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See below a digest of the top newly released or upcoming features for Microsoft Teams. To see all updates available check the Microsoft Roadmap: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap Live Events for up to 100k attendees Engage the Microsoft LEAP team to produe and deliver your event of up to 100k attendees. Feature ID: 85151 | Release Sept 2021 Auto-expiring Meeting Recordings New recordings will auto-delete after 60 days if no action taken. Feature ID: 84580 | Release Sept 2021 Share Content from Camera Share content from a physical whiteboard with your laptop camera, now with high quality resolution. Feature ID: 86062 | Release Sept 2021 Question & Answer app Add a moderated or unmoderated Q&A to webinars and meetings. Feature ID: 84027 | Release Sept 2021 Add Attachments to Approval Attach files to approvals from OneDrive and SharePoint, or attach a generic link to other locations. Feature ID: 70787 | Release June 2021 Approval Templates Ready-made, off-the-shelf templates for common approval processes such as leave, expense reports, overtime requests. Admins & Team Owners can use them as-is or customize. Feature ID: 70768 | Release June 2021 Paging in Video Gallery If there are more than 49 video participants in Large Gallery view, or more than 9 in Gallery view, navigation controls now appear to allow you to view more video participants. Feature ID: 84464 | Release June 2021 Fluid components in Teams chat Users can send a message with a table, action items or a list that can be co-authored and edited in-line by everyone. Feature ID: 82779 | Release June 2021 Pin chat messages Pin chat messages in your team to highlight them. Feature ID: 82584 | Release June 2021 Update to meeting participant access to chat If you invite participants via meeting link only, they will no longer have access to meeting resources (chat, files, notes...) after the meeting ends. Feature ID: 68853 | Release April 2021 New default settings when opening Office files Users can set files to default open in desktop or Teams (if they have Office version 16 or higher). Feature ID: 82662 | Release May 2021 Whiteboard Templates Introducing built-in templates for meetings, workshops, decision making, planning, design thinking and more. Feature ID: 82030 | Release June 2021 Auto Recording Users can auto record meetings by choosing auto record from the meeting options. Feature ID: 83054 | Release July 2021 Multi-language Meeting Invites IT Admins can apply a policy to set multiple languages in Teams meeting invites. Feature ID: 81521 | Release September 2021 For Educators: Supervised Chat Teams Admin Policy can ensure students are supervised by an educator during private 1:1 or group chats. Feature ID: 81359 | Release May 2021 Restart Live Event Ability to disable or enable video for one specific attendee before or during a Teams meeting. Feature ID: 70620 | Release July 2021 SharePoint Folders now Visibly Connected to Channels Channel-connected folders are clearly marked in the SharePoint interface. Feature ID 30686 | Release June 2021 Scheduled Access Reviews for Guest Users Automatically scheduled guest access reviews across Teams, turned on by default. Feature ID 70778 | Release May 2021 Templates for New Teams IT Admins can create custom templates for standard Teams which users can use and customize. Feature ID 71635 | Release May 2021 Extended Together Mode Build your own Together Mode scenes in Teams Developer Portal. Feature ID 63219 | Release June 2021 In-Line Message Translation in Channels Users can translate channel posts and replied into their preferred language by pressing and holding the channel post or reply and selecting "translate". Feature ID 63219 | Release July 2021 Large Interactive Meetings - now live Interactive meetings can now host up to 1000 participants Feature ID MC242587 | Released
Live Captions in Additional Languages Live captions now available in English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Swedish, Polish, Arabic, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Russan and Dutch will be added as live caption options. Feature ID: 70593 | Release July 2021 Chat with External Users in Group chats Users can create group chats that include people external to the organisation. Feature ID: 51126 | Release May 2021 Disable/Enable All Attendees' Video Ability to disable or enable video for all attendees before or during a Teams meeting. Feature ID: 70621 | Release May 2021 Restart Live Event Producers will be able to restart a Live Event if accidentally ended or if ended. Feature ID: 82953 | Release May 2021 Teams Webinar Capabilities Registration page creation, email confirmation, host management and attendee reporting all available for 1,000 person webinars from regular Teams app. Feature ID: 80099 | Release May 2021 Forms in Teams now with 'Correct Answer' Feature Correct answer choices can be selected on multiple choice questions. Correct answer will be shown after voting in the Results Card. Feature ID: 80519 | Release May 2021 Teams channel calendar Users will be able to manage appointments, events and meetings directly in each Teams channel.
