Delayed Features, Retirements, and New Insights Control for Office 365 in July 2021

Usual Mix of Missed Dates

As is the norm for Microsoft engineering groups when the end of the company’s fiscal year approaches on June 30, a mad dash happens to complete and ship functionality. This has nothing whatsoever to do with performance reviews and associates bonuses. Instead, it’s all done in the spirit of wanting to make customers happy. Some features don’t make it in the rush to deliver commitments, which is why on July 1 you invariably see Microsoft issue a bunch of updates to previous new feature notifications published in the Microsoft 365 message center. 2021 is no different and the table below lists some of the more interesting delays.

Message Center Number	Notification Title	Delay
MC250796	Create tasks from Teams chats or channel posts	GCC rollout delayed (no date given)
MC256837	Sharing links for Microsoft Lists	Delayed from late June to end of July
MC260564	Live transcription (Teams)	Early July. Automatic transcription for recorded meetings delayed to August.
MC265759	Defender for Office 365: Secure by default for Exchange transport rules	Rollout delayed from start to end of August.
MC249623	OneDrive Sync client update for Mac	Rollout delayed from mid-June to mid-July.
MC264090	Outlook Extension for Edge (recommendation)	Rollout late July for targeted release; early August for standard.
MC258623	Roaming bandwidth control for Teams	Rollout delayed to the end of July.
MC261352	Updated Stream web video player	Targeted release delayed from mid-June to early July.
MC256473	Defender for Office 365: Advanced delivery for Phishing Simulations	Rollout begins at the start of July.
MC256277	Advanced eDiscovery auto-scaling of legal holds for large scales	Rollout delayed from mid-June to mid-July.
MC257689	Customize property of Yammer Communities app in Teams	Delayed to “completion in July.”
MC258425	Rich Yammer preview links in Teams chats	Rolling out delayed from June to early August.
MC251564	Organizers can lock Teams meetings	Deployment delayed from mid-June to mid-July.
MC248428	New OWA calendar board view	Standard release deployment delayed from late June to mid-July.
MC252056	Office App for Desktop improvements	Deployment delayed from late-June to late-July.

Retirements in July

Two retirements for Office 365 components loom on the horizon for July:

• Skype for Business Online retires on July 31, 2021 (MC266078). If an organization needs to extend support in their tenant, they can ask Microsoft for an extension. No guarantee exists that Microsoft will agree, so it’s best for organizations to move on and transition to Teams.
• Site mailboxes, the unloved and unwanted child of SharePoint and Exchange, get the chop on July 15, 2021 (MC266256). If you haven’t moved data from these mailboxes to somewhere better (with a long-term future), you’ll lose the content.

New Graph Insights Control

In May, Microsoft replaced the privacy settings previously in the Delve app with Graph-based controls. The controls introduced at the time were:

• The isEnabledInOrganization setting to control if a tenant allows Item Insights (for example, information about the documents a user has recently worked on).
• The disabledForGroup setting to specify the GUID of an Azure AD group whose members are excluded from Item Insights. This setting only applies when a tenant allows Insights.

On July 1, Microsoft published MC266073 to remind everyone that the new Item Insights controls are now active. They also introduced a new personal-level setting in the Settings & Privacy section of the MyAccount page (Figure 1) to allow users to exclude themselves from Item Insights. The setting is only available when an organization enables Item Insights, and the user account isn’t a member of the group specified in the disabledForGroup control. Users who don’t want to share information about what they’ve been working on should set the slider to Off.

Setting the privacy control at a personal level does not add the user account to the membership of the Azure AD group specified in disabledForGroup.

Another Year, More Changes

We’re only a few days into Microsoft’s FY22 year. Already it looks as if lots will change. We’ll be busy tracking that change and updating the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook (2022 edition). Make sure you stay abreast of important developments in your Office 365 tenant by subscribing to Office 365 for IT Pros.