Microsoft announces a Loop app and components and more Office features

With Microsoft’s Ignite virtual event kicking off today, the floodgates have opened for news coming out of the event. Among the Ignite news, Microsoft Office is getting a big new app and new features for existing apps. The big new app is called Microsoft Loop, and if you remember Microsoft’s Fluid framework and components, this is the next evolution of that. We’ve seen Fluid components come to Teams and other apps, but Microsoft is fully realizing their potential now.

Microsoft Loop encompasses three big elements: Loop components, Loop pages, and Loop workspaces. Loop components are the new Fluid components, and Microsoft describes them as “atomic units of productivity”. Essentially, they’re bits of information you can iterate on and that work across the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem. A Loop component can be a table, a to-do list, and so on, and wherever that component is available, it’s updated in real-time with the latest information. If you share a Loop table in Microsoft Teams, you can make changes right there, and they’ll reflect in every page or location where that table is.

Microsoft is also introducing a few brand-new Loop components today. First, there’s a new voting table component (seen above), where you can list different options along with their pros and cons and users can vote on their preferred choice. Another one is a status tracker, where tasks can be assigned to different users and their progress can be updated over time. There’s also a new Loop component for Dynamics 365 records, so you can see up-to-date information about customers across different apps.

Loop pages and Loop workspaces are more focused on organizing information, Loop pages let you bring together all the information related to a project in a way that’s constantly up-to-date since all the components are updated live wherever you share them. Loop workspaces are more like notebooks, where you can organize pages in different groups and sections to make everything easier to find, which is particularly useful for large projects. Both pages and workspaces can be collaborated on by multiple users at the same time.

Another new Microsoft Office experience announced at Ignite is Context IQ. This is an artificial intelligence service that can surface relevant suggestions and information that can be useful at any given time. The first platform to benefit from Context IQ is going to be Microsoft Editor, the company’s spellchecking and proofreading tool. With Context IQ, Editor can not only correct the things you may have written, it can predict certain information you may want to enter. For example, it can automatically look for available times when you try to set up a meeting via email, it can suggest files to share with a coworker based on projects you’re working on, and more.

Another new member of the Microsoft Office family is Clipchamp, the video editor Microsoft recently acquired. There isn’t much that’s new here, and Microsoft seems to not be making any changes to the pricing structure or how it’s offered for now.

Existing Microsoft Office apps are also getting some upgrades announced at Ignite. For starters, the Office app for Windows and Office.com has been redesigned with a Recommended Actions section at the top for files and tasks that need attention, with Quick Access being just below that with a list of recent files. There’s also a new My Content page that lets you find content from all Microsoft 365 apps and a new Create page that presents templates from multiple Office apps to make it easier to find what you might be looking for.

PowerPoint is getting a new feature recording studio feature that lets users record their presentation, including the speaker’s video and audio feeds, customize the background, and annotate on presentation slides, creating a full pre-recorded presentation that can be shared with others. If a particular slide didn’t come out the best, it’s also possible to re-record just one slide instead of the entire presentation.

Finally, Excel is getting a major upgrade thanks to a new JavaScript API, which allows developers to create custom data types. Custom data types can include images, entities, custom formatted numbers, and more. Developers can also create or improve existing Excel add-ins with features that leverage the power of custom data types, Ultimately, this allows for more complex types of data to be easily accessible within Excel.

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Microsoft Teams gets more collaborative features at Ignite 2021

Microsoft’s second Ignite event of the year – and the biggest one – kicks off today, and tons of new features have been announced for Microsoft Teams. The biggest of these is undoubtedly Mesh for Teams, which brings immersive virtual spaces to the platform. We covered Mesh for Teams in a separate article, but Teams is getting many other features, as it often does.

Starting with meetings, one of the big new features is support for shared channel meetings. Shared channels are channels where an organization can invite members from another organization to work together, and now you’ll be able to conduct video meetings in these channels, too. Microsoft is also adding shared chat, so you can talk one-on-one with people outside your organization if they’re using their personal account.

For meeting organizers, there’s a new virtual green room feature, which allows organizers and presenters to talk with each other before other meeting attendees can see what’s happening. This allows them to prepare for a meeting before it starts without having to set up a separate meeting for that. There are also enhanced controls to allow organizers to choose what the audience sees, and you can assign a co-organizer role to up to 10 users, giving them the same permissions as the organizer.

