Microsoft 365 Received Several Big Updates in July

Microsoft this week highlighted the improvements it delivered across Microsoft 365 during the month of July. Key among them were updates to Microsoft Teams and Outlook on the Web.

Here’s a quick rundown of the improvements.

Microsoft Teams improvements. Microsoft Teams received Read receipts and Priority notifications to help ensure time-sensitive messages are received and prioritized, plus a new Announcements feature that highlights important news and a way to post a single message across multiple channels. There’s also a new time clock feature for Firstline Workers that brings clock in/out capabilities to the Team Shifts module.

Outlook on the Web improvements. Microsoft’s web-based version of Outlook for Office 365 commercial customers received a new Quick Poll feature that lets you add polls directly to email messages, plus a way to more easily book meeting rooms by discovering which rooms are available (with search by city or room) and viewing those rooms that are available during recurring events.

Yammer improvements. Yammer received a small user experience update in which questions now stand out more from general discussions, making them easier to see.

Microsoft To-Do improvements. Microsoft To-Do now lets you assign tasks to team members using @mentions (“at mentions”).

FIDO2 support for Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). In July, Microsoft released a public preview of FIDO2 security key support in Azure AD. “Now, with FIDO2 technologies, you can provide users with seamless, secure, and passwordless access to all Azure AD-connected apps and services,” Microsoft corporate vice president Kirk Koenigsbauer explains. “Additionally, administrators can assign passwordless credentials to users and groups and allow self-service sign-up.” You can learn more here.

Microsoft Threat & Vulnerability Management (TVM). Microsoft TVM became publicly available in July, providing “a new set of advanced, agentless, cloud-powered capabilities that provide continuous, real-time, risk-based vulnerability management.” Those already using Microsoft Defender ATP now have access to TVM through the Microsoft Defender ATP portal. Those without ATP can sign up for a trial of Microsoft Defender ATP including TVM.

Desktop Analytics. Microsoft released a public preview of its Desktop Analytics web-based Windows deployment readiness tool. “In combination with System Center Configuration Manager, Desktop Analytics is designed to create an inventory of the Windows apps running in the organization and assess app compatibility with the latest feature updates of Windows 10. Desktop Analytics is currently offered as an Office 365 service and requires an Office 365 subscription in your Azure AD tenant.” You can learn more here.

New cloud regions. Microsoft opened new Microsoft 365 cloud regions in South Africa and the United Arab Emirates in July.

There’s more, of course: Microsoft retired the Office Online branding in July, announced (but did not release) a new Personal Vault feature for OneDrive, and improved how it deploys Teams updates to Office 365 subscribers. You can learn more in the original Microsoft post.