Microsoft Roadmap, messagecenter en blogs updates van 24-01-2025

Updated January 21, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Users can now record themselves anywhere and share it with coworkers in the Microsoft Teams chat or channel without worrying about the background. Users can now change their background to any image they want or make the background blurry while recording using their Microsoft Teams camera on iOS devices. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 380852

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High and DoD): We will begin rolling out early May 2024 (previously late March) and expect to complete by late January 2025 (previously late December).

[How this will affect your organization:]

Users will get an option to change their background to any image they want or make the background blurry while recording using their Microsoft Teams camera on an iOS device. To use this feature:

1. Press and hold the camera icon next to the Compose box and then tap the blur icon to the right of the shutter button.
2. You can then choose either an image to replace the background or choose to mildly or heavily blur your background.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

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

Updated January 21, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

In Microsoft Purview, audit search provides your organization with access to critical audit log event data, allowing you to gain insight and further investigate user activities. The Microsoft Purview Compliance portal’s audit search UI currently includes several search fields (i.e., date range, activities, workloads, users, etc.) to facilitate the retrieval of relevant logs. With a recent update, we have added four additional fields to the audit search UI.

These four fields are described below:

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 384092.

[When this will happen:]

Public Preview: We will begin rolling out early April 2025 (previously early February) and expect to complete by late April 2025 (previously early March).

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Security admins in your organization who use audit in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal will be able to use these four additional fields to retrieve relevant audit logs.

[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.

Additional resources

• Search the audit log | Microsoft Learn

Updated January 23, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to new Microsoft Outlook: Users will be able to share Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint files stored on their device (not stored in a cloud like Microsoft OneDrive) from new Outlook for Windows.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 397094.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): We will begin rolling out early October 2024 (previously mid-September) and expect to complete by late August 2025 (previously late December). 

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout, users are only able to see old Outlook for Windows when they try to share a Word, Excel or PowerPoint fie.

After this rollout, when users want to share a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file that is saved to their device (not stored in a cloud like Microsoft OneDrive), the user can right-click the file name in File Explorer, select Share, and select new Outlook for Windows to email the file.

This option is 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. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Updated January 21, 2025: 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 in the Microsoft Teams admin center: Admins will be able to deploy location-based frontline teams where team membership is automatically managed, and team owners can also add frontline workers or remove them from teams. This rollout will allow admins to take advantage of dynamic rules to keep teams updated as members join and leave the organization and also give team owners the autonomy to manage membership at the team level.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 410774.

[When this will happen:]

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

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout, admins are able to:

• Create location-based dynamic frontline teams where team membership is strictly managed with dynamic rules.
• Identify frontliner workers in their organization with a Microsoft Entra attribute and value pairings in the Deploy Teams at Scale tool.
• Assign a single team owner for all frontline teams.

After this rollout, admins will be able to:

• Create location-based frontline teams where team membership is automatically managed with dynamic rules, while respecting manual changes made by team owners.
• Identify frontline workers in their organization with dynamic groups in the Deploy Teams at Scale tool.
• Assign multiple individuals in the organization as team owners of frontline teams.

After this rollout, team owners will be able to:

• Add or remove frontline workers at their frontline locations if they are assigned team owner of their team.

This feature is on by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Review the documentation:

• How to find the best frontline team solution for your organization – Microsoft 365 for frontline workers | Microsoft Learn
• Deploy frontline dynamic teams at scale – Microsoft 365 for frontline workers | Microsoft Learn
• Microsoft Teams frontline usage report – Microsoft 365 for frontline workers | Microsoft Learn

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.

Updated January 23, 2025: We have updated the content. Thank you for your patience.

Administrators and security operators who are using third-party report message solutions in Microsoft Outlook to allow their users to report suspicious messages (for example, Knowbe4, Hoxhunt, Cofense, Proofpoint add-ins, and so on) can now configure Defender for Office 365 to automatically send these messages to Microsoft for analysis.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 406167.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

You must configure this setting if you want the benefit of sending third-party reported messages to Microsoft.

