDI (Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure), we are changing the rollout schedule of new Teams. (Previously communication: MC752511 ‘New Teams as default’ rollout schedule in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (March 2024).

Starting July 2024, the Teams admin center policy UseNewTeamsClient under TeamsUpdateManagement will no longer be processed. Instead, for VDI customers, we will overwrite this value to New Teams only on the schedule in this message. This means that New Teams client will be installed automatically and will become the default client. The toggle to return to classic Teams will still be available if needed.

This policy value override will only apply to persistent VDI environments. For non-persistent environments, admins will continue to control the rollout of the new Teams client with golden/master image updates, and the value of the existing policy in the Teams admin center will be honored for users in non-persistent VDI environments:

Persistent environments: Classic Teams was installed with the .exe installer (user installation in Appdata/local).
Non-persistent environments: Classic Teams was installed with the .msi installer (machine-wide installation in C:Program Files (x86)).

When this will happen:

We will roll out these changes to Targeted Release, Worldwide, and GCC customers between early July 2024 and late August 2024.

Targeted Release and Worldwide:

Targeted Release | Phase 1: Overriding Not enabled with Classic Teams as default: We will begin rolling out early July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-July 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide) | Phase 1: Overriding Not enabled with Classic Teams as default: We will begin rolling out early July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-July 2024.

Targeted Release | Phase 2: Overriding Classic Teams as default with New Teams as default: We will begin rolling out late July 2024 (previously early August) and expect to complete by early August 2024 (previously mid-August).

General Availability (Worldwide) | Phase 2: Overriding Classic Teams as default with New Teams as default: We will begin rolling out late July 2024 (previously early August) and expect to complete by early August 2024 (previously mid-August).

GCC:

General Availability (GCC) | Phase 1: Overriding Not enabled with Classic Teams as default: We will begin rolling out mid-July 2024 and expect to complete by late July 2024.

General Availability (GCC) | Phase 2: Overriding Classic Teams as default with New Teams as default: We will begin rolling out early August 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by mid-August 2024 (previously late August).

How this will affect your organization:

Depending on your existing policy value in the Teams admin center, your users will experience the following:

Phase 1: If you have set the policy to Not enabled, users in persistent VDI environments will be migrated first to Classic Teams as default. Users will start seeing the Switch to new Teams toggle in classic Teams and will be able to switch to new Teams (and return to classic Teams if desired). In other words, Not enabled will not be honored after this rollout.
Phase 2: Second and final phase, overriding Classic Teams as default with New Teams as default for ALL users in persistent VDI environments.

As an admin, you can always move forward in the phases to New Teams by default from any point in the rollout schedule, but you cannot move backwards in the phases after Phases 1 and 2 are rolled out. For example:

If you are currently in Classic Teams as default, you can go to New Teams as default or New Teams only by assigning those policy values. However, you will not be able move back to the Not enabled value (or AdminDisabled in the PowerShell cmdlet) after Phase 1 is complete.

If you are currently in New Teams as default, you can move forward to New Teams only by assigning that policy value. In this case, you cannot move back to Classic Teams as default (UserChoice in the PowerShell cmdlet) after Phase 2 is complete, and you cannot move back to Not enabled (AdminDisabled in the PowerShell cmdlet) after Phase 1 is complete.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates. No admin action is required. Please notify your users about this change and update relevant documentation as appropriate.

Learn more: End of availability for classic Teams client – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

MC800850 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: In Chat, “Files” will be renamed to “Shared” and get new features

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 396169

Updated August 2, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon in Microsoft Teams: Discover more content easily with the new Shared tab in Chat. After this rollout, the Files tab will be named Shared. The Shared tab will show files and links sent in a chat, in a new, richer format. Channels are not affected by this change. This message applies to Teams for Desktop and for Mac.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-July 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously mid-July) and expect to complete by late September 2024 (previously late July).

How this will affect your organization:

Before the rollout, the Files tab displayed one list of files shared in the chat and did not include links.

After the rollout, the new Shared tab will include recent files, all files, and links.

Coming soon after the rollout:

Image previews for links
Keyword search to find content easily

Next version: Media links (images, videos, GIFs, etc.)

Like the Files tab, the new Shared tab is on by default and accessible to all Teams users.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC800840 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: “New Teams as default” rollout schedule in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (GCCH and DoD)

Updated July 22, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below for DoD. Thank you for your patience.

We will be rolling out New Teams as default in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments. This message only applies to persistent VDI environments and only for classic Teams versions higher than 1.7.00.7956. 

Persistent environments are environments where classic Teams was installed with the .exe installer (user installation in the Appdata/local directory).
Non-persistent environments are environments where classic Teams was installed with the .msi installer (machine-wide installation in the C:Program Files (x86) directory).

We will begin rolling out New Teams as default when the admin policy setting UseNewTeamsClient is set as the Microsoft default value in the Teams admin center (TAC) > Microsoft controlled or is set as Microsoft choice in PowerShell.

If the TAC policy is set to Not enabled or Classic Teams as default, this message is not relevant, because the message only applies to Microsoft Controlled policy settings.

When this will happen:

General Availability (GCC High): We will begin rolling out in mid-June 2024 and expect to complete by late June 2024.

General Availability (DoD): We will begin rolling out in late June 2024 and expect to complete by late July 2024 (previously early July).

How this will affect your organization:

Microsoft will begin rolling out the new Teams in VDI environments where the virtual machine’s operating system meets the minimum version requirements (Windows 10.0.19041).

Users will start seeing this banner in their classic Teams app: The new Teams is installed and ready to use. Users can then select Switch now or Switch when I’m not using Teams.

To ensure you are fully empowered to manage the rollout of new Teams in a way that is right for you, we will continue to honor the admin setting for UseNewTeamsClient under Teams update policies if you have already deployed the policy.

You will continue to be able to directly deploy the new Teams client to virtual machines in your organization at any time.

What you need to do to prepare:

Review the resources and timelines and plan your organization’s rollout plan for the new Microsoft Teams app.
Verify your VDI environments meet the minimum requirements as defined by your virtualization provider.
Citrix customers: To be optimized when using new Teams, the appropriate registry key is required in the VDAs.

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC800498 — Introducing Town halls in Microsoft Teams GCC

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 395373

Updated August 1, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

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 for GCC, 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 experience 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.

Town hall will be available for GCC customers, and advanced capabilities in town hall will be available for Teams GCC customers. The new town hall experience will be generally available and start to roll out globally to GCC customers in July 2024. 

Please note, Q&A for town hall will be initially only available in private preview when town hall launches in GCC. Q&A is expected to become generally available in August 2024. To request access to Q&A in private preview, please open a support ticket asking for it. 

Our recommendation is that GCC customers (both existing and new) start using town hall as it becomes generally available in July. Basic town hall functionality in GCC provide the following capabilities:

Attendee capacity of 10,000 attendees
Host up to 15 concurrent events across a tenant
Co-organizer support
Automated invitation and event recording emails
Green room
Manage what attendees see
RTMP-in
On-demand recording 
Live translation captions (up to 6 languages)
Live transcription (AI-generated)
AI-generated captions
Third-party eCDN and Microsoft eCDN support
Attendee reporting

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out early July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August 2024 (previously early July).

How this will affect your organization:

Users in your tenant will see the new entry for Town hall within the new meeting drop down.

What you need to do to prepare:

This feature will be enabled by default upon release, however if required by Admin Policy, can be disabled.

MC800497 — (Updated) Introducing Premium Town halls in Microsoft Teams GCC

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 395374

Updated August 1, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

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 GCC, 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 experience 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.

Town hall will be available for GCC customers and advanced capabilities in town hall will be available for Teams Premium GCC customers. The new town hall experience will be generally available and start to roll out globally to GCC customers in July 2024.

Please note, Q&A for town hall will be initially only available in private preview when town hall launches in GCC. Q&A is expected to become generally available in August 2024. To request access to Q&A in private preview, please open a support ticket asking for it. 

