Are you keeping up with Microsoft updates? The Microsoft Mondays: Microsoft Service Updates series from Total Solutions is here for your needs, and remember that Total Solutions also provides tailored, expert guidance during our consulting process. We are highlighting a few of the Microsoft announced upcoming updates from August:
- Teams Premium Trial
- OneDrive and SharePoint: Colored Folders
- Inking Support Coming to the New Outlook
- Avatars: Hardware Requirements and Service Plan Update
- Channel meeting invitation | Allow organizer to send a channel meeting invite to everyone in team
Keep an eye out for Microsoft Mondays for your Microsoft updates or speak with our technical team for your Microsoft needs.
*Updates posted here originally posted by Microsoft in the Microsoft 365 Message Center
Teams Premium Trial
[MC670435 · Published Aug 24, 2023]: Beginning rollout in late September, users in your organization will be able to initiate a self-service trial of Microsoft Teams Premium using their Azure Active Directory (AAD) credentials with no requirement to input payment information, while providing complete visibility and control to their Microsoft 365 admin. Self-servicing allows end users to start the 60-day trial and generate signals on utilization for IT to identify users that would benefit from a Teams Premium license. These trial licenses are separate from your existing Teams Premium licenses.
Note: These trial capabilities will be available worldwide. Trials are not available for Government customers.
When this will happen:
Beginning late September 2023
How this will affect your organization:
When rolled out, users within your organization will be able to directly initiate a Teams Premium trial. These self-service trial licenses will be a part of your Microsoft organizational tenant, and you will be able to manage these licenses like other Microsoft subscriptions. You will be able to cancel these trial licenses at any time.
You will also be able to fully control whether trials are converted to paid subscriptions. Users will not need to input payment information when signing up. If a user would like to convert to a paid license, they must work with you directly to do so as there is no auto-renew functionality for these trials. If a user isn’t upgraded to a paid subscription, all services included in their Microsoft Teams Premium will end, and the user may lose read only access to data generated by Teams Premium, stored in Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint.
Microsoft Teams Premium helps make your Teams meetings more intelligent, protected, and engaging. Unlike other meeting and collaboration tools, Teams Premium brings advanced capabilities for meetings, virtual appointments, and webinars together for one low cost. You can learn more about Teams Premium here.
The customer data for all services associated with the Microsoft Teams Premium trial will be handled in accordance with the Microsoft Online Subscription Agreement and the Product Terms.
What you need to do to prepare:
Global or billing admins can use the same self-service purchase controls to disable self-service trials while making use of subscription management capabilities to oversee and manage trial licenses on the Your Products page in the Billing section of Microsoft 365 admin center.
Note: This is a new Teams Premium trial and is enabled or disabled independently of past trial offerings. Review our updated self-service purchase and trial documentation here. We’ve added important information about the way trials work, the data that is collected, and the terms that apply.
OneDrive and SharePoint: Colored Folders
[MC670439 · Published Aug 24, 2023] Colored folders are part of the overall “personalization and organization” story for OneDrive and SharePoint. This feature will allow users to colorize their folders with a pre-set range of 16 colors. This colorization is applicable to both new and already existing folders. This feature will be available in OneDrive for Business as well as SharePoint Document Libraries.
This message is associated with Microsoft Roadmap ID 124980
When this will happen:
Rollout will begin in late August 2023 and is expected to be complete by early October 2023.
USSec/USNat: Rollout will begin in mid-September 2023 and is expected to be complete by early October 2023.
How this will affect your organization: When creating a new folder, users will now be presented with a color picker with 16 colors that they can choose to customize their folders with. The color picker chooses yellow by default for ease of creation, but it can be changed to any of the other colors by the user.
If the user already has a pre-existing folder that they want to change the color of, they can do so directly from the context menu or through the rename folder option.
Colored folders can only be viewed in My Files with this feature rollout.
What you need to do to prepare:
There is nothing you need to do to prepare. You may want to notify your users of this update. For more information, please visit the blog page.
Inking Support Coming to the New Outlook
[MC670030 · Published Aug 23, 2023]: On a touch-enabled device, add a canvas to your message and draw with your finger, a digital pen, or a mouse in Outlook. Select from different pen styles and edit your drawing to freely express yourself.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 151810
When this will happen:
Rollout will begin in early September 2023 and is expected to be complete by late September 2023.
How this will affect your organization:
Users will be able to draw or compose a message with digital ink. On a touch enabled device, users will see the Draw tab. Once selected, you can pick from multiple options of thickness of the pen, color of the ink and type of pen (highlighter, pencil, pen).
What you need to do to prepare:
There is nothing you need to do to prepare. You may want to notify your users of this update.
Avatars: Hardware Requirements and Service Plan Update
[MC669477 · Published Aug 21, 2023] You will soon see a new service plan associated with your Microsoft 365 or Office 365 license: Avatars for Teams (MESH_AVATARS_FOR_TEAMS).
Avatars for Teams app is also updating the minimum hardware requirements to access this feature. The new minimum specified hardware requirement is a two core CPU with 6gb RAM. Users will not be able to utilize this feature if it does not meet the minimum hardware spec. This change is due to be able to provide users with a better Avatars for Teams experience.
When this will happen:
Rollout for the service plan will begin in late August and is expected to be complete by September. Rollout for the hardware requirements is expected to be complete by end of September.
How this will affect your organization:
A new service plan, Avatars for Teams (MESH_AVATARS_FOR_TEAMS), will be added to these licenses: Teams Essentials, Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft 365 E3/E5, and Office 365 E1/E3/E5. This service plan enables customizable avatars and reactions, giving you a much-needed camera break while showing colleagues that you are present — encouraging engagement, collaboration, and fun. Read more here.
What you need to do to prepare:
No action is required as this update will not impact user workflow or admin experience. You may wish to make a note of the new service plan name for your records.
Note – if the Avatar Service plan is set to enabled, but an Admin has disabled the Avatars app via the Teams Admin Center, end users will not have access to Avatars. Both the Service plan and the Teams Admin Center app settings need to be enabled in order for Avatars to work within your organization. Please refer to this guide to enable/disable the Avatars app for your organization: Set up avatars for Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn
Channel meeting invitation | Allow organizer to send a channel meeting invite to everyone in team
[MC661224 · Published Jul 26, 2023 · Last updated Aug 16, 2023] Updated August 16, 2023: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.
Channel meeting invitations will now allow channel meeting organizers the ability to share invites on personal calendars of all channel members.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 142405
When this will happen:
Standard Release: We will begin rolling out in late August 2023 (previously early August) and expect completion by mid-September 2023 (previously mid-August).
How this will affect your organization:
Often, channel meetings get missed since users are not appropriately notified about them. With the added enhancement, meeting organizers can turn a toggle button on the scheduling form when scheduling a channel meeting. Once the toggle is turned on and meeting is saved, all channel members will be notified of the meeting on their main work calendar.
What you need to do to prepare: There is no action needed to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.
Check out previous Microsoft Updates that Total Solutions has posted here -> Microsoft Updates Archives – Total Solutions Inc.
