Come March 20th, it will be springtime for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. This is an exciting time with new possibilities and opportunities, and it excites me to bring some of the features in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap to you. The ones shown below were handpicked based upon feedback I get in the field:
Office 365 Groups: naming policy in Azure Active Directory:
Status: Launched – March 19
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Administrators can configure a policy for appending text to the beginning or end of a group name and email address for groups no matter where a group is created (e.g. Outlook, Planner, Power BI, etc.). Administrators can also configure a list of specific blocked words that can’t be used in group names, and rely on the native list of thousands of blocked words to keep their directories clean.
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Notes: This is a good feature to have. Every client of mine asks about governance in Teams. Groups is the backbone, and it adds to a growing number of control points.
What can you do?
Govern the naming policy- add prefix or suffix, include fixed string or attributes ([Department], [Company], [Office], [StateOrProvince], [CountryOrRegion], [Title]).
Block specific words in the name of the group – Upload a set of blocked words.
What License do you need?
Azure AD Premium P1 for enterprise clients. Azure AD Basic for EDU clients.
How to create the policy?
For now, the policy can be created only using PowerShell. You will also need the Preview version of the Azure AD PowerShell. So, if you have the GA version of Azure AD PowerShell then, you will need to uninstall that and install the preview version.
Windows Hello Fast sign in for Shared Windows Devices:
Status: Launched – December 18
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Users of shared Windows devices can login in less than 5 seconds to a shared PC, even if they have never used that PC before.
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Notes: This is a great improvement. Our clients with F1 or Firstline workforce will love this. One of the common complaints has been about the time it takes to switch the user context. The new login time helps to improve efficiency. I have tried this out on 1809 and the new version is a massive upgrade from its older counterpart.
Windows Autopilot Reset:
Status: Launched – December 18
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This feature extends the zero-touch experience from deployment of new Windows 10 devices to reset scenarios where a device is being repurposed for a new user. We’re making it possible to completely reset and redeploy an Intune-managed Windows 10 device into a fully business-ready state without having to physically access the device. All you need to do is click a button in Intune
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Notes: Another excellent feature. Previously, Autopilot was available for those brand new devices shipped from a manufacturer. Also the policy could be setup for those Azure AD Joined devices. In a medium/large organization, the devices will invariably Hybrid Azure AD Joined. This new update changes it all. We now can use the Autopilot feature when we are re-purposing an existing device and can apply the policy to Hybrid Azure AD joined device.
Office 365 IP Address and URL Web service:
Status: Launched – December 18
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Office 365 administrators can use a script or REST call to consume a structured list of endpoints from the Office 365 IP Address and URL web service and update the configurations of perimeter firewalls and other network devices. This will ensure that traffic bound for Office 365 is identified, treated appropriately and managed differently from network traffic bound for generic and often unknown Internet web sites. For more information on how to use the Office 365 IP Address and URL web service see aka.ms/IPURLWS
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Notes: This is awesome for many of my clients. They can now automate the process of updating the firewall and the peripheral devices which otherwise was hitherto a manual or outsourced to the peripheral product vendor.
Meeting notes sharing:
Status: Launched – March 19
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We integrated with Outlook’s calendar information so now when you use the app to capture your notes or whiteboard during a meeting, OneDrive will intelligently prompt you to share the file with the other meeting attendees.
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Notes: This is a pretty good utility to make meetings as productive as possible. It could help to get those meeting notes to everyone sooner.
SharePoint mobile: create a News link from an external source:
Status: Launched – December 18
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With News links, you can now bring in news articles from external sources. And now you can do this from your mobile device through the SharePoint mobile app. The News link feature gives you the option to paste in an external URL. And then it generates a thumbnail and gives you the option to adjust the primary text. Once you save it, the news article goes into the SharePoint news service as a new News article. And when a person clicks on it, they will be taken to the original source to read the article.
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Notes: Will come handy while realizing a Communications site to your client.
Create an org-wide team (for up to 2,500 users) in Microsoft Teams:
Status: Launched – November 18
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Microsoft Teams will support an easy way for everyone in an organization with up to 2,500 active users to be a part of a single team for collaboration with the new org-wide team type. With this feature, all internal users (up to 2,500 active users) will be added as members automatically.