Our recommendation is that GCC customers (both existing and new) start using town hall as it becomes generally available in July. Customers with Teams Premium in GCC will enjoy the following features:

Attendee capacity of 20,000 attendees
Host up to 50 concurrent events across a tenant
Co-organizer support
Automated invitation and event recording emails
Green room
Manage what attendees see
RTMP-in
On-demand recording 
Live translation captions (up to 10 languages)
Email editing
Live transcription (AI-generated)
AI-generated captions
Third-party eCDN and Microsoft eCDN support
Attendee reporting

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling out early July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August 2024 (previously early July).

How this will affect your organization:

Users in your tenant will see the new entry for Town hall within the new meeting drop down.

What you need to do to prepare:

This feature will be enabled by default upon release, however if required by Admin Policy, can be disabled.

MC797476 — (Updated) Teams: Updated developer tools to share content from Teams apps to chats, channels, and meetings

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 394670

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Today, users can share content to a Microsoft Teams meeting directly from a standalone webapp (in the browser) if developers have embedded a Share-in-Meeting control in their webapps. Today, this control allows users to share content only to an ongoing Teams meeting (or a new ad-hoc meeting) on the same device. In this rollout, we will retain the control’s existing capabilities, and we will enhance the control to enable users to share content to a meeting scheduled for the future. We will combine the Share-in-Meeting controls with the existing Share to Teams dialog box, so users can use one dialog box to share from a Teams app to Teams chats, channels, or meetings. We are also introducing the ability for users to choose Present Now from the dialog to present content in a Teams meeting. Developers can choose to opt into the features in this rollout. This rollout applies to Teams for Windows, the web, and Mac.

When this will happen:

Public Developer Preview: We will begin rolling out early June 2024 and expect to complete by mid-June 2024.

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously early August) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024 (previously mid-August).

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by late September 2024 (previously late August).

How this will affect your organization:

Additional enhancements for developers in this this rollout:

When a meeting begins, the app side panel is opened automatically for the user who shared the content to the meeting.
Exposes shared content information for the app to get the list of content shared, display the content, and have it readily available in the side panel.
Notifies the meeting participants through an experience in the meeting chat that a user has shared content in the meeting.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. Please notify your app developers about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Before rollout, we will update this post with revised documentation.

MC795085 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: New meeting option to control permissions for admitting participants from lobby

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 392836

Updated August 2, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Microsoft Teams: Currently, the capability to admit attendees from lobby and the capability to present are combined into one meeting role: Presenter. This frequently results in situations where meeting participants, who are not in charge of meeting management, are able to admit people from the lobby to enter the meeting, and the meeting organizer has no way to control it.

With this feature update, we are addressing this gap by introducing a meeting option for meeting organizers to be in control of who can admit people from the lobby.

The new option Who can admit from lobby will have two choices:

Only the organizer and co-organizers can admit from the lobby: This is the more secure option to be used for meetings where only organizers and co-organizers should be able to admit participants from the lobby.
The organizer, co-organizers, and presenters can admit from the lobby (default option): This mimics the current system behavior that presenters also get the right to admit participants from the lobby.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously early August) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024 (previously mid-August).

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by late September 2024 (previously late August).

How this will affect your organization:

Based on the above option, people who have access to admitting participants from the lobby, will also have these capabilities:

Receive notifications related to lobby activity, such as the lobby meeting start notifications or in-meeting lobby alerts

View lobby in the People tab during the meeting

What you need to do to prepare:

No specific action is needed to enable or utilize this capability for meetings in your organization

All existing meetings will be configured with organizers, co-organizers and presenters with this capability.

For all new meetings, the organizers will have access to set this option during scheduling time.

The default for this new meeting option can be configured by the tenant admins using the meeting policy:

*****

MC792604 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams devices: Cancel device operations through the Teams admin center

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 395372

Updated July 22, 2024: We have added additional resources below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon for Microsoft Teams devices: Teams devices admins will have the option to cancel device operations from the Teams admin center. This rollout applies to Teams Rooms on Android, Teams Phones, Displays, and Panels. This rollout is designed to provide administrators with greater control and flexibility in remotely managing their meeting and calling devices.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out early July 2024 (previously late June) and expect to complete by mid-July 2024 (previously mid-July).

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out mid-July 2024 (previously late June) and expect to complete by late July 2024 (previously late July).

General Availability (GCC High): We will begin rolling out early August 2024 (previously late July) and expect to complete by late August 2024 (previously mid-August).

General Availability (DoD): We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously late August) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before the rollout, admins are not able to cancel operations. 

After the rollout, admins will be able to cancel any queued or scheduled device operations that have not yet been initiated.

Operations that admins will be able to cancel:

Device restart
Software update
Device diagnostics (download logs)
Configuration update
Remote sign-in
Remote sign-out

Admins will be able to cancel operations by selecting the desired operation from the device’s History in the Teams admin center, either from the list page or from the History tab on the Device page. A confirmation prompt will ask if the cancellation is intentional, and after confirmation, the execution for the selected operation will be cancelled.

Administrators can also select multiple operations from the History tab (on the Device detail page) and cancel them in bulk.

Only operations that have not yet started to execute can be cancelled.

There will be no impact on existing operations.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

We will update this comm before rollout with revised documentation.

Additional resources:

Manage devices in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

MC792603 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Ask to join a shared channel with a channel link

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 325330

Updated August 1, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams: In-tenant users who attempt to access a shared channel with a link will be able to request to join the channel. Channel owners will receive the join request and can decide to approve or deny request. This rollout applies to Teams for Desktop and Mac.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out mid-June 2024 and expect to complete by mid-June 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): We will begin rolling out late June 2024 and expect to complete by late June 2024.

General Availability (GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August 2024 (previously mid-July).

How this will affect your organization:

Before the rollout, a user who selects a channel with a link receives a You don’t have access message.

After the rollout, a user who selects a channel with a link receives will be able to ask to join a channel.

After the rollout, out-of-tenant users who click on a shared channel link from another tenant will continue to see the You don’t have access message.

Admins cannot turn off this feature.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Before rollout, we will update this post with revised documentation.

MC791879 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Manage Do Not Disturb presence status when screen sharing

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 393228

Updated July 22, 2024: We have made the decision not to roll out to GCC customers at this time and will communicate via Message center when we are ready to proceed.

We are introducing a user setting to prevent automatic transition to Do Not Disturb (DND) while presenting in a Microsoft Teams call on web.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early June 2024 and expect to complete by mid-June 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out mid-June 2024 and expect to complete by early July 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Traditionally, when a user is engaged in screen sharing, Microsoft Teams automatically switches their presence to DND during a call or meeting. While in DND mode, users do not receive notifications of calls, meetings, or chats, except from priority contacts. This automatic presence transition is aimed to help users concentrate on their tasks without interruptions. Based on customer feedback, we are now introducing this new feature for increased flexibility while working to receive notifications and messages while in presenting mode.

The setting will be available by default. Users must toggle the DND setting off to enable this feature.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically with no admin action required. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC790796 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: New onboarding to teams and channels

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 381734

Updated July 22, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon in Microsoft Teams: A new way to join teams and channels. This message applies to new Teams for the web and Teams for desktop. It does not apply to Teams for iOS or Android.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early June 2024 and expect to complete by mid-June 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out mid-September (previously mid-July) 2024 and expect to complete by late September (previously late July) 2024.

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out late September (previously late July) 2024 and expect to complete by early October (previously late July) 2024.

General Availability (GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out early October (previously early August) 2024 and expect to complete by late October (previously early August) 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout, a team owner could mark a standard channel as Show for members while creating the channel or later from the team management page. These channels appeared automatically in the teams and channels list on the left side of the screen for all team members.

After this rollout:

A team owner will be able to recommend channels for team members to join. This functionality replaces Show for members.
When joining a new team, team members will see only the General channel. On the team onboarding page, additional channels may be tagged as Recommended by the team owner. Members can review channel details and opt into channels of interest. This rollout is designed to help team members join the most relevant channels, for a more streamlined experience in Teams.

The view from the Activity stream: A team owner adds a user to team (called Cross team collaboration) and recommends specific channels (Feature crew, General) for the user to show in the teams and channels list.

