Microsoft Roadmap, messagecenter en blogs updates van 17-01-2025

Updated January 16, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon for new Microsoft Outlook for Windows and Outlook for web: Users will be able to add shared folders to their Favorites list in the top left corner of the screen. This message does not apply to Outlook for Mac or Outlook for mobile devices.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 388913.

[When this will happen:]

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early February 2025 (previously early January) and expect to complete by early March 2025 (previously early February). 

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

This new functionality will enable users to add shared folders and individual folders from shared mailboxes to their Favorites. This means that users can easily access important folders from shared resources or individual colleagues, directly from their Favorites. Users can share calendars, or folders that contain mail, contacts, tasks, or notes.

[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.

Learn more: Open and use a shared mailbox in Outlook – Microsoft Support

Updated January 16, 2025: The deprecation for old data sync solution will start from Jan 20th, 2025. For GCC, the deprecation will start from Feb 13th, 2025.

After the old data sync solution has been deprecated, existing Excel workbooks using the old data sync solution will no longer receive new responses. Users can still migrate these existing Excel workbooks to the new data sync solution to receive new responses when needed.

•  For each form using the old syncing solution, users can migrate the form according to the instructions provided in Forms and Excel for the web. More details can be found here: Update to the new solution for syncing forms responses to Excel – Microsoft Community Hub.
• If users are using the old data sync solution in a workflow that relies on the Excel workbook being updated automatically without any user action, they will be impacted by the change as the Excel file will only get updated when it’s opened in a supported Excel client. These users will have to manually update their workflow. Our suggested solution is to use Power Automate: Setting Up an Automated Workflow Between Microsoft Forms and Excel Through Power Automate – Microsoft Support
• If a form using the old syncing solution is still receiving new responses, the form owner (a user or a group) will get an email notification about migrating their form. Some form owners might have already received these emails. Form owners will receive at most one email for each form they own.

The old data sync solution deprecation only impacts commercial users.

As communicated in MC816207 Microsoft Forms now supports live data sync to Microsoft Excel with more functionality (July 2024), Microsoft Forms is introducing a new data sync solution with higher reliability to sync Forms response data to Microsoft Excel for the web. Before this rollout. Forms supported an older version of live data sync to Excel. The older version of live data sync will be replaced by the newer solution on January 13, 2025 and for GCC on February 13, 2025. This message describes the support that we will provide for migrating from the older solution to the newer solution. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 410988.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide): Support for migrating the older data sync to the new solution will begin rolling out in late October 2024 (previously early October). We expect to complete by late November 2024 (previously early October). 

General Availability (GCC) Support for migrating the older data sync to the new solution will begin rolling out in early January 2025 (previously late November). We expect to complete by late January 2025 (previously mid-December 2024). 

[How this will affect your organization:]

Users who rely on the older version to sync data from Forms to Excel will need to manually update the data sync to the new solution before January 13, 2025 (previously October 20, 2024). After this date, existing Excel files with the older data sync will be retained but will no longer receive automatic data updates from Forms.

The older version of the data sync exists in two types of Forms:  

• Forms created from Microsoft OneDrive and Excel for the web
• Group forms created with SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft 365 Groups.

For these two types of Forms, we will provide this support to migrate to the new solution:

• Users who own Forms with the older version of the data sync will get notifications through email, Forms, and Excel for the web.
• In Forms, users will be able to recreate the data sync with the new solution. The data sync will be created to the same table in the existing workbook as the older data sync. The new worksheet will be connected to the latest data from Forms.
• After the older solution is retired, the user can still recreate a new data sync to the Excel workbook.

For workflows that connect to Excel data from Forms responses (such as Power Automate workflows), users will need to update the workflow to the Forms connector for new response updates. Learn more: Create an automated workflow for Microsoft Forms – Microsoft Support

Note: The new data sync can only be triggered in Excel for the web. If users want to receive new Forms response data in the Excel desktop app, open the file in Excel for the web, and then wait for the desktop app file to sync from the web file. (Support for other versions of Excel is in progress.)

