Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (1)
Rolling out (3)
In development (9)
🍾 LAUNCHED
SharePoint: Admin center – Migration Manager: Google migrations – With Microsoft’s recent Mover acquisition, we are excited to expand our capabilities to allow moving content from Google into Microsoft 365. Roadmap ID: 82014
🚂 ROLLING OUT
New leadership connection site template – The template brings together conversations from Yammer, news, resources, and showcases upcoming events. Roadmap ID: 71752
OneDrive and SharePoint: Immersive Reader support – Users can edit Word files directly into Immersive Reader from inside OneDrive and SharePoint. Roadmap ID: 81954
SharePoint: Microsoft Lists: Updated sharing experience – Create unique sharing links for lists based on who and how you wish to share them, while adhering to any sharing settings per established IT and governance planning and policies. Roadmap ID: 81965
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – May 2021
🆕 SharePoint: Swap root site from SharePoint admin center for customers with 10k+ seats – Customer tenants with more than 10K seats or more can now swap their SharePoint root site from within the SharePoint admin center user interface. Roadmap ID: 72224
Release – June 2021
🆕 SharePoint: Page details updates – This update to the page details panel will allow page authors to delete a page and change the page’s URL. Roadmap ID: 81994
🆕 SharePoint: Email notification settings – With this feature, users can unsubscribe or re-subscribe to their favourite SharePoint email notifications. Their preference will be respected for these email notifications. Roadmap ID: 81993
🆕 Yammer and SharePoint for Business: Yammer Conversations Web Part V3 – 3 new configurations to the Yammer Conversations SharePoint Web Part: new horizontal layout, new filter option to show only Questions or All Conversations, and a new configuration option to show or hide the Yammer publisher. Roadmap ID: 81998
Release – July 2021
🆕 Microsoft Search: Find a meeting recording based on what was said – For a Teams meeting that was recorded to OneDrive & SharePoint and was also transcribed live during the meeting you can now search in Microsoft Search to find the meeting recording file based on the transcript. Roadmap ID: 82003
SharePoint: Admin center – Migration Manager: Egnyte migrations – Microsoft have expanded their capabilities to allow moving content from Egnyte into Microsoft 365. Roadmap ID: 82016
SharePoint spaces: Embed Web Part and Annotation – Show SharePoint pages or HTML embed content as an interactable overlay on a SharePoint space. Roadmap ID: 70732
SharePoint spaces: 360° tour annotation icon customization – Customize icons in 360° image tours with choice of icons, colours and size. Roadmap ID: 70733
Release – September 2021
🆕 Microsoft Stream: Variable playback speed (0.5-2x) for Microsoft Teams meeting recordings – For Teams meeting recordings saved to OneDrive & SharePoint you’ll now be able to change the playback speed (0.5x – 2x) while watching the video. Roadmap ID: 82002
The Microsoft 365 monthly update includes updates and recently recent features across all of Microsoft 365. Press a button to read about an individual technology or continue reading for more. You can take a look back at previous monthly updates here, plus take a look at our weekly roadmap roundup.
Immersive reader for SharePoint pages and news posts
Immersive Reader, currently built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft apps, will soon be available for SharePoint pages and news posts.
Immersive Read is now available for SharePoint pages and news posts.
You now have the ability to target specific audiences per event within the SharePoint Events Web Part. Meaning you can target specific events to different audiences – aligning with in-place options to personalize your intranet experience.
This new SharePoint release of scenario-based site templates will help you expand what’s possible with content, pages, and web parts while helping you quickly get started building your own site. Each template contains pre-populated content and web parts that are fully customizable to meet the needs of your organization.
NOTE: This currently does not include a way to save a customised site as a template, to create custom site templates (aka site designs, or site scripts click here).
Microsoft have announced Lists for iOS now supports iPad. AKA, no more Lists at 2x. You’ll get a beautiful native experience to track, manage and share your information.
Microsoft have announced the arrival of a new guided experience in Lists that will make it easy to create business intelligence reports in Power BI using your list data as your source.
NOTE: Users with a Microsoft 365 E5 license or Power BI Pro license will have access to the full report authoring and viewing experience.
Users without either of those licenses will be prompted by Power BI to sign up for a 60-day free trial of Power BI Pro when they attempt to save a new report or edit or view an existing report. Users with a Power BI free license may only visualize their list data but cannot publish nor view reports.
Organizers can now reassign participants even when rooms are opened. Previously, you could only reassign when rooms were closed. Breakout room assignments also now persist over multiple sessions. These features are useful for efficiently managing discussions and ensuring the right participants are in each breakout.
Breakout room retention and participant reassignment is now available in Microsoft Teams.
A new meeting setting is now available in Teams meeting options that automatically sends those who were not originally invited by the organizer to the lobby. For example, if an invitee forwards a meeting invitation to a colleague, when that person tries to join, they’ll be directed to wait in the lobby until the host selects to admit them.