The view from the teams and channels list: General is the only channel shown when a team owner adds a user to team (called Cross team collaboration) and recommends additional channels (Feature crew, General) for the user to show in the teams and channels list.

Note: Users with EDU and FLW licenses will continue to see “owner recommended” channels in their teams and channels list automatically.  

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

We will update this comm before rollout with revised documentation.

MC785024 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Introducing slash commands in the compose box

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 120469

Updated July 22, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams: New slash commands in the compose message box. These shortcuts help in composing messages, navigating in Teams, and tackling frequent tasks. This rollout applies to Teams on Desktop, Teams for the Web, and Teams for Mac.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out mid-May 2024 and expect to complete by late May 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCCH, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-June 2024 and expect to complete by late July 2024 (previously early July).

How this will affect your organization:

Slash commands in Teams expedite your work without memorization. To access the menu of slash commands, enter a forward slash in the compose box.

Here are just a few examples of what you can do:

/code: Add a code block to your message
/mute: Mute the chat you’re in
/loop: Incorporate a loop component into your message
/settings: Navigate to settings
/away: Set your presence to away

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC783217 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Disable attendee emails for town halls and webinars

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 392826

Updated July 23, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon: In Microsoft Teams, we are releasing a toggle to disable attendee email notifications for town halls and webinars.

When will this happen:

Targeted Release: We will rollout mid-September 2024 and expect to complete late September 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide): We will rollout mid-October 2024 (previously early August) and expect to complete late October 2024 (previously mid-August).

General Availability (GCC): We will rollout late October 2024 (previously early September) and expect to complete early November 2024 (previously late September).

How this will affect your organization:

This is useful for organizers who want to send email notifications from third-party platforms. When this toggle is turned on, attendee emails will be enabled and will be sent through the Teams Events email platform. When this toggle is turned off, all attendee emails from the Teams Event Email platform will be disabled. The toggle button will be enabled upon rollout.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC781595 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Tenant-wide policy for permission to download meeting transcription

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 332800

Updated August 2, 2024: We have updated the content below for accuracy. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon for Microsoft Teams: A new policy for IT admis to restrict permissions to download new meeting transcript files (stored in Microsoft OneDrive) for all users in the tenant. Admins can exempt people from the policy who are members of specified security groups such as governance or compliance specialists who require download access to meeting transcripts. This rollout applies to Teams for Mac and Teams for desktop.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early June 2024 (previously mid-May) and expect to complete by mid-June 2024 (previously late May).

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): We will begin rolling out mid-June 2024 (previously late May) and expect to complete by late June 2024 (previously early June).

General Availability (GCC High): We will begin rolling out late August 2024 (previously mid-July) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024 (previously late July)

General Availability (DoD): We will begin rolling out late September 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by mid-October 2024 (previously late August).

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Learn more: Block the download of Teams meeting recording files from SharePoint or OneDrive – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn (We will update this comm before rollout with revised documentation.)

MC764456 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Explicit transcription consent to transcribe meetings

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 389368

Updated August 2, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

You can hold a Microsoft Teams meeting that requires everyone’s consent in order to be transcribed. For tenants or user groups who turned on the policy get recording and transcription consent, all meetings will require explicit consent from participants when the transcription is started. 

When this will happen:

Worldwide, GCC: We will begin rolling out early June 2024 (previously mid-May) and expect to complete by mid-June 2024 (previously late May).

GCC High: We will begin rolling out late August 2024 (previously mid-July) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024 (previously late July).

DoD: We will begin rolling out late September 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by mid-October 2024 (previously late August).

How this will affect your organization:

If your tenant turns on the policy get recording and transcription consent, meetings organized by users within the tenant will require participants’ agreement to be transcribed when transcription is started. Participants can agree or disagree to be transcribed. If participants do not consent, they cannot unmute, turn on their camera, or share content during the meeting. 

Get additional information about viewing live transcription in Microsoft Teams meetings.

What you need to do to prepare:

To prepare, admins should make sure the policy get recording and transcription consent is on. 

MC750668 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Access Workflows from the three-dot menu on shared file

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 381643

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon: Microsoft Teams will be bringing Workflows powered by Microsoft Power Automate to the three-dot menu for files shared in Teams chat or channels.

When this will happen:

Worldwide: We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 (previously early August) and expect to complete by late September 2024 (previously mid-August).

GCC: We will begin rolling out early October 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by mid-October 2024 (previously late August).

How this will affect your organization:

To make sure Microsoft Teams provides the best workflow experience for our users, we are making it easier to configure and run workflows for files. A user will be able to select the three-dot menu on files shared in Teams chat or channels, and then choose Workflows. From Workflows, the user will choose an instant workflow to run on a file. The user must set up the workflows in advance. A user can set up a new workflow for files by selecting See more workflows at the bottom of the three-dot menu. This launches the Workflows task module, where a user can choose a template to start setting up a new workflow. Examples of file workflows include Request approval for selected file, Get notified in Teams when a file is updated, Create a PDF copy of the file, and Add a task for this file.

If the Power Automate app is disabled in the Teams admin center, users will not see this option in the three-dot menu.

This feature will only be available in the New Teams client on the desktop and on the web.

What you need to do to prepare:

No action is needed from you to prepare for this rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change so they can find the new entry point for Workflows.

MC748380 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Pre-pin meeting apps for users

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 131169

Updated July 10, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Microsoft Teams is now enhancing app setup policies, allowing admins to pre-pin and pre-install meeting apps for users. Earlier, the pre-pinning and pre-installation were limited to personal apps and message extensions. This update extends the functionality to meeting apps. Admins can set up policies to install and pin meeting apps to provide users quick and easy access to their necessary meeting tools within Microsoft Teams.

When this will happen:

Worldwide: We will begin rolling out late June 2024 (previously mid-June) and expect to complete by mid-July 2024 (previously early July).

GCC, GCC High, DoD: We will begin rolling out late July 2024 (previously late June) and expect to complete by early August 2024 (previously late July).

How this will affect your organization:

This new feature enhances the customization of Microsoft Teams for users by highlighting the most important meeting apps for them. Admins can choose the meeting apps to pre- pin and pre-install, streamlining the user’s experience, especially during meetings. The pinned apps will appear in the meeting app flyout and the meetings tabs next to chat.

What you need to do to prepare:

This feature update does not affect any existing policies or permissions. No specific actions are required. You can review the existing app setup policies and consider the meeting apps that could be beneficial to pre-pin and pre-install for your users. 

You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC727452 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Organizers can configure who can record and transcribe

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 116819

Updated July 23, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

We are changing Who can record to Who can record and transcribe for organizers with a Microsoft Teams Premium license for desktop or mobile.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out mid-June 2024 (previously early June) and expect to complete by late June 2024 (previously mid-June).

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out late June 2024 (previously mid-June) and expect to complete by late July 2024 (previously early July).

How this will affect your organization:

If an admin turned on Transcription in the Teams admin center, Teams meeting organizers reviewing Meeting options will see Who can record and transcribe, with two options:

Organizers and co-organizers
Organizers, co-organizers, and presenters

With this rollout, organizers can manage the roles that can start recording and transcription for a meeting. 

What you need to do to prepare:

No action is needed to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Learn more

Admins: The Recording & transcription section of Teams settings and policies reference – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

Users: View live transcription in Microsoft Teams meetings – Microsoft Support

MC726122 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: View, download, and delete Microsoft OneDrive transcript files

Updated August 2, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

We are beginning the process to standardize all transcript storage to OneDrive, starting with the storage of transcripts for meetings that only have transcription enabled. Previously, meetings with only transcription enabled saved the transcript file to the meeting organizer’s Exchange Online, while meetings with both recording and transcription enabled saved two transcript copies—one that is coupled with the recording saved to OneDrive and another transcript copy saved to the meeting organizer’s Exchange Online. 

Now with this feature, meetings that have only transcription enabled will also save two copies (one in OneDrive and one in Exchange Online), but all meeting transcript entry points in Teams app will point to the OneDrive copy only, no entry points for meeting transcripts will source from the Exchange Online copy. At the same time, meeting transcripts will stop saving in Exchange Online altogether and all transcript storage will be standardized on OneDrive only. 

