Microsoft Roadmap, messagecenter en blogs updates van 23-08-2024

Updated August 22, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Users will now have access to a quicker and easier method to search their Outlook Mobile contact list within the app. We are adding a search bar at the top of a user’s in app contact list that will allow users to type the name of a contact to easily find a contact. This search is limited only to the contacts within the Outlook Mobile app, and this feature does not search any device contacts that have not been synced with Outlook. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 135281

[When this will happen:]

Preview: We will begin rolling out mid-September 2023.

Worldwide: We will begin rolling out mid-October 2023 and expect to complete by late November 2024 (previously late August).

[How this will affect your organization:]

There are no added settings or training needed for you as an admin. This feature will work for all users who have access to and/or use contacts in Outlook Mobile. 

[What you need to do to prepare:]

There is nothing required to prepare.

Updated August 22, 2024: We have updated the content for clarity. Thank you for your patience.

App centric management (ACM) is on hold as of August 14, 2024 and will restart in mid-September (previously June). Your experience during this hold will fall under one of the following , with Phases defined in detail below.

• If your tenant has already been migrated to ACM, it will remain on ACM. The rest of this MC post is not applicable to your tenant.
• If your tenant fell under the Phase 1 criteria of using only the Global app permission policy and no custom app permission policies, it will resume auto migration in mid-September.
• If you do not have a draft currently saved, you will not be able to access ACM migration until the roll out restarts.
  

What is in Phase 2?

• Migration wizard: a step-by-step guide to help you migrate the permission policies. You will be able to select which polities to migrate and designate users groups or individuals who should have access to the apps.
• Testing and Validation: before finalizing the migration, you will have the opportunity to test and export your staged changes. You can use this to make side-by-side comparison with your current setup, ensuring everything is perfect before you proceed.
• Duration: The migration process is designed to have no downtime for the end users and can take a few hours to complete. During the migration, your existing permission policies will remain in effect until the transition to app centric management completes.

Detailed documentation for the migration process is available at App centric management to manage user access to Teams apps – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn.

App centric management introduces new admin settings to control who in the tenant can install Teams apps. First, admins can set a default value for new apps that are published to the Teams app store. Second, admins can manage apps for users, groups, or everyone in the organization. This feature replaces the existing app permission policies and provides admins with the ability to manage access to the app individually. The app permission policies for existing customers are migrated to maintain existing app availability in the tenant.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 151829

[When this will happen:]

This feature will gradually roll out across three major phases.

Phase 1 (from late November 2023 to late September 2024 (previously late February) affects the tenants that use only the Global app permission policy and have no custom app permission policies. The app status from the permission policy and tenant settings will be migrated to preserve the admin intent. The migration will not affect the end users and their ability to use the apps. Admins may see the Manage apps page in a read-only mode for a short time.

Phase 2 (from mid to late September 2024 (previously July)) affects the tenants that use both global and custom app permission policies. This phase will let the admin choose to migrate to app centric management by following a migration process that will change the existing app permission policies to app assignments in the new app centric model. The admins will have the choice to modify the apps that are assigned using the custom permission policies to be accessible to groups, if they want.

Phase 3 (early 2025) applies to the tenants that skipped the migration in phase 1 or 2. These tenants will be migrated automatically in this phase. More details to come as a follow up MC post.

[How this will affect your organization:]

Starting with this release, you can:

1. Manage Teams apps for selected set of users, groups or all users in the organization.

2. Set the default value for new apps published to Teams app store for each of the app types: Microsoft, third-party and custom apps.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

No action needed for phase 1 tenants with Global permission policy only. More information will be provided for phase 2 and 3 tenants in a follow-up communication before launch.

Updated August 21, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon for new Microsoft Outlook for Windows: A new policy to automatically configure accounts based on Active Directory Primary SMTP address.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 396729.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before the rollout: On the first-time login page in the new Outlook for Windows, the email field will be empty, and users will need to enter their email address.

After the rollout: On the first-time login page, the email field will be automatically filled with the primary SMTP address and the user will not be able to change it.

You can access the new policy called Automatically configure accounts based on Active Directory Primary SMTP address through the Microsoft Intune admin center > Apps > Policies for Office Apps.

Admins are advised to configure the new policy for specific groups for an easier account setup process on managed devices and to guarantee that company policies will always be respected.

If this policy is enabled, the primary SMTP address used to log in to Windows will be suggested the first time a user adds their account to new Outlook for Windows.

The default state of the new policy is off.

[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 admins about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Learn more: Policy Management – Deploy Office | Microsoft Learn (will be updated before rollout begins)

Updated August 21, 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 early October 2024 (previously mid-September) and expect to complete by mid-October 2024 (previously late September).

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

[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 August 22, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

In the new Microsoft Outlook for Windows and web, we are updating the Scheduling Assistant view to help users have better readability. This feature update provides improved grid lines, an Availability view, and a combined Availability bar. We are also updating the time zone behavior when scheduling across multiple time zones, and we are adding the ability to send an event from the Scheduling Assistant view. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 397769

[When this will happen:]

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

General Availability (GCC, GCC High, DoD): We will begin rolling out late August 2024 and expect to complete by late September 2024.

[How this will affect your organization:]

This feature update aims to improve the Scheduling Assistant view readability while scheduling new events. 

