The Microsoft roadmap roundup is a weekly summary of all the newly added items and changes within the Microsoft 365 roadmap, covering SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive and Microsoft Purview. Here’s all the new and updated Microsoft roadmap items from the past week:
Join 373 other followers
Use the links below to switch between each product’s roadmap updates:
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (1)
Rolling out (0)
In development (8)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Microsoft Viva: Mobile SharePoint site navigation – Feature to allow Viva connections mobile users to browse and reach SharePoint sites by surfacing their hub and site navigation in the VC app. Roadmap ID:117527
🚂 ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Answers information panel – Support employees getting started with using Answers in Viva by providing guidance in the Answers information panel. Roadmap ID: 124945
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Campaign discovery hub – Campaign discovery hub in Viva Engage to help users explore and discover existing campaigns. Roadmap ID: 124952
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Search for Campaigns – Users will be able to search for and find campaigns in an easy and intuitive way. Roadmap ID: 124953
Microsoft Viva: Connections News Notifications – Mobile users of Viva Connections will receive a push notification from Teams when SharePoint news is published from sites they follow or visit frequently. They’ll also receive notification if they are @ mentioned in a comment on a news post, or if someone likes or comments on news they have published. These notifications will honor Teams notification settings including fully disabling them and quiet hours. Roadmap ID:98112
Microsoft Stream: Playlists in the SharePoint List webpart – This feature will allow you to display playlists on SharePoint pages using the List webpart. The playlist will display video titles and thumbnails, and people with access to files in the playlist can click on the thumbnails to view the videos. Roadmap ID:124808
Rollout starts – July 2023
SharePoint: Advanced editing in Image web part – New advanced editing capabilities available in the Image web part will include adjustments, filters, and markup. Roadmap ID:124825
Rollout starts – September 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: McKinsey Integration through Data Egress in Insights – Organizational Health Index (OHI) applies analytical rigor to organizational health management. Our quantitative diagnostics and proven recipes for success empower senior leaders to measure and achieve the organizational health required to sustain long-term performance. This integration includes Viva Insights metrics to enhance OHI’s diagnostics and solutions. Roadmap ID: 117411
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Avanade Integration through Data Egress in Insights – Avanade’s employee experience transformation takes the next step by integrating with Viva Insights metrics to unlock deeper understanding and offer new solutions. Roadmap ID: 117412
The Microsoft roadmap roundup is a weekly summary of all the newly added items and changes within the Microsoft 365 roadmap, covering SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive and Microsoft Purview. Here’s all the new and updated Microsoft roadmap items from the past week:
Join 373 other followers
Use the links below to switch between each product’s roadmap updates:
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (6)
Rolling out (2)
In development (3)
🍾 LAUNCHED
SharePoint:Create pages and news from the SharePoint app bar – Now you’ll be able to start creating pages and news as an action from within the SharePoint app bar. This means, no matter where you are in SharePoint you can jump right into the content creation process and stay in the flow of work. Roadmap ID:98143
Microsoft Viva: Viva Goals extension in Azure DevOps – The Viva Goals extension in ADO enables users to view alignment details within ADO Work Items. When a work item is connected to a project in Viva Goals, they can view end alignment in the Goals tab. Users can also perform check-ins, create projects, and more without leaving ADO. Roadmap ID:117474
Microsoft Viva: Stories Public Preview – Stories allow people and leaders to share updates, experiences, vision, and perspective on your storyline, using short videos or photos. Stories are a new way to express yourself authentically, and to reach and engage people in your organization across Viva Engage, Teams, Outlook, and Yammer. Roadmap ID: 101514
Microsoft 365 admin center: Send email notifications from your own domain – Notifications that cannot be sent from a user’s email account can now be configured to use your own custom verified domain instead of the Microsoft default domain. Roadmap ID:103628
Microsoft Viva: Take action after reflecting on meeting category insights in Viva Insights – Viva Insights customers will be able to take actions such as editing meeting invites or responses directly from the Viva Insights app after reflecting on their meeting category insights to align their time spent in meetings with their goals. Roadmap ID:117374
Microsoft Viva: Engage Premium Analytics – New advanced personal, community, and leader analytics to better understand engagement, reach, insights, and sentiment in communities and storyline posts in Viva Engage. Roadmap ID:109574
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Viva: Jira on prem support for Viva Goals – Support for Jira Server and Jira Data Center that allows users to automatically track the progress for objectives and key results (OKRs) along with the work driving those OKRs in Viva Goals. Roadmap ID: 109592
Microsoft Viva: Viva Goals Zapier data integration – The Viva Goals integration with Zapier allows users to automate their key results with progress from over 5000+ apps in the Zapier marketplace. Roadmap ID:117459
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Enhancements to aggregate insights surfaced through the Viva Insights app in Teams – With this release, the aggregate insights surfaced through the Viva Insights app in Teams will display results for all subgroups within the organization. New sorting controls will make it easier to highlight the most important information, and the interactive charts will make navigating the results easier than ever. Roadmap ID: 124905
Rollout starts – July 2023
Microsoft Stream: New Stream webpart – This new Stream webpart will support configuration of single and multiple videos for Stream (on SharePoint). Roadmap ID:124800
Rollout starts – September 2023
SharePoint on Stream: Inline playback of videos in SharePoint Highlighted content web parts for grid, carousel and filmstrip layouts – When users click to play a video in a Highlighted content web part (Grid, Carousel or filmstrip layouts) section of a SharePoint site, the video will play inline. This feature allows users to watch a video without being taken off the SharePoint page and keeps the video playing while users to browse/scroll through the other contents of the page. Roadmap ID:98091
The Microsoft roadmap roundup is a weekly summary of all the newly added items and changes within the Microsoft 365 roadmap, covering SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive and Microsoft Purview. Here’s all the new and updated Microsoft roadmap items from the past week:
Join 373 other followers
Use the links below to switch between each product’s roadmap updates:
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (15)
Rolling out (2)
In development (14)
🍾 LAUNCHED
SharePoint: New SharePoint site templates – We are introducing 3 new SharePoint site templates dedicated to helping you create sites for your portal home site, to provide guidance and assets for your brand, and a template powered by Microsoft Syntex for your Accounts payable team. Roadmap ID:117554
SharePoint: New site templates – We are introducing 3 new SharePoint site templates dedicated to helping you create sites for your HR department, to showcase Events, and a template powered by Microsoft Syntex to do contract management. Roadmap ID:102380
SharePoint: SharePoint admin center: Streamlining management of site related information across Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups – SharePoint is updating the site detail panel to include Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups information. Admins that have permissions to SharePoint, Teams and Groups admin centers can now manage all related attributes (membership, group name, description, etc.) from a single site detail panel in the SharePoint admin center ‘Active Sites’ tab. SharePoint admins with SharePoint only permissions will have read-only access to the new attributes. Roadmap ID:100053
SharePoint: Updates to site themes – We are implementing an update for the Office theme in Classic SharePoint will align the presentation with the application experience. Roadmap ID:101150
Microsoft 365 admin center: Send email notifications from your own domain – Notifications that cannot be sent from a user’s email account can now be configured to use your own custom verified domain instead of the Microsoft default domain. Roadmap ID:103628
Microsoft Syntex: new rules actions – move and copy – Create rules to move or copy files processed by Syntex models based on the extracted value. Roadmap ID:98111
Microsoft Viva: Automatic Topic Relationships available in GCC – The ability for AI to suggest relationships between topics will be available for customers in our Government Clouds. These suggested related topics appear on the topic card, page and answers. This is already available for standard worldwide customers. This feature deployment has changed and the roadmap item has been updated to reflect those plans. Roadmap ID:106765
Microsoft Viva: Designated Viva Goals Admin Center Console – Viva Goals IT Administrator will have an admin page that will enable them to enable/ disable integrations, configure organization permissions and manage organizations by granting admin access. Roadmap ID:117475
