Microsoft Roadmap, messagecenter en blogs updates van 29-01-2025

Updated January 28, 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 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 late October 2024 (previously mid-October) and expect to complete by early November 2024 (previously late October).

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

[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 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 28, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

As a part of Team’s ongoing effort to enable our customers to create, manage, and run large scale events, end users can now embed Teams town hall in sites they manage. This capability allows town hall attendees to watch the event instance within a particular website.

Embed for town hall introduces embeddable support for town hall engagement features on release. Attendees will have the same engagement feature access within the embed player as they do in client such as Q&A, Captions, Reactions and more.

To implement embed for town hall, organizers can access their town hall events unique embed code from the town hall scheduling template upon publish. Organizers can then take that code and inject it to their SharePoint or Microsoft 365 site as desired. On event start, attendees will be able to view and engage with the embed stream on the published site.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 401120

[When this will happen:]

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

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Users will be able to copy embed code directly from town hall scheduling form on event publish. After the embeddable code is placed in the website, the town hall player will be accessible to attendees who have access to the URL.

Note: Attendee access to the embedded video player is driven by the town hall event access.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Organizers with SharePoint or Microsoft 365 site who want to utilize embed support for town hall can begin implementing the embeddable code upon release.

Updated December 20, 2024: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

The Shifts Graph APIs will transition from beta to production. This change brings enhanced stability and reliability to the APIs, ensuring a seamless experience for developers and users.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 422813.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

You may continue using the API endpoints in beta. However, we recommend migrating to the production endpoints.

To refer to a list of all production (v1.0) APIs, go to the following page and navigate to Teamwork and communications > Shift management: Microsoft Graph REST API v1.0 endpoint reference – Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn

This update is available by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

To update Microsoft Graph APIs from beta to production, change your API calls from the beta endpoint to the v1.0 endpoint and thoroughly test your application to ensure compatibility. Check for any differences between the versions, and update any documentation accordingly.

Updated January 28, 2025: After further review we have decided not to proceed with this change at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Introducing a new Microsoft Purview | Communication Compliance feature that allows users to customize their compliance policies by selecting specific languages for trainable classifiers.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 408533 

[When this will happen:]

Public Preview: We will communicate via Message center when we are ready to proceed.

General Availability (Worldwide): We will communicate via Message center when we are ready to proceed.

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout, all available language models are included by default, often leading to unwanted matches.

After this rollout, you can tailor your policy conditions to run Trainable Classifiers for specific languages, bringing precision to your compliance approach. The selected languages will be applied to all classifiers in the policy. You can update your existing policies for a more language-specific compliance strategy.

This feature will be available by default.

In the Purview compliance portal, the Choose languages option will be in the in the Trainable classifier side panel.

[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 admins about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Learn more: Create and manage communication compliance policies | Microsoft Learn (will be updated before rollout)

Updated January 28, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams: With the Best practice configurations monitoring dashboard in the Teams admin center, Teams admins will be able to monitor the conformance of your tenant to the Microsoft recommended best practices for an optimal collaboration experience on Teams.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 421185.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Ensuring the quality and reliability of user’s collaboration experience using Teams is crucial (specially the meeting-related experiences). Microsoft recommends best practices to ensure that organizations have an optimal environment setup for collaboration.

The Best Practice Configurations monitoring dashboard will assist admins in understanding their tenant’s non-conformance with these best practices, the overall impact, and how to comply with these recommendations.

You’ll find the Best practice configurations dashboard in the Meetings section of the Teams admin center. In this release, we’ll monitor and highlight non-conformance in three key areas:

• Update out-of-date client versions
• Enable the right ports and protocols
• Implement split tunnelling for VPNs

If a location does not adhere to these best practices, it will be highlighted on the dashboard. A widget on the main dashboard will also spotlight non-conforming practices. Also, a list of subnets/IP addresses will be displayed by city, showing the extent of non-conformance for each location. This list can be exported to share with relevant teams, and recommendations for addressing these issues will be available on the same page.

