Auto classification with sensitivity labels – Now in public preview, auto classification with sensitivity labels is now available in OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange Online. Roadmap ID: 57312
Edit metadata from within the Document Library and List View web parts – You can now Now edit item metadata properties displayed in a library or a list from within the corresponding web parts: the Document Library and List View web parts. Roadmap ID: 61030
SharePoint Integrations with Power Automate and Power Apps to GCC-High Tenants – Enables you to create/manage custom flows and forms/apps with Power Automate and Power Apps. Roadmap ID: 62437
Extended layout for site footer – Modern communication sites will now include a new layout option, extended, to show more content in the footer section. Roadmap ID: 61063
SharePoint Recommendations – You will see SharePoint Recommendations at the bottom of pages and news posts to help users discover new content powered by machine learning. Roadmap ID: 52604
Site owners can now associate their sites with a SharePoint hub – Now site owners are able to associate their sites to a hub, this was previously only available to site collection admins. Roadmap ID: 53903
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Schedule SharePoint pages & news posts – You will be able to schedule a page or news post to be published at a specific date and time in the future. Roadmap ID: 62892
SharePoint news email notifications – Receive notifications for comments, replies and likes via email from SharePoint news. Roadmap ID: 49603
Save for later web part – New web part to display a user’s saved for later items. Roadmap ID: 57810
Conditional show or hide columns in a form – This feature allows users in lists and libraries to show or hide columns in a list form based on another column’s value by specifying a formula. Roadmap ID: 63518
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – July 2020
Microsoft Lists: Lists app in Microsoft Teams – Team members will be able to both create new lists and add existing ones as tabs in Teams’ channels. Roadmap ID: 64162
Microsoft Lists: forms customization – Adjust what information shows on the out-of-box forms and include custom header and footer imagery and information. Roadmap ID: 64165
Microsoft Lists: calendar view – Visualize any list with items that use date column information in a calendar view. Roadmap ID: 64167
Microsoft Lists: sticky first column – As you scroll left and right, the first column of your list remains in place; similar to the sticky header that is already a part of Lists. Roadmap ID: 64168
Active time spent reports on SharePoint Site Usage – You can now get reports with aggregated data on the amount of time that users are spending on your intranet sites. Roadmap ID: 57159
Cumulative analytics for Hubs in SharePoint – Hub owners can now analyze aggregate usage analytics for their SharePoint hub sites, including all associated sites. Roadmap ID: 57160
New SharePoint admin center home page – Updates to the SharePoint admin center to align it to the Microsoft admin center, including more tiles and graphs. Roadmap ID: 57318
Migration manager – Admins can now add and manage multiple migration machines, and use task view to track progress of migrations.Roadmap ID: 57308
Migration manager is now generally available.
Move SharePoint sites to a new location – This feature will allow administrations to move a site to the location of an existing site. Roadmap ID: 51259
Connect sites to a Team in one click – A new Connect to Teams button in bottom-left corner of your sites. Roadmap ID: 30685
Connect SharePoint sites to Teams in just one click.
SharePoint news notification configuration – Configure personal email notification settings for SharePoint news updates. Roadmap ID: 49604
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Auto classification with sensitivity labels – Now in public preview, auto classification with sensitivity labels is now available in OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange Online. Roadmap ID: 57312
Modern term store – Use the updated term store to create and manage terms and term sets in SharePoint. Roadmap ID: 57315
SharePoint Integrations with Power Automate and Power Apps to GCC-High Tenants – Enables you to create/manage custom flows and forms/apps with Power Automate and Power Apps. Roadmap ID: 62437
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Release – June CY2020
Default site theme color is changing from blue to teal – SharePoint’s new teal theme will automatically update new and existing communication sites and team sites. Roadmap ID: 60592
Set Default Page Templates – This feature will allow site owners to set a page template as the default when a user creates a new page or news post on the site. Roadmap ID: 64529
Schedule SharePoint pages & news posts – You will be able to schedule a page or news post to be published at a specific date and time in the future. Roadmap ID: 62892
Release – Q4 CY2020
Site header updates – You will be able to choose to show/ hide the site title and a choice between a square site logo thumbnail or a non-square site logo. Roadmap ID: 63776
Multilingual page publishing –Create, publish and consume modern SharePoint pages/news in multiple languages.Roadmap ID: 50217
Multilingual page publishing in SharePoint.
Home sites – This feature lets you designate a communication site as the “home site” for your intranet.Roadmap ID: 26842
SharePoint home sites.