Microsoft Viva: Display connected topics on people profile cards – Profile cards displayed through Outlook will display Topics associated to an individual. Roadmap ID:88697
Microsoft Viva: Effective meetings in Viva Insights – A new “Effective meetings” experience is being introduced in the Microsoft Viva Insights app in Microsoft Teams. Meeting organizers will be able to view personalized insights and suggestions to help improve their meeting habits. Users will also be able to create and share meeting plans to set team meeting norms such as shorter meetings by default and always including Teams links. Roadmap ID:85660
Microsoft Viva: Goals EU Data Residency – With EU Data Residency support, EU-based customers interested in using Viva Goals can have their data stored in EU Data centers. Currently, EU Data Residency is available for new customers. With this change, for existing Viva Goals EU customers, the data will be migrated to EU Data centers. Roadmap ID:115479
Microsoft Viva: Shared focus plan in Viva Insights – The shared focus plan enables managers and team leads to foster mutual productivity norms and drive a positive team culture by inviting teams to book focus time for uninterrupted work. Roadmap ID:88839
Microsoft Viva: Sharing praise with others – With updates coming in January, users with Viva Insights subscriptions who send praise will have the ability to share a copy of the praise with others. Shared recipients will be notified via Teams and can see praise details in the Microsoft Viva Insights app in Teams. Roadmap ID:106122
Microsoft Viva: Viva Connections Customer Facing Analytics – The customer facing analytics module will allow customers to understand the usage metrics for their instance of Viva Connections. and will help them gauge the health of their VC deployment. Roadmap ID:93367
Microsoft Viva: Viva Insights app in Teams with personal insights for GCC-H – The Microsoft Viva Insights app in Microsoft Teams will be available in GCC-H and will show you personalized recommendations that help you do your best work. Roadmap ID:101521
🚂 ROLLING OUT
SharePoint:Create pages and news from the SharePoint app bar – Now you’ll be able to start creating pages and news as an action from within the SharePoint app bar. This means, no matter where you are in SharePoint you can jump right into the content creation process and stay in the flow of work. Roadmap ID:98143
Microsoft Syntex: Split PDF pages into new PDF files with the Extract action in OneDrive for iOS – Users of Microsoft Syntex can now split a PDF file into multiple PDFs with the Extract file action in OneDrive for iOS. The Extract file action lets you quickly split and extract multiple pages of a PDF into a new PDF file stored in SharePoint or OneDrive. Roadmap ID:117548
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – May 2023
🆕 Microsoft Stream: Organize & share video and audio files with a playlist template from Microsoft Lists – This feature will allow users to organize their video and audio files into a playlist for easy organization, sharing and playback. Users can add any video and audio files to a playlist that they have edit access to. People with access to the playlist and to the files in the playlist can view the videos in order or skip back and forth between items in the playlist. Roadmap ID:124797
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Configure learning academies – Admins can create and manage learning academies in the Viva Learning Admin tab. Roadmap ID:99167
Microsoft Viva: Personalized activity feed – With this release, Users especially non OKR owners will land on their activity feed page that is prioritized with updates from leaders, people they work with regularly and OKRs that are relevant to help them stay informed on the status, progress, comments/reactions from people of the goals they care about. Users can comment/react to the post in the activity feed. Roadmap ID:124781
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: DOD support for Connections – Viva Connections will be made available to use for DoD. Roadmap ID:117431
Microsoft Stream: Playlists in the SharePoint List webpart – This feature will allow you to display playlists on SharePoint pages using the List webpart. The playlist will display video titles and thumbnails, and people with access to files in the playlist can click on the thumbnails to view the videos. Roadmap ID:124808
SharePoint: Microsoft Lists – User experience (UX) update – This update improves overall performance of Microsoft Lists and introduces new features, like the ability to add ratings to any list, drag and/or paste images directly into a list, see who collaborating with you – and where – in real-time, switch views by clicking tabs, and more. Roadmap ID:124867
Microsoft Viva: Topics engagement analytics in Topic center – Usage and engagement analytics showing Topics adoption and value will be available to knowledge managers in a new analytics tab in Topic center. Analytics will include Unique users and Usage counts for Topics usage activities all up; Unique users and Usage counts for Topics for consuming, contributing and sharing Topics activities; Usage count details for Topics consumption activities from Topic card, page, search, Topic center cards; Usage count details for Topics for contribution activities like Editing and publishing topics, providing feedback. Roadmap ID:118768
SharePoint: New site theme options – We are adding two new SharePoint themes to our Change the Look menu. The addition of Black and Cerulean will enhance your site customization options for how you want your sites to look. Roadmap ID:117368
Microsoft Viva: Viva Insights manager, leader, and advanced insights available for GCC – Viva Insights is pleased to announce that manager, leader, and advanced insights will be available for GCC June 30, 2023. These premium insights help organizations understand and predict the impact of day-to-day actions to continuously improve the outcomes they care about. Roadmap ID:88843
Microsoft Viva: Topic engagement analytics – This update will introduce usage and engagement analytics on topics (views, edits, etc.) to the Microsoft Admin Center. Roadmap ID:88699
Rollout starts – July 2023
Microsoft Stream: New Stream webpart – This new Stream webpart will support configuration of single and multiple videos for Stream (on SharePoint). Roadmap ID:124800
SharePoint: Improvements to custom site template experience – We are updating the experience for when you apply a custom site template, also known as a third -party site template, from your organization. With these updates, you will have more insight into the status updates and site script details for the template as you are applying it to your site. Roadmap ID:117495
Rollout starts – September 2023
SharePoint on Stream: Inline playback of videos in SharePoint Highlighted content web parts for grid, carousel and filmstrip layouts – When users click to play a video in a Highlighted content web part (Grid, Carousel or filmstrip layouts) section of a SharePoint site, the video will play inline. This feature allows users to watch a video without being taken off the SharePoint page and keeps the video playing while users to browse/scroll through the other contents of the page. Roadmap ID:98091
Rollout starts – March 2024
SharePoint: Collaborate on SharePoint pages and news with co-authoring – Multiple authors can collaborate on a SharePoint page or news at the same time. Roadmap ID:124853
In this post we look at the current limitations of sending Teams meeting invites that hide guest attendees and provide potential workarounds.
The problem
I’m sure most of the readers of this site will be familiar with sending Microsoft Teams meeting requests, I mean, who isn’t right? (if you are a Zoom user, you may have come to the wrong place). If you are a frequent meeting creator I’m sure you will have had scenarios where you need to create meetings that involves external guests. So far, so good, but what if you want to hide the guest list from the meeting invite, as it may contain personal email addresses of the external guests and pose a GDPR risk?
Well, you may find this is a problem, especially if you create the invite from the Outlook desktop client. You cannot hide the the invite list, either from required, or optional. Bcc isn’t an option either, as this isn’t available for Teams meeting invites.
Here are some workarounds for this problem:
Workarounds
#1 Use the hide attendee list feature in Outlook on the web
The hide attendee list is, bizarrely a feature that is only available in Outlook on the web, but does allow you to make the attendee list of your meeting anonymous. Super simple to use:
Create a new event > ensure Teams meeting is enabled
Press response options > hide attendee list
#2 Use a group if guests are regular attendees
Another option may be for more frequent or regular meetings, try adding the guest users into a mail-enabled security group. You could then email that group address, rather than the individuals directly. In testing this option, internal members of the mail-enabled security group can open it up from the meeting invite, but only see the internal members, not the external guests:
#3 Save meeting as an .ics file, share meeting invite in regular email
My least favourite option, but an option all the same. My idea for this one is to use the bcc option we already have in regular email, but add a Teams meeting link and a calendar invite into the message to make it work. To do this:
Create a new Teams meeting in Outlook, select the date/ time you require for your meeting
Copy the link within the click here to join this meeting text from your Teams meeting invite
Press Save as, ensure save selected appointment is ticked
In Outlook, select Options > Bcc
Create a new email > insert an attachment and add your newly created .ics file
Add some relevant copy to the email body and its ready to go!
