What’s new with Mural: Outlook and Office integrations, template redesigns, and more

This month’s launches include integrations to make collaboration more seamless across the Microsoft ecosystem, redesigns to make popular templates even easier to customize, and enhancements to company dashboards on Enterprise plans. And that’s not all! 

Here’s a roundup of everything new in June:

Connected collaboration spaces across Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and Office

MURAL is a proud preview partner with Microsoft for new Outlook and Office integrations that make it seamless to embed more collaboration and innovation into day-to-day workflows. You can collaborate visually where you’re already working in Office 365 — cutting down on distractions from toggling between apps.

🎬 Learn more about Microsoft’s early release program in our support docs.

💻 Read more about how we’re bringing collaborative intelligence to life across the Microsoft Ecosystem.

Your favorite templates are now easier to use

Based on feedback from members like you, we’ve rebuilt some of our most popular templates with a more flexible and intuitive design. In addition to the fresh look, these templates are now truly a breeze to edit — with easy deleting of what you don’t need and the ability to mix and match panels to create your own sequence of activities. 

We’ve also added step-by-step instructions with real-world examples of completed activities to make templates more informative, easy to use, and action-oriented. 

🏠 Click Home in the MURAL app to receive personalized template recommendations, or give my new favorites a try: the importance/difficulty matrix and world map warmup.

Join the beta program* for MURAL’s Azure DevOps integration

Calling all Azure DevOps and MURAL users! We’re looking for volunteers to provide feedback in June as part of our Azure DevOps integration beta program. Sign up here to get connected to our product team.

Streamlined app creation and sharing with the MURAL API

Now, you can create and share apps without breaking a sweat! We’ve streamlined our documentation, made app creation even easier, enabled private app sharing, and added new endpoints. The MURAL API is in beta and open to anyone with a MURAL account. Get started in the developer portal.

An update on our commitment to accessibility 

Each year, we undergo a yearly audit of the MURAL product UI (user interface). We follow WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines, and we’re proud to share that our remediations are on track and now include in-canvas scenarios. Our updated Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR, also known as a VPAT) can be found at mural.co/accessibility. 

We’ve also published a new guide on best practices for more accessible GIFs when collaborating visually in a mural. While GIFs and other animated content are a fun way to engage collaborators, they’re even more engaging when they’re accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. Check out the guide here.

Gain deeper insights into MURAL usage with a new reports page in the company dashboard

Support account management, compliance initiatives, and other functions with self-serve access to your company’s MURAL usage data via a new reports page in the company dashboard. Hone in on specific data using filtering capabilities and download reports as CSV files to then leverage in business intelligence applications or to tackle more complex reporting needs. 

📊 Need to programmatically access data on a recurring basis? Check out the MURAL Reporting API. Available for Enterprise plans only.

‍Centrally manage all workspaces across your company from the the company dashboard‍

Get greater visibility and centralized control over all the workspaces in your account without the need for workspace admin privileges on each and every workspace. Perform administrative actions and bulk actions to easily manage your company’s use of MURAL, even as it scales. Learn more.

This functionality is only available for a subset of Enterprise plan customers with less than 20 workspaces. If the workspaces page is not accessible to you in the company dashboard, contact a member of the MURAL Customer Success Team to explore the option of activating this functionality.‍

‍Migrate existing workspaces to a new region with enhancements to MURAL’s data residency capabilities

Now you can easily migrate data in a mural from an existing workspace to a new region with help from a member of MURAL’s Customer Success team. This feature is an enhancement to our existing data residency capabilities. Learn more. Available for Enterprise plans only.

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And we’ve still got more small but mighty updates:

• Locking and unlocking objects to the canvas just became a lot easier with functionality added to the toolbar and new shortcuts (Shift + Command + L or Control + Shift + L) to quickly apply. 
• Try the new Clayboard integration to facilitate more engaging workshops with murals embedded in your agenda blocks.
• We’ve also enhanced the MURAL App for Teams: the share button is now available to quickly copy and paste a share link from a mural into Teams chats and channels. This means meeting facilitators can quickly add new folks to a mural during a Teams meeting without needing to open the web app.
• Running a lot of voting sessions in the same mural? You can now quickly delete all previous voting sessions in bulk with one click.
• We now support Thai characters in exports.
• Enhanced navigation in move mode: when you have objects selected on a mural, they will now stay selected as you hit the spacebar to enter move mode to navigate without accidentally rearranging anything.

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*Currently in private beta. Subject to testing and defects. Provided warranty free, "as is" and "as available" basis. MURAL not liable for any losses that may result from private beta.