Microsoft Roadmap, messagecenter and blogs updates from 15-02-2025

Coming soon for Microsoft Viva: Feature Access Management for Copilot features will support the AI administrator role. As communicated in MC985479 Microsoft 365 admin center: AI administrator role authorization to manage Copilot settings (published January 22, 2025), the AI administrator role is a newly introduced role for AI and Microsoft 365 Copilot administration that enables admins to manage Microsoft Copilot efficiently without requiring extensive Global admin permissions.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Feature Access Management allows authorized admins to create access policies, enabling them to tailor the deployment of certain Viva features based on local and regulatory requirements. After this rollout, Copilot features in Viva with existing Feature Access Management controls can also be managed by AI admins. Also, all future Copilot features will have AI admin access by default. Admins can manage Copilot feature controls through the Feature Access Management in the Viva admin center, the dedicated Copilot settings page in the Microsoft 365 admin center, or with Microsoft PowerShell.

Please see below for a complete list of Viva Copilot features that AI administrators can now manage through access policies:

• Copilot in Microsoft Viva Engage
• Copilot in Microsoft Viva Goals
• Copilot Dashboard
• Copilot Dashboard Auto Enablement
• Copilot Dashboard Delegation
• Copilot Assisted Value
• Copilot in Microsoft Viva Insights

Note: Copilot in Microsoft Viva Glint is currently not managed by Feature Access Management and is in transition to be supported, as communicated in MC1004409 Microsoft Viva Glint: Use Feature Access Management in Viva for Microsoft 365 Copilot in Glint (published February 12, 2025). After this transition is complete, AI administrators will have access to manage this feature as well.

Admins with the AI administrator role will be able to manage access policies for all Copilot-related features in Viva. This includes both the current Copilot features (listed above) and any future Copilot features that become available in Feature Access Management in Viva.

Admins in other roles (such as Global admins) who already have management access to these feature controls will continue to retain their access.

This feature update will be 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 or after 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.

Learn more: Microsoft Viva – Feature access management | Microsoft Learn

In Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Lists forms are being updated to enhance your list data collection and management. These updates include subscribing to notifications, form scheduling, conditional branching, quick form creation, and additional field-type support. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 124865.

[When this will happen:]

Targeted Release: We began rolling out early January 2025 and expect to complete by mid-February 2025.

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-February 2025 and expect to complete by late March 2025.

[How this will affect your organization:]

Updates to the Microsoft Lists forms include these key improvements:

• New creation experience: Users can now create forms directly from Lists home, SharePoint, and the Lists app in Microsoft Teams. This streamlined process automatically creates the underlying list for responses, saving time and effort.

• Conditional branching: Conditional branching allows you to show or hide questions based on previous answers, ensuring respondents only see relevant questions. You can branch questions to other questions or based on choices in a Choice field.

• Add logo: Enhance your forms with a relevant logo, making them look more professional and reinforcing brand identity.

• Support for Additional Field Types Attachments, Image, Location, Lookup. Please note that for Lookup fields respondents need at least read access to the underlying source list to see and select the options.

• Get notified of new responses and Schedule form Start/End dates: Choose to be notified when someone submits a response to a form you own or have access to. Set specific start and end dates for your forms.

For more information, see Microsoft Lists forms: What’s New.

[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.

Microsoft Viva Learning Search will soon detect and correct spelling errors in user queries, using the corrected query to perform searches and return relevant results. Users can choose to override Spell check and search with their original query.

This feature is available in all languages that Viva Learning supports and is available to customers with licenses for Viva Learning or Viva Learning Premium.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 162943.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide): We began rolling out late January 2025 and expect to complete by late February 2025.

[How this will affect your organization:]

After this rollout, to make Spell check available for users, admins must first enable optional connected experiences in Microsoft 365 admin center. Then users must enable Optional connected experience in Viva Learning > Select the gear icon > Settings > Privacy:

When a user uses Viva Learning Search on the Home page, My Learning tab, Search engine results page, or in Content curation window), the search query is automatically checked for errors using Microsoft Bing spell check APIs. To find the language used for Spell check in Viva Learning, users can check select the three dots in the top right of the screen > Settings > Language).

