Hello and welcome to March 2023! As has become the pattern, we’re back to fill you in about recent updates that have taken place in the world of Microsoft 365. We do this for a couple of reasons. First, so you can be in the know, and make the most out of new updates and feature enhancements. Second, there is a good chance that some of your coworkers, friends, and family aren’t quite as well informed as you are, which gives you a chance to cut and paste and look like the hero telling them what new tricks Microsoft 365 has. If you have feedback or ideas on updates you’d like to hear more about, we’d love to hear them!
Microsoft Teams 2.0
First, let’s talk about performance. Teams has been running on the Electron Framework which has made the application slower and more resource intensive than one running as a “real” native application. The move from Electron to Edge Webview2 will cut how much memory Teams uses in half, ease its load on your CPU, and make your battery last longer. This is important for using Team on a laptop and even more crucial on a phone. “I wish my phone battery wouldn’t last as long as it does,” said no one, ever. Almost as important is the news that the new version of Teams will offer better support for users with multiple accounts. Microsoft is currently planning to ship a preview to users in late March. If you want early access, you can join the Microsoft 365 Insider program by clicking here.
Open AI Integrated with Viva Sales
The other big splash in February was ChatGPT. You’ve heard about it, you’ve played with it, and you’ve been impressed. As you may know, Microsoft was an early investor in OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, and is working hard to embed the technology into many Microsoft products. One important new integration is Open AI in Viva Sales. This removes the drudgery and repetition from the sales functions in Viva, and allows users to focus on the higher-value functions that add more value to their bottom line and more fulfillment to their jobs. Examples of drudgery might include responding to an email. To simplify this task, Viva Sales offers categories such as “make a proposal,” “reply to an inquiry,” etc. making the tasks of sellers easier and more intuitive. Viva Sales is simply first in the chain reaction as Microsoft leans into integrating machine learning and Open AI with more of its technologies. Expect to read more soon about its impact in other places such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Let’s not call it “The ghost of Clippy past.”
SharePoint Page Improvements
Microsoft announced or deployed a few improvements to SharePoint page authoring in February. First, they improved the text web part to better support multilingual proofing and give better control over line spacing. That change may be in your tenant already. Coming soon will be the addition of the Black and Cerulean theme options. After that, improvements will be made to the image web part options. This includes a consolidated toolbar for better navigation and added capabilities to text overlays such as text size and styling, text box color and opacity, and image overlay color and transparency.
Ready to Implement These Microsoft 365 Feature Updates?
This concludes our review of some of the most impactful, new features and functions to Microsoft 365. It is up to you and me to make sure we maximize the value of our “spend” with Microsoft technologies, and sharing frequent updates is one way to achieve that. If you are looking to improve your business processes by better utilizing your current Microsoft technologies, or are looking to migrate to Microsoft 365, please reach out to a JourneyTEAM Microsoft 365 expert today.