New invite-only meeting options are now available in Microsoft Teams.
Polls in Teams meetings has advanced capabilities for expanded options, intelligent suggestions and analytics
Attendees and guest attendees on mobile devices can now participate in Polls in Teams meetings. Also, discover intelligent poll suggestions to prepare relevant poll questions quickly and analyze responses to take swift action post-meeting.
Polls in Teams meetings has advanced capabilities for expanded options, intelligent suggestions and analytics.
For added security and compliance, Teams meetings and join links are disabled for users whose scheduling permissions have been revoked. Previously, a user could continue to reuse their old meeting join links after their scheduling capabilities have been disabled. This policy update automatically expires those old meeting links so they can’t be reused.
Improvements to audio permissions settings for attendees
As a meeting presenter and organizer, you can now manage attendee audio permissions with greater flexibility. Attendees no longer need to request to speak for you to allow them to unmute, and you also have the ability to prevent individual attendees from unmuting.
Improvements to audio permissions settings for attendees in Teams Meetings.
For Live Events created in Teams, you can allow anonymous users who do not have an Microsoft Service Account (MSA) or Azure Active Directory (AAD) identity to be a presenter. You can now also manage a live event as a Producer in a separate Teams window, so you can simultaneously support the event, while still collaborating with others on Teams.
Custom backgrounds are now available on iOS. Select from Microsoft provided backgrounds or one of your own directly from your iOS mobile device. Now you can make your video meetings more fun and personal while you’re on the go.
For quick ad-hoc meetings that don’t require a formal scheduled meeting, users can leverage Teams casting to wirelessly connect to a Teams Room and display content from their mobile device. Users can broadcast their screen and share content stored locally on their device or accessible via Teams or OneDrive.
Cast content from a mobile device to a Microsoft Teams Room.
Teams automatically reviews the feedback that you submit, and provide help documentation related to the topic, if available. Additionally, once enabled by Teams administrator, you have the option to share your email address when submitting feedback in Teams, to allow for Microsoft to follow-up with you.
Windows 10 native notifications in Teams
You can now choose the style of your notifications: built-in Teams or Windows native notifications. The latter brings a suite of benefits, like respecting focus assist mode which enables you to avoid distracting notifications when you need to focus, and integrating with Windows 10 action center to helps you review your notifications in one place. If you have a Windows build 10.0.17763.288 or higher, you can make this change in Teams notifications settings.
Update to Microsoft Teams mobile app on Android and iOS
Visual updates: The Teams mobile app has a new visual look and feel that delivers new headers, icons, and styling along with the ability to automatically switch to dark theme when you set your device to dark.
Organize chats in mobile app: In the Teams mobile app, you are now able to pin chats and filter the Chat list. This is great for when you quickly want to get back into important conversations! Pinned chats are also rolling out on Android shortly.
Emoji library and GIFs in mobile app on Android and iOS: In the Teams mobile app, there is an expanded library of emojis, and the ability to trim GIFs directly in the app.
Visual update to Microsoft Teams mobile app on Android and iOS.
As an admin you can now add a URL of your choice to the website tab in a team template. When the end-user creates a team using the pre-built template, it will include the preset website you specified, making it easier to distribute standardized content to the entire organization.
App developers are able to specify if they want to provide the option for their customers to customize the app. If the developers provide this option, admins are able to customize app properties like app name, descriptions, icons and more to deliver a branded app experience right within Teams.
App customization and branding in Microsoft Teams.
Teams user usage report: The Teams user usage report provides you a view into your Teams activities and usage. You can generate insights and metrics on a per-team and cross-team basis to understand your interaction with peers and across the organization.
Anonymous user usage reports: As a Teams admin you have the option to anonymize user data, protecting user privacy while viewing, downloading, sharing, and accessing the Teams usage report data. Once enabled, personally identifiable information like username, email addresses, and Active Directory IDs are anonymized.
Time Clock APIs: New APIs (Application Programming Interface) for Time Clock allows integrations into your organization’s Time & Attendance system. to enable rules for how early or late someone can clock-in/out and new processes like a health screening survey that must be completed before clocking-in for the day.
Shift Settings & Permissions: With the Teams Shifts Policy, an organization can now allow users who aren’t the owner of a Teams site to be able to edit and manage Shift schedules, approve swaps, and authorize time off requests.
Enhanced tasks publishing capabilities: Microsoft have enhanced task publishing so operations and corporate teams can more clearly manage and plan their task distribution to frontline locations. As a member of a publishing team you can now see separate Drafts, Published, and Unpublished sections to easily see which task lists are at which stage of their lifecycle.
Manage meeting options Organizers are now able to modify the user experience across desktop, mobile, and web by using the new Meeting Options to customize their meeting safety and security settings. Meeting Options can be accessed in the Teams meeting invitation details in Outlook and Teams Calendar. Available in GCC-High.