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Notes: Possible use of Teams as Intranet portal for organizations with under 1000 users and those who are not into Content management features.
SharePoint admin center improvements:
Status: Launched – December 18
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The new SharePoint admin experience provides a completely revamped SharePoint admin center that draws heavily on our modern principles… an administrative console designed to help IT achieve more, so their users can achieve more. Beginning in late October we’re adding new capabilities to this admin center to include: The ability to set as your default admin center Improvements to managing group-connected sites New options to manage and configure hub sites and associated sites Simplified configuration of sharing controls that are more aligned to the OneDrive sharing controls Additional options to allow for configuring default site creation properties
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Notes: Some very useful features here. One that I like is the ability to see the modern sites created in one pane. This was not possible so far.
Risky IP for Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) extranet lockout protection:
Status: In Public Preview. Rolling out – Q2 19
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Risky IP is a feature in Azure Active Directory Connect Health for ADFS. Depends on the threshold setup from the portal, Connect Health will notify admins if there are potential IP attacks through ADFS. With Extranet Lockout feature, ADFS will “stop” authenticating the “malicious” user account from outside for a period of time. This prevents your user accounts from being locked out in Active Directory. In addition to protecting your users from an AD account lockout, AD FS extranet lockout also protects against brute force password guessing attacks. The whole IP address list can also be exported from the Connect Health Portal. To get started, visit our documentation today!
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Notes: I have seen some of my clients getting affected by brute force attack or password spray attack. This feature could help in those scenarios, although, that particular user will not have access for the duration of the lockdown. Which may not go very well with that user.
I think. moving to Azure AD Seamless Single Sign-On is the way to go for identity management.
Share and coauthor documents with LinkedIn connections directly from OneDrive, SharePoint, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Online:
Status: Rolling out – Q2 19
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With this update, users will be able to find many of their first-degree LinkedIn connections as people suggestions when sharing files or folders from the OneDrive and SharePoint websites, or from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Online. This makes it easier for employees in your organization to collaborate with people outside your organization without needing to know their email addresses.
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Notes: Not really sure if any of my customers are missing this feature.
Outlook for Windows: Lift 500 folder limit for shared mailboxes:
Status: Rolling out – April 19
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Outlook has improved synchronization of folders by removing the 500 folder limit for shared mailboxes.
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Notes: This is a blessing of sorts for those who have more than 500 folders and are hit by Outlook performance. I had at least one client in this situation and will be glad to see this update.
SharePoint web parts: web part to web part connections:
Status: Rolling out – Q2 19
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Let web parts talk to other web parts and your pages and experiences become more dynamic and interactive. You will be able to configure web parts to get their property values from other web parts, including updating those values based on selection state.
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Notes: This is a catchup feature to traditional SharePoint site feature. Should be a quite a welcome feature to some of you.
Combined password reset & MFA registration experience for end users:
Status: Rolling out – Q1 19
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Users can register security info for multi-factor authentication (MFA) and password reset in a single converged experience. Now when a user registers security info such as their phone number for receiving verification codes, that number can also be used for resetting a password. Likewise, users can change or delete their security info from a single My Profile portal, making it easier to keep information up-to-date. Also, this experience has been refreshed to streamline the process and make it even easier to register from mobile devices.
More Info.
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Notes: This will help to streamline the process. Less clicks and keyboard activity is always welcome.
SharePoint sites: adjust the footer of a site:
Status: Rolling out – Q1 19
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When you change the look of your site, you can now add a site footer to showcase common information you wish to highlight at the bottom of your site.
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SharePoint hub sites: mega menu navigation:
Status: Rolling out – Q1 19
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Increase the value of your hub site navigation. The new mega menu options allow for multiple levels of hierarchy at once – no fly-outs needed. This will enable you to better organize and showcase the content and sites associated under that particular hub site.
More Info.
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Notes: This will help a good bit towards using Communication sites as Intranet portal. I will be using this very shortly in a real project and will give my feedback in a separate blog.
That is it from me for the March updates. Enjoy the spring season and whatever you plan to do.