🚂 ROLLING OUT
SharePoint admin center: migration manager – Admins can now add and manage multiple migration machines, and use task view to track progress of migrations. Roadmap ID: 57308
Extended layout for site footer – Modern communication sites will now include a new layout option, extended, to show more content in the footer section. Roadmap ID: 61063
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Microsoft Lists: home page – The Microsoft Lists home page is your home for all your lists across Microsoft 365. Roadmap ID: 64160
Microsoft Lists: rules – Create simple if/then rules based on changes to list information to set reminders and send notifications. Roadmap ID: 64163
Microsoft Lists: sharing – Share entire lists, or list items with individuals or groups with view or edit permissions and the ability to manage access. Roadmap ID: 64164
Microsoft Lists: ready- made templates – Create a new list from ready-made templates that accelerate list creation, structure, forms and flows. There will be 8 templates at initial launch. Roadmap ID: 64166
Bulk edit list items and file properties in the form – Soon you will be able to select multiple items and edit their list items or documents properties all at once in the default form. Roadmap ID:64228
Save a view in Quick Edit – Soon you will be able to save a view in Quick Edit for any list or document library. When saved, the list or library will always render in quick edit for easy inline editing. Roadmap ID: 64229
Open a list or library item within the view form from Quick Edit – Users will see their list and document library view forms inside of the Quick Edit experience. Roadmap ID: 64230
Quick Edit page size expanding from 30 items to 101 – People will now see up to 100 items per page on their document library or list when using Quick Edit. Roadmap ID: 64231
Create a new list item via a form in Quick Edit – Users will see the “New” button on their command bar in lists when they are in Quick Edit to create new items via the default form. Roadmap ID: 64232
I’ve decided to compliment my Microsoft 365 monthly updates with a closer look at the Microsoft 365 roadmap. I will focus mainly on the core technology I personally keep an eye on (SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, Power Platform), but will add other roadmap updates where they fit in.
I’m going to try to do this weekly roundup to track the new additions and changes to the 365 roadmap as items enter development, roll out and launch.
This first roadmap roundup will cover from 4 May through to 17 May 2020, but i’ll leave out anything that was covered in last month’s update:
Auto-save column operations in lists – Show, hide or reorder columns in a SharePoint list without explicitly saving the current view or creating a new one. Roadmap ID: 59732
Make changes to the current view without explicitly saving in SharePoint.
Format list and library JSON using Monaco code editor – Use Visual Studio code editor as the preferred coding tool when formatting JSON. “Monaco Editor” is what powers Visual Studio code. Roadmap ID: 59733
Per site sharing links can now default to People with Existing Access Links – Microsoft are introducing support to set the default sharing link to “People with Existing Access”. Roadmap ID: 60335
Image resize – Page editors are able to resize images in the image web part. Roadmap ID: 57812
Resize an image from within a modern page.
Page Difference Visualization – As well as the existing version history you can already see, you can now compare changes visually on a page. Roadmap ID: 57813
You can now compare changes visually when editing SharePoint pages.
Root site swap – Swap the location of a source site with another target site using the new Swap site button in the SharePoint admin center. Roadmap ID: 57309
Click on the current root site to replace it with another.
Mover migration worldwide availability – Microsoft have announced that new service Mover is available to customers worldwide. Roadmap ID: 61190
Next steps panel – Expanding on the in-service help that appears at the top of a team site – where the actions that are suggested are driven more and more by the use of the site itself. Roadmap ID: 46832
Integrations for GCC Tenants – SharePoint Integrations with Power Automate and Power Apps to GCC Tenants: Roadmap ID: 33770
Auto classification with sensitivity labels – Now in public preview, auto classification with sensitivity labels is now available in OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange Online. Roadmap ID: 57312
“Flow” renamed “Automate” in lists – The flow button in SharePoint lists now reads “Automate”. Roadmap ID: 62855
Automate flows can run on individual items – Automate flows that can run on individual items contained within a document library or list. Roadmap ID: 62856
URL rename – You can now rename the SharePoint site URL from within the admin center. Roadmap ID: 56205
Rename a SharePoint site URL from the admin center.
