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.
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 380 other followers
Use the links below to switch between each product’s roadmap updates:
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (7)
Rolling out (3)
In development (10)
🍾 LAUNCHED
SharePoint Syntex: Content Assembly – Choose fields in modern templates to create document library columns – While publishing modern templates, you can now choose fields that you want to map to document library columns. When documents will get generated, the fields chosen to be library columns will get auto filled by the value entered by the users. Roadmap ID:98126
Microsoft Viva: Connections for Android tablet – Microsoft Viva Connections is your gateway to a modern engagement experience designed to keep everyone engaged and informed. This release brings the experience of Viva connections to Android tablet, thus extending the set of devices you can access it on. Roadmap ID:117388
Microsoft Viva: Insights web app in DoD – A new web interface for the Viva Insights app will be discoverable via the web and the Microsoft 365 app launcher. This will offer an additional way to access the personal productivity and wellbeing experiences in the Viva Insights app in Teams. Roadmap ID: 106096
Microsoft Viva: Briefing and Digest emails for GCC-H – The daily Briefing email and the semi-monthly Digest email, automatically delivered to your Outlook inbox, will be available for GCC-H. The daily Briefing email is a personalized, actionable email from Microsoft Viva to help you start the day on track and stay on top of tasks. Twice a month, you’ll also receive a Digest email that summarizes data about your work patterns and ways to improve them. Roadmap ID: 109529
Microsoft Viva: Briefing and Digest emails for DoD – The daily Briefing email and the semi-monthly Digest email, automatically delivered to your Outlook inbox, will be available for DoD. The daily Briefing email is a personalized, actionable email from Microsoft Viva to help you start the day on track and stay on top of tasks. Twice a month, you’ll also receive a Digest email that summarizes data about your work patterns and ways to improve them. Roadmap ID: 109530
Microsoft Viva: GCCH support for Connections – Viva connections will be made available for Government Community Cloud High. Roadmap ID:117429
Microsoft Viva: Language expansion – Italian and Portuguese – Viva Topics will soon support indexing content and generating topics from documents written in Italian and Portuguese (as well as English, French, German, and Spanish). Topics can be edited and experienced in your language. Japanese and Simplified Chinese. Roadmap ID:100252
🚂 ROLLING OUT
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: Topics in Viva Engage (Yammer) – Display topic highlights and access topic cards in Yammer conversations. Roadmap ID:72184
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
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – April 2023
Microsoft Viva: Notifications in Teams activity feed in Viva Goals – User can now receive notifications for Viva Goals check-in reminder, mentions, and replies to your comments within your Teams activity feed. Roadmap ID:117445
Rollout starts – May 2023
Microsoft Viva: Resolve topic name similarities – Allows users to select a topic among several when they share similar or matching names (disambiguation). Roadmap ID:72183
Microsoft Viva: Topics in Outlook Desktop – Learn more about topics being discussed in your organization without leaving Outlook Desktop. With this feature, Viva Topics can detect that a topic is mentioned in the email that is currently in focus in read mode. In this case, Viva Topics will prompt the user to open the Viva Insights panel where they can see a list of all topics referenced in the email along with a view of the topic descriptions and the people/resources associated with the topics. Roadmap ID:100247
Rollout starts – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Academies in Viva Learning – Academies in Viva Learning provide a guided learning experience to employees to improve their skills. Roadmap ID: 95147
🆕 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
Rollout starts – July 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Viva Pulse – Viva Pulse is a feedback tool that empowers managers to get day to day feedback on projects and team dynamics, resulting in quicker action. Using smart templates, research-backed questions, and analytics, Viva Pulse enables teams to use their voice so they can help managers pinpoint what’s working well and which areas to focus on over time. Roadmap ID: 117393
Microsoft Viva: Simple topic segmentation – Create segments of topics based on sites and information architecture. Roadmap ID:88694
Rollout starts – August 2023
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 has been reverted to “rolling out” as it has not yet completed deployment. Roadmap ID:106765
Rollout starts – September 2023
Microsoft Viva: Custom Topic Types for Viva Topics – Knowledge Managers can define and edit custom topic types that can offer important context on the nature of the topic entity. Roadmap ID:117437
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: SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM), Workflow Manager, Stream on SharePoint: Create, View & Share Playlists, External File Request, SharePoint email notification rules update, Dropbox migrations, Export list as a dataset, Yammer becomes Viva Engage, Viva Topics integrations into Engage
Microsoft Syntex | SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM)
Microsoft have announced the general availability of SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) add-on, a new set of advanced security and content management capabilities. SAM helps when working with advanced access policies for secure content collaboration and advanced sites content lifecycle management.
