365 Message Center Show

Two new communications tools arrived in Microsoft 365. SharePoint news in Outlook publishes your news as attractive emails, showing the full page content. In Viva Engage, Campaigns connect communications and activities with hashtags, landing pages, and measurable goals and promote visual sponsorship by leaders. This week's episode is longer, but that's because it's full of demos! It's about time we had a good 'show and tell'.  

Dar...

It's our 300th episode. To celebrate we are wearing cake, talking Python in Excel and giving all of your users a free 60 day trial of Teams Premium. OK, the trial is included in Microsoft 365 and we didn't organize it. But it was nicely timed. 

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- Web links from Microsoft Teams chats to open in Microsoft Edge Teams chat will open side-by-side with link  

- Preview: Python in Excel  

- Inking Support Comin...

Internal comms people are going to love this update. Post a Viva Engage message on behalf of your leadership by setting a schedule. This means you can time the Engage post to coincide with the scheduled publishing of your SharePoint news post. Fantastic that we finally get this functionality. 

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- Draft and Scheduled Posts with POBO (Posts on Behalf of) in Viva Engage - MC667672  

- Viva Goals: Export OKRs...

What if we told you that Viva Amplify is coming to Viva Suite and Employee Communications & Connections subscribers in September? Would you be excited to plan your first communications campaign with it? What if we said Amplify can also be used by anyone who would like to send communications across multiple channels in your organization? Would you be open to sharing it? Daniel and Darrell discuss this and how the new Stream web ...

Send short announcement messages to target audiences through the Viva Connections app. This has potential to replace the Company Communicator app in Microsoft Teams. Recent Planner plans and To Do lists will appear in your recent files on Microsoft 365 home page. SharePoint pages are now easier to share using the new Share button. 

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- Twitter web part retirement 

- See your Recent Microsoft Planner plans ...

The new Teams channel invites will restore faith and interest in using channel meetings. Meeting organizers have more control as to whether team members will receive an emailed invite. SharePoint web parts receive a visual refresh. Loop components will open using loop.microsoft.com and within the Loop app if your organization is using it. 

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- SharePoint Platform: Visual Refresh 

- Channel meeting invitati...

Share a Stream video in Teams chat and channel conversations, and you will be able to preview and play them from within the conversation. OneDrive has a new feed to show up-coming and past meetings and their related files. It has a really interesting way to show files and recordings for recurring meetings too. SharePoint site creation show's more about the site template you're about to pick. 

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- Viva Suit...

New Outlook gets a separate window for displaying reminders. Microsoft Teams Cloud Intelliframe frames up people in a meeting room so we can see their faces. Browse OneDrive files by people and see what they have been working on recently that has been shared with you. 

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- Browse files by People in OneDrive 

- Automatic Transcription for Video Uploads to SharePoint Online, Yammer, and Office.com 

- Azure A...

OneDrive on the web is changing to bring focus to your content and make it easier to create new files. LinkedIn Learning adds more free courses to Viva Learning basic. Custom list templates will soon included Power Automate flows as part of the template, packaging up a nice reusable app with automation. 

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- OneDrive: Color, font, and navigation changes in OneDrive for Web 

- OneDrive Sync Account Detectio...

Now during your Teams meetings, annotate on a live screen. This is an improvement on the freeze-frame screenshot with annotations we had till now. Click through the annotations layer and continue to use the live shared window or desktop. This will be great for support scenarios and collaborative feedback over the top of what is shared. 

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- Removal of access to Sections view in Outlook Mobile Feed 

- Intro...

If your organization is interested in using Microsoft 365 Copilot, you can start preparing now. We talk about the things you can prepare for, things you should be doing anyway, and things you will have to wait for. 

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- (Updated) Future of the Mail and Calendar apps in Windows with Outlook 

- New Viva Connections Analytics Experience Coming Soon 

- Get Ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot 

- Microsoft Lists Use...

If your org has Viva Suite, then Viva Pulse is now available. Send short surveys out to your team to see how they are doing. Teams group chat now lets you share a link to a reply in the chat. Lastly, MFA will stop support for SMS and phone call code authentication. 

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- Microsoft Viva: Answers in Viva on Mobile 

- Viva Pulse availability 

- Group chat message copy links are now available! 

- Present a Loca...

If you've been out of the loop for a while, there's a new way to work with tasks in Microsoft 365. But don't worry, it still connects to your favourite task management apps, Planner and ToDo. You can get started with in a Teams meeting or chat. Add a Task list Loop component to capture actions. Then manage the tasks assigned to you from ToDo.  How about those custom backgrounds in Teams? Have you ever wanted to use an animated back...

Clearly, we don't mean using Zoom inside a Teams meeting. But we do mean being able to zoom into shared content with more visible buttons to control zoom levels. We also discuss "nosie suppression" maintenance, and all about campaigns in Viva Engage. 

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- Introducing zooming controls while viewing screenshare 

- Relocating Sync Command in OneDrive's My Files view to Settings  

- Answers-focused view in Viv...

When you share a document from OneDrive, expect to see a simplified user experience with fewer choices to make. The Sharing window will let you enter an email address or group name to share a file with, set if it's view only or edit, add a message. But the significant change is the scope of the sharing has shifted to the bottom of the window and if you want to change it, it is via the Settings cog. Is this simplified or is it minim...

Configure multiple home sites to serve up a different home page and Viva Connections dashboard for different audiences. It has been a while coming. We first talked about it in episode 242. Daniel Glenn and Darrell Webster tell us more about it and its limitations. Teams Collaborative Stageview will allow Teams to open content in a separate window and conversation alongside it in a sidebar. Apps will need to be developed to take adv...

Let your team members know when you intend to work remotely or in the office. Outlook's new Work Hours and Location feature uses your Outlook work hours settings and your calendar. Set the days and hours you work, and whether you will work remotely or from home. If you need to change it during the week, adjust it in your calendar at the top of a day where All Day events are displayed. Copilot's Semantic Index was announced as the m...

Start conversations and read new and updated posts at the top of a Teams channel. Pop them out to focus on the discussion. See channel information and pinned posts on a new channel sidebar. The new Microsoft Teams channel experience will improve they way you engage with conversations. 

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- Loop Component in Outlook Mobile  

- cloud.microsoft domain for new Microsoft 365 apps  

- Microsoft Teams: New Channe...

Did you remember to reply to this email? This one. The one at the top of your Inbox. No? You're welcome. Outlook mobile will soon remind you to reply to messages that appear to need a reply. Also Topics will get it's own app soon in Teams. This will be handy for the topics you contribute knowledge to, or if you are a Knowledge Manager. 

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- Reminder: Uploading content to Stream (Classic) to be blocked  

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