This was the month that saw Microsoft celebrate its 49th anniversary, on 4th April to be precise.
It’s certainly packed a lot into this almost-half century and who knew that when Microsoft launched their first product, the Altair BASIC, back in 1975, almost fifty years later they’d be unleashing the power of AI in the form of Microsoft Copilot.
Enough looking back though, we’re here to see what’s on the horizon and the answer is, loads.
Here are a few key Microsoft updates, releases and enhancements you need to know about.
Multi-tenant organization with Microsoft Entra ID
Let’s start with the general availability of Microsoft Entra ID multi-tenant organization platform capabilities.
Most organizations start up with a single tenant but as your organization evolves, perhaps due to a merger or acquisition, you might need to integrate multiple tenants.
Microsoft Entra ID is a cloud-based identity and access management service that your employees can use to access external resources, and now Entra ID has multi-tenant organization capabilities to enhance collaboration, communication, and administration across multiple tenants.
Follow the link for more info and how to get started…
Viva Connections UX and branding updates
If you’re using Viva Connections as your employee experience platform, this one’s for you.
Microsoft has just announced new and improved branding capabilities for customers and greater flexibility of look and feel for end users.
Updates include:
- Custom icon for Viva Connections
- Custom name for Viva Connections
- Hero section image
- Theme color
- Custom fonts (coming soon)
Full details here along with Vesa Juvonen’s demo video…
AI Enhancements for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform
2024 release wave 1, set to be rolled out between April and September, includes new Microsoft Copilot capabilities for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, as well as role-based extensions of Copilot for Microsoft 365.
The role-specific Copilots include Microsoft Copilot for Sales, Microsoft Copilot for Service and the recently announced Microsoft Copilot for Finance.
In addition, Microsoft Copilot Studio allows users to customize and build their own customer and internal-facing copilots using their organization’s data and workflows.
There are new AI-assisted CRM capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service to help frontline and field workers boost efficiency, reduce training costs, and improve customer experience.
And with AI-infused Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft is aiming to take some of the grind out of a significant amount of manual ERP processes.
Sound like a lot to take in? There is.
Get the full story here…
Microsoft Graph API for SharePoint Pages
If you’re a SharePoint developer, you’ll love this new Microsoft Graph API for SharePoint Pages.
The aim is to provide developers with more useful, flexible tools, allowing them to programmatically interact with SharePoint Pages and News posts.
The V1.0 release includes:
- Web part support for create & edit
- Improved validation and error handling
Read on for more…
Cloudwell app updates
If you’re a Calendar Overlay customer, here’s what you need to know about Cloudwell’s latest Calendar Overlay update.
Cloudwell Calendar Overlay v3.7.0
Feature Updates
- Support for Recurring Events in Planner Plans: You can now show recurring tasks from Planner Plans.
- Visual Distinction for Recurring Events: We’ve introduced a recurring icon for visual distinction of recurring events for all data sources.
- SharePoint Add New Event Dialog Updates: When adding a new event to a SharePoint data source using the classic experience from the Calendar Overlay, the ribbon is now available to support uploading attachments and more.
- SharePoint View Event Dialog Updates: You can now open links within event descriptions in a new tab.
- Exchange Add New Event Dialog Updates: We’ve updated the ‘add new event’ dialog for Exchange events to align with the visual experience of the ‘view event’ dialog. Adding a new event also now supports adding categories when creating events.
- Added ‘Contains Data’ and ‘Does Not Contain Data’ Filters for Exchange Data Sources: When filtering Exchange data sources by the Category field, we’ve added ‘Contains Data’ and ‘Does Not Contain Data’ comparisons.
- Calendar Legend Security Trimming: Calendar legend items no longer display when a user does not have access to the data source configured.
- Introducing a Multi-month View: Our latest view addition, the ‘Multi-month’ view option, allows admins to configure a certain number of months to display within a specified number of columns.
Resolved Issues
- SharePoint All Sites Query Issue: We’ve fixed an issue where users could not configure a SharePoint Data source to point to all sites if they did not have read access to root the site.
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If you want more news and updates from the Microsoft technosphere, don’t miss our CEO Pat McGown’s blog.
And don’t forget, as a Microsoft Gold Partner, Cloudwell makes it our business to provide innovative enterprise solutions for your business.
Get in touch and let us solve your biggest challenges.