More granular audio permissions Organisers and presenters will be able to better manage attendee audio permissions, by preventing specific individuals from unmuting instead of all attendees, and attendees being allowed to unmute without requesting to speak beforehand. Feature ID: 80261 | Release April 2021 Low data mode Users will be able to limit the amount of data being used during a Teams video call, to preserve data (especially useful in limited connectivity settings). Feature ID: 70786 | Release March 2021 Breakout room improvements Organisers will be able to set a timer for breakout rooms, set room retention so participants re-join the same rooms, or re-assign participants to new rooms before and after the room opens. Feature ID: 81372 | Release April 2021 Lock meeting from additional joins Organisers can choose to lock the meeting to prevent new joiners. Feature ID: 80669 | Release May 2021 PowerPoint slide translation Participants using Micorsoft Teams (desktop) will be able to translate presentation content from PowerPoint Live in a Teams meeting into a language of their choice. Feature ID: 80601 | Release July 2021 Presenter mode improvements Organisers will be able to overlay video on content, move content box to a corner of the video view etc. Feature ID: 66587 | Release April 2021 Co-organiser meeting role Organisers will be able to assign a Co-organiser who will have almost all the capabilities of the organiser. Feature ID: 81391 | Release June 2021 Share to Teams from Outlook Send a copy of email messages or convos to Teams chats and channels. Feature ID: 80261 | Release April/May 2021 Mobile optimised network data usage Users can select option to reduce bandwidth used in calls. Feature ID: 70786 | Release March 2021 Enable unmute Organisers can now allow participants to unmute - even if they have not raised their hand. Feature ID: 80721 | Release March 2021 Multiple spotlights Organisers & presenters can now spotlight up to 7 participants at the same time. Feature ID: 80425 | Release April 2021 3rd party electronic signatures in teams approvals Teams approvals will now allow 3rd party electronic signatures via Adobe Sign. Feature ID: 81407 | Release April 2021 Create and use approval templates Team owners can create templates or use out-of-the-box templates in the Teams approval app. Feature ID: 81408 | Release April 2021 Call Merge Users can merge active 1:1 calls into another 1:1 call or group call. Applies to VOIP and PSTN Feature ID: 66054 | Release April 2021 Recording Download blocked for view-only participants Users with view-only permissions in a meeting will have download blocked by default on the meeting recording in OneDrive. Feature ID: 70543 | Release April 2021 View-Only Overflow for Meetings Currently only 300 users can attend a Teams Meeting. With this update, additional participants (up to 10,000) will be able to attend with view-only capacity. Requires separate license and must be enabled at tenant level. Feature ID: 65952 | Release Feb 2021 Anonymous Presenters in Live Events Organisers will be able to schedule anonymous presenters for Live Events. Feature ID: 70599 | Release Mar - Apr 2021 Direct Entry for Invited Guests Only Meeting organisers can ensure only invited guests are allowed into a meeting without approval, but others must wait in the lobby. Feature ID: MC233536 | Release March 2021 Meet Now meeting link in Teams When clicking the Meet Now button in Teams, users will get an option to open a meeting, or copy a link for future use. Feature ID: M237392 | Release: March 2021 Support for Multiple Teams Accounts Switch between 1 work and 1 personal/school account within settings! Feature ID: 68845 | Release Feb 2021 Improved Calling Experience Contacts, voicemail and calling history all in the same screen. Feature ID: 68771 | Release Feb 2021 Large Gallery View Gallery view will now support up to 50 participants. Feature ID: 70573 | Release Feb 2021 Channel Calendars Create channel-specific calendars. Feature ID: 68911 | Release Jan 2021 Improved in-meeting Share Experience Feature ID: 70560 | Release Feb 2021 Send to Teams from Outlook Send copy of emails (incl attachments) to a Teams chat or channel from outlook. Feature ID: 70598 | Release March 2021 Create Task from Chat Message Turn any message into a task by clicking 'Create Task' from message dropdown options. Feature ID: 68696 | Release Feb 2021 Glamour Filters Not looking your best? No worries - Microsoft is adding filters which you can adjust before joining a meeting to soften the focus, change lighting levels and customize your appearance. Feature ID 65944 | Release April 2021 Dynamic View Users can personalise the view during meetings and screenshares, for example: showing shared content and selected participants side-by-side. Feature ID: 65943 | Release March 2021 Breakout Rooms Meeting organisers can split participants into groups to facilitate brainstorming & discussions. Feature ID 65332 | Release November 2020 Force Mute Organisers will now be able to "force mute" participants, removing their ability to unmute themselves. Feature ID: 68729 | Release: December 2020 Webinar Registration & Reporting Event registration + automated emails to manage attendance, and detailed reporting dashboard to help understand employee engagement. Feature IDs 66586 & 66585 | Release June 2021 Data Loss Prevention for Teams Prevent people from sharing sensitive information in a channel or chat. Feature ID 65383 | Release November 2020 Teams Templates Custom templates with standardized structures and relevant apps to scale best practice. Feature ID 67110 | Release October 2020 Meeting Recap Meeting recaps including meeting recording, transcript, chat and shared files will be shared with participants in the meeting chat tab, and can be viewed in the Details tab of each meeting. Feature ID 67175 | Release: November 2020 Turn Off Chat Organisers can turn off the chat functionality during a meeting. Feature ID 67175 | Release November 2020 Outlook Integrations 3 new features coming to Outlook: "Share email to Teams" (Share an email and any attachments to a channel or chat in Teams), "Share conversation via email" (share a chat from Teams via email), "Reply to missed activity emails" (see recent messages from Teams and respond via Outlook. Feature ID: 57389 | (Launched) Manage Meeting Options in-meeting View and update meeting options within the meeting. Feature ID 67121 | Release October 2020 PowerPoint Live Presentations Audience can navigate their own views of the slides, separate from presenter, as well as provide live reactions, comments, and rate the presentation at the end. Feature ID 65947 | release December 2020 Meeting Overflow If attendee limit is exceeded, meeting will scale up to 20 000 attendees (stream capability only) Feature 65952 | Release October 2020 (Free) Whiteboard Alternative Freehand by Invision app for sketching and brainstorming. Pops out in new meeting experience. Feature ID 67170 | Release