As these issues are resolved, the trend of non-conforming locations will be tracked to help monitor progress.

This new dashboard will be available by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Administrators do not need to do anything to prepare for these changes. They will take effect automatically.

You may want to notify your admins about this change and update any relevant documentation.

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

Updated January 28, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon to Microsoft Teams town halls: For organizers with a Teams Premium license, we are expanding the limit from 20,000 maximum concurrent attendees to 50,000 maximum. The quality and stability of town halls up to this new limit will remain constant, providing high-quality and reliable content for participants. For events with more than 20,000 concurrent attendees, some interactivity features such as chat and reactions will be disabled for all attendees. This message applies to Teams town halls on Windows desktop, on the web, and on iOS/Android. This feature is available for town hall organizers with an active Teams Premium license. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 429538.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

To get started, organizers in your tenant should contact the Microsoft 365 Live Event Assistance Program (LEAP) to get support for audiences of up to 50,000 concurrent attendees.

This change will be available to organizers who contact the LEAP program.

[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.

No other changes in town hall functionality are associated with this rollout. If organizers do not want or need to host events with a maximum capacity greater than 20,000, there will be no impact to your organization.

Learn more

• Microsoft 365 Live Event Assistance Program – Microsoft Adoption
• Plan for Teams town halls – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn (will be updated before rollout begins)

We are committed to continuously improving the Microsoft Teams experience and are excited to bring this new capability to our customers.

Updated January 28, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon for Microsoft Teams: New DVR (digital video recording) functionality for all town halls. This new feature will allow town hall attendees on Windows desktop or the web to interact with a live streaming town hall in the same way they would interact with recorded content. DVR functionality in the town hall enables event attendees to pause and move forward or back in a town hall, navigate to any previous timestamp, and other abilities, making it more convenient to interact with a town hall more and easier to digest the content being presented. This feature is available for Teams town halls from all organizers, regardless of the license assigned to the organizer.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 422804.

[When this will happen:]

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

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

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

After this rollout, the DVR controls will appear when attendees hover their mouse over the content being presented in the town hall. Attendees can:

• Pause, play, and skip 10 seconds forward or backward
• Control the volume of the content with the volume control
• Jump to any point in time, starting from the beginning of the event
• Catch up with the content and join the live event by selecting the Watch Live button next to the volume control

The DVR controls are at the bottom of the Teams window when the Q&A page is open on the right side:

We are committed to continuously improving the Microsoft Teams experience and are excited to bring this new capability to our customers.

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 the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Learn more: Plan for Teams town halls – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn (will be updated before rollout)

Updated January 28, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon: We’re adding support when sharing screens with Microsoft Mesh in Microsoft Teams immersive events. Presenters will now be able to choose whether they’d like to include system audio when starting a screen share in an immersive event. This feature is available for presenters in Mesh with a Teams Premium license. This message applies to Mesh on Windows desktops.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 423475.

[When this will happen:]

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

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

The Share content screen in a Mesh event will have an Include sound option, which includes system audio when sharing content.

This change will be available by default for users to enable.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

No new admin work or action is required in order to use this new capability.

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 28, 2025: We have updated the content. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon: Updates to community analytics features for Microsoft Viva Engage. After this rollout, users will be able to keep up with their community’s activities in real time. We have added additional data ranges to support periods of 7 days, 28 days, 90 days, and 365 days. We have also added a new top conversations table that displays the conversations with the most engagement in the community and new Q&A engagement metrics, including an overview of most popular questions.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 168626.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout: Community analytics had 24-hour refresh periods and limited metrics to 7-day and 28-day periods.

After this rollout: Community analytics will be in real time and include more metrics to help track community engagement over longer time periods. Community analytics are no longer accessed from the About tab. Instead, users can access community analytics by selecting the Analytics icon from the community page header.

