Do you get invited to meetings which you can’t attend due to meeting clashes or a leave of absence, but where you want to know what happens and the decisions taken?
What is being introduced and When?
From late May 2024, Microsoft is introducing a new “Follow” response for meeting invitations.
Screenshot of the “Follow” button in a meeting invitation.
What happens?
Using the “Follow” button will let the meeting organiser know that you cannot attend the meeting but that you are interested in the details.
Follow response returned to the meeting organiser
The organiser will be prompted about recording or transcribing the meeting.
A number of updates and changes have been published by Microsoft over the recent weeks. This blog post provides brief details about the ones that are most impactful for members of Imperial’s community.
Calendar Notifications in Teams Activity Feed
You can now get the Calendar Notifications in Teams from the Activity Feed.
You will get calendar notifications in the Activity Feed for the following scenarios:
Meeting invite (including channel meetings you are explicitly invited to) Meeting updates Meeting cancellations Meeting forwards (as an organizer)
When you get a calendar notification, you will see an unread notification in the Activity Feed pane or at the bell icon.
When you click on a notification, you will see the details of the meeting / event in the right pane.
Tags in Teams Private Channels
If you use tags within a team to associate groups of users, you can now use these tags for @ mentions inside Private channels.
Changes to the Website Tab in Teams
Microsoft Teams will be retiring the ability to load websites inside the new Teams client when using the Website tab. These website links will open in a new browser tab instead. This is to better align with emerging best practices in web security and privacy while also improving the reliability of websites opened through this feature.
Education tenants will be subject to this change but not before July 2024.
At the current time you are urged to plan for this forthcoming change which may not take effect until after summer 2024.
More videos visible in Teams meetings in Chrome and Edge
Microsoft Teams Meetings currently supports a maximum of 4 videos (2×2) on the screen by default (i.e., Gallery view) on web browsers.
With this update, users will be able to automatically see up to 9 videos (3×3) on Chrome and Edge on their screen by default without any additional explicit action.
Emojis, Gifs and Stickers in one unified “picker”
Users can soon find all of their emojis, GIFs, and stickers in a combined picker in Microsoft Teams. This simplifies the experience and will be available by early May 2024 at the latest.
Hide the “general” channel in Teams
Similar to other channels in a team, now you will be able to hide general channels as well! As a team member, when you become a part of a team, you see general channel always shown in your teams and channels list. From April 2024 you will have the option to hide this channel from the list of channels that you see in your default Teams view.
Intelligent recap on iOS and Android
For users with a Teams Premium License (https://blogs.imperial.ac.uk/office365/2024/04/29/microsoft-teams-premium-licenses/) Intelligent recap is now available in iOS and Android versions of Teams. Meetings recorded or transcribed and where the organiser has a Teams Premium license will now be delivered with the AI generated meeting notes and actions in the same way as when recorded from a desktop device.
Planner App in Teams
The new Planner App is now available for use in Microsoft Teams. Previously known as “Tasks by To-Do and Planner”, the new Planner App builds on the new releases of functionality in Planner and the new Planner Premium features.
Microsoft assure us that Planner Premium licenses will be available for Education tenants such as ours to purchase in due course. If you wish to use Planner Premium features immediately then you should contact the Service Desk to purchase a Microsoft Project Plan 3 (Project Pro) license as this enables Planner Premium features today.
Teams meeting recordings will be saved into the Organiser’s OneDrive for Business instead of the person who initiated the recording. Microsoft is making this change for governance and compliance purposes and to ensure a simple and understandable policy for where the recording is stored.
The change will be made by the end of May 2024. After that time all Teams meeting recordings will be stored in the OneDrive for Business of the account that organises the meeting.
Shorter Teams Meeting URLs
Microsoft are changing the format of the URLs for Teams meetings, removing some information and thus reducing the length of the URL. This will make it easier to copy and paste meeting URLs into meetings or chats for quick access.
The change will be rolled out between mid May and late June 2024.
Teams for Web – Safari and Firefox
Up until April 2024 New Teams has only worked in the Chrome and Edge web browsers on Windows, macOS and Linux.
With immediate effect, New Teams for Web on Firefox is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. New Teams for Web on Safari is now available now on macOS
Media node in OneDrive for Business
Microsoft will be adding a Media node to the left navigation bar of Microsoft OneDrive for web that will allow customers to easily find all the photo and video content stored in their OneDrive in a single view.
When an end user navigates to the Media node, they will see a view of all the photo and video content stored within their OneDrive.
This content will be sorted by the date the content was created. The files shown in this view are the same files stored in the user’s OneDrive and the Media node does not create separate copies of the content.
End users will be able to perform actions on the media content in this view such as Share, Download, or Delete. These actions will behave the same way in the Media node as they do in the My Files node.