Invite-only meeting options A new meeting setting is now available in Teams meeting options that automatically sends those who were not originally invited by the organizer to the lobby. For example, if an invitee forwards a meeting invitation to a colleague, when that person tries to join, they’ll be directed to wait in the lobby until the host selects to admit them. This helps prevent those uninvited from joining the meeting. Available in GCC. Learn more
Enhanced meeting creation and expiration policies For added security and compliance, Teams meetings and join links are disabled for users whose scheduling permissions have been revoked. Previously, a user could continue to reuse their old meeting join links after their scheduling capabilities have been disabled. This policy update automatically expires those old meeting links so they can’t be reused. Available in GCC.
Improvements to audio permissions settings for attendees Meeting presenters and organizers can now manage attendee audio permissions with greater flexibility. Attendees no longer must request to speak for the organizer or presenters to allow them to unmute, and presenters and organizers can prevent individual attendees from unmuting instead of all attendees at once. Available in GCC. Learn more
More labels in Planner Labels are a quick, visual way to categorize similar tasks in Planner and we’ve increased the number of labels to help you get even more organized. You can now add up to 25 labels in all different colors to your tasks in Planner web, mobile, and in Microsoft Teams. Available in GCC, GCC-High and DoD. Available for GCC, GCC-High and DoD. Learn more
New way to update the Teams Rooms app You can now use Teams meetings and calling functionality in your Teams Rooms on Windows. IT Admins can easily perform a manual update. Simply download and run an offline app update PowerShell script to your Teams Rooms devices. Follow the steps in this article to get started. Available in GCC-High.
Out of Office Setting Let others know that you are not available by scheduling your Out of Office in Teams. During this time, your presence status changes to “Out of Office” and your status message is displayed when someone reaches out to you via chat. Additionally, your Outlook calendar and automatic replies are updated accordingly. Available for GCC.
etting back to your important PDFs in your mobile devices just got easier. Use the new bookmark option in OneDrive for Android to add bookmarks to your important content so you can pick up where you left off.
Now when you open a PDF on your Android device you would be able to add or remove bookmarks by tapping the bookmark icon (on the top of your screen) or by long-pressing anywhere on the page you want to tag.
Bookmarks for PDF viewing for OneDrive on Android.
You can now leverage the page rotation tool to rotate one page or multiple pages so you don’t have to switch your device’s screen orientation when reading a document in OneDrive.
Page rotation for PDF viewing in OneDrive for iOS & Android.
When a user deletes a file(s) for the first time, they will be shown a dialog to educate them that their file is in the OneDrive recycle bin where it can be restored. This will show up on subsequent deletes until the user checks the box stating they do not wish to see it again. Admins can turn off this notification all together with a group policy setting.
Dialog on First-Time deletion of File(s) in OneDrive.
Updates to the Azure File Storage and Excel Online (Business) connectors
Microsoft have announced improvements to the Azure File Storage and Excel Online (Business) connectors to make them more useful and robust. Additionally, the features between these two connectors have been re-arranged for greater clarity and ease of use.
Azure File Storage Connector: The Azure File Storage connector allows users to interact with their files in an Azure Storage account. Microsoft have removed the “blob” designation from this connector. This designation blocked Power Apps users from getting at the actions available for the connector.
Excel Online (Business) Connector: The Excel Online (Business) Connector allows users to work with Excel files in document libraries that are supported by Microsoft Graph (OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Sites, and Office 365 Groups).
The ISV Studio team have announced the release of F&O application telemetry in ISV Studio! ISV Studio is a technical benefit of the ISV Connect program and is designed to be the platform that allows an ISV to monitor the success of their published apps by providing telemetry into:
Usage analytics (Monthly/Daily/Weekly active usage)
Microsoft have announced a vast new set of capabilities that provide enterprise grade application lifecycle management for the data sources that canvas apps and cloud flows connect to. Environment variables are a powerful tool for a variety of ALM scenarios as they allow you to externalize input parameters from the components that use them.
Environment variables are now natively built into authoring experiences across canvas apps and cloud flows as well as solution authoring and solution import experiences
Data source environmental variables in Power Apps.
Code components within Power Apps Portals (preview)
Support for code components within Power Apps portals is now available with portals version 9.3.3.x and package version 9.2.2103.x. as these updates are rolling out. In this preview release the feature provides support for Field type of code components allowing fields on portal forms to be replaced with code components.
Power Apps Mixed Reality Components General Availability
Microsoft have announced the general availability of mixed reality (MR) features in Power Apps, which include the View in 3D, View in MR, View Shape in MR, and Measure in MR components. You are able to leverage low-code development to drag-and-drop these mixed reality capabilities directly in your apps today from the Media and Mixed Reality sections of the insert pane.
Power Apps Mixed Reality Components General Availability.
