Microsoft have recently announced a slew of updates and feature changes for Microsoft 365 and Teams.  We’ve distilled down these changes to give you a quick summary of the updates that you’ll be seeing over the coming weeks.   Using your personal account in New Teams   Starting in April 2024 and rolling out gradually, the new Microsoft Teams desktop app on Windows and Mac will let you use any type of Teams account (work, school, or personal).   Meeting Recap   Launching in April 2024, shortly after a meeting ends, a recap message will appear in the meeting chat with li ..read more

In September 2024 Microsoft will turn off Live Events in Microsoft Teams. This will affect any users who have had access to Public facing Live Events. What Now? A new feature, called Microsoft Town Halls is being rolled out with greater capabilities than Live Events. Town Halls feature a “green room” for pre-event preparation and bringing speakers together. Town Halls also offer the ability to bring multiple speakers into view along with content such as presentations of screen shares or for panel style sessions with multiple speakers (up to 7 in view at any one time) – something that was dif ..read more

What’s Happening? In summer 2023, Microsoft made the new Teams application available for Windows and then Mac OS X systems in preview. As a result of the extensive use and testing and in order to move forwards with new features, Microsoft will be ending the Classic Teams application on Windows and Mac OS from 31 March 2024. In advance of this enforced change, ICT will be updating the policy for all College users to use the New Teams application. This change is planned for 27 February 2024 and will install the new Teams application at the next initiation of the application if you haven’t alre ..read more

The following are updates of particular interest or use for staff and students within College. Many have been demonstrated or discussed at the regular Microsoft 365 Ask Me Anything sessions (find out more at Ask Me Anything Sessions for the 2023 / 24 Academic Year – Office 365 News and Updates (imperial.ac.uk)). Microsoft Teams Updates Private Channels – Tags and Channel Links Private channels will support the use of tags that are generally available in MS Teams. You can use Tags for grouping people with similar responsibilities, grouping students into learning sets or dividing a large team in ..read more

What? Microsoft are ending FindTime, the add-in for Outlook that allowed you to offer options for a meeting and have attendees vote for their preferred meeting option(s). When? With effect from 11 December 2023 you will no longer be able to create meeting polls using FindTime. What do I do now? Instead of FindTime you should use Scheduling Poll which is the new option for meeting polls. Scheduling Poll is built into Outlook for the Web and Outlook for Mac. It is also available for Outlook for Windows, but may not immediately appear depending on the update channel to which you are subscribed ..read more

What is Bing Chat Enterprise (BCE)? Bing Chat Enterprise (BCE)  use the Chat GPT 4 AI model to interrogate and deliver search results based on access to the data that you have.  Your data is protected and the chat results are NOT saved or made available for Microsoft, so the data does not pass outside of the organisation.   BCE is grounded in data from the public web and provides complete, verifiable answers with citations, along with visual answers that include graphs and charts.   BCE is designed by Microsoft in line with Microsoft’s AI Principles.   BCE has no acces ..read more

Apple will shortly release iOS 17. This is expected to happen by the end of September 2023. At this point Microsoft will cease issuing updates for Outlook running on iOS 15 systems.  Outlook will continue to run on iOS 15 devices but will not receive any feature or security updates. In order to remain secure and compliant, ICT recommends that you update your device to the newest available iOS release for your system. If you continue to run iOS 15 on your device after the release of iOS 17, but then update your system to iOS 16 or 17, your version of Outlook will be updated to the latest ..read more

After the finish of the 2022 / 23 Ask Me Anything sessions, we wanted to let you know that we will be back for the 2023 / 24 Academic Year. Following on from the polls run during July 2023, we are continuing to run these, on the second Tuesday at 10.00 and the fourth Tuesday at 09:00, each month. How do I join the sessions? We’re making it simpler to get signed up for these sessions / add them to your calendar this year.   Head over to The Microsoft 365 Ask Me Anything Pages at https://imperiallondon.sharepoint.com/sites/M365AMAPages On the home page, scroll down until you see the “Ask ..read more

Microsoft Teams Preview is being rolled out for Education tenants. You can now opt in to get Teams previews by completing the registration form at https://forms.office.com/e/yFmnU9fuMA This will add you to the group which has the preview policy applied. Once available on our tenant you will be able to switch to Preview mode using the toggle switch on the main title bar in the Teams client for Windows. Please note that this is a Windows only preview at the current time. You can find out more about the Teams Preview by visiting the Microsoft Adoption Pages at this link … New Microsoft Teams ..read more

The “Present in Teams” button in the PowerPoint app is being extended to PowerPoint files that are not stored in Microsoft 365 Clouds. You will be able to use the “Present in Teams” button in the PowerPoint for Window app to present via PowerPoint Live in your Teams meetings, even if your file is not stored in Microsoft 365 Clouds. This is a new PowerPoint Live entry point for those files, in addition to the “Browse my computer” button in Teams Share tray. Clicking the “Present in Teams” button first leads you to the Save As dialog to store the file to the Microsoft 365 Cloud. Once the file i ..read more