The rollout of this feature also improves both the experience of meeting organizers to manually delete the transcript, as well as the ability for IT administrators to apply retention policies to the transcripts from meetings that only had transcription enabled. 

When this will happen:

Targeted release: We will begin rolling out early June 2024 (previously mid-May) and expect to complete by mid-June 2024 (previously late May).

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): We will begin rolling out mid-June 2024 (previously late May) and expect to complete by late August 2024 (previously mid-August).

GCC High: We will begin rolling out late August 2024 and expect to complete by mid-September 2024.

DoD: We will begin rolling out late September 2024 and expect to complete by mid-October 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

There is no change to the end user experience for viewing and downloading Teams meeting transcripts. The only change for meeting organizers and co-organizers is for any meetings that are held after this feature rolls out, they can delete all copies of the meeting transcript directly from the Teams app, instead of having to manually delete all copies of the transcript from two places (Teams app and Stream). For IT administrators, they can start applying retention policies for the copy of the transcript saved in OneDrive, including scenarios where a meeting only had transcription enabled. This retention policy won’t affect the copies saved in Exchange Online, to bulk delete transcript files saved in Exchange Online—please refer to this documentation.

We will also update the default transcript permissions. After the rollout, when the new policy is not applied, only meeting organizers and co-organizers will have permission to download or delete the transcript file, and meeting participants can only view the transcript in Teams or Microsoft Stream. Regardless of whether the new policy is applied, the meeting organizer will be able to select in Stream the participants who are restricted from downloading, viewing, and editing the transcript in Stream.

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action needed to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC718553 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Change background while recording on phone

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 380852

Updated July 10, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Users can now record themselves anywhere and share it with coworkers in the Microsoft Teams chat or channel without worrying about the background. Users can now change their background to any image they want or make the background blurry while recording using their Microsoft Teams camera on iOS devices. 

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High and DoD): We will begin rolling out early May 2024 (previously late March) and expect to complete by early September 2024 (previously mid-June).

How this will affect your organization:

Users will get an option to change their background to any image they want or make the background blurry while recording using their Microsoft Teams camera on an iOS device. To use this feature:

Press and hold the camera icon next to the Compose box and then tap the blur icon to the right of the shutter button.
You can then choose either an image to replace the background or choose to mildly or heavily blur your background.

What you need to do to prepare:

No action is needed to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC718250 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Describe it to design it in Teams Workflows

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 382659

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Can’t find a workflow template that matches what you need in Microsoft Teams? You will now be able to describe in detail how you want your automation to work and receive a workflow to match your needs. All you need to do is select the Workflow builder button at the bottom of the create dialog in the Workflows app in Microsoft Teams chat and channel overflow menu. 

Workflow builder will come to the Workflows app in Microsoft Teams chat and channel overflow menu first. Other entry points to Workflows will get this feature later.

When this will happen:

Worldwide: We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 (previously early August) and expect to complete by late September 2024 (previously mid-August).

GCC Release: We will begin rolling out early October 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to be complete by mid-October 2024 (previously late August).

How this will affect your organization:

All users with the ability to create workflows with the Workflows app in Teams will be able to describe the workflow they are trying to build and then receive a suggested flow. 

Prerequisites

A work or school Teams account with access to a Power Automate environment in Europe or the United States.

Limitations

Power Automate supports workflow descriptions written in the English language only. Descriptions written in other languages might work but are not supported.

Cloud flows are the only type of flow that you can create from a written description.

In the version rolling out, the AI might omit some parameters, even if you provide them in the description.

What you need to do to prepare:

No action is needed to prepare for this rollout. If your tenant uses the Power Automate app within Microsoft Teams, you may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

To learn more: Create a cloud flow from a description (preview) – Power Automate | Microsoft Learn

MC717970 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Personalize group chats with avatars

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 119305

Updated August 1, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

In Microsoft Teams, we are introducing custom avatars for group chats. Group chat members will be able to upload their own image or select a built-in image or emoji, to add a layer of inclusivity and expression to their chat as well as helping visually identity chats with similar titles or participants.

When this will happen:

Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, and DoD: We will begin rolling out mid-March 2024 and expect to complete by early August 2024 (previously mid-July). 

How this will affect your organization:

Users will be able to select the current group chat avatar and then change that avatar by selecting from new avatars and emojis. Users can also upload their own images.

What you need to do to prepare:

No action is needed to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC714167 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Wiki Notes Retirement in GCC High

Updated August 1, 2024: We have updated the timing of this change. Thank you for your patience.

We previously announced in MC675282 (September ’23) Wiki retirement and the future of note taking in Teams Channels, that we will be retiring Wiki-based Meeting notes in meetings in GCC High as planned by mid-August 2024 (previously July). While we understand Wiki notes has been a valuable collaboration tool for many of our users, we are still working to introduce a richer alternative for Microsoft Teams. There is no planned date at this time. Users in GCC High will need to keep using an alternative product such as OneNote to continue taking notes until then. 

When this will happen:

Beginning late July 2024 and complete by mid-August 2024 (previously early July)

How this affects your organization:

Once Wiki notes have been retired, users will need to utilize an alternative product such as OneNote to continue taking notes.

What you need to do to prepare:

When Wiki retires in private meetings, users can select Download from the banner at the top of their meeting chat to download the notes as a file. Learn more: Access wiki meeting notes in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support.
Before and after Wiki retires in channel meetings, users can still download their existing Wiki notes in Word doc format from the SharePoint site of the channel > Teams Wiki Data folder.
Those who didn’t create Wiki notes, who joined the meeting after the Wiki notes were created, or who are using the new Teams client can retrieve and download the notes of the meeting.

No action is needed to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC705760 — (Updated) Teams: Latest meeting experiences with performance improvements on web for Safari and Firefox (for guests)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 329253

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

The latest Teams meeting experiences will be available for Teams on the web in Safari and Firefox browsers – including performance improvements, refreshed pre-join, updated meeting stage, and the updated meeting toolbar. (for anonymous join only) 

When this will happen:

Worldwide: We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by early October 2024 (previously late August).

GCC, GCC High and DoD: We will begin rolling out mid-October 2024 (previously mid-September) and expect to complete by early November 2024 (previously mid-October).

How this will affect your organization:

We make constant steps to improve Teams performance irrespective of the platform – this time we are making the experience of Teams meetings on web (in Safari and Firefox browsers) better for anonymous users (guests). That’s crucial because it improves external collaboration. For example, if participants from your tenant would like to have meetings with non-Teams users (who are often joining as guests) it’ll become simpler as guests joining meeting from Safari/Firefox web browsers won’t have to wait significant amount of time for the meeting experience to load. 

You may also notice that currently meeting UI in Chrome and Safari/Firefox is different, but with this update it won’t be a case anymore and you’ll enjoy all the benefits of modern UI (such as meeting toolbar on top of the screen, etc). 

What you need to do to prepare:

You may want to update your internal documentation to inform your users about this improvement.

MC705351 — (Updated) Organizer can select languages for Town Halls (Premium)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 375696

Updated August 1, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Currently in a town hall, organizers are unable to select which languages attendees can translate their captions into. Microsoft pre-selects the 10 languages that an attendee may translate their captions into if either the attendee or organizer has Teams Premium. With this new update, organizers who have Teams Premium can now select the 10 translated caption languages (from a list of over 40) that an attendee can choose from in a town hall. 

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out mid-March 2024 (previously early February) and expect to complete by early April 2024 (previously late March).

General Availability: We will begin rolling out early May 2024 (previously early April) and expect to complete by mid-August 2024 (previously early July).

How this will affect your organization:

Organizers in your tenant will now be able to pick the translated captions languages for their attendees to choose from in a town hall. 

What you need to do to prepare:

You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.

MC704035 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Integrate Chat notification with Meeting RSVP status

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 161739

Updated August 1, 2024: We have updated the rollout timelines below. Thank you for your patience.

