Microsoft is kicking off Ignite 2020, and as usual, there"s a big news drop to start things off. Included is a whole bunch of new things that are coming to Microsoft 365. There are a ton of Teams features, but other Microsoft 365 services are getting updates as well.
Outlook is getting some improvements, as you"d probably expect. Bookings is getting a new UI, along with new features for customization. On iOS and Android, Outlook is getting Play My Emails in more regions, voice commands for composing an email, reactions for emails, and QR connect to authenticate your Azure AD account. The new Outlook for Mac, using Microsoft Sync, is going to be available next month, but you"ll have to turn it on with a toggle.
Next up is Microsoft Search, which is getting new features later this year. Search is getting integrated into Teams, and it"s also coming to Windows search. New Microsoft Graph connectors are generally available, and Admin Feedback will allow employees to submit feedback to their administrator to help improve Search.
In the SharePoint and Yammer department, there"s a new Share To feature, which lets you share news to either service, along with Teams, with one click. There"s also a new All Company feed in Yammer, letting you share news to everyone at once, and in SharePoint, there"s a Boost feature to prioritize announcements in employees" feeds. There are also new Insights to help understand reach and engagement, and there are new built-in templates. People are going to be able to upvote answers to questions in Yammer as well.
Next up, Project Cortex is starting to mature as SharePoint Syntex. It allows you to teach AI to extract data from documents, and then it can apply metadata to that data.
Microsoft is also rebuilding Microsoft Stream. The idea is to do for videos what Office has done for documents, and it should be just as easy to find a create, share, and find videos in your organization. The new Microsoft Stream will arrive in Q4 of this year.
In Excel, users can connect to Power BI datasets, so they can use tools that are familiar to them. For example, you can use PivotTables or something along those lines.
Microsoft also announced some new features for IT professionals. Microsoft Tunnel is a remote access solution with Endpoint Manager and lets your smartphone connect to on-prem resources. Also, Endpoint Manager now supports managing virtual endpoints like Windows Virtual Desktop.
Most of the features announced are coming later this year.