Microsoft Roadmap, messagecenter en blogs updates van 06-06-2024

The first set of offline capabilities in the new Microsoft Outlook for Windows will be rolling out worldwide in the coming months. Mail, calendar events, and contacts will be saved on the user’s device, so those items can be viewed even when not connected to the internet. Additionally, key actions can be performed on emails, including flag, move, and delete, and new emails can be composed, saved, and sent, so users can stay productive even when not connected to the internet.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID: 178030.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before the rollout: New Outlook had no offline capabilities.

After the rollout

Features: Users will have the ability to view mail, calendar events, and contacts in the new Outlook for Windows when not connected to the internet. After a user connects to the internet, actions performed on emails while offline will synchronize back to the server and emails sent while offline will complete sending, moving from the Outbox to Sent Items.

Improved performance: By saving items on the user’s device, the performance of the new Outlook will be improved, because interacting with items saved on the device is faster than interacting with items loaded via a network connection.

Storage impact: Because items are saved on the user’s device, the new Outlook will require more local storage on the user’s device. The storage impact will depend on which folders are saved, how many items are saved, and size of the individual items.

Settings: Users can adjust the folders to save, adjust the number of days of email and calendar events to save, and turn off the feature in new Outlook for Windows > Settings > General > Offline. The feature is enabled by default with these settings:

1. Folders to save: Inbox, Sent Items, Drafts, Archive, Deleted Items, Snoozed, and Favorites (can be changed to exclude Favorites or include recent folders)
2. Days of email to save: 7 days (can be increased up to 180 days)
3. Days of calendar events to save: 30 days (in the past and future) (can be increased up to 180 days)

Features that are not supported when not connected to the internet will display error messages.

Future capabilities: Additional capabilities will be available later in 2024.

Default offline settings in the new Outlook for Windows:

[What you need to do to prepare:]

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

If you would like to disable this feature, set the new Exchange PowerShell -OwaMailboxPolicy cmdlet parameter OfflineEnabledWin to False. When disabled, no items will be saved on the user’s device, which also means users will not receive the performance improvements described in this message. Any items saved prior to disabling the feature will be deleted.

To use OfflineEnabledWin, the mailbox account must be the primary account in the new Outlook. To prevent end users from changing the primary account, set the parameter ChangeSettingsAccountEnabled to False.

Note: Another parameter, OfflineEnabledWeb, will be available when offline capabilities for Outlook on the web are rolled out (separate from this rollout, and not yet planned).

Learn more: The -OfflineEnabledWin section in Set-OwaMailboxPolicy (ExchangePowerShell) | Microsoft Learn

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

Note: If your organization does not use custom applications or your custom applications do not take a dependency on the string format of the ‘ipaddr’ claim from the access token or id token, there should not be any impact and no action is required.”

Action may be required: The format of IP addresses containing IPV4 embedded in IPV6 addresses within token claims is changing.

The Microsoft identity platform implements security tokens as JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) that contain claims. Claims are name or value pairs that relay facts about the token subject. Applications can use claims for the following various tasks: Validate the token, Identify the token subject’s tenant, display user information, identify client’s IP Address etc.

One of the claims in the token is ‘ipaddr’ which is a string and refers to the IP address the user authenticates from.

The format of certain IPV6 addresses containing IPV4 address is altered to display as all IPV6 addresses. The impacted ipv6 addresses are those of a format xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:200:5efe:xxxx:xxxx, i.e., where 7, 6, 5, and 4 octets have values ‘0x02, ‘0x00’, ‘0x5e’, ‘0xfe’ correspondingly.

Currently these IP addresses are serialized with embedded ipv4 address like this: xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:200:5efe:YYY.YYY.YYY.YYY, where ‘YYY’ is number from 0 to 255.

Once the changes go into effect, these IP Addresses will be serialized as xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:200:5efe:xxxx:xxxx where x is a hex digit (0-9, a-f)

For example:

• Current format: “2001:558:1416:0:200:5efe:169.152.178.93”
• Format after the change: “2001:558:1416:0:200:5efe:a998:b25d”

Please note that despite the string format looking different, both IP addresses remain the same. The change would impact both access tokens and id tokens; and the affected claims is ‘ipaddr’ claim.

The ‘ipaddr’ claim is included in the V1.0 token if applicable and included in the V2.0 token if the application requests them using optional claims. Please look at Access token claims reference – Header claims for more details.