If the spell check corrects a phrase that should not be corrected (for example: “Company specific terms”), the user can override spell check by selecting “Search instead for [the original query]:”

When spell check is skipped, Viva Learning displays “Did you mean…” to quickly search using corrected queries:

Pages and features that include spell check

• Home page Search
• My Learning Search
• Search features in:
  • Learning path
  • Feature set
  • Academy
  • Learning collections
  • Permissions
  • Learning tab

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Per the Microsoft privacy statement, Spell check in Viva Learning is be governed by the optional connected experiences policy setting that can be managed by administrators and users .

• Admin documentation (includes some user documentation): Overview of optional connected experiences in Office – Deploy Office | Microsoft Learn
• User documentation: Optional Connected Experiences | Microsoft Learn

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.

Support for multiple brand themes (an extension to Microsoft Teams Premium branding capability) provides organizations greater flexibility to express their unique visual brand identity across different types of meetings while maintaining consistency with branding standards.

Admins can now create and assign multiple brands to a customization policy in the Teams admin center. This will allow meeting organizers who are assigned a customization policy to select from different meeting brand options when scheduling their meeting. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 468868.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-March 2025 and expect to complete by mid-April 2025.

[How this will affect your organization:]

This feature allows organizers to tailor brand themes to suit the occasion, whether it’s a formal external meeting, a more casual internal team session, or a meeting with seasonal or holiday-specific branding. For example, they can choose a festive theme for a holiday campaign or a professional theme for client-facing discussions, ensuring the right visual brand identity for every event.

With this capability, meeting organizers can create a more personalized experience for attendees while aligning with the organization’s brand guidelines.

This update 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.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 378409.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

With this rollout, admins can use real-time analytics for policies that are scoped for priority content to help predict the number of users that could potentially match a given set of policy conditions. This feature enables admins to quickly adjust the selection of indicators and thresholds of activity occurrence so you can efficiently translate your insider risk strategies into pragmatic controls and avoid too few or too many alerts.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

To use this feature, admins will need to enable Analytics in Insider risk management > Settings. After Analytics is enabled and insights are populated, admins will be able to see real-time predictions in policies that are scoped to all users/groups and scored only for priority content.

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.

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: Configure policy indicators in insider risk management | Microsoft Learn

Updated February 14, 2025: Based on Admin feedback, we are updating the behavior for automated hiding of inactive channels to be opt-in (suggestions) only. With this update, Teams will offer users suggestions on channels that are inactive, and the user is prompted to review their inactive channels and hide them only if they choose. The settings are also updated to reflect this opt-in workflow. There are no changes to the on-demand hiding process.

This feature is enabled till Targeted Release, and we will roll out to General Availability later this year.

In the interim, we are disabling the current generally available version of the feature which requires users to opt-out as well as the settings, for all users. Please note that all users in the public or general ring will not see the setting or have any of their channels hidden automatically. We will re-introduce the updated feature later this year.

Note: Users with EDU licenses assigned will not receive this change. 

Microsoft Teams will detect and hide inactive channels users have not interacted with recently. Users can choose to have Teams run this automatically as well as initiate the hiding process on demand when needed. They can review the list of channels and choose none, some or all of the inactive channels to be hidden. Users can opt out of automated hiding anytime from Teams Settings. This message applies to Microsoft Teams for Desktop, web, and Mac. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 325780.

[When this will happen:]

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

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out mid-November 2024 (previously mid-August) and expect to complete by mid-January 2025 (previously mid-September)

General Availability (GCC): We will begin rolling out early February 2025 (previously late September) and expect to complete by mid-February 2025 (previously early October).

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

General Availability (DoD): We will begin rolling out mid-February 2025 (previously late October) and expect to complete by late February 2025 (previously late October).

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout: Users had to manually manage their relevant channels list by hiding inactive and irrelevant channels.

After this rollout: 

Manage preferences for automated hiding via Teams Settings 

If users prefer to manage channels manually, they can opt out of the auto-hiding process. Simply go to Teams settings, select General, and toggle off “Hide Inactive Channels.”  

Hide inactive channels on demand when needed

Users can manually view which channels are inactive and choose to hide some or all of them whenever you need. This can be done from Settings, under General, by clicking the “Hide Now” button. Note that this action can be performed once every 24 hours.

Automated hiding of inactive channels 

With this, Teams will hide channels that have been inactive for the user. Inactive channels are identified based on the following criteria: if the user has not been active in the channel in the last 120 days – meaning there is no new messaging in the channel that the user has read or reacted to – the channel is considered inactive. Once the inactive channels are identified, the user is notified with the coach mark message, “We’re hiding some inactive channels for you.” 

