Microsoft Roadmap, messagecenter en blogs updates van 29-11-2024

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Microsoft Purview: The feature to configure HR resignation date as a condition for risk level in Adaptive Protection will be rolling out to General Availability. We communicated the preview for this feature in MC681240 Adaptive Protection in Microsoft Purview: Public preview of HR resignation date as a condition for risk level (November 2023).

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 124972 and 171748

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

When the HR connector has been configured, admins with appropriate permissions can now select the HR resignation date as a condition to assign a minor, moderate, or elevated risk level. For example, an admin can configure the elevated risk level to be assigned when an HR resignation date is sent via the HR connector.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

No action is required for this update. To configure user’s risk level for Adaptive Protection, admins can visit Insider Risk Management > Adaptive Protection (preview) > risk levels for Adaptive Protection.

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.

Additional Resources:

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

• Home – Microsoft Purview 

Learn more about adaptive risk mitigation:

• Help dynamically mitigate risks with Adaptive Protection (preview) | Microsoft Learn

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

As users search in office.com, sharepoint.com, or Microsoft Bing at Work, they will get results from Microsoft Viva Engage that they have access to. The results show up as interleaved results on the search page. This is currently limited to only question posts from public Communities, Storylines, and Answers. This new feature is available by default.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 391669.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Below is an example of search results (available to all users):

[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.

Updated November 27, 2024. We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Note: If you are not using frontline worker functionality, you can ignore this message.

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams: Cross-location Shifts is a new feature in the Microsoft Shifts app for Teams that enables frontline managers to offer open shifts across multiple locations in a region so managers can share the labor pool and workers can select available shifts across different locations. This message applies to Microsoft Teams for Desktop, web, Mac and Mobile.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 394351.

[When this will happen:]

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

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before the rollout, frontline managers are not able to not able to offer open shifts across multiple locations in a region.

After the rollout

Benefits of cross-location shifts:

• Optimize the manager’s workforce by balancing the supply and demand of labor across locations in a region.
• Empower your frontline workers by giving them the flexibility to select open shifts at a location that is convenient for them.
• Improve customer satisfaction by ensuring that you have enough staff to serve them.

The cross-location shifts feature requires the following conditions:

• An operational hierarchy must be established for the organization.
• The team should have sister locations.
• Team should have at least one matching schedule group code with other teams

Admins or frontline managers can enable these prerequisites through:

• Defining the operational hierarchy in the Teams admin center, as described in Deploy your frontline operational hierarchy – Microsoft 365 for frontline workers | Microsoft Learn
• Creating schedule group codes via the Graph API, detailed in Create scheduling Group – Microsoft Graph beta | Microsoft Learn

[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.

For reference: Manage the Shifts app for your organization – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Adaptive Protection integration with Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention will soon be available for government clouds (GCC, GCC High, and DoD). This integration enables admins with the appropriate access to change, create, update, and delete policies, and to configure policies where users are automatically included in the scope of data loss prevention (DLP) policies based on insider risk levels. For example, a DLP policy integrated with insider risk levels will prevent high-risk users from printing sensitive data, while allowing low-risk users to do so.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 377674.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout: Adaptive Protection integrated with Purview DLP was not available for government clouds.

To use Adaptive Protection integrated with Purview DLP for your organization, go to Purview > Insider risk management > and turn on Adaptive Protection:

Adaptive Protection is off by default.

[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: Help dynamically mitigate risks with adaptive protection (preview) | Microsoft Learn

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the content. Thank you for your patience.

When joining a meeting in Teams Room on Windows or Android 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. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 400702

[When this will happen:]

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

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.

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

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.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 400717.

[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-January 2025 (previously mid-November) and expect to complete by late January 2025 (previously late November).

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

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

When eligible customers activate default labels and policies for Microsoft Purview Information Protection, labels will soon be scoped to files, email, and meetings.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 398458.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this change, default labels and policies are scoped to files and email.

After this rollout, activating the default labels will include meetings. 

This rollout will not affect current sensitivity labels used by your organization. This rollout will only affect organizations that choose to activate default labels.

This change is on by default and accessible to all Purview admins with the appropriate permission.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Before the rollout begins, we will document the default label scope in Learn about the default labels and policies to protect your data | 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.

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the content. Thank you for your patience.

Currently, Viva Amplify users have no easy way to reuse content that has previously been published in a campaign and often must copy and paste content from one publication to the next manually. Coming soon, a Viva Amplify user will be able to reuse content by copying an existing publication using a centralized ‘Save copy’ button available on any given campaign publication. This new feature streamlines the content creation process and maximizes efficiency for all communicators.