Advanced access policies for secure content collaboration
Data access governance (DAG) insights for SharePoint sites
Restricted access control (RAC) policy for SharePoint sites
Restricted access control (RAC) policy for OneDrives
Conditional access policy for SharePoint sites and OneDrives
Secure SharePoint Document Libraries
Advanced sites content lifecycle management
Sites lifecycle management policy for inactive sites
Recent SharePoint Admin Actions
Sites history
Block download policy for SharePoint sites and OneDrives
Microsoft recently announced the release of SharePoint Workflow Manager, a new workflow engine to power the SharePoint 2013 Workflows platform for SharePoint Server and replace Service Bus and Microsoft Workflow Manager. Compatible with SharePoint Server 2013, 2016, 2019, and Subscription Edition, Microsoft recommend that all SharePoint Server customers using SharePoint 2013 Workflows upgrade to SharePoint Workflow Manager as soon as they’re able to.
Microsoft will focus all future investments and maintenance on SharePoint Workflow Manager rather than Microsoft Workflow Manager, including providing support beyond the year 2026.
Microsoft Stream (on SharePoint): Create, View and Share Playlists
This feature allows users to organize their video and audio files into a playlist for easy organization, sharing and playback. Playlist creators can share their playlist with others, and people with access to the playlist and to the files in the playlist can watch/listen to the video/audio files in order or skip back and forth between items in the playlist – along with the full player capabilities with chapters, closed captions, playback speeds, and more.
Stream playlists are both built and accessed via Microsoft Lists and can use other Lists capabilities. Playlists can be created directly from Stream and via Lists creation flows across Office, SharePoint, and Lists. Users can add any video and audio files to a playlist that they have access to. Playlists can be accessed from stream.office.com or from the Microsoft Lists home page in Microsoft 365.
External File Request in SharePoint Document Library
Initially, this feature was released for OneDrive, but the Microsoft team have announced this secure way to request and obtain files from anyone is now here for SharePoint document libraries. Just choose a folder in a SharePoint Document Library where others can upload files to – this accomplished with a unique, secure share link that you share with them.
Recipients who upload files to you upon your request can only upload files; they can’t see the content of the folder, edit, delete, or download files — or even see who else has uploaded files. To use this feature in the SharePoint Document Library: 1) Admin enables Anyone links at the tenant level, and 2) Admin configure view, edit, and upload permission for Anyone links.
Update to Rules Email Notifications for SharePoint Lists and Libraries
Rules can be created for lists and libraries to send automatic email notifications based on events in the target list or library. Previously, these email notifications were sent from SharePoint Online <no-reply@sharepointonline.com>. To improve the security of the rules feature, email notifications will now be sent from the email account of the user who last modified the rule. If the rule was newly created, this will be the creator’s email address.
Microsoft have announced an expanded set of capabilities to allow moving content from Dropbox into Microsoft 365. When you’re ready to move your content, click on the Migrate tab in the SharePoint admin center to start scan discovery, assessment, and migrate. You’ll get detailed reports and the rest in a seamless transition of files and folders to Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and/or Teams).
Microsoft are adding a new option under the “Export” menu for Microsoft Lists: Export to Power BI. With this feature, users can easily and quickly create a dataset based on their list in the Power BI service, in their environment of choice. Datasets are sources of data that are ready for reporting and visualization in Power BI. This adds to the options of inline reporting with Power BI in Lists, and now the ability to export list data as datasets and use them in the Power BI app.
Microsoft announced the rebranding of Yammer into Viva Engage this month. This change will happen across all existing Yammer surfaces – including web, mobile, and integrations (Embed, SharePoint, and Outlook) and will occur throughout 2023. In the coming months you can expect Yammer to become Viva Engage through the update of brand elements like logo, app icon and name.
Viva Topics brings new integrations with Viva Engage
Engage is integrating with and adopting Viva Topics to make community-sourced knowledge easily accessible across an organization and support a consistent experience in Microsoft 365. Among others, this brings: 1) Topic cards will show in Engage when you hover over a highlighted topic, and 2) Topic pages and cards will include content from Engage such as questions and answers, and conversations from the relevant community.
Teams Premium is a more personalized, more intelligent, and more protected version of Microsoft Teams. Here are the latest features released this month for Teams Premium:
Intelligent Recap
With Intelligent Recap, you can now save time spent reviewing meeting recordings. Available now, AI-generated chapters based on PowerPoint Live divide the meeting into sections using the contents from the presentation, so it’s easy to pick and choose the segment most relevant to you. Intelligent Recap also will automatically generate meeting chapters based on the meeting transcript in the future.
