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Stay in the loop: February 2021 roadmap updates

Stay informed quickly and easily with this monthly post bringing together the 317 features planned for release in February, the 74 features added in January as well as the ones that caught my attention!

Jacques Alexandre Bergeron

• 16 min read
Stay in the loop: February 2021 roadmap updates

Each month there are tons of features added and planned for release and it is hard to keep track of features even with the new Microsoft 365 roadmap website, RSS feed and downloadable spreadsheet.

This one-stop-shop monthly article makes sense of the clutter and is divided into 3 sections:

Do not forget that the most accurate and updated information regarding the upcoming features are found at the Microsoft Roadmap web site.

I hope this will help you easily discover what is coming and maybe help us manage employee and client expectations.

6 features that caught my attention

Here some of the feature planned for release this month that caught my attention.

Admin Center: Effective Controls for Apps

This new set of features will let you quickly managed Office apps deployment within the organization. IT admin will define de deployment channel such as current, enterprise monthly, and semi-annual for all your users. Among these, an admin will be able to skip a specific version for some reason, like holiday period, rollback to a particular version when needed and get insight regarding future versions.  Another feature will let you establish the set of features you want your user to know about before the user update Office apps. You will not be able to remove parts but instead, define what will be shown in the "What's new" popup after the user gets the update. It will definitively help businesses ensure users get the appropriate information and ensure we did not put too much noise on some that may bring more questions or concerns. Roadmap ID: 68929

Credit to Microsoft
Credit to Microsoft
Credit to Microsoft

Admin Center: Feedback from your organization coming to the admin center

Today users can send feedback to Microsoft product group using the tools they use daily, like Office apps. The input sent contains lots of valuable information to understand better what your user is like and do not like to help your organization gain in efficiency. Using the new Feedback section in the Admin center, you'll be able to manage feedback across your org, easily prioritize, route, take action filters by apps/channel/platform, and follow up with users internally. Through the creation of policies, an admin will be able, among others, to control the feedback experience and define which data can is allowed to be sent to Microsoft. Roadmap ID: 68899

Credit to Microsoft
Credit to Microsoft

Outlook for Windows: Book a physical workspace

What if you can easily define a back to work desk reservation for your offices? This is precisely where the workspace fit! Workspace can be made of many desks or a single desk that users can reserve as they do with rooms in Outlook using the "Room Finder." Each workspace defines its location (city, street, country…), floor, capacity, and minimum booking duration. This feature is already available for a couple of months in Outlook on the Web but coming soon in Outlook for Windows. Roadmap ID: 65643

Install-Module -Name ExchangeOnlineManagement
Connect-ExchangeOnline
New-Mailbox -Room Demo-Workspace-C | Set-Mailbox -Type Workspace
Set-CalendarProcessing Demo-Workspace-C -EnforceCapacity $True -MinimumDurationInMinutes 180
Set-Place -Identity Demo-Workspace-C -City "Québec" -Floor 21 -FloorLabel "IT Open space" -Capacity 25

Credit to Microsoft

SharePoint: Auto-News Digest

Let's told the truth. We don't open the intranet and another SharePoint site every single day to see what's new, do we? With this new feature, users will receive a weekly news digest containing up to 10 news they didn't read yet and are relevant to them. Microsoft uses Graph to determine what's "relevant," such as when someone in the user's direct management chain publishes a news post, works closely with publishes a news post, or follows a site. This feature is turned on by default and can be managed at a tenant level using PowerShell. Roadmap ID: 64685

Set-SPOTenant -EnableAutoNewsDigest $true | $false.
Credit to Microsoft

SharePoint: Image Lightbox

Finally! We all love images but be limited to a small picture instead of the full screen turned me off for years in SharePoint. There were a couple of alternatives, but I'm pleased to see Microsoft bring this simple and quite useful feature. Unfortunately, we didn't know if this will be available on image + image gallery and how Microsoft will handle different resolutions and mobile devices, so stay tuned! Has soon as I know more about it, this blog will be updated. Roadmap ID: 70669

Teams: History Menu

Have you ever use these two little arrows top left in Teams? Those are SOOOO useful for quickly returning to your previous location in Teams, such as switching from team conversation to documents. Soon Microsoft will add the option to jump to a specific last location without clicking it multiple times the arrow. A bit like we did with ALT+TAB while switching various Windows apps, Teams will display an over menu on the arrows. I can already think of lots of small scenarios where we often need to manage more than chat popup in teams and quickly jump back from a team's conversation to a specific tab, files and calendar. Roadmap ID: 70545

Credit to Microsoft

317 features planned for release this February

Here a list of what’s Microsoft has planned for release this month. Remember that “Planned for release” does not mean you will get the update this month but instead that Microsoft planned to start rolling out and it takes weeks and months prior it gets globally available.

To keep this simple this include all Products, Release Phase, Platform and Cloud Instance. The text has been cut in order to fit on 1 line, then if you are curious about it, click on it to go directly to the roadmap.

74 features added to the roadmap in January

Here a list of what’s Microsoft has been added to the roadmap in the past month.

To keep this simple this include all Products, Release Phase, Platform and Cloud Instance. The text has been cut in order to fit on 1 line, then if you are curious about it, click on it to go directly to the roadmap.

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