Microsoft Monthly Update June - July

Welcome back to another Microsoft Monthly Update where we summarise some of the latest headlines from Microsoft, so that you don’t have to. 

This month Microsoft have announced the retirement of Office 365 connectors within Teams, Teams Public Preview users can create custom emojis and Copilot in OneNote can now read handwritten notes!

Retirement of Office 365 connectors within Microsoft Teams

Office365 connectors allow users to receive content and service updates from third-party services direct to a Team’s channel. These include popular services such as Trello, GitHub, Azure DevOps Services and more with the Office connector posting directly into the chat stream.

Beginning 15 August 2024 Microsoft is retiring the Office 365 connectors feature from Microsoft Teams. This change will be rolled out in two waves:

• Wave 1: Effective 15/08/2024: All new Connector creation will be blocked within all clouds.
• Wave 2: Effective 01/10/2024: All connectors within all clouds will stop working.

Microsoft recommends Power Automate workflows as the solution to relay information into and  out of Teams in a scalable, flexible and secure way.

For more information about this change, see here.

OneNote Copilot now supports inked notes

Copilot in OneNote can now analyse both typed and handwritten (inked) notes! Whether you’re accessing Copilot from the ribbon or directly via the canvas, Copilot can summarise your inked notes, create a task list when you select ‘To-Do’’ from the Copilot menu and more!

This feature is available to users running OneNote on Windows Version 2404 (Build 1768.20006) or later.

For more information check out the blog here.

Custom emojis and reactions in Microsoft Teams

Does the standard catalogue of emojis and reactions not quite cut it for you? Teams Public Preview and Microsoft 365 Targeted release customers are now able to create their own emojis and reactions.

These emojis are available for use across your tenancy with a maximum of 5,000 custom emojis allowed per tenant.

For more information, check out the full feature deep-dive here.

File menu improvements on the way for Word, Excel and PowerPoint for the web

Currently available for Targeted Release customers, these changes are expected to be generally available to all users starting in August 2024.

What’s new?

• Rename a file by selecting its title – renaming a file just got easier, simply select the filename near the top of the browser window and type the name you want.
• Autosave – ever worried something hasn’t saved? After your changes are saved automatically, a green cloud icon will appear next to the file name in the title bar.
• Quickly display your folder structure – by clicking the cloud icon next to the file name OR selecting ‘File’ to show the file location.
• Export to your favourite file type – you can choose which file type to export to, right from the file menu (no more File > Save as!)
• Move File & Access Version History – right from the file menu with these two new menu items.

For more information and to see previews of this functionality, check it out here.

Customise your notifications experience in Microsoft Teams

Teams Public Preview and Microsoft 365 Targeted release customers can now opt in (and out) of receiving notifications for a post in a channel.

At the top of a post, select the three-dot menu and then select Turn off notifications or Turn on notifications based on your preference.

For more information, check out the full blog post here.