Microsoft Roadmap, messagecenter en blogs updates van 18-12-2024

Updated December 16, 2024: We have updated the content. Thank you for your patience.

Important update regarding the cloud hosted Mailbox External Recipient Rate Limit: After carefully considering your feedback and understanding the need for additional time to adjust, Microsoft has decided to delay the rollout of the cloud hosted Mailbox External Recipient Rate Limit (MERRL) by ~six months. The MERRL will go into enforcement in October 2025 for trial tenants and new tenants provisioned after October 1st, 2025. In October 2025, the Exchange Admin Center Report will be available for tenant admins to review Sender mailbox data on external recipient volume. In April 2026, the MERRL will go into enforcement for all tenant’s cloud hosted mailboxes including existing tenants.

Please refer to the ACS email documentation (Prepare an email communication resource for Azure Communication Services – An Azure Communication Services concept article | Microsoft Learn), or reach out to your Microsoft account team for further support in this journey.

We have made the decision to not proceed with this change for DoD, GCC, or GCC High organizations at this time. We will communicate via Message center when we are ready to proceed. The External Recipient Rate Limit will only apply to WWMT/Production.

Please refer to the ACS email documentation (Prepare an email communication resource for Azure Communication Services – An Azure Communication Services concept article | Microsoft Learn), or reach out to your Microsoft account team for further support in this journey.

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Today, we are announcing that, beginning in January 2025, Exchange Online will begin enforcing an external recipient rate limit of 2000 recipients in 24 hours.

Exchange Online does not support bulk or high-volume transactional email. We have not enforced limiting of bulk email until now, but we plan on doing so with the introduction of an External Recipient Rate (ERR) limit. The ERR limit is being introduced to help reduce unfair usage and abuse of Exchange Online resources.

[When this will happen:]

The new ERR limit will be introduced in 2 phases:

• Phase 1 – Starting January 1, 2025, the limit will apply to cloud-hosted mailboxes of all newly created tenants.
• Phase 2 – Between July and December 2025, we will start applying the limit to cloud-hosted mailboxes of existing tenants.

[How this will affect your organization:]

Exchange Online enforces a Recipient Rate limit of 10000 recipients for cloud-hosted mailboxes. The 2000 ERR limit will become a sublimit within this 10000 Recipient Rate limit. There is no change to the Recipient Rate limit, and both of these will be rolling limits for 24-hour windows. You can send to up to 2,000 external recipients in a 24-hour period, and if you max out the external recipient rate limit then you will still be able to send to up to 8,000 internal recipients in that same period. If you don’t send to any external recipients in a 24-hour period, you can send to up to 10,000 internal recipients.

For example:

• You use a cloud-hosted mailbox to send to 1,000 external recipients and 2,000 internal recipients at 6:00AM on Day 1, for a total of 3,000 recipients. You then send to another 1,000 external recipients at 8:00AM on Day 1. Because you sent to 2,000 external recipients, you will be blocked from sending to external recipients until 6:00AM on Day 2. During this period, you are able to send to up to 6,000 internal recipients, but for this example, let’s assume that you don’t.
• At 6:00AM on Day 2, the 1,000 external recipients and 2,000 internal recipients sent at 6:00AM on Day 1 will no longer count toward the 24-hour limit calculation. Thus, from 6:00-8:00AM on Day 2, you can send to up to 9,000 total recipients (e.g., 9,000 internal or 8,000 internal plus 1,000 external).
• If you don’t send to any internal or external recipients during this period, then at 8:00AM on Day 2 you can again send to 10,000 recipients total with up to 2,000 of them being external recipients.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

If you have a cloud-hosted mailbox that needs to exceed the ERR limit, you can move to Azure Communication Services for Email, which is designed specifically for high volume email sent to recipients external to your tenant.

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

In Microsoft Teams, users will be able to add their own custom emojis and reactions by uploading an image or GIF file, and their emojis and reactions will be accessible to all users in the tenant alongside the standard Teams emojis and reactions. Up to 5,000 custom emojis can be added per tenant.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 80659.

[When this will happen:]

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

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

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

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

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:]

This new custom emojis and reactions feature will be turned on by default. Users in the tenant will be able to upload emojis that are visible to the whole tenant. You can pre-emptively turn this feature off or restrict users who can create new emojis via the Teams Admin Center controls described below.

How do I use this feature?