Media node in OneDrive
This feature should be visible by mid May 2024.
Loop components in OneNote
You can create or insert Loop components into your Microsoft OneNote notebook.
Loop component in OneNote for Web
With Loop components in OneNote, users can:
Enhance Collaboration
Bringing unstructured, collaborative content from Loop components in Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook into OneNote notebooks, fostering real-time collaboration and sharing.
Improve Productivity: Quickly augment and recall collaborative notes within the familiar workflow of OneNote, enabling tasks to be completed more efficiently.
How to Insert Loop components into OneNote for Web
When using Microsoft Whiteboard, users will be able to @mention other users within their tenant inside of a comment.
The flow will look and feel similar to other Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
The user will type an @ symbol followed by the name of the user they would like to @mention in the text of a comment.
If the @mentioned user is not actively using Whiteboard then they will be sent a notification via email and via the Microsoft Outlook notification bell. Inside of Whiteboard, the @mentioned user will see a blue @mention badge on the comment in which they are mentioned.
Additional things to note:
Users will be shown a teaching callout within Whiteboard to inform them of the new @mention feature. Similar to the blue @mention badge, users will see a new red badge on comments that will display the number of replies in that comment thread that they have yet to read.
This feature is planned to be available by late May 2024.
The availability of third-party tools for Meeting AI capabilities, such as Meeting Notes, Actions, etc., has been rapidly rising.
Unfortunately, these AI systems are beyond Imperial’s reach or trust at the present time – see Imperial’s AI and Education Guidance Hub pages (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/about/education/resources/ai-education-hub/). Additionally, licensing such capabilities is expensive and may expose college data to use in the training of future AI models such as ChatGPT, etc.
Staff who wish to use meeting AI can now request a Teams Premium license through ICT.
The Teams Premium license costs £20 + VAT per user per year (or part thereof).
What’s in the Teams Premium license?
Teams Premium licenses deliver intelligent meeting recaps, live translations, and advanced event capabilities.
Meeting AI—If you record or transcribe a meeting, the AI will generate a meeting summary and a list of actions recorded during the meeting.
Live Caption translation—A Teams Premium license allows meeting attendees to choose the language into which the captions they view are translated. There is a list of 40 current languages, with more being added constantly.
Advanced Event experiences—If you are a webinar or Town Hall user, the Teams Premium license will add additional functionality to these event offerings.
First, please contact the ICT Service Desk with details of the staff account(s) you wish to enable, the user I.D., email address, and a valid cost code for recharging the license costs. We plan to provide this as a form in the Service Desk system in due course.
Once checked, the cost will be charged to your nominated cost code, and the license will be provisioned against your account.
N.B. Teams Premium can only be provided for users with an A3 or A5 license – please validate your license eligibility by going to the photo profile or initials in your Office 365 pages (https://office.imperial.ac.uk), then clicking on view account and choosing the subscriptions element. When viewing your subscriptions, you must check that you have either “Microsoft 365 A5 for faculty” or “Microsoft 365 A3 for faculty” applied to your account.
Microsoft have recently announced a slew of updates and feature changes for Microsoft 365 and Teams. We’ve distilled down these changes to give you a quick summary of the updates that you’ll be seeing over the coming weeks.
Using your personal account in New Teams
Starting in April 2024 and rolling out gradually, the new Microsoft Teams desktop app on Windows and Mac will let you use any type of Teams account (work, school, or personal).
Meeting Recap
Launching in April 2024, shortly after a meeting ends, a recap message will appear in the meeting chat with links to the meeting recap page and meeting artifacts such as the transcript, the recording, any files shared in the meeting, and the meeting Collaborative notes and Whiteboard (if used).
New Planner App in Teams
The old Tasks by Planner and To Do app within Teams is being replaced during late March and early April. The new app will be called Planner and will bring together tasks from To Do (your personal productivity list), Planner (your groups tasks) and Project (if you have Project), allowing you to see all your work and personal tasks in one space.
Teams Calendar Meeting Notifications
By the end of April 2024, when you receive an invitation or an update to a meeting, a notification will be added tot he notifications area in teams giving real time notifications of new meetings, updates and changes.
If you schedule a new meeting in a Teams channel, then you can now choose to alert all the members and add it to their calendar. This should mean that team members no longer miss out on channel scheduled meetings.
Teams Meetings in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge
If you are using a web browser to join a meeting then from the beginning of March you will be able to view an enhanced gallery of up to 9 videos on the screen instead of the previous 4. You need take no action to see this updated view.
Viva Engage – Create or Reply to a Post using email
The ability to create a new post or reply to an existing post directly using email will be retired from Viva Engage starting on March 31st, 2024.
