O365 Weekly Digest - 02/25/2019

Every week I'll be posting a quick summary of O365 updates included in the admin weekly digest email that you can sign up for via the admin Message Center: https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal/Home#/MessageCenter - these emails include items posted to the message center over the last week and come out every Monday.

Lots of updates on previously announced features were included in this week's digest including Sticky Column Headers for lists and libraries (Roadmap ID: 46103) and New Tasks module for Outlook web with Microsoft To-Do (Roadmap ID: 34338) so I will focus on the net new things this week.

End users will be seeing some updates in their Outlook experience including mobile support for Teams Meetings (Roadmap IDs: 32955 & 32956) and easier group membership management for Groups in Outlook. Additionally, when clicking on a file link inside of Office applications users will have the ability to open it directly in the Office desktop app instead of the browser (Roadmap ID: 46330)

Admins are seeing the most love this week with updates to the admin mobile app to include device management (Roadmap ID: 47918). On the web new capabilities are coming to help support your Microsoft 365 tenant including full page ticket history and callback scheduling. For mail,  non-delivery report messages will now be sent after 24 hours instead of the current 48 hours. Finally, in Teams, admins can now manage app permissions and app setup in the Teams and Skype admin center.

Finally, as mentioned last week, Microsoft Forms Pro public preview started on 2/21 (Roadmap ID: 46517), you can check out my rundown what's been announced here: https://blog.mslavieri.com/2019/02/forms-pro-221-release.html 

Check out the full list of updates below.

Email Text

Feb 24

Updated: Power BI Scheduled Maintenance Planned Maintenance: Power BI will be performing scheduled maintenance in all regions. North Central US: Starting Wednesday, February 20, 2019 01:30:00 AM UTC Ending Wednesday, February 20, 2019 06:30:00 AM UTC North Central US B: Starting: Friday, February 22, 2019 01:00:00 AM UTC Ending: Friday, February 22, 2019 05:00:00 AM UTC Central US: Starting: Friday, February 22, 2019 01:00:00 AM UTC Ending: Friday, February 22, 2019 05:00:00 AM UTC East US: Starting: Friday, February 22, 2019...

Feb 22

Updated - The Office 365 Home Page is becoming the default start page for all Office 365 commercial users Currently in Office 365, there is a setting that allows users to personalize what page they land on when they log into Office 365. The Office 365 Home Page has evolved to pull a user's most relevant apps, documents and places where they are working —all in one place--and consequently will be the default page a user lands on when signing into Office 365. This enhancement is related to Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 45971.

Feb 22

Updated feature: Groups in Outlook - easier membership management Act By: Jun 01 We’re updating how owners of groups in Outlook can manage membership requests. We'll begin rolling this feature out soon.This message is associated with Office 365 Roadmap ID: 46436.

Feb 21

Admin policies for managing app permissions and app setup in Teams As announced last year, when we launched the Teams and Skype for Business Admin Center, we would continue to add additional functionality to enhance the experience. We are moving app management from the Teams service add in page to the new Teams and Skype for Business Admin Center. With the change you can use app setup policies to customize Microsoft Teams to highlight the apps that are most important for your users. You choose the apps to pin and set the order that they appear. App setup...

Feb 21

New feature: Open file links directly in Office desktop apps We’re excited to announce a new feature that will allow your users to open files saved in the Microsoft cloud directly in their existing Office 365 desktop apps. This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID: 46330.

Feb 21

Feature update - Mobile admin app update, including device management Major Update: General Availability The Microsoft 365 Admin mobile app allows you to receive notifications, add users, reset passwords, manage devices, create support requests, and more- all while you’re on the go. This enhancement is related to Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 47918. This rollout does not impact Office 365 subscriptions in GCC.

Feb 20

Outlook mobile supports Teams Meetings Major Update: General Availability As announced at Microsoft Ignite, we will be rolling out native support for creating and joining Microsoft Teams meeting in Outlook for iOS and Android in late March. This enhancement is related to Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 32955 and 32956 The ability to create Teams meetings will be available to all Outlook mobile customers. For customers who have migrated to the updated architecture using the Microsoft sync technology, as communicated in message center post MC165218, we’re also making it...

Feb 20

Feature update: Admin center support updates, including full page ticket history view and callback scheduling Major Update: General Availability Microsoft 365 support is designed to be effective, efficient, and transparent to ensure a high-quality experience. We hope the new support features coming soon to the Microsoft 365 admin center will help reduce time to resolution and improve the overall transparency and effectiveness of the support process. These updates do not apply to Office 365 subscriptions in GCC at this time.

Feb 20

We’re making a change to non-delivery report notifications Beginning on March 20, 2019, if after multiple attempts we’re unable to send or deliver a message sent by one of your users, we’ll send them a bounce message about it within 24 hours instead of 48 hours.

Feb 19

We’re changing your default SharePoint admin center experience Major Update: General Availability The new SharePoint admin center will be the default experience for some organizations. We'll begin rolling out this change soon. This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 46375.

Feb 19

Clutter for Outlook is being retired beginning January 31, 2020 Major Update: General Availability As we previously announced in December 2017, on the Outlook blog, we will be retiring the Clutter feature from Outlook beginning January 31, 2020. To help our users manage their mail and be productive, we are leading with the Focused Inbox experience which provides a similar benefit as Clutter by showing less important and urgent mail in Other.

Feb 19

Information Protection updates to the existing Office 365 E3, E5, Advanced Compliance and Information Protection Major Update: General Availability We’re updating the existing Office 365 E3, E5, Advanced Compliance and Information Protection & Compliance SKUs to include: Information Protection for Office 365 – Standard Or Information Protection for Office 365 – Premium We'll be gradually rolling this out to customers in March, and the roll out will be completed worldwide by the end of March.

Feb 19

New feature: SharePoint Online gets Sticky Column Headers for Lists and Libraries Sticky Column Headers is a new SharePoint Online feature. We'll begin rolling this feature out soon. This enhancement is related to Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 46103. We'll be gradually rolling this out to Targeted release Organizations in mid-February 2019, and the roll out will be completed worldwide by the end of April

Feb 19

Updated feature: Microsoft To-Do Major Update: General Availability Microsoft To-Do is an updated Office 365 feature. We'll begin rolling this change out in mid-March and it will finish by the end of the month. This enhancement is related to Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 34338.