Support for sensitivity labels with protection – SharePoint & OneDrive now support sensitivity labels with Microsoft Information Protection-based encryption. Roadmap ID: 57311
Lists/ library web parts consume dynamic data – You will be able to configure list web parts to send its property values to the List Properties web part. Roadmap ID: 57307
🚂 ROLLING OUT
Updated Yammer Conversations web part for SharePoint – The Yammer conversations web part is being updated to contain the new Yammer experience. Roadmap ID: 63385
Multilingual page publishing – Create, publish and consume modern SharePoint pages/news in multiple languages. Roadmap ID: 50217
Home sites – This feature lets you designate a communication site as the “home site” for your intranet. Roadmap ID: 26842
Increased site collection limit – You can now have up to 2,000,000 site collections per tenant, up form 500,000. Roadmap ID: 57316
Global reader role in SharePoint admin – SharePoint admin center now supports the Azure Active Directory built-in “Global Reader” role. Roadmap ID: 59984
People cards for SharePoint list and library web parts – Now, when you see a person’s name or face within a SharePoint List or Library web part, you can hover over it and reveal their people card. Roadmap ID: 57814
Information barriers (private preview) – Now in private preview, Information barriers are policies that can be configured to prevent individuals or groups from communicating with each other. Roadmap ID: 57313
Conditional formatting rule builder with new rich-text capabilities in lists – You will have the ability to use If/Then logic to format rows and columns based on attributes like numerical, date, etc. Roadmap ID: 57305
Updating modern home pages for classic team sites – Classic homepages will be automatically updated to a modern home pages if they have not been customized. Roadmap ID: 60405
Edit metadata from within the Document Library/ List View web parts – Now you will be able to edit the metadata properties on items displayed in a library or a list from within their corresponding web parts. Roadmap ID: 61030
Updates to sharing page in Admin center – Admin sharing settings from the classic sharing page are being added to the modern sharing page. Roadmap ID: 61116
Easy page and news publishing experience from sitepages library – Adding the ability to easily publish and republish a page or news post from the sitepages library in a site via the command bar or the file card experience. Roadmap ID: 61191
SharePoint Migration Tool supports SharePoint Server 2016 migrations (Public Preview) – Migration support from the SPMT now covers SharePoint server 2010, 2013 and 2016. Roadmap ID: 63258
Query alterations using SPFx for custom results page – Allows for query alterations in Microsoft Search for custom results pages with the SharePoint Framework. Roadmap ID: 57135
⌛ IN DEVELOPMENT
Enable modern communication site experience on classic sites – Using PowerShell, admins can now enable the modern communication site experience on any classic team site, including the root site. Roadmap ID: 46338
Configure header, footer and body of a form for lists/ libraries – This feature allows users in SharePoint lists and libraries to add a custom header and a footer to the associated form. Roadmap ID: 63519
Create all column types directly within Quick Edit – Replacing the legacy column creation in Quick Edit, this feature will allow you to create all column types directly from Quick Edit. Roadmap ID: 64171
Site header updates – You will be able to choose to show/ hide the site title and a choice between a square site logo thumbnail or a non-square site logo. Roadmap ID: 63776
Fluent design coherence updates for SharePoint – Fluent will be applied to modern SharePoint which will result in some visual changes i.e. larger/ bolder typefaces, opacity etc. Roadmap ID: 63777
Conditional show or hide columns in a form – This feature allows users in lists and libraries to show or hide columns in a list form based on another column’s value by specifying a formula. Roadmap ID: 63518
Improved page/ news publishing experience – A new pre-publish panel that gives authors an overview of key information about their pages or news posts. Roadmap ID: 63257
Schedule page/ news posts – You will be able to schedule a page or news post to be published at a specific date and time in the future. Roadmap ID: 62892
Extended layout for site footer – Modern communication sites will now include a new layout option, extended, to show more content in the footer section. Roadmap ID: 61063
Default site theme color is changing from blue to teal – SharePoint’s new teal theme will automatically update new and existing communication sites and team sites. Roadmap ID: 60592
Saved for later web part – New web part to display a user’s saved for later items. Roadmap ID: 57810
Slightly shorter than usual 🙂 but with Microsoft Ignite imminently upon us, I wanted to break down all of October’s release info prior to the big announcements coming out of Ignite.
The diagnostic tool is a browser extension for Chrome and Microsoft Edge that helps identify modern/ classic Site Pages in SharePoint Online that may not be delivering optimal performance.
By comparing characteristics of a site page to known best practices, the tool provides remediation guidance, leading to suggested fixes across three analysis results: Attention required, Improvement opportunities and No action required.
Adding the Page Diagnostics browser extension, to seeing it work in action
Lots of new and updated web parts are coming to SharePoint Online, here’s a look at them:
Button & Call To Action – engage your page viewer by providing focused text on and above a button
World Clock & Weather – add individual cities or a group of locations to highlight local times and weather
Divider – put a line in between sections and web parts, choosing the width and thickness
Highlighted Content adds Custom Query – use custom CAML or KQL queries to display precise sets of content, with the ability to combine filters using AND, OR, and NOT operators
The file card now shows relevant file activities, like if someone you work with edits, comments, or @mentions you, that activity is displayed with a link to take action.
Manage sharing/ access request settings from site permissions panel
Sharing and access requests for a SharePoint site have moved. Now located in the “Change sharing settings” link, site owners can use the new panel to allow only owners to share files, folders, and the site – restricting everyone else from sharing.
Admins will now be able to customize the expiration length on a per-site basis for Anyone or anonymous sharing links. Admins can now override the tenant policy and set a more or less restrictive expiration policy for specific sites.
Note: This functionality will only be available via the SharePoint Online Management Shell.
Site owners can now get a CSV file report to see all the items in their site that have been shared with any user, both inside and outside the organization. Useful for providing external sharing reports, the export can be filtered to only show content from the “Shared with External Users” option to view every unique user, permission, link, and item that has been shared externally.