Quick actions are now customizable in model-driven Power Apps
Quick actions are commands that help you complete your task without losing context of your work. New capabilities released around search, starting with a search bar in the front and center of model-driven Power Apps. This search bar is powered by Dataverse relevance search, that shows results as you type and has robust intelligence built in.
For usability reasons, quick actions are capped at FIVE commands per table. Quick actions show up only in the context of search – alongside suggestions and in results page on the primary column.
Changes to Power Automate’s native integration with Microsoft Dataverse
The Common Data Service (current environment) connector, featuring a native integration between Power Automate and Dataverse, will now be known as Microsoft Dataverse, and appear with the new icon and color shade as shown below. Now we know that old habits die hard – and that’s why you will still be able to search using the old name for a while. Lastly, the names of triggers and actions, and their options and descriptions will be updated to match the revised terminology.
Direct purchase on Power Automate RPA attended is now available
You can now directly purchase the Power Automate per user plan with attended RPA for yourself, or even for all members in your team without need to be an M365 tenant/org admin! Anyone who has a valid organization email account is now able to purchase RPA directly.
There is now a new way in which you can combine Power BI data and flows by allowing users to manually trigger a flow from any Power BI report. This new capability uses the Power Automate visual in Power BI and a new “Power BI button clicked” trigger on the Power BI connector.
Several new additions have been announced for Microsoft AI Builder which improve document automation capabilities and extend Microsoft’s footprint across products and geographies.
Improved table extraction in form processing
Support of table data in document automation
Identity document reader public preview release
AI Builder in Teams
Availability in India, France, Germany, and UAE
Improved table extraction in form processing in AI Builder.
11 new connectors have been released for Power Automate, offering connectivity to services that offer company financial data insights, IoT devices, and task management – taking the total number of connectors available on the platform to near 500.
Several enhancements to Process advisor in March 2021 to improve process creation including a guided first run experience, recording improvements, manage activity names plus more.
In Power BI: Admin APIs to Determine Access Rights, visualise SharePoint lists now GA, July 2021 Feature Summary, PivotTable refresh, Streaming dataflows in Power BI premium, On-premises data gateway July 2021, free virtual workshops
On-premises data gateway April 2021
Microsoft have announced the April update for the On-premises data gateway (version 3000.79.6). This release includes:
In this month’s Power BI feature summary there are updates for the preview Power Automate visual, previews for Small Multiples and DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services are getting some new features plus lots more!
Microsoft have announced a new custom visual in AppSource: the Microsoft Charticulator visual. Previously to use Charticulator, a user would flip between the web app at charticulator.com and Power BI (PBI). Now, users can create a wide range of custom chart designs right within PBI using our brand-new Microsoft Charticulator custom visual.
Announcing the new Charticulator visual (Public Preview).
Object-Level Security (OLS) is now generally available in Power BI Premium and Pro
Object-level security (OLS) enables model authors to secure sensitive tables or columns from report viewers– sensitive data, for example includes personally identifiable information (PII). This added layer of security prevents users without the appropriate access levels from discovering business critical or sensitive personal information.
Configure object-level security using the tabular editor.
Sharing reports in Power BI will be as easy and familiar as sharing in Office. Microsoft are introducing a new sharing capability in Power BI that will allow reports to be shared via links in addition to direct access sharing.
Several new features have been announced in Dataflows allowing users to more seamlessly ingest, prepare, and refresh data that can be widely reused by others across the Power Platform and Azure.
Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (0)
Rolling out (0)
In development (5)
🍾 LAUNCHED
N/A
🚂 ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – June 2021
🆕 SharePoint: Editing Modern Pages in Teams Experience – Edit Modern SharePoint Pages that are pinned to Teams channels & conversations. Roadmap ID: 82969
🆕SharePoint: Integration of Power Automate and Power Apps for DoD tenants – Power Automate and Power Apps will be available for SharePoint DoD customers. Users can automate common tasks, customize forms, create apps from lists, and use the Power Apps web part. Roadmap ID: 81985
🆕 SharePoint: Display images from Microsoft Lists in Power Apps – Power Apps image controls will now display images that are stored in Microsoft Lists Image columns. They can be displayed in four sizes: small, medium, large, or full. Roadmap ID: 81986
Release – July 2021
🆕 Azure Active Directory, OneDrive, and SharePoint for Business: Azure B2B integration with OneDrive and SharePoint is now generally available – The Azure B2B Integration with OneDrive and SharePoint is now generally available. This integration is currently disabled by default but can be enabled using the SharePoint Online Management Shell. Roadmap ID: 81955
🆕 OneDrive and SharePoint for Business: Library Dropdown – We’re adding a dropdown that allows you to easily switch between multiple document libraries associated with a Team or Site. Roadmap ID: 81990
Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (4)
Rolling out (3)
In development (10)
🍾 LAUNCHED
SharePoint: Company-Branded Auto News Digest – For SharePoint news users, we are launching an update to the Auto-News Digest feature. Now users will receive a company branded Auto-News Digest.Roadmap ID: 70606
SharePoint: Immersive reader is coming to modern SharePoint pages and new posts – The Microsoft Immersive Reader, which is currently built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft apps, will be available for SharePoint pages and news posts. Roadmap ID: 70737
SharePoint Syntex: Document understanding model – extractors position awareness – An explanation enhancement to specify document region where an entity may appear in a content understanding model. Roadmap ID: 70605
SharePoint Syntex: Retention label support for Form Processing – Option to assign a default retention label to content captured with an applied form processing model. Roadmap ID: 70608
🚂 ROLLING OUT
SharePoint: App Bar – The SharePoint app bar brings a consistent navigation experience to every site on your intelligent intranet, featuring quick access to important sites across the organization with global navigation, personally relevant sites, and the news feed. Roadmap ID: 70576
SharePoint and OneDrive: Share dialog – adding Link settings to the quick permissions. Roadmap ID: 81958
SharePoint: Admin center – Migration Manager: Dropbox migrations – With Microsoft’s recent Mover acquisition, we are excited to expand our capabilities to allow moving content from Dropbox into Microsoft 365. Roadmap ID: 82015
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – May 2021
🆕 Azure Active Directory, OneDrive, and SharePoint for Business: Azure B2B integration with OneDrive and SharePoint is now generally available – The Azure B2B Integration with OneDrive and SharePoint is now generally available. This integration is currently disabled by default but can be enabled using the SharePoint Online Management Shell. Roadmap ID: 81955
🆕 SharePoint: Microsoft Lists: Updated sharing experience – Create unique sharing links for lists based on who and how you wish to share them, while adhering to any sharing settings per established IT and governance planning and policies. Roadmap ID: 81965
🆕 SharePoint Syntex: Automatically set sensitivity labels in document understanding models – You can now tag documents automatically with MIP sensitivity labels in document understanding models. Roadmap ID: 81975
🆕 SharePoint Syntex: Use regular expressions to match patterns for extracting metadata in document understanding models – You can now use regular expressions (RegEx) in explanations, allowing model trainers to provide more complex metadata extractor and recognition patterns. This addition includes a set of regex explanation templates that can be used or edited like the other templates. Roadmap ID: 81976
SharePoint admin center: updated homepage dashboard – Update for the homepage in the SharePoint admin center with more and more cards and graphs appear over time – so you can see insights on files, usage security, recommendations, training and so on. Roadmap ID: 68812
Microsoft Viva: Improvements for Topic Management – This update will empower Knowledge Managers, providing additional metadata for sorting and filtering through the list of topics, including additional quality and usage columns, and segmentation to help manage topics at scale. Roadmap ID: 72182
Release – June 2021
SharePoint: Admin center – Migration Manager: Egnyte migrations – With Microsoft’s recent Mover acquisition, we are excited to expand our capabilities to allow moving content from Egnyte into Microsoft 365. Roadmap ID: 82016
Microsoft Viva: Topic management dashboard – You can track the stats over time for topics through the lifecycle of suggested, confirmed, published, and removed with the new visual topic management dashboard. Roadmap ID: 81977
Release – August 2021
SharePoint Syntex: Availability for GCC – General availability for SharePoint Syntex in GCC. Roadmap ID: 70610
Release – December 2021
🆕 SharePoint: Admin center: Migration Manager: Dropbox migrations for Government Clouds – With our recent Mover acquisition, we are excited to expand our capabilities to allow moving content from Dropbox into Microsoft 365. Roadmap ID: 83456
SharePoint and knowledge bases have gone hand in hand for many years. If you have been involved with SharePoint for any length of time it is not an uncommon request to be asked to build a knowledge base at some point. With the advent of AI and machine learning within Microsoft 365, plus the introduction of Knowledge & Content Services (formerly Project Cortex), SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva Topics, you may think the need to build a traditional knowledge base has gone the way of the dodo.
Well the pricing of the above services means that my organisation won’t readily adopt these new things, so for now at least continuing to leverage metadata rich lists & libraries will have to suffice! Here’s how I built a knowledge base in SharePoint Online…
Site features
Custom site theme/design
Mega-menu navigation
PnP modern search V3
Custom page templates
Site Pages library with additional metadata
Lookup value lists
Change log list
Web parts used
Image with colour block
Search box
Highlighted content
Image/ text
Page properties (KB articles)
Search results web part
Searh filters web part
Approach
I wanted to leverage the modern page authoring experience for creating pages, as there are several people adding content to the knowledge base (KB). So with that in mind the knowledge base is built around the Site Pages library, using the metadata applied to each knowledge base article to drive dynamic web parts throughout the site such as search, page properties and the highlighted content web part.