Custom emojis and reactions will be found in the emoji and reaction menus in the Custom category. Users with upload abilities can add new content through the plus (+) button. Users with delete abilities can right-click any custom emoji to delete. Please note that deleted emojis may take up to 24 hours to reflect for all users in the tenant. Deleted emojis may take up to 24 hours to reflect for other users.

How do I manage this feature?

This feature can be managed through the Teams Admin Center. Admins will have access to the following controls:

• Turn the feature on/off for the whole tenant via the Messaging Settings page (on by default).
• Set which users can create new emojis via the Messaging Policy groups (on for all users by default).
• Set which users can delete emojis via the Messaging Policy groups (off for all users except admins by default).

The Teams Admin Center controls will be made available in early June. We recommend adjusting your settings as needed prior to the Targeted and Worldwide Releases in late June 2024 to ensure that they are in place when the feature rolls out.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

This feature is on by default. If you would like to turn the feature off, please use the provided setting in the Messaging Settings page:

Messaging Settings

This feature allows all users to create new emojis by default and only allows admins to delete emojis by default. If you would like to adjust emoji creation and deletion permissions, please make the appropriate changes through the Messaging Policy groups:

Emoji Creation Setting (enabled for all users by default)

Emoji Deletion Setting (only enabled for admins by default)

Additional feature capabilities:

View custom emojis in the emoji menu

Press the plus (+) menu to select an image to upload

Set a name for your emoji

Right-click on an emoji to delete or to see the creator

Updated December 17, 2024: We have updated the timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

We shared in https://aka.ms/sharepoint/Copilotagents last month that SharePoint would have a new capability for creating and using Copilot agents. Users with M365 Copilot licenses will see a new Copilot action in the Suite Navigation bar where they will see the built-in Copilot scoped to the site they are on. They will also see entry points from the New menu on home and in their document libraries to create Copilot agents. These capabilities are available only if they already have create and edit permissions on the site or document library. They can also share a link to the Copilot agent with other users, and those users (with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license) will be able to chat with it in SharePoint, a Teams group chat or meeting chat. 

This release does not include the extension to Copilot Studio for advanced customizations or the Site owner abilities to approve agents and set a default agent for a specific site. These capabilities will be available later this year. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 416297

[When this will happen:]

Targeted release: We will begin rolling out late-October 2024 and expect to complete by early November 2024.

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Users will be able to create and use Copilot agents in SharePoint.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Here is the documentation to learn more about the capabilities.

SharePoint Help & Learning https://support.microsoft.com/topic/44e981e7-dcef-4422-977d-967f3dcfe796 

Get started with agents in SharePoint https://support.microsoft.com/topic/69e2faf9-2c1e-4baa-8305-23e625021bcf 

Create and edit an agent https://support.microsoft.com/topic/d16c6ca1-a8e3-4096-af49-67e1cfdddd42 

Manage agents https://support.microsoft.com/topic/bcab837a-835c-4a1a-8ad4-d53a353c369f 

Share an agent in Teams https://support.microsoft.com/topic/6dcbf7b5-8c13-44e5-a68a-dbd71fb76ad3 

Manage access to agents https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/SharePoint/manage-access-agents-in-sharepoint

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

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams: Anonymous unauthenticated users will be able to join watermarked meetings and have access to all meeting content, including video. This message applies to Teams on Windows desktop, Teams on the web, Teams for Android/iOS, and Teams Rooms.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout: Unauthenticated users who join a watermarked meeting can hear the meeting audio only.

After this rollout:

• Admins: The watermark policy in the Teams admin center will remain the same as it is now, because anonymous guest support will not be tied to a policy.
• Users: Anonymous users can join as before the rollout. They will see a watermark of their guest name they entered on the pre-join screen and will be able to access all meeting content.

An anonymous user will be asked to enter their name on the pre-join screen:

After the anonymous user joins the meeting, they see the name they entered on the pre-join screen as the watermark:

[What you need to do to prepare:]

This feature will be on by default. If you do not want guest name as the watermark for anonymous users, you can run a Microsoft PowerShell script for these guests to have access to audio only in meetings.

Learn more: Require a watermark for sensitive Teams meetings – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn (will be updated before rollout)

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

Coming soon in Microsoft Teams: An easier way for user to delete their Copilot account history from all applications. When users select Open Copilot activity history in Teams, they will be taken directly to the Settings & Privacy page in their My Microsoft account. This new entry point applies to Teams for Windows desktop, Teams for Mac desktop, and Teams for iOS/Android. A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required to access this feature.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout, users must navigate to their My Microsoft account to delete their Copilot interaction history. After this rollout, they can access the My Microsoft account Settings & Privacy page directly from Teams. On the My Microsoft page, they can delete the Copilot activity history for all Microsoft 365 apps with Copilot activity history.