October 2020 Changes in Incoming IP Video Policy - Prioritize Bandwidth IT Administrators will be able to control incoming video policy, as well as outgoing. Prevent both outgoing and incoming video as needed to manage bandwidth. Feature ID 57082 | Release October 2020 Targeted Communications Team members can message everyone in a specific role at the same time with the @ tag. Feature ID 57651 | (Launched) Organisation-wide Teams Create a Team with up to 25 000 users. Feature ID 68692 | Release November 2020 Power App in Teams Usage Analytics Teams Admins will be able to analyse how app built with Power Apps inside of Teams are being used in the organisation. Feature ID 68751 | Release December 2020 Meeting Transfer between Companion Devices Users can transfer meetings between mobile, desktop, web, and add another device as a companion to a meeting. Feature ID 67176 | Release October 2020 AI Background Noise Suppression Background noise will automatically be removed by AI. Feature ID 68695 | Release December 2020 Whiteboard per-user licensing Whiteboard - the add-on for Teams will now be available on a per-user basis. Feature ID 66761 | Release October 2020 Presenter Mode for Whiteboard Organisers will now be able to present a whiteboard, without granting edit abilities to participants. Feature ID 66568 | Release October 2020 Better Power BI Integrations for Teams Enhancements to the Power Bi app to make creating visualizations directly from within Teams. Feature ID 68762 | Release November 2020 New Power Automate Actions & Triggers from Teams "Create a Teams meeting", "Send message to a channel", "get @mention token", "Create a team", "Add users to a team" actions and "User leaves a team" triggers for Power Automate to build automation from Microsoft Teams. Feature ID 68752 | Release October 2020 Device Management Automatic Alerting Trigger notifications and corrective action when a new device is used. Feature ID 68755 | Release November Direct Guest Join for Zoom & WebEx Teams Rooms and Zoom Room devices can connect via embedded web technologies. Feature ID 68736 | Release October 2020 BONUS New Together Mode Scenes A new variety of settings (e.g. an auditorium, a conference room, a coffee shop) in the together mode for Teams meetings. Feature ID 68749 | Release December 2020 Personal Wellbeing & Productivity Insights Users can create mental bookends such as a virtual commute, use Headspace for mindfulness, and set emotional check-ins to pause and reflect. MyAnalytics introduces productivity insights to set reminders to catch up with key people, follow up on to-dos and protect focus time. Feature IDs 68748 & 68747 | partially launched - full release: December 2020

The monthly Power BI updates always contain some interesting minor updates. But every now and then, we see a pretty cool new big feature, and this month, you're in luck! From now on, it’s possible to trigger a flow from your Power BI report and include your Power BI filters. How does it work? It’s actually pretty simple:
Download the Power Automate visual from the app store Add the Power BI fields required for the flow to the visual Import an existing flow or create a new one. In the flow you can specify which Power BI fields to use at which step Click apply and the flow button will appear Customize the button and the flow is ready to be triggered
That’s it! Sounds easy, right?
Once the flow is triggered, it will run with the selected Power BI fields and will apply all existing filters. Also, the usage of the button can be restricted to certain people or user groups. I understand this might still sound a bit abstract. So how can this benefit you? See some examples below:
Turn your data into actions! You can send a mail to a group of people by just clicking the flow button. Remember, existing filters will be passed into the flow. For example, each shop has to send a monthly update about their stock. You have email addresses for each shop in your dataset and you can easily create a filter in your Power BI report that states if a shop did or did not update their stock count. Select this filter and trigger the flow. Each shop that did not update their stock yet will get a reminder! This reminder can be a simple text, customized by you in the flow. But you can also add any Power BI fields to send some additional information, specific for each shop! Another example is to send data into an existing Excel file. You have a great Power BI report, but you need to report quarterly to your management team and they would like to have some charts in a word document. Just set up your Excel table and charts. Set the filters in your Power BI report and trigger the flow. Your charts will be updated! Or how about integrating your flow with Teams? Set up the flow and update your weekly message with some key numbers to any Teams channel! This is all new for us as well, but we're excited to try it out! Do you see any other applications? Feel free to share them!

Power Apps has demistified app building, and created a legion of citizen builders. This is a great thing, after all who is more familiar with the process than end users? Allowing the subject matter experts to design and build solutions is the way of the future. However, as I'm sure many of you have already realised, there is more that goes into app building than knowing the business requirements. User Experience (UX) design is an entire profession, with a wealth of resources available online to learn from. At IMBII we've learned a few key ingredients to building successful apps, which I'll share below. 1. Build interactive user guides into the app itself! Classroom-based and instructor-led trainings don't cut it anymore for introducing new software. As users, we're introduced to new applications every day in our personal lives, no training required. At IMBII, we prefer to include our user guides right in our apps via a "How to use this app" button. With clickable actions to view next steps, the user is led through each screen and functionality throughout the app. This is a lot of work upfront, but your users will thank you. 2. Build IT support processes into the app How do users know who to contact if/when there's a bug or something goes wrong with the app? Just as you can build in your training, why not also directly introduce the "Help/Support" button to send a ticket to your organistion's IT helpdesk? You can even prompt the user to add more info and include keywords to help your first line support categorise the ticket. 3. De-clutter your apps with responsive buttons. With UX, less is always more. I try to keep my screens clean and clutter-free, but sometimes it's near impossible. There are just too many necessary buttons. One helpful feature I now work with is responsive buttons. After a few hours of building your first app, you've probably already noticed the "Visible" attribute on your buttons, which you can set to true or false based on other buttons or conditions in your app, but you can also use this conditional logic on the "y" attribute as well, meaning you can have certain fields move around your app depending on whether other fields are visible or not. This is how I create filters that expand or roll-up when the user clicks the ^ icon. Bonus tip: Colour blind users have difficulty distinguishing between red and green, so try to avoid this combo. Want a custom app developed for your organisation? Get in touch today: Sylvie@imbii.nl

