We're nearing the end of yet another month, and almost halfway through 2019. That means it's time for Microsoft's monthly recap of the updates made to the Microsoft 365 suite during the month of June.
This month, many of the news are related to security, specifically in enterprise environments. Microsoft Cloud App Security has gotten some improvements, and it now lets you discover the apps and services that are running on top of your Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) subscriptions, regardless of whether they're running on Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.
Microsoft also announced the availability of Azure AD Conditional Access policies for Microsoft 365 Business. This lets you set specific conditions to how your company's data can be accessed by, for example, requiring that employees use a specific app to connect to a service. Finally, Identity Secure Score is now generally available, and it gives you suggestions on how to improve your business's identity security.
There are also some new tools that make it easier for businesses to comply with certain regulations. For example, communication barriers can now be set up between Teams channels, so that information from a specific team isn't allowed to be shared with a team that shouldn't have access to it.
To comply with data residency regulations, Yammer now offers local data residency for EU customers. Soon, Yammer content will also show up in eDiscovery searches. Microsoft is also making Multi-Geo Capabilities in Office 365 available to more organizations by reducing the minimum seat requirement from 2,500 to just 500. This should make it easier for more organizations to comply with region-specific data residency requirements.
Moving on to Office app updates, Microsoft announced a range of improvements to PowerPoint earlier this month. The Designer feature now works with your companies branded templates, and it can also suggest fully-licensed background photos, plus theme styles and customization colors, based on the text you've written in the slide. Branded templates are rolling out to Office Insiders on Windows and Mac, while the new theming features are rolling out to everyone.
As for Outlook, Microsoft has added inking capabilities to the desktop app, similar to what you get in the Windows 10 Mail app. Meanwhile, on iOS, Outlook now lets you share your most recent files more easily. Plus, if you include a link to a file rather than the file itself, company-wide access permissions will be applied to it automatically.
As for the other Office apps, Microsoft has introduced Recommended Documents, which provides suggestions on what documents you may want to work on when you open one of the apps. The feature is now available on iOS and Mac, and rolling out to the Win32 apps. Microsoft is also bringing Version History to the Office web apps, starting with PowerPoint.
A few other noteworthy updates for this month include the launch of Microsoft To-Do for Mac, a new "thumbs up" feature in Microsoft Whiteboard, Excel's ability to pull data from Nasdaq and Refinitiv, and support for password lengths up to 256 characters in Azure AD.