To enable this setting:

1. Go to User reported settings in the Microsoft Defender portal, select Monitor reported messages in Outlook, and then select Use a non-Microsoft add-in button.
2. In the Reported message destination section, select Microsoft and my reporting mailbox, and then provide the email address of the internal Exchange Online mailbox where user-reported messages by the third-party add-ins are being routed to. If the third-party vendor follows the guidance for message submissions format, Defender for Office 365 will submit these messages automatically to Microsoft for analysis.
3.  The result from Microsoft after analysis is shown on the User reported page in the Defender portal.

For more details about how Microsoft handles user-reported suspicious messages, see Report suspicious email messages to Microsoft.

Alerts are automatically generated for user reported messages in Defender for Office 365. If you have Defender for Office 365 Plan 2, Automated investigation and response (AIR) is also automatically triggered for user reported phishing messages. Both alerts and their investigations are automatically correlated to Defender XDR Incidents, which helps SOC teams with automation to triage, investigate, and respond. Submitting these messages to Microsoft for analysis provides a response of this analysis to security analysts and also helps improve Defender for Office 365 filters.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

If your user reporting settings are already set to Use a non-Microsoft add-in button and Microsoft and my reporting mailbox, you don’t need to do anything to benefit from this change. However, if the destination is My reporting mailbox only, you need to change the destination to Microsoft and my reporting mailbox to benefit from this change. 

Updated January 23, 2025: We have updated our Threat Classification documentation on Microsoft Learn. You can now access the latest version from here.

Coming soon to Microsoft Defender for Office: We will introduce Threat classification details to enhance your ability to understand the intent behind email attacks. This update will allow you to integrate Threat classification information across key experiences, enabling better detection, analysis, and response. The Threat classification system utilizes large language models (LLMs), machine learning (ML) models, and other advanced techniques to understand the intent behind threats, providing a more accurate classification. As the system evolves, you can expect new Threat classifications to be added to keep pace with emerging attack methods.

[When this will happen:]

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:]

Threat Explorer: You will be able to filter emails by Threat classification, view the classification in the results, analyze trends using charts, and export data with the classification details included:

Advanced Hunting: The ThreatClassification column will be available in the EmailEvents table, allowing you to create custom detection rules based on classification details:

Email summary panel: Threat classification will be integrated across multiple areas, including Alerts, Incidents, Reports, AIR, Submission, Explorer, and Advanced Hunting, providing a comprehensive view of threat classifications:

Email entity page: A new Threat classification field will be added in the threat detection details, helping you understand the context and intent of the detected threat:

These changes will be available by default for admins to configure.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Familiarize your team with the new Threat classification details available in the Threat Explorer, Advanced Hunting, email summary panel, and email entity page.

Leverage Threat classification to enhance filtering, hunting, and trend analysis in your workflows.

Prepare to update any custom detection rules or automated workflows to incorporate Threat classification for more targeted and insightful threat detection.

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 team about this change and update any relevant documentation.

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

Updated January 21, 2025: After further review, we will not be rolling this out to DoD during the timeline outlined below. We will communicate via Message center when we are ready to proceed. Organizations in GCC High and DoD can safely disregard this message. Thank you for your patience.

We are rolling out fundamental Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) support for primary accounts in new Outlook. With this new feature, new Outlook will start supporting sending and reading signed and encrypted emails.

In new Microsoft Outlook, this option is available in Options > More Options.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 397891.

[When this will happen:]

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

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

General Availability (GCC High, DoD): We will communicate via Message center when we are ready to proceed.

[How this will affect your organization:]

If your organization is not using New Outlook this will not impact you.

If your organization does not have S/MIME setup for your users, this will not impact you. 

If your organization is currently using S/MIME, you will soon see controls to apply S/MIME encryption when signing into new Outlook. Similarly, you will be able to verify, sign, decrypt, and reply to S/MIME emails.