The new data sync solution will be on by default and available to all Forms and Excel for the web customers. 

Notification in Forms to update workbook to continue syncing with Forms:

Notification in Excel for the web to update the data sync to new solution:

Excel workbook is successfully updated to new solution:

[What you need to do to prepare:]

• Send a notification to impacted users and groups to migrate their data syncs to new solution.
• Share the migration solution if users report they cannot get Forms data updated in Excel.
• Learn more: Introducing Forms data sync to Excel – 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.

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


Updated January 16, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

The ability to distinguish between internal and external recipients is crucial for maintaining secure and efficient communication. This update will improve offline accuracy and overall performance of the External Recipients MailTips feature on Microsoft Outlook for iOS and Android.

This post is associated with MC834102 External recipients MailTip offline behavior update for Microsoft Outlook for iOS and Android (published July 2024, updated to cancel November 2024).

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

After this rollout, organizations that have enabled External Recipient MailTips feature will benefit from the client retrieving and caching internal domain information from the Microsoft Exchange Server. This improves accuracy for users who are offline or have unreliable internet connections and overall feature performance.

Before this rollout, Outlook for iOS and Android calls the MailTips service for an External Recipient determination when users add recipients to an email. When the user is offline, we are unable to reach the MailTips service, so domain comparison is used.

This change is on by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

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

Learn more: MailTips in Exchange Online | Microsoft Learn (will be updated before rollout)

Updated January 16, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Viva Pulse will retire the Customize the privacy policy statement feature in the Privacy settings. Instead, Viva Pulse will reference the Microsoft admin center’s Organizational privacy policy, which is an existing capability for Microsoft apps. This retirement eliminates duplicate capabilities.

[When this will happen:]

This retirement will take place on January 31, 2025 (previously January 6).

[How this will affect your organization:]

Current experience to be retired: Viva Pulse > Privacy > Customize Privacy policy statement:

After the retirement: Configure your organization’s privacy policy in the Microsoft admin center > Org settings > Security & privacy tab > Privacy profile > Organization privacy statement:

[How this will affect your organization:]

• Your organization’s privacy policy used in Viva Pulse and displayed to survey participants will be derived from the policy you configure in the Microsoft admin center, rather than from the Viva Pulse Privacy settings.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Ensure that your organization’s privacy policy is configured in the Microsoft admin center. If it is not configured, the default privacy policy that will be used in Viva Pulse and displayed to survey participants will be the Microsoft Privacy Statement – Microsoft privacy.

Learn more

• Set up the in-app Viva Pulse experience | Microsoft Learn

Updated January 16, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon for Microsoft Outlook for iOS and Android users: In response to customer requests, we are rolling out the ability to attach emails directly in the compose window. This enhancement allows users to include individual emails as attachments in new messages, facilitating seamless sharing and providing more context for recipients.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 464206.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout, users can forward emails as attachments but cannot attach emails while composing.

After this rollout, users will notice a new Attach email option when they select the paper clip attachment icon in the compose window. Users can select this option to browse for, choose, and attach individual emails to their new message.

This change is available by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

This change will happen automatically by the specified date. No admin action is required. Please notify your users about this change, update relevant documentation.

Updated January 16, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

We are introducing the ability to forward app cards. With the addition of app card forwarding, users now have a new way to share app cards across chats. To forward a message containing an app card, simply navigate to the More Actions menu of any message containing an app card and select forward. From here, the forward message dialog will populate, which provides users with a preview of the message being forwarded, including the app card. 

Please note: Forwarding of bot cards is excluded from this release. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 469506.

[When this will happen:]

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

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Users will now have less restrictions when forwarding content. Previously, users were unable to forward messages that contained app cards. With this improvement, this restriction does not exist. 

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Users must have the latest Microsoft Teams build to receive these updates. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Updated January 16, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

We are introducing a new Carousel layout to make the Hero web part more attractive. This new layout will feature a slideshow and a selection of new styles with imagery, bold text, and a call to action, creating a more engaging page experience.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 395214.