See below a digest of the top newly released or upcoming features for Microsoft Teams. To see all updates available check the Microsoft Roadmap: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap Live Captions in Additional Languages Live captions now available in English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Swedish, Polish, Arabic, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Russan and Dutch will be added as live caption options. Feature ID: 70593 | Release July 2021 Chat with External Users in Group chats Users can create group chats that include people external to the organisation. Feature ID: 51126 | Release May 2021 Teams channel calendar Users will be able to manage appointments, events and meetings directly in each Teams channel. More granular audio permissions Organisers and presenters will be able to better manage attendee audio permissions, by preventing specific individuals from unmuting instead of all attendees, and attendees being allowed to unmute without requesting to speak beforehand. Feature ID: 80261 | Release April 2021 Low data mode Users will be able to limit the amount of data being used during a Teams video call, to preserve data (especially useful in limited connectivity settings). Feature ID: 70786 | Release March 2021 Breakout room improvements Organisers will be able to set a timer for breakout rooms, set room retention so participants re-join the same rooms, or re-assign participants to new rooms before and after the room opens. Feature ID: 81372 | Release April 2021 Lock meeting from additional joins Organisers can choose to lock the meeting to prevent new joiners. Feature ID: 80669 | Release May 2021 PowerPoint slide translation Participants using Micorsoft Teams (desktop) will be able to translate presentation content from PowerPoint Live in a Teams meeting into a language of their choice. Feature ID: 80601 | Release April 2021 Presenter mode improvements Organisers will be able to overlay video on content, move content box to a corner of the video view etc. Feature ID: 66587 | Release April 2021 Co-organiser meeting role Organisers will be able to assign a Co-organiser who will have almost all the capabilities of the organiser. Feature ID: 81391 | Release June 2021 Share to Teams from Outlook Send a copy of email messages or convos to Teams chats and channels. Feature ID: 80261 | Release April/May 2021 Mobile optimised network data usage Users can select option to reduce bandwidth used in calls. Feature ID: 70786 | Release March 2021 Enable unmute Organisers can now allow participants to unmute - even if they have not raised their hand. Feature ID: 80721 | Release March 2021 Multiple spotlights Organisers & presenters can now spotlight up to 7 participants at the same time. Feature ID: 80425 | Release April 2021 3rd party electronic signatures in teams approvals Teams approvals will now allow 3rd party electronic signatures via Adobe Sign. Feature ID: 81407 | Release April 2021 Create and use approval templates Team owners can create templates or use out-of-the-box templates in the Teams approval app. Feature ID: 81408 | Release April 2021 Call Merge Users can merge active 1:1 calls into another 1:1 call or group call. Applies to VOIP and PSTN Feature ID: 66054 | Release April 2021 Recording Download blocked for view-only participants Users with view-only permissions in a meeting will have download blocked by default on the meeting recording in OneDrive. Feature ID: 70543 | Release April 2021 View-Only Overflow for Meetings Currently only 300 users can attend a Teams Meeting. With this update, additional participants (up to 10,000) will be able to attend with view-only capacity. Requires separate license and must be enabled at tenant level. Feature ID: 65952 | Release Feb 2021 Anonymous Presenters in Live Events Organisers will be able to schedule anonymous presenters for Live Events. Feature ID: 70599 | Release Mar - Apr 2021 Direct Entry for Invited Guests Only Meeting organisers can ensure only invited guests are allowed into a meeting without approval, but others must wait in the lobby. Feature ID: MC233536 | Release March 2021 Meet Now meeting link in Teams When clicking the Meet Now button in Teams, users will get an option to open a meeting, or copy a link for future use. Feature ID: M237392 | Release: March 2021 Support for Multiple Teams Accounts Switch between 1 work and 1 personal/school account within settings! Feature ID: 68845 | Release Feb 2021 Improved Calling Experience Contacts, voicemail and calling history all in the same screen. Feature ID: 68771 | Release Feb 2021 Large Gallery View Gallery view will now support up to 50 participants. Feature ID: 70573 | Release Feb 2021 Channel Calendars Create channel-specific calendars. Feature ID: 68911 | Release Jan 2021 Improved in-meeting Share Experience Feature ID: 70560 | Release Feb 2021 Send to Teams from Outlook Send copy of emails (incl attachments) to a Teams chat or channel from outlook. Feature ID: 70598 | Release March 2021 Create Task from Chat Message Turn any message into a task by clicking 'Create Task' from message dropdown options. Feature ID: 68696 | Release Feb 2021 Glamour Filters Not looking your best? No worries - Microsoft is adding filters which you can adjust before joining a meeting to soften the focus, change lighting levels and customize your appearance. Feature ID 65944 | Release April 2021 Dynamic View Users can personalise the view during meetings and screenshares, for example: showing shared content and selected participants side-by-side. Feature ID: 65943 | Release March 2021 Breakout Rooms Meeting organisers can split participants into groups to facilitate brainstorming & discussions. Feature ID 65332 | Release November 2020 Force Mute Organisers will now be able to "force mute" participants, removing their ability to unmute themselves. Feature ID: 68729 | Release: December 2020 Webinar Registration & Reporting Event registration + automated emails to manage attendance, and detailed reporting dashboard to help understand employee engagement. Feature IDs 66586 & 66585 | Release May 2021 Data Loss Prevention for Teams Prevent people from sharing sensitive information in a channel or chat. Feature ID 65383 | Release November 2020 Teams Templates Custom templates with standardized structures and relevant apps to scale best practice. Feature ID 67110 | Release October 2020 Meeting Recap Meeting recaps including meeting recording, transcript, chat and shared files will be shared with participants in the meeting chat