From Viva Sales to new Office experiences—here’s what’s new in Microsoft 365
The ways we work have changed dramatically over the past several years, and those changes go so much further than whether work happens at home, in an office, or somewhere in between. In this collaboration-first world, every organization needs a digital fabric that binds people together—from the C-suite to the frontline, and across every role and function.
At the center of this digital fabric is Microsoft Teams, and it’s enhanced by the productivity tools of Microsoft 365, the digital employee experience in Microsoft Viva, and the power and security of Windows.
We have lots of new updates this month across Microsoft 365, including a first-of-its-kind solution with Microsoft Viva Sales, and new capabilities for Teams, Outlook, Word, and more. And we’ve upgraded endpoint security to keep businesses safe and give IT departments better tools.
Let’s dive in.
Facilitating deeper customer connections
Microsoft Viva is the digital-first employee experience for every employee. It connects employees to the organization’s mission and culture and supports engagement and retention. Now, it goes further to help employees excel at their job.
Microsoft Viva Sales reimagines the selling experience, giving salespeople AI-driven insights and data automation right in the flow of work. Sellers will be able to automatically capture, access, and register data into any customer relationship management (CRM) system. Enriched with data from Microsoft 365, Viva Sales helps salespeople create deeper connections and relationships with customers to make better, faster sales.
Viva Sales is the first of its kind solution, and we’re excited to roll out additional business-specific tools soon. Learn more about Viva Sales announcement.
Increasing communication, time management, and search in the flow of work
Overflowing inboxes are nothing new but continue to be a pain point for many. We’re introducing new features in Outlook to help you better manage your time: Bookings with me puts you in control of when people can book an appointment with you, updates to Microsoft Forms help streamline communication, and enhancements within Search make it easier to find and share information with your co-workers.
With Bookings with me in Outlook, you can create, customize, and share a personal Bookings page where people can book time with you based on your personal preferences. Start customizing your Bookings page in the web calendar by clicking on Create bookings page.
Microsoft Forms has a new distribution and notification experience, available now. You can share with people directly, create a QR code, embed a link, or even generate an email invitation with a dedicated template. You can easily keep track of responses and send reminders with one click.
Microsoft Search is a modern, AI-powered search solution for your workplace. Whether your users are looking for a ServiceNow knowledge article, a Confluence wiki, or a document on a Windows file share, you can use Graph connectors to index all your content to save them time and increase productivity by bringing that information into the flow of their work.
Improving the Office.com experience
We’re enhancing the productivity tools millions of people rely on every day to get work done, with an improved Office.com experience. These new updates will allow users to create, share, and collaborate all in one place with their favorite apps.
The newly designed Office.com sign-in and sign-up page greets you with a modern entry point to get your day started on the web. We are introducing a new onboarding experience that helps you understand how to better use and engage with Office. Additionally, with the new Create experience, you can access new creation templates in a single location.
Enabling visual storytelling
When it’s time to “show” rather than “tell” your story, Word Designer can help deliver inspiration thanks to updates that contextualize image suggestions, offering customized recommendations to meet your unique needs.
Updating endpoint security for IT departments
When work can happen from anywhere, the management and security of endpoint devices have become more critical and more complicated. So, our efforts to be a reliable, consistent, and trustworthy digital endpoint manager have only increased.
Microsoft Endpoint Manager now offers IT administrators a way to create organization-level policies to mute after-hours notifications and can get visibility into which devices models are most performant for people in their organization. This further enables organizations to improve the employee technology experience with the endpoints they use every day.
IT departments subscribed to Windows E3/5 can now rely on Windows Autopatch to handle endpoint updates for M365 software, Windows 10, and Windows 11. Automatic updates help reduce gaps in security and build organization-wide trust that endpoints are secure. This new service will be available in mid-July, at no additional cost and requires Intune and Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).
Looking forward
This month, we rolled out a series of updates and improvements to Microsoft 365, all designed to give employees the insights, context, and support they need to get their jobs done effectively. There’s more coming next month as we announce several product innovations at Inspire, our largest partner event of the year. Stay tuned.