Another new feature is Q&A in Teams, which allows organizers to ask questions, filter the responses, mark a best answer, and more. A more advanced feature is the ability to create an audio mix of a meeting with each user having an individual audio and video feed. Teams also now supports integration with Cvent, enabling users to manage the lifecycle for Teams meetings in a more familiar way.

Microsoft is also making quality-of-life improvements to the overall meeting experience. Meeting organizers can assign roles to presenters when scheduling the meeting, raised hands will be displayed in order for organizers, and the overflow menu on the mobile app will prioritize common actions like viewing the chat.

For Teams Rooms devices, there’s a new Direct Guest Join feature, allowing Teams Rooms systems to join third-party meetings with limited controls, and vice versa. Right now, this works with Zoom and Cisco, but it’ll also support Bluejeans and GoToMeeting in the future.

On that note, Microsoft also announced a couple of Teams devices at Ignite, including the Yealink deskVision AIO24, a 24-inch display that can be used as a standalone Teams device or as a second screen for a PC. Another new display is the Logitech Tap Scheduler, a Teams panel that makes it easier to view meeting room availability, location information, and meeting details.

Yealink deskVision AIO24

It’s not all about meetings, though, as Microsoft also has some new features for Teams chat. For starters, there’s the ability to chat with yourself, which essentially serves as a way to save information as a reminder. There are now over 800 3D emoji reactions – presumably the emoji Microsoft announced back in July – to choose from to react to a message, and you can also delay the delivery of a message to a more convenient time. Additionally, you can now change the chat density settings to fit more messages on the screen. Finally, a new UI for search results should make it easier to find information.

There are also new features for IT managers, including the ability to search for any function in the Teams admin center and an app discovery tool to make, both of which are now generally available. In preview, IT managers can also try a new device analytics dashboard, a new workspace view with the ability to see data for all devices in a specific location, and priority account notifications, so managers can more closely track activity from a specific user.

Finally, Microsoft also announced new improvements to the Teams platform and its interoperability with other services. There are enhanced features for Power Virtual Agents, Teams chat is now available in Dynamics 365 Sales for easier collaboration, the ability to embed Teams chat features in Microsoft Power Apps, and interoperability with Azure Communication Services. There’s also a new contact center experience powered by Teams and Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

Aside from new Teams features themselves, Microsoft also announced new Teams apps at Ignite. New launches include Atlassian Jira Cloud, SAP, and ServiceNow. Those apps are also easier to find thanks to a redesigned Teams app store.

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Microsoft Mesh is bringing the metaverse to Teams

Microsoft’s Ignite conference for business partners kicks off today, and with it come tons of announcements across the company’s portfolio. One of the big announcements is that Microsoft Mesh, the company’s mixed reality platform, is coming to Microsoft Teams to enhance the remote collaboration experience.

This will allow coworkers to meet and interact with each other as virtual avatars, whether that’s in a standard Teams meeting or an immersive virtual space – the metaverse. Yes, the metaverse is the hot new buzzword – so much so that Facebook recently changed its name to Meta – but Microsoft also believes it’s the future of collaboration. In fact, Accenture has been working with Microsoft Mesh for a while, and even built a virtual campus for its employees to come together in all sorts of activities. Even new hires are welcomed to the team using virtual spaces, replacing the typical onboarding experience in person.

Initially, Mesh for Microsoft Teams will be just about replacing your presence in a video call with a digital avatar that represents you. This is an attempt to address a common problem some people may have had with working from home, which is having to put on formal clothes for a meeting. With virtual avatars, users don’t have to worry about how they look in real life, and they can look and feel engaged in the conversation. Teams will use your audio to determine if your avatar’s lips should move, and in the future, you can also use your camera to track more detailed facial and head movements to make the avatar more life-like.

Then, immersive spaces – or metaverses – will be created, allowing users to interact with each other in a more natural way. Teams will roll out with a few preset spaces, but companies can also create their own and deploy them in their organization, similar to Accenture’s implementation. Avatars are available across different Mesh experiences, so if you use an avatar in a Microsoft Teams meeting, other users can then recognize you if you’re in a virtual space together.

