Microsoft Mondays: Microsoft Service Update – January 2023 Vol. 1

If you’ve been following the Microsoft news as of recent, you’ve likely heard about the Microsoft Service Update for Wiki retirement in Microsoft Teams, new calendar week layout in Microsoft Lists, new Answers coming to Viva Engage and the retiring of Teams mobile support for devices running on iOS 14. When any of these topics came as a surprise or sound unfamiliar, Total Solutions is here to give you a rundown of recent or upcoming updates and action items your team can take in a series we like to call, Microsoft Mondays! If your team has questions that are not identified in this blog, rest assured that Total Solutions offers support and expert guidance as a part of our consulting process, and we look forward to hearing what updates and announcements you have questions on.

Wiki retirement and the future of note taking in Teams Channels

[MC496248 · Published Jan 11, 2023] Microsoft announced that Wiki’s will retire from Teams and the future of note taking capabilities will take place through Teams Channels powered by OneNote. Currently, users create OneNote tabs manually using the add tab experience (via +) but soon Notes tabs, powered by OneNote, appear as a default when users create new channels.

When this will happen: The following change will be rolled out starting mid-February

How this affects your organization: With this release, users have an option to export their wiki content to OneNote notebooks in Teams standard channel. After exporting users can go to the Notes tab to collaborate using OneNote in channels. 

Note: With this change users can continue to access and edit existing wikis but can’t create new wikis in Teams channels. 

If your organization has not enabled OneNote then you can review this documentation for assistance: 

• Deployment guide for OneNote 

REFERENCE: MC496842 (NOTE: M365 Message Center can only be accessed if you have certain Admin roles granted to your account)

Microsoft Lists: Calendar Week Layout 

[MC496244 · Published Jan 11, 2023] While creating a calendar view, choose between month layout or the new week layout to visualize your list information. There is a provision to create multiple calendar views – using both month and week layouts. Week Layout also supports all features from the month layout including the drag and drop operations to reschedule items and conditional formatting to color code items on the canvas. 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 100504 

When this will happen: This Microsoft service update will begin rolling out in mid-January 2023 and expect to complete rollout by late January 2023. To enable this feature no action is required but consider notifying your team about this new capability while updating your training documentation.  

How this will affect your organization:  With the introduction of this new feature, users can: 

• Create a Lists calendar view in week layout 
• Switch between month and week layouts in a calendar view 
• Drag and drop items in a calendar to schedule, reschedule or un-schedule them 
• Apply conditional formatting to color code items on the calendar 

REFERENCE: MC496244 (NOTE: M365 Message Center can only be accessed if you have certain Admin roles granted to your account)

Get ready for Answers in Microsoft Viva 

[MC495322 · Published Jan 6, 2023] Answers is a conversational experience for asking questions and connecting people to answers and appears as a tab in Viva Engage. Learn more in the announcement blog (Announcing Answers in Microsoft Viva), or view the Microsoft Mechanics segment (YouTube). 

When this will happen: This Microsoft service update is rolling out early February 2023 and expect this update to complete by early March 2023. 

NOTE: Customer tenants should be in Native Mode (Yammer Native Mode: step-by-step guide) while requiring Yammer topics to migrate to Viva Topics (Viva Topics experience in Yammer). 

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 72188 

How this will affect your organization:  The following capabilities will become available for licensed Viva Suite and/or Viva Topics customers when they enable the ‘Viva Engage Knowledge’ (Answers in Microsoft Viva) service plan: 

Knowledge managers/ Answers admin functionality :

• Office 365 tenant admins/ Global admins can assign users to the Knowledge manager role through AAD. 
• New/Existing Knowledge managers will sync to the Engage application as Answers admins. Syncing will likely rollout in phases before GA/Knowledge managers are included in the admin.csv data export file as well. 
• For the best experience, Global admins can assign the same users for Viva Topics to manage Answers within the organization. See assigning a AAD role to a group (Assign a role to a group using Privileged Identity Management). Also consider creating a role-assignable group in Azure AD (Create a role-assignable group in Azure Active Directory). 

Knowledge managers/ Answers admin functionality:

• Viva Engage Admin Center Controls made available to the following roles: 
  • Office 365 tenant admins 
  • Global admins 
  • Engage/Yammer admin 
  • Answers admin/ Knowledge manager
  • Users with the appropriate license will also see these new capabilities on by default in Viva Engage
  • Global admins will be able to enable or disable the Answers and/or Rewards experience through the Engage admin center under Feature management

Rolling out of new experiences:

For Viva Suite (Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Viva for Faculty, Microsoft Viva with Glint add-on, Microsoft Viva with Glint add-on for Faculty) 

• Viva Engage Communities & Communications service plan entitles the new Viva Engage experiences 

• Viva Engage Knowledge service plan entitles Answers in Microsoft Viva experience 

For Viva Topics (Viva Topics, Viva Topics for Faculty): 

• Viva Engage Knowledge service plan entitles Answers in Microsoft Viva experience 

These new service plans have been pre-provisioned to all the subscribed users. However, there is no impact to your organization as of now. Take the appropriate steps, mentioned below, within the next 30 days to control the provisioning for the new user experience. 

What you need to do to prepare (Tenant Administrators): 

• Service plans are already assigned to the users / employees by default. Admins should cross-verify to ensure correct users are entitled for new experiences, while un-assigning the licenses for others using this guidance. 
• If needed, admins can assign licenses to additional employees using this guidance. 
• In addition, Admins should prepare to identify Answers admins that are familiar with community management and Viva Topics management. 
• Customer tenants should be in Native Mode and require Yammer topics to migrate to Viva Topics so you can meet technical requirements to use Answers. 

REFERENCE: MC495322 (NOTE: M365 Message Center can only be accessed if you have certain Admin roles granted to your account)

Retiring Teams Mobile Support for Devices Running on iOS 14 

[MC495051 · Published Jan 6, 2023] Another Microsoft service update includes the retirement of the Teams mobile support on iOS version 14. Users should upgrade to newer iOS builds i.e., iOS 15 and above, which is where Microsoft will invest their development resources. Microsoft will also begin encouraging users to update to the newest version of Teams. 

When this will happen: The deprecation of iOS 14 will start on March 1, 2023, and complete by March 7, 2023. Microsoft will also prompt users to move to supported OS versions before the retirement.

How this will affect your organization: 

Users on your tenant will stop getting Teams update if they continue to use unsupported iOS version after retirement timelines. 

What you need to do to prepare (Tenant Admins): 

Prepare to upgrade the users in your tenant to supported OS versions i.e., iOS 15 or above.  

REFERENCE: MC495051 (NOTE: M365 Message Center can only be accessed if you have certain Admin roles granted to your account)

Note – All Screen images are sourced from Microsoft Message Center, as well as Message Summaries.