Microsoft made over 100 updates and announcements in the month of September 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.
- Automatically View Up to 49 Videos (7x7) in Teams Meeting
Microsoft Teams Meetings currently supports a maximum of 9 videos (3x3) on the screen by default (in Gallery view). For seeing more than 9 videos, a user needs to manually select the ‘Large Gallery’ view. With this update, users will be able to automatically see up to 49 videos (7x7) on their screen by default without explicit action. However, Large Gallery view will continue to exist as an option. - Configure navigation links to open in a new tab
When it comes to designing intranets in SharePoint, a common question is whether it’s possible to control how site navigation links behave. Previously, you could not define whether each link would open within the same tab or a new tab in the browser. With this new feature, you’ll now be able to specify this behavior and optimize the user experience. - Collaborate in Teams meetings with Excel Live
Excel Live allows users to share Excel spreadsheets stored locally on their computers or in OneDrive while allowing all other participants the ability to also collaborate on the spreadsheet directly from within the meeting window. With this new feature, you no longer have to worry about sending links to Excel files before or during the meeting or worry about you have the right permissions in place so that the users can access them. From the Share window in a meeting, scroll down to the Excel Live section to share a file using this feature. It is scheduled to begin rollout mid-October and is expected to be complete by late November. - Windows 11 2022 Update Now Available
Windows 11, version 22H2 - also referred to as the Windows 11 2022 Update - is now available for eligible Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices. This is the first major update to Windows 11, offering important new features designed to keep your organization safe in an ever-changing threat landscape without compromising the Windows experiences that help end users collaborate. For details on our overall rollout strategy for this release, see How to get the Windows 11 2022 Update. To see how the update will be offered to end users, watch this video. - Retired: Safe Attachments Policy "Replace" Action
Microsoft has announced the retirement of the “Replace” action from the Safe Attachment policies which is applied to messages found to contain malware. The “Replace” action still allows the message to be delivered however the original attachments are removed and replaced with a text attachment notifying the recipient that the original attachments were removed due to malware. The retirement of this feature will occur in 2 phases. The first phase will apply the “Block” action to existing policies containing the “Replace” action and is expected to be completed by the end of October 2022. The second phase will remove the “Replace” option from the dashboard completely and the timeline for this is still to be announced. - New Stream Migration Tool
In July, Microsoft announced moving Stream over to SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and Yammer. As part of this change, Microsoft has created a migration tool to assist in moving content from Stream (classic). The migration tool is available in preview with a few customers today, but it will be made available to everyone later this month. To access this tool, go to the Stream Admin Center, and click on the “Stream Migration (preview)” tab. The migration tool is listed on this tab, and the link will take you to the SharePoint Admin Center (you’ll need to be a SharePoint Admin to run this tool). You can also directly access the Stream migration tool inside Migration Manager from the SharePoint Admin Center. Microsoft has also updated Stream (classic) Usage Reports to help your migration effort. - Granular Policies for Request Files
Microsoft is adding new policies to Request Files & Anyone links to better enable customers to configure sharing in their tenant to match their specific needs & scenarios. With this change, customers who have chosen to disable Anyone links for OneDrive will now be able to enable Anyone links for just the Request Files feature.
Today, when Anyone links are disabled for OneDrive, the Request Files feature is also disabled and unavailable. With this change, it will be possible to enable the Request Files feature (which uses Anyone links) without also enabling standard Anyone links for other files & folders. Customers who wish to manage these two features together will continue to do so with no changes.
