If you work within any type of Government Microsoft 365 Tenant, known as GCC, you should understand by now that the features are not the same as provided within a regular commercial Microsoft 365 Tenant. As such I wanted to list some upcoming changes specifically for GCC Tenants:
- Microsoft 365 Defender for GCC license holders: Starting in 2021 Microsoft will be enhancing existing Microsoft Defender for Office 365 P2 with eligibility to use Microsoft 365 Defender capabilities. The change on Dec 1, 2020 effects eligibility only and will not result in turning on any new capabilities. Microsoft 365 Defender is planned to become available for enablement to eligible GCC customers in 2021.
- Data loss prevention for Microsoft Teams coming to GCC: Microsoft are extending data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities for Microsoft 365 GCC tenants to include Microsoft Teams chat and channel messages, including private channel messages.
- Communication Compliance availability in GCC and GCC-High: Coming soon to GCC and GCC-High environments, Communication Compliance is part of a broader set of insider risk solutions in Microsoft 365 that intelligently detects and helps remediate regulatory compliance and code of conduct violations within an organization’s communications. Roll-out is scheduled for November.
- Office 365 Video to Microsoft Stream migration: retirement date and timelines for GCC: Microsoft will be retiring Office 365 Video and replacing it with Microsoft Stream.
- Retirement of Advanced eDiscovery 1.0 in GCC and GCC-High: On December 31, 2020, you will no longer be able to access data that was stored in Advanced eDiscovery 1.0. Using Advanced eDiscovery 1.0 helped organizations save time and money through the powerful analytics built especially for the legal industry. This same functionality (and with many other great features) is available in Advanced eDiscovery 2.0. Advanced eDiscovery 2.0 builds on the capabilities of its predecessor and includes more powerful features such as custodian management, custodian communications, and most importantly, review sets.
- Microsoft To Do web app available for GCC: The Microsoft To Do web app will soon be available for GCC customers, starting late-October and should be complete in early November.
What is really helpful outside of the email updates you may or may not get (depends on permissions in the Tenant), is the roadmap that covers GCC, GCC-HIGH and DoD.
Rolling Out: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=GCC%2CGCC%20High%2CDoD%2CRolling%20out
In-Development: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=GCC%2CGCC%20High%2CDoD%2CIn%20development
An important part of managing Microsoft 365 Tenants is knowing what is coming, and could affect the tenant.