[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.

Users with S/MIME certificates on their machine or Smart Card will be able to use this new feature in new Outlook.

Learn more: Overview of the new Outlook for Windows

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.

Users in your organization who are licensed for Microsoft 365 Copilot receive emails when their license is assigned and monthly emails with the latest updates, tips, and tricks for Copilot. These emails are aligned with your organization’s opt-in to end-user communication, ensuring that your users receive information about the products and services they are licensed. We have recently received feedback from customers that they trust emails coming from the @microsoft.com domain. To ensure our communication reaches your users’ inbox and enables your users to learn about and be productive with Copilot, we will be making a change. We will change the email sender address from [email protected] to [email protected].

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

This change will be available by default.

Old sender address:

New email sender address:

[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.

Microsoft Viva Insights will improve adoption insights for Microsoft 365 Copilot by enabling admins and leaders to view usage intensity and retention metrics in the Microsoft Copilot Dashboard. Admins and leaders will be able to explore Microsoft 365 Copilot usage frequency at various thresholds, compare top groups by usage intensity, and measure recurring usage of Copilot over time.

A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is not required to view the adoption insights in the Copilot Dashboard. The users included in the analysis population must have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Admins and leaders with access to view Copilot dashboard will find these updates to the Adoption tab.

• New cards with highlights for usage intensity and retention with the option to click explore more for additional details.
• A new data visual to group the number of active users by number of actions taken.
• A new data visual to measure the number of weeks of consistent Copilot usage.
• A new data visual to measure the number of returning Copilot users over time.

In the Copilot Dashboard, admins and leaders can measure the frequency and consistency of Copilot usage:

The new features will be available by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

These existing admin controls will continue to be respected after the rollout:

• If an admin or leader has not been provided access to the Microsoft Copilot Dashboard, this feature will be unavailable to them. Learn more about providing access to Copilot Dashboard.
• Privacy thresholds set by the admin will continue to be respected with these insights.

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

Clipchamp brings video creation skills to Visual Creator in Copilot. Simply type your prompt, and Clipchamp will generate a bespoke script, source high-quality stock footage, and assemble a video project complete with music, voiceover, text overlays, and transitions. This provides you with a first draft, which you can open in the Clipchamp app to continue editing. You can then export the video to mp4, which will be saved in OneDrive and count towards your OneDrive quota, ready for sharing. This feature is ideal for creating informational videos, video messaging, how-to guides, demos, and video presentations. Available on the Microsoft 365 Copilot plan.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 402192.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this affects your organization:]

Once available, users can type a prompt, and Clipchamp will generate a bespoke script, source high-quality stock footage, and assemble a video project complete with music, voiceover, text overlays, and transitions. 

Video creator limitations:

The video creation skill does not generate new video clips, animations, images or audio. We use content in existing Microsoft 365 service asset libraries (enterprise compliant stock media), to bring your video to life. Once the script is generated, we select the most appropriate audio and imagery available in our asset libraries, to complement both the content and the style of your video. You can edit the video in Clipchamp to update the script, replace the selected media or extend the video with new content.

[What you can do to prepare:]

You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.

Controlling access to your videos:

The video creation skill with generate a Clipchamp video project within the user’s OneDrive (inside a Videos/Clipchamp folder). Users must first open this project in Clipchamp (a link is provided in Copilot) to export a video file (e.g. mp4). For more information about Clipchamp, visit our Clipchamp Adoption page, or the Get Started page on our support site.

Managing access to video creation:

You can find the Visual Creator agent within Microsoft 365 Copilot sidebar. Users must click into the agent to activate the video creation skill.

Access to Copilots agents is centrally managed, in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, by using the Copilot extensibility controls.

Providing feedback:

In addition to existing support and feedback mechanisms, users can provide quick feedback by clicking the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon below their video. Clicking these icons will open the feedback dialog and allow users to enter comments and (optionally) include a screenshot or prompt information.