To Do App on iOS
If you use the To Do app on an iPhone or iPad device, the new version has a minimum iOS version requirement of iOS 15.
Minimum versions for iOS and Android OS ensure security and bug fixes are optimised.
Retirement of MS Publisher – October 2026
In October 2026, Microsoft Publisher will reach its end of life. After that time, it will no longer be included in Microsoft 365 and existing on-premises suites will no longer be supported. Until then, support for Publisher will continue and users can expect the same experience as today.
New App Launcher in Microsoft 365
The new App Launcher experience will be rolling out between April and June 2024.
The new launcher should bring improvements in access to apps and ease of access to recent files too.
In September 2024 Microsoft will turn off Live Events in Microsoft Teams. This will affect any users who have had access to Public facing Live Events.
What Now?
A new feature, called Microsoft Town Halls is being rolled out with greater capabilities than Live Events.
Town Halls feature a “green room” for pre-event preparation and bringing speakers together.
Town Halls also offer the ability to bring multiple speakers into view along with content such as presentations of screen shares or for panel style sessions with multiple speakers (up to 7 in view at any one time) – something that was difficult with Live Events.
Town Halls also offer the ability to send integrated emails for attendees – so no copying and pasting the attendee link into a separate calendar invitation in the future. Emails may also be customised further when the organiser has a Teams Premium license.
Live Events switch-off
Live Events capability will be switched off on the 31 July 2024. Staff who have Public Facing Live Event capabilities will be contacted in the coming weeks to discuss current and anticipated requirements going forwards.
New Town Hall users
ICT will shortly publish a new request form for Town Hall capabilities. Staff who wish to use Town Hall features will need to apply for this capability at least one month in advance of their planned event to ensure time for the College events team to review the request and for capabilities to be enabled, rehearsals held, etc.
In summer 2023, Microsoft made the new Teams application available for Windows and then Mac OS X systems in preview. As a result of the extensive use and testing and in order to move forwards with new features, Microsoft will be ending the Classic Teams application on Windows and Mac OS from 31 March 2024.
In advance of this enforced change, ICT will be updating the policy for all College users to use the New Teams application.
This change is planned for 27 February 2024 and will install the new Teams application at the next initiation of the application if you haven’t already switched over manually by 27 Feb.
Why the New Teams Application?
The classic Teams application has been in use for almost 6 years and can hog memory and processor resources making it unreliable on lower specification devices. Since the first iteration many new features have been added creating divisions in the application and it’s effectiveness.
The new version consolidates the changes into an improved application which uses much less computer resources, resulting in greater availability for other applications. Improvements in the underlying code also mean that the New Teams app is faster and more responsive.
The main one that may affect a small number of users is the ability to produce Live Events in the New Teams application. An update is being released to allow this and will be available at the point when we change, or shortly after. For anyone who needs to produce a live event you will be able to switch back tot he old version of Teams to produce your event. Note that presenters will be able to use the New Teams application in a Live Event.
Private channels will support the use of tags that are generally available in MS Teams. You can use Tags for grouping people with similar responsibilities, grouping students into learning sets or dividing a large team into smaller sub teams for notifications, etc.
By the end of March 2024 you will also be able to create a link to the private channel(s) in your team. You can then use the link to direct people to the correct channel – as long as they are a member or owner in the private channel concerned.
Archiving of Team Channels
From end of February, Channel owners and teams admins will be able to archive a channel in a Team, making it read only for all. This will help people with using only the active channels while leaving information in the archived channels for cross-reference purposes.
Website tab in Teams
From April 2024, the website tab will cease to function. This change is being deployed by Microsoft to ensure security and privacy while improving the reliability of access to websites.
You will only be able to choose to open the website from the tab once the change has been applied.
Unification of Emojis, GIFs and Stickers in one picker
From the end of March 2024 you’ll find a single “picker” to choose emojis, GIFs and stickers. This simplifies the experience for all users and should be easier to use going forwards.
New Gallery view in Meetings
From March 2024 you will find a new Gallery experience and will be able to choose from 4, 9, 16 or 49 attendees per page.
At the same time both video and audio only meeting attendees will appear in a single sized window for easier identification of who is speaking and for spotlighting, etc.
Hide General Channel in Teams
From late March 2024 users will be able to hide the General channel in teams.
The General channel is always created when a new team is provisioned and by default is always visible for users added to the team.
Now users will be able to turn off / hide the General channel to allow focus on specific channels in the Team.
Team owners (admins) can always set the General channel to only allow owners to post in the General channel thus giving a clear admin announcements channel that doesn’t get cluttered with messages and chats that should be in appropriate channels.
Recap Tab
The Recording and Transcription tab for meetings will be replaced with a tab titled Recap.
The recap tab will contain the meeting recording with “in live viewing possible” along with a copy of the transcript.