The Microsoft roadmap roundup is a weekly summary of all the newly added items and changes within the Microsoft 365 roadmap, covering SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive and Microsoft Purview. Here’s all the new and updated Microsoft roadmap items from the past week:
Join 373 other followers
Use the links below to switch between each product’s roadmap updates:
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (4)
Rolling out (2)
In development (23)
🍾 LAUNCHED
SharePoint: Improvements to SharePoint pages authoring – Updates include two changes to the text web part from multilingual proofing to better control over line spacing. Roadmap ID:117365
Microsoft Viva: Granularity in Viva Goals Permissions- New Tenant IT Admin role – Introducing an additional admin role with the Tenant level IT Admin who has the ability to administer Viva Goals, enable integrations, etc. Roadmap ID:117469
Microsoft Viva: Increased Language Availability for Viva Goals – Viva Goals will support a total of 37 languages. Currently Viva Goals supports 28 languages. Roadmap ID:115478
Microsoft Viva: Viva Goals Dashboard Enhancements – Expand Viva Goals OKRs within a dashboard widget and compare progress. Roadmap ID:117451
🚂 ROLLING OUT
SharePoint: SharePoint admin center: Streamlining management of site related information across Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups – SharePoint is updating the site detail panel to include Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups information. Admins that have permissions to SharePoint, Teams and Groups admin centers can now manage all related attributes (membership, group name, description, etc.) from a single site detail panel in the SharePoint admin center ‘Active Sites’ tab. SharePoint admins with SharePoint only permissions will have read-only access to the new attributes. Roadmap ID:100053
Microsoft Viva: Viva Topics app in Teams – Teams will include an official Viva Topics app, where users can go to quickly access the Topic Center without leaving their Teams environment. It will include new menus for Viva Suite users to navigate between the Viva tools within Teams. Roadmap ID:118592
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – May 2023
🆕 SharePoint: Change history in SharePoint admin center – Create and download change history reports in the SharePoint admin center to review SharePoint site property changes made within the last 180 days. Roadmap ID:124872
SharePoint: New site theme options – We are adding two new SharePoint themes to our Change the Look menu. The addition of Black and Cerulean will enhance your site customization options for how you want your sites to look. Roadmap ID:117368
SharePoint: Microsoft Lists – Applied Filters – As you add and adjust filters to narrow or expand what appears in the current list view, you’ll now see which filters have been applied. And you can remove them without going back into the column filter pane. You do this now in the top-left portion of the list. Roadmap ID:117585
SharePoint Syntex: Image tagging – Automatically recognize thousands of standard objects and automatically tag the file with recognized items. Roadmap ID:88715
Rollout starts – June 2023
Microsoft Viva: Live People Card within Viva Goals – Users can now hover over icons of different users within Viva Goals to display their Live People Card. Roadmap ID:117472
Microsoft Viva: Viva Connections Administration in Microsoft Admin Center – Centralized IT administration of Viva Connections experiences along with home sites within the Microsoft Viva admin experience in Microsoft 365 admin center. Roadmap ID:117421
Microsoft Viva: Create more than one Connections experience in the same tenant – This new capability enables customers to create multiple distinct Connections experiences and corresponding home sites within the same tenant. Common scenarios include conglomerates or subsidiaries that require different Connections experiences for different users, each with its own dashboard, feed and resources. Roadmap ID:99916
Microsoft Viva: Connections News Notifications – Mobile users of Viva Connections will receive a push notification from Teams when SharePoint news is published from sites they follow or visit frequently. They’ll also receive notification if they are @ mentioned in a comment on a news post, or if someone likes or comments on news they have published. These notifications will honor Teams notification settings including fully disabling them and quiet hours. Roadmap ID:98112
Rollout starts – July 2023
🆕 SharePoint: News in Outlook – With the new integration of SharePoint News into Outlook, news authors can preview and send full news posts as emails to their reader’s inbox. To help authors get started, we’re also adding 6 templates designed to look great in Outlook and SharePoint. Finally, with our unified page analytics, authors will be able to see their total page reads across outlook and SharePoint as one number. Roadmap ID:124803
🆕 SharePoint: Page sharing – With this feature, users can now share SharePoint pages and news posts individually without having to share the entire site, just like other Microsoft 365 files. All sharing settings at the site and tenant level will be respected. Roadmap ID:124822
🆕 SharePoint: Advanced editing in Image web part – New advanced editing capabilities available in the Image web part will include adjustments, filters, and markup. Roadmap ID:124825
🆕 Microsoft Stream: new webpart – The updated Stream web part will ensure you can configure Stream videos inside your pages by supporting single and multiple videos from folders. Roadmap ID:124800
Microsoft Graph: SharePoint Pages API – New graph API to create and manage SharePoint pages and news posts. Correcting the status to “In Development as only a preview is available at this time. Roadmap ID:101166
Rollout starts – August 2023
🆕 SharePoint: Video Pages – Create video centric page content, like highlighting meeting content or executive messages with the new video pages templates – presenting them inline, playable, and beautiful. These templates are available in both SharePoint and Stream, making it easy to showcase video with a customized and branded pages experience from either application. Roadmap ID:124823
Rollout starts – September 2023
🆕 SharePoint: New SharePoint Start – New SharePoint start experience aims to inspire content creators to use their platform. By emphasizing a user-friendly approach that minimizes clicks, it’s now easier to create websites, pages, news, and intranet content. Creators can return to the start experience hub to refine drafts, review past work, and monitor engagement metrics. Roadmap ID:124824
Rollout starts – October 2023
🆕 SharePoint: Content Pane for SharePoint Pages and News – The content pane surfaces relevant authoring tools that help authors quickly browse and add content to SharePoint pages. With this new feature, authors can easily drag and drop web parts, media, and section templates for creating rich and engaging pages. Roadmap ID:124827
🆕 SharePoint: Microsoft Lists- A new forms experience to collect information – We are making it easier to collect information with an updated forms experience for Microsoft Lists. Forms look clean, are easy to design, can be easily shared, and respondents are able to fill them out on any device. All form responses appear immediately in your list after recipient clicks the submit button. Roadmap ID:124865
Rollout starts – November 2023
🆕 SharePoint: Copilot in SharePoint – Copilot in SharePoint combines the power of Large Language Models (LLMs), your data in the Microsoft Graph, and best practices to create engaging web content.? Use a brief prompt to generate custom sites and pages with content hierarchy, design, and sample content that aligns with user needs. And all within our existing commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise. Roadmap ID:124840
Rollout starts – December 2023
🆕 SharePoint: Centrally manage branding for your organization – We’re introducing new branding and management capabilities that you can use to improve consistency across your sites and pages. Roadmap ID:124838
🆕 Microsoft SharePoint: Resource Specific Consent – Introduction of new .Selected permissions and APIs to support granting applications permissions at all of the levels where it is possible to break inheritance today. This will apply to applications operating in either delegated or app-only mode. Roadmap ID:124842
🆕 SharePoint: Application Site Creation without Sites.FullControl.All – Currently an application requires Sites.FullControl.All to create new site collections within a tenant. This work will allow applications to use a new scope, Sites.Create.All, to create new site collections without accessing any existing content. During the site creation process the application can request access to the new site, allowing for provisioning scenarios with reduced tenant permissions. Roadmap ID:124843
Rollout starts – January 2024
🆕 SharePoint Pages: Design Ideas – By integrating with the MSFT Designer service, we can now offer authors beautiful ways to improve the look and feel of their sharepoint pages. This is done through tailored section level design suggestions. Roadmap ID:124846
Rollout starts – March 2024
🆕 SharePoint: Collaborate on SharePoint pages and news with co-authoring – Design ideas will offer authors beautiful ways to improve the look and feel of their SharePoint Pages through tailored section level design suggestions. Roadmap ID:124853
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.