Microsoft Teams users will soon be able to control how they get notified in meeting chats through RSVP to their meetings. When they decline a meeting, they will not receive notifications or see the chats in chat list; when they accept a meeting, they will receive notification for all new messages. This release of Microsoft Teams Meeting ID will be rolling out across Microsoft Teams Desktop, Mobile and Web and will provide an additional way for users to control their chat list by selecting which meetings they want to receive message updates from.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously early Augus) and expect to complete by mid-September 2024 (previously mid-August). 
Worldwide will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by late September 2024 (previously late Augus). 
GCC will begin rolling out late September 2024 (previously August) and expect to complete by early October 2024 (previously early September). 
GCC High will begin rolling out early October 2024 (previously early September) and expect to complete by mid-October 2024 (previously mid-September). 
DoD will begin rolling out early October 2024 (previously early September) and expect to complete by mid-October 2024 (previously mid-September). 

How this will affect your organization:

You will not receive notifications or see chats from meetings you declined. You will be able to set how you want to be notified for meetings you RSVP with Accept or Tentative from Microsoft Teams settings.

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about this new capability to control meeting chat notifications by RSVP to meetings. 

MC686919 — (Updated) Simplified Compose Experience for Teams

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 123486

Updated August 1, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Teams Compose is the heart of collaboration, where all Teams messages flow each month. It’s also the gateway to a wealth of features, from Copilot to Files, Loops, Video, and Platform Apps. 

While Teams’ capabilities have grown by leaps and bounds, the compose experience has remained largely unchanged. This update addresses usability, scalability, and information density challenges. We’ve simplified the compose experience, enhancing usability for various rich authoring scenarios, establishing scalable patterns for all compose actions, and optimizing it for your everyday needs. Get ready to enjoy a more seamless and efficient collaboration experience! This is for the new Teams experience only.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early-December 2023 and expect to complete by mid-December 2023.

Worldwide: We will begin rolling out mid-April 2024 (previously early April) and expect to complete by mid-May 2024 (previously late April).

GCC, GCC High and DoD: We will begin rolling out in late May 2024 (previously early May) and expect to complete rollout by early August 2024 (previously early July).

How this will affect your organization:

All Teams users will still be able to do everything they have previously done in Teams, but now, accessing these features will be easier and clearer.

What you need to do to prepare:

No changes are required to prepare for this change.

MC683928 — (Updated) Microsoft Teams: In-meeting Error Messaging

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 167211

Updated August 2, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below for DoD organizations. Thank you for your patience.

Microsoft Teams Meeting users will be notified directly through the error message on meeting right pane for why they cannot access meeting chats when their chat access is limited by policy or due to system limitations and unexpected errors.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out mid-November and expect to complete by late November.

Worldwide: We will begin rolling out early December and expect to complete by mid-December.

GCC: We will begin rolling out early January and expect to complete by mid-January.

GCC High: We will begin rolling out mid-January and expect to complete by late January.

DoD: We will begin rolling out early February and expect to complete by early August 2024 (previously late July).

How this will affect your organization:

Once available, users will begin to understand why they cannot access certain chats during meetings.

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action needed to prepare for this change.

Purview

MC846386 — Microsoft Purview | Insider Risk Management: Bulk upload for priority user groups

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 409540

Coming soon to Microsoft Purview | Insider Risk Management: Priority user groups will support bulk upload.

When this will happen:

Public Preview: We will begin rolling out mid-August 2024 and expect to complete by late August 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCCH, DoD): We will begin rolling out early February 2025 and expect to complete by early March 2025.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: Insider Risk Management admins enter UPNs one at a time when adding to a new or existing priority user group.

After this rollout: Insider Risk Management admins will be able to upload a CSV of UPNs (User Principal Names) that they would like to add to a new or existing priority user group:

This feature is on by default and accessible to all Insider Risk Management admins with appropriate permissions.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Learn more: Prioritize user groups for insider risk management policies | Microsoft Learn (This page will be updated soon).

MC843111 — Microsoft Purview | Insider Risk Management: General availability of granular exclusion (GCC, GCC High, DoD)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 389842

Coming soon: Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management will roll out granular exclusion for general availability.

When this will happen:

General Availability (GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out late August 2024 and expect to complete by early September 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: Granular exclusion was only available in Public Preview. Before Public Preview, admins were not able to fine-tune Insider risk settings according to organizational preferences.

After this rollout: Granular exclusion allows admins with appropriate permissions to adjust and fine-tune indicators according to organizational preferences and to help tailor risk detection that may lead to a potential security incident. For example, admins can configure the indicator Sending email with attachments to recipients outside the organization to only detect emails sent to personal domains (such as outlook.com). In this way, admins can reduce the number of false positives. This feature is on by default and accessible to admins with appropriate permissions.

What you need to do to prepare:

No admin action is needed to prepare for this rollout. To use granular exclusions, admins can configure the exclusion conditions in the Purview compliance portal at Insider risk settings > Policy indicators and select Indicators to create variants of detections. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management correlates various signals to identify potential malicious or inadvertent insider risks, such as IP theft, data leakage, and security violations. Insider Risk Management enables customers to create policies based on their own internal policies, governance, and organizational requirements. Built with privacy by design, users are pseudonymized by default, and role-based access controls and audit logs are in place to help ensure user-level privacy.

You can access the Insider Risk Management solution in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.

Learn more in the Create a variant of a built-in indicator section of Configure policy indicators in insider risk management | Microsoft Learn.

MC841252 — Microsoft Purview | Audit: Blanket custom retention policies that apply to all Audit recordTypes (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 397753

Microsoft Purview is enhancing the Audit custom retention policy experience to make it easier for customers to change the default retention policy across all their Audit logs. With this change, customers can now create blanket custom retention policies that apply to all Audit recordType values. This capability will become available in addition to the existing support of manually selecting specific recordType values in a custom policy.

When this will happen:

General Availability (GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-October 2024 and expect to complete by end-October 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

This rollout allows security admins in your organization to apply a default retention policy to all Audit recordTypes. Before this rollout, an admin had to manually select every recordType in the dropdown menu of a custom retention policy. Also, before this rollout, custom policies were not automatically applied to new recordTypes added to the Audit log at a future time.

With this change, an admin can simply select All under the recordType field to apply the custom retention policy to all existing and future recordTypes.

This change is on by default and accessible to all Microsoft Purview customers with the appropriate permissions.

What you need to do to prepare:

Learn more: Manage audit log retention policies | Microsoft Learn

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation.

MC841233 — Microsoft Purview compliance portal: The new Microsoft Purview Portal will be GA (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 397889

Coming soon for the new Microsoft Purview portal: A streamlined design and unified experience that helps you discover and access data security, risk and compliance solutions for all your data. You will be able to access all Purview solutions in one portal, as well as experiences such as settings, global search, recommendations, and roles and permissions management.

When this will happen:

General Availability (GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out late August 2024 and expect to complete by early October 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: You access Purview solutions on the classic Compliance portal.

After this rollout: You will be able to access all Purview solutions with new experiences such as centralized settings experience, global search, a new home page with tailored recommendations, and more. You will have access to all existing features and new features in the new Purview portal. We will update this message before rollout to add screenshots.

You can continue to use the Purview compliance portal if desired. In the future, we will shift all admins from the Purview Compliance portal to the new Purview portal in the future. More information will follow.

What you need to do to prepare:

There is nothing in particular you have to prepare at this time. This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. Please familiarize yourself with the new Microsoft Purview portal since this will be the future home for all Microsoft Purview solutions. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Learn about the Microsoft Purview portal (preview) | Microsoft Learn

MC833890 — Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint: Protect sensitive files with dynamic watermarking

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 400717

Dynamic watermarking is a new sensitivity label setting that will add watermark text containing the consuming user’s information onto content in files created in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Sensitivity labels from Microsoft Purview Information Protection help you classify and protect your organization’s data. Learn more: (Preview) Dynamic watermarking for sensitivity labels in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint – Microsoft Community Hub

This message applies to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on the web, Desktop/Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS platforms.

When this will happen:

Public Preview: We will begin rolling out mid-July 2024 and expect to complete by early August 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out to Current Channel mid-November 2024 and expect to complete by end of November 2024.

The rest of the channels will follow in line with their normal cadence.

