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SharePoint roadmap pitstop - November 2024

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Mark-Kashman
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Dec 03, 2024

Review everything that landed in November 2024, plus five announcement highlights from Microsoft Ignite 2024.

It's a busy post-#MSIgnite pitstop – Time to get up to speed AND look ahead. 

This month we look at everything that landed in November 2024: Viva Engage: Updates for the Copilot adoption community, Copilot Pages, Add Approvals to any SharePoint document library, Teams: New chat and channels experience, Teams: New calendar experience, and Windows Server 2025 (GA).  

Plus, we share highlights from Microsoft Ignite 2024 - Five announcements from across the Microsoft portfolio. And within The Intrazone episode, you'll also hear a segment of audio from Maya Rodrig - from the Microsoft Loop team - summarizing Copilot Pages alongside BizChat. 

Details and screenshots below, including our audible companion: The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: November 2024 podcast episode – all to help answer, "What's rolling out now (and what’s coming) for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?" 

All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of November 2024 (possibly early December 2024). 

Inform and engage with dynamic employee experiences. 

Build your intelligent intranet on SharePoint in Microsoft 365 and get the benefits of investing in business outcomes – reducing IT and development costs, increasing business speed and agility, and up-leveling the dynamic, personalized, and welcoming nature of your intranet.  

 

Microsoft Viva Engage: New features for Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption community. 

This is a Viva Engage adoption community we help you establish and use sharing updates and insights for Microsoft 365 Copilot. As a Microsoft 365 admin, you will have access to new suggested content covering timely Copilot updates and best practices and the ability to easily upload documents and leverage AI to generate Q&A pairs using Answers Intelligent Importer.  

Expanded view of the new Microsoft Viva Engage “Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption” community, within Microsoft Teams.

As of August 2024, you can now enable a new type of community, a community in Viva Engage, specifically built to facilitate the rollout and adoption of Copilot in your organization. Establish a place within your Microsoft 365 tenant where people can ask questions, seek support from both their peers and IT admins, share best practices, and learn more from articles and quick tips on how best to use Copilot. 

Every month, there will be new suggested content to highlight new end-user features in Copilot. This is crafted from the monthly Copilot emails that are sent to the licensed users for customers who opted into Microsoft direct to end-user emails. This pre-curated content can be leveraged by community admins to better prepare, plan, train, and roll out Copilot features to end users. 

 

Copilot Pages 

This is the first step in our contemporary design system for knowledge work. Copilot Pages is a dynamic, persistent canvas within Copilot chat (aka. BizChat) designed for multi-person collaboration; to turn insightful Copilot responses - when in research and discovery more, into something durable with a side-by-side page that you can view and edit and, when ready, share with your team to collaborate - to better organize complex information. 

You can return to a page at any time by clicking the link in chat or the Open Page icon at the top of the associated Copilot session. Additionally, users can view all their pages in the Pages module in Microsoft365.com where they can also collaborate with others. 

Created pages are stored in a personal, user-owned SharePoint Embedded container. The container is lifetime-managed with the user account, so like OneDrive, the container and its content adhere to user account activity and management policies - for use, retention, deletion, etc. 

FYI | Get started in the Microsoft 365 app + its new Pages module:  

Teamwork updates across SharePoint team sites, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams 

Microsoft 365 is designed to be a universal toolkit for teamwork – to give you the right tools for the right task, along with common services to help you seamlessly work across applications. SharePoint is the intelligent content service that powers teamwork – to better collaborate on proposals, projects, and campaigns throughout your organization – with integration across Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Yammer, Stream, Planner and much more. 

 

SharePoint: Add approvals to any document library. 

This capability started in Microsoft Lists. And since document libraries are built on the Lists platform, you can now establish simple review and approval business flows from the Automate dropdown menu from the command bar in SharePoint document libraries in Microsoft 365 into the Microsoft Teams Approvals app.  

Once enabled, you'll see the "Approval status" column appear - To start and track approvals in SharePoint and connect with the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams.

After approvals are enabled, a user can create a file and submit it for approval. By creating an approval request and specifying the approver, the request will appear in the Approvals app in Microsoft Teams or can be approved directly in the library in SharePoint. Once approved, the file metadata is updated. 

Note: When editing files, any in-flight approvals will be cancelled if changes are saved. To discourage edits of in-progress approvals, files will open in view-only mode in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for the web, and the same Windows desktop applications will show that the document is Marked as final. Disabling approvals will only hide the relevant columns. In-progress approvals will still be actionable in Teams. At any time, you can manually add approvals columns back into your views.  

Related technology 

Microsoft Teams: New chat and channels experience 

The new, streamlined chat and channels experience makes it easier to stay on top of what matters most and organize your digital workspace. Catch up on chat, channels, and teams in one place, create custom sections to organize conversations by topics, use filters to triage messages and more. 

The Teams team has been listening to user feedback on the pace of work and the challenges of keeping up with conversations, managing messages scattered across different locations, and triaging quickly. To address this, we’ve streamlined the chats, teams, and channels experience to make it easier for users to stay on top of what matters most. 

New filters for Unread, Chat, Channels, Meetings, and more help users focus on relevant conversation in their list. Filters persist until they are turned off. The new @mention view gathers all