Each month we like to keep you updated with the latest updates and developments within the Microsoft 365 suite. This month we explore updates for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Power Pages Design Studio, Microsoft Viva Learning API and more.
We hope you find these interesting.
Microsft Teams
Microsoft Forms enhancements in Teams meetings
Microsoft has announced an enhanced relationship between Forms and Teams. With a range of new features and improvements to existing features within meeting polls. Here’s a quick summary:
They are replacing the “Forms” app within Teams with a new app named “Polls”—improving clarity., and you can now see the “Polls” app from the message extension flyout menu.
They have improved the UI on the poll suggestions pane, including the ability to:
o Re-position the list of suggested polls
o Provide an entry point in the polls portal page, where users can show/hide the side pane as needed
o View poll results once you have voted, reducing wait time.
LinkedIn integration
Your Microsoft Teams chats can now be connected to LinkedIn profiles. Helping you to get to know your colleagues, connect directly on both platforms and build deeper relationships. From Teams chat, channels, calls, or meetings, you will now be able to view your colleague’s LinkedIn profile, including their current role, past experiences, and other insights.
Power Platform
Power Page Design Studio
Apply corporate branding with no-code
One of the first tasks of building a new site regardless of if it’s internal or external is to brand it. This covers everything from incorporating a colour palette with the corporate colours and updating the site logo and title.
Within the Power Page Design Studio, you can choose one of the pre-set themes. Themes are great starting points as they have been curated by a team of professional designer and are a great starting point for customising the look of the site. Each theme has its own colour palette, header and paragraph fonts, and various button styles. Simply pick the theme that resembles your brand and customise it from there. Then, from the Pages workspace, edit the site header with your company colour, logo, and site title in a few easy steps, this will update the theme for the site.
Easy authoring for everyone
The updated authoring experience for designing and building webpages provides experience makers and citizen developers with control and flexibility alike. Pages workspace offers in-context editing where creators can easily add and configure sections and components to build pixel perfect webpages.
Microsoft Excel
Control automatic data conversions (Insiders Beta)
Microsoft are rolling out improvements across Excel for Windows to give you more control over data conversions. More specifically, you can now control how and whether the data you enter is automatically converted to specific formats
Resizable Conditional Formatting dialog (Insiders Beta)
Previously, the Manage Rules dialog limited you to viewing just five conditional formatting rules at a time. It’s size also meant that users may also not be able to see the entire formula, or the range used in your rules. Now, you can resize the dialog bow making it wider and/or taller, allowing you to see more of the rules and giving you more space to view longer formulas if needed.
SharePoint external Sharing ‘One-Time Passcode’ mails now come from no-reply@notify.microsoft.com
To improve reliability for delivery of the one-time passcode e-mails when sharing files with external parties, Microsoft are updating the sending address from no-reply@sharepointonline.com to no-reply@notify.microsoft.com.
This change will result in improved delivery reliability – think trusted domain, fewer share emails in spam folders – and better transparency for all customers, and their partners, who use external sharing in OneDrive and SharePoint today.
OneDrive/SharePoint: Review mode for Word documents
When sharing a link to a document, you can assign someone to ‘Review Mode’ in the Share Dialog by using the new ‘Can Review’ option in the permission dropdown. They’ll then have access to review the document – to make edits with tracked changes intact and leave comments, this is in addition to features like “Read Only” and “Can Edit”.
Employee learning API for Viva Learning announcement
With this API, customers can discover content from any Learning Management System (LMS) or learning provider within Viva Learning. And in the other direction, LMS or learning providers can use the API to display courses on Viva Learning, just like any of our pre-integrated learning partners (SAP SuccessFactors, Skillsoft, Coursera, etc.). The employee learning API in Microsoft Graph is now available in public preview.
We hope this new update was useful and you can utilise some of the above features to improve useability and employee experience. We regularly share tips on how to make the most out of your Microsoft 365 investment on LinkedIn and Twitter, you can follow us here or you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter to get these tips directly in your inbox.