Available today, you can quickly see relevant PowerPoint Live chapters in the meeting recording.
With live translations for captions in meetings, now available in Teams Premium, you get AI-powered real-time translations in 40 spoken languages. By default, regular closed captions are displayed in the language that’s spoken during the meeting. Live translated captions allow you to see captions translated from the spoken language into the language you’re most comfortable with, saving money and making meetings more productive and effortless. Only the meeting organizer needs to have Teams Premium for all meeting attendees to enjoy live translations for captions in meetings.
Now with Teams Premium, IT admins can create customized meeting templates—like a client call, brainstorming meeting, or help desk call— to automatically include the correct settings, reducing the time and thought process it takes to create and get the meeting right. Also with templates, leaders can ensure that their meetings adhere to company best practices and policies.
Meeting templates, once configured by your IT admin, are easy to use to schedule a new meeting.
With Teams Premium, you can unlock advanced personalization experiences, which can help your organization have a professional and unified impact in meetings. Branded meetings let everyone see the logo and colors of your company when you join the meeting and allow your brand colors to be infused in the meeting itself.
Infuse your brand into every meeting, including a custom-branded meeting lobby.
Organization backgrounds and organization together mode scenes
During the meeting, you can enable brand-approved organization backgrounds and organization together mode scenes, so that what makes your company—and your people—unique will shine through in every part of the meeting.
Just like meetings are not “one size fits all,” different Teams policies often are assigned based on your groups or departments. Assigning meetings, messaging, and app policies individually can be a complex task. But with custom user policy packages now available, IT can save time by creating a customized bundle of policies for users with similar roles in the organization. It’s a simplified, streamlined tool that provides consistency when managing policies for groups of users across your organization.
Watermarking is a new meeting option, can help to deter leaks when sharing sensitive or confidential meeting content. Meeting organizers can leverage a unique watermark over attendee screen shares and video feeds to confidently present and display sensitive information.
Easily watermark content and speakers during a meeting and automatically apply relevant Teams meeting options based on sensitivity labels.
With who can record, you have additional protections to keep discussions private and can limit who can record specific meetings. Find out more:Record a meeting in Teams
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) for online meetings
For those rare, extremely sensitive meetings that require disabling core meeting features like recording for an advanced encryption option, you can apply end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to the meeting. As a reminder, data exchanged during Teams calls or meetings always is secured using industry-standard encryption in transit and at rest. Find out more:Use end-to-end encryption for Teams meetings
Sensitivity labels for Teams meetings (for Microsoft 365 E5 customers)
Microsoft 365 E5 customers with Teams Premium can now enable Microsoft Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels for Teams meetings. Meeting organizers can leverage sensitivity labels to automatically apply the most relevant and important meeting options based on the sensitivity of meeting content. Compliance admins can configure this integration with Teams meetings in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal to determine which meeting options should be enforced if the label is used in a meeting. Find out more:Sensitivity labels for Microsoft Teams
Advanced webinars: Host events with seamless registration and customized experiences
Teams Premium includes webinars to easily host these events while also saving you time and money by eliminating the need for add-on solutions or working across different platforms. Find out more:Advanced Webinars
Registration waitlist and manual approval
Once registration is set and invites are sent to attendees, you can enable registration waitlist and manual approval to make it easier to manage registration ahead of a webinar. Enabling the waitlist will keep webinar registration open even after the event has reached the capacity set by the organizer. This allows additional people to register and be automatically added to the list. As new spots open up, people will be automatically moved to the pending approval state, which enables the organizer to review their registration information and manually approve or reject each of the registrants.
Manage registration by enabling the waitlist to manage event capacity and manual approval to view registrant information.
Webinar hosts also have the ability to customize registration start and end times to specify when you want registration to start and end, making it easier to plan for and manage your event. Find out more:Manage webinar registration
Virtual green room
Webinars allow presenters to join the virtual green room so that preparation before the webinar is seamless. Presenters have the time and space to connect and do a quick briefing or test run without disturbing attendees. While attendees wait for the event to start, they can engage with the presenters and one another through chat and Q&A.
Connect and prep with the host and other presenters in the virtual green room and engage with attendees through chat and Q&A.
During a webinar, presenters can more effectively manage what attendees see. These host controls create more professionally produced events and make it easy to create more dynamic engagement for presenters and attendees.
Manage the attendee experience so they only see shared content and participants brought on screen.