Under the attendee names, availability is denoted as text for the times that users have selected.

On the grid, we have updated how free/busy information is displayed for each user.

Combined Availability view is a bar within Scheduling Assistant that shows the combined availability of all participants at a given time.

We are also updating the color of the horizontal bar that denotes the selected time to blue. Previously, it was green or red based on participant availability. The bar also has a hover state that will communicate the time and availability information.

Previously, we showed time zone information for all the users. Going forward, we will only show time zone information for users who are in a different time zone than the organizer’s time zone.

Previously, there was no Send button in Scheduling Assistant. Users had to go back to the Event form to send an invite. Now, we are adding the Send button.

[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 on August 22, 2024:  This feature has been delayed.  We will update this Message center announcement again once we have new rollout dates. 

Coming soon for Microsoft Teams: Users will have expanded options for searching for content related to a person. Users will be able to expand their search from a keyword search of a 1:1 chat to all results related to a person, with suggestions to search with or without a keyword. This message applies to Teams on Windows, Mac, and the web.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before the rollout: When searching for a keyword in a 1:1 chat, users do not have an option to expand the search to all results for a person in Teams. Also, in the search results page, users do not have an option to filter search results by a person.

After this rollout, users who use the Find in chat feature in 1:1 chats will see a suggestion at the end of the search results to expand search results across Teams, either by pairing their search keywords with the person in the chat or by seeing all results in Teams related to the person in the chat:

The search results page for a keyword, filtered by all results related to a person:

This feature will be on by default and is accessible to all Microsoft Teams 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.

The campaign goals feature allows you to set specific goals for your campaigns and track progress towards completion. With campaign goals, you can now easily monitor how well your campaign is performing and make data-driven decisions to achieve your desired outcomes.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 409233

[When this will happen:]

General Availability: We will begin rolling out late August 2024 and expect to complete by late September 2024.

[How this affects your organization:]

Soon, Viva Amplify users will be able to set goals for a given campaign. By directly tying goals to key metric like the unique viewer metric, users will be able to track how many people viewed their campaigns and measure its effectiveness. Currently, campaign goals are only integrated with the unique viewer analytics metric.

To set a campaign goal, navigate to the campaign brief where you can plan your campaign strategy. When you set a campaign goal, you can specify your target outcome, such as increasing the open rate or reaching a certain percentage of views, and it will be applied at the campaign level and to each distribution channel that you distribute content to. Once a goal is set, our analytics tool will then track your progress and provide detailed reports, making it easy for you to view and understand how close you are to achieving your goal. To view more insights on your campaign goals, navigate to the reporting page. The reporting experience will not only display the campaign goal with clear details on the actual audience reached for your campaign, but it will also provide detailed insights broken down by distribution channels to give you a better understanding on how far or close you are from achieving your goal and why. Currently, campaign goals are integrated with the unique viewer analytics metric only.

It is important to note that if you publish to an open SharePoint site or to Viva Engage storyline (i.e to a whole organization), you can still set a campaign goal. However, users should be mindful that goals may be harder to reach as the audience will be very large. In this case, the campaign goal will not be displayed unless the user takes explicit action to include the whole organization which should then enable the goal tracker to be displayed.   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.

[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.

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.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 409234

[When this will happen:]

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

[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.  

This message applies to frontline workers and managers using Android devices. if you are not using Android devices and frontline worker functionality, you can ignore this message.

Effective immediately for the Microsoft Teams Shifts app on Android devices: To continue receiving reminders for upcoming shifts and clock in/clock out, all Android users (managers and workers) must enable reminders in their device’s operating system. This change is due to Google’s changes to Android’s API 34.

[How this will affect your organization:]

The Shifts landing page on Android will display a pop up to enable reminders for all users. The pop up takes users to the OS page to enable the reminders for upcoming shifts and to clock in and clock out.

If a user dismisses the pop up, the user can go to the Shifts Settings page and enable the Scheduled shift reminders field that will navigate to OS page to enable the reminders for future shifts.

Android device users: Consent to this pop up to receive upcoming shift and clock in/out reminders:

References

• Manage the Shifts app for your organization – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn
• Get started in Shifts – Microsoft Support
• What is Shifts? – Microsoft Support
• Clock in and out with Shifts – Microsoft Support

We are updating the Admin experience for our new Viva Learning – SuccessFactors integration set-up experience. We are planning to upgrade all existing customers to the new experience by September 2024,

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this affects your organization:]

The new SuccessFactors set up experience consolidates configuration steps to a single interface in Viva Learning. See below for a summary of major changes coming to the new experience:

• All configuration updates (done previously in SuccessFactors portal) can now be done directly in the Viva Learning Admin experience.
• SFTP details are now collected from SuccessFactors and pre-populated in Viva Learning, including the username, Host URL, and root folder path. Admins will not need to enter these details manually moving forward.
• Public encryption keys are updated in SuccessFactors automatically
• Updates to the SFTP subfolder path in the Viva Learning Admin set-up experience reflect in SuccessFactors automatically

[What you can do to prepare:]

There is no action, but you may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.

For the detailed feature breakdown in our newly updated product documentation, review: Add SAP SuccessFactors as a content source | Microsoft Learn

Documentation for the current experience is still available here while you wait for the new experience: Add SAP SuccessFactors as a content source | Microsoft Learn