Important: Due to the recent our recent editor updates for Outlook and Teams distribution channels, any publications that were created using the old editor version will have their content reset to the main draft without customizations when copying a publication. This only applies to publications created on the old editor versions. For any new publications created, copying a publication will create a copy of the publications including any customized content and audiences as intended. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 409234

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this affects your organization:]

Soon, Amplify users will be able to copy existing publications in a campaign regardless of the publication’s status. This feature is available for users in the web/desktop experience. Please note that Amplify on Mobile iOS & Android applications are out of scope currently.

The “save a copy” button is present under the ‘More options’ button in the campaign overview and publications tab where all the publications are present. Users can also access it when authoring right under the ‘Save and close’ button on the command bar. Please note that when a publication is copied, it will copy all content of the publication, including all channel customization across SharePoint, Teams and Outlook, as well as the audiences of the original publication if desired. 

Additionally, for preview customers, the copy a publication feature does not support the ability to copy Viva Engage customized content. This will come as part of a separate release in the future.  

[What you can do to prepare:]

There is no action for admins beyond reviewing any internal help or guidance you have may have created for end users.  

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Starting in early September 2024, customers will see a new setting in the Microsoft Viva Engage admin center to mute users across their networks. Muting a user removes new posts from that user from the Home feed, Storylines feed, and all email digests.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 396168.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Network, Engage, and Global admins will be able to add or remove a user from mute for network status. The feature can be found in the Engage admin center under the Governance and Compliance tab. All admin activity related to muting users for the network is captured in the user audit log for Engage.

While muted, new ThreadStarters from a user cannot show in discovery surfaces, including the Home feed, Storylines feed, and email digests. Comments and replies from a muted user can show in discovery surfaces.

Muting a user does not affect visibility of ThreadStarters, comments, or replies in community feeds. Users and their content remain visible through search.

Muted users will not see any indication they’ve been muted. Admins can only see who is muted within the admin center. Users do not receive a notification when added or removed from mute status. Customers own all internal communication around the use of the feature.

Admins can mute any user in their network, including guest users. Muting applies per user per network. Up to 1,000 users can be muted simultaneously per network.

This new 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.

Please review the available documentation on Microsoft Support and Microsoft Learn, which will be available publicly after general availability rollout begins in September 2024: Reduce visibility of a user’s posts in Viva Engage (Private Preview) | Microsoft Learn

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams: A streamlined installation process to simplify how users add an app to Teams. This update aims to reduce friction and improve user engagement with apps by offering a more intuitive process from discovery to use. We’ve reduced the number of steps it takes for a user to install an app and start using it in chats, channels, and meetings. This message applies to Teams on Windows desktop, Mac desktop, and on the web.

[When this will happen:]

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

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

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout: The process to install apps in Teams is more complicated, less intuitive, and has more steps.

After this rollout, installing apps in Teams will be more efficient and user-friendly. The new installation process provides users with a more streamlined approach to using apps in chats, channels, and meetings as well as for personal use. Note: This update does not require you to change current app management practices. Users may notice the streamlined process.

This new process is on by default.

Adding a new app from Apps tab on the left side of Teams, with a single Add or Open button:

For apps that work in chats, channels, and meetings, the user can search for a chat, channel, or meeting where they can use the app or select a chat, channel, or meeting from recommendations based on the user’s recent interactions on Teams:

Note: For all users: If an app already exists as a configured tab in an existing chat, channel, or meeting, selecting the same scope (chat, channel, or meeting) will trigger a new configured tab in that scope. Users can open an existing configured tab in the chat, channel, or meeting by navigating to it in Teams.

Users with Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 licenses can start using the Copilot extension in the Copilot app on Teams.

Users with Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 licenses who want to install an app with Copilot extensions will be presented the option to Open in Copilot:

Selecting Open in Copilot will take Copilot users to the Copilot app that displays a list of Copilot extensions they can choose to use in their chats, channels, and meetings:

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Admins should ensure that their teams are aware of the new installation process, especially if your organization heavily uses apps on Teams. No specific actions are required from admins, but communicating this change to users may help them take full advantage of the new process.

Documentation for users: Add an app to Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support (will be updated before rollout begins)

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the content. Thank you for your feedback.

We’re introducing a new policy that gives IT admins enhanced flexibility with distinct settings for voice and face enrollment. This adjustment provides greater control over managing these features, allowing organizations to tailor to their needs. Voice and face biometric enrollment will be enabled by default, enabling voice isolation and speaker recognition in meeting rooms and enhancing intelligent meeting recaps and Microsoft Copilot for meetings.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 413708.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC):

• We will begin rolling out the new policy in early October 2024 and expect complete by mid-October 2024.
• The policy will be enabled beginning in early February 2025 (previously early January) and expect to be complete by mid-February 2025 (previously mid-January).