In Teams for Windows desktop, users can find Open Copilot activity history under the Privacy > Delete Copilot activity history setting:

In Teams for Android/iOS, users can find Open Copilot activity history under the Copilot setting:

Users will be taken to the Settings & Privacy page in their My Microsoft account:

If users select Delete history, this popup appears:

A tool tip will guide users to these controls in the Welcome message in Copilot for chat, channels, and meetings (desktop tool tip on the left, iOS/Android tooltip on the right):

[What you need to do to prepare:]

This change will be available by default to all Teams users with a Copilot license on Windows desktop, Mac desktop, or iOS/Android. Manage Microsoft 365 Copilot settings | Microsoft Learn explains how to disable Copilot at the tenant level if desired.

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.

Learn more

• Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft 365 Copilot | Microsoft Learn
• Delete your Microsoft 365 Copilot activity history – Microsoft Support
• Change settings in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support (will be updated before rollout)

Coming soon: Users can seamlessly share apps and Microsoft 365 Copilot agents in Microsoft Teams chats and channels. A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is not required to share apps and agents, but a Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required to use apps and agents.

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

[When this will happen:]

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out mid-December 2024 and expect to complete by early January 2025.

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

After this rollout, users will experience:

• New detailed cards for shared Copilot agents and apps
• Shortened URLs for shared links
• The developer’s name and branding icon on app cards
• App details in short description in cards
• Ability to dismiss cards while pasting a link in compose mode
• Ability to right click and share apps from the left app bar
• Ability to share from an app header
• An updated sharing experience with Share and Copy link in the same window
• Shared Copilot agents created from the embedded agent builder in Teams can now be acquired from Teams and used in the Copilot app within Teams.

New detailed cards when sharing Copilot apps and agents in chats and channels:

Sharing from left app bar in Teams:

Sharing from the app header or Copilot agent header:

This change 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. 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.

We’re making some changes to feedback policies in Outlook mobile for iOS and Android behavior to match our documentation.

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

According to the current Microsoft documentation in Manage Microsoft feedback for your organization – Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn, setting feedback collection policies to Not configured has the same effect as setting them to Enabled. Before this rollout, Outlook for iOS and Android currently does the opposite of the documentation and prevents users from including log files and content samples when the Allow users to include log files and content samples when feedback is submitted to Microsoft policy is not configured.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

After this rollout, the behavior will align to the current documentation to allow users to include log files and content samples when submitting feedback if the policy is not configured. Please review the documentation and your organization’s configuration to ensure that it matches your requirements.

This change will be available by default.

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: Manage Microsoft feedback for your organization – Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn

We are releasing an enhanced user experience in Viva Engage for email notifications that admins receive while monitoring network keywords. This enhanced experience addresses security upgrades and offers additional context about the monitored keywords and the associated conversations.

The enhancements and upgrades are summarized below.

• Only Entra ID-backed email addresses within your tenant will be supported as email recipients. Consumer email addresses (e.g. Google Gmail) will no longer be supported. Unsupported email addresses will receive a prompt to change to a compatible email address.
• Private messages between individuals will no longer be detected by the keyword alert system. These messages are confidential and must be discovered through appropriate compliance solutions (e.g. Microsoft e-discovery) when necessary.
• Email subjects will provide more context on the detected keyword and the associated community or storyline conversation.
• Email bodies will include the detected keyword and an inline view of the conversation for public communities. For private community conversations, a link to the detected conversation/message will be provided. Recipients must have access to the community to view the conversation.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 470303.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out mid-December 2024 and expect to complete by late January 2025.

[How this will affect your organization:]

If your organization has configured keywords to be monitored in Viva Engage, ensure the alert recipient email address is updated to a compatible Entra ID-backed email address within the tenant. We are no longer supporting consumer email addresses to be added as alert recipients. 

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Ensure the keyword email alert recipients are updated to be compatible with our security standards, which are Entra ID-backed email addresses within your tenant. 

Update any email rules or filters to support the new subject line format. If you process keyword email alerts with Power Automate or custom code, you may also need to make modifications to your solution. 

