Microsoft made over 100 updates and announcements in the month of March 2025 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.
This month, Microsoft launched the Microsoft 365 Setup Expert, an AI-driven tool created by FastTrack engineers to simplify the deployment and setup process for Microsoft 365. This solution is designed to support IT admins, decision-makers, and other stakeholders with fast, accurate guidance tailored to their roles and scenarios.
Key Features:
Prepurchase Guidance: Helps organizations assess which Microsoft 365 licenses and features are best suited for their needs, including considerations around compliance, remote work, and security.
Post-Purchase Support: Assists in deploying core and advanced Microsoft 365 features, troubleshooting issues, and scaling deployments efficiently.
Trusted Information: Draws from validated Microsoft sources to ensure accuracy in deployment recommendations.
Role-Aware Interaction: Delivers customized responses for users with different levels of technical expertise, from IT admins to business leaders.
Benefits:
Accelerates and simplifies deployment planning
Reduces dependency on highly credentialed administrators
Improves cross-team collaboration
Helps organizations make informed purchasing and rollout decisions
Microsoft 365 Setup Expert is positioned as a powerful new resource that enables faster, more confident decision-making and deployment planning across a variety of organization types.
In March, Microsoft announced several General Availability and Preview Feature updates to Defender for Cloud:
General Availability (GA) Updates
Enhanced Container Protection for AKS Nodes (March 30, 2025): Defender for Cloud now offers agentless vulnerability assessment and malware detection for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) nodes. This enhancement allows organizations to identify and remediate vulnerabilities and detect malware without deploying agents, streamlining security for containerized environments.
Agentless VM Scanning Support for Customer-Managed Keys (March 26, 2025): Agentless scanning for Azure virtual machines with customer-managed key (CMK) encrypted disks is now generally available. This feature enhances security assessments for VMs without the need for agents.
File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) in Azure Government (March 3, 2025): File Integrity Monitoring based on Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is now generally available in Azure Government. This feature helps meet compliance requirements by monitoring critical files and registries in real-time.
Microsoft has released 14 new connectors for Copilot to expand its capabilities to more platforms such as SalesForce Knowledge, ZenDesk Help Desk, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.
You can test the new connectors: https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home#/MicrosoftSearch/Connectors/add
Check out the Microsoft Graph connectors gallery: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftsearch/connectors-gallery
By mid-April, M365 Admins will be able to add-on (for additional costs) OCR capabilities in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business for specific users/groups or everyone in the tenant. This improvement makes all files searchable, boosting their discoverability and aiding compliance efforts like eDiscovery.
The Microsoft Outlook app for iOS and Android now allows users to request a recall of emails sent to colleagues within their organization. Since this new feature has been set to complete rollout by late March 2025, the feature should be now generally available for Worldwide, GCC, and GCC High tenants. It provides users with an additional control to retract emails sent in error. The update will occur automatically and does not require any administrative action. It is important to reiterate that this feature only works when you have sent an email to user(s) within your organization. To use the new feature:
- View a message in Outlook from your Sent folder and select the ellipses (...) at the top-right corner
- Select the Recall button
Coming in April, Microsoft is renaming the default "Files" tab in channels to "Shared". This change is focused on enabling a new vertical for files and links shared within posts in the channel. Similar to OneDrive, users will have the ability to select "In Library" or "In posts". When the user selects posts, they can filter down to view Recent, Files, and Links, enabling users to quickly access and reference files and links that are shared in posts, without having to scroll through various conversations.
The meeting organizer can use the Scheduling Poll in Outlook to create and schedule meetings minimizing the back-and-forth emails to identify a common available time slot for all meeting participants.
Last month, we saw Microsoft add a number of enhancements to the desktop application for Teams. These include the ability to resize to as small as 360x502px or 502x360px, as well as freely adjust the width of the main and side panels, allowing users to fit Teams where they want on their display.
Additionally, Microsoft is adding the ability for users to share Teams apps and agents directly from the side panel, as well as contact information directly from a channel. These enhancements are focused on making collaboration more accessible, as well as streamlining the sharing of apps and information.
Microsoft Teams will introduce a new "Tag mentions" filter in the Activity feed, allowing users to see their tag mentions in chats and channels. The existing @Mentions filter allows users to catch up quickly on personal mentions
Microsoft will begin rolling out mid-February 2025 and expects to complete by late April 2025 (previously late February).
There are new features highlighted in Microsoft Defender XDR announced at the Microsoft Secure 2025 conference. Key innovations include the Security Copilot Phishing Triage Agent, which autonomously identifies and resolves false positives in phishing incidents, and Microsoft Purview Data Security Investigations, which integrates data security with SOC operations for faster incident response. Additionally, enhancements in collaboration security for Microsoft Teams and OAuth app insights in Exposure Management are introduced. These advancements aim to streamline security operations, improve threat detection and response, and protect organizations against sophisticated cyber threats.
Microsoft has introduced Microsoft Entra Health alerts, a new feature designed to enhance tenant health monitoring by detecting potential degradation. This capability builds on existing health metric data streams, offering automated alerts for anomalies at the tenant level. The alerts help IT teams proactively manage tenant health by providing timely intelligence on issues like spikes in multifactor authentication (MFA) failures. Available to premium-licensed tenants with at least 100 monthly active users, these alerts can be accessed via the Microsoft Entra admin center or Microsoft Graph, enabling integration with third-party tools for comprehensive observability and quick remediation.
Microsoft has announced that the Microsoft 365 E5 Security license is now available as an add-on to Microsoft 365 Business Premium license, providing enhanced security features for small and medium businesses (SMBs). This add-on includes advanced identity and access controls, extended detection and response (XDR), identity threat detection and response (ITDR), device security, email and collaboration security, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) security. These features aim to protect SMBs from sophisticated cyber threats, streamline security management, and offer cost-effective solutions compared to purchasing individual products separately.