To elevate your presentation and deliver more dynamic content, integrate different external media feeds into your webinar using RTMP-in. By leveraging an external encoder and enabling RTMP-in, you’ll be able to livestream a custom RTMP source, whether it’s a professionally produced video or high-quality screen sharing, to all attendees in the meeting.
Stream different media types directly into a presentation with RTMP-in.
To improve live event experiences within your organization, Microsoft eCDN (Enterprise Content Delivery Network) is now included in Teams Premium. With Microsoft eCDN, you can seamlessly and securely live stream global meetings, all-hands gatherings, and town halls and distribute company-wide training using Teams Live Events. Microsoft eCDN helps reduce the load on the corporate network, helps prevent connectivity failure and poor video quality, and does not require any additional installation on your endpoints and devices. Find out more: Scale video delivery and monitor network traffic by using eCDNs with Microsoft Teams
Advanced Virtual Appointments: A new Teams Meeting type for business-to-customer (B2C) meetings
Virtual Appointments is a new Teams meeting type tailored for B2C meetings with people outside of your organization. When using Virtual Appointments, guests will get a meeting invitation that includes important appointment details to make joining easy via SMS or email. They can join from any device—no need to install Teams—and experience a comfortable pre-appointment virtual lobby until they are ready to begin. To learn more about the entire solution, check out this Microsoft Tech Community blog.
Virtual Appointments app
This app provides a single location where professionals and admins can create and manage scheduled and on-demand Virtual Appointments in Microsoft Teams. It includes a comprehensive dashboard that gives a quick view of an employee’s schedule 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. Download the Virtual Appointments app today through the Teams app store.
Queue view of scheduled and on-demand appointments
Enable employees to manage and service Virtual Appointments in one location with advanced capabilities to track wait times, check on the status of a meeting, and more. Scheduling admins and staff conducting virtual appointments can monitor incoming requests and process them appropriately. Scheduling admins also can set up an on-demand entry point for customers to request services and appointments on demand through a hosted, self-service website with company branding.
Custom virtual lobby for Virtual Appointments
Create a custom waiting room for your external attendees so they receive a branded, first-class experience from the start. This virtual lobby can be customized with your company’s logo, branding, and more.
Virtual Appointments individual and departmental analytics
Individuals or departments can focus on key metrics—no-shows, wait times, and calendar-level analytics—to drive business outcomes and improve customer experiences. Reports include trends over time and the ability to drill down into individual appointment data.
As a Virtual Appointments admin or operations supervisor, you can view aggregated analytics across your department and the entire organization. You also can see detailed activity for appointments created and conducted through multiple scheduling entry points and date ranges. Reports also include active user information for capabilities unlocked in Teams Premium, including SMS, two-way waiting room chat, and queuing. This data can be easily exported into Excel for additional analysis.
Teams (non-premium)
Teams Management
The following features are currently available for the Teams Management Platform (admin center):
Manage Surface Hubs as Teams devices from Teams admin center – As an admin, you can manage the entire lifecycle of Surface Hubs as Teams devices from the Teams admin center. Available features include remote restart, download of logs, configuration of settings, and detailed device information.
Notification granularity – You can use Intune to determine the types of content users can see in notifications on their mobile lock screens.
Ability for Teams users to manage their third-party app subscriptions from within Teams Client – Teams users now can view and manage in a single place all third-party app subscriptions purchased in the Teams app store—all without leaving the Teams client. This allows users to easily add more licenses for purchased subscriptions, cancel, upgrade and downgrade subscriptions, and access invoices.
Delete or rename files in a channel and in your OneDrive folder in Teams – To rename or delete a file in a channel, go to the files tab and find the file you want. Then select “more options” (the three dots) on the file. To rename or delete a file from your OneDrive, select “more” at the bottom of the app, then select “files.” Once you find the file you want, select the three dots, and choose to rename or delete it.
Surface Message Actions by most recently used menu – This feature surfaces the most recently used Message Actions into the level one menu for you to access quickly.
License management in Microsoft Teams and Teams admin center for SaaS offers built by ISVs – With Microsoft’s license management solution for SaaS offers built by independent software vendors (ISVs), customers can easily assign, use, and track SaaS licenses in Teams and the Teams admin center. This also provides ISVs with a ready-to-use solution without the need to develop their own license management and enforcement system.
Upload files to your approval request via Power Automate portal – Files that you upload within the Power Automate portal will now be shown within the view details window of an approval request within Teams.
Enhanced flyout design for app engagement and discovery – Enhanced visual layout helps you quickly launch apps that you have in addition to discovering new ones to help you complete your day-to-day tasks in Teams.
