M365 Roundup, January 2022: NCE Opens Its Doors and Business Voice Bows Out

January 2022 is the month New Commerce stopped being a roadmap item. NCE availability for M365 and D365 went live on January 10, Business Voice got its replacement and a retirement date in the same breath, and Microsoft quietly told Business Premium customers that enterprise-grade endpoint security was on its way into their existing license. Everything MSP-relevant from the January announcements, sorted by workload.

Licensing and admin#

New Commerce launches for M365 and D365 (licensing)#

Availability for New Commerce on M365 and D365 products officially launched on January 10, 2022. Partners can now upgrade legacy subscriptions into NCE or purchase New Commerce products net new. For the full breakdown of how the offer works, see the New Commerce Experience breakdown.

Defender for Business joins Microsoft 365 Business Premium (security enhancement)#

A new service plan called Microsoft Defender for Business will be added to Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscriptions, bringing enterprise-grade endpoint security to Business Premium customers. No action is needed to enable the service when it arrives, and administration happens in the M365 Defender admin center. For a closer look at the offering, see the Defender for Business breakdown.

Rollout: late February 2022, expected complete by early March.

Defender for Office 365: URL protection report learns four new verdicts (security enhancement)#

The URL protection report gains new click actions that give admins better insight into link activity inside the tenant:

• "Admin allowed": clicks allowed by the admin as part of the safe links policy
• "Admin block": clicks blocked by the admin as part of the safe links policy
• "Pending scan": clicks on URLs awaiting a scan verdict
• "Admin blocked and click through": the admin blocked the link and the user clicked through anyway

That last one is the report worth reading. It is a list of users who saw a block page and kept going.

Rollout: end of March 2022, expected complete by early April.

OneDrive sync admin reports get a preview dashboard (new feature)#

The preview dashboard lets you view deployed OneDrive sync app versions, see errors on individual devices and in aggregate, and monitor Known Folder Move deployment progress.

More information in Microsoft's sync health documentation (opens in new tab).

Rollout: mid-January 2022, expected complete late January.

Teams#

Teams Phone with Calling Plan replaces Business Voice (licensing)#

The Teams Phone SMB bundle (Microsoft 365 Business Voice) and the Enterprise bundle (Teams Calling Essentials) are being consolidated into a single offering: Teams Phone with Calling Plan, available for purchase starting January 1, 2022. Business Voice is phased out on February 28, 2022.

One known issue as of January 2022: a bug prevents Business users from adding Teams Phone with Calling Plan, with a resolution actively in the works. Details on the offering (opens in new tab) and the bug announcement (opens in new tab) are in Partner Center.

Rollout: early January 2022, expected complete by early February.

Walkie Talkie goes GA on iOS (new feature)#

Walkie Talkie in Teams gives employees a familiar push-to-talk experience without bulky radios, turning employee-owned or company-owned iOS smartphones and tablets into walkie-talkies. Fewer devices for frontline workers to carry, lower hardware cost for IT.

With general availability, frontline workers can speak and receive Walkie Talkie calls even on a locked phone, using purpose-built BlueParrott Bluetooth headsets with a dedicated PTT button.

Walkie Talkie is not pre-installed. To enable it, use the Teams Admin Center to include Walkie Talkie in the App Setup Policy (opens in new tab) assigned to your users; it becomes available in the iOS app within 48 hours.

Teams learns to recognize music (new feature)#

To stop suppressing music as if it were background noise, Microsoft built an ML-based music detector that notifies users whenever music is present. The user then chooses: treat it as unwanted noise (the coffee shop scenario) or as the point of the call (the music lesson scenario) and enable the new high-fidelity music mode.

Rollout: early January 2022, expected complete mid-February.

Stream: comments come to video and audio files#

You can now hold threaded conversations on video and audio files saved in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online, using the same familiar commenting experience as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Rollout: early February 2022, expected complete by late February.