[When this will happen:]

Targeted Release: We will start rolling out in mid-January 2025 and expect to complete by mid-January 2025 (previously late January).

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Adding a Hero web part to a page or news post has not changed. This update allows authors to create eye-catching carousel slides in any section type, with up to five slides in Carousel layout, enhancing user engagement and highlighting key content to establish page hierarchy. It offers three new styles and supports Stream videos to make the page more appealing. 

[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 January 16, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon for Microsoft SharePoint: A new Accessibility assistant tool to help content creators meet accessibility standards when authoring SharePoint Pages. This tool provides checks and brief guidance to help ensure pages are inclusive and accessible to a broad audience. This rollout reflects our ongoing commitment to fostering accessibility and inclusivity in SharePoint.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 470603.

[When this will happen:]

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out late January 2025 and expect to complete by late January 2025 (previously early February).

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

After this rollout, authors can initiate an accessibility test while editing a page. Authors can select the Accessibility assistant icon from the right vertical toolbar. The Accessibility assistant will support five web parts: Banner, Text, Image, Hero, and Quick Links.

The Accessibility assistant identifies accessibility issues:

The Accessibility assistant guides authors to address accessibility issues in the specific web part:

The Accessibility assistant confirms the author has addressed all accessibility issues:

[What you need to do to prepare:]

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

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

• Use service admin roles to manage your tenant
• Microsoft Entra built-in roles

As a part of modernizing our search extensibility platform, we are retiring the support for federated search providers in Microsoft Search. We are announcing the retirement of Microsoft Dataverse and Microsoft Dynamics 365 results in Microsoft Search (Learn more: Dataverse and Dynamics 365 federated search provider for Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn). The Dynamics 365 federation provider is used by organizations to surface Dataverse content (enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management data) in enterprise search endpoints like Microsoft Office.com, Microsoft SharePoint home and Microsoft Bing.com. These providers are configured by Search admins in the Microsoft 365 admin portal. (Microsoft 365 Search and Intelligence admin portal)

[How this will affect your organization:]

You are receiving this message because our reporting indicates your organization has enabled Dynamics 365 federated search. The feature is accessed through the Data sources tab in the Microsoft 365 Search and Intelligence admin portal.

[When this will happen:]

The Dynamics 365 federation provider will be removed starting late February 2025 and ending in early March 2025. After the feature retires, it will not return results on the Dynamics 365 search vertical.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

To surface Dynamics 365 content in enterprise search endpoints like Microsoft365.com (Office.com), SharePoint Home and Bing.com, use Microsoft Graph connectors. Learn more: Microsoft Graph connectors overview for Microsoft Search | Microsoft Learn. You can build a custom connector to index Dynamics 365 content. Content ingested through Graph connectors will be searchable on all enterprise search endpoints and Microsoft 365 Copilot for licensed users and following your organization’s policies. For details on index quota limits, refer to the Learn more section in this message.

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

Learn more

• Dataverse and Dynamics 365 results in Microsoft Search | Microsoft Learn
• Microsoft Graph connectors overview for Microsoft Search and Microsoft 365 Copilot | Microsoft Learn
• Use the Microsoft Graph connectors API – Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn
• Microsoft Graph connectors SDK overview – Microsoft Graph | Microsoft Learn
• Index quota for Microsoft Graph connectors | Microsoft Learn

Coming soon for Microsoft Teams: Organizers of town halls and webinars will be able to select and assign presenters to also moderate the Q&A, allowing them to manage and publish questions asked during the event. This feature lets organizers make changes to the group of moderators at any time (before or during the event), and it is available to all users organizing a town hall or webinar.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 469492.

This message applies to Teams for Windows desktop, Teams for Mac desktop, Teams for the web, and Teams for iOS/Android.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

This feature is supported for presenters with Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AAD) IDs. Presenters using consumer domains (such as live.com or gmail.com) are not supported.