Education
These features are currently available for Teams for Education customers:
Invite parents via SMS for Communication – To enable parent-teacher communication, admins can now choose either email or SMS as their preferred Parent Connection invitation channel. Learn more details here.
Parent-teacher meetings – This enables teachers to easily schedule virtual meetings with parents or guardians of students through Teams.
Power Apps
In Power Apps: Simple and scalable portal navigation, call Dataverse in Power Fx, Wrap wizard, new look model driven apps
Power Apps portal left navigation pane
Microsoft have announced the new and simplified left navigation pane is now available to our makers. With this new experience, you get to see your most used items pinned to your left nav., customize those items by reordering them based on need, unpin items from the left navigation pane, discover a list of features available to you in Power Apps and so much more.
Introducing the new and simplified Power Apps portal left navigation pane.
Microsoft have announced direct access to Dataverse actions in Power Fx formulas as an Experimental release. As a part of the Power Fx language, authors can now directly invoke a Dataverse action within a formula. A new Power Fx ‘Environment’ language object that authors can add to their app enables access to Dataverse actions. It is available with Power Apps release version 3.23022.
The new Environment object and a Dataverse action bound to a button.
Turn your Power Apps app into a native mobile app with the new wrap for Power Apps step-by-step wizard, available to all makers in Public Preview! The step-by-step guided wizard can “wrap” any existing canvas app(s) into a native mobile app shell and produce an Android or iOS mobile package that is ready to be digitally signed and distributed.
Create native mobile apps with wrap for Power Apps wizard (Public Preview).
New look model driven Power Apps (Public Preview)
Microsoft have announced a public preview of the new model driven app experience and providing an update on new controls coming to canvas apps in the spring timeframe. The initial preview is launching with updates to the most heavily used model app experiences. The pages included in this initial launch cover 70% of scenarios in use today and we will be frequently updating the preview over the coming months.
In Power Automate: Desktop flow activity GA, desktop flows in Dataverse updates, February 2023 Power Automate desktop, 11 new verified, 9 independent connectors
Desktop flow activity (Generally Available)
Desktop flow activity is now generally available. Desktop flow activity is the new area in Power Automate to monitor in real-time your desktop flows automations. Three new pivots — “Last runs”, “Machines” and “Current runs” — have been added these last weeks to get more control on your RPA automations and orchestration.
Power Automate desktop flows are stored in Microsoft Dataverse, which lets you securely store and manage data that’s used by business applications. This enables you to leverage features like Solutions for Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). However, we have received feedback from customers that the way data is stored can be difficult to work with.
A new storage schema for desktop flows in Dataverse (v.2) has been implemented. This will be much easier to work with when you are using Dataverse APIs and will enable future product enhancements with Power Automate for desktop. This new storage schema is publicly available along with the February 2023 application release (v.2.29).
11 verified, 9 new independent publisher connectors
In January 2023, Microsoft launched 11 new verified connectors and 18 updates from different service owners. These connectors have solutions and tools for Communication, AI, Business Management, Sales and CRM, Commerce. In addition, 9 new Independent Publisher connectors were published in January. These connectors have solutions and tools for IT Operations, Productivity, Lifestyle and Entertainment, Communication, and much more.
In Power BI: Power BI February 2023 feature summary, Power BI Datamart – February 2023 Feature Summary, multi-tasking in Teams & Power BI, streaming dataflows retirement, on-prem data gateway update, export to excel improvements for matrix visuals GA, SSRS migration tool expansion, Power BI embedding capabilities, new report color themes, new workspace metadata for excel
Power BI February 2023 Feature Summary
In this month’s update Microsoft have added TypeScript support in the developer playground sandbox, several new formatting features for reporting, and so much more.
Microsoft have announced several enhancements to multitasking for the Power BI app for Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and Office have started rolling out now, these include the ability to go back to a previous Power BI app in Teams, Improved back stack navigation and more.
Streaming dataflows allows authors to connect to, ingest, mash up, model, and build reports based on streaming, near real-time data directly in the Power BI service. Microsoft have announced that starting mid – March of 2023 they will no longer support the creation, editing or running of streaming dataflows.
Microsoft have released the February 2023 update for the on-premises data gateway (version 3000.162.9). This update brings the on-premises data gateway up to date with the February 2023 release of Power BI Desktop.
Export to Excel Improvements for Matrix Visuals (General Availability)
Microsoft have announced that the export to Excel improvements for Matrix visuals feature is now generally available (GA). This feature allows you to export data to Excel from a Power BI matrix visual while keeping the structure of the data intact in Excel.
