The month of June is soon coming to a close, and that means it is now time to look back and see what was new in Microsoft 365. As the world continues to deal with the Coronavirus pandemic and adapts to remote working or learning there’s plenty of supporting features that were added across Microsoft 365 this month. Here’s a look at what you need to know.
Microsoft Teams
We’ll start with everybody’s favorite service, Microsoft Teams. On this front, there are a few highlights, most notably the announcement of the expansion of Teams grid view to 7 x 7. This allows users to see new faces during meetings, and up to 49 at once in a single screen. Also announced was Breakout Rooms, which will allow meeting organizers to split meeting participants into small groups. Other important features added to Teams can be seen below.
- Offical support for the custom background effects feature
- Preview of Microsoft Teams for consumer, which allows you to sign in to personal Microsoft accounts in Teams on mobile to connect in group chats or video calls, collaborate over shared to-do lists,
Some of the miscellaneous added features for Teams include recurrent surveys in Teams. This feature will give admins an easier way to manage routine surveys in the Teams channels, including pulse surveys.
Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel
Second on our list will be Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel. In June, Microsoft announced that PowerPoint Presenter Coach is available for Android phones. The feature gives you on-screen tips on how to pace when you’re delivering a presentation. In addition, Microsoft also rolled out PowerPoint Live for PowerPoint on the web. It is designed to help you deliver more personal presentations to each audience member or viewer of your presentation.
As for Excel, there’s a couple of notable features in June. The first is Money in Excel, which helps you manage your finances and bank accounts and get a visual look at how your money is moving each month. In addition, Forms for Excel also became generally available, which makes it easier to get the information from users within your organization. Finally, there was the announcement of the ability to create video diagrams with a bit more ease.
Microsoft Outlook, Yammer
Third up are Outlook and Yammer. In Outlook, Microsoft improved on the ability to create polls from Outlook on the Web and the Outlook emailing app. The Polls add-in is now on the way out, and users can directly create a poll with a button in the email compose box, or the Office ribbon.
Finally, with Yammer, there was a major change in June. The new Yammer experience, which is designed around Microsoft’s Fluid UI is now rolling out in a public preview. This means that there are some new features, such as an “All Company” community experience, host live events and announce questions, polls, and praise with notifications to the entire “All Company” community.
Other changes
Of course, these are not all the changes announced this month. There were some new features for IT Admins, too. These folks can now make data more searchable with connectors and fine-tune some more privacy settings for the Microsoft Graph. IT admins can also now manage Microsoft 365 groups more efficiently thanks to an updated user interface and improved error messages. Lastly, there also is a new ability to verify documents are safe before they’re opened in Office, as well as manage the types of data that sync for Edge users.
It’s been a busy month for Microsoft 365, and we remind you that you can keep up to date on all the latest features and news via our dedicated news hub.
