Dear Techies,
February is a busy month in the world of Microsoft 365. With plenty of updates rolling out, and some exciting new features on the horizon, it’s time to dive in and keep the community up-to-date. 👇
✨ February Competition!
If you’re a subscriber of the Business Tech Planet Newsletter, then you’re automatically in with a chance to win a 1 Year subscription to Grammarly Premium (worth $150)!
Grammarly Premium features:
Clarity-focused sentence rewrites
Tone adjustments
Plagiarism detection
Word choice
Formality level
Fluency
Additional advanced suggestions
We’ll be announcing the winner in the FIRST March newsletter, so stay tuned!
🔥 Microsoft Introduces Copilot Pro
Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant tool that many users have found helpful in generating various responses from answering questions, proofreading paragraphs, all the way to unique image creation.
Now, Microsoft has announced a Pro version of Copilot for a $20 per month/ per user subscription.
The Pro version offers the following advanced features:
Access to Copilot in more of your Microsoft 365 applications, including Excel, OneNote (PC, Mac & iPad), Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. This extended access will be available for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers.
Access to GPT-4 Turbo during peak hours for faster response times.
Enhanced AI image creation with 100 daily boosts, more detailed image quality, and landscape format.
✉️ PowerPoint: Add Cameo to All Slides
Microsoft PowerPoint now allows users to add their video feed (Cameo) to all slides in the presentation. Cameo’s are perfect for presenting in Teams, as your video feed streams through it, allowing you to view yourself while using the expanded “Focus on content” view.
Want to learn more? Here’s the guide:
✉️ Microsoft Teams: Copilot in Viva Engage
If you’re using the Viva Engage app in Microsoft Teams, then you can look forward to the integration of Copilot, an AI communication tool that can boost the efficiency of your frontline retail teams.
Copilot will create conversation starters and even images to help engagement with the frontline communities.
✉️ Microsoft Planner: schedule recurring lists
Microsoft will be incorporating a new feature that will allow your organization to schedule recurring lists within task publishing.
With this enhanced feature, you have the flexibility to determine the frequency of recurring task lists.
For instance, if you regularly assign a store audit task every Monday, task publishing will handle the scheduling process automatically.
✉️ Microsoft Teams: Walkie Talkie Update
From Februrary 2024, Walkie Talkie in Teams will work with any wired Android headsets.
Additionally, users will be able to listen to incoming messages from any pinned channels automatically.
For more information Click Here.
What is Walkie Talkie?
Microsoft Teams Walkie Talkie is a feature within Teams that transforms smartphones and other devices into push-to-talk communication tools.
The tool is designed to mimic the experience of traditional walkie-talkies, allowing instant voice communication in a team or organizational setting.
To use Teams Walkie Talkie, users can press and hold a button to talk, enabling immediate communication without the need for phone calls or text messages.
📹 Work and Relaxation Videos
This year, we’ve been creating some…well, different videos on our Youtube channel. We’ve been looking at ways to engage our audience by providing ambient soundscapes that can improve focus while working, or simply while trying to relax.
If you enjoy what we’re doing, please drop us a like and a comment! 🥰
🪲 Known Bugs!!
Many users have reported error 30183-48 (401) while attempting to install Microsoft 365. This is likely a server-side issue that will be resolved by Microsoft.
However, you could also try using the Support and Recovery Assistant (SaRA) to assist you with your installation. Good luck!
📥 Rolling out in February 2024
There’s a lot of updates coming in early February. Here’s a list of what you can expect to come into general availability this month.
Clicking the To Do icon in the Outlook navigation bar will open inline instead of opening in a separate browser window.
Microsoft Defender will include a feature that displays the last used date for entries in the Tenant Allow Block List. This applies to domains, addresses, URLs, and file entries, providing administrators with information on when an entry was last utilized, either during mailflow or at the time of a click.
Microsoft Purview compliance portal will allow administrators to change the retention period on labels set to start retention based on "When items were labeled."
In Microsoft Teams, administrators will be able to deploy and customize their frontline operational hierarchy within the Teams Admin Center. This allows them to map the organizational structure of frontline teams and locations, define attributes such as department and brand information, and sets the groundwork for upcoming frontline capabilities like task publishing and other related experiences.
In Microsoft Teams Premium, users will be allowed to enable recording with watermarks during meetings. During playback of the recorded meeting, an email ID watermark will be displayed. This feature allows users to access and watch watermarked recordings on both web and mobile platforms after the meeting has concluded.
In Microsoft Edge, the Managed Site Indicator (briefcase icon) indicating a managed page will be relocated to the lock icon in the address bar. Admins can then click on the lock icon to check for the briefcase icon and determine if there are protections in place for a particular page.
Microsoft Search will introduce a new Video vertical feature on Bing, office.com, and SharePoint, enhancing search capabilities for videos within your organization.
OneDrive for Web will feature new and enhanced empty state images and text in various views. These images will be visible in new accounts without stored files and existing accounts with no recent, favorited, shared, or recycled files. For instance, if there are no favorited files, an image of a star with the text "Items you favorite will show up here" will be displayed.
✅ Wrapping Up!
That’s all for this newsletter. Remember to keep your eyes peeled for first newsletter in March, where we’ll be announcing the winner to our Grammarly Premium competition!
Thanks for reading! 👋