M365 Roundup, September 2022: Basic Auth Enters Its Final Hours

September 2022 is one of those months where the feature news is pleasant and the deadlines are not. Teams shipped eight quality-of-life features, but the items that decide whether your October goes smoothly are both in the admin column: basic authentication in Exchange Online starts shutting off October 1, and the GDAP clock keeps ticking. Deadlines first, features after.

The deadlines: basic auth and GDAP#

Basic authentication shutoff begins October 1, 2022 (potential action required)#

As Microsoft communicated in blog posts last year and in MC375736 earlier in 2022, basic authentication in the worldwide multi-tenant service starts turning off on October 1, 2022. Tenants are selected randomly: a 7-day warning Message Center post, a Service Health Dashboard notice, then basic auth goes dark in the tenant.

The protocols being turned off: MAPI, RPC, Offline Address Book (OAB), Exchange Web Services (EWS), POP, IMAP, Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), and Remote PowerShell.

Make sure no users or services are still using basic auth in your environments. The CIPP app reports on basic auth within tenants, and these open-source PowerShell scripts produce the same reporting across customers: msp4msps/Basic-Authentication-Reporting (opens in new tab).

GDAP bulk migration window (action required)#

The tool for creating GDAP relationships with Azure AD roles in bulk:

• Available until October 31, 2022, per the announcement current in September
• Documentation: GDAP bulk migration tool, Partner Center (opens in new tab)

Two related dates:

• September 30, 2022: Microsoft stops creating DAPs when a new customer or reseller relationship is created. If your customer onboarding workflow includes creating DAP relationships, that step needs reworking.
• October 31, 2022: Microsoft begins transitioning active DAP connections to least-privileged GDAP roles.

Partner Center announcement: August 2022 announcements (opens in new tab)

Worth knowing: the CIPP app (opens in new tab) now has a native migration tool that is much friendlier than the bulk migration tool Microsoft provides.

Teams: eight features, mostly meetings#

Cameo puts your camera feed inside PowerPoint Live (new feature)#

Cameo is a new PowerPoint experience that integrates your Teams camera feed directly into your presentation, letting you customize how and where you appear on your slides, with layout recommendations for optimal viewing. When it is time to present, PowerPoint Live in Teams delivers the remote presentation. There is a short demo clip here: watch the Cameo demo (opens in new tab).

Rollout: generally available.

Schedule send for Teams chat (new feature)#

All users in the organization can schedule chat messages. Scheduled messages can be delivered no more than 7 days in the future and cannot be flagged urgent or important. Inline images and attached files only become accessible to others in the chat once the message is delivered.

Rollout: early November.

Excel Live brings the workbook into the meeting window (new feature)#

Excel Live lets you share and collaborate on an Excel workbook inside a meeting, turning the meeting canvas itself into the collaboration surface, no switching between windows and screens. The obvious case: a budget sheet that needs every participant to contribute, review, and finalize together.

Rollout: mid-October, completing by late November.

Quick Access to Teams and SharePoint libraries in the Office backstage (new feature)#

Users currently bounce between routes to reach their content across Office products. Quick Access surfaces shared libraries from both SharePoint and Teams locations as a list in the win32 backstage, encouraging users to open and save files to those libraries with less friction and making storage locations consistent across M365 apps. The new backstage experience does not appear in Teams, SharePoint, or OneDrive itself, but it includes storage locations from OneDrive and Teams (sites and channels) stored on SharePoint.

Rollout: early January, completing by late January 2023.

Search results open the full chat thread (new feature)#

Clicking a chat message in Teams search currently lands you on the lone selected message with no surrounding conversation. The fix lands users on the full chat thread instead, with complete context around the result.

Rollout: early October, completing late October 2022.

Music on hold for call transfers (new feature)#

Teams can now play music to callers on hold when a call transfer is initiated. Applies to 1:1 VoIP and PSTN calls.

Rollout: mid-September, completing by late September.

Video clips in chat (new feature)#

Users can capture, send, and play back short video messages in Teams chat on all Teams endpoints. Recording is limited to 1 minute across all platforms.

Rollout: late September, completing by early October.

Gallery view jumps from 3x3 to 7x7 automatically (new feature)#

Teams meetings currently default to a maximum of 9 videos (3x3) in Gallery view, with Large Gallery as a manual escape hatch. With this update, users automatically see up to 49 videos (7x7) by default, no explicit action required. Large Gallery view remains available as an option.

Rollout: late September, completing by early October.

Viva: meetings get a feedback loop#

Meeting effectiveness surveys give attendees a new way to send feedback to meeting organizers and improve future meetings. Surveys appear at the end of select Teams meetings with 5 or more attendees and ask the following questions:

Requires a Viva Insights subscription.

Rollout: meeting effectiveness surveys begin rolling out end of September 2022, the meeting effectiveness plan begins mid-October 2022, and both are available worldwide by end of October 2022.