Microsoft / Office 365 News
Microsoft 365 temporary feature adjustments
To reduce the load on Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services, there have been some temporary adjustments made to handle the increased load due to Corona Virus Home Office work better:
OneNote:
- OneNote in Teams will be read-only for commercial tenants
- The download size and sync frequency of file attachments have been changed
SharePoint:
- Some specific backend operations have been rescheduled to regional evening and weekend. Impacted capabilities include migration, DLP and delays in file management after uploading a new file, video or image
- Video resolution for playback videos is reduced
Stream:
- Meeting recording resolution was adjusted to 720p
- People timeline is disabled for newly uploaded videos
Provisioning delays for multiple scenarios
Scenarios impacted by provisioning delays include, but are not limited to:
- Newly created tenants
- Newly added users to existing tenants
- Users being added to security groups may not be reflected
- Users being granted admin access via Azure Privileged Identity Management (PIM) may not be reflected
- The Microsoft Teams files tab appearing for a SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business sites
Exchange Team Blog: Best practices when decommissioning Exchange 2010
There have been many blog posts on this topic already around, but this one seems to be the most complete one.
It includes the key areas you need to consider when shutting down your Exchange 2010 servers:
- Move your namespace (FQDN and SCP)
- Make sure your mail flow does not pass Exchange 2010 anymore
- Make sure all mailboxes have been moved, and the mailbox databases are removed
- Remove all nodes from the DAG and delete the DAG
- Migrate all legacy Public Folders
- Don’t forget your UM role
- Remove Exchange 2010 ASAs & Offline Address Books (OABs)
- And… finally un-install Exchange 2010
Microsoft 365 Business Voice available in the U.S. on April 1st
This is aimed at users with Business Premium and similar subscriptions and is already available in the UK.
It provides an easier experience for on-boarding and a cheaper way of adding on phone system capabilities without the up-lift to E5 licensing.
Find out more about Office 365 licensing in this recent article.
New on the Roadmap
- Outlook for iOS/Android: Natural language Search
- Outlook will support Microsoft Search that recognizes search queries using language you use every day to filter and narrow search results through either typing or speaking via a new microphone option in the Search bar.
- Planned: April 2020
- Microsoft Teams – Multi-Window Chat
- This allows the Teams client (Windows/Mac) to pop-out individual Teams chat conversations into a separate window.
- Planned: April 2020
- Outlook for iOS: Meeting Insights on the Search page
- A carousel on the Search home page will include quick access to with files and conversation threads that are relevant to the meetings on your calendar for the coming week (Meeting Insights)
- Planned: April 2020
- Outlook for iOS/Android: Actionable calendar event search answers
- You can search for specific calendar results through keywords and will provide answers with quick action options such as RSVP or join and online meeting.
- Planned: Q3/2020
- Exchange Monitoring preview
- This focuses on monitoring the following areas:
- Data from your user’s location to Office 365 cloud service
- Incidents and Advisories that impact your end to end experience are surfaced here
- Near real time signals per scenario to infer the impact
- Exchange monitoring will be integrated in Service Health in M365 Admin center.
- Planned: Q2/2020
- This focuses on monitoring the following areas:
Message Center Updates
- Update available for Office 365 ProPlus on the Monthly Channel
- The monthly channel updates for Office 365 Pro Plus commenced on the 25th March
- Co-editor chat access directly from Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents has been retired
