Microsoft 365 Roadmap Weekly: pictures for group Teams chats and more

If it's Sunday, then it's time for a new look at the past seven days on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap website. The site, which offers info on upcoming features for many Microsoft productivity apps and services, was especially busy this past week.

We've already reported on one new entry that shows Minecraft Education will add a way to save game worlds to OneDrive later in 2024. Here's a look at some of the other new features that were added to the roadmap last week.

Microsoft Teams - Adding a profile picture to group chats and more.

As usual, there were a lot of new Roadmap entries in the last week that revealed new features coming to Microsoft Teams. One of them that's coming in March for PC and Mac platforms will let group chats in Teams get their own profile pictures:

You will have a better way to reflect your team and group chat topic, with custom pictures. Group chat members can upload an image or use pre-selected illustrations and emojis, adding a layer of inclusivity and expression to their chat.

The web version of Teams will add a new feature in March that will allow admins to export "inactive teams and inactive domains reports to a csv file in Teams Admin Center." Another new Teams improvement that's coming in April 2024 for all of its platforms will shorten the URL for meetings and will also get rid of "unnecessary symbols/info from there to make it more convenient for sharing."

iOS Microsoft Teams users will get a new feature in March for recording video from their iPhones:

You can record a video clip with your phone camera and switch your background to any picture you want or make it blurry. With this feature, you can record yourself anywhere and share it with coworkers in your Teams chat or channel.

Finally, PC and Mac Teams admin users will get a new feature in March that will give them some control over presenters in meetings:

When enabled, presenters will no longer be able to control attendee mics and cameras, change the role of other participants, lower participants’ hands, and remove participants from the meeting. We want organizers to have control, flexibility, and structure in managing their meetings.

Microsoft Outlook - Schedule a Teams meeting from an email via Copilot and more

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that the new Outlook for Windows app had added support for chatting in a Teams meeting without leaving the app. However, there's another Teams-related feature that's coming to all Outlook users in March as a public preview.

Often you may want to transition a conversation from an email thread to a meeting. Copilot helps you do this by being able to start scheduling right from the email conversation. It saves you time and effort by generating a meeting invite that's ready for you to review and send. When you click on "Schedule with Copilot" a meeting form will appear with a Copilot generated meeting title, agenda, and conversation summary as well as a pre-filled attendee list from the email thread and an attachment of the original email thread.

The new feature will be generally available in May.

App developers will be able to check out a new Outlook feature in March for the desktop and web editions.

Developers can now build and publish Teams apps with Outlook add-ins for use by their customers. Users can acquire these Teams apps with Outlook add-in for themselves via Outlook on the web, new Outlook for Windows, and classic Outlook for Windows clients. Admins can deploy to users from Integrated Apps in Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

Microsoft OneDrive - File Viewer updates for the web version

The Roadmap site shows that the web version of the OneDrive file storage service will be getting File Viewer updates in March.

OneDrive is enhancing the user interface and design of the file viewer to make it more useful and intuitive. We are adding a new toolbar, new panes, and collaboration features. Additionally, the file viewer will open files up to 50% faster once these updates launch.

That's our look back at the past seven days on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. Come back next Sunday as we will once again check out some future updates for Teams and other apps listed on the website.

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