In SharePoint: What’s next for SharePoint?, Renaming File viewer web part to ‘File and Media’, New List Templates with Approvals, SharePoint supports the Loop app, review recent site actions, what’s new for SharePoint server, Microsoft Edge to replace built-in PDF engine with Adobe Acrobat PDF engine
What’s next for SharePoint – join the event this May!
The next step of SharePoint’s journey at the Microsoft 365 Conference in Las Vegas, NV in early May. Join an in-person celebration of SharePoint’s past, present, and future – and build new connections with a full return of a vibrant in-person community event.
Microsoft are renaming the Files webpart to File and Media to make this webpart inclusive of more file types like videos. Users will see the new name for the webpart. Functionally, nothing changes w.r.t. the capabilities of the webpart. Note: Image files are not supported in the File and Media web part. However, if you want to insert an image on your page, you can use the use the Image web part.
When adding a new web part to a SharePoint page, you’ll now see the File web part reads, “File and Media.” Note the longer description appears on-hover.
We are introducing two new list templates that embed the Approvals app (service) into the Lists experience. With this change, two Microsoft Lists templates appear – specifically Travel Requests with approvals and Content Scheduler with approvals; both bring integration with the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams. You’ll see the new list templates within the Create list experience.
Note: This is an optional feature that users can leverage by using one of the two new list templates. If they opt out of the Approvals integration when creating the list, the value of each template carries through – minus the added approval functionality.
SharePoint supports the Loop app – Components, pages, and workspaces
The Loop app is now in public preview, and SharePoint provides the underlying storage and collaboration technology for Loop:
Tree Structured Storage – Optimizing for innovation and performance, SharePoint has moved from a traditional file stream architecture to tree-structured storage. Leveraging B-Tree graph nodes allows us to unlock powerful collaboration capabilities and unmatched flexibility in a data structure that works for existing file types but also natively supports Fluid Framework, the underlying tech for Microsoft Loop.
Performance Optimizations – The Loop experience sets a new bar in editing and real-time collaboration, especially for speed and scale. This drives performance improvements – not only in core SharePoint – throughout our partners in Azure on Blob, SQL, Networking, as well contributions to Windows and Chromium http stacks.
Personal and Work – Today’s Loop announcement is a major milestone because it is simultaneously available for both personal (MSA) and organization (AAD) accounts. This is the direct result of work inside SharePoint to support both authentication models.
Security and Compliance – By building on the core SharePoint platform, Loop components, pages, and workspaces inherit all of SharePoint’s industry-leading work on compliance and security.
A visual of a Loop workspace showing a page titled Project Home with reacting to the content.
What’s new for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition – March 2023
Here’s the latest feature updates for SharePoint Server Subscription:
Unified patches – To simplify the process for updating your SharePoint Server Subscription Edition environments, we’re introducing a single update each month for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, starting with the March 2023 public update.
Support for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) version 1.5.1 – To expand the customization scenarios that SharePoint Server Subscription Edition supports, the 23H1 feature update adds support for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) version 1.5.1.
New PowerShell cmdlets for variations feature – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 introduces 4 new PowerShell cmdlets that will replace the functionality of the “stsadm.exe -o variationsfixuptool” command.
SharePoint Server recompiled with Visual C++ 2022 – Microsoft have recompiled SharePoint Server Subscription Edition with the newest Visual C++ compiler: Visual C++ 2022.
Private key management in certificate management – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition introduced a new certificate management feature that allows SharePoint farm administrators to directly manage the deployment and lifecycle of SSL/TLS certificates in their SharePoint Server farms.
Support for wildcard host header bindings – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 adds support for specifying a wildcard host header binding for a web application.
Expanded usage of modern sharing dialog – To deliver a more intuitive sharing experience, these sharing entry points have been updated to use SharePoint’s modern sharing dialog.
Column totals in modern list views – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 adds support for displaying column totals in modern list views just like in classic list views. This option can be enabled in the “save view” feature.
Enhanced Quick Chart web part – SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1 enhances the Quick Chart modern web part by adding a “Get data from a list or library on this site” option. Users can now configure the Quick Chart web part to consume data from a list or library within the site.
Improved file picker – The Quick Links web part file picker can now support more file types such as PDF, TXT, MP4, M4V, MP3, OGG, and WAV. The File Viewer web part file picker can now support PDF files.
New product servicing policy for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition – Starting in January 2023, each public update for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition will be supported for one year after its release date (until the second Tuesday of the same month in the following year).
Antimalware Scan Interface integration comes to SharePoint Server 2019 – Our 22H2 feature update for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition first introduced Windows Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) integration to SharePoint Server.
SharePoint 2013 reaches end of support on April 11, 2023 – As a final reminder for those customers who haven’t migrated to SharePoint Online or upgraded to a newer version of SharePoint Server yet, SharePoint 2013 will reach end of support on April 11, 2023.
Microsoft Edge to replace built-in PDF engine with Adobe Acrobat PDF engine
As part of the Adobe and Microsoft collaboration to re-envision the future workplace and digital experiences, Microsoft are natively embedding the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine into the Microsoft Edge built-in PDF reader. With the use of the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine, users will have a unique PDF experience that includes higher fidelity for more accurate colors and graphics, improved performance, strong security for PDF handling, and greater accessibility – including better text selection and read-aloud narration.
In Teams: New desktop app, collaborative notes, speaker coach, avatars, new channel experience, updated files app, video filters, closed captions in PowerPoint Live, Whiteboard innovations, auto-lowering of a users raised hand, meeting toolbar improvements, ultrasound howling detection, disable chat for anonymous or unauthenticated users, live transcript in all languages, expanded view for profile card
Dynamics emergency calling updates, busy-on-busy settings, user managed call queue, click-to-call, hotline phones, simplified call delegation, shared device license for Teams mobile Android, Teams phone devices UI updates, virtual front desk, PSTN support for Breakout Rooms DoD, GCC High, SIP Gateway support, leave meeting on all devices
At Enterprise Connect 2023 earlier this month, Microsoft unveiled the new era of Teams, including the introduction of a new Teams desktop app in public preview for Windows. New Teams is a reimagining of the app from the ground up to be faster, simpler, and more flexible. Follow the announcements at Enterprise Connect to learn more about new Teams. From some independent benchmarking, they found the new Teams app:
Coming to Public Preview in April, Collaborative notes ensure that each meeting helps you to drive your work forward with a collaborative agenda, co-edited meeting notes, and follow up tasks that sync with ToDo and Planner. The best part is these notes are Loop components, that can be copy/ pasted to places like Teams chat and Outlook.
Speaker Coach provides private, personalized feedback on your speaking and presentation skills in both real-time as well as post-meeting in a summary. Now available in preview. Live insights are only seen by you and are not saved in recorded meeting transcripts.
A day of hybrid meetings can be exhausting, especially when you are distracted by how you or your background looks. Avatars for Microsoft Teams gives you a much-needed camera break, while still allowing you to collaborate. Represent yourself with customizable avatars and reactions. Maximize engagement by including more people in the conversation— whether they need a break due to video fatigue, are joining from a different time zone, or just feel more comfortable with their video off. Add a new layer of choice to your meetings.
Last year, Microsoft announced a new channels experience, built with an intuitive design that allows teams to focus, stay on task, brings everyone up to speed, actively engages real-time. Coming June 2023:
The compose box and recent posts will appear at the top of the page.
