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Microsoft 365 Roadmap - November update.


Hi, hope you enjoyed the last bit of Summer. It was a busy few months with a lot of things happening. There was good bit of updates in the Microsoft 365 world as well.

Back in September I had mentioned of a few of the Microsoft 365 interesting and much discussed features among my clients ("Highly Discussed Office 365 features in dev/testing "). Here is an update on those features and others that are going the rounds:

Following features in my September list have been launched and should be available in your tenant:
Microsoft Bookings - mobile app read-only mode
Microsoft Secure Score support for new controls
Malware Detect
Microsoft Teams - Call Queues
ATP SIEM Integration

And the "Privileged access management in Office 365" rolling out now.

ATP SIEM integration is pretty big in that, a few of my clients are looking to have a consolidated place to get their reporting.

Microsoft Teams - Call Queues is, for now, a port of existing Skype features and more updates are coming looks like.

Rest of the features I had listed in my blog  are still in dev/test and looks like will be released in the next month or so.

Here are a few of the new features that should be interesting that are launched or in dev/testing are:
SharePoint web parts: web part to web part connections
Status: Launched
"Let web parts talk to other web parts and your pages and experiences become more dynamic and interactive. You will be able to configure web parts to get their property values from other web parts, including updating those values based on selection state."


Microsoft Secure Score controls include compliance data
Status: Launched
"Controls in Secure Score will include compliance information on how they map to GDPR, ISO, and NIST compliance requirements."

I liked secure score in Microsoft 365 in that it provides a checklist that I can go against and tailor based on my customer needs. With this update, GDPR, the most talked about now a days, shows up as a score that I can easily walk my clients through.

Microsoft Teams Admin Roles
Status: Launched
"Facilitate the administration of Microsoft Teams in your organization with new Azure Active Directory roles. Users can be assigned the Teams admin roles via the Azure Admin Portal."

Now, that is one more privileged access that you can manage.

Outlook for Windows: Lift 500 folder limit for shared mailboxes
Status: Rolling out (EoY 2018)
"Outlook has improved synchronization of folders by removing the 500 folder limit for shared mailboxes."

There were a couple of my customers who were struggling to solve the issue. Not this is a big news for them and will help immensely without having to architect a whole new solution.

Manage Teams from Admin Center
Status: Rolling out (Now)
"A list of all teams in your organization is now available directly in the Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business Admin Center. Simply click on “Teams” in the left navigation and select “Manage Teams” to see this list"

This is available in my tenant and I checked it out. The Teams admin center has changed good bit. Saw the list of Teams and little bit of administration that we can do there.

Live events in Yammer
Status: In Dev (EoY)
"Allow users to host and drive conversations through live townhall events, broadcasted directly on Yammer's feed using Stream."

Shared Line Appearance for Microsoft Teams
Status: In Dev (EoY)
"Shared Line Appearance handles multiple calls on a specific number called a shared number. SLA can configure any enterprise voice enabled user as a shared number with multiple lines to respond to multiple calls. The calls are not actually received on the shared number, instead they are forwarded to users that act as delegates for the shared number. Any one of the delegates can pick up the call while the rest of the delegates get a notification on their phone about who picked up the call and which line has become busy as a result."

This is an interesting feature and some of my clients are looking forward to it.

Call Park for Microsoft Teams
Status: In Dev (EoY)
"Call Park is a feature that enables you to place a call on hold in the cloud rather than on your phone, for you or someone else to retrieve from another endpoint in your organization using a unique code. Example scenarios to use Call Park are: (1) A receptionist parking a call for someone on the factory floor so they can retrieve from a nearby device. (2) parking a call on the mobile Teams App as her phone battery is dying, and then retrieving from a meeting room, and (3) A support representative parking a customer call and sending an announcement on a Teams channel for an expert to retrieve the call and assist the customer."

SharePoint and Teams: SharePoint web parts as tabs in Teams
Status: In Dev (EoY)
"We’re working towards directly exposing SharePoint web parts as tabs in Microsoft Teams - including their configuration options. Now, your custom development can be used in more places throughout your organization’s collaboration and communication efforts."

This could bring the published content in SPO to Teams. So, one does not have to leave Teams to get the company news.


So, keep tuned in. I will bring more updates as I see them. 

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