

Version 21.01.07
Microsoft MVP Jasper Oosterveld on the new Approvals app for Microsoft Teams, an audience targeting capability for the Quick links web part in SharePoint, and the ability to block downloads for Teams meeting recordings on OneDrive and SharePoint.
ShareGate’s easy-to-use SaaS tools enable organizations to achieve more than ever before with Microsoft cloud technologies. In our ongoing series, Jasper Oosterveld brings you up to speed on the latest and greatest from the world of Microsoft 365.
I hope you enjoyed my last update—where I discussed the ability to manage Q&A and comments for Yammer live events, the general availability of mandatory labeling in Office apps, and the introduction of Portal Launch Scheduler in SharePoint PowerShell.
Let’s move on to the latest installment!
In this release, you’ll find my opinion on the new Approvals app for Microsoft Teams, an audience targeting capability for the Quick links web part in SharePoint, and the ability to block downloads for Teams meeting recordings on OneDrive and SharePoint.
Without further ado, let’s take a closer look at three Microsoft 365 updates you need to know about now.
Get caught up on all things Microsoft Ignite 2020! Missed this year’s virtual conference? Check out the ShareGate Takeaway for all the event news, announcements, and session recaps with analyses from the ShareGate team and Microsoft experts!
Prepared with care by our team and 7 Azure and Microsoft 365 MVPs
What better way to start the new year than with a Microsoft Teams update! Microsoft is introducing a native Microsoft Teams application called Approvals.
Get to results faster with Approvals in Microsoft Teams. Easily create, manage, share, and act on approvals directly from your hub for teamwork.
Microsoft 365 Roadmap, Feature ID: 68724
Approvals lets employees easily create, manage, and share approvals from a hub for teamwork. These approvals are triggered directly through the Power Automate infrastructure and do not require a flow with an approvals action.
Employees can create new approvals, view pending approvals, and see previous approvals in one place—including the approvals that have been completed. Approvals show up across all systems, including Power Automate, SharePoint, and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
The following screenshot shows an example:
During my conversations with customers, I always emphasize one of the biggest selling points of Microsoft Teams: Its central and integrated work experience enables employees to do most of their work right within Microsoft Teams. This saves them time switching between multiple applications, resulting in increased focus and concentration. This, in turn, leads to increased productivity. The new Approvals application proves this once again.
Good to know:
Microsoft is rolling out the update in mid-January 2021. Head to the official Microsoft documentation for additional information about Approvals in Microsoft Teams and Teams Approvals app availability, or check out the Microsoft support documentation for ‘What is Approvals?’.
One of the key features of a high-quality SharePoint intranet portal is the ability to provide personalized information for your employees. This varies from news, knowledge items, content, and links.
Up until now, however, personalizing the latter (links) was tricky. To address this, we, at InSpark, created our own Quick links app to include a personalization feature, allowing companies to provide personalized links based on the logged in employee.
With this update, Microsoft is finally introducing an audience targeting feature for the Quick links web part!
We are adding the ability to target specific audiences per link within the Quick links web part. With it, you target specific links to different audiences, helping you provide more personalized experiences on SharePoint pages.
Microsoft 365 Roadmap, Feature ID: 67115
That is great news! Not only because of the personalization aspect, but also because the Quick links web part is an awesome web part.
The web part contains multiple layout options and icon support. For example:
With the release of this update, an audience targeting capability will be available in the Quick links web part, too. Content authors will be able to enable audience targeting within the web part, and then target each link to individual groups.
Good to know:
Microsoft started rolling out the update in the beginning of January 2021 and expects the rollout to be completed by the end of February 2021.
In a previous update, I discussed the change of the Teams meeting recording location to OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online instead of Microsoft Stream. With this update, Microsoft is improving on that feature:
As part of the New Stream experience, new Teams meeting recordings will be stored in your OneDrive for Business and SharePoint. Based on customer feedback we are enhancing the feature so that these recordings are not downloadable by those with view-only permissions, and that those permissions be set by default.
MC230505, Plan for Change, Feature ID: n/a
I applaud this change because recordings of meetings could contain sensitive information. You want to prevent, or at least control, the option to download the recording.
When this change is implemented:
Good to know:
Microsoft will start rolling out this change in early February 2021 and expects the rollout to be completed by the end of April 2021.
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you are all safe and healthy as we begin 2021, and I sincerely hope this is the last year COVID-19 has such a major impact on all our lives.
Luckily enough, the updates for Microsoft 365 have not been impacted by the pandemic. There were plenty of interesting and valuable updates throughout 2020, and I expect that to continue through this year! My favorite update this time around is the audience targeting update for the Quick links web part. Although I’m continuing to move more towards the compliance side of collaboration, my heart still belongs to SharePoint. I still support customers implementing personalized intranet portals with SharePoint Online.
The new audience targeting capability means we can phase out one of our custom solutions and use an out-of-the-box Microsoft solution, instead. That’s what I love to see: standard solutions fitting customer needs.
From SharePoint migration and content management to ongoing Microsoft Teams governance, ShareGate gives you everything you need to achieve successful Microsoft 365 deployment and adoption.
In this on-demand webinar, ShareGate’s Head of Product, Benjamin Niaulin, gives a tour of ShareGate Desktop and ShareGate Apricot’s top features and shows how they can help solve common issues at each stage of your journey to Microsoft 365 adoption.
On-demand webinar
with Benjamin Niaulin, Head of Product at ShareGate and Microsoft MVP