Meeting organizers can enable this feature in Meeting options while setting up the event or during the event.

This feature 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: Q&A in Microsoft Teams meetings – Microsoft Support (will be updated before rollout)

Multiple account access to Copilot in Microsoft 365 desktop and mobile apps will be available soon.

[When will this happen]

General availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out in early March 2025 and expect to complete by late March 2025.

Cloud Policy to manage use will be available by late January 2025.

[How this will affect your organization]

As an M365 service, Copilot can be used across signed in accounts in clients that allow you to sign in with multiple accounts. This lets users use their Copilot value on any document to which they have permission. Note that Copilot data protection is always based on the identity used to access the file. This ensures enterprise data protection for files in your organization, regardless of which account grants Copilot access. The setting for web grounding in Copilot is also based on the identity used to access the file. If you disabled web grounding in Copilot, users will not be able to use web grounding even when using Copilot access from another account. This feature will be available starting in March 2025, at which point, users signed into accounts with external Copilot licenses will be able to use Copilot on their work and school documents in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote desktop and mobile apps.

[What you need to do to prepare]

If you wish to restrict multiple account access to Copilot, you can use the “Multiple account access to Copilot for work documents” Cloud Policy.  This policy setting is expected to be available in Cloud Policy by the end of January 2025

[Additional information]

For more information, see Multiple account access to Copilot for work and school documents.

The AI assistance category page in Adoption Score helps adoption specialists measure progress towards making Microsoft 365 Copilot a daily habit. We are updating this page with an enhanced score, new Microsoft 365 Copilot usage metrics, time trends, and peer benchmarking. The page remains in public preview for this update.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 185700

[When this will happen:]

We will begin rolling out mid-January 2025 and expect to complete by late January 2025.

[How this will affect your organization:]

The updated AI Assistance score (preview) introduces:

• Improved scoring model: the revised score takes into account a much wider range of M365 Copilot features as compared with V1, including usage of M365 Copilot Chat and all M365 Copilot capabilities across Teams, Outlook, and Office apps. As new Copilot features are released in these apps, usage of them automatically accrues to the score. As a result, tenants will see a much higher score as compared with V1, and efforts to grow adoption should lead more directly to score gains.
• Peer Benchmarking: Customers can compare their score to peers in their industry, consistent with other Adoption Score categories.
• Expanded secondary insights: V2 includes new feature-level usage metrics for Microsoft 365 Copilot features such as M365 Copilot Chat (work) as well as a histogram summarizing the number of days during which users were active in Copilot over the past month.
• Time Trends: Customers can view how key M365 Copilot usage metrics (including the score itself) are trending over time, going back up to 180 days.

These insights provide Adoption Specialists and IT admins with a more comprehensive view of Copilot engagement, helping them drive adoption and measure success.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Ensure that any admin that currently uses the report is aware of this update.

We are updating the ‘Modern Workplace – Autopatch Client Setup’ script used by Windows Autopatch. Currently, this script installs the ‘Microsoft Cloud Managed Desktop Extension’ and ‘Windows Autopatch Client Broker’ applications, which share the same script for post-device registration readiness checks. The updated script will uninstall the old ‘Microsoft Cloud Managed Desktop Extension’ application and upgrade the existing application for improved performance.

[When will this happen:]

We will start the updates in early February 2025, and they will continue through late February 2025.

[How will this affect your organization:]

The ‘Windows Autopatch Client Broker’ will replace the ‘Microsoft Cloud Managed Desktop Extension,’ offering better scalability and performance through Windows Autopatch. We are continuously working to enhance functionality. There will be no immediate impact on your environment.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

To ensure the new application runs successfully, ensure that the new endpoint – device.autopatch.microsoft.com – is added to your allow list.

For more information, see Configure your network | Microsoft Learn. We will start the updates in early February, and they will continue through the end of the month.

If you have any questions or concerns, or need assistance, file a service request by visiting the Microsoft Intune admin center.