Within the KB, all KB articles get categorised by the type of technology, application and product they fall under. These work for my KB as I can fit KB articles within these headings. For example:
KB article: How to fix the sync connection in SharePoint 2010
Technology
Application
Product
Microsoft
SharePoint Server
SharePoint 2010
Site Pages library
As mentioned above, the Site Pages library is the lynchpin to the entire knowledge base. Starting with the Pages library, I created columns to capture additional metadata about each KB article. Here are the columns I created:
Technology: lookup column, values held in custom list Application: lookup column, values held in custom list Product: lookup column, values held in custom list Knowledge Type: choice column Topic: Managed Metadata column Contact: Person or Group
Technology, Application & Product are what drive each view within the Site Pages library. I have created a view for each Technology and Application, which are used for web parts embedded within the relevant pages (for example: Microsoft).
Product is used as a way to formalise the type of KB articles that are created (for example: Procedure), with Topic effectively being a way to tag KB articles with a wider variety of terms to aid searching and filtering.
The only thing I did different is I used a different website to generate my theme which you can use here. This theme generator site allows you to access more of the colours that are used when creating a theme to potentially create a multi-coloured theme. For more information of this check out another great post by Laura Kokkarinen here.
Use a theme generator to create a custom theme for your SharePoint Online site.
Homepage
The homepage of the knowledge base is broken down into three key areas: search, recently added and the browse area.
Search: Search web part as part of the PnP modern search solution V3. Connected to a custom search results page (more information below).
Recently added: Highlighted content web part that only shows pages from this site, filtered by recently added earlier this year.
Browse: Three column section consisting of images, text and button web parts. I used the images from the look book template to get the correct sizing for the images above. When updating the images I noticed they didn’t update immediately which I wrote about how to fix here.
Navigation
The navigation for the KB has been created using the mega menu option within the Change the look > Navigation options. The links have all been created manually for each section, with each link going to either a dedicated page or a view created from the Site Pages library.
Mega menu navigation in the IT KB.
Search
Search web part
The search for the knowledge base is all based on web parts from the PnP modern search solution V3. From the homepage there is a search web part. Before configuring the search web part on the homepage you will need to create and configure the search results page and web part as it is required as a data source. I followed the guidance from the PnP modern search solution documentation to configure the search web part with the following properties:
The search web part configuration on the knowledge base homepage.
Search results
The search results is a dedicated page created within the knowledge base that includes the search box, search results and search filters web parts. The search box web part is configured in exactly the same way as on the homepage and just serves as a consistent way to see your search results and search again if required.
The search results web part has been added to a separate, one-third left section underneath the search box web part shared with the search filters web part. The search results web part has the following settings:
Connect to source: Page environment Page environment’s properties: Search Search: Search query Use a default search query: No Query template: {searchTerms} Path:{Site.URL} FileType=aspx Result source identifier: No Sort order: Created, size Sortable properties: None Connect to a search refiners web part: On Use refiners from this component: Filter Connect to search verticals: Off Enable query rules: On Include personal OneDrive results: Off Selected properties: {searchTerms} Path:{Site.URL} FileType=aspx Refinement filters: None Show paging: On Number of items per page: 30 Number of pages: 4 Hide navigation: No Hide navigation if disabled: Yes Results layout: Simple list
Search filter web part
The search filter web part has been added to the search results page with no additional configuration changes made. Don’t forget (like I did), to get the search filter web part to start to work with your search results, you need to turn it on within the search results web part – under connect to a search refiners web part!
Page templates
I’ve used page templates within the knowledge base to standardise the layout of each KB article. At the time of writing there are only two templates to choose from: an application template or new KB article.
Example KB article page template
The KB article page template includes a page properties web part that shows the Knowledge Type, Contact and Topic.
The layout of each KB article page template is as follows: One-third right section: Text web part (left), Page properties web part (right) One column section: Two text web parts One column section: Two text web parts
How to create a page template
Create or open the page you want to use as your template
Press the down arrow next to the save button > Save as template
Page templates will now appear under saved on this site when creating a new page. Templates are also saved in a “Templates” folder within the Site Pages library.
Create page templates to standardise how knowledge is created.
More information on how to manage and delete templates can be found here.
Issues & next steps
Dependant drop-down lists, Power Apps and the Site Pages library
One area I would like to improve on is including the ability to have dependant drop-downs for Technology, Application and Product when applying metadata to KB articles. When creating the KB, I did work on two ways to achieve this- but they both fell short in the end.
My first attempt was to customise the Site Pages library new and edit forms using Power Apps. I used this article by Microsoft on how to create dependent drop-down lists in a canvas apps as a starting point, but had to make some changes to account for the additional third level of drop-down. Although I got this working within the context of PowerApps, I had to abandon this method as creating new pages in the Site Pages library via Power Apps is not supported. My experience was that once I customised the form in Power Apps, it pretty much broke the Site Pages library. I was unable to create new pages and it would default to an old style wiki page and not let me create modern site pages.