Users with Teams Premium licenses will also find the AI generated meeting notes and actions in the Recap tab.
Microsoft are ending FindTime, the add-in for Outlook that allowed you to offer options for a meeting and have attendees vote for their preferred meeting option(s).
When?
With effect from 11 December 2023 you will no longer be able to create meeting polls using FindTime.
What do I do now?
Instead of FindTime you should use Scheduling Poll which is the new option for meeting polls.
Scheduling Poll is built into Outlook for the Web and Outlook for Mac. It is also available for Outlook for Windows, but may not immediately appear depending on the update channel to which you are subscribed. Monthly update channels will see Scheduling Poll with immediate effect. Semi-Annual Enterprise Update channel users may not see Scheduling Poll until after January 2024.
If you need to use Scheduling Poll but don’t see it in your Outlook for Windows then head to your Outlook on the web and create your scheduling poll there.
For more information and support articles on the change from FindTime to Scheduling Polls please visit Microsoft’s support pages at Scheduling Poll articles – Microsoft Support
What is Microsoft Copilot with Commercial Data Protection (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise) ?
Microsoft Copilot with Commercial Data Protection (MS Copilot) uses the Chat GPT 4 AI model to interrogate and deliver search results based on access to the data that you have. Your data is protected and the chat results are NOT saved or made available for Microsoft, so the data does not pass outside of the organisation.
MS Copilot is grounded in data from the public web and provides complete, verifiable answers with citations, along with visual answers that include graphs and charts.
MS Copilot is designed by Microsoft in line with Microsoft’s AI Principles.
MS Copilot has no access to organizational data in the Microsoft 365 Graph.
How do I use MS Copilot?
Head to https://www.bing.com/chat and sign in with your College ID (username@ic.ac.uk). NOTE Only Staff with an A3 or A5 license for Microsoft 365 services can access Bing Chat Enterprise at the present time.
Once signed in you will see a “Protected” flag beside your name indicating that you are using the secure version of Microsoft Copilot with Commercial Data Protection.
The font page will appear with options to select a particular style of conversation (Creative, Balanced or Precise).
Bing Chat Enterprise homepage
You can provide simple questions or more complicated multiple point paragraphs. MS Copilot will then interpret your request and deliver results which you can then refine as needed.
MS Copilot also incorporates DALL-E for image creation – this can take a little while to respond depending on how complicated your request is. You should also be careful to ensure that any image that you create correctly attributes any copyright for partial use from other published images. Failure to do so may result in image copyright infringement and subsequent demands for payments or charges being levied through legal action. If in doubt then adopt the premise of “don’t publish”!
Five Things to Try to Get Started
Summarise a long document or article. Navigate to a long article or document (PDF) on the internet, then use the Chat sidebar in Microsoft Edge to ask MS Copilot to summarise the document in 5 bullet points.
Draft emails and content that’s ready to send. Navigate to your Outlook on the web (https://email.imperial.ac.uk) then use the Copilot icon in Microsoft Edge to ask MS Copilot to draft an email, e.g. “Draft an email alumni students asking them to consider leaving Imperial a gift in their will”.
Create an image. In MS Copilot ask “Create an illustration of a shark jumping out of a coffee mug”. Try changing the shark to a dolphin.
Learn new and useful information easily. In MS Copilot ask “Explain how large language models work in simple terms”.
Get answers to complex and specific questions. Try “Give me a table that compares Imperial’s undergraduate Medicine course to that of UCL”
More information
You can find out more about MS Copilot and how it works with your data and information by watching the Microsoft Mechanics video (https://aka.ms/BCE/MechanicsVideo)
There is also a recording of the Imperial Ask Me Anything session where we looked at BCE (now MS Copilot). This is available from our AMA Video library (The Microsoft 365 Ask Me Anything Pages – Home (sharepoint.com)). This information is only available to Internal users in Imperial College London.
This page was updated on 1 February 2024 to reflect naming changes in the Microsoft estate.
Apple will shortly release iOS 17. This is expected to happen by the end of September 2023.
At this point Microsoft will cease issuing updates for Outlook running on iOS 15 systems. Outlook will continue to run on iOS 15 devices but will not receive any feature or security updates.
In order to remain secure and compliant, ICT recommends that you update your device to the newest available iOS release for your system.
If you continue to run iOS 15 on your device after the release of iOS 17, but then update your system to iOS 16 or 17, your version of Outlook will be updated to the latest release to include any new security or feature updates. Once using iOS 16 or 17 your Outlook for iOS will continue to receive new feature and security updates.
Microsoft supports Outlook for iOS for the current and one previous major version of the operating system. In order to maintain security and feature availability in Outlook and other Microsoft apps for iOS you should keep your device up to date with iOS updates.
