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January 2024 Newsletter

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Our resolution is to continue to improve the information and resources that we provide to our clients!
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Now onto what's new in 2024!

What’s New in the Data Center?

  • Broadcom continues to shuffle the deck, announcing the restructuring of the partner program as well as whom customers can buy or renew licenses from. eGroup | Enabling Technologies is on the ‘nice’ list and can continue to support existing and new customers as usual. See your options for VDI if the spinoff of Horizon is concerning to you: Monitoring the VDI Landscape: Alternatives on the Horizon.
  • Zerto recently dropped Update 2 for Version 10, continuing to provide great protection of VMware workloads (on-premise or public cloud). Read about Zerto’s v10 Update on our blog.

What’s New with Microsoft?

Security

  • Microsoft 365 Defender is being rebranded to Microsoft Defender XDR. 
  • Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention will enable you to extend some of your existing DLP policies to macOS endpoints, including Removable USB device groups/Network share groups/Printer groups, Most restrictive, and Network share coverage and exclusions. 
  • When using Purview’s Content Explorer Export feature, you can export data only after drilling down to a specific location. Now, admins can use a new cmdlet within Security & Compliance PowerShell, “Export-ContentExplorerData,” to export all rows of data for the content that are scanned and shown. 
  • In Public Preview, Microsoft will integrate Purview Records Management with Power Automate. To provide greater process flexibility, Compliance administrators will now be able to create retention labels and choose a Power Automate flow to run when an item labeled with it expires in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange.  
  • To enhance the admin experience for editing and creating Purview Info Protection policies, Microsoft is making improvements to the Trigger, Trigger threshold, Indicator threshold, and Summary pages of the policy wizard. 
  • In Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (plan 2), admins can provide intent while submitting messages to Microsoft for review. 
  • Microsoft is releasing a tenant-wide Hold report as a Public Preview in eDiscovery Premium. 
  • If running Defender for Cloud Apps, firewall admins should take the time to allow the new IPs that Microsoft is updating (for portal access and SIEM agent connections). Admins should see Microsoft Defender for Cloud apps network requirements for the new IPs that need to be added for service to continue.  
  • Microsoft is retiring the Threat Protection report page (accessed through Reports > Endpoints > Threat protection), moving those features to Advanced hunting queries and Alert queue filters in Defender XDR. 
  • Microsoft Purview Information Protection allows the scanning of non-Office/Adobe documents and can apply protection (i.e., to scanned contracts in SharePoint or Exchange). By late April, Microsoft will allow customers to estimate the potential cost for using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). 

Intune

  • Starting on January 8, 2024, or soon after, the minimum supported version of the macOS Company Portal will change to v5.2312.0. 
  • Google recently identified two issues in Android 14 that make some management policies permanent on non-Samsung devices. When a device is upgraded from Android 13 to Android 14, certain settings are made permanent on the device. Additionally, when devices that have been upgraded to Android 14 are rebooted, other settings are made permanent on the device. 
  • Three new solutions are being added to the (extra) Intune Suite license: 
  • Microsoft Intune Advanced Analytics – February 1, 2024 
  • Microsoft Intune Enterprise Application Management – February 1, 2024 
  • Microsoft Cloud PKI – in the February release of Intune approximately February 26, 2024

Power Platform

  • Microsoft announced the general availability of the modern hierarchy security editor interface within Microsoft Power Platform, allowing admins to manage security assignments for users and positions. 
  • If using Power Platform Connectors, your firewall admins must edit the allow-list for endpoints based on your hosted region. See Microsoft’s documentation.
  • Beginning February 2024, Microsoft Power Apps is introducing a new endpoint for the Power Platform API as a service dependency change in all clouds: *.content.powerplatform.com. Power Apps end-user experiences will leverage this new endpoint. See Power Platform URLs and IP address ranges. 
  • To provide a unified workflow experience within Teams, Microsoft is merging the existing Workflows app with the Power Automate app. The Power Automate app will be changing its name to “Workflows.”