Custom forms for document libraries only supports editing custom metadata. Editing or managing file(s) is not supported.
After this failed, I also tried an older way of doing this by using JQuery and SPServices as described here.
Initially I got this to work too, but it was also a pretty poor solution when working with modern pages as the only way to actually get to the dependent drop-downs was by pressing “Edit all” which took you to the classic version of the edit properties page.
Aside from this, you also have to jump through several hoops to add in the old content editor web part, which are too numerous to describe in this post but have linked to one of them.
There was also a recent change to how classic forms work with modern lists that stopped this method working all together. Although this seems to be resolved, my understanding is you have to set your list to run in the classic experience in order to get this method to work – so I’ve scrapped this too!
I currently have no solution for dependant drop-downs, but am open for suggestions that are low code or relatively easy to implement. Feedback so far from users is that they aren’t all that bothered about it as the process to apply metadata is easy.
Images not updating when refreshing
As I was in the process of updating the KB homepage I noticed that when replacing some of the images or other assets that make up the page, they weren’t visibly updating after a forced browser refresh. I wrote a separate post called how to force images to update in SharePoint Online which details how to resolve this.
Updating the modern search solution
When I began building the KB I deployed what is now version 3 of the modern search solution. Since then the PnP team have created PnP Modern Search V4, I’ve personally decided not to update my search solution as at the time of writing V4 doesn’t support suggested keywords which is a part of my solution.
Use these buttons to switch between each product’s roadmap updates.
SharePoint
Launched (2)
Rolling out (2)
In development (39)
🍾 LAUNCHED
🆕 Microsoft Lists for iOS: iPad support – Microsoft is expanding device support on iOS to now include iPad. Roadmap ID: 70748
🆕 Microsoft Lists: iOS Intune support (MAM CA) – Microsoft is currently working on getting the Lists app for iOS into the Intune console, for Mobile App Management (MAM) policies. Roadmap ID: 70752
🚂 ROLLING OUT
SharePoint: Microsoft Lists: Visualize with Power BI – Visualize your list in Power BI. This is a new view and author experience that auto-generates an initial report for you based on the information in your list. You can specify fields to create from, or update the visuals shown in the report. If you want more advanced report authoring capabilities, you can move into Edit mode and further refine. To create a report from a list, click the Integrate menu, choose Power BI and then you will see “Visualize the list”. Roadmap ID: 72175
SharePoint: Simplified MUI editing for multilingual communication sites – This new feature allows the same user, with the right permissions, to update site navigation, site title, site description and site footer in all the languages enabled in your communication site. Roadmap ID: 79847
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – May 2021
SharePoint: Admin center – Migration Manager: Google migrations – With Microsoft’s recent Mover acquisition, we are excited to expand our capabilities to allow moving content from Google into Microsoft 365. Roadmap ID: 82014
🆕 OneDrive and SharePoint: Immersive Reader support – Users can edit Word files directly into Immersive Reader from inside OneDrive and SharePoint. Roadmap ID: 81954
🆕 SharePoint and OneDrive: Share dialog – adding Link settings to the quick permissions. Roadmap ID: 81958
Microsoft Lists: forms customization – Adjust what information shows on the out-of-box forms and include custom header and footer imagery and information. Roadmap ID: 64165
Microsoft Lists: sticky first column – As you scroll left and right, the first column of your list remains in place; similar to the sticky header that is already a part of Lists. Roadmap ID: 64168
SharePoint: Auto-News Digest – SharePoint Auto-News Digest sends automated email to employees in you company about the latest News posts that they have not yet read. Roadmap ID: 64685
Microsoft Lists and SharePoint document libraries: Gallery view – Configure your lists and library items using a dynamic Gallery view – choosing how your documents and list items appear. Roadmap ID: 57304
Microsoft Lists: mobile app (iOS) built on SharePoint – You’ll be able to create new lists, edit list items and easily share with other people. The Lists app will first come to iOS and Android shortly after. Roadmap ID: 64161
New SharePoint admin center home page – Updates to the SharePoint admin center to align it to the Microsoft admin center, including more tiles and graphs. Roadmap ID: 57318
SharePoint Online search query volume limits when using app-only authentication – When this change is implemented, queries using the Site.Read.All permissions level or greater will be throttled at 25 QPS. The search query will return with a 429 response and you can simply retry the query. Roadmap ID: 64963
Microsoft Lists: updated Yes/No column experiences – powered by SharePoint – List items with a Yes/No column, in and out of Quick Edit mode, will appear using the new experience design format – making it easier to create and more accessible to consume. Roadmap ID: 67119
SharePoint: Text web parts automatically added to new sections in modern pages – Microsoft are now adding text web parts automatically for you when you add new sections to a modern page. Roadmap ID: 67146