From the site usage page, you can see recently shared items, with an option to run a report
You can now add more storage to your existing Office 365 subscription (Personal or Home) in 200 GB increments, starting at $1.99 per month.
Note: the 200GB incremental additional storage plans are only available for Office 365 subscribers. The Basic plan is free and offers 5GB, and non-subscription paid is $1.99USD/mo. and offers 100GB.
Differential sync brings the ability to sync only the parts of large files that have changed, not the entire file. The ability to leverage differential sync to all file types, stored in OneDrive and SharePoint is being rolled out this month.
Note: differential sync is already available for Office file types.
The OneDrive mobile app already has built-in scanning capabilities for scanning documents, whiteboards, business cards to name a few, as well as converting them into an easy-to-read PDF format. Scans taken for iOS 11.1.5 or later are now available for optical character recognition.
Newly released filters added in Chat and Teams help you filter more than just your activity. In chat, type a person’s name to filter for every group, meeting, or one-on-one chat you have with them.
Now you can mute a conversation in a channel. Alternatively, when you want to follow a conversation in a channel you’ve hidden from your list, all you need to do is turn on notifications.
You can now directly transfer a call to Cloud Voicemail. You can also now configure call answer rules, choose the greeting language, customize the TTS for the standard greeting and the ‘out of office’ greeting, and choose when you want your ‘out of office’ greeting to be played.
Now when you receive a call, Teams will display the PSTN Caller’s name based on Azure Active Directory data and/or the Telco provided display name. Available now on the desktop, and coming soon to Teams mobile.
Calling in Chrome
If You use Teams on the web, you can now add Google Chrome to your list of browsers that support making calls from your web browser.
Several updates are coming to Microsoft Government Community Cloud (GCC) this month, such as:
Call Handling Enhancements, Teams Calling improvements for VOIP users, Group Call Pickup (GCP), phone number blocking, Multiparty Calling without Conference License, Call Park (CP), and Shared Line Appearance (SLA).
The “Meet Now” feature on desktop allows you to skip the invitation and instead go straight to in a new meeting. All you need to do is go to Calendar on the left side of Teams, then select Meet now in the top right corner and add the people to the meeting.
Pin a meeting participant
You can now choose which meeting attendees to “pin” to create your own personal view. Right-click on a meeting participant and select “pin” (or unpin) to create your own custom layout of meeting participants. Note that this view is your own and does not impact other meeting participants.
Pin a meeting participant in Teams
Missed meeting-add notifications
Now you will see a notification in the Teams activity feed to notify you that someone tried to add you to a meeting, and if the meeting is still going on you can join directly from there.
Light weight meeting capabilities for Internet Explorer, Firefox & Safari
With the new light-weight meeting join capabilities, users can jump straight into a Teams Meeting in Internet Explorer 11, Safari, and Firefox browsers. Meeting audio is delivered via Audio Conferencing, so meeting organizers will need the respective license.
Microsoft unveiled a new version of To Do this month with a new look and new features. You can change the experience and background (includes dark mode) to suit your needs. To Do can now integrate with other Microsoft 365 apps to create a central view of your tasks.
Now you can easily create new flows in Visio and export them as a fully functioning workflow to Microsoft Flow. Built-in Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) stencils have sharing and commenting capabilities, simplifying development and collaboration.
You can now create and use a template to save time when adding multiple users. Templates are particularly useful if you have users who share many properties, like those who work in the same role and the same location.
Finally, you can make your root site a modern communication site or a modern team site! Using the new PowerShell cmdlet: Invoke-SPOSiteSwap, switches the location of a source site with another target site.
Note: the source or target sites cannot be “associated” with an Office 365 group or connected to a hub site.
Site owners can now associate their sites to a hub they have permissions to join. Previously this ability required site collection level admin privileges.
The activity highlights shows you if someone you work with edits, comments, or @mentions you on files you’re working on. This is displayed in the File Hover Card, with a link to the relevant activity.
Now you can find relevant content at the top of the Shared with me view in OneDrive. Files which are recommended based on your working relationships will surface to help you find trending information faster and discover new content.
You can already comment on Office docs in Office on the web, but now you can comment on other file types in OneDrive on the web such as PNGs, JPGs, or PDFs. You can also comment while using the viewer in OneDrive.
OneDrive will be natively integrated into the Samsung Gallery app, providing automatic syncing of your photos and videos and enabling new protection and cross-device experiences. The Galaxy Note10 will be the first to get the OneDrive integration, with more Samsung devices to follow.
When you schedule “focus time” through MyAnalytics, Teams will automatically help you stay focused by changing your presence to “focusing” and silencing all notifications during the focus period (based on your priority access settings).
The Microsoft Teams Room app has been updated to include a “content camera” feature. This detects the whiteboard in the room, crops and frames it, and shares the content with remote participants.