Ultimately, the goal is to provide a better way to collaborate than simply having a Teams channel and typical video meetings. Microsoft Mesh in Teams will begin rolling out in preview in the first half of 2022, and Microsoft says it will be available on PC, mobile, and mixed reality headsets. It’s unclear just how many of these features will work without a headset, or how they will work, but we may see more about it as Ignite continues throughout this week.

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Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 is almost $750 off this month

At its Ignite 2021 conference today, Microsoft announced that it’s offering a 15% discount on its HoloLens 2 headset this month. Considering that the lowest-priced unit costs $3,500, you don’t have to be a mathematician to know that that’s a pretty hefty discount. For the Industrial Edition, which costs nearly $5,000, it’s a savings of almost $750.

Billed as an untethered holographic PC, the second-generation HoloLens is aimed squarely at businesses. Indeed, the first-generation model seemed to be all over the map, offering some business applications, but Microsoft had also demoed a bunch of augmented reality games like Minecraft. HoloLens 2 is more focused, adding things like hand- and eye-tracking so you can more naturally interact with the holographic world around you.

The Development Edition comes with things like Azure credits and a free trial of Unity Pro. Obviously, it’s made for the development of Windows Holographic and Windows Mixed Reality applications. Both that and the standard HoloLens 2 are $3,500. A common use case for the HoloLens 2 would be something like Remote Assist, where you can place holographic diagrams or objects on top of the physical world to show exactly what someone should do. For example, if you were working on a car, someone could mark the part to work on, right on top of the real world.

The Industrial Edition, on the other hand, is aimed at highly regulated environments like clean rooms. It can be used in Class I, Division 2-Groups A, B, C, and D hazardous location environments. It also gets two years of support from the Rapid Replacement Program, meaning that if anything happens to your unit, you can make a quick swap for a new one.

The 15% discount is exclusive to the Microsoft Store, and it’s only available until November 15. You’ll be able to grab a HoloLens 2 or HoloLens 2 Development Edition for $2,975, or you can get a HoloLens 2 Industrial Edition for $4,207.50.

HoloLens 2

HoloLens 2 is powered by a Snapdragon 850, and has a larger field of view, hand tracking, and eye tracking.

See at Microsoft

HoloLens 2

The HoloLens 2 Development Edition comes with Azure credits and free trials for Unity Pro and more.

See at Microsoft

HoloLens 2

The HoloLens 2 Industrial Edition is made for highly regulated environments.

See at Microsoft

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Windows 11 is now available for all Windows 365 customers

It’s Microsoft Ignite, the company’s biggest event of the year. As usual, there’s a ton of announcement, and there are a few that have to do with Windows 11, as you’d expect. Most notably, all Windows 365 subscribers can now use the new OS. You might recall that when Windows 365 was announced as basically a streaming operating system, or cloud PC, it offered Windows 10 with a promise of Windows 11 later. With it already available to Windows 365 Enterprise users, there are new tools to help Windows 365 Business users make their transition to the newest version of Windows. This is available now.

There are several other improvements to the service as well. There’s a new configurable grace period. Right now, there’s a way to set a Cloud PC so that it will be de-provisioned after a grace period of seven days. IT will now be able to end the grace period immediately, and this update is in preview.

There’s now going to be support for Azure AD-joined Cloud PCs, so you won’t need your own Azure infrastructure. In Microsoft Endpoint Manager, there will be new metrics for reporting on CPU and RAM performance. Obviously, this is meant to improve support for the Cloud PC. Both of those updates are in preview now.

Finally, windows365.microsoft.com is actually getting improvements too. You’ll be able to change local resource settings, such as printers and keyboards, and you can edit settings while you’re in sessions. This is in preview.

There are a few other Windows-related improvements that are on the way. Microsoft Excel on the web is going to support Universal Print later this year, meaning that you can print to any printer in your organization. Test Base for Microsoft 365 is now generally available. That’s made to make it easier to test out apps with feature updates, and speaking of Windows 11 feature updates, you’ll be able to manage those with Microsoft Intune.

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Apple rolls out Fitness+, One Premier, and Pay in new regions

Apple announced during its iPhone 13 launch event that it would be bringing its Fitness+ service to 15 new regions. The wait is almost over! Apple has started rolling out its One Premier bundle in 17 new regions, with Fitness+ to follow tomorrow. This expansion comes along with that of Apple Pay, which just became available in three new regions.

