April 2023 Microsoft 365 Announcement Highlights

Microsoft made over 100 updates and announcements in the month of April 2023 for the Microsoft 365 platform. Don’t have time to read them all? We’ve gone through all of them and put together what we feel are the most important updates for you to be aware of.

The Teams Admin Center now has a fresh view for monitoring recently deleted teams and optionally restoring them within 30 days of deletion.  There’s also a new view for monitoring teams with upcoming expiration dates, which can help administrators plan and engage with business stakeholders on team renewal decisions.

Previously, users had to open a separate filter panel to see any applied filters on their lists.  Applied filters will now be displayed at the top of the list, making them easier to see and quicker to adjust. Remember that lists can be surfaced inside SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, or the standalone Microsoft Lists app.

On April 11, 2023 Microsoft announced the upcoming retirement of the Azure Information Protection (AIP) Unified Labeling add-in for Office. The feature is scheduled to officially reach retirement after 12 months. To continue using sensitivity labels powered by Microsoft Purview Information Protection in Office applications, organizations must transition to the built-in labeling experience in Microsoft 365 Apps.

LAPS allows administrators to manage the local administrator account of devices. The advantage of LAPS is that you can prevent PtH (Pass the Hash) attacks against your admin credentials by using a locally stored credential.

LAPS also provides a mechanism for limited timeframe admin access - once you use the local admin password, it will reset either immediately or on a timer. This was a highly anticipated feature, so its release to public preview is widely celebrated.

Since the release of SharePoint workflows, Microsoft has evolved workflow orchestration to not only encompass SharePoint, but all the productivity services you use with Microsoft 365 and beyond. With the continued investment in Power Automate as the universal solution to workflow, Microsoft is retiring SharePoint 2013 workflows.

When this will happen:

• Starting April 2nd, 2024, SharePoint 2013 workflows will be turned off for any newly created tenants.

• Starting April 2nd, 2026, Microsoft will remove the ability to run, or create and execute SharePoint 2013 workflows for existing tenants.

How this will affect your organization

If your organization still uses SharePoint 2013 workflows, they will no longer function after April 2nd, 2026. We recommend customers to move to Power Automate or other supported solutions.

• Use the Microsoft 365 Assessment tool to scan your tenants for legacy workflow usage.

• Review Guidance: Migrate from classic workflows to Power Automate flows in SharePoint

• Review the Power Automate resources as a solution to legacy workflows.

This includes:

• Basic filters are comprised of basic criteria, such as, subject, sender, and recipient.
• Advanced filters include more complex criteria such as NetworkMessadeID, Sender IP, and Attachment SHA256.
• URL filters focus on URLs or domains associated with threats or attacks.
• File filters relate to attachments like file name and type that may be linked to a threat.
• Authentication filters can identify DMARC, DKIM, SPF authentication results.
  
  Apart from filters, the new enhancements also include customizable exports and end-user clicks data in Threat Explorer.

Microsoft is releasing a new feature to Microsoft Forms that will allow users to edit their responses after the form has been completed.  The form, however, does need to still be open in the browser for it to be edited.  If the form window has been closed, their answers cannot be edited. Authors of the Forms must select the check box “Allow respondents to edit their responses” to enable the feature in the Form settings.  The feature is scheduled to be released in May 2023 and completion of the rollout should finish late May 2023.

• Target APP and managed apps ACP based on device OS version
• Target APP and managed apps ACP to specific device models or device manufacturers
• Target different managed apps ACP based on device management type, including unmanaged devices

Your existing policies will stay as is, however, Microsoft recommends you move your policies to filters with MAM to use the assignment granularity it provides.

Microsoft is releasing a new feature to Microsoft Forms that will allow users to edit their responses after the form has been completed.  The form, however, does need to still be open in the browser for it to be edited.  If the form window has been closed, their answers cannot be edited. Authors of the Forms must select the check box “Allow respondents to edit their responses” to enable the feature in the Form settings.  The feature is scheduled to be released in May 2023 and completion of the rollout should finish late May 2023.

In order to ensure smooth transition to the new webinar experience, Microsoft has temporarily continued the old webinar policy setting of AllowMeetingRegistration in controlling the availability of the new webinar. Now with successful introduction of the new webinar, we will be decoupling the settings that control the availability of the old (via AllowMeetingRegistration in meeting policy) and the new (via AllowWebinar in events policy) webinar.

The current state of enforcement with coupling of AllowMeetingRegistration and AllowWebinar controlled the behavior of the webinar entry point in New Meeting dropdown in Teams Calendar. Below is summary of the current state and changes this will bring highlighted in red if no action is taken: 

By decoupling:

• AllowMeetingRegistration will only control whether require registration option is available in Teams meetings. Availability of require registration option is not impacted by this change.
• AllowWebinar will only control whether there will be the webinar entry point with the new webinar experience under new meeting dropdown in Teams Calendar.

You can configure the new events policy using Powershell cmdlets: New-CsTeamsEventsPolicy, Set-CsTeamsEventsPolicy, Grant-CsTeamsEventsPolicy, Get-CsTeamsEventsPolicy, Remove-CsTeamsEventsPolicy.