There are two new entry points available for community analytics 1) selecting the analytics icon in the community header (replaces the previous entry point in the “About” tab) and 2) the community summary card in the right rail which is visible only to community admins and network admins:

Updated community analytics dashboard:

This change will be on by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Tenant admins: Announce upcoming changes to community analytics to help admins and other community managers prepare and share the user Support documentation.

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

User documentation: Monitor engagement in Viva Engage with analytics – Microsoft Support (will be updated when rollout begins)

Admin documentation: View and manage analytics in Viva Engage | Microsoft Learn

Updated January 28, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

After further review, we are not able to proceed with these clouds: GCC High and DoD. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Coming soon to Microsoft Outlook: Users can move emails between their accounts in the new Outlook for Windows, streamlining organization and productivity. For enterprise users, this feature is controlled by the Set-OWAMailboxPolicy policy managed by admins in Microsoft Exchange PowerShell. By enabling this policy, admins can grant their users the ability to move emails between accounts in a way that aligns with organizational needs and policies. With this rollout, we are introducing a new parameter called -ItemsToOtherAccountsEnabled for the Set-OWAMailboxPolicy policy.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 470018.

[When this will happen:]

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

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

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

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

The new parameter -ItemsToOtherAccountsEnabled controls whether users can move or copy their emails between accounts. By default, the value will be False, which means that the policy is disabled and users won’t be able to move emails between accounts unless an admin changes the policy to True.

If you enable this parameter, users will be able to move emails between accounts in these ways:

1. Dragging and dropping an email from one account to another

2. Using shortcuts:

• Copy: Ctrl C + Ctrl V
• Copy: Ctrl + Drag and drop
• Move: Drag and drop
• Move: Ctrl X + Ctrl V

3. Right-click an email and select Move or Copy from the menu (menu items only available if the policy is enabled)

[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.

Learn more: Set-OwaMailboxPolicy (ExchangePowerShell) | Microsoft Learn

#newoutlookforwindows

Updated January 28, 2025: We have updated the content. Thank you for your patience

Email notifications will start being sent to Forms owners from December 12, 2024.

In MC855685 (August ‘24), Microsoft Forms and Excel provided a new data sync solution which can sync a form’s response data to an Excel workbook, replacing the old data sync solution which will be deprecated by Jan 13th, 2025.

Note: The new data sync can currently only be triggered in Excel for the web. If users want to receive new Forms response data in the Excel desktop app, open the target file in Excel for the web to sync new responses, and then wait for the file to update in the desktop app. Direct syncing support for the Windows and Mac versions of Excel is in progress and will be released soon.

Impact

There are 0 users and 1 groups with a total of 1 forms using the old data sync solution in your tenant in the last 3 months (Aug – Oct 2024).

For GCC: Form owners could get notification in Forms and Excel for the web, but the email notification doesn’t support GCC tenants. Sorry for the inconvenient. Notification in Forms and Excel for the web has already rolled out to GCC tenants. The old data sync solution will start deprecating from Feb 13th, 2025, for GCC tenants. 

Action

To continue syncing new responses from their form to their Excel workbook, users will need to update the syncing solution for each affected form. The notification will be sent directly to form owners to guide users in taking action. If users do not migrate before January 13, 2025, they can still trigger migration to set up the new data sync and sync all data to Excel after Jan 13,2025. For admin: If you would like to notify users directly before the deprecation date, you can request a user ID list by filing a support ticket.

What do users need to do?

• Pay attention to notifications in Forms, Excel for the web and Email. For each form which is using the old syncing solution, they must migrate the form according to the instructions provided. More details can be found here: Update to the new solution for syncing forms responses to Excel – Microsoft Community Hub.
  • Notification in Microsoft Forms

  

  • Notification in Excel for the web

  

  • Notification through email to Form owners: Email subject – Important: Update sync in Forms before January 13, 2025

  

• If users are using the Forms Connector in Power Automate to get response data, they will not be impacted by this change, and no action is needed. 
• 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
• User who are using Excel clients which don’t support the new sync solution (e.g. a perpetual client) can also consider setting up the Power Automate workflow to get updated data in their Excel workbook. 