Meetings First is a configuration mode that allows organizations to continue to use Skype for Business Server for their chat and enterprise voice needs, but move their meetings workload to the cloud.
Any version of Skype for Business Server is supported, though more recent clients will have a better coexistence experience. In addition, organizations need to be licensed for Teams, including Audio Conferencing if PSTN dial-in/dial-out functionality is required.
SoftBank has released their UniTalk calling plans to Office 365 customers in Japan. The Softbank Calling Plans enables SoftBank to sell and support PSTN calling services specifically for the Japanese market.
Audio Conferencing via Direct Routing for GCC High and GCC DoD
o Conferencing via Direct
Routing for GCC High and GCC DoD
This feature enables participants to join your organization’s meetings using a standard phone number. Configuring this feature requires your GCC High or GCC DoD organization to use its own numbers for dial-in access and all meeting dial-outs to phones are via Direct Routing.
Currently in developer preview, Personal apps can extend and customize Microsoft Teams for your organization. It provides a capability for people in your organization to use 3rd party apps within Teams.
Personal apps in developer preview has been rolled out, with a a broader target rollout in the last quarter of 2019.
The
enhanced Assignments tab now shows a clear view of what’s coming up next, when
creating a class assignment, educators can add resources from your Staff or PLC
team. Simply select Add resources on your assignment and choose it from the
file picker. You no longer need to move your content between teams.
In August the PowerApps team added videos to the release notes show casing upcoming innovations as part of the wave 2 releases. You can see the video below:
PowerApps Portals now uses the selective entity caching approach to improve reliability and performance of your portal. With this update, you can now see changes reflected on the portal immediately.
PowerApps component framework can now see changes in the test harness as they are made and push components directly into an org using the CLI.
The push capability will make you more efficient because it bypasses the custom component versioning requirements and does not require you to build your solution in order to import into your development environment.
The watch capability removes the need to reload your test harness after every change is made.
The SetFocus function gets data entered faster by having the app position the cursor in the input field where we should begin. When you go to validate, the app will take you directly to the offending entry, even if it scrolled off screen.
You can now simplify large formulas by dividing them into named sub-formulas, eliminate redundant sub-formulas, and easily work with functions that return records.
Inline navigate to all of our modern model-driven designers
To reduce the amount of clutter within your browser while building apps, Microsoft have introduced an option to open the modern view and form designers inline. To get back, you can simply press the back button in the designer.
Data source experience & Common Data Service views
New data source experience and Common Data Service views that allow adding data sources into the app, or creating new connections without inserting a control have been updated.
Also updated is enabling a Common Data Service entity view that can be selected in the property pane and the Items property. The property pane will update the Items property to add the Filter function taking the the view name as the filter.
Now in public preview, this feature enables canvas apps to be shared with guests of your organization! This enables teams of individuals made up of different organizations participating in a common business process to access the same app.
Sharing canvas apps with guests of your organization
Please note: there are also several updates for the PowerApps Unified Interface that I haven’t been able to list here, but you can find all the details from the link below:
Work-in-progress diagrams and slides in PowerPoint
You can now transform standard shapes in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel into rough outlines that look handdrawn and convey a sense of in-progress work. Sketched Shapes is perfect for building wireframes, drafting designs, or adding an artistic touch.
Work-in-progress diagrams and slides in PowerPoint
You can now get a link to an individual slide from PowerPoint and share it with recipients. This will help others land on the most relevant information without having to find what you were trying to show them through a stack of presentation slides
Recently announced, a new Yammer mobile experience to iOS and Android devices. Some highlights include a modernized feed experience that reduces visual clutter and delivers improved readability, live events, and townhalls that you can view on the go; Seen Counts to let you know how many people have viewed your messages; and group search to cut down on search time and find the information you need.
I decided to hold fire on posting a full write up from the SharePoint Conference to create a bumper edition of this month’s update.
I’ll include several of the bigger announcments coming out of SPC19, but ill include a full list of links to all the annocument recaps coming out of the event for more information.
One of the most requested features of the modern experience for SharePoint is the ability to have the default or ‘root’ SharePoint site in the full modern experience. Home sites can be any commication site in your environment, that come with ‘superpowers’ such as:
News from home sites becomes organisational news
Search from home sites becomes tenant wide
Shared branding with the SharePoint start page
Unique mobile app experience
SharePoint home sites are being targeted to be rolled out around Q3 2019.
Currently in private preview, Sensitivity Labels allow you to apply consistent security and access policies to SharePoint sites based on the sensitivity of the site.
Sensitivity labels with protection now supported
You can now experience the same collaborative capabilities for Office files protected with sensitivity labels in Microsoft 365 in SharePoint and OneDrive as files with no protection applied. Files with labels applied will be encrypted on upload by Azure Information Protection and understand the policies applied to the document by the label.
