January 2023 Update Available for Office 365 for IT Pros

Office 365 for IT Pros Monthly Update #91

Lots of things happened in December 2022 to give the Office 365 for IT Pros writing team work to do. Among the changes are:

• Azure AD: Support for IPV6, registration for Linux devices, new branding options for tenants, and general availability of multi-tenant passwordless authentication through Authenticator for iOS.
• Exchange Online: The deployment of cloud (aka roaming) email signatures is showing up in Outlook for Windows and causing heartache for some organizations. RBAC for Applications is available in preview. This is important because it’s the new method to limit the access that apps have to user mailboxes.
• PowerShell: Microsoft is removing remote PowerShell for Exchange Online with the final deprecation due by July 2023. The preview of the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK V2.0 includes some good updates; it also proposes changes that will lead to the need to update scripts.
• SharePoint Online/OneDrive for Business: The sharing dialog now shows the sensitivity label assigned to a document (if one exists).
• Microsoft 365 Groups: The collaboration policy blacklist or whitelist can accept up to 25,000 characters, which should be enough to block 1,600 domains if you so choose.
• Teams: Meeting co-organizers can manage breakout rooms. Test licenses are available for Teams Premium. The new webinar experience is showing up in tenants. Users can add people to group chats with an @ mention.
• Compliance: communications compliance policies will accept adaptive scopes to define the scope of policies from February 2023.

All of this and more is in monthly update #91 of the Office 365 for IT Pros (2023 Edition) eBook, the only book updated monthly to cover the constantly changing Microsoft 365 Office ecosystem.

Ongoing Change

The list above is just a snapshot of the changes made across the book. More detail is available in our change log. We’re not always as good as we should be at recording precisely what changes appear in chapters. Suffice to say that there’s lots going on every month within Microsoft 365. This simple fact underlines and emphasizes the value of being able to publish a completely refreshed book monthly. No one likes dealing with outdated information and we do our best to make sure that our subscribers have the most current data available to them.

Download Updated Files

Subscribers of the EPUB/PDF version can fetch the updated files from their Gumroad account or by using the link in the receipt emailed to them when they bought the book. Amazon readers can ask the Amazon support team to refresh their book. More detail about downloading updated book files is available in our FAQ.

Office 365 for IT Pros in 2023

Development continues at full pace and the number of updates Microsoft releases has not reduced. The Microsoft 365 admin center team has made several changes to improve the quality of communication around changes and to help administrators understand the impact of individual changes on tenants. The addition of a release status for updates is the latest improvement.

Our mission is to track the changes as Microsoft announces them in message center notifications, blogs, and other places, analyze the updates, and figure out if they’re important enough to include in the book. We do not include everything because some of the announced changes are simply user interfaces updates. Instead, we focus on what’s important to tenant administrators. As we enter 2023, our dedication to tracking and documenting change within Microsoft 365 continues. We hope that you find our work and output useful and will continue to do so as the new year unfolds.

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So much change, all the time. It’s a challenge to stay abreast of all the updates Microsoft makes across Office 365. Subscribe to the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook to receive monthly insights into what happens, why it happens, and what new features and capabilities mean for your tenant.