Apple Fitness+

Apple initially launched Fitness+ in 6 countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Tomorrow, November 3, it will be available in Austria, Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, and UAE. First-time users will get a free one-month trial, and Apple is offering a three-month trial with every Apple Watch purchase. Fitness+ is also included in the Apple One Premier bundle.

 Apple One Premier

Apple One Premier was supposed to be available tomorrow as well, but it seems like it’s rolling out a day early, according to 9to5Mac. This bundle includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, and iCloud+. However, News+ isn’t supported in these new regions, so subscribers will only get access to the other bundled services.

One Premier costs $29 per month in the US and all included services can be shared across six family members. It’s unclear how much it’ll cost in each of the new regions, considering Apple takes local currencies into consideration. In Brazil, for example, it costs R$69.50, which is about $12.

The new countries where One Premier is supported are Austria, Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, and UAE. Ireland and New Zealand have already had Fitness+ support, so they can access it through One Premier starting today. Subscribers in the 15 other regions will have to wait till tomorrow to burn their calories fancily.

Apple Pay

In addition to Fitness+ and One Premier, Apple is continuing to expand its services across the world. According to 9to5Mac, users in Costa Rica, Colombia, and Azerbaijan can take advantage of Apple’s payment system. While Kapital Bank in Azerbaijan is already promoting the feature’s availability, Apple and other banks in the two other countries aren’t — yet. It could be because Apple is adding some final touches before opening the floodgates and making it official.

Apple Pay artıq Azərbaycandadır!
Əgər siz də Apple markalı ağıllı telefona, saata və Kapital Bank kartına sahibsinizsə alış-verişlərinizi çox rahat və təmassız şəkildə həyata keçirə bilərsiniz.#ApplePay #BirinciBank pic.twitter.com/DdltIuLNAH

— Kapital Bank (@KapitalBankOJSC) November 2, 2021

Do you plan on subscribing to Apple Fitness+ or One Premier if you live in one of the newly supported regions? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Samsung rolls out new One UI 4 beta with tons of fixes

Samsung kicked off its Android 12 campaign with the launch of the One UI 4 beta program last month, allowing Galaxy S21 series owners to try out an early version of Android 12. Since then, the South Korean giant has released a couple of beta updates, adding new features and fixing annoying bugs. The third One UI 4 beta was released two weeks ago, and it fixed bugs related to virtual RAM, Samsung Keyboard, and more. Now Samsung has just released a new One UI 4 beta for the Galaxy S21 series, which further refines the overall software experience.

As per user reports on our forums, Samsung has started rolling out the fourth One UI 4 beta to the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+, and Galaxy S21 Ultra. The update weighs 807.27MB and carries the firmware version G998BXXU3ZUK1 / G998BOXM3ZUK1 / G99xBXXU3ZUK1. While the latest beta doesn’t introduce any massive changes, it fixes many bugs and issues reported by beta testers.

One UI 4 Beta Overview: Hands-on with every feature in Samsung’s Android 12 update!

Screenshot credit: XDA Senior Member
gashishpetim

The fourth One UI 4 beta brings the following changes:

• Removed the stretch effect when “overscroll” was operated
• Removed a pop-up window that appeared after the first start of the application
• After setting the screen resolution to WQHD, performance of the device slightly decreased
• Frame drop issue when the alarm went off
• WIFI and hotspot were not turned on in certain situations
• Screen blurring issue when unlocking the device
• Issue that two call logs were generated when making a call
• Fingerprint recognition issue after rebooting the phone
• Issue that WIFLAP search didn’t work in certain situations
• Phone restart during a voice call
• Issue that keypad was forcely closed
• When closing all the Recent apps, the One UI
• Home was terminated and rebooted
• Fixed other minor issues

The new update has started hitting the Galaxy S21 units in South Korea and other markets. If you’re on the third One UI 4 beta, you should receive the new update soon. One UI 4 packs many new features and visual changes, including a redesigned Quick Settings panel, improved dark mode, new home screen widgets, new charging effects, improved multitasking experience, and more. To learn more about Samsung’s latest software, be sure to check out our review of One UI 4.

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