M365 News for March
Microsoft = All in on Copilot Everywhere
I’ve been asked to test Copilot at work, so maybe it’s just because I’ve been paying more attention, but it sure seems like new Copilot features or information is coming out every day. Regarding tracking news about M365 this month, I suspect some of it is getting drowned out by Copilot.
Still, while I found some news that wasn’t related to Copilot, we might as well get to the Copilot-related stuff first:
There are new and upcoming features to keep an eye on:
Introducing Copilot in Forms: Redefining Your Forms Creation
Notebook is now officially available on Microsoft Copilot on the web for PC and mobile
There is also so much to learn about Copilot; thankfully, some free resources are available.
Build Critical AI Skills with These 250 (Free) AI Courses - not specific to Copilot, but it’ll help with any AI tool.
Microsoft also has some new training courses (thanks to David Cervigón Luna for sharing these on LinkedIn.)
New Microsoft 365 Copilot trainings available (MS-4004, MS-4005, MS-4006)!
+ Optimize productivity with Copilot for Microsoft 365:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/courses/ms-4004
Includes:
- Introduction to Copilot for Microsoft 365: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/introduction-microsoft-365-copilot/
- Empower your workforce with Copilot for Microsoft 365 Use Cases: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/empower-workforce-copilot-use-cases/
+ Craft effective prompts for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/courses/ms-4005 (based on the modules already included in this Learning Path https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/craft-effective-prompts-copilot-microsoft-365/)
+ Copilot for Microsoft 365 for Administrators: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/courses/ms-4006 --> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/prepare-your-organization-microsoft-365-copilot/
There are also some important things to know about Copilot when it comes to Information Governance, Purview, etc.:
Microsoft Copilot for M365: 4 Readiness Considerations for Legal and eDiscovery Teams
Introducing Restricted SharePoint Search to help you get started with Copilot for Microsoft 365
Tony Redmond, however, points out that limiting the search to 100 SharePoint sites is fairly ridiculous. I agree with his recommendation to use Sensitivity Labels to exclude things you don’t want Copilot to include in the models. However, this will be a significant exercise for many.
This is also important for anyone with confidentiality concerns with their prompts. - AI Data Privacy Concern: Microsoft employees might review your Azure AI prompts and responses.
I told you there was a lot. But there are also some other things to share that are not Copilot:
This seems like an interesting alternative to VPN:
I haven’t been using Project for the Web, but it seems like Microsoft is making some changes to make it more useful. - Project for the Web gets highly requested feature to boost collaboration.
Auditing the ins and outs of group membership is vital to ensure users aren’t granted access to things they shouldn’t be. - Audit Group Membership Changes in M365 Using PowerShell.
Related - Audit File Downloads in SharePoint Online Using PowerShell.
It's a Good Idea to Archive Teams Channels - I’ll have more on this in next week’s issue.
Zoom Is Getting Microsoft 365 App Integration, which could be interesting.
This seems like a useful integration - Microsoft Lists: New forms experience.
This new Teams feature makes me wonder how we would audit meeting attendance when investigating one of our users. What do you think about it?
Microsoft Teams users can test signing in to a work meeting with their personal account.
Here’s some information on DLP -
Finally, here are some new options for permissions:
Enhancing Secure collaboration with new user-defined permission support.
That’s it for this month. I’ll return with some testing results in the next few weeks. As always, free subscribers will get the preview, while paying subscribers will get all the testing details.