Missed The Experts Conference (TEC) 2021? Catch up on the sessions on-demand
On the show today Steve and Paul discuss TEC – Paul talked about his session Group Policies Are Dead; Long Live Intune and Steve’s session Removing the last Exchange On-Premises Server – plus many other great sessions which you can watch on-demand now. Although virtual one of the greatest part of TEC was the lively Q&A after each session, which allowed everyone who watched the session to grab the mic and join the discussion.
Next year, TEC is back in-person so the all-important networking can happen face to face. The Experts Conference 2022 takes place September 20-21, 2022, in the Loews Atlanta Hotel.
If you’re wondering which Microsoft 365-related sessions to catch up on, then check out Tony’s recommendations then watch TEC 2021 Sessions- The Experts Conference (TEC) 2021
If you like what you see – sign up for The Experts Conference 2022
Commsverse 2021
Can’t wait until next year for in-person Microsoft 365 conferences? Neither can we. Paul, Mike Weaver and other Practical 365 authors including Jason Wynn will be at Commsverse – the independent UK Microsoft Teams conference next week, September 15-16th, UK. It’ll be the first time Paul and I have been face-to-face since 2019 and we are looking forward to it.
If you aren’t in the UK or not ready for in-person conferences just yet then you can still attend Commsverse. It’s a hybrid conference, so you can join sessions from home as well as in-person. Paul, Mike, Jason and myself – plus a long list of other experts, Microsoft product group staff and MVPs will be presenting sessions.
To find out more about what’s going to be on offer at Commsverse, organisers Mark Vale, Phillipa Digby and Randy Chapman joined me for a chat. (Martin Boam couldn’t join us unfortunately).
Although it’s next week, Mark let us know reserve tickets have been made available so you can sign up – but only until the end of this week. Sign up at Commsverse – The Microsoft Teams Conference
New Teams features – but not all come for free
Renaming channels will rename folder
We’ve mentioned it before on the show, but the good news is that it’s finally happening. Coming this month, you’ll soon be able to rename a channel in Teams, and the underlying folder in the SharePoint document library will follow suit.
Azure Virtual Desktop and VDI Improvements
On the list of top features needed for Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365 and Citrix environments is multi-window support for meetings in Teams. This will arrive in October 2021, with live caption support for Citrix arriving in November.
Introducing 2×2 gallery view for Teams meetings viewed in Safari browser
Mac users will rejoice if they are Safari users and have to use a browser for Teams meetings – such as in scenarios where Microsoft Cloud App Security proxies access. 2×2 gallery mode, already available on Chrome and Edge arrives this month.
Left navigation improvements in the Teams admin center
Why leave something the same when you can change it? Jokes aside, changes to the navigation menu in the Teams admin center are long overdue, as Collaboration Bars have been renamed since the last update; this change is described in the message center and is rolling out from mid-September onwards.
New Polling App “Polls” in Teams meeting and chat
Forms will release a more discoverable app named “Polls” in Teams. Adding polls to your Teams chats/meetings via this new “Polls” app will be the same experience as before (via the Forms app), but now it’s under a new app name and Teams-branded icon. This arrives October.
Public Preview of New Conditions in Teams DLP
One of the top requested features for Teams DLP, an Office 365 E5 feature, are in public preview, providing some parity between Office 365 E3’s Exchange Online DLP functionality:
- Sender is
- Recipient is
- Sender domain is
- Recipient domain is
Another change we’d love to see would be Teams DLP to make it into the E3 suite. One can dream, surely?
Announcing Public Preview of New Conditions in Teams DLP – Microsoft Tech Community
Enable Teams users to purchase Teams apps through the Teams store
One to watch as we’ll expect some admin controls here. Or a re-think about the types of customer that this is suitable for. Teams users will now have the ability, from October onwards to buy third-party apps themselves, without IT or admin intervention. Shadow IT in your Enterprise IT? It could get confusing. We’ll keep our eyes on this one and recommend you do as well.
Real time data for Teams Meetings in Teams Admin Center and Teams Clients
As Tony wrote about last week, Teams will get the ability for real-time telemetry on the client performance. This shows your bitrate, packet loss, jitter, video quality and more. It’s a niche feature but useful when checking or troubleshooting client-side issues, and will also be available in the Teams admin center. Is it worthy of inclusion in the Advanced Communications license? Let us know!
Teams Advanced Communications Add-on (Version 2) Ready to Go (practical365.com)
Insights in Microsoft 365 becomes part of Microsoft Viva
Delve MyAnalytics, Insights emails, Cortana emails – the Viva Insights components that have existed for a few years sat under different, slightly confusing names and brands. Wisely, Microsoft are bringing these together by re-branding everything under Viva Insights. It means that Viva isn’t only available in Teams going forward and these older product names will be disappearing shortly. As in – today our MyAnalytics Digest Emails sported a new Viva look.
And a new Viva Insights homepage will be available at insights.viva.office.com as well as via the Microsoft 365 app launcher on Office.com in place of MyAnalytics.
Daily briefing and MyAnalytics branding updates to reflect Microsoft Viva – Microsoft Tech Community
Intune gives support for Android 12, but is taking away support for older versions
Android will be moving to support Android 9 (Pie) and higher on October 1, 2021. Teams Android devices are not impacted by this announcement and will continue to be supported regardless of their Android OS version.
Google is making some significant changes in Android 12 that affect management capabilities available to Intune. If you are currently using or planning to use Android 12 devices, see the blog Android 12 Day Zero Support for Microsoft Endpoint Manager for details on how this new OS will be supported.
Android 12 Day Zero Support with Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Outlook changes on the way
Outlook client support for records management
When a message has a record label, Outlook will natively block corresponding edit and delete operations. We wonder what the experience in non-Microsoft clients will be like, such as IMAP, or when using MFCMapi. This isn’t one for this month or even this year – it’s planned for February 2022.
Tone detection in Microsoft Editor for Outlook on the web
Ever sent an email and wished you hadn’t? Or are you proud of your prose and don’t want it interfered with. Either way, Microsoft will be introducing a new feature in Microsoft Editor in Outlook on the web (bit of a mouthful, right?) to help with your tone.
Paul thinks some folks really won’t like this and points to the use of sarcasm in the UK. I’m sure no-one will mind it in the UK. Sarcastic comments aside, actually – sarcasm is one area that doesn’t work well in written text and email and is often misinterpreted so I’ll be keen to try this out. You can try this now or soon as it’s rolling out right now.
New minimum Outlook for Windows version requirements for Microsoft 365
Finally, this November 1st, only Outlook 2013 SP1 with the latest fixes and higher (so Outlook 2016, 2019, and Outlook in M365 Apps for Business/Enterprise) will be able to connect to Exchange Online. It’s long overdue as these clients – and Outlook 2013, haven’t been supported for some time. The key reason for this is because legacy authentication support is going away, but also because Microsoft want to add support for HTTP/2 in Microsoft 365.
Need to find clients using legacy auth? Check out my article Switching off legacy authentication for Exchange Online
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