Microsoft have announced the expansion of the migration tool functionality for SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). The migration tool is now available in SSRS 2019 – version 15.0.1102.1047 and SSRS 2017 – version 14.0.601.20. You can download the updated application from the download center.
There is a new form of Power BI embedded analytics that enables you to embed an interactive data exploration and report creation experience in your applications. With this solution, you’ll be able to provide your users a similar experience to our integrations in Dynamics 365 and SharePoint.
Five new color themes have been released to support accessibility (Accessible Default, Accessible City park, Accessible Tidal, Accessible Neutral, Accessible Orchid). These new themes make it easier than ever to create stunning reports with accessibility in mind.
Microsoft have announced additional improvements that helps you and your organization easily track usage of live Power BI content in Excel based on where the content is saved. New metadata has been added to the Power BI activity logs that enables you to easily filter activity events by workspace name. This saves you valuable time while ensuring your organization continues to meet its compliance requirements and other data auditing needs.
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 380 other followers
Use the links below to switch between each product’s roadmap updates:
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (5)
Rolling out (8)
In development (8)
🍾 LAUNCHED
SharePoint: Export Microsoft Lists as a dataset for Power BI Data Hub – Today, you can visualize a list as a report in Power BI, from within the list itself. Soon, it will be possible to export a dataset from Microsoft Lists for use in Power BI Data Hub. Once your list is in Power BI Data Hub, you can take advantage of its rich data visualization features to create powerful, custom reports based on your list data. Roadmap ID:117379
Microsoft Viva: GCCH support for Connections – Viva connections will be made available for Government Community Cloud High. Roadmap ID:117429
Microsoft Viva: Language expansion – Italian and Portuguese – Viva Topics will soon support indexing content and generating topics from documents written in Italian and Portuguese (as well as English, French, German, and Spanish). Topics can be edited and experienced in your language. Japanese and Simplified Chinese. Roadmap ID:100252
Outlook: View and navigate the organization chart with Org Explorer – Org Explorer for Outlook helps you to visualize and explore your company’s internal structure, work teams, and individual roles. Roadmap ID: 103605
Microsoft Viva: New landing experience for Viva Connections desktop – Help people in your organization manage their daily flow of work using a customized landing experience in Teams that displays the most important tasks, tools, news, and resources in one central place. The new landing experience offers expanded navigational tools between Viva apps and acts as the home base for Viva experiences in Teams. Roadmap ID: 99917
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Microsoft Viva: Viva Insights web app in GCC-H – A new web interface for the Viva Insights app will be discoverable via the web and the Microsoft 365 app launcher. This will offer an additional way to access the personal productivity and wellbeing experiences in the Viva Insights app in Teams. Roadmap ID: 106095
Microsoft Viva: Insights web app in DoD – A new web interface for the Viva Insights app will be discoverable via the web and the Microsoft 365 app launcher. This will offer an additional way to access the personal productivity and wellbeing experiences in the Viva Insights app in Teams. Roadmap ID: 106096
SharePoint: Improvements to the Image web part – Improvements to the Image web part include one consolidated toolbar for better navigation, and added capabilities to text overlay, such as text size and styling, text box color and opacity, and image overlay color and transparency. Roadmap ID:117376
SharePoint: Improvements to the Page authoring experience – We’re reducing clutter and creating an efficient canvas by moving the “add section” action to be inline and visible on hover, as well as surfacing the layout options in the web part toolbars. Roadmap ID:117377
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
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – April 2023
Microsoft Viva: Display connected topics on people profile cards – Profile cards displayed through Outlook will display Topics associated to an individual. Roadmap ID: 88697
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: 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
Rollout starts – May 2023
Microsoft Viva: Resolve topic name similarities – Allows users to select a topic among several when they share similar or matching names (disambiguation). Roadmap ID:72183
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
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
Rollout starts – June 2023
Microsoft Viva: Viva Topics – Microsoft Graph Search API returns Topic – Microsoft Graph Search API returns Topic answer details. Roadmap ID:118591
Rollout starts – July 2023
Microsoft Viva: Mobile quick access to Homesite in Viva connections – Feature to improve the discoverability and access of SharePoint (SP) Homesite for customers of SP using Viva connections mobile. Roadmap ID: 117528
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 380 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 (1)
In development (18)
🍾 LAUNCHED
SharePoint: External File Request in SharePoint Document Library – With the file request feature in SharePoint Document Library, you can choose a folder where others can upload files using a link that you send them. People you request files from can only upload files; they can’t see the content of the folder, edit, delete, or download files, or even see who else has uploaded files. Roadmap ID:103625
