Hello, it's Matt, and welcome to Collaboration Coach.
This is the Microsoft 365 Roadmap Radar for May 2021.
So these are my picks for all the updates and changes
that Microsoft are making this month
and as usual there is a lot of change.
Teams dominates but there's lots of good stuff for SharePoint as well
so let's get into it.
Webinars for Microsoft Teams are rolling out this month.
Webinars are a new type of meeting
that will allow you to create a registration page.
The registration page lets people sign up to join your webinar
and you can customise it to capture the information you need from your attendees.
It will send them a confirmation email
and the organiser will get reporting for registration and attendance.
A webinar will run just like a normal Teams meeting
so there's nothing new to learn.
Webinars and registration pages are rolling out now,
they'll be available to all enterprise and business plans
and should be complete by the end of May.
Microsoft are adding some new features to Teams breakout rooms.
Now when meeting organisers use breakout rooms
they'll be able to make sure participants stay in the same room every time,
even if the meeting is recurring.
We'll also be able to reassign participants to rooms during the breakout sessions
because previously you could only do reassignment when the breakout rooms were closed.
And we'll be able to set timings for how long the breakout session should last.
We'll set a timer, and that will be displayed for the participants in the room
and will show when the room is closing
and then move the participants out of the breakout room
and back into the main meeting.
These features rolled out in April and should be available to everyone now.
We'll soon be able to create tasks from Teams chats and channel posts.
This will mean you can turn a conversation into an actionable task.
On any post or chat we can go to the ellipsis and choose "create a task".
The task will be stored and tracked in the Tasks app in Teams
and from the app you can assign the task,
set a due date, and prioritise it.
This feature is rolling out now and should be complete by the end of May.
And now some updates for live events and Teams.
Anonymous presenters are those who have not signed into your organisation before they join your meeting
so they are basically external guests.
Until now, anonymous participants could not present and share slides in live events.
This was a pain because it meant that you couldn't have guest presenters...
...that were not part of your organisation - which was a common scenario.
So this new update will allow that
and an anonymous presenter can join the live event and share content,
as long as they're using the desktop app.
This is rolling out now and should be complete by the end of May.
A new feature is coming to PowerPoint on the Web
that will allow you to present to Teams with just one click.
There'll be a new "Present to Teams" button on the toolbar
in the browser version of PowerPoint.
Clicking that will share the deck you have open
to any Teams meetings that you're a participant of.
This feature is rolling out now and should be complete by the end of June.
There's a new view being added for producers of live events.
Currently producers see the meeting inside of the Team's app
and not in a separate window like a normal Teams meeting.
This new update will add the ability for producers to see the live event in a separate window
and it's rolling out now and should be complete by the end of May.
And now on to SharePoint.
This update is for Lists in SharePoint
and there'll be a new item added to the integrate menu for Power BI
and now with one click,
we'll be able to create a Power BI report from that list data for viewing.
Unfortunately only subscribers with the Microsoft E5 license
or the Power BI Pro license will be able to edit and publish the reports.
Those of us with the Power BI Free license can only view the reports.
You may already be receiving the SharePoint news digest in your inbox.
This email is sent out every week
with SharePoint news items from your organisation.
Microsoft are adding some new features to that email service.
First we'll be able to brand the digest email
with our organisation's themes colours and logo.
The news items are going to be ranked
so that people will see the news that is most relevant to them.
There will also be a new feature called Boost
that will prioritize certain news items as well.
These news features are rolling out now and will be complete in June.
Microsoft are adding a new feature that will allow us to pick a template
and apply it to our SharePoint sites.
The templates will be based on a scenario
like employee onboarding or training and development
Templates will include content, pages and web parts
to help us quickly get our sites up and running.
When we create our sites
we'll be able to browse a template gallery
and preview how they look, and then apply them.
And we'll be able to apply them to sites that already exist.
There'll be templates for team and communication sites.
This feature is rolling out through May and should be complete in June.
The app bar has finally started to roll out again.
Remember this started to appear in some tenants last month,
but the rollout was cancelled while Microsoft made some changes.
The app bar will be found in the top left of the browser on the SharePoint start page,
and in all modern SharePoint sites.
The idea is to make it easier to navigate the whole of SharePoint
by having a common menu system
so no matter what site you're looking at, you'll see the same thing.
We'll also be able to customise the navigation as well.
The app bar is rolling out now and should be complete by the end of May.
Now a new update for Outlook on the Web.
The new calendar board view is rolling out this month.
Boards are a new view for your calendar that can be customised
so you can add notes, tasks and other widgets.
A board is a personal productivity space that integrates with your Office 365 mailbox,
and with many other apps like OneNote and To Do.
They'll be available in Outlook on the Web, but not on the desktop client.
Boards are rolling out now and should be complete by the end of June.
And if you choose the suggested link now,
you'll see the video of my first look at Outlook Boards.
And finally the "My Day" view is being added to the office.com home page.
The "My Day" button will be a new icon in the top right of the navigation.
We can use it to toggle My Day on and off
and that will show us a summary of our calendars and tasks.
This feature is also available in Outlook on the Web on our calendars and mailboxes.
My Day on the office.com homepage should be available to everyone now.
So that's my pick of the new features and updates from Microsoft 365 this month.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time
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