External access expiration
Tenant-scoped external sharing expiration allows admins to specify how long external users can have access to sites and their contents. Once the maximum period of time for external sharing links has been met, access if revoked unless extended by the administrator.
There have lots of improvements since the new SharePoint admin center was released to preview earlier this year. Here are some major updates from this month:
Classic features now available in new admin center
Support for performing bulk actions against a collection of sites
Ability to rename sites (GREAT NEWS!)
Improved sharing controls
Windows PowerShell cmdlet (invoke-spositeswap) that allows you to replace the root site within a tenant with an existing site (ALSO GREAT NEWS!)
A new security control (in private preview) that blocks external sharing of files in OneDrive and SharePoint until a DLP scan has been completed. This prevents overexposure of sensitive information and compliance with policies set by the tenant administrator.
DLP for restricted sharing
Another new security control (coming to private preview Q3 2019), that coincides with easy sharing with anonymous links, but once files are scanned by DLP and flagged as sensitive, anonymous access to the file is blocked.
Now in GA with SharePoint Framework 1.8, app pages make it possible to add full-page tools in SharePoint. Available through a new create page experinece, team members can add application pages to existing sites.
You can also add more Teams tabs directly into your SharePoint sites.
Out of the box sites (sites not utilising any code or 3rd party tools)
Navigation & icons
Site descriptions
SharePoint web parts (see supported web parts here)
Pages (including site asset library pages)
Managed metadata (including content types and term stores)
Additional language support
The migration tool is now localised for 11 different languages, support for Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish & English.
SharePoint 2010 migration support
Huge news for those of us still toiling away on SP2010 😀 with end of extended support for SharePoint 2010 less than 15 months away, you can now start to migrate content from SharePoint 2010 to Office 365.
Announced at SPC2019, SharePoint Server 2019 provides more flexible deployment options to include support for Azure Stack and SQL Managed Instances.
A managed instance in Azure SQL Database is a fully managed SQL Server Database Engine Instance hosted in Azure cloud. Support is also being extended for deploying SharePoint Server 2016 (SharePoint Server 2019) on Azure Stack so you can build and run SharePoint environments using consistent Azure services on-premises.
Proximity-based meeting join for Microsoft Teams Rooms means that the Teams app on your desktop or mobile will find a Teams-enabled room for you to use that is nearby and available. Available now for your desktop and mobile clients, and will start working automatically.
“Meeting started” notifications on your phone
You can now receive “meeting started” notifications on your phone when someone joins a Teams meeting on your calendar. You can join the meeting right from the notification, and skip searching for the correct meeting in your calendar.
Busy on Busy is a feature that allows callers to know a user’s status when contacting them. When a user is already in a call or meeting, this setting alerts the caller that they are on another call by playing a busy signal. This feature is automatically available in your Teams experience.
New Calls App
Voice over IP (VOIP) enabled users will now see the Calls App in the App bar in the Desktop and Web Clients, with voicemal coming soon. There is no change in functionality for existing users or calling policy configuration.
Call Me functionality
You can now join meetings through a “Call me” functionality both from pre-join screen and during the meeting. To use this feature, you need to provide a phone number where you can receive a phone call.
The new Class Materials folder in the General channel of Microsoft Teams for Education allows you to share files with students, without the ability to edit.
Manage your team and add new members straight from the Teams app on your phone. Invite guests from outside your organization via their email address using your mobile app.
Export reporting data from the admin center
You can now export Teams usage reports to CSV files for offline analysis. After selecting a report in the Analytics and reports section of the Microsoft Teams admin center, click Export to Excel.
OneDrive
Full-fidelity experience for shared libraries
You can now view shared libraries with full-fidelity from the OneDrive UI on the web. This means you can create new documents, pin important ones to the top, create views, manage metadata, share and more.
You can now use native connectors to import non-Microsoft 365 data, like data from Facebook and Twitter into the 365 cloud for archival purposes. A new records management solution helps you easily manage business, legal, and HR records in a single location.
You can now add quizzes, forms, or polls directly into Microsoft Stream videos. The Forms integration into Microsoft Stream helps presenters interact with their audience and gives them a way to solicit feedback.
You can also now securely record, upload, and share video from the Microsoft Stream mobile app.
The new question and answer feature allows you toask a question, then you or a group admin can mark the best answer – making the knowledge easier to share and reuse in the future. Additionally, a group can feature intelligent, bot-like responses to frequently asked questions.
Geo-data storage capabilities in Yammer
Microsoft are accelerating availability of in-geo data storage for Yammer in the EU, available now. This means that now Yammer messages and files attached to Yammer messages will be stored at-rest in our EU datacenters, for new Yammer networks in the EU.
Microsoft search is now generally avalible, offering a unified, consistent search experience to help you discover relevant people, content, commands, and activities across all the Microsoft 365 experiences you use daily.