You can navigate to a conversation view that makes the discussion more engaging and synchronous, just like a chat. You can also pop out the post, keep an eye on the discussion, while continuing to work on other topics.
Hashtags referencing Viva Topics will provide context right in the channel on organizational topics without having to ask anyone else.
A streamlined information pane will include all the important contextual information like channel’s members and pinned posts so new team members can quickly on-board and for all members to find the information they need, right in the channel.
Pin posts to make it easy for everyone to know what’s important in the channel and quickly reference it.
Simplified badging is making it easier for users to understand when there are new unread activities in teams. In addition, the simplified design helps users focus on the specific channels which requires the most attention, like channels in which the user was @mentioned.
Whether editing a Word document or collaborating in PowerPoint with a team, a new files app experience with an updated navigation panel enables you to quickly discover, access and share your files from your chats, channels, or meetings:
Home: Get back to your recently accessed files.
My files: Access your personal files saved in your OneDrive.
Shared: Find files shared with you and files you have shared with others across M365.
Downloads: Locate files downloaded from Teams on your computer.
Quick Access: Pin a Teams channel file tab or SharePoint document library to access quickly.
This new file experience brings consistency and familiarity with how files are stored, shared, and accessed across Microsoft 365 and OneDrive.
Video filters in Teams meetings allow you to remove unwanted distractions and better express yourself by bringing your personality to each meeting. The filters enable participants in Teams Meetings to augment their video stream with visual effects ranging from animated frames to styles changing the video’s hue. You can apply these filters even before you join a meeting from the lobby.
Closed Captions in PowerPoint Live aim to help those who are Deaf or hard of hearing, have difficulty processing auditory information, have a language barrier, or who are simply joining the meeting from a loud environment, to better understand the auditory content being shared. Meeting attendees will now have the option to turn on closed captions for any video that includes a closed captions file.
During the meeting enjoy a breadth of Whiteboard innovations including the ability to open your existing whiteboard in Teams meetings, quickly set up your whiteboard using one of the 60+ templates, invite others to follow your viewpoint as you navigate, identify collaborators through sticky note attribution, automatically resize your sticky note text, and format it as you see fit.
You can also copy and paste Loop components into Whiteboard from Teams chat and soon from Outlook mail and Word for the web. The whiteboard you and your participants collaborated on, as well as shared comments, can be accessed in the Teams chat under the Whiteboard tab following the meeting.
Automatic lowering of a user’s Raised Hand after speaking
To reduce the number of stale raised hands in meetings, Teams will now suggest you lower your raised hand after we detect they spoke in the meeting. You will be able to choose to keep their hand raised. If the you doesn’t take any action on the suggestion notification, we’ll automatically lower your hand. This should ensure smoother meeting facilitation for organizers and presenters.
The updated Microsoft Teams meeting toolbar makes navigating meetings and discovering new features and capabilities easier than ever. For example, you are now able to raise your hand from the meeting toolbar with the dedicated raise hand button, you can navigate the More menu easier from sub-menu groupings, as well as navigate the More menu easier from sub-menu groupings.
When multiple people join a meeting in the same room then a feedback loop is created which causes an echo and in many cases the echo quickly escalates to howling (like when a musician holds the mic too close to a loudspeaker). If you a meeting with multiple other people on laptops join from the same location, we notify you that another Teams Device is detected in the vicinity and is already joined with audio to the current meeting. We will automatically mute the mic and speakers of the person who has joined after a you and has audio on.
Disable chat write access for anonymous or unauthenticated users
IT admins can now disable chat write access at the policy level for non-federated users and unauthenticated users who join Teams meetings through a link that must be used in conjunction with disabled meeting chat policy to provide additional security against data exfiltration.
Live Transcript in all available languages in Teams Meetings on Web
During any Teams meeting, you can start a live transcription of the proceedings. The text appears alongside the meeting video or audio in real time, including the speaker’s name (unless they chose to hide it) and a time stamp. Live transcription can make your meeting more productive and inclusive for participants who are deaf or hard-of-hearing or have different levels of language proficiency. Participants in noisy places will also appreciate the visual aid. People can choose not to be identified in meeting transcripts.
Microsoft are introducing an expanded view of the profile card in Teams, giving you the ability to view details and build stronger connections with your collaborators. From Teams chats, channels, calls or meetings, you can easily look up richer profile data and learn more about who you are collaborating with including, contact information, job title, organizational chart, and their LinkedIn profile. Insights like birthdays, career updates, suggested tasks will also be included in your profile card, helping form personal connections by celebrating important milestones.
Dynamic emergency calling enhancements on Teams Phone
If you are in the US, you can now easily set your emergency location in the Calls app on Teams with location recommendations. Next quarter, you will be able to set the emergency location on your Teams Phone devices without needing to rely on administrators to set the emergency location.
If you are busy in a call or meeting, you can minimize distractions with the ability to manage how incoming calls are routed. Busy-on-busy settings can be set directly from your Calls settings in the Teams app. Choose from the option to allow calls to come through, play a busy signal, or to redirect the call based on your unanswered call routing preference. Next quarter, you will be able to set busy-on-busy settings on Teams phone devices as well.
User managed call queue and auto attendant greetings
To adapt to changing environments, you may need to adjust their call queue/auto attendant greetings and announcements. This is required more frequently than what the IT helpdesk can typically handle. To solve this, we introduced user managed call queue and auto attendant greetings. Next month, if you are an authorized user, as identified by Teams tenant admins, you can change greetings and announcements for their respective call queues and auto attendant without leaving Teams.
In a world where everything and everyone is connected, customers’ expectations have evolved. Customers want quick answers and seamless interactions. Click-to-call makes it easy for customers to reach your sales and support teams directly from your webpage or app. Developers can add, customize, and program the widget to connect customers to a specific Teams user, call queue, or auto attendant. Click-to-call will be available in public preview next quarter.
Hotline phones (Private Line Automatic Ringdown)
Next quarter, you will be able to program Microsoft Teams certified phone devices to directly dial a pre-configured phone number or contact, such as emergency services in a manufacturing plant or help desk in your organization. The hotline can be set up directly through the device settings or the Teams admin center. The device will need to be enabled with a Teams Shared Device License and set to common area phone mode.
Simplified call delegation UI and feature enhancements
Shared line appearance lets a user choose a delegate to answer or handle calls on their behalf. Next quarter, we will be launching a simplified experience in the Calls app and on Teams phone devices for users who have set up call delegation. Delegators will be able to view and join active calls handled by the delegate and grant delegates permission to join active calls.
Teams Shared Device license on Teams mobile app for Android
The usage, importance, and range of experiences conducted on shared devices continues to evolve. Mobility is becoming a must have and many segments of the workforce rely on mobile devices to keep their business connected. To support mobile and flexible work styles, later this year the Microsoft Teams Shared Device license will be available on the Teams mobile app on Android. This will enable Android phones to be set up as shared devices. Walkie Talkie, call queues, auto attendants, cloud voicemail, call park and all other features currently supported for common area phones will be available through the Teams Android app.
We are continuing to simplify the UI for Teams phone devices. Next quarter, we will be launching a redesigned dial pad to help with reducing unnecessary mistakes while dialing a phone number and offers a new dial pad only view in landscape mode if you primarily use their devices for placing outbound PSTN calls. The updated meeting experience and navigation will enabled you to more quickly join meetings and help them easily navigate across applications on their phone device.
Leave a meeting on all my devices
When you join a meeting using multiple personal devices, you can encounter friction when leaving the meeting, including forgetting to leave the meeting on one of their many devices. This functionality allows you to leave a meeting from all your devices with a single tap.
The following features are currently available for the Teams Management Platform (admin center):
Teams Admin Center: Simplified navigation – The new Simplified Left Navigation feature allows administrators to pin their preferred menu options to the navigation panel, reducing clutter and streamlining the process of finding the information they need.
