Hello, and welcome to September! Before we dive in, there are two things to consider. First, and always, you are free to use any or all of this with others who live on the M365 Platform. Our goal is to help you get the most value out of your Microsoft 365 subscription. Second, don’t forget the Pro-Tip of the Month at the end of this post. Let’s get to it!
Microsoft Teams Updates
Let’s start with one we all use often, Microsoft Teams. We currently have two choices: new Teams or classic Teams. Microsoft is busy updating both versions, but in this update, we’re going to cover new Teams. In many cases, there are features and functions that have been ported from the classic version to the new. Here is a list of a few of the updates:
You now have more control over how your notifications appear.
When in a chat or channel you can now Ctrl-F to search only that channel or chat.
When you are presenting Teams will automatically mute non-priority notifications and messages.
You can now set New Teams to look just like Classic Teams.
The new Teams is twice as fast to start up and join meetings.
Lastly, and this is a big one, the New Teams client now allows app integration. If your company has custom apps built for Teams, you are one step closer to being able to move over. That’s important because in September the New Teams will become the Default Teams. (Speaking of September, that is when you will be able to get the public preview of the New Teams for your Mac.)
Microsoft Loop Updates
August brought about new growth in Microsoft Loop, as It is slowly being enabled by default in new tenants. That means even if your IT department hasn’t enabled it, you will soon be able to use it. If you are in the IT department, and you don’t want to make it available to your company, you will want to make sure you disable it explicitly. I’ll note that the gradual rollout is not expected to be complete until early 2024.
Also, new this month is an integration with Atlassian allowing Loop users to add Jira and Trello boards and update them directly from Loop. This is the type of integration that makes Loop so attractive! It’s a little dated, but this video from March will demonstrate how it works. Loop can also be “dropped” into a SharePoint page.
SharePoint Updates
SharePoint is often used to manage large data sets, often using rules and patterns to classify content. A new feature is using colored folders to help distinguish the content. You might want to have invoices in green, progress reports in purple, and bug reports in red. This would let you then assign names to the folders specific to a project but maintain the color consistency. This also applies to OneDrive and in both cases, folder colors can be set programmatically with Power Automate.
Bing Chat vs. Bing Chat Enterprise
This has rolled out to most of us, and if you are logged into a “work” account on Microsoft Edge, you will find it in the upper right-hand corner of your browser as a stylized ‘b” in a chat bubble. If you are logged into a personal account, you will find the regular Bing Chat behind the same bubble. Here are the differences between the two. Bing Chat Enterprise does not save your chat data, nor is your data used to train the underlying large language models. In fact, it doesn’t save your chat history at all, so when you come back you are starting fresh each time, which can be a pro for keeping sensitive information secure. It also doesn’t currently support 3rd-party plugins or actions, Bing Image Creator, or Visual Search. All those items are coming soon. ILastly. Bing Chat Enterprise does not have access to your internal content, that will be available in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Because Bing Chat saves all your “prompts” to be used for later training, it should be clear that it is not a good choice for “work” questions.
JourneyTEAM’s Pro Tip of the Month
Finally, let’s talk about opening content in either Word, Excel or PowerPoint. When you click a link to a shared document, there are three ways Windows might respond. If you are in Teams, you can view and edit the document without ever leaving Teams. If you are not in Teams and click the link, it can either open in your default browser or in the desktop application. Note that in many cases Windows will choose to open the document in Edge even if that isn’t your default browser. Editing documents in Teams or a browser is a much better experience than it used to be. To set your system so that documents automatically open there each time, here are a couple of steps:
Open Teams (either version!) and click the three dots next to your profile.
Click Settings.
On the left will be a “Files and links” which will give you a chance to set your “File open preference.” That will govern documents opened from within Teams.
Now open any Office application and choose File and then Options.
Click on Advanced and then scroll down until you see File Open Preference. With both of those options set to Desktop most (but not all!) documents will open in your desktop applications.
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