M365 Changelog: (Updated) Microsoft Teams: Automatic location updates on bookable desks – Oct 2, 2024

MC808158 – Updated October 2, 2024: Microsoft has updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Before this rollout, users can indicate in Microsoft Teams if they are in office or remote by manually setting their location by selecting their profile photo at the top right of Teams. With this rollout, Microsoft is introducing automatic location updates on bookable desks to make it easier for users to keep their work location up to date and connect with others in the office.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 401118.

When this will happen:

General availability (Worldwide) for bookable desks: Microsoft will begin rolling out mid-September 2024 (previously early September) and expects to complete by late September 2024 (previously mid-September).

General availability (Worldwide) for BYOD rooms: Microsoft will begin rolling out late October 2024 and expects to complete by early November 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Bookable desks refer to unassigned seats in the office that are equipped with devices such as monitors or other peripherals. Admins can associate these devices to a workspace account using the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal. This association will allow users to automatically claim a desk, and (in future) will provide IT with valuable usage analytics and reports. Learn more: Setting up Bookable Desks in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn. After configuring bookable desks, admins can enable automatic location updates at the tenant level or for a specific user group. Then, users can enable the feature at Teams > Settings (three-dot menu in top right of the screen) > Privacy > Sharing your work location. After users enable the feature, their work location will automatically update to In the office when they connect to a bookable desk, if their location was previously set to Unknown or Remote.

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To help users find this feature, after an admin enables the feature, the banner “Looks like you’re in the office” will appear the first time a user plugs into a bookable desk.

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After a user enables automatic location updates, the banner “You’re connected to your organization’s network or device” will appear once when they plug into a bookable desk. The banner confirms that the user has successfully enabled automatic location update.

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What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified date with no admin action required before the rollout. To prepare for this feature, Microsoft recommends communicating this new feature to your users and admin team and sharing instructions if needed. After this feature rolls out, admins can enable automatic location updates at a tenant level or for a specific user group. Then, users can enable automatic location detection in Teams Settings > Privacy as described earlier.