Reinventing SharePoint business process at Microsoft Ignite 2018

It’s a very busy week at Microsoft Ignite 2018.  We’ve been working on all the enhancements we previewed at SharePoint Conference in May 2018, and we hope you’ve been able to enjoy the featured role for SharePoint, PowerApps and Flow in some of our keynote demos this morning, and available for replay on our site. 

Here are our highlight announcements for business apps in Office 365.

• Easy list creation – Build new SharePoint lists from the structure of existing lists or Excel tables [Coming Q4 2018]
• Predictive indexing – Add indexes to lists and libraries of any size, up to 30 million items [Coming Q4 2018]
• Location column – Add a new column type to any list or library to search and tag data with map coordinates, name, mailing address and more. [Coming Q4 2018]
• Conditional formatting – Add conditional color coding to SharePoint columns without using scripting [Coming Q4 2018]
• View formatting – Cut and paste scripts to create conditional formatting and immersive experiences for any list or library [Rolling out now]
• SharePoint pages and lists in Microsoft Teams – Simply browse and add any SharePoint lists or library as a tab to any channel in Microsoft Teams [Rolling Out to Targeted Release]
• Flow for document management – Use Microsoft Flow to move and copy files in Office 365, and generate shareable links [Coming Q4 2018]
• Flow for site management – Use Microsoft Flow to build approval processes to join a SharePoint site to a hub site [October 2018]
• Flow for reminders -- Use Microsoft Flow to schedule date based reminder emails for and custom date field [October 2018]
• PowerApps support for rich text fields – Use PowerApps to view and update rich text stored in SharePoint formatted text columns [October 2018]
• PowerApps forms in SharePoint Mobile -- Link directly to list and library PowerApps-based forms while browsing lists and libraries in the SharePoint mobile application [Coming Q4 2018]
• US GCC Cloud Support for PowerApps and Flow - Run PowerApps and Flow solutions in tenants on the U.S. GCC sovereign cloud [October 2018]
• Forms file upload for groups – Allow authenticated users of Microsoft Forms connected to a group to upload file attachments to OneDrive and SharePoint [Coming 2019]
• PowerApps Auditing – Track PowerApps administrative actions inside the Office 365 audit center [Q4 2018]

Let’s look at some of these in more detail.

List Creation

We’re making easier than ever to reuse existing data as a template for new lists.  You can build new lists directly from the structure of existing lists or from Excel tables.  Copying list structures also brings over custom views and formats.  [Coming Q4 2018]

Creating lists from other lists

Location Columns

Locations can greatly enrich any business data – but coordinating multiple fields for coordinates, address, and location names can be hard.  Our new location column allows you to browse Bing-based mapping data to tag items and documents with location data.  You can even filter and sort on any aspect of the location, like city or state.  And you can also include locations in your organization directory, such as meeting rooms.  [Coming Q4 2018]

Working with location columns

Conditional Formatting

Last year we introduced column formatting, which lets you use cut-and-paste JSON scripts to bring visualization, formatting and interactivity to SharePoint columns.  Coming soon, you’ll also be able to conditional formatting without using any JSON scripts.  [Coming Q4 2018]Conditional formatting for dates

Business Apps Partner Program Charter Members

We’re not done here at Ignite 2018.  Watch for the announcement of our initial charter members of the SharePoint Business Apps Partner Program and customer case studies. [updated 27 Sept 2018].