tab, and can be viewed in the Details tab of each meeting. Feature ID 67175 | Release: November 2020 Turn Off Chat Organisers can turn off the chat functionality during a meeting. Feature ID 67175 | Release November 2020 Outlook Integrations 3 new features coming to Outlook: "Share email to Teams" (Share an email and any attachments to a channel or chat in Teams), "Share conversation via email" (share a chat from Teams via email), "Reply to missed activity emails" (see recent messages from Teams and respond via Outlook. Feature ID: 57389 | (Launched) Manage Meeting Options in-meeting View and update meeting options within the meeting. Feature ID 67121 | Release October 2020 PowerPoint Live Presentations Audience can navigate their own views of the slides, separate from presenter, as well as provide live reactions, comments, and rate the presentation at the end. Feature ID 65947 | release December 2020 Large Interactive Meetings Up to 1000 participants Feature ID 65951 | Release December 2020 Meeting Overflow If attendee limit is exceeded, meeting will scale up to 20 000 attendees (stream capability only) Feature 65952 | Release October 2020 (Free) Whiteboard Alternative Freehand by Invision app for sketching and brainstorming. Pops out in new meeting experience. Feature ID 67170 | Release October 2020 Changes in Incoming IP Video Policy - Prioritize Bandwidth IT Administrators will be able to control incoming video policy, as well as outgoing. Prevent both outgoing and incoming video as needed to manage bandwidth. Feature ID 57082 | Release October 2020 Targeted Communications Team members can message everyone in a specific role at the same time with the @ tag. Feature ID 57651 | (Launched) Organisation-wide Teams Create a Team with up to 25 000 users. Feature ID 68692 | Release November 2020 Power App in Teams Usage Analytics Teams Admins will be able to analyse how app built with Power Apps inside of Teams are being used in the organisation. Feature ID 68751 | Release December 2020 Meeting Transfer between Companion Devices Users can transfer meetings between mobile, desktop, web, and add another device as a companion to a meeting. Feature ID 67176 | Release October 2020 AI Background Noise Suppression Background noise will automatically be removed by AI. Feature ID 68695 | Release December 2020 Whiteboard per-user licensing Whiteboard - the add-on for Teams will now be available on a per-user basis. Feature ID 66761 | Release October 2020 Presenter Mode for Whiteboard Organisers will now be able to present a whiteboard, without granting edit abilities to participants. Feature ID 66568 | Release October 2020 Better Power BI Integrations for Teams Enhancements to the Power Bi app to make creating visualizations directly from within Teams. Feature ID 68762 | Release November 2020 New Power Automate Actions & Triggers from Teams "Create a Teams meeting", "Send message to a channel", "get @mention token", "Create a team", "Add users to a team" actions and "User leaves a team" triggers for Power Automate to build automation from Microsoft Teams. Feature ID 68752 | Release October 2020 Device Management Automatic Alerting Trigger notifications and corrective action when a new device is used. Feature ID 68755 | Release November Direct Guest Join for Zoom & WebEx Teams Rooms and Zoom Room devices can connect via embedded web technologies. Feature ID 68736 | Release October 2020 BONUS New Together Mode Scenes A new variety of settings (e.g. an auditorium, a conference room, a coffee shop) in the together mode for Teams meetings. Feature ID 68749 | Release December 2020 Personal Wellbeing & Productivity Insights Users can create mental bookends such as a virtual commute, use Headspace for mindfulness, and set emotional check-ins to pause and reflect. MyAnalytics introduces productivity insights to set reminders to catch up with key people, follow up on to-dos and protect focus time. Feature IDs 68748 & 68747 | partially launched - full release: December 2020

Saved for Later | Release: July 2021| UPDATE FWebpart that can be added to any page or newspost to display a user's saved for later items. Stock Photos! | Release: July 2021| UPDATE Free to use stock images available in the SharePoint image file picker. Easy publishing from Site Pages Library | Release: July 2021| UPDATE New easier publish/republish options from the sitepages library via the command bar or file card. Search scoping | Release: July 2021| UPDATE New search scopes will allow users to select library, lists, hub, or organisation. Email Notification Settings | Release: July 2021| UPDATE Users can subscribe or unsubscribe from specific SharePoint email notifications. Collapsible Page Sections | Release: June 2021| UPDATE Modern Pages are getting accordion view options for sections, meaning you can choose to display them collapsed or expanded by default, and your users can collapse or expand as they like. Search allows acronyms | Release: Apr 2021| UPDATE The new Acronyms feature in Search will allow users to seach based on Acronyms, both for commonly used acronyms as well as company specific . Custom query filtering | Release: Apr 2021| UPDATE With this new advanced query option, users can now add their own codes (KQL or CAML). Immersive reader | Release: Mar 2021| UPDATE Tool which uses proven techniques to improve reading & writing. New button will appear in ribbon on all pages.
Group-driven membership | Release: Jun 2021| UPDATE Office 365 group membership will (finally) be manageable by security groups. Audience targeting for Events web part | Release: Mar 2021| UPDATE Focus Mode | Release: Mar/Apr 2021| UPDATE Page viewers and authors can hide site header and navigation with one click. SharePoint Spaces | Release: Feb 2021| UPDATE SharePoint Spaces allow creation of mixed-reality environments with 3D models, 360 images, videos, documents etc. Share a Page to Yammer | Release: Jan 2021 | UPDATE Audience Targeting for Quick Links | Release: Jan 2021 | UPDATE Targetting specific links to different audiences on your pages. Collapsible Sections on Pages | Release: March 2021 | UPDATE Ability to show page sections in an accordion view or as tabs. Default will be collapsed. Custom list Forms | Release: Jan 2021 | UPDATE Adding headers and footer images, customising choice field colours etc.
Lists Offline Mode | Release: Jan 2021 | UPDATE Just like with files and OneDrive Sync, users will now be able to work with SharePoint lists Offline! for low-to-no internet access. List Rules | Release: Jan 2021 | UPDATE Create if/then logic rules on lists based on changes in list information to set reminders and send notifications. Will this replace or compliment Power Automate? SharePoint App Bar | Release: March 2021 | UPDATE In an effort to standardise the look & feel between their apps (Teams & SharePoint), Microsoft is introducing the App Bar . Similar to the Teams layout, the app bar moves the navigation from the top of the screen to the left-hand side.