How this will affect your organization:

Before the rollout: Admins are not able to configure dynamic watermarking though sensitivity labels in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

After the rollout, refer to the admin documentation to configure dynamic watermarks in your tenant. This feature is off by default. Admins must configure the feature before it is accessible to users.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Learn more

Apply encryption using sensitivity labels | Microsoft Learn
(Preview) Dynamic watermarking for sensitivity labels in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint – Microsoft Community Hub

MC809599 — Microsoft Purview: Information Barriers v2 support for all new onboarding customers (GCC, GCCH, DoD)

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 402516

Microsoft Purview Information Barriers v2 (IB v2) will soon be available for all new onboarding customers. IB v2 has enhanced architecture with these new features:

Large-scale segment support: The segment limit in organizations has increased to 5,000.
Multi-segment support: Users can be assigned to up to 10 segments.
Flexible user discoverability: Organizations can now choose to allow IB-protected users to discover each other while adhering to IB communication and collaboration policies.

When this will happen:

General Availability (GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out late July 2024 and expect to complete by early August 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

What is Information Barriers?

Microsoft Purview Information Barriers (IB) is a comprehensive compliance platform that allows regulated customers in finance (FSI), legal, consulting verticals to meet compliance requirements to protect communication and collaboration across internal regulated users. IB was first released for Microsoft Teams in 2019. Since the initial release, IB has expanded from Microsoft Teams to also support Microsoft OneDrive for Business and Microsoft SharePoint Online.

New capabilities with IB v2

Large-scale segment support: A big improvement with IB v2 is large scale segment support per tenant. For IB v1, the maximum number of defined segments in a tenant was 250. With IB v2, this limit is increased to 5,000 segments per tenant. No extra IB configuration changes are needed to use IB v2 at this new scale.
Multi-segment support: The new multi-segment organization mode enables admins to assign users in your organization to up to 10 segments in IB, instead of being limited to just one segment. This allows support for more diverse communication rules between users and groups and supports more complex organizational and operational scenarios. Learn more: Use multi-segment support in information barriers | Microsoft Learn.
Flexible user discoverability: IB v2 now allows administrators to enable or disable user discoverability restrictions in IB. After user discoverability restricted by IB is turned off, users can discover each other in the people picker, independent of their IB policies.

By default, the people picker restriction is enabled for all IB policies. For example, IB policies that block two users from communicating with each other also restrict these users from seeing each other when using the people picker. Administrators can now choose to disable the user discoverability restriction using the Security & Compliance PowerShell cmdlet Set-PolicyConfig. For more information, review the Enable or disable user discoverability section of Manage information barriers policies | Microsoft Learn.

IB v2 is on by default. Admins can update the state with the PowerShell parameter -InformationBarrierMode.

Enable multiple segment support for your organization:

Disable user discoverability restriction by IB:

What you need to do to prepare:

Organizations using IB v1 will be eligible to upgrade to IB v2 in the future. Currently, this is only for new customers.

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC805721 — (Updated) Purview | Insider Risk Management: Adaptive Protection is generally available in GCC, GCCH, and DoD

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 335856

Updated July 23, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon: Adaptive Protection integrates the breadth of intelligence in Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management with the depth of protection in Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention, to continuously and automatically fine-tune policies and protect data where and when it matters the most. The capability is built into the Microsoft platform with no endpoint agents required so organizations can get started using this as soon as it rolls out.

When this will happen:

General Availability (GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out late July (previously early July) 2024 and expect to complete by late August 2024 (previously early August).

How this will affect your organization:

Before the rollout: Admin are not able to configure custom definitions for insider risk levels in Insider risk managements or use insider risk levels as conditions in Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies to apply dynamic controls to risky users.

After the rollout: Adaptive Protection is a capability of Microsoft Purview that enables organizations to dynamically optimize the balance between data protection and productivity. By leveraging the machine learning-driven analysis in Insider Risk Management, Adaptive Protection detects potentially risky user actions that may result in a data security incident and automatically adds the user to a stricter Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy. The protection policies are adaptive based on user context, ensuring low-risk users can maintain productivity and high-risk users have appropriate protection in place.

What you need to do to prepare:

To begin using this capability, configure risk levels for Adaptive Protection in Insider Risk Management and add a new condition for risk levels for Adaptive Protection in new or existing DLP policies for Exchange, Teams, or Devices.

You can also set up Adaptive Protection using the one-click activation option from the home page of Microsoft Purview compliance portal. With one click, Adaptive Protection will create an Insider Risk Management policy based on aggregated risk insights of anonymized user activities in your organization, set your risk levels for Adaptive Protection, and create a DLP policy in test mode.

The default state of this feature is off.

Get started with Adaptive Protection in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal > Insider risk management > Adaptive Protection

References

Learn about adaptive protection 
Learn about insider risk management 
Learn about data loss prevention 

Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management correlates various signals to identify potential malicious or inadvertent insider risks, such as IP theft, data leakage, and security violations. Insider Risk Management enables customers to create policies to manage security and compliance. Built with privacy by design, users are pseudonymized by default, and role-based access controls and audit logs are in place to help ensure user-level privacy.

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC804767 — (Updated) Purview compliance portal | eDiscovery: Compliance boundary cmdlet tool to manage compliance boundary property

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 397091 and 398451

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to Microsoft Purview compliance portal: A new compliance boundary cmdlet Invoke-ComplianceSecurityFilterAction will be available as part of the Security & Compliance PowerShell. This cmdlet allows user to check if a given mailbox or site has the compliance boundary property value set. If the property is not set or if the object is in arbitration, compliance admins can use this cmdlet to assign the property value for the mailbox or site for compliance boundary to take effect.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out early August 2024 (previously mid-July) and expect to complete by late August 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: Admins had no single solution to check or set mailbox properties and arbitration status, requiring complex steps with Exchange PowerShell for different mailbox types.

After this rollout: This cmdlet will enhance your organization’s ability to manage compliance boundaries. It will be especially beneficial in situations where a Microsoft OneDrive site needs to be brought back into compliance following a user’s departure, or when an inactive mailbox is not correctly assigned. This cmdlet allows for the straightforward setting of the compliance boundary property, based on user input, to address these issues.

This new feature is off by default.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date. To prepare for this update, we recommend reviewing the Compliance boundary cmdlet documentation at New-ComplianceSecurityFilter (ExchangePowerShell) | Microsoft Learn. Additionally, ensure that your compliance admins are informed about the upcoming changes and are ready to incorporate the cmdlet into your organization’s process such as departed employees to ensure compliance boundary stay in effect.

MC799274 — (Updated) Microsoft Purview portal: Enhanced global Search

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 396570 and Roadmap ID 396571

Updated July 23, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to the new Microsoft Purview portal: An enhanced global Search feature will enable you to search for users in your organization and access their profiles. You will find basic information such as names and email addresses. Additionally, if you have role management privileges, you will be able to view assigned role groups and admin units for the searched users. The global Search also allows you to search for navigational results, data, and learning resources.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out mid-July 2024 and expect to complete by early August 2024.

General Availability (GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously early August) and expect to complete by early October 2024 (previously early September).

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout, the Search feature displays navigation, data, and resources results in the new Purview portal.

After this rollout, the Search feature in the new Purview portal includes all existing functionality and also displays user profile results:

Search is on by default and accessible to all Purview portal users.

What you need to do to prepare:

Learn more in the Global Search section of Learn about the Microsoft Purview portal (preview) | Microsoft Learn

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC791110 — (Updated) Microsoft Purview | Data Lifecycle Management: New integration with Adaptive protection

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 392839

Updated July 22, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon for Microsoft Purview: We are announcing the public preview of the integration of Adaptive protection with Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) to help you find the right balance to protect against data sabotage while enabling productivity. This new integration leverages DLM features to provide an additional control for Adaptive protection that automatically preserves items deleted by a user with an elevated risk level, so items can be restored if needed.

When this will happen:

Public preview: We will begin rolling out in late June 2024 (previously early May) and expect to complete by late July 2024 (previously mid-July).

General Availability: We will begin rolling out in mid-December 2024 (previously mid-May) and expect to complete by late December 2024 (previously late June).