Updated January 28, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

We are introducing a new entry point to Viva Connections from the SharePoint app bar, which will enhance the integration between the Intranet and Viva Connections.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 468290.

Screenshot of Viva Connections on SharePoint App Bar feature

[When this will happen:]

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

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

General Availability (GCC, GCC High, DoD): We expect to complete by late February 2025.

[How this will affect your organization:]

After the rollout, end users can easily and seamlessly navigate to Viva Connections via any SharePoint site. 

Note: This feature will only be available to customers who have a configured and published dashboard and an enabled Viva Connections experience on their tenants. This feature 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.

We recommend creating awareness about this feature with your users by sending a News post.

You may want to update any relevant documentation.

Organizations can use the unified Microsoft Purview portal to connect Purview to their ChatGPT Enterprise workspaces, enabling them to discover, collect, and store user interactions in the scope of Purview capabilities and policies.

With Purview solutions, organizations can effectively discover and govern these interactions. For instance, you can review all AI interactions and sensitive information detected in the Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI solution. Also, you can use eDiscovery, Data Lifecycle Management (DLM), Communication Compliance (CC), and Insider Risk Management (IRM) solutions to govern this data.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 401125.

[When this will happen:]

Public Preview: We will begin rolling out mid-December 2024 and expect to complete by mid-January 2025.

We will communicate the plan for General Availability in a future post. 

[How this will affect your organization:]

When this feature is available in the Purview portal, you can use the new connector in the Purview Data map called ChatGPT Enterprise to connect to your ChatGPT workspace. 

This change is available for configuration by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

To get started, you will need a Microsoft Azure account with an active subscription, an active Enterprise Purview account, and a ChatGPT Enterprise plan for your organization. This integration also requires you to have configured single sign-on of Microsoft Entra ID with your ChatGPT Enterprise workspace.

If you haven’t started using it yet, we recommend you familiarize yourself with the Purview Data map.

Learn more:

• Subscriptions, licenses, accounts, and tenants for Microsoft’s cloud offerings – Microsoft 365 Enterprise | Microsoft Learn
• How to upgrade from the free to enterprise version of Microsoft Purview | Microsoft Learn
• Scans and ingestion in Purview Data Map| Microsoft Learn
• Microsoft Purview Data Map supported data sources and file types | Microsoft Learn] 

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 admins about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Updated January 28, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Python in Excel allows you to bring the capabilities of Python directly into the Microsoft Excel grid. In September 2024, Python in Excel with standard compute became generally available to all eligible users with access to Excel for Windows. With this upcoming rollout, Python in Excel will also be generally available in Microsoft Excel for the web for all eligible users.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 471001.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout, Python in Excel is only available to eligible users with access to Excel for Windows. After this rollout, eligible users with access to Excel for the web will be able to add Python formulas to their workbooks without any installation required. These Python formulas will be run by Excel in a secure container on the Microsoft Cloud with enterprise-level security and with standard compute. With this release, eligible Excel for the web users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will also be able to use the Copilot in Excel with Python feature, enabling them to leverage the capabilities of AI and Python in Excel for deeper data analysis.

Note: A Python in Excel add-on license gives users premium Python compute for faster calculation times for more powerful data analysis. Some premium Python compute will be included in each user’s Microsoft 365 subscription each month, giving users limited access to faster calculation speeds. After they have used all of their included premium compute, they can continue to use the Python in Excel feature with standard Python compute or choose to purchase or request a Python in Excel add-on license from in-app prompts.

If you would like users in your organization to have full access to premium Python compute, you can purchase and assign them a Python in Excel add-on license in the Microsoft 365 admin center. The Python in Excel add-on license is also offered as a self-service purchased product, which means that eligible end users will be able to request a license or purchase a license through in-app prompts in Excel for the web. Learn more about self-service purchases.

