Tag: Reactions

Microsoft 365 Updates – Summer 2024

This blog article rounds up a number of recently announced or released updates during the Summer of 2024.

 

Teams Breakout Rooms – choose your room

Planned for release by late October – Meeting Organisers using Breakout Rooms will be able to choose whether participants are assigned to specific breakout rooms in advance or whether they can choose which breakout room to join.  This will prove useful for meeting participants where organisers wish to allow participants a choice.

Meeting organisers should look for the new feature in the breakout rooms panel when setting up the breakout rooms.

 

Screenshot showing organiser view of breakout rooms and how to set to allow attendees to choose the room they join
Organiser view of breakout room setup for attendee choice

 

Screenshot of attendee experience when breakout room choice is available
Attendee view of breakout room choice

Available late October 2024

 

OneNote for Windows 10

As previously advised, Microsoft are ending support for the OneNote for Windows 10 application at the end of October 2025.

You are recommended to use the OneNote Windows application which is bundled with the Office 365 download.

OneNote for Windows now supports the option to move the navigation bar to the left side of the app providing a consistent navigation experience across all OneNote apps.

 

Support ends October 2025

 

Microsoft Teams – Rename the General channel

From mid-September 2024, Team owners will be able to rename the General channel to something more meaningful for their team.

If you rename the General channel you cannot rename it back to General at a later date.

When changed the channel will appear in alphabetical order amongst any other channels created.

The renamed channel cannot be archived or deleted.

 

Available mid September 2024

 

Microsoft Teams – New skin tone settings and reactions

From late October 2024, new skin tone settings will be enabled to allow users to choose a preferred skin tone for relevant emojis and reactions across chats, channels and meetings on all Teams platforms (Teams for Desktop, Teams for web, Teams for Mac and Teams Mobile).

 

Screenshot showing how to set the skintone within the Settings in MS Teams
Set your skintone via the settings in MS Teams

 

Screenshot showing how to set skintone within the emojis element of Teams reactions
Set skintone via the emojis element in MS Teams reactions

 

Available late October 2024

 

Microsoft Teams – Notify when available

You can now get notified when a colleague’s status changes to available.

You can subscribe to the notifications by doing the following

Right click (or tap on the “…”) on a person in the chat list view and choose “Notify when available”

Screenshot showing how to set the "notify when available" option in MS Teams.
How to set “Notify when available”

 

Available now

 

MS Teams – Calendar Notifications

You will now see calendar notifications in Teams through the Activity Feed.  You will also be able to accept or reject calendar invitations through this activity feed view.

You can change this through the “Notifications and activity” section of Teams settings.

This is one by default in your activity feed.

Screenshot showing how to edit the calendar notifications in the activity feed
How to change the calendar notifications for the Activity Feed

Available now

 

MS Teams – Emojis, GIFs and Stickers in One Picker

Microsoft have simplified the selection of emojis, gifs and stickers, bringing all elements into one unified picker in MS Teams.

Screenshot showing the simplified emjoi, GIF and sticker picker now available in MS Teams
Screenshot of the simplified emjoi, GIF and sticker picker.

 

Available now

New Features and Updates in Microsoft 365 – December 2022 and January 2023

A number of new features and updates have been announced affecting several Microsoft 365 apps and services.

 

Viva Insights

Viva Insights brings you a daily email briefing before you start your day, helping to ensure that you have the right information in advance of your meetings and reminders which are pertinent to you.  The Viva Insight briefing email is personal to you and cannot be seen by anyone else.

 

In January 2023, Microsoft will be pausing the briefing emails while they implement improvements and additional personalisation.  The current update states that briefings should return at the end of February following the “make over”.

During the period when there are no emails, you can still view your personal insights by using the Outlook add-in or adding the Viva Insights app to Microsoft Teams.

 

Microsoft Teams Updates

Everyone Mention

Commencing in late January 2023, a new feature will roll out allowing Teams users to mention everyone in a group chat or meeting chat in one simple way.  Currently you can @ mention each person individually, which is fine in a small group chat or meeting chat, but if you have a large meeting chat or group chat running and want to alert everyone there is currently no simple way to do this.

 

Once the new feature is live you will be able to type @everyone and then everyone in the chat will receive a notification just like they do when they are individually @ mentioned at the moment.

 

Breakout Rooms

From late December ’22 or early January ’23 depending on roll out, Teams Breakout Rooms will support co-organiser management.  So if you create a meeting and set a “co organiser” on the meeting then the co-organiser will have full management rights over Breakout Rooms.

 

More Reactions in Teams

A greatly expanded set of reactions are currently rolling out in Teams for use in Chat and Team conversations.  The reactions for meetings remain limited for simplicity, but for chat and threaded conversations there are now over 800 “emojis” to choose from.  These are available from December 2022.

 

Multi Factor Authentication Improvements

Commencing at the end of February 2023, Microsoft will begin roll out of enhanced Multi Factor Authentication replacing the push notifications with number matching.  Many organisations are seeing an increase in attacks due to MFA fatigue due to users just hitting approve without thinking about what they are approving.

Number matching requires the up to date Microsoft Authenticator app to be installed from either the iOS App store or Google Play store fro Android devices.  If you have been approving MFA requests via an Apple watch then you should uninstall the apple watch app and approve all authentication requests via the phone – the watch app does NOT support number matching.

Number matching works by displaying a number following successful username and password verification.  The authenticator app will then provide information on what app is being accessed and the location of the access request (including a map display) and require the user to enter the number as displayed on the login screen of the app.

Screenshot of number matching at login

Number matching display during login

 

Screenshot of Authenticator app during number matching

Number matching on Authenticator App