How this will affect your organization:

After the rollout, and after you enable Adaptive protection for your tenant, the retention label and auto-apply policy for data lifecycle management will be automatically created for you. This policy will automatically include elevated risk users identified by Microsoft Purview | Insider Risk Management solution. If these users delete content from Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft OneDrive, or Microsoft Exchange, a retention label is automatically applied to that content to retain it for 120 days. Retention labels are automatically applied to unlabeled content deleted by these users. When these users are no longer at the elevated risk level, they are automatically removed from the DLM policy, and the system will no longer keep a copy of content they delete. Any content copies previously retained when the user had an elevated risk level will be kept for the 120 days as specified by the retention label.

Unlike other retention labeling scenarios, users do not see the retention label, and you do not need to create or manage the retention label or policy. At this time, you can’t change the retention period or assign different policies based on the different risk levels, or for different locations. The single retention label and auto-labeling policy for your tenant is not visible in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.

What you need to do to prepare:

Learn more: Learn about retention policies & labels to retain or delete | Microsoft Learn

If you’re using Adaptive protection and want to automatically retain content deleted by elevated risk users, follow these steps to turn on this new integration.

Sign in to the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.
Navigate to Data lifecycle management > Microsoft 365 > Adaptive protection settings in the top right corner.
Turn the setting ON and select Save.

If you’re not using Adaptive protection already, turn on Adaptive protection and the new feature will be enabled along with Adaptive protection.

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC776192 — (Updated) Microsoft Purview | New eDiscovery Hold reports

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93268 and Roadmap ID 93269

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon: For Microsoft Purview, we will release a tenant-wide Hold report in eDiscovery (Premium).

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out mid-August 2024 (previously mid-July) and expect to complete by early September 2024 (previously early August).

General Availability (GCC, GCCH, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 (previously mid-June) and expect to complete by early October 2024 (previously early September).

How this will affect your organization:

The Hold report in eDiscovery (Premium) will let users with eDiscovery Administrator and eDiscovery Manager permissions access a built-in report with information on all hold policies associated with eDiscovery cases in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal. This includes eDiscovery holds associated with eDiscovery (Standard) and eDiscovery (Premium) cases. The Hold report lists all locations that are part of a tenant’s hold policies (whether enabled or disabled). The Hold report currently doesn’t show custodian association for each data source but will show the location.

Your organization must have an organization subscription that supports Purview eDiscovery (Premium) to generate and access the Hold report. eDiscovery Managers can only view Hold reports related to the cases they are a member of.

The Hold report will be available under the Reports tab in eDiscovery (Premium)

Use the Group option to group eDiscovery holds from eDiscovery (Standard) cases using group by Case Type. Use Customize options to select case type options and display Standard or Premium (case type column not shown here)

What you need to do to prepare:

Assess if the rollout will change your organization’s eDiscovery workflow. If so, update internal documentation and provide training to all eDiscovery users in your organization.

Learn more

Manage holds in eDiscovery (Premium) | Microsoft Learn
Hold report in eDiscovery (Premium) (preview) | Microsoft Learn

MC678065 — (Updated) Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Information Protection – New cmdlet for Content Explorer

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 117531

Updated July 26, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

The Content explorer Export feature has a limitation of exporting data only after drill down to specific location. This feature is now available in Public Preview and allows admins to use a new cmdlet within the Security & Compliance PowerShell, Export-ContentExplorerData, to export all rows of data for the content that are scanned and shown on the Content Explorer. 

When this will happen:

This feature will begin rolling out early October 2024 (previously mid-October) and expect to complete by late November 2024 (previously mid-October). 

How this will affect your organization:

This feature can be accessed through the Security & Compliance PowerShell, Export-ContentExplorerData. 

What you need to do to prepare:

There are no additional settings needed for this feature.

Get started with content explorer | Microsoft Learn 

Defender for Office 365

MC846385 — Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Tenant Allow/Block List is generally available

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 389854

This message applies to customers with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection OR Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 or Plan 2 service plans.

You can now block emails from email addresses, domains, subdomains, spoofed senders, URL and files using block entries in the Tenant Allow/Block List for Microsoft Defender for Office 365. You can create entries in the Microsoft Defender XDR portal or in Microsoft PowerShell. The entry is not case sensitive, and can be in uppercase, lowercase, or mixed.

When this will happen:

General Availability (GCC, GCC High, DoD): Available now in your tenant since late July 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: To block emails, you use the Exchange transport rule and antispam allow/block, which do not have the limits you need and do not enable you to manage the entries in a data-driven manner.

After this rollout: You can create entries to block emails you do not want your users to interact with and you can manage the blocks in a data-driven manner.

The Tenant Allow/Block List is on by default and accessible to all admins with appropriate permissions.

In a few weeks, we will roll out support for allowing emails (Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 406165). Watch for a future message.

What you need to do to prepare:

We recommend you try out Tenant Allow/Block List and let us know what you think.

To learn about limits and the permissions, review the What do you need to know before you begin? section of Allow or block URLs using the Tenant Allow/Block List – Microsoft Defender for Office 365 | Microsoft Learn.
To learn more about blocking email addresses, domains, subdomains, spoofed senders, review the Related articles section of Allow or block URLs using the Tenant Allow/Block List – Microsoft Defender for Office 365 | Microsoft Learn.
To learn more about blocking URLs or files: Allow or block URLs using the Tenant Allow/Block List – Microsoft Defender for Office 365 | Microsoft Learn.

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation.

MC802702 — (Updated) Microsoft Defender XDR services: False positive email release from quarantine through post breach scenarios

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 184915

Updated August 1, 2024: We have updated the content below with links to additional information. Thank you for your patience.

Microsoft Defender XDR will soon let Security Operations (SecOps) restore quarantined emails to an inbox from Threat Explorer, Email Entity, Summary Panel, Advanced Hunting, and Microsoft Graph API.

Note that this new feature is only available for Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 and Microsoft 365 E5 customers. 

When this will happen:

General Availability: We will begin rolling out mid-July (previously late June) 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August (previously late July) 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout, admins did not have a way to release or move false positive emails (emails that are not breaches) to an inbox directly from post breach scenarios. They needed to go back to the Quarantine page to complete these actions. Also, previously, admins could only bulk release 100 emails.

With this new feature, the following steps explain how to move false positive emails to inbox or release after investigating them in Threat Explorer, Email Entity, or Advanced Hunting and have selected entities to act.

Create remediation: Click on the Take action button on the top-right corner of the Email Entity page to open the Action wizard. Follow the steps to trigger the “move to inbox“ action. This action can be tracked in Action center. 

Note that Email Entity Take action allows admins to take release action for either specific users or a release to all.

Quarantine release from Threat Explorer (bulk scenarios): Go to Threat explorer and select the messages that you want to move, then click move to inbox.

Track the action status in Action center: Go to Actions & Submissions, click on Action center, and then go to the History page. You will be able to see who has taken the action, action status, and so on.

Track the status on the Quarantine page: You will be able to see the email status on the Quarantine page as well as who released it.  

Quarantine release from Advanced Hunting (bulk scenarios): Go to Advanced Hunting and select the messages that you want to move by selecting Move to mailbox folder. then proceed to click on the Inbox option.

Custom detection: SecOps can create a custom detection rule and take action. Please see Create and manage custom detections rules to read more about custom detection.

Graph API: You can take move to inbox action through Graph API.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically with no admin action required. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Additional references:

Announcing quarantine release integration in Microsoft Defender for Office 365 hunting experience!! – Microsoft Community Hub

Exchange Online

MC847877 — Microsoft Outlook for iOS and Android: Choose fonts while composing

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 409969

Coming soon for Microsoft Outlook for iOS and Android: We will add support for choosing fonts while composing emails. We will also improve support for fonts while reading emails.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High): We will begin rolling out early September 2024 and expect to complete by late September 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

When this update rolls out, users will be able to select fonts to use in emails, signatures, automatic replies, and calendar invitations:

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

MC844915 — Microsoft Outlook: Open attachments in desktop apps from the new Outlook for Windows

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 401123

In new Outlook for Windows, users will be able to open attachments of all types in their preferred desktop apps by double-clicking on them.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out late August 2024 and expect to complete by late September 2024.