The user can select View changes to see the details. The user can keep the channels hidden or show them again. 

If a user has less than or equal to 25 shown channels, no channels will be hidden for that user. 

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Admins need to be aware of this feature, but no additional action is needed. The feature will roll out starting in November 2024. Users will first see their settings enabled to manage their preferences for automated hiding; additional to the ability to manually hide inactive channels. 

Users will start to see the automated hiding of inactive channels, a few weeks after the feature has rolled out.  

Updated February 14, 2025: We are proactively opting tenants out of the rollout that were detected as sending high volumes of emails exhibiting multiple From addresses without a Sender address header. These exempted senders will only be able to send emails exhibiting multiple From addresses without a Sender address header to recipients belonging to the same tenant as the sender. We will provide a subsequent update by the end of March with an updated timeline for tenants that are opted out.

Starting February 3 (previously December 1), we’re going to start gradually dropping messages that have multiple From addresses (also known as P2 From headers) without a Sender header from being processed via Exchange Online.

If we see significant traffic exhibiting multiple From addresses (P2 From headers) without a Sender header in your tenant in the month of September, we will send you a Message Center Post by October 15th alerting you and providing some sample message IDs.

We are doing this to comply with RFC 5322 (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322#section-3.6.2) which mandates the Sender header to be present and contain a single address if the From header has more than one address. Noncompliance with this could be exploited by attackers, allowing them to impersonate a sender address by misleading the client into using the From header to determine the sender instead of the Sender header.

[When this will happen:]

February 3, 2025 (previously December 1st)

We are delaying the rollout start date from December to February 3rd 2025 in order to provide more time to customers for investigating messages exhibiting multiple P2 From Addresses without a Sender Address.

Most of the traffic exhibiting multiple P2 From Addresses without a Sender Address will be inbound spam destined for your tenant sent by malicious spammers on the internet.

Some customers are sending legitimate emails with this malformed header configuration. On October 15, we sent a targeted MC post to customers showing high volumes of messages exhibiting multiple P2 From Addresses without a Sender Address as they may be impacted by this change.

For investigating if you will be impacted by this change, focus your investigation on messages sent using On Premises Inbound Connectors to Exchange Online. Authenticated mail submission is not impacted because submitting messages like this using those submissions are not allowed (Graph, Outlook clients, SMTP AUTH Client Submission).

[How this affects your organization:]

If email clients including devices and applications that you use to send messages, do so using multiple From addresses but without a Sender address header after December 1st, you will get an NDR error code 550 5.1.20 “Multiple From addresses are not allowed without Sender address’”.

[What you can do to prepare:]

When this change is in effect, if you need to send a message that has more than one email address in the From field, make sure that you have a single email address in the Sender header.

If you expect this change to cause any issues for your organization, please share that feedback.

Updated February 14, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Your Microsoft 365 subscription is being updated with a new service in your Outlook: Org Explorer. This organization chart helps your visualize your company’s internal structure and discover connections, roles, and responsibilities among you and other people across teams. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 421191.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide) for new Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Web, and Outlook for Mac: April 2025 (previously late-February 2025) and expect to complete by late-May 2025 (previously mid-April 2025).

General Availability (Worldwide) for classic Outlook: April 2025 (previously late-February 2025) and expect to take longer time to complete it than on other Outlook clients.

Note: The access to Org Explorer will depend on which Outlook service platform the user is using. Therefore, we recommend you switch to the new Outlook for Windows or Outlook for web to have early access to this new feature. 

[How this will affect your organization]

Once the new service is available for your organization, you can access the Org Explorer app via Outlook as below:

Is a Viva license still required to access Org Explorer?

After the rollout in April 2025 (previously January), Org Explorer will not require a Viva premium license. 

[What you need to do to prepare]

There is no action required now. The documentation of Introducing Org Explorer is going to be updated soon for additional information regarding Org Explorer.

Updated February 14, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

For Microsoft Teams, in the Queues app, authorized users will be able to enter into a monitoring session for private coaching. They can listen to customer calls, whisper to the agents for private messages, and barge into or takeover the call.  

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 473884.

[When this will happen:]

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early April 2025 (previously mid-March) for and expect to complete by mid-April 2025 (previously early April).

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): We will begin rolling out late April 2025 and expect to complete by early May 2025.

[How this will affect your organization:]

In the Teams Queues app, authorized users will now have access to selected capabilities for private coaching.

• Monitor
• Whisper
• Barge
• Takeover

[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.