Microsoft Updates to M365 Suite

Microsoft is adding several new features and capabilities to the Microsoft 365 suite. First, Visio is gaining several new infographic and marketing templates to help streamline creating visualizations. Second, PowerPoint is gaining two important new features. The first of these new features is the Storytelling Mode that integrates Power BI and PowerPoint together to enable live and interactive data in PowerPoint slides. The second is a new tool to control where and the size of a presenter’s video feed from a Teams meeting in relation to the slide being presented. Third, Teams is adding a notification drawer for in-meeting messages. Fourth, Microsoft Lists is now available for Android devices. Fifth, Forms is gaining a new mobile app and getting started experience. Finally, for small to medium organizations running Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft Defender for Business is being released. Microsoft Defender for Business brings together protection, detection, and response / resolution tools in one system. Details on these updates to Microsoft 365 can be found here.  

Why This Matters

• These updates are all focused on empowering employees to do more – from having tools on mobile devices to creating more engaging presentations. These are all likely to resonate with individuals in companies using Microsoft 365.
• Some of these experiences require investments and deployments of other parts of Microsoft 365 – especially base services like SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Teams.