If you have disabled self-service purchases in your tenant, the end user will instead be able to submit a license request to you. These grouped notifications will appear in the Microsoft 365 admin center and you can manage these requests in the Requests tab on the Licenses page. Learn more: Manage self-service license requests in the Microsoft 365 admin center | Microsoft Learn.

The Python in Excel feature is enabled by default.

An example of Python formulas in an Excel workbook:

[What you need to do to prepare:]

• To learn more about Python in Excel, please review the Python in Excel documentation. For specific information around data security, visit: Data security and Python in Excel – Microsoft Support
• As an admin, you still maintain visibility and control over the Python in Excel add-on licenses in your tenant. You can view licenses purchased by users in the Microsoft 365 admin center at Billing > Your Products. You will be able to take control of licenses purchased by users and manage them as you would any other license in your tenant.
• Learn more about how admins can manage self-service purchase for the Python in Excel add-on, including how to opt out: Manage self-service license requests in the Microsoft 365 admin center | 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 28, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Coming soon for the Microsoft Viva Insights app: Leaders can explore organizational and behavioral data using Microsoft 365 Copilot in Viva Insights. After this rollout, leaders can ask questions about their organization in chat and explore new reports.

• New query capabilities: Leaders and their delegates will be able to ask Copilot in Viva Insights questions about their organization’s composition, team collaboration, hybrid work patterns, geographic distributions, and more.
• New Copilot in Viva Insights-driven reports: Leaders and their delegates can also view reports on organizational composition information that include a list of employees and other uploaded attribute information like Function, Manager, and location information like Country or City.
• New Viva Insights app home page: The home page will suggest queries that leaders can use in Copilot in Viva Insights. Previously existing leader reports and personal insights features will continue to be accessible through the Organizational behavior reports and Personal insights sections of the new home page.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 415452.

A Viva Insights premium license is required to access most of the features described in this message. A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is not needed to access the features described in this message.

This message applies to Viva Insights on the web and in the Viva Insights app in Teams for Windows desktop, Teams for the web, and Teams for iOS/Android.

[When this will happen:]

Public Preview: We began rolling out early December 2024 and expect to complete by late December 2024.

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Leaders and delegates entering the Viva Insights app will experience an updated home page and new features in the Copilot in Viva Insights chat pane on the right of the screen:

Leaders and delegates will now be able to ask and visualize a richer set of organizational composition queries in Copilot in Viva Insights chat such as “how many employees do I have in the United States” or “how many new hires joined in the last 3 months?”

This change 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 the rollout. Review your current configuration to determine the impact for your organization. Please make users in your organization aware of this upcoming change and direct them to Viva Insights documentation to learn more about how to use Copilot in Viva Insights.

Fresh data upload: For this update to be valuable to leaders and their delegates, you must upload fresh and complete data once a month. If minimal data is provided, Copilot in Viva Insights will not be able to answer questions completely or accurately. Please refer to Viva Insights documentation for more information about what attributes to upload and how. Before rollout, we will update this post with new and revised documentation.

Data availability: Uploaded data will be available to leaders and their delegates, so don’t upload sensitive Human Resources (HR) attributes that you would not want to be accessible to leaders and delegates. Questions regarding HR data will be answered based on all users who have a Viva Insights license.

Review general manager and delegate roles: This update will be rolled out to anyone with a general manager (GM) role who meets minimum team size, or anyone who has delegate access from a leader. If you do not want a user to have access to Copilot in Viva Insights, you can remove their GM role. If you do not want a delegate to have access, you can remove their delegate access with a Microsoft PowerShell script.

Updated January 28, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

We’re excited to introduce a new feature that allows admins to discover, monitor, and manage Microsoft Teams Premium on a single page in the Teams admin center (TAC). This enhancement aims to streamline the admin experience and offer top-tier management for Teams Premium.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout, admins navigate to multiple portals to manage licenses, view usage reports and manage settings.