[How this will affect your organization:]

These changes will provide your organization with increased flexibility in managing voice and face enrollments. By using separate settings, you can customize for your organization’s specific needs. The enrollment policy will be enabled by default. Once enabled, these enrollments will activate features like Voice Isolation and enhanced speaker recognition, leading to more efficient and productive meetings.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

To ensure you have enough time to prepare for this change, you have until mid-January 2025 to configure everything to best suit your needs. If your organization requires keeping face and voice enrollments off, be sure to review the new policy and adjust the settings during this time. This period provides an opportunity to optimize how you manage voice and face data, enhancing your team’s control over the process.

The new csTeamsAIPolicy will replace the current csTeamsMeetingPolicy, introducing two separate settings for face and voice enrollment: EnrollFace and EnrollVoice. Each can be set to Enabled or Disabled.

To help you get ready, review:

• Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy
• Get-CsTeamsAIPolicy 

For more information about voice and face enrollment, visit Overview of voice and face enrollment – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon for Microsoft Purview compliance portal | Communication Compliance: A notification banner designed to enhance transparency will alert users when keywords embedded in hidden content (such as hyperlinks or encoded strings) trigger a compliance policy match. With this rollout, investigators will be able to quickly recognize that some or all keyword matches are not immediately visible in the main content body, saving time and ensuring a more efficient triage experience.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 417483.

[When this will happen:]

Public Preview: We will begin rolling out early December 2024 (previously mid-November) and expect to complete by late December 2024 (previously late November).

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out early February 2025 (previously early January) and expect to complete by mid-February 2025 (previously early mid-January).

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout, users and investigators are not notified if policy matches occur for hidden text.

After this rollout, users will be notified if any policy matches in a message are concealed and not readily discernible in the main content.

This feature is available by default.

[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.

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

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams: A new feature to enhance the security in external collaboration. If your company allows external domains to contact your users in Teams, we will identify if an external user is impersonating a brand commonly targeted by phishing attacks during their initial contact with your user through Teams Chat. If we detect potential impersonation, we will show a high-risk alert to the user, notifying them to check for suspicious name/email and proceed with caution.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 421190.

[When this will happen:]

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

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout: For organizations that have enabled Teams external access, user can receive messages from any user from external domain. Teams does not scan the sender for impersonation risks. When a user receives a chat invitation, the user can accept, or block, or preview the message. Note: Previewing the message does not put the organization at risk. 

After this rollout: If your organization enables Teams external access, we will check for potential impersonation activity when your user receives a message from an external sender for the first time. Your users will see a high-risk warning in the Accept/Block flow if we think there is potential impersonation risk, and users must preview the message before they can choose to Accept or block. If users choose to accept, we will prompt them again with potential risk before proceeding with Accept.

This security check will be done automatically. No admin configuration is required. Admins can check the audit log for impersonation attempts detected.

Teams detects an impersonation attempt in chat. In this case, the sender claims to be associated with Microsoft, but is not coming from a legitimate Microsoft domain:

When a user selects Preview their messages in the first screen, and then selects Accept, the user is alerted again to the potential for risk in this screen:

This feature will be on by default.

[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 update any relevant documentation. We recommend that you educate your users on what the new high-risk Accept/Block screen means and remind users to proceed with caution.

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

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the content. Thank you for your patience.

A new csTeamsAIPolicy policy for Microsoft Teams (available now via Microsoft PowerShell and taking effect in mid-January 2025) will give IT admins more control over voice and face enrollment settings, allowing organizations to manage these features based on their needs. After rollout, voice and face profile enrollment will be enabled by default, and users can benefit from voice isolation, speaker recognition, and attribution in meeting rooms, resulting in smarter meeting recaps and enhanced functionality for Microsoft 365 Copilot in meetings. To access Copilot features, a Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required. This message applies to Teams for Windows desktop and Mac desktop.

NOTE: Microsoft doesn’t use the voice and face profiles of users to train any models or for any other purposes other than providing the voice and face enrollment feature in Microsoft Teams.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 413708.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): The new Microsoft PowerShell cmdlets are available now for preparation and to ensure a smooth transition. The policy takes effect starting in early February 2025 (previously mid-January) and is expected to be fully in effect by mid-February 2025 (previously mid-January).

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout, the current policy csTeamsMeetingPolicy has a single setting, EnrollUserOverride, that allows the administrator to enable or disable the enrollment of both face and voice profile of users.

