The End for Office 365 Connectors Comes Into Sight

Office 365 Connectors bring data from external sources into Microsoft 365 apps like Teams and Outlook. Workflows and Power Automate are replacing Connectors for Microsoft 365 Groups (Outlook groups) and SharePoint Online. Connectors are still available in Teams but for how long? No one knows, but it does seem like Microsoft is rationalizing no-code automation around Power Automate.

Microsoft Adds Power BI Premium and Power Automate (with RPA) to Self-Service License Purchases

Microsoft 365 tenant users can look forward to an increased range of self-service license purchases with the addition of Power BI Premium and Power Automate with RPA. Nine products are now eligible for self-service purchases, unless a tenant administrator decides that this kind of thing is nonsense and uses PowerShell to disable self-service purchases for all or some products.

How to Block Email Forwarding from Power Automate

Power Automate (Flow) can forward email from Exchange Online mailboxes to external recipients. This isn’t a great idea if you want email kept within the control of your data governance framework. Power Automate now inserts x-headers in the email it sends, which allows the use of transport (mail flow) rules to detect and reject these messages if required.

Microsoft Retires Twitter Connector for Teams and Office 365 Groups

Microsoft has announced the retirement of the Twitter connector for Teams. The news is disappointing because the Power Automate alternative doesn’t do as good a job at injecting tweets into Teams. It’s a mystery why Microsoft is retiring a working component that does a good job, but no doubt a good reason is known to some and they’re saying nothing.