M365 News For May
Hints of an eDiscovery Interface Makeover
I’ve only seen hints of the new “modern interface” for Microsoft Purview Premium eDiscovery. I’ll be very interested to see what kinds of improvements. This LinkedIn post by Purav Desai suggests that we could see significant improvements, but even when I worked for a Microsoft partner and had access to the CCT show and tell, some things were shown that wound up not appearing in the product for quite some time. (Years in some cases.)
This isn’t my first rodeo, so I’ll wait and see what happens when it happens. That’s the only thing that matters. Still, it’s nice that Microsoft hasn’t forgotten eDiscovery in the Copilot mania.
What else is happening in M365-land recently?
This article was interesting to me:
6 Ways Microsoft 365 Could Be Even Better
The first five are good suggestions for Microsoft to consider. (I know there are more; I have a few myself.) It’s the last one that made me perk up:
6. Too Many People Are Priced Out
While Microsoft offers four different 365 business packages, there are only two Microsoft 365 options for home users, and both are pricey. Microsoft could resolve this issue by, for example, charging less for people who only want to use Word, Excel, and Outlook, as many don't bother with the other programs that are included in the costly subscription charge.
This article focuses on home users, but we see the same thing in the enterprise world. Think about it this way:
You’re a mid-sized business that wants to use Copilot. That’s $360/year for each user. That’s not bad, but let’s consider this:
If you want to categorize the content in SharePoint automatically, you’ll need a SharePoint Premium license.
You'll need a Teams premium license if you want to get the most out of Copilot during and after Teams meetings.
Automatically detecting sensitive data that shouldn’t be pulled into Copilot interactions will require an e5 license.
The new Copilot for Planner will require a Premium Planner license. If I understand it correctly, you won’t be able to use Copilot to create tasks without paying for a Planner license.
It starts to add up to serious money. We’ve discussed the struggles with using e3 for eDiscovery and how the pricing for e5 might create an issue for small businesses dealing with litigation. The same thing is happening with Copilot.
Pricing specific types of organizations out? Yes, that’s a thing.
In other news:
Microsoft Teams added many new features in April 2024, like multi-turn chats with Copilot
Microsoft delays adding Copilot to OneDrive from April to summer 2024 - more waiting.
Microsoft Outlook will Let Users Follow a Teams Meeting, a feature I’m very interested in seeing. It could be very useful, at least until all of your attendees follow the meeting and none attend. ;-)
M365 Changelog: (Updated) Microsoft SharePoint document libraries: Improved Version history controls
Microsoft Places is Available in Public Preview - I’ve only read the marketing. I’m going to need to dig into this to understand it. But it’s in preview for those who can dig into it.
Microsoft Teams DLP Playbook - I can’t resist the urge to point out that when I first saw this post, the linked PDF of the playbook was locked down, likely with a DLP policy, and wasn’t accessible. It’s funny but also illustrative of the fact that this isn’t easy.
My closing question. If you were making a list of ways Microsoft 365 could be better, what’s at the top of your list?