After this rollout, admins will be able to:

• Manage licenses: Admins can view license information, assign licenses to users, monitor license utilization, and review and act on end user license requests.
• Monitor usage: Admins can track which features are being used through the Teams Premium usage report and identify opportunities to drive further adoption.
• Manage settings: Feature Advisor provides admins a single view of ALL settings along with the status on configuring and deploying Teams Premium features. It highlights any pending actions needed to fully utilize the premium features.
• Review your Teams Premium subscription: The new experience provides detailed information on Teams Premium licenses, such as the total count, assigned count, unassigned count, and license requests. It also allows administrators to assign licenses that have already been purchased from the Microsoft 365 Admin center. NOTE: Admins can only purchase licenses in the Microsoft 365 admin center. The Teams Premium pages in TAC provides a deep link to the Microsoft 365 admin center to manage the subscription.

Only Global admins can perform license management tasks, such as assigning licenses and approving or rejecting end-user license requests.

This feature does not alter any aspect of Teams Premium but provides an additional method to manage it in the Teams admin center.

The new Teams Premium feature in the Teams admin center:

This feature will be available by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

• Please review your Teams Premium subscription details in the Microsoft 365 admin center to ensure they are accurately reflected in the TAC when this new feature becomes available for your tenant.
• There is no need to change your existing settings for managing Premium features, as they will remain the same in the new feature.
• It may be beneficial to review and update your settings and policies to ensure they align with your organization’s needs and preferences and are applied to the correct premium users.

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

Starting in February 2025, customers with the Microsoft Viva suite or Microsoft Viva Communications and Communities premium licenses will see an option to schedule or edit a poll prior to publication.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 467251.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout, users did not have a way to schedule polls in Engage.

After this rollout, premium-licensed users will have a new option in the publisher to schedule a poll post in the same location as other post types (discussion, question, praise, article). From their drafts, users can publish or edit a poll.

Users may also edit a poll prior to publication from their drafts. Users cannot edit poll posts, including voting options, after publication.

This feature will be available by default.

The new option to schedule or edit a poll prior to publication:

[What you need to do to prepare:]

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date. There is no action for admins to enable or opt-in to this feature. 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: Write and schedule posts, articles, and announcements in Viva Engage – Microsoft Support

The Reliability report, a public preview feature for Windows Autopatch, will retire starting February 28, 2025, and ending by March 1, 2025. This report informs admins about the reliability of an update and the impact crashes have on their devices.

[How will this affect your organization:]

We will remove this report from the Windows Autopatch service and do not currently offer a replacement report or feature.

The Reliability report is currently located at Microsoft Intune > Reports > Windows Autopatch > Windows quality updates > Reports > Reliability report (preview)

We appreciate the usage and feedback you have provided during this preview. Windows Autopatch will be taking this feedback into consideration to reevaluate the feature and improve a future version.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

No action is required. If you have any questions or concerns, or need assistance, please file a service request in the Microsoft Intune admin center.

Coming soon from Microsoft Purview | Endpoint Data Loss Prevention: To improve classification operations, data classification for files stored on macOS devices will be triggered automatically when files are accessed and read.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 476099.

[When this will happen:]

Public Preview: We will begin rolling out late January 2025 and expect to complete by late February 2025.

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

This is a system level change for those macOS devices that have deployed endpoint DLP. This change will not be visible to the end user.

This change 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. You may want to update any relevant documentation.

Learn more: The Notes in the section called Best practice for endpoint DLP policies in Learn about Endpoint data loss prevention | Microsoft Learn

New Copilot Prompt Gallery Prompts app for Microsoft 365 available: Explore full prompt collections across Copilot and agents in the new Prompts app available on Teams, Outlook, and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 473463.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Prompts app will be available for your users to install from Teams, Outlook, and Microsoft 365 Copilot app stores.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

Copilot Prompt Gallery app will be available for your users to install if:

1. Teams apps are enabled for your tenant: Customize default settings for Teams apps that work on Outlook and the Microsoft 365 app
2. Prompts app has been configured for users in your tenant to install: How to manage the availability of an app in your organization 

Coming soon: To make the language more friendly and relevant for all users, we will update the user experience for “More information required” during authentication method registration (Microsoft Entra).