If you’re working with Power BI, you most likely hate it or love it. And whether you hate it or love it depends on the stage you’re currently in. And the stage you’re currently in, depends on the time and effort you’ve put into it. Makes sense, right? Power BI of course has many aspects, but let’s today focus on one of the hardest: DAX. You magically have a great dataset that is refreshed regularly, you’re working in one of the few organisations where the dataset is accompanied by proper and up-to-date metadata. Also, you don’t have to worry about how to share and where to upload the report and so on. You just have to make a wonderful report, which gets the most out of the available data. Besides great visuals, you need DAX. A lot of DAX.  Everyone working with DAX follows the same 5 stages. Many people stop, frustrated, during stage 3. But once you’ve put a lot of effort in Power BI and you’re past this point, a world of joy and lots of potential is awaiting you! Let me describe the 5 stages Joy & Happiness. Power BI is initially intuitive: you can easily create nice bar and pie charts, like in Excel but easier and fancier, and by clicking some visuals the whole report changes accordingly! The sums, counts and aggregate formulas you’ve created with DAX work properly, just like they did in Excel. Actually, it feels like Excel 2.0 and your Power BI future looks bright.
Deception & Frustration . The results of your formulas that involve more than a simple sum, count etc. often don’t make sense, but well... sometimes they do. You’re just trying some formulas till you’ve got the desired results. But once added to a different visual or with a different filter, the formula doesn’t work anymore! There must be a glitch in the tool! DAX is just behaving weirdly today. The difference between scalar and tabular functions are kind of clear to you, but not exactly. You also don’t understand the difference between a calculated column and a measure. Sometimes the columns work, sometimes the measures do, so you just go for the one that works that day.
Disillusion . None of your more complex measures seem to work anymore. In any other language like SQL, R, Python or with Excel, you exactly know how to get to the right results. But with DAX, it just doesn’t seem to work. Why does DAX have to behave so differently!? Even the simple calculate function does not always work as expected. And what’s the difference between filter and calculate!?!? Worst of all, sometimes your formula does yield the right results, but is so incredibly slow and you just don’t have a clue what to do about it.
Lift-off to success. Congratulations, you've probably spent quite some time and effort in learning DAX and it has paid off. You do understand the more complex DAX functions like iterators, time-intelligence functions, and you can create formulas that mostly work. Sometimes you’re creating a monster of a query, which is very slow, but that has nothing to do with your code, right? It’s just the amount of data. Also, you know how to Google for funky out-of-the-box DAX queries that open up a lot of additional perks of Power BI such as: adding measure filters to a visual, transform a slicer visual into “and – and” logic instead of “or – or”, use measures for a parameter slicer, use measures for conditional formatting etc. You’re making big steps now!
Master of DAX. You don’t just write code, you own code! You understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Evaluation context and filter context makes complete sense to you. The complex codes yield the right results and if not, you’ve got the skills to troubleshoot and fix it. You’ve also got the skills to tweak DAX in order to enhance performance. You write reusable codes, and therefore your reports are much more efficient and stuff that you never expected to be possible with PBI is now possible. In a nutshell: DAX is complex! A quote from the absolute heroes of DAX, Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari, “DAX is easy to learn, but hard to master”. That’s why it’s not something you can “just do on the side”. Nor is it possible to manage with just some people in your organisation that “sometimes develop a report besides their regular task”. You need dedicated people, people who can spend the time and effort to master DAX. People who discuss with peers, people who learn from the unlimited resources on the internet, read books (especially “The definitive guide to DAX”), use additional tools like the performance analyser, query plans, and DAX studio to tweak and improve the code. You are not alone in thisjourney, just request the help of a professional. Get in touch with us and we will discuss the best way forward for you. We offer trainings tailored to your level, create reports with proper documentation so you learn from our work and will be able to reuse the code, or we review your previous work and improve existing products. Let’s get the most out of your data!

If I would have banged my head against the wall each time someone asked me to recreate an existing spreadsheet in a dashboard, I would have had a permanent headache. And believe me, I’m pretty hard-headed. Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand why people come with such requests. You are just getting used to dashboards, the new way of reporting within your organisation, and you couldn’t be happier. For a while now your data is being refreshed regularly, the reports are much faster, you can easily filter on specific subsets of your data, you can easily share the report with everyone, etc (I feel another blog coming up!). But you’ve always worked with your convenient spreadsheet to visualise your data. So, let’s recreate your spreadsheet in a dashboard, as you’ve always done! Well, that’s a bit odd. You do adore everything that makes dashboards so efficient and you trust your BI specialist, but you’re asking for the same end result. Dashboards are not just awesome because of the nerdy background. The new visualisation options lead to plenty of new opportunities as well. So you should not ask your BI nerd “Can you recreate my spreadsheet”, but rather it should be “This spreadsheet has always been very useful to me. Can you make it even more useful?” And that, that’s a question we like to hear. Cause yep, I’m now speaking on behalf of all my fellow BI friends, we certainly can. Let me list a few advantages of “not just recreating your spreadsheet” Add trends: Of course you can add charts to your spreadsheet to show trends. But the trend charts in dashboarding tools are better in every single way. There are many different charts, allowing you to find the perfect fit for your purpose. This in combination with the possibility to filter your dashboard on a subset of the data, or to drill down, will become a very powerful asset for your decision making!  Drill down: Yes, I just mentioned it. Would you like to see how much toilet paper you’ve used per year, quarter, month, day? Or would you like to see the amount of toilet paper used per country, state, province, city? You just need one chart or table and you can see it all. With just one click you will see your data aggregated at a higher/lower level. This beats every pivot table. Visualisation: Dashboards can be eye candy, even if you try to recreate a table. I hate to say this, but people are superficial. Yes, you are too. If something looks nice, people are more prone to believe the content and have a closer look at it. So give your tables a touch of yourself and simply copy the layout to all other tables. Flag data: It’s so much easier to add some colour coding or other flags to your tables. Do you need to flag anything below or above a certain number?  This allows you and your colleagues to see any interesting data straight away! This in combination with the automated refresh... Oh my god. (By the way, does your organisation have proper KPI’s defined? You should!) Year to something values: Spreadsheets also allow you to calculate year to date, year on year etc. values. But I’ve never seen this being done properly and therefore it’s mostly left out of any spreadsheet. But in dashboards? Piece of cake for your local BI hero! Monitoring your progress has never been this easy. But what if you would still like to have a tab with the raw numbers to check the correctness of the data? Or you need to export your data because you need to send it by mail? No problem. That’s a very valid point and a table for exporting your data can easily be added to the dashboard as well. But please get used to the new possibilities that visualisation has to offer! These are just a few examples about how to visualise the same data, more efficiently. All those new features require a slightly different way of thinking and the data needs to be built up in a different way. With the “old-fashioned” spreadsheet way of thinking, you’re missing out on a lot of new possibilities. That’s one of the many reasons why your organisation needs a BI specialist. Don’t know where to start? Are you curious if dashboards can benefit your organisation? Do you just want to have a chat because you feel lonely? So do we! Reach out to IMBII and let’s see how we can move your organisation forward.

