What's New in Microsoft 365 - October 2023

Microsoft Teams: Published Task List Notifications

The task publishing experience in Microsoft Teams now allows you to choose which users to notify when you publish or unpublish a task list. If you are using the task publishing feature, you will see the additional notification options in the confirmation screen when you publish or unpublish a list.

Microsoft Teams: New search experience within chat and channels.

The new in-chat and in-channel search experience will now be available in the right handrail, making it possible to see your chat/channel list and your new search results in one single view. In windows, you can begin your search using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F or Cmd +F on a Mac.

In addition to the keyboard shortcut, users can search using the ‘Find in Channel’ button on the channel information pane.

Microsoft Teams: Call Delegation Feature Enhancements

In Teams, users can choose a delegate to answer or handle calls on their behalf. Now, users will have a simplified experience when setting up call delegation on the Teams desktop app and Teams phone devices. Users who manage more than one line will now be able to more easily switch between and view call history for each line. 

Microsoft Teams: Explicit Recording Consent

Participants will now be asked to give their explicit consent to be recorded when a meeting organizer begins recording a meeting. Before a user gives consent, their audio, video, and screenshare/content-share will be disabled during the meeting. This will prevent their actions from being recorded.

Microsoft Teams: Set your Work Hours and Location

Set your work location for the day in Microsoft Teams, so your team can easily view your availability for in-office and remote collaboration. The work hours and location features allow you to specify more details about your work schedule and preferences, like from where you’re working (remotely or in the office) and whether you work different hours on different days.

Coming Soon to Microsoft 365

Outlook: Disallow Reactions on Specific Emails (October 2023)

With this update, senders will have more agency to decide if a certain email should not allow reactions. Documentation that describes the full extent of this feature will be released soon.

Outlook: Shared Calendar Notifications (November 2023)

The feature gives the ability for a user to receive notifications for changes to a calendar they have shared or have been shared with. Delegates and editors can subscribe to notifications from a calendar shared with them, and receive alerts if events have been created, updated, or deleted. Similarly, any user who has their calendar shared out can subscribe to notifications if a delegate or editor makes a change to their calendar.

Outlook Web: Customize Your Folder Pane (November 2023)

Users in Outlook for the web will have the ability to update their settings in order to hide Favorites if they do not use or want to see them. The 'Hide Favorites' feature allows users to personalize their folder pane. By default, Favorites will be visible, but users can opt to hide and unhide the Favorites experience from their view.

OneDrive and SharePoint: Colored Folders (November 2023)

In an effort to provide more personalized and organized OneDrive and SharePoint experiences, users will be able to colorize their folders with a pre-set range of 16 colors. When creating a new folder, users will be presented with a color picker, which defaults to yellow for ease of creation, but can be changed to any of the other 16 colors by the user.

Microsoft Teams: Simplifying Meeting Join Experiences on Teams Mobile (November 2023)

Microsoft is improving and streamlining the meeting join experience on mobile by:

1. Reducing the number of steps to join a meeting, particularly for external users joining from outside of the organization.
2. Users who join without signing in will have the capability to preset and preview video and audio settings prior to joining the meeting.
3. Simpler join process for users with multiple accounts by improving the account switching experience. 

Categories: Science and Technology