🚂 ROLLING OUT
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
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Rollout starts – March 2023
SharePoint: Improvements to the Image web part – Improvements to the Image web part include one consolidated toolbar for better navigation, and added capabilities to text overlay, such as text size and styling, text box color and opacity, and image overlay color and transparency. Roadmap ID:117376
SharePoint: Improvements to the Page authoring experience – We’re reducing clutter and creating an efficient canvas by moving the “add section” action to be inline and visible on hover, as well as surfacing the layout options in the web part toolbars. Roadmap ID:117377
SharePoint Syntex: Content Assembly – Choose fields in modern templates to create document library columns – While publishing modern templates, you can now choose fields that you want to map to document library columns. When documents will get generated, the fields chosen to be library columns will get auto filled by the value entered by the users. Roadmap ID:98126
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
Microsoft Viva: Verified Topic badges – Users can now mark published topics as verified and add a specific group of SMEs as editors to the topic. Verification helps readers identify topics with added reliability. Topics that are verified are identified by a special badge and indicate the content is reviewed for accuracy and are regularly updated by assigned editors. Roadmap ID:118239
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
Rollout starts – April 2023
🆕 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
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Manage Interests – Curate Interests for your tenant and tag content with interests – Admins can curate interest inventory for their tenant and tag content with the curated interests, enabling learners with personalized experience to pursue learning with these interests. Roadmap ID:107778
Microsoft Viva: Employee learning API – learner record sync – Assignments and learner records sync from providers/LMS connected to Viva Learning through the employee learning API. Roadmap ID:100200
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
Rollout starts – May 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
Microsoft Viva: Topics bot brings you topic information to your Teams chat – We are introducing an exciting new way to interact with Topics. A new Teams bot for Viva Topics to bring important topic related information, activities and more to users on their Teams chat. Roadmap ID:118488
Microsoft Viva: Topic level metrics on topic experiences – View the topic level impact, impressions and usage on topic card and page experiences. Roadmap ID:118491
Microsoft Viva: Topic Activities on topic experiences – Viva Topics helps you stay updated on topics of interest by bringing AI and human activities on the topics including topic updates, conversations and more to experiences across Microsoft 365. Roadmap ID:118241
Microsoft Viva: Topics in Teams Channels – Earlier this year, we rolled out new Viva Topics integrations with Microsoft Teams. To widen the reach of Topics into the areas team members work, Viva Topics will expand from chats in Teams to channels in Teams, allowing users to mention topics and see topic cards within a given channel. This addition to the Teams integration will make the Topics experience more intuitive and approachable, allowing you to interact with topics in the spaces you are used to collaborating with team members. Roadmap ID:100254
Microsoft Viva: Topics Adoption Metrics Dashboard – Topics will include a new analytics page, where knowledge managers and admins will have access to a set of metrics that details the health of their adoption. Tenants will have health targets to reach to keep them on track for adopting Viva Topics, as well as recommended actions to perform to drive each metric to healthy. Roadmap ID:100028
Rollout starts – June 2023
Microsoft Viva: Trending Topics – Viva Topics brings a new way to discover and learn about important and relevant topics in your organization through the trending topics experiences across M365. Roadmap ID:118489
Microsoft Viva: Editors cohort for topics – Knowledge managers can now select and assign a group of SMEs to a topic and invite them to validate and contribute to suggested, confirmed and published topics. Roadmap ID:118490
In this post we look at a behaviour of document libraries in SharePoint that shows items as loading, and how to fix it.
The problem
I recently came across something I hadn’t seen before in SharePoint Online when working with document libraries. I was in a library that had more than 30 folders within it, and after the 30th folder the library just displays a sort of pulsing, loading screen similar to the below:
The thing is that nothing actually loads, there is no pagination or way to move to to see any more results, any additional files/ folders or basically any way to navigate further. I decided to dig into this to understand what was causing it and what can be done to resolve.
The solution
I found that the issue related to a view setting within the document library. The default view had an item limit set to “limit the total number of items returned to the specified amount”. Changing this effectively solved the problem, as once changed items are displayed in groups of 30, but a “show all” button will appear that allows you to see all the files/ folders. Here’s how to get to the item limit setting and update it:
Open the affecting document library > press the cog > library settings > more library settings.
Scroll down to views > select the default view.
Scroll down and expand item limit.
Change the radio button setting to display items in batches of the specified size.
Press OK.