View users and groups assigned to a policy – Admins can view the list of assigned users and groups for a policy.
Teams Advisor guidance for Phone system deployment – Teams administrators can use Deployment Advisor for tailored guidance on deploying Teams Telephony to their organizations.
Export Teams list from Teams Admin Center – Administrators can export Teams list as a csv file from Teams admin center.
Government
These features currently available to Microsoft’s commercial customers in multi-tenant cloud environments are now rolling out to our customers in US Government Community Cloud (GCC), US Government Community Cloud High (GCC-High), and/or United States Department of Defense (DoD):
SIP Gateway for GCC – SIP Gateway is now available for Government Community Cloud customers to enable core Teams calling functionality on legacy devices. For organizations with investment in SIP devices, SIP Gateway provides calling, meeting dial-in, voicemail and other core telephony features.
Frontline workers
Virtual Appointments in Microsoft Teams – Virtual Appointments is a new Teams meeting type tailored for B2C meetings with people outside of your organization. Guests will get a meeting invitation that includes important appointment details and enables an easy join experience via SMS or email from any device—no need to install Teams. The Virtual Appointment app provides a single location where professionals and admins can create and manage scheduled and on-demand appointments as integrated with Bookings. It is further enhanced with Teams Premium, which unlocks a snapshot of the queue of appointments, a summary of appointment analytics, and options to manage appointments.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Copilot, Enhanced security for shared connections, modern controls for canvas apps, selection checker enforcement, CoE starter kit backed by self-serve data, new Power Fx formula bar, request a premium license, CLI February update, tenant switcher in mobile, design data driven cards in Teams, admin-configured welcome experience, pipelines GA
Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps
Microsoft announced a next-generation AI copilot in Microsoft Power Apps that will transform how we build and interact with software applications this month. With the power of large language models, we are advancing to the next step in the evolution of code abstraction—moving from custom code, to low-code, to natural language authoring where human and machine work side by side to build applications together.
Enhanced security for implicitly shared connections
The Power Apps team have announced an enhanced security for implicitly shared connections in Power Apps. With this feature, connections are no longer directly shared with the users of a Power App. Instead, a proxy connection object that only grants access to the underlying resource (e.g., a specific SQL Server table) is shared. End user authors cannot create new applications with either the connection or the proxy connection. This feature also limits the end-user to the actions (get, put/patch, and delete) that are defined in the corresponding Power App.
Following on from the launch of the new look for model driven apps, the Power Apps team are making the same modern controls available to canvas apps through an opt in preview. The new controls bring the following improvements:
Modern – A focused and less cluttered design that supports richer interaction states and elevation, provides a higher usability baseline to build your low code apps from. These controls are based on Microsoft’s own Fluent design system which powers majority of Microsoft experiences across all products like Microsoft Teams, Word and more.
Fast – Built for performance. We are making critical investments for this new suite to ensure your apps are fast and fluid.
Accessible – These controls are WCAG 2.1 compliant with accessibility built in by default. We will provide a comprehensive set of properties for our developers to configure.
Theming – Designed with theming in mind. Although not part of the initial launch, support for theming and per control styling is coming to the preview soon.
Power Apps developers can turn on modern controls feature in Power Apps Studio by navigating to list of preview features in settings dialog.
Solution checker enforcement in Managed Environments
The Power Apps team have announced the public preview of solution checker enforcement, a new feature in Managed Environments that gives admins much more control over the customizations in their environments! Solution checker enforcement allows you to block or warn on solution imports with critical severity violations, as defined in the solution checker rules. There are two modes you can choose for solution checker enforcement:
In Block mode, solutions can only be imported if they were checked with solution checker and they contain no critical violations. Solutions containing non-critical violations won’t be blocked.
In Warn mode, solutions can be imported even if they weren’t checked with solution checker or if they contain critical violations.
improved barcode reader control general availability
Scanning barcodes is a critical part of many frontline worker workflows – whether you are managing shelves in a retail store, inventorying goods in a warehouse, managing assets on the factory floor, or accessing records in a hospital. We are excited to share the immediate general availability (GA) of the improved barcode reader control. Workers will now be able to scan barcodes quickly, accurately, and flexibly on their Android and iOS devices.
Select to scan – Select which of the visible barcodes you want to be scanned, instead of only being able to automatically scan the first visible code.
Multiple scan – Within a single barcode reading session, scan as many barcodes as you want, returned as a table output property.
Better user experience – See what you are scanning and have scanned with barcode tracking indicators and a dropdown drawer showing your scan history.
CoE Starter Kit backed by data from self-serve analytics data export (preview)
The Power Apps team have announced that the CoE Starter Kit can now use data provided by self-serve analytics as a foundation for inventory and telemetry, enabling rich insights built for scale. The experimental preview of the CoE Starter Kit using data provided by the Data Export feature is a foundation for inventory and telemetry. You can export Power Platform inventory and usage data directly into Azure Data Lake Storage using the Data Export feature in the Power Platform Admin Center.
The Power Apps team have announced a new formula editor is available an experimental feature that we encourage you to turn on in your apps and try out! The new editor is based on the powerful Monaco shared code editor component which allows us to provide you with better performance, a consistent editing experience across Studio, and additional error highlighting improvements.
Request a Power Apps premium license from org admins
Power Apps is excited to share that users can now request a license from their admin – directly in product! If a user is trying to run an app that requires a license, they will see the option to ‘Request a license’, in addition to the buy a license or start a trial option (if eligible). Once a request is submitted, a confirmation message will appear at the top of the page saying the request was successfully sent to their admin.
Tenant switcher in Power Apps mobile allows users to easily switch to a different directory, when using Power Apps on phones or tablets without logging out. Users see the list of directories they have access to on the profile page, and they can pick any directory to see apps shared with them as a guest user.
Cards for Power Apps can be sent automatically via flows
Cards for Power Apps is a recent addition to the low code lineup, announced as public preview in September, that empowers business users and developers alike to create interactive, embeddable, data-driven, lightweight mini-apps that bring context and actions directly into Teams conversations.
Now, cards for Power Apps can be sent automaticallyvia flows using our new connector and the updated Teams connector! The cards authoring experience has also been significantly improved, making it easier to design cards that suit your business processes. With these new features, anyone can use cards to bring conversations and workflows together like never before.
Admin-configured maker welcome experience in Power Apps
Admin-configured maker welcome content is now available for the Power Apps maker portal. Today, admins rely on sending welcome emails, creating wikis, and setting up internal portals to educate makers. Since this information can be presented in so many different places, makers may miss important communication.
With the maker welcome experience, admins can customize content that is displayed to users in the maker portal, proactively communicating information such as security policies, knowledge bases, the environment’s purpose, and support information to makers.
Pipelines in Power Platform is Generally Available
Pipelines within Power Platform are now generally available. Pipelines aims to democratize application lifecycle management (ALM) for Power Platform and Dynamics 365 customers by bringing deployment automation capabilities into Managed Environments in a manner that’s more approachable for all makers, admins, and developers.
In Power Automate: Copilot in Power Automate, 2 new verified + 11 independent publisher connectors, dataverse solutions by default, Power Automate connector for updates in Teams
AI Builder and Copilot in Power Automate
Power Automate will make it possible for you to not just describe a flow to create, but also improve and iterate on your flows with AI-driven conversations. This next-generation AI based Copilot in Power Automate will sit right inside of the flow studio and help out with every flow that’s being built or changed.
Copilot in Power Automate will allow open ended and conversational experiences while authoring your flows. As you build, you’ll be able to ask questions and get assistance making improvements and changes. You won’t need any special knowledge of how Power Automate works – simply by using natural language you’ll be able to build and enhance everything from a simple flow to a complex, robust enterprise-wide process.