Microsoft Lists: column settings in Grid view – The capabilities when in Lists “Grid” view (previously Quick Edit) will now allow people to pin a column to the filter’s pane, format the column, show/hide columns, and hide their column(s). Roadmap ID: 68714
Microsoft Lists: Support for thousands separator in Number column – When Lists owners and members leverage the Number column, they can now choose if the comma should appear or not. Roadmap ID: 68716
Microsoft Lists: offline mode – Similar to taking files offline, people will have the ability to take Microsoft Lists offline – so you can work with your information in scenarios where you may have low-to-no internet access. Roadmap ID: 68809
Microsoft Lists: @mentions in comments – Get a colleague’s attention to an item in a list by @mentioning them within list comments. That person will receive a notification and a link that takes them directly back to the item, to review the comment and take the requested action. Roadmap ID: 68811
SharePoint admin center: updated homepage dashboard – Update for the homepage in the SharePoint admin center with more and more cards and graphs appear over time – so you can see insights on files, usage security, recommendations, training and so on. Roadmap ID: 68812
SharePoint admin center: site creation source – SharePoint admins will now be able to see where sites were created from – be it PowerShell, via the SharePoint admin center, from Teams, from SharePoint “Create site” – and to be able to see more clearly who created the site. Roadmap ID: 68813
SharePoint admin center – Migration Manager: Box migrations (public preview) – With their recent Mover acquisition, Microsoft are excited to expand capabilities to allow moving content from third-party cloud storage providers starting with Box.com. Roadmap ID: 68816
Microsoft Teams: Improvements to the “Create a Microsoft Team from SharePoint” experience – Enhance existing Microsoft 365 Groups with Teams functionality, directly from SharePoint team sites. Roadmap ID: 68861
SharePoint: Updated Tag column for images – Image tags are automatically created and includes descriptive labels when they are uploaded into SharePoint within Microsoft 365. This improves Microsoft Search results. With the new update, people will be able to manually add or remove tags from this column using freeform text or from the managed metadata service (your company taxonomy). Roadmap ID: 68902
SharePoint: Page Analytics – View rich page analytics on SharePoint Pages, including page views, page viewers and page traffic. Roadmap ID: 70635
Microsoft Lists: Grid view keyboard improvements – When you edit in grid view (previously ‘Quick edit’), you will have a faster editing experience that adheres to greater levels of accessibility. Roadmap ID: 70670
Microsoft Lists: visual UI for read-only fields – Lists fields will show people when a field is edit-only and screen reader support when a field is read-only. Roadmap ID: 70672
Microsoft Lists: Configure Person column profile pictures – When using a Person column (for individuals or groups), you will have more control to show as text-only or using available user’s profile pictures with the visual ‘pill’ formatting. Roadmap ID: 70673
Microsoft Lists: List Setting to disable/enable commenting – New list-level settings to disable/enable commenting. Roadmap ID: 70706
SharePoint: People cut out tab for stock images – The stock images tab inside the image file picker will now include images of people without a background. Roadmap ID: 70720
SharePoint spaces: Embed Web Part and Annotation – Show SharePoint pages or HTML embed content as an interactable overlay on a SharePoint space. Roadmap ID: 70732
SharePoint: Immersive reader is coming to modern SharePoint pages and new posts – The Microsoft Immersive Reader, which is currently built into Word, OneNote, Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft apps, will be available for SharePoint pages and news posts. Roadmap ID: 70737
Microsoft Lists app in Teams: Rules – Create simple if/then rules, based on changes to list information, to set reminders and send notifications directly from within Microsoft Teams. Roadmap ID: 70749
SharePoint: Calendar view in Lists web part – The List web part for SharePoint in Microsoft 365 allows you to display a list from your team or site on a page and customize it with your own title, view, and even size. Roadmap ID: 70750
SharePoint: Events web part will display event images – Page authors in SharePoint who use the Events web part will be able to turn on an option to show event images within the web part. Roadmap ID: 70791
SharePoint: Scoping Control for SharePoint Online – Scoping control is available for SP page, site, list and library, for users to search faster with specified scope. Roadmap ID: 70792
SharePoint: Portal launch scheduler UX – The Portal Launch Scheduler is designed to help you follow a wave / phased roll-out approach by managing the redirects for the new portal. Roadmap ID: 70799
SharePoint: SharePoint News Boost – You can boost the visibility of a news article for a set time, until an employee has seen your content, or until a viewer has seen the item in their feed a set number of times. Roadmap ID: 70810
SharePoint: Audience Targeting capability for Events Web Part – We are adding the ability to target specific audiences per event within the Events Web Part. With it, you target specific events to different audiences, helping you provide more personalized experiences on SharePoint pages. Roadmap ID: 70815
New leadership connection site template – The template brings together conversations from Yammer, news, resources, and showcases upcoming events. Roadmap ID: 71752