The sharing links feature that blocks downloads is being updated. The updated feature will block downloads, disallow printing, or copying of a file. Block download is now available when using the “Specific people” sharing link type.
Users will be able to create “block download” links from File Explorer, Office apps, and the rest of the apps which use the common Office 365 file sharing experience.
You can now see all your tasks across Microsoft 365 in To-Do, including flagged emails in Outlook and tasks assigned in Planner. View your tasks, deadlines, and details, and plan to get more done throughout your days.
Announced this month, the general availabity of Microsoft Graph data connect. This service helps bring together productivity data from the Microsoft Graph with business data and derive deep insights about effective work patterns.
If you’ve made it this far…wow well done! Apologies this was such a long update, I wanted to make sure I included all of the updates from the SPC19, plus the various pitstops and what’s new blog posts for each of the products we cover in our monthly update.
Finally, the main inspiration for this monthly update, Jim Naroski’s new in 365 video series seems to have changed – with no more Jim. This change for me is definately for this worst, as expressed in the comments section too by the looks of it. Hopefully its a one time thing, but if not Jim’s personal touch to delivering all the latest 365 news spurs me on to continue my own series.
Files restore offers a self-service recover solutionthat allows administrators and site owners to restore files from any point in time during the last 30 days. Look for a new “Restore this library” option within the library settings panel.
Files restore example for SharePoint document libraries
Long awaited modern document sets will update the user interface to bring them inline with modern sharepoint. Document sets allow you to group related documents together using shared metadata. Modern document sets also unlock the same intuitive user actions like drag and drop content, link to content that lives outside the document set, pin files and much, much more.
Audience targeting is a new feature within the news and highlighted content web parts that enables authors and site owners to tag news articles with Azure Active Directory groups to filter content through web parts to people within those groups.
Author reply emails for comments, replies and likes
Now when someone comments on your page or news post, SharePoint notifies you via email. Multiple comments will be batched so that you receive a single email. This feature will start rollout to targeted release in April, with worldwide rollout currently scheduled to be completed in mid-June 2019.
Coming soon are three new connected web parts for SharePoint Online that allow you to display data from list and library web parts. With the List Properties, File Viewer and Embed web parts you can now connect to a data source and interact with lists and libraries in new ways.
Multi-Geo in SharePoint Online and Office 365 Groups
SharePoint Online and Office 365 Groups now joins Exchange Online and OneDrive in having the ability to enable where SharePoint sites and their content is stored.
Multi-Geo in SharePoint and Office 365 Groups enables global businesses to control the country or region where shared resources like SharePoint Team Sites, Office 365 Groups content (associated SharePoint Sites and Groups mailboxes) are stored at-rest.
Autodesk AutoCAD integration for SharePoint and OneDrive
New integrations with Autodesk connect OneDrive and SharePoint to the drafting tools available through AutoCAD. As you work with DWG files across these applications, you can open and edit them in the AutoCAD desktop application, the AutoCAD mobile app, and the new AutoCAD web app.
Flexible image types for company logo’s in the Office 365 navigation bar
You can now use larger, more flexible image types to upload your company logo in the Office 365 navigation bar. You will be able to upload a custom logo of any file size/ format via a URL in order to improve the clarity of the logo image that your users see.
Improvements to the Office 365 group “hover cards” so that you can act on the group within the context of what you’re doing, rather than going to a separate page. You can search through all group members, renew the group per any set expiry, and approve pending members.
Praise in Microsoft Teams is the new way to show your appreciation and encourage each other at work. Send in a 1:1 chat or post it to a channel for the entire team.
You can now request on behalf of someone else to join a private team. Teams can be created as either private, where admins control membership, or public, where anyone in the organization is welcome to join.
Increased member limits
Organisation wide teams now have higher size limits, so they can have up to 5000 members in a team. Global administrators can easily create a public team that pulls in every user in the organisation and keeps the membership up to date with Active Directory as users join and leave.
Org-wide teams now have higher size limits
Show/ hide teams
It’s now much easier to keep your teams list tidy. What used to be Favorite and Remove from favorites is now Show and Hide. Choose which teams and channels you want to show in your teams list and hide the rest. You’ll still get notified when @mentioned, they just won’t clutter your teams list.
OneDrive is introducing golden folders with subtle, yet noticeable clues emblazoned on the icon to remind you of the contents and sharing status of each folder. Golden folders are being rolled out across mobile and web in OneDrive, SharePoint and connected experiences in other apps.
Golden folders in OneDrive and the OneDrive mobile app
The OneDrive sync client lets you can access and share all your files directly from your desktop in Windows File Explore or macOS Finder. Some new updates for the sync client include:
Self-help option: “Illegal files names not syncing” A new in-app resolution to sync errors – like when using an Asterix “*” symbol or any file name starting with “~$” – to help avert and solve naming blockers, to then rename the file and continue with upload
Request assistance Look for a new “Get Help” option in the OneDrive activity center on your desktop. This enables people to initiate a support ticket.