2 new verified, 11 new independent publisher connectors
There were 2 new verified and 11 new independent publisher connectors released in the past few months. These connectors have solutions and tools for Communication, Marketing, Collaboration, Productivity and much more.
Dataverse solutions by default capabilities for Power Automate
A new environment setting is available to administrators that ensures that all cloud flows will be created in Dataverse and added into the Default solution, when Dataverse is available in the environment. There are multiple ways to create cloud flows. The following table summarizes which entry points are currently supported by the switch for create in Dataverse solutions by default:
Power Automate connector for Updates in Microsoft Teams
Updates is a Microsoft Teams app which allows you to create, submit, and review employee updates, surveys and work reports in one place, to keep your team on track for success. The Power Automate connector for Updates which allows Power Automate users to leverage Updates and address use cases like daily update, project progress, shift handoff, checklists, inspection, store visits, etc. as a part of their flows. For example, a common scenario is to collect inventory count during a store walkthrough. With this connector in place, when a frontline/store worker submits a daily or weekly update for store inventory in the Updates app, the Updates connector will automatically trigger the embedded workflow which can automatically aggregate all the inventory into a dashboard.
In Power BI: Pin workspaces, on-premises data gateway, analysis services server properties GA, Power BI March 2023 Feature Summary, On-object, Power BI data from different regions, Scanner API, Power BI org apps with multiple audiences, Power BI & PowerPoint, query parallelization
Pin workspaces
The Power BI team have announced that the pin workspace feature is now available! You can pin your workspaces on top of the list. And unpin them anytime as needed. This functionality enables you to easily navigate to the workspaces that are most relevant to you without searching through the workspace list.
Analysis Services server properties in Power BI Premium are now in general availability
Analysis Services server properties in Power BI Premium are now in public preview. At this time, we’ve transitioned this capability to general availability with full support in Power BI Premium and Power BI Embedded. As mentioned in the public preview announcement, the Analysis Services (AS) server properties gives administrators granular control to optimize and alter query behavior in their workspaces.
In this month’s release there are updates for the On-object interaction, updates to the way you can apply slicers on your reports using a new Apply All Slicers button, Multiple Audiences in the Power BI app and more.
Introducing On-object! The new way to build and format your visuals releasing with March 2023 Power BI Desktop. Aligning to our new “Office-like” strategy we bring you, on-object. A new way to build and format visuals directly on the visual.
Use Power BI data from different regions in your Power Apps solution
The Power BI team have announced that its now possible to use the capabilities of the Power App Solutions/Power BI integration even when the Power Apps environment and the Power BI workspaces it’s integrating with are located in different geographic regions.
This Power Apps Solutions/Power BI integration is controlled by two admin feature switches – one in the Power Platform admin center and the other in the Power BI admin portal. Both switches are enabled by default. Both switches must be enabled to allow cross-geo operation.
The Scanner API is part of the Power BI admin API. It enables administrators to efficiently and automatically retrieve valuable information about their organization’s Power BI assets, such as inventory, metadata, and lineage. To further meet your needs and follow up on your requests, the Power BI team have added several new capabilities over the past few months, inlcuding:
Power BI Org Apps with Multiple Audiences Generally Available
The Power BI team announced the launch in Public Preview of Multiple Audiences for Power BI org apps in August 2022. This feature is now generally available and with this, the multiple audience feature will now be supported by Power BI Mobile.
Power BI integration with PowerPoint Generally Available
Power BI and PowerPoint are now better together than ever before. We’re excited to announce the general availability of the Power BI integration with PowerPoint, which brings the world’s most powerful data visualization tool to the world’s most popular presentation program. The value of this integration is clear: it lets people easily add interactive Power BI data visualizations to their PowerPoint presentations, making them more interactive, more informative, and more engaging.
Query parallelization helps to boost Power BI dataset performance in DirectQuery mode
The Power BI team have announced significant query processing improvements in the Power BI engine around query parallelization in DirectQuery mode, which can help to accelerate query response times, specifically for DAX and MDX expressions that generate multiple storage engine (SE) queries.
The Microsoft roadmap roundup is a weekly summary of all the newly added items and changes within the Microsoft 365 roadmap, covering SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive and Microsoft Purview. Here’s all the new and updated Microsoft roadmap items from the past week:
Join 373 other followers
Use the links below to switch between each product’s roadmap updates:
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (1)
Rolling out (2)
In development (3)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Microsoft Viva: Schedule send suggestions from Viva Insights in Teams chat – To encourage adoption of healthy collaboration habits, Viva Insights will display actionable recommendations to align message delivery in Teams chat to recipient work hours. Schedule send suggestions will be automatically displayed for those who compose 1:1 chats in Teams desktop and web after-hours. With just one click, users can schedule chat message delivery to be at the start of recipient work hours and minimize work-related interruptions during personal time. Roadmap ID: 98159
🚂 ROLLING OUT
SharePoint: New SharePoint site templates – We are introducing 3 new SharePoint site templates dedicated to helping you create sites for your portal home site, to provide guidance and assets for your brand, and a template powered by Microsoft Syntex for your Accounts payable team. Roadmap ID: 117554
Microsoft Viva: Take action after reflecting on meeting category insights in Viva Insights – Viva Insights customers will be able to take actions such as editing meeting invites or responses directly from the Viva Insights app after reflecting on their meeting category insights to align their time spent in meetings with their goals. Roadmap ID:117374
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – April 2023
Microsoft Viva: Viva Topics app in Teams – Teams will include an official Viva Topics app, where users can go to quickly access the Topic Center without leaving their Teams environment. It will include new menus for Viva Suite users to navigate between the Viva tools within Teams. Roadmap ID:118592
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Mobile Dashboard personalization – Now you can customize your Viva Connection Dashboard by adding, removing or reordering your dashboard cards. Roadmap ID: 117428
Rollout starts – October 2023
🆕 Microsoft Lists: A new forms experience to collect information – We are making it easier to collect information with an updated forms experience for Microsoft Lists. Forms look clean, are easy to design, can be easily shared, and respondents are able to fill them out on any device. All form responses appear immediately in your list after recipient clicks the submit button. Roadmap ID: 124865
The Microsoft roadmap roundup is a weekly summary of all the newly added items and changes within the Microsoft 365 roadmap, covering SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive and Microsoft Purview. Here’s all the new and updated Microsoft roadmap items from the past week:
Join 373 other followers
Use the links below to switch between each product’s roadmap updates:
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (3)
Rolling out (2)
In development (12)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Microsoft Viva: Enhanced Viva Goals Azure DevOps data integration – This enhanced version of the Viva Goals ADO data integration enables users to directly link work items to projects and Key Results and eliminates the dependency on shared queries. Roadmap ID: 117473
Microsoft Viva: Adding Viva Goals team members through AAD Groups – With this capability, team admins can add members to teams by selecting AAD Groups (SG, DLs, etc.); This will enable roll outs and deployment across all teams as well as multiple group support at an organizational level. Roadmap ID:117470
Microsoft Viva: Meeting category insights coming to the Digest email – The Digest email from Microsoft Viva will include a summary of meeting category insights for users with a Viva Insights subscription, highlighting up to 3 categories in which users spent the most time over the last 4 weeks. Roadmap ID: 98164
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Viva: Display connected topics on people profile cards – Profile cards displayed through Outlook will display Topics associated to an individual. Roadmap ID: 88697
Microsoft Viva: SharePoint content on Office.com and Edge New Tab Page Feed show related Viva Topics – Feed items are highlighted with a Topic Pill when they have relevant SharePoint content allowing the user to further contextualize their Feed. Roadmap ID:118063
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – April 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Viva Goals Zapier data integration – The Viva Goals integration with Zapier allows users to automate their key results with progress from over 5000+ apps in the Zapier marketplace. Roadmap ID:117459
