MC348870: Connected experience controls for Whiteboard

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.

Microsoft Whiteboard on Windows, Teams, web, mobile, and Surface Hub applications will support optional connected experiences, with Windows and Surface Hub applications supporting them after upgrade to the new client. The only optional connected experience that will be available initially is the ability for users to provide feedback using Microsoft Feedback portal, with additional features being added in the future. Tenants can opt-out of these experiences within their Office policies, and Individual users will be able to opt-out of these features within the Whiteboard application.

When this will happen

We expect this rollout to begin in early April and expect 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, we 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

Learn more

• Optional connected experiences for Whiteboard

Message ID: MC348870
Published: 29 March 2022
Updated: 29 March 2022