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out late September 2024 and expect to complete by mid-October 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

This feature is designed to streamline the process of opening attachments in desktop apps by reducing the number of steps, making it more efficient in your daily workflow.

What’s new

Previously, double-clicking on an attachment in new Outlook for Windows would open a preview of the file within Outlook. This meant that if users wanted to open the file in a desktop app, they would first have to save the file locally.

Now, when a user double-clicks on an attachment, the file will open in the desktop app specified as the default app to open that file type in the user’s operating system, just like in Outlook Desktop and Windows Mail apps. Single-clicking on an attachment will continue to open a preview of the file within Outlook.

It’s important to note that, for security reasons, users will see a confirmation dialog every time they open an attachment of a certain file type unless they choose to dismiss it permanently. To do so, they must uncheck the “Always ask before opening this type of file” checkbox for each file type (.pdf, .docx, .xlsx, jpeg, etc.).

This feature is available by default.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically with no admin action required. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC835648 — Announcing IPv6 Enablement for Accepted Domains

Starting October 1st, 2024, we’re gradually enabling IPv6 for all customer Accepted Domains that use Exchange Online for inbound mail. Microsoft is modernizing Exchange Online so our customers can easily meet their local regulations as well as benefit from the enhanced security and performance offered by IPv6.

More information on IPv6 support for Microsoft 365 services can be found at: IPv6 support in Microsoft 365 services

When this will happen:

October 1, 2024

How this will affect your organization:

After we enable IPv6 for your Accepted Domains, when someone tries to send an email to one of your users and queries the MX record for the domain, they will receive both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (AAAA records) in response to their MX record query.

What you need to do to prepare:

To take advantage of IPv6 connectivity, please make sure that your network allow-lists allow Exchange Online IPv6 endpoints in the same way it allow-lists IPv4.

The Exchange Online IPv6 endpoints can be found here: Microsoft 365 URLs and IP address ranges.

We understand customers have unique situations and may require their own timeline for IPv6 enablement. For customers who need to remain IPv4-Only, we will update this post in September with details on how to opt-out of IPv6 for your Accepted Domains.

With this change, please note that traffic moved to IPv6 will have more stringent authentication requirements, as described here Support for anonymous inbound email over IPv6

If you expect this change to cause any issues for your organization, please reach out via your regular support channels.

MC801243 — (Updated) Microsoft Outlook: Adding search to settings in the Outlook for Android app

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 398984

Updated July 23, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

If your organization does not support Android devices, you can ignore this message.

We are adding the ability to search within Settings on the Microsoft Outlook for Android app so that users can find exactly what they’re looking for.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out early August 2024 (previously early July) and expect to complete by late August 2024 (previously late July).

How this will affect your organization:

Users will now have the ability to search within Settings, but everything else within settings will remain the same.

To use search in Settings, users will need to go into the Settings page within their Outlook for Android app. On the Settings page, they will see a search bar at the top. Once they click into the search bar, they can query for the setting that they are looking for and see relevant results.

This feature is available by default.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically with no admin action required. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC714520 — (Updated) Apps for the web: Grid view for tasks in Microsoft To Do web version and To Do inside Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 381749

Updated July 22, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

In Microsoft 365 apps for the web, users can see their tasks in a grid view and can update details inline in To Do on web and To Do app inside Microsoft Outlook.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, and DoD): We will begin rolling out late April 2024 (previously early April) and expect to complete by late July 2024 (previously early July).

How this will affect your organization:

When users open To Do on web within Microsoft Outlook, they will see their tasks in a tabular format or grid. They can continue to have the list view if preferred.

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action needed to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC711018 — (Updated) Microsoft Exchange Online: Support for inbound SMTP DANE with DNSSEC

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 63213

Updated July 17, 2024: We have updated the rollout timing below.  Thank you for your patience.

We are adding support for DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (or DANE) for SMTP and Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) for inbound mail to Exchange Online. DANE for SMTP is a security protocol that uses DNS to verify the authenticity of the certificates used for securing email communication with TLS and protecting against TLS downgrade attacks. DNSSEC is a set of extensions to DNS that provides cryptographic verification of DNS records, preventing DNS-spoofing and adversary-in-the-middle attacks to DNS.

When this will happen:

Public Preview: We will begin rolling out in July 2024.

General Availability: We begin rolling out early September 2024 (previously late August) and expect to complete by late October 2024 (previously late September).

How this will affect your organization:

Inbound SMTP DANE with DNSSEC will be off by default. If you do not want to enable the feature, you do not need to do anything.

If you want to enable the feature, please follow the documentation using Exchange PowerShell. When the feature is released, the documentation will be in the How can Exchange Online customers use SMTP DANE inbound section of How SMTP DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) secures email communications | Microsoft Learn. By the end of 2024, we will release a new experience for enabling DNSSEC and SMTP DANE without using PowerShell.

What you need to do to prepare:

Review your domain configuration internally to ensure you won’t be impacted by any of the limitations below, and visit Implementing Inbound SMTP DANE with DNSSEC for Exchange Online Mail Flow – Microsoft Community Hub for more detailed information on limitations:

Not supported: Fully delegated domain, onmicrosoft.com domains, and domains purchased from Microsoft known as “viral” or self-service sign-up domains
Supported with risk: 3rd-party gateways, connectors, and integration with hybrid mail flow (ex. if you are using a connector to smarthost to a domain that you want to enable with DNSSEC, you need to update the smarthost name for that connector [ex. contoso-com.mail.protection.outlook.com] to match the new MX record that will be provided during DNSSEC enablement or, preferably, to match the tenant’s onmicrosoft.com domain [ex. tenant-name.onmicrosoft.com] before enabling the feature.)

Microsoft 365

MC823294 — Microsoft Lists app: New drag and drop feature

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 380183

Coming soon for the Microsoft Lists app: Users will be able to reorder List items using drag and drop.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early August 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August 2024.

Standard Release: We will begin rolling out late August 2024 and expect to complete by early October 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Before this rollout: Users are not able to drag and drop list items to reorder them.

After this rollout, Users will be able to drag and drop list items.

This feature is on by default and accessible to all Microsoft List app users.

Drag and drop items to reorder your items in Microsoft Lists!

Drag and drop multiple items, too!

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Learn more: Microsoft Lists App | Microsoft 365

Before rollout, we will update this post with revised documentation.

MC822726 — Microsoft Excel: Extending support for Insights Services to GCC

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 396171

GCC customers will be able to use features in Microsoft Excel run by Insights Services, including Analyze Data, found on the Home tab.

When this will happen:

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out late July 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Customers on GCC will now have the Analyze Data button in the Home tab on web, Microsoft Windows, and Mac. They can use this feature to get insights about their data and will also be able to receive Recommended Charts and Recommended Pivot Tables on web.

For more information, visit:

Analyze Data in Excel – Microsoft Support 
Recommended Charts

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically. You can turn off Analyze Data by going to Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Turn off all connected experiences.

You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

MC805212 — Microsoft 365 apps: Improved resharing experience

Updated July 22, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Currently, when you share a link with view-only permissions in Microsoft 365 apps, clicking on Copy link defaults to an “Only people with existing access” link that does not always target your intended people.

With this new feature, when you share a link with view-only permissions with other people, those people will now be able to copy that same link directly from the Share dialog when they attempt to share. If your only option to share with others is Only people with existing access, you will be able to send a request to the owner to share this file with specific people directly in the sharing control. The owner of the file will then receive a request and will be able to approve or reject the request.

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early August (previously late June) 2024 and expect to complete by mid-August (previously early July) 2024.

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, and DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-August (previously early July) 2024 and expect to complete by late August (previously mid-July) 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

With this new feature, anyone who accesses a Microsoft 365 apps file with view-only permissions will see this new experience. 

Learn more: Sharing files, folders, and list items – Microsoft Support (content within will be updated before rollout begins).

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Microsoft 365 IP and URL Endpoint Updates

Documentation – Office 365 IP Address and URL web service

July 31, 2024 – GCC

July 31, 2024 – GCC High

July 31, 2024 – DOD

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More