After this rollout, the new csTeamsAIPolicy will replace the existing enrollment setting in csTeamsMeetingPolicy. The new csTeamsAIPolicy has two settings, EnrollFace and EnrollVoice, that will be set to Enabled by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date. Review your current configuration to determine the impact for your organization. You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation.

If your organization prefers to disable voice and face enrollments, review and update your settings before mid-January 2025. To help you get started, review:

• Set-CsTeamsAIPolicy (MicrosoftTeamsPowerShell) | Microsoft Learn
• Get-CsTeamsAIPolicy (MicrosoftTeamsPowerShell) | Microsoft Learn

Learn more: Overview of voice and face enrollment – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

We are introducing updates that provide capabilities for managing custom fonts for Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Viva Connections. This includes the ability to hide the From Microsoft font packages from Change the look, the ability to apply a font package in your site templates, and updated availability for the From Microsoft font packages.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 420933.

[When this will happen:]

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

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out early November 2024 and expect to complete late January 2025 (previously early December).

[How this will affect your organization:]

This rollout will include new Microsoft PowerShell commands that will allow you to get information about the From Microsoft font packages and the ability to hide these font packages if desired. More details for these commands will be available in our PowerShell documentation. We will also provide an update to add an additional site script action that will allow developers and administrators to include and apply font packages as a part of a site template.

Sample action details:

{

"verb": "applyFontPackage",

"fontPackageTitle": "Amasis MT",

"fontPackageId": "1e7a7803-045d-44df-9c7a-d2f2f8562e51",

"fontPackageStore": "OutOfBox"

}

This rollout will also include a change to allow tenants that meet the requirements for custom fonts to discover the feature without needing to activate the SharePoint brand center. For tenants that are currently using the Organization Assets Library functionality with Public content delivery network (CDN), these organizations will see Fonts and the From Microsoft font packages in Change the look without any additional actions.

[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.

Get started with the SharePoint Online Management Shell | Microsoft Learn (will be updated)

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams: With the Best practice configurations monitoring dashboard in the Teams admin center, Teams admins will be able to monitor the conformance of your tenant to the Microsoft recommended best practices for an optimal collaboration experience on Teams.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 421185.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): We will begin rolling out mid-January 2025 (previously early December) and expect to complete by late January 2025 (previously mid-January).

[How this will affect your organization:]

Ensuring the quality and reliability of user’s collaboration experience using Teams is crucial (specially the meeting-related experiences). Microsoft recommends best practices to ensure that organizations have an optimal environment setup for collaboration.

The Best Practice Configurations monitoring dashboard will assist admins in understanding their tenant’s non-conformance with these best practices, the overall impact, and how to comply with these recommendations.

You’ll find the Best practice configurations dashboard in the Meetings section of the Teams admin center. In this release, we’ll monitor and highlight non-conformance in three key areas:

• Update out-of-date client versions
• Enable the right ports and protocols
• Implement split tunnelling for VPNs

If a location does not adhere to these best practices, it will be highlighted on the dashboard. A widget on the main dashboard will also spotlight non-conforming practices. Also, a list of subnets/IP addresses will be displayed by city, showing the extent of non-conformance for each location. This list can be exported to share with relevant teams, and recommendations for addressing these issues will be available on the same page.

As these issues are resolved, the trend of non-conforming locations will be tracked to help monitor progress.

This new dashboard will be available by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Administrators do not need to do anything to prepare for these changes. They will take effect automatically.

You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation.

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

Updated November 27, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams town halls: For organizers with a Teams Premium license, we are expanding the limit from 20,000 maximum concurrent attendees to 50,000 maximum. The quality and stability of town halls up to this new limit will remain constant, providing high-quality and reliable content for participants. For events with more than 20,000 concurrent attendees, some interactivity features such as chat and reactions will be disabled for all attendees. This message applies to Teams town halls on Windows desktop, on the web, and on iOS/Android. This feature is available for town hall organizers with an active Teams Premium license.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 429538.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out early January 2025 (previously mid-December) and expect to complete by mid-January 2025 (previously late December).

[How this will affect your organization:]

To get started, organizers in your tenant should contact the Microsoft 365 Live Event Assistance Program (LEAP) to get support for audiences of up to 50,000 concurrent attendees.

This change will be available to organizers who contact the LEAP program.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

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

No other changes in town hall functionality are associated with this rollout. If organizers do not want or need to host events with a maximum capacity greater than 20,000, there will be no impact to your organization.

Learn more

• Microsoft 365 Live Event Assistance Program – Microsoft Adoption
• Plan for Teams town halls – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn (will be updated before rollout begins)

We are committed to continuously improving the Microsoft Teams experience and are excited to bring this new capability to our customers.