Hello, it's Matt, and welcome to Collaboration Coach.
This is the Office 365 Roadmap Radar for June and July.
These are my picks from all the updates and changes that Microsoft are making at the moment
that I think you'll be interested in.
There were lots of new features added in June so we'll cover those first
and then we'll look ahead to what's coming in July.
As usual, Teams gets most of the attention
but there's lots of good stuff for SharePoint, Planner and Forms
so let's take a look.
In June we saw lots of new features for presenters in Teams meetings.
With Live Annotations presenters will be able to highlight areas of the screen
to help their viewers follow their presentation
just like we used to do with a pointer tool in the real world.
The new annotation tool appears when a slide deck is shared.
Presenters can use tools like pointers, pens and markers
and annotate their slides in real time to draw attention to different areas.
The annotations are only seen during the meeting
and they are not saved back to the original deck.
Viewers on mobile versions of Teams will not see the annotations.
Live Annotations rolled out during June to Teams on Windows desktop, web and Mac
and should be available to everyone now.
Next we have a feature called Standout Mode.
Standout Mode lets presenters add a video feed to their presentation.
We'll be able to superimpose our camera video in front of our slides
or whatever else we're sharing.
There'll be a new button added to the sharing window
that activates Standout Mode.
Standout mode takes your video feed and layers it on top of whatever we're presenting
so people can see you and your slide at the same time.
Standout Mode rolled out during June to Teams desktop, Mac and web
and should be available to everyone now.
A new slide translation feature will allow us to translate slides into 19 different languages
when they're presented in a Teams meeting.
The attendees will be able to choose which language they want to see.
The translation will only be available for the individual that chooses it
and won't affect the presenter or any of the other attendees in the meeting.
Slide translation rolled out in June
and should be complete for everybody now.
This feature will allow multiple spotlights in Teams meetings.
It will allow organisers and presenters to spotlight up to seven participants simultaneously
for everyone to see during the meetings.
They can remove the spotlights whenever they need to
and add and remove them in bulk as well.
Multiple spotlights rolled out in June
and should be available to desktop and mobile versions of Teams for everyone now.
Approvals in Teams has been around for a while
and is available to everyone using it
but it was quite limited in what you could do with it until recently.
and this new template update makes it a lot more interesting.
Now tenant administrators and teams owners
will be able to create new approval templates in Teams
that people can use to start their approval workflows.
So for example, a team owner can create a workflow
that users of the approvals app can use to request to work from home.
All the properties needed like the date and the reason are all built into the template
so a team owner can create the approval workflow in minutes
and the whole team can use it.
The approval app templates rolled out in June and should be available to everyone now.
Now we can set our out-of-office messages in Teams
and that message will sync across Teams, Outlook,
and any presence indicators and contact cards like you find in SharePoint.
You can get to this through the "set status message" panel
or the settings page in Teams.
This update is available in the desktop and web versions of Teams
and should be available to everybody now.
There's a new feature being added to the SharePoint event web part
that will let us target events to different audiences.
This will let us give our site viewers a more personalised experience
because now, every time you create an event like the ones here on my home page,
you can choose who sees it
because some events you want everyone to see, like this company meeting,
and some will be specific like this one here which is for marketing.
You can add an audience to the event based on the Microsoft 365 group
and then only people in that group will see the event listed on the homepage.
This feature rolled out in June and is available now.
And now an update for Planner.
This has been on the roadmap for a while and is finally live.
File recommendations will suggest files to attach to our task
with a curated list based on the person using Planner
and the task itself.
So now when we open a task in Planner
we'll see a suggested attachment section at the bottom of the task.
It will only show us the files that we already have access to
and we can choose to add them from the list.
This update is rolling out now and should be complete by early July.
This is a Forms update that you can actually use in Teams meetings.
Now your Forms poll questions can have correct answers.
For Teams when you create a poll now, and you choose the "multiple choice quiz",
you can mark an answer as correct.
The poll can be launched in the meeting as usual
but when the attendee answers your poll
they'll see which answer is correct.
This update rolled out in June and is available to everyone now.
Okay, so now we're going to move on to what's coming soon in July.
First of all there are some updates for PowerPoint on Mac and Windows.
We'll be able to present straight to Teams from PowerPoint.
There'll be a "present to Teams" button added to the top right corner of the PowerPoint app
and in the slideshow tab there'll be a "present to Teams" button there too.
If you're already in the Teams meeting,
you can just hit "present to Teams" and it will share your deck with the attendees.
This update is rolling out now to PowerPoint for Mac and Windows
and should be complete by the end of July.
With this update we won't have to have the chat window open to see what people are saying.
Now when we type into the chat window, chat bubbles will pop up on the meeting stage
so that all the participants can see what was said.
Keeping track of chat is a challenge, especially if you're presenting,
so this update should make that much easier.
Chat bubbles are rolling out now and should be complete by the end of July.
The new call feature for Teams will provide everyone with a panel...
...that will show us real-time data generated by our Teams meeting or call.
It can be opened up during the meeting
and the idea is that it will help us diagnose any issues that we have.
It will provide data on audio, video, content sharing and network.
It updates every 15 seconds and it will help us trace issues with our call quality.
This update is rolling out now and should be complete by the end of August.
This is a new feature for SharePoint page creators.
Now when we're editing our pages
we'll be able to configure sections to expand and collapse.
We'll be able to configure whether the whole section can collapse or not
and what default state it should be.
Collapsible sections for SharePoint is rolling out now and should be complete by the end of July.
Okay, that's all I've got for you this month.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
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