[When this will happen:]

The change will go into effect on July 8th, 2024.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Action Required:

• If your organization does not use custom applications or your custom applications do not take dependency on the string format of ‘ipaddr’ claim from the access token or id token, there should not be any impact and no action is required.
• Check in your custom application code or scripts to see if you are taking dependency on the ‘ipaddr’ claim from the access token or id token using the string format instead of reading into an IPAddress object.
• Organization’s custom applications shouldn’t take dependency on String version of IP address. They should parse IP address from the string and load into IPAddress object. Please look at IPAddress.Parse Method for an example.
  • IPAddress address = IPAddress.Parse(ipAddress);

A new sync window feature will be available in Microsoft Outlook. This feature allows you to choose how many days’ worth of emails and attachments you want to download to your device. This way, you can always access your emails and attachments, even when you’re offline.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 189809

[When this will happen:]

Targeted Release: We will start rolling out in early June 2024 and expect to complete the rollout by late June 2024.

[How this will affect your organization:]

With this feature, users will have access to the following new settings:

• Days of Mail to Sync: Users can select how many days of emails they want to sync to their devices, with options ranging from 1 to 30 days.
• Include Attachments: There is a toggle option to auto-download all attachments received within the selected sync window. For example, if a user sets their sync window to 14 days and turns this toggle on, all attachments received in the past 14 days will be automatically downloaded to their devices.

Microsoft Intune controls available:

• Admins can specify a default sync window.
• Admins can allow or disallow changes to the default sync window.

This is the first version of the Sync Settings feature being released. To maintain the best performance of the Outlook app, we are initially releasing this feature with a limit of a 30-day sync window and a limit of 2,000 downloaded messages. We plan to expand this limit in the future. 

This feature is available by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

To enable and use the sync window feature, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Under the General section, select Accounts. If you have multiple accounts, choose the one that you want to configure.
3. Look for Sync Settings under Data Storage.

This will allow you to customize your sync preferences and ensure you have the emails and attachments you need, even without an internet connection.

For Microsoft Outlook on the web and new Outlook for Windows, we will be retiring Microsoft 365 Groups connectors starting August 5, 2024, and ending September 5, 2024. Microsoft 365 Groups connectors deliver notifications and updates from online apps, tools, and services (such as Asana, Trello, or RSS) to Group email. Instead, we recommend using the Microsoft Power Automate app to continue receiving notifications/updates from these apps on Group email.

[How this will affect your organization:]

After the Microsoft 365 Groups connectors retire, users will not be able to create new connections or update/manage existing configurations, and existing configurations will no longer receive new notifications.

Before this retirement, users set up these connectors by going to their Microsoft 365 Group’s Settings > Connectors.

Workaround for users

Users who wish to continue receiving notifications/updates from these apps on Group email can configure a connector with the Power Automate app.

• Users can build workflows to deliver emails to the Groups mailbox.
  • Explore this step-by-step example: Create a cloud flow in Power Automate – Power Automate | Microsoft Learn. Note: In the Specify an action section > Step 2, after selecting Send an email (V2), users must enter the group’s email address in the To field.
• Users can check the List of supported connectors | Microsoft Power Automate.
• Please note that each trigger must be set manually once by the user.
• Premium connectors such as Salesforce, Jira, and HTTP webhook require a Power Automate premium license.

Alternatively, users who are part of a Microsoft Teams channel backed by the same Microsoft 365 Group can choose to receive notifications in the channel as posts by creating a workflow (via the Workflows app that is powered by Power Automate). Learn more: Creating a workflow from a channel in Teams – Microsoft Support

[What you need to do to prepare:]

This retirement will happen automatically by the specified date. Please notify your users about this retirement, update relevant documentation as appropriate, and share.

Learn more: Connect apps to your groups in Outlook – Microsoft Support

With the Create from File capability of Microsoft PowerPoint, Copilot will now be able to create a new presentation based on a PDF file.

A Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 license is required to use this feature.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 396344

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

In addition to the existing capability of creating a new presentation based off of a Word document, users of PowerPoint will now be able to ask Copilot to create a presentation based on a PDF file.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

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

Additional Resources:

• Create a new presentation with Copilot in PowerPoint – Microsoft Support
• Frequently Asked Questions about Copilot in PowerPoint – Microsoft Support