From helping people thrive with Viva to creating hybrid Teams Rooms experiences—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365
At Microsoft, we believe that energized, empowered employees are the key to durable competitive advantage for every organization. Just last week, we released a new Work Trend Index Pulse Report with three urgent pivots to help leaders align everyone in the organization around the most impactful work and help people thrive.
Microsoft 365 is the integrated, secure, cloud-first solution that enables all the ways people work today—wherever, whenever, and however they work—while simplifying IT and reducing cost and complexity.
From how we’re helping every employee thrive with Microsoft Viva, to new Microsoft Teams Rooms offerings for hybrid meetings, to new security and management capabilities in Windows 11—read on to learn what’s new in Microsoft 365 this month.
Work Trend Index Pulse Report
Key findings point to three pivots leaders need to make to drive alignment around the most impactful work and help people thrive.
Energize and empower employees with Microsoft Viva
Microsoft Viva is the first employee experience platform that brings together connection, purpose, insight, and growth in the flow of work to help people and teams to be their best. And we’re expanding Microsoft Viva with new apps that help companies energize and empower employees to do meaningful work in an uncertain economic environment. Since its introduction last year, Microsoft Viva has helped customers reduce onboarding time by 50 percent, improve worker productivity by 75 percent, and reduce employee attrition by 20 percent, resulting in a threefold return on investment.1
Recently, we launched Viva Goals, a goal-setting and objectives and key results (OKR) management solution that helps organizations align everyday work to business outcomes. This month we’re excited to share new integrations in Viva Goals that bring goals into the flow of work. These include an enhanced Microsoft Teams app to check-in and collaborate on OKRs within the Teams activity feed, an extension in Azure DevOps to complete work items, a connection to Power BI datasets to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and key results, and integrations with Microsoft Planner and Microsoft Project for automatic project management updates.
Viva Pulse is a new employee feedback tool that helps managers understand their team’s needs and address them on a continual basis. The app empowers managers and team leads to seek regular and confidential feedback on their team’s experience, right in the flow of work in Teams.
Viva Amplify is a new app that empowers leaders and communicators to elevate their message and energize their people. It centralizes communications campaigns, offers writing guidance to improve message resonance, enables publishing across multiple channels and distribution groups in Microsoft 365, and provides metrics for improvement.
Leadership Corner offers new capabilities for Viva Engage—which was announced for general availability last month—that will empower leaders to connect with employees on strategy, drive company initiatives, and address employee questions. It’s a space to encourage open dialog and feedback across communities and teams through news, Ask Me Anything (AMA) events, surveys, and more.
To streamline the Viva experience and help employees start their day on track, the new Viva Connections home experience brings all Microsoft Viva apps into one place, creating a destination for employees to start their day. And the Viva briefing email provides more personalized recommendations to help employees catch up on work, meetings, and learning.
Learn more about these and other new features of Viva and to get started, check out the Microsoft Viva website.
Engage everyone in hybrid work with Microsoft Teams Rooms
Microsoft Teams Rooms are designed to bridge the gap between physical and digital workspaces, helping everyone feel closer and more engaged in hybrid meetings so they can collaborate fully.
Over 60 percent of the Fortune 500 have already chosen Microsoft Teams Rooms to connect employees across the hybrid divide, and active Teams Rooms devices have more than doubled year over year.
This month we are introducing Teams Rooms Pro, a new offering that brings together the value of our existing Teams Rooms features, new innovations, and the Teams Rooms managed services platform—all in one license. Teams Rooms Pro simplifies the purchasing process and delivers the collective benefits of our advancements in both hybrid meeting experiences and device management. Teams Rooms Pro is available now at USD40 per room/month.
For small businesses or customers with small Teams Rooms deployments, Teams Rooms Basic provides foundational Teams meeting experiences like scheduling, joining meetings, wireless content sharing, and collaborative whiteboarding. Teams Rooms Basic is included with the purchase of any certified Teams Rooms device at no additional cost purchased on or after September 1, 2022. Customers can apply up to 25 Basic licenses to their tenant.
Learn more about the new Microsoft Teams Rooms options.
Work smarter and safer with the new Windows 11 2022 Update
This month we announced the general availability of Windows 11 2022 Update, the first major update to the operating system. This update includes some critically important new features designed to keep your organization safe in an ever-changing threat landscape without compromising the Windows experiences that help your employees collaborate and do their best work.
Making Windows even more secure
Windows 11 is built to enable work from anywhere on any device with out-of-the-box protection of data, apps, and identity. Here are some of the new capabilities that continue to make Windows 11 the most secure Windows operating system yet.
Windows Credential Guard, enabled by default with devices running Windows 11 Enterprise, uses virtualization-based security to isolate secrets so that only privileged system software can access them, making it harder for attackers to compromise your network.
Microsoft Defender SmartScreen offers enhanced phishing protection, identifying malicious applications or hacked websites and warning users about risky password practices.
Smart App Control prevents employees from running malicious applications by blocking untrusted or unsigned apps. This is great for smaller organizations who don’t manage their devices or have unsigned line-of-business applications and have clean installations of Windows 11 2022.2
Increasing operational efficiency for IT
Our latest investments in reporting, application compatibility, and manageability for Windows 11 provide intelligent, proactive tools that keep IT in control while reducing manual processes.
Windows Autopatch uses the Windows Update for Business client policies and deployment service tools included in the Windows Enterprise E3 and higher subscription to reduce endpoint vulnerability by maintaining healthy, secure, and compliant endpoints with automated updates and patches on schedule but without interruption.
Microsoft Endpoint Manager offers application and driver compatibility insights to help you better understand compatibility risks in moving to Windows 11. Recently Microsoft was recognized by Gartner® as a Leader in the 2022 Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) Tools. Central to this is Microsoft Endpoint Manager, our native solution that provides deep integration with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure to improve employee security and the IT administrator experience. With organizations ranging from becoming fully remote to seeking a full return to the office, customers appreciate the flexibility and control Endpoint Manager offers in migrating to the cloud.
Update Compliance will be using Azure Workbooks to be more responsive to your needs while providing a simpler and more consistent product.
Working in Windows is friction-free
New capabilities in Windows 11 contribute to a friction-free experience for employees that is intuitive, secure, and helps them do their best work.
Windows Studio Effects help make audio and video calls even better—Voice Focus helps filter background noise, while Automatic Framing and Eye Contact keep your image centered and focused to better engage with your audience.3
System-wide live captions make audio easier to understand, such as when working in a noisy location, and help create more inclusive work environments for those who are hearing impaired or who comprehend visual information more easily.
All the features we’re releasing this month and later this year are available as a free update on new Windows 11 devices, as well as with Azure Virtual Desktop and on Windows 365 Cloud PCs, giving your organization the flexibility to empower hybrid and specialized work, securely, on a wide variety of endpoints and across platforms. Learn more about the new Windows 11 update.
Looking ahead
Join us at Microsoft Ignite from October 12-14, 2022, to learn more about how we’re innovating across Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva, and Windows 11 and Windows 365 to empower today’s digitally connected distributed workforce.
References:
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Unified Endpoint Management Tools, Tom Cipolla, Dan Wilson, Chris Silva, Craig Fisler, 1 August 2022
Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks and service marks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
1The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Viva, September 2022, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting. Results are for a composite organization based on interviewed customers and over a three-year period.
2Requires a clean installation.
3This feature is hardware dependent.