Teams

  • Starting January 22, 2024, Microsoft will upgrade the way policies are assigned in Teams. The upgrade will offer improvements to policy propagation for groups and remove the limitation on the maximum number of groups per policy (64 now). Watch your tenant’s message center for your exact date windows. 
  • A new Teams OneDrive app has replaced the Files app in Teams (in new Teams) and for classic Teams, will be replaced in early 2024. Those using third-party storage services will now require the corresponding Teams app for that service, available in the Teams app store. 
  • Teams device administrators will be able to configure maintenance windows for their Android-based devices (Teams Phones, Displays, Panels, and Teams Rooms on Android). This maintenance window will be used to carry out any automatic operation on the device including automatic updates. 
  • Mesh/Immersive Spaces is available in Microsoft Teams on Windows PC or on Meta Quest VR devices for users with Teams Premium. In immersive spaces, participants can connect with anyone in the Teams meeting.  
  • For experiences built with Microsoft’s provided environments, the PC requires 4 cores and 8 GB RAM. 
  • PC requires 4 cores and 8 GB RAM to enable the option and access immersive spaces. 
  • By the end of January, Teams meeting users will begin to see drop-down menus on the audio and video buttons to control their device settings, backgrounds, etc.   
  • Teams mobile users will now get notifications of the protected voicemails in the App and can open the voicemail via a link. 
  • For a paused or completed project where channel owners or admins want to preserve channel content—but no longer want to keep the channel active—they can archive channels now.  
  • Microsoft announced the general availability of the new Teams app for VDI environments for Windows. 
  • Teams applications must be at their most up-to-date versions by March 2024. At that time, users on Teams clients that are more than three months old may experience delayed chat messages, including one-on-one chats, group chats, or channel posts after March 2024. This change will affect Microsoft Teams Desktop, Teams on Mobile (iOS and Android), and VDI (Virtual Desktop Interface) clients. 
  • There is now an out-of-the-box template for meetings with external participants. The controlled content access template has preset defaults for meeting options to provide tight controls over lobby bypass, who can present, allowing chat across meeting lifecycle/in-meeting, and who can record. 
  • There is a new meeting option to “Turn off copying or forwarding of meeting chat” that gives the meeting organizer the option to disable meeting chat participants from copying chat messages using menu options or keyboard shortcuts, or forward or share messages to Outlook. 
  • Microsoft is changing the Teams creation process, making it simpler by creating a team from a template or group and selecting privacy/sensitivity of the team. 
  • Microsoft is enabling a personalized channel feed showing info from people and topics users care about. Instead of going through each channel listed to catch up on what’s happening in the org, users use the “Discover” Feed to catch up quickly on relevant channel conversations. Users can see why a specific channel post is being shown in their feed and they can customize their feed preferences.   
  • In March, users will see a “Notes” button during channel meetings that invokes new capabilities. Participants can collaborate in real time, create an agenda, take notes, and add tasks. When assigned a task in the meeting, they will receive an email notification that will sync with Planner and To Do. 
  • Soon, you’ll be able to create AI-artwork as the background of channel announcements. Try it in Teams web if your Teams app isn’t on Teams Desktop Channels 2.0. 
  • Teams Premium users will be able to “Decorate your background,” leveraging gen-AI to augment real-life surroundings and create a personalized atmosphere over your real background during video calls.  
  • Teams Premium users will be able to experience a live translated transcript during the meeting. Users can choose their spoken language and translated transcript language. 
  • Coming by March, Microsoft is rolling out a new report in the Teams Admin Center that will provide analytics for external access.  
  • On January 31st, 2024, Microsoft will block people from chatting with bots that are not connected to a Microsoft Teams app (e.g., Azure and Power Virtual Agent bots that are not published as an app) and who are not assigned to an app setup policy which allows uploading custom apps. 
  • If using Power Platform Connectors, your firewall admins must edit the allow-list for endpoints based on your hosted region. See Microsoft’s documentation. 
  • Beginning February 2024, Microsoft Power Apps is introducing a new endpoint for the Power Platform API as a service dependency change in all clouds: *.content.powerplatform.com. Power Apps end-user experiences will leverage this new endpoint. See Power Platform URLs and IP address ranges. 
  • To provide a unified workflow experience within Teams, Microsoft is merging the existing Workflows app with the Power Automate app. The Power Automate app will be changing its name to “Workflows.”

SharePoint

You can now rename the Topic Center site address from SharePoint Admin Center, using the same flow as now for changing the site address, instead of having to make a request to Microsoft Support. 

Microsoft 365 Copilot

  • Users of Microsoft 365 Copilot in Microsoft Teams chat and channels will soon be able to view their past Copilot conversation history. This release will be rolling out across Desktop, Web, and Mobile. 
  • Outlook has added an administrative policy to the Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center to allow admins to control the Draft with the M365 Copilot feature in Outlook.   
  • The Microsoft Copilot Dashboard is a new Power BI app from Viva Insights that helps organizational leaders prepare for rollout and track the adoption and impact of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. Admins can view results about how end-users feel about Microsoft 365 Copilot by asking recommended questions.  
  • Copilot is coming to Viva Engage, making personalized suggestions of what to post on Viva Engage, and where, and helping write unique/authentic Viva Engage posts. 

Outlook

  • With Outlook Mobile’s new sync window, you can choose how many days of emails and attachments you want to download to your iOS or Android device so you can access them offline. 
  • You can now send email with High or Low importance from Outlook for iOS like on Outlook for Windows and Web, with the “Importance button” in the command bar when drafting an email. 
  • Now, users can see Outlook contacts created with their Entra ID (AAD) account in Teams, and vice versa. Previously, contacts created in Teams were not available in Outlook.  

Viva

With the “Share an Update” feature, Viva Goals users can share updates about goals and dashboards with their teams or selected audience directly from Goals. Updates are sent to others via email. 

Windows

Plan for Windows 10 EOS with Windows 11, Windows 365, and ESU end of life on October 14, 2025. Upgrade eligible PCs to Windows 11, purchase new Windows 11 Pro PCs, or make Windows 11 available in the cloud through a Windows 365 license. 

Delve

Microsoft is retiring Delve on December 16, 2024, but the main features (i.e., Profile Cards in Microsoft 365) are elsewhere integrated into the native Microsoft 365 experience. 

Edge

Much like the way links from Outlook open in Edge alongside the corresponding email, links that come from Microsoft Teams will open the same way (by the end of January). 

Microsoft 365

Microsoft is introducing the ability for admins to get oversight to users who initiate and deploy self-service trials. Admins can now receive an Admin Center notification about trials for Microsoft 365 products or features available with their subscription with no requirement to input payment information. 

Conclusion

If any of these updates or changes concern you, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our team! We will be happy to work with you and navigate the changes with you. Feel free to fill out the form below to get in contact with our team.

Need Assistance with these Updates?

Contact our team today to get help with any of the changes mentioned above!

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