M365 Changelog: Connected experience controls for Whiteboard

MC348870 – Microsoft Whiteboard is now integrated with the Microsoft Office Cloud Policy Service (OCPS) . OCPS allows you to control policies that apply to Office products.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93184.

When this will happen:

Microsoft expects this rollout to begin in early April and expects it to be completed by mid-April.

Note: This functionality will be rolled out to web, Windows, Teams, mobile, and Surface Hub Whiteboard experiences. This replaces Whiteboard’s connected experiences settings in the admin portal.

How this will affect your organization:

The only policy in OCPS that initially applies to Whiteboard is the Optional Connected Experiences policy. It controls whether users have access to optional connected experiences, today this only applies to the ability to see and access a link in Whiteboard where they can provide feedback using Microsoft’s Feedback portal.

Note: Additionally, in the future, Microsoft will add the ability to control the “insert documents from OneDrive for Business and SharePoint” feature currently available in Whiteboard as well as other features.

What you need to do to prepare:

No change is necessary, unless you wish to disable the Microsoft Feedback portal link in Whiteboard. In which case, see directions below.

1. Sign in to https://config.office.com/ with your MS365 admin credentials

2. Select Customization from the left pane

3. Select Policy Management

4. Create a new policy configuration or edit an existing one.

5. In configure policies, choose Allow the use of additional optional connected experiences in Office.

6. Choose the security group for which you want to apply the policy

7. In configuration setting, choose either – enabled, disabled, or not configured. The implication of each of these options is mentioned below:

• Enabled: Optional Connected Experiences are kept enabled for users
• Disabled: Optional Connected Experiences are kept disabled for users
• Not configured: Optional Connected Experiences are kept enabled for users

8. Save the policy configuration.

9. Reassign priority for any security group if required. (If two or more policy configurations are applicable to the same set of users, the one with the higher priority is applied)

10. In case you create a new policy configuration or change the configuration for an existing policy, there will be a delay in the change being reflected as mentioned below:

If there were existing policy configurations prior to the change, then it will take 90 mins for the change to be reflected

If there were no policy configurations prior to the change, then it will take 24 hours for the change to be reflected

Additional information