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

Before this rollout: Before a user starts the process of registering a new method for multifactor authentication and/or account recovery, they typically encounter this screen first:

After this rollout, users will encounter this new screen instead:

This change 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 the rollout. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation that includes screenshots of the current UX.

Some in-product messages in Microsoft Teams can now be controlled with the New-CsTeamsUpdateManagementPolicy command. Using this control, tenant admins can limit in-product messages relating to periodic What’s New and Conferences updates.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC): This update is available now.

[How this will affect your organization:]

Setting policies to disable in-product messages will stop users from seeing What’s New and Conferences awareness messages within Teams.

For more information, visit the -DisabledInProductMessages Microsoft Learn page for the PowerShell policy overview regarding disabling these in-product notification types for Teams users.

[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.

Coming soon to Microsoft Purview | Data Loss Prevention (DLP): To provide greater flexibility to manage your organization’s DLP policy workflows, we are integrating DLP with Microsoft Power Automate. With this capability you will be able to trigger custom Power Automate workflows as a DLP policy action.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 380721.

[When this will happen:]

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

With this feature, DLP admins will have the ability to execute custom workflows they have created in Power Automate when a DLP policy is violated.

1. Create a workflow in Power Automate using the DLP rule trigger:

2. Add Run a Power Automate workflow as an action in a DLP rule:

This change 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. Consider updating any training or reference material for your Data Loss Prevention admins and evaluate if you would like to use this new capability.

Learn more: Get started with Power Automate integration | Microsoft Learn

Coming soon for Microsoft Teams: A new Mic volume indicator on the user bar in Teams meetings. This feature will provide users with real-time visual feedback on their audio levels in the meeting, eliminating the need to ask, “Can you hear me?” This feature is designed to minimize interruptions as well as enhance user confidence and meeting effectiveness.

This feature applies to Teams on Windows desktop and Mac desktop.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 468274.

[When this will happen:]

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out in early March 2025 and expect to complete by mid-March 2025.

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

General Availability (GCC High): We will begin rolling out in mid-May 2025 and expect to complete by mid-June 2025.

General Availability (DoD): We will begin rolling out in late June 2025 and expect to complete by early August 2025.

[How this will affect your organization:]

This feature will be available to users by default and has no admin policy.

Users can select the Mic icon and review the Microphone section of the menu to find out more about their audio levels in the meeting:

[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.

Learn more: Muting and unmuting your mic in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support

Coming soon to Microsoft SharePoint: The new Preview mode can be used to understand how Pages and News posts will appear on different device types when viewed by an audience.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 473452.

[When this will happen:]

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

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

[How this will affect your organization:]

After this rollout, a Preview button will display in the command bar while users are editing Pages and News posts in SharePoint. After selecting Preview, users can see what the page will look like in view mode for the audience. When previewing Pages, users can navigate between Desktop and Mobile device types. When previewing News posts, users can also choose to view the email version as Desktop or Mobile device types.

This change will be available by default.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

You may want to notify users, update your user training, and prepare your help desk.

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

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

• This update addresses an issue with High dynamic range (HDR) that causes some games to appear oversaturated. This occurs when you use Auto HDR.
• This update improves the previews that show when your cursor hovers over apps on the taskbar. The update also improves their animations.
• An icon will appear in the system tray when you use an app that supports Windows Studio Effects. This only occurs on a device that has a neural processing unit (NPU).
• In File Explorer, when you right-click items in the left pane, the “New Folder” command appears on the context menu.
• You can change time zones in Settings > Time & Language > Date & Time.

• Windows 11, version 24H2: KB5050094
• Windows 10, version 22H2: KB5050081