Thanks to the Covid-19 crisis, the entire world has shifted to online working. This mass exodus from the office has companies jumping from different video conferencing programs, trying to find the best tool for the lowest price. Naturally, the big names in VC are fighting a viciously competitive battle, and we get to watch the carnage unravel before us in a veritable PR soap opera.
From a recent exposé about Microsoft Teams vulnerabilities to hackers via a simple GIF , to the constant barrage of media about Zoom’s lax security, it seems like everyone is getting some kind of bad press, so who really comes out on top? Lucky for you, we’re here to gather the latest info and try to make a clear comparison of the biggest, most trusted names in video conferencing – as well my uncle Jim’s highly controversial and nonsensically named app “Thyme4Meeting”. See how they compare in terms of security and privacy below. The results are in... When it comes to cyber security, any system is vulnerable. So what is the distinguishing factor between all of these platforms? In terms of security, I would say it’s the sheer size of the company and the resources they can and will devote to dealing with security issues. For example, Uncle Jim’s ridiculously named “Thyme4Meeting” app (a conferencing app that has nothing to do with the culinary arts), has not disclosed financial records and when asked about funding for security Jim laughed and replied “no one’s getting past the gators”. While Microsoft dominates in this category, GoToMeeting is not far behind, even outshining Microsoft with their ability to provide end-to-end encryption on meetings. They do trade off some nice features, like remote screen control, in order to achieve that boast, however. Webex also offers end-to-end encryption, and Cisco is also a very well-respected name when it comes to Security.
Google is predictably last in this race, with security updates only three times per year, and generally are quick to drop support for apps they no longer want to invest in.
While Microsoft and Webex excel on the security side, they are currently on the chopping block when it comes to privacy concerns. A damning exposé from Consumer Reports revealed some shady information buried in the Privacy Policies of Microsoft, Google, and Webex:   “ According to their privacy policies, all three companies can collect data while you're in a video conference, combine it with information from data brokers and other sources to build consumer profiles, and potentially tap into the videos for purposes like training facial recognition systems” While Uncle Jim’s Thyme4Meeting was not listed in the Consumer Reports article, he has openly admitted that the app is “recording 24/7” and that technically it is not possible to turn the camera off. Zoom was also in the news for leaking user data to Facebook, allowing hosts to track when their participants were paying attention , installing secret web servers on Mac computers , and providing misleading or false information regarding its security and privacy policies. Consumer Reports have made recommendations to all four companies for improving their privacy policies, but if privacy is one of your major concerns, we would suggest opting for GoToMeeting until these data mining tactics subside.
It is important to note as well that Microsoft Teams is not exclusively a video conference solution, but also part of a much larger Office 365 offering, which includes document management, productivity, social media and automation tools.
We would also advise against Thyme4Meeting, at least until the majority of the 24 class action lawsuits are resolved. Resources and References: Consumer Reports, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex April 30, 2020 Consumer Reports, Zoom, March 30, 2020 Mozilla, Privacy not included Wikipedia, Microsoft v US, 2018 Threatpost, Single Malicious GIF Opened Microsoft Teams to Nasty Attack, April 27, 2020 TechCrunch, Maybe we shouldn't use Zoom after all, March 31, 2020 http://killedbygoogle.com For more information on how we collected our data, our rating system, or how we made our decisions, get in touch. I'll send my boring research for free!

When Microsoft introduced Power Apps, a low-to-no-code tool for non-developers to create extremely powerful browser and mobile apps, it was a game changer. For the first time we had subject matter experts able to design and develop their own tools. Finance professionals could design their own expense report tools, without investing their retirement savings into Red Bull and spending all their waking hours learning to code. Naturally, users began to flex their newfound power, and started building business-critical tools that entire teams or organisations are now relying on. While this novel flexibility provides great returns on investments, it also drives IT departments mad. Imagine you're minding your own business, savouring the early morning serenity of the office, when Susan from Fundraising appears at your desk, frantic and accusatory, upset that the "Donor Database App" isn't working. Although you are the director of IT, this is the first time you've heard of such an app. Upon further research it becomes clear that Amanda, a Fundraising Professional with impressive coding skills, has built a very complex application in Power Apps which connects to third party tools to consolidate data and automate several processes. Amanda unfortunately left her role recently to travel the country with her amateur improvisation team, and did not leave any significant documentation about the configuration of the app. So there you are, unable to support an app you never approved in the first place, yet one which has become absolutely invaluable to your Finance team. You start to wonder just how many other apps are out there which grant access to data, make changes to documents, and otherwise potentially circumvent your organisation's policies and procedures. You decide to join Amanda in her rootless improv lifestyle, giving up on your responsibilities and relationships with friends who refuse to support your (aggressively bad) acting skills, never to be seen again in the IT circles you previously enjoyed. All of this could have been avoided, had you called in the experts for some advice and support. Don't make the same mistake, call IMBII now, let us show you how to take back control of your environment, while still empowering your users. Never turn to amateur improv.