Things to note
The number of items to display doesn’t have any bearing on modern views. In the screenshot above I’d changed mine to 100 items to display, but after the first 30 files/ folders, the show all button appears.
The show all button is problematic as if you are grouping within your view, when pressed it will apply an empty filter automatically – showing no files and ultimately confusing people. I’ve wrote about this in detail here.
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 380 other followers
Use the links below to switch between each product’s roadmap updates:
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (03
Rolling out (2)
In development (2)
🍾 LAUNCHED
SharePoint: Private drafts for SharePoint pages and news – We’re adding the ability to create private drafts for pages and news posts. A private draft is visible only to the page author, the people the author chooses to share it with, and site admins. It’s great for creating and editing content that’s not ready for others to see except the people you want to collaborate with. Roadmap ID:85629
Microsoft Stream: Create, view and share playlists in SharePoint – 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:109564
Microsoft Viva: Meeting prep inline suggestions coming to Outlook with Viva Insights – Users with a Viva Insights subscription will receive inline suggestions in Outlook to book meeting preparation time. Meeting invite recipients will receive the inline suggestions if the meeting is between 30 and 60 minutes long, it has fewer than 12 attendees, it is not recurring, and the user has time on their calendar for prep time. Roadmap ID:109590
🚂 ROLLING OUT
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: 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
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release 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
🆕 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
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 380 other followers
Use the links below to switch between each product’s roadmap updates:
Includes updates for SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva.
Launched (0)
Rolling out (0)
In development (3)
🍾 LAUNCHED
N/A
🚂 ROLLING OUT
N/A
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – March 2023
🆕 SharePoint: Review recent SharePoint site actions in admin center – Review the most recent site changes you made from the SharePoint admin center in the last 30 days. Roadmap ID: 117553
🆕 SharePoint: Site Sharing will use Azure B2B Invitation Manager for External Sharing – The SharePoint Site sharing experience will now use Azure B2B Invitation Manager when new external users are invited, instead of the SharePoint Invitation Manager. Roadmap ID: 117557
Release – June 2023
🆕 Microsoft Viva: Export Viva Goals OKR view to Powerpoint – New feature allows users export a list and create a slide for each OKR in Power Point. Roadmap ID: 117483
In this post we will look at how the image tags managed metadata column creates issues for ShareGate migrations and how to resolve them.
Intro
Image tags were introduced in July 2021 and are automatically added by Microsoft AI to improve search. When images get uploaded into document libraries, SharePoint will analyse them upon upload and tag them based on a set of 37 basic tags. SharePoint will also re-analyse each time an image is updated and update the image tags.
The image tags column is a managed metadata column that isn’t immediately available within a document library. you have to upload an image first, before the image tag column appears – which can take several hours.
The problem
When migrating files at scale using migration tools such as ShareGate desktop, you will start to see errors in your migration reports related to the image tags column. In the example below, the details of each failed item showed the same or similar errors:
“Property Image Tags: The following values are unavailable: ‘outdoor, sign, text’. Please specify another value.”
ShareGate migration errors
Example migration report showing the image tag error messages.
The solution
The way I resolved this issue was to change an option within the migration task itself to ignore the image tag column managed metadata values. To do this I did the following in ShareGate:
In ShareGate desktop > start a copy content migration
Select your source and destination sites
In the copy content screen > select Options
Select Metadata > then expand Document
You will see the image tags column here > change set mapped value to ignore
Tick apply for all version history
Set your copy content migration task to ignore the image tasks column metadata.
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 380 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 (1)
In development (6)
🍾 LAUNCHED
SharePoint: Microsoft Lists: Calendar view – week layout – When you create a new view for your list, you can now choose between month view or the new week view to visualize your list information in a way that works best for you. And you can create multiple calendar views – using both month and week – you choose. Once in the calendar view, it’s easy to drag-n-drop items to reschedule them (adjusting their date on the list itself). Roadmap ID:100504
🚂 ROLLING OUT
SharePoint: Export Microsoft Lists as a dataset for Power BI Data Hub – Today, you can visualize a list as a report in Power BI, from within the list itself. Soon, it will be possible to export a dataset from Microsoft Lists for use in Power BI Data Hub. Once your list is in Power BI Data Hub, you can take advantage of its rich data visualization features to create powerful, custom reports based on your list data. Roadmap ID:117379
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – March 2023
🆕 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: 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
Release – April 2023
🆕 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: 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
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
Microsoft Lists: Commenting (iOS) – Bringing web commenting experience to Lists iOS mobile app. Add/delete a comment on list items to collaborate and share better. Roadmap ID: 70705
SharePoint Stuff 