If you use keyword monitoring to identify private messages matching specific keywords, work with your Purview administrator to implement an alternative process using eDiscovery.

We are making several important updates to how your entire organization can experience Microsoft Copilot, our existing ad-free, AI-powered chat service grounded in the web and secured with enterprise data protection. Starting in mid-January, we will roll out the following changes:

1. We are making name changes to simplify the user experience. Microsoft Copilot for Entra account users will be renamed Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. Additionally, the Microsoft 365 app will be named Microsoft 365 Copilot, and its icon will be updated as announced during the November 2024 Ignite conference.
2. The new Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat will allow end users to discover, create, and use agents.
3. The new Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat will be accessible within the new Microsoft 365 Copilot app, with options for admins and end users to control access.

[When will this happen:]

These changes will begin rolling out in mid-January 2025.

[How this will affect your organization:]

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (formerly Microsoft Copilot) will continue to offer web-grounded chat with the latest large language models including GPT-4o, features like Pages and file upload, and enterprise data protection at no additional cost for Entra account users.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat users will be able to discover, create, and use agents, including custom agents that can access shared work data in your tenant. Access to agents can be controlled and configured within the Microsoft 365 admin center. Specific agents, such as those that access shared work data, will be billed based on metered consumption for users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Agents grounded only on web data will be available to use at no additional cost.

The name changes for Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, and the new Microsoft 365 Copilot app icon, will roll out across App stores and the web in mid-January.

We are also introducing a new URL to make it easier to discover Microsoft 365 Copilot on the web: M365Copilot.com. Further, users visiting office.com and microsoft365.com will automatically redirect to m365.cloud.microsoft.

Additionally, we are rolling out updates to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app UI. For more details, refer to MC958905.

Here’s a summary of the name and icon changes:

[What you need to do to prepare:]

No action is required for Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat integration within the new Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Previous tenant pinning controls for Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (formerly Microsoft Copilot) will be honored. These settings can be found and managed on the Copilot page within the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Per above, web grounded agents are available at no cost and respect existing settings for enabling web grounding within a tenant.

Agents that access SharePoint or Graph Connector content will be billed based on metered consumption. Agents utilizing metered consumption are off by default. To enable, admins will need to set up or utilize an existing Azure subscription for Copilot Studio. More details on how to manage metered consumption will be available in mid-January.

No action is needed to enable agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot-licensed users – the use of agents comes with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.

For the name and icon changes, no action is required.

As noted in MC958903, we are updating the Microsoft 365 app name and icon to Microsoft 365 Copilot in mid-January 2025. In addition, we are evolving the app’s UI to support future AI-first experiences. Key changes include reducing the top app header, consolidating all app-level tools and settings into the App toolbar on the left, and retiring features like Help me create and My Day from the app.

[When will this happen:]

These changes will begin rolling out in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app (web, Windows) starting in mid-January 2025. This is a phased rollout, so not all users will receive the update simultaneously.

[How will this affect your organization:]

With these updates, users will notice the following changes:

• The app will no longer have a top header. Instead, tools like user profile, settings, and feedback will move to the bottom left toolbar. The feedback button will be available under the ‘Settings and more’ section in the bottom left toolbar.
• The search box will now be presented on the Homepage for users to find all their content across multiple file types and storage locations. Note: There is no change to the search experience—only the placement of the feature.
• All the apps on the left tool bar are aligned to the top and the AI rich experiences like Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Copilot Pages will be presented together to establish correlation.
• The organization logo, previously displayed in the top header under the Organization theme, will no longer be visible in the app. Note: This change does not affect other Microsoft 365 apps where the organization logo will still appear in the header.
• The ‘Back’ button on the Windows Microsoft 365 Copilot app will not be available. Users will still be able to use the left AppBar to navigate between pages.
• The ‘My Day’ feature is being removed from the app experience, and users will no longer see the button to launch the calendar and to-do on the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Note: This change does not affect other Microsoft 365 apps where My Day feature is available.
• The ‘Help me create’ feature will be retired from the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Launched in February 2024, ‘Help me create’ was focused on helping users go from their stated intent to document creation using an LLM. With Microsoft 365 Copilot app becoming the destination for Copilot, we will be bringing AI powered document creation into Copilot tab. Users will be able to brainstorm ideas and draft new content based on a storyboard or a script to an agenda or an executive summary from Copilot Chat.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

No admin or user action is required as these changes roll out. However, we recommend keeping your users informed about these updates to ensure they are aware that these changes are part of the app enhancements.