Prompt for pending uploads And one last “wait, before you go” feature… the OneDrive sync client will also notify users when they have pending uploads when the computer is shutting down or going into standby
Block download option for specific people sharing link
You are now able to use the “Block download” functionality that allows people to block recipients from downloading, copying and pasting shared content when using the “Specific people” style sharing links.
Users will now be able to save Office files with missing required properties. This change only applies to the Office files synced by the OneDrive sync client. Additionally, users can add, or update required properties for a document by navigating to the file in the SharePoint document library and entering the appropriate value.
The Yammer conversations wep part enables you to integrate topics, groups or users into SharePoint. This combines the social nature of learning across organizations with the content and knowledge management powers of SharePoint.
The Yammer Highlights web part, provides a quick overview of active conversations and a targeted portal to specific groups or conversations in Yammer.
Microsoft Search in Bing Preview includes Yammer conversations
Yammer conversations or conversations between co-workers will now start appearing Microsoft Search in Bing. Microsoft Search will only return information and files that you have permission to see.
Microsoft have updated their available icon set, with nearly 350 new icons being added to choose from. You are able to rotate, resize, and recolor the icons without any loss in the quality of the image. You can also separate the icon into its components and use only the pieces you want.
The Power BI web by example connector allows customers to scrape data from HTML pages. It supports ingesting any data element on the page, beyond just HTML tables. You can now automatically suggest Power BI tables based on HTML element repetition patterns.
Compliance Manager now allows you to create custom risk assessments of any application used in your organization. This customised assessments capability enables IT to import their own security and compliance controls into Compliance Manager, including those for corporate policy, local law, and industrial standards.
Office Security Policy Advisor is a new intelligent
service, now available in preview, that uses behavior-based analysis to help IT
admins to quantify the risks and benefits of applying a tailored policy, and
monitor policy health over time, for their Office clients.
Admins can now deploy policies with a single click and easily update, or even roll back, policies.
Take a look at some of the best bits for the improvements and enhancements to Microsoft 365 throughout February:
SharePoint
SharePoint Migration Tool updates
The SharePoint migration tool now supports migrating content types and managed metadata term stores for SharePoint Server 2013. Global tenant admin permissions are required to do so.
Also, many of the on-premises SharePoint web parts can be migrated into Microsoft 365. Examples being blogs, chart viewer, content search, list form, list view media plus many more.
You can now pretty much migrate every element of a SharePoint site that is most important to you such as web parts, pages and site navigation.
Drag and drop to re-order the left-hand site navigation
You can now re-arrange the order of your site navigation elements with a nice, user friendly drag and drop gesture. This removes the multiple clicks involved in he ellipsis, move up or down options of old. This new gesture also works for dragging/dropping into a sub-navigation location.
Drag and drop the left-hand site navigation
Bulk check in/out
This one I’ve been waiting for awhile for! You will soon be able to check in/out multiple files at the same time form the modern ribbon in a document library.
Bulk check-in/out documents from a modern library
File signals
File signals or status icons are being added into SharePoint to add visual clues regarding the status of a file, such as check-out status, sharing, DLP blocks or missing metadata. This applies to modern lists and libraries.
File signals give visual clues regarding the status of a file
Column totals
A revamp of an old favorite, column totals and subtotals are coming to modern lists and libraries. These totals and subtotals are displayed in the footer. This is a welcome change from the old total count in classic views!
Modern column totals
Add columns between columns and drag and drop
You can now insert new columns in place between existing in and modern list or library view, plus move a column around by simply dragging the header to a new location in the view.
Adding a column between an existing column in a modern SharePoint list or library
Smarter file hover cards
The file hover card gives you a sneak peek into your most important files. Now, as soon as your hover over a file you will be able to see important stats like number of views, who’s viewed and who’s modified. This functionality is now being extended to almost all file types.
This new experience will also appear for files listed in your Shared by Me view.
Hover over a file in a SharePoint library or OneDrive folder to see more information about a file
Microsoft Teams
Priority notifications and message delegation
Priority notification alerts will notify a recipient to an urgent message on their mobile and desktop devices and repeat the alert every two minutes for up to 20 minutes, until a response is received.
Priority notifications in Teams
Also coming soon is message delegation. Message delegation enables a recipient to delegate messages to another colleague when they are unavailable.
Message delegation in Teams
Priority notifications are currently in private preview.
Microsoft Authenticator allows you to receive security notifications for important events on your personal Microsoft Account. When you receive a notification, you can quickly view your account activity to take action if needed.
Microsoft Authenticator can be used to add two-step verification for added security if needed. It supports fingerprint, face ID or PIN authentication.
