Microsoft April 2022 Update Digest

1. Suspicious Connector Activity alert

Microsoft Security platform, Microsoft 365 Defender to start rolling out a new alert for suspicious activities in an inbound connector for improving and protecting the users.

On detecting suspicious activity delivered mails will be blocked from the inbound connector, and the administrator will receive an email notification and an alert under https://security.microsoft.com/alerts.

This alert will provide instruction on how to inspect, degenerate changes, and unblock a restricted connector.?In addition, new changes are also being made to the existing Restricted user's page (https://security.microsoft.com/restrictedusers) to support this improvement. The changes can be viewed as follows:

Current Experience:

Future Experience:

?When this will happen:

• The Update will begin rolling out in late May and is expected to complete by late June.

What you can do to prepare:

• Impacted customers are advised to become familiar with Responding to a Compromised Connector
• Impacted customers are advised to become familiar with Remove Blocked Connector From Restricted Entities Portal

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2. Data Management Report

The withdrawal of the Data management report in Microsoft 365 Defender will be beginning in mid-May.?The use of Data at-rest Scan progress is recommended, where Microsoft will continue to invest its development resources.??

Users will no longer have access to view report lists of all the files stored in your cloud apps, by app, when this change is implemented.

When this will happen:

• Mid-May

What you can do to prepare:

• ?Update your training and documentation as appropriate.?

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3. Pairing naming convention between Teams channels and corresponding SharePoint folders

The new update via Microsoft will now update the channel rename experience in Teams to simultaneously rename the corresponding folder in SharePoint sites whenever a channel in Teams is renamed. This step is being taken to eliminate the difficulty in tracking, across all Microsoft 365 endpoints, that occurs when a channel in Teams is renamed, and the corresponding folder's naming convention is not updated accordingly in SharePoint.

This new feature will be available for all Standard and Private channels that are renamed after the rollout.

• For Standard channels – The corresponding folder in SharePoint will be renamed.
• For Private channels – For Private channels, the corresponding folder in SharePoint will be renamed.
• For legacy Teams channels that were renamed before this rollout – There will be no change inexperience. When a legacy channel is renamed after this release, it will simultaneously rename the corresponding SharePoint folder.
• Upon renaming a channel, the new folder name will only reflect the same name in the corresponding OneDrive sync client when the whole document library has been synched. When only the channel folder is synched, the new name will not be reflected in the OneDrive sync client.
• SharePoint name auto-updated when Teams channel renamed

When this will happen:

• Updated April 22, 2022

What you can do to prepare:

• ?Notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation.
• ??Review any automated script dependency on channel folders in SharePoint.

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4. New Microsoft 365 Lists entry point in the SharePoint app bar

With the new update in SharePoint, Resources in the SharePoint app bar will be expanding to include an entry point to Microsoft 365 Lists and Microsoft 365 Lists content is personalized to the individual user. The new Microsoft 365 Lists entry point cannot be disabled or customized.

With this new update, users will be able to easily access and view Microsoft 365 Lists from the SharePoint app bar that have been followed and viewed often. Additionally, users will be able to select the part where they’ll navigate to the SharePoint site where the List is located.

Lists that belong to a person and have not been shared with others will not be accessible.

When this will happen:

• Targeted release: will begin rolling out in early January (previously late November) and is expected to be complete in mid-January (previously early December).
• Standard: will begin rolling out in mid-March (previously late January) and is expected to be complete in mid-April (previously late March).

What you can do to prepare:

• ?You do not need to do anything to prepare. M365 Lists cannot be disabled or customized. If you have not already?enabled and customized global navigation in the SharePoint app bar, it’s highly recommended that you do to take advantage of the best navigational experience for end-users.

5. Change to mailbox forwarding behavior coming to Exchange Online

Changes have to be made in which forwarded messages are rewritten with SRS. Starting in early November, we will be further consolidating our rewriting for messages that are automatically forwarded outside of Exchange Online. Not all forwarded messages are rewritten using SRS today. Messages forwarded with SMTP or mailbox forwarding have their P1 Mail From address replaced with the forwarding mailbox address today.

SRS rewriting will be applied to all messages transmitted externally from Exchange Online to the internet. Any danger of a negative impact on those communications should be minimal. The supplied website will offer you further information regarding SRS behavior

Messages sent to on-premises servers will no longer be altered, according to customers. For delivery to on-premises mailboxes, this should be acceptable. However, there is a danger if users send emails to the internet using their on-premises servers rather than Exchange Online. Forwarded messages will be sent without being rewritten, which may cause the recipients' servers to reject them.

When this will happen:

• ?Starting in early November

What you can do to prepare:

• ?Before this change takes effect, customers who route traffic to the internet from their on-premises environment should enable the new parameter SenderRewritingEnabled on their outbound on-premises mail flow connector to avoid any disruptions.

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6. Feature update: Modern Dynamic Distribution Groups

Microsoft is modernizing Dynamic Distribution Groups (DDGs) to bring you a more reliable, more predictable, and better performing experience. Changes have been made to minimize mail delivery delay, increase service dependability, and allow you to identify who is on a DDG. The feature will be made available to all Exchange Online companies as part of this release. The membership list for a Dynamic Distribution Group is now calculated each time a message is delivered to the group, based on the filters and conditions that you have established for that group. Because these filters can be rather complicated, calculating the recipient list might take a long time, resulting in delayed mail and, in extreme circumstances, dependability difficulties.

New changes:

Instead of calculating group membership in real-time, we will be storing the membership list for each Dynamic Distribution Group. This membership list will then get updated periodically once every 24 hours.

?When you create a new Dynamic Distribution Group or modify the filters of a group, it may take up to 2 hours until your group is ready to be used for the first time after creating or modifying the group filters.

Benefits:

With this upgrade, you will be confident of a Dynamic Distribution Group's recipient list before sending a message, which will assist resolve any potential compliance problems. The Get-DynamicDistributionGroupMember cmdlet will allow you to view Dynamic Distribution Group members. Please see Get-DynamicDistributionGroupMember for additional details.

When this will happen:

• ?The update will begin rolling this out in early April and is expected to complete by late April (previously mid-April).

What you can do to prepare:

• ??Since the member list is no longer counted each time a message is sent, the recipient list may not always be updated as it is refreshed every 24 hours.

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7. Safe Links Global Settings Migrated to Custom Policies

Customers that have "Use Safe Links in Office 365 Apps" enabled will need to develop a custom policy to keep safe link protections in Office 365 Apps. This modification was supposed to go live at the same time as the Built-In Protection was finished. Customers will receive the two modifications at different times. Tenants will notice the policy setting Use Safe Links in Office 365 Apps in both the Global Settings menu and the Custom Policy starting in mid-April. Tenants will no longer be able to alter this parameter in the Global Settings menu in the future. Only the policy setting "Use Safe Links in Office 365 Apps" configured in the Global Setting menu will be enforced at this time.

Customers that have "Use Safe Links in Office 365 Apps" enabled will have this tenant-level setting enabled by default as part of built-in security for all users, groups, or domains not identified in a custom policy after the migration. In the future, customers will be able to manage the properties "EnableSafeLinksforOffice," "Track Clicks," and "Allow Click-Through" in custom policies. This update will not override user scoped settings with current tenant-wide settings for previously existing user scoped properties (Track Clicks and Allow Click Through).

When this will happen:

• The update will begin rolling this out in early?May and expect to complete the rollout in late?June.?

What you can do to prepare:

Users might want to notify you about this change and update your training and documentation.

Thank you,

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