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Viva Goals extension in Azure DevOps – The Viva Goals extension in ADO enables users to view alignment details within ADO Work Items. When a work item is connected to a project in Viva Goals, they can view end alignment in the Goals tab. Users can also perform check-ins, create projects, and more without leaving ADO. Roadmap ID:117474
🆕 Viva Learning employee learning API: Content sync – Content Sync API, which enables learning content hosted on learning systems to show up across the Viva Learning user experience. Roadmap ID:91125
Rollout starts – May 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Auto-categorization coming to meeting category insights in Viva Insights – Users with a Viva Insights license will be able to see what kind of meetings are taking up their time, automatically categorized by Viva Insights based on meeting size, cadence, and people in the meetings. Categories include long and large, recurring, and 1:1 meetings. Roadmap ID:117396
Microsoft Viva: Mobile SharePoint site navigation – Feature to allow Viva connections mobile users to browse and reach SharePoint sites by surfacing their hub and site navigation in the VC app. Roadmap ID:117527
Microsoft Viva: Notifications in Teams activity feed in Viva Goals – User can now receive notifications in the Teams activity feed for Viva Goals check-in reminders, likes and mentions in comments, and nudges to check-in. Roadmap ID:117445
Microsoft Viva: Bot support for building Viva Connections Cards – developer can leverage the power of Microsoft bot framework to build cards for Viva Connections. Roadmap ID:117419
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Viva Goals in Live People Cards – Increase transparency by viewing a user’s OKRs from Viva Goals within a Live People Card in Outlook. Roadmap ID:117453
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Viva Goals Workplace integration – Users can receive OKRs updates and check-in reminders within Workplace. Roadmap ID:117461
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Granularity in Viva Goals Permissions- New Tenant IT Admin role – Introducing an additional admin role with the Tenant level IT Admin who has the ability to administer Viva Goals, enable integrations, etc. Roadmap ID:117469
Rollout starts – July 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Viva Goals OKR views in Sharepoint – Embed OKR lists as URL or HTML i-frame in your organization’s announcement pages on SharePoint. Roadmap ID:117484
Rollout starts – August 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Viva Goals Custom Views – User can now filter and save custom views to quickly access views that are most relevant. Roadmap ID:117478
The Microsoft roadmap roundup is a weekly summary of all the newly added items and changes within the Microsoft 365 roadmap, covering SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive and Microsoft Purview. Here’s all the new and updated Microsoft roadmap items from the past week:
Join 373 other followers
Use the links below to switch between each product’s roadmap updates:
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (2)
Rolling out (1)
In development (3)
🍾 LAUNCHED
Microsoft Viva: Send Praise from your Viva Connections Dashboard – Site owners/authors can add the Praise card from Microsoft Insights on the Viva Connections dashboard, allowing employees to send out praises to their colleagues. Roadmap ID: 117378
Microsoft Viva: Discover experts and answers from Topics – Questions on topics will receive automated answers or get referred to subject matter experts. Feature ID: 72188
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Graph: SharePoint Pages API – New graph API to create and manage SharePoint pages and news posts. Roadmap ID: 101166
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – May 2023
Microsoft Viva: Microsoft Project data Integration in Viva Goals – Connect Viva Goals OKRs with MS Project. As Project tasks and milestones are completed, the connected OKRs and projects will reflect the latest status. Roadmap ID: 117462
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Viva Topics Teams app – Viva Topics Teams app as the new destination for discovering new and trending topics in the organization, providing feedback on suggested topics, catching up on activities on topics of interest and more. Roadmap ID: 118492
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Follow a topic – Users can now follow topics from experiences across Microsoft 365 and the Viva suite to receive personalized experiences and notifications of activities around topics of interest. Roadmap ID: 118493
In this post we will explain what the root site of your SharePoint Online environment is, why you may want to replace it, limitations and more.
Intro
The root site in SharePoint Online is one of the sites that get created automatically when you purchase your Microsoft 365 subscription that includes SharePoint. The root site is a teams site, but not Microsoft 365 group connected. It’s URL is contoso.sharepoint.com or similar, owned by the company administrator and cannot be deleted.
Example of a root site in SharePoint Online.
By default, the root site has the “everyone except external users” domain group added within the site members SharePoint group, meaning that everyone except external users has edit access to the site.
Root site permissions showing how the “everyone except external users” domain group has been added within the site members SharePoint group.
As the root is is a team site, when organisations start to build intranet solutions, they may find they want to use the root, or top-level URL as their default landing page, or home site for their intranet. To do this, you will need to swap the existing root site for a communication site in your SharePoint Online environment.
Root site vs. home site – what’s the difference?
As mentioned earlier, the default root site of a SharePoint environment is the one that is setup at the beginning when you purchase your subscription. You may also come across the term home site, which is used by Microsoft frequently. The Microsoft definition of a home site is:
“A landing site for your intranet that brings together news, events, embedded video and conversations, and other resources to deliver an engaging experience that reflects your organization’s voice, priorities, and brand”.
Setting a home site doesn’t change the SharePoint start page from appearing when pressing the SharePoint link in the Microsoft 365 ribbon, or pressing the home button on the side-bar. The SharePoint start page is something else – not a root site or home site
Setting a home site doesn’t change the site that appears if you browse to the root URL i.e. contoso.sharepoint.com
There is a separate configuration setting that let’s you can specify a new home site – but this is not the same as replacing the root site
Replacing the root site
There is some pretty good documentation available here from Microsoft on how to replace a root site, but it lacks screenshots and any limitations that may be relevant. So here’s how to replace the root site of your SharePoint Online environment:
💡 You’ll need to have the SharePoint admin role to be able to perform a root site swap.
Navigate to the SharePoint admin center
In the all sites view > sort the A to Z column so that the current root site appears at the top of the list
Select the root site > press replace site from the command bar
Press replace site from the command bar in the SharePoint admin center to start the root site swap process.
A replace root site pane will open > enter the URL of the source site you wish to replace the root site with
Press Save
Note: SharePoint auto-generates what the URL will be for the root site when you swap it. This cannot be changed.
Things of note
Any featured links added to the SharePoint start page will need adding after replacing the root site
A site redirect is created to redirect traffic from the source site to the root site (if the source site is already being used)
Following the root site swap, the source site redirects also update any sharing links, apps or files to refer to the new URL
Limitations
During the root site swap, you may see a 404 not found message appear temporarily.
Following the root site swap, all content needs to be re-indexed by search, so some content might not appear in the search results whilst this happens.
The source site used for the root site swap has to be a communication site (SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0), or modern team site not connected to a Microsoft 365 group (STS#3).
Neither the root site, or source site can be registered as a hub site prior to replacement. If either are hub sites, they must be unregistered, then re-registered following the swap.
If your root site has sub-sites, they will be archived as part of the replacement process.
The site you select as the new root site must be within the same domain as the current root site.
If the site is on hold, you’ll receive an informative error and you can’t replace the site.
If your root site swap contains large lists or libraries then it is worth considering migrating these before the root site swap. There is no official documentation on size limitations as part of the replacement process, and should be possible – but I would air on the side of caution!
Setting a home site
Although different from the root site, a home site does have it’s own capabilities, such as:
“Intranet” wide search – Home sites don’t have the scoped search that typical sites have.
Home site news posts become official organizational news and take priority on the start page and in the home section of the mobile app.
Customised global navigation in the SharePoint app bar
Before you start – make sure to have the URL of the site you wish to set as the home site handy, as you’ll need it later! Here’s how to set a home site in SharePoint:
Navigate to the SharePoint admin center.
Select Settings > SharePoint – Home site.
In the SharePoint admin center > select settings then press the SharePoint – Home site option.
Enter the URL of the site you want to use.
Press Save.
Note: After setting the home site, it may take several minutes to take effect.