There are few things that truly scare me in this life; deep sea squid, a monkey with a score to settle, the possibility of geese developing opposable thumbs, but the thing that truly spikes my blood pressure is having worked on a document for several hours, only to lose my work a week later when I realize that my files were not syncing properly from SharePoint. Why does this (and other OneDrive errors) happen, and how can we stop it? While we may never be able to stop the endless plodding of evolution, and ensure our fowl enemies never develop the ability to operate heavy machinery, we can solve our OneDrive issues. Here are some possible OneDrive errors and how to solve them: 1. File paths exceeding 251 characters This is the most frustrating cause of sync errors, mostly because it can be hard to discover. SharePoint Online now accepts a path limitation of 400 characters in the browser, which is great….except for when you go to sync that file. Unfortunately Windows Operating System still has a hard exception of 251 characters. Sync that library and you will run into errors all over the place, even in other (non-offending) files! And now try to unsync the library – good luck! You probably need to uninstall and re-install OneDrive to actually remove the files. Cleaning up your folder structure is always the best way to solve this issue, but there are some other helpful steps you can take as well, like quick tricks via PowerShell to reduce your path length by a third! 2. Syncing too much, too often Much like a primate with a long-standing grudge, computers can get tunnel vision. With OneDrive that tunnel vision can translate to “sync, sync, sync, gotta sync”. If you’re reading this article, chances are you’ve already enabled Files on Demand, but if not, this article is the first step to solving your problems. If you’ve already tried FoD, here is another trick: Storage Sense . Enabling Storage Sense to aggressively free up local disk space has allowed my users to sync VERY large libraries with far fewer issues. 3. Files Disappeared Not unlike deep-sea squid, synced files can at times be mysterious, or even disappear completely. I am including this “issue” because although it is technically a user error, in my opinion it is a design flaw on the part of Microsoft that causes this user error. It is not at all obvious at first glance how to stop syncing a folder or library. Common sense would have us believe that simply “removing” the file should do the trick. Let’s select the library and click “delete”. Well, that pop-up seems pretty reassuring, doesn’t it? Looks like I can go ahead and click “Yes”. What I’ve just done sends ALL of my SharePoint files to the recycle bin in the SharePoint site, effectively deleting them for all users. And if anyone has ever tried to restore hundreds (thousands? Hundreds of thousands??) of files from a SharePoint recycle bin, you are probably having PTSD flashbacks right now. Unfortunately in this scenario, your only option is to be reactionary, however there are some good PowerShell scripts you can use to properly restore files when this inevitably happens. There are a few other issues I’ve come across in OneDrive sync less frequently – excel files that don’t allow co-authoring in the desktop application, for example, conflicts resulting in duplicated files, files reverting to old versions when a particular user re-syncs a library – but overall it is an extremely useful tool, especially in settings where the connectivity and Wi-Fi infrastructure just isn’t amenable to remote working. If you’re interested in how IMBII can help you cope with strange sync issues, or the very real threat of disgruntled apes, drop me a line and get in touch. And remember – geese are NOT our friends.

Microsoft’s aggressive marketing of Teams has paid off. With usage jumping dramatically from 32 to 44 million users over the course of one week, it’s obvious they’re riding the wave of Covid-19. Teams is a great choice for chat, video conference, and collaboration, but there are some serious implications to consider before and after implementing. Here are the top 5 things to be concerned about with Microsoft Teams: 1. ‘Dark Matter’ and GDPR/Data Security By default, all members of a Team are able to create Private Channels, which generates a subsite entirely invisible to anyone else (including owners) in that group. It not only generates its own chat, but also its own document storage. At this point giant GDPR compliance alarm bells should be ringing in your head. 2. Proliferation: Attack of the Clones Depending on how you implemented Teams, you may now be facing a complex architecture where sprawl and duplication abound. Why have your (potentially sensitive) data in one location when you can have it duplicated across several? 3. The SharePoint Connection If your organisation started out with SharePoint Online for document management, you may have already found yourself dealing with users who create new Teams, attach it to an existing site, remove all members and make a mess of the underlying access structure. The connection between Teams and SharePoint is not such an obvious one, and can really make a mess. 4. Auditing As a SharePoint support specialist, the majority of first-level support issues I am seeing are audit related, “Who deleted 2000 documents yesterday?” and “How long has that file been shared with those external consultants?” While this is easily done in your SharePoint environment, accounting for files and actions in Teams is not (yet) so sophisticated. How do you know if a user created a private channel, or whether your users have been uploading files to general chats (OneDrive), or channels (SharePoint)? Add to this the fact that Shadow IT such as Google Drive and Dropbox can easily be added to the Teams as add-ons, and you start to lose sleep at night. 5. Orphaned data The next logical question after we’ve introduced the concepts of private channels and Shadow IT, is about business continuity. If your users create file storage only available to them and one or two others, what will happen when that business-critical information isn’t included in their hand-over? Things start to fall through the cracks. This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the consideration and planning that should go into implementing new business tools. But don’t throw in the towel yet, because there are also some hidden tools in your subscription that can help with bringing some order to the chaos. Having a plan and some clear business rules will go a long way to cleaning up and protecting your environment, and to proving you’re doing all you can to be compliant to data security legislation like GDPR. At IMBII, we’ve seen the whole spectrum of Teams implementations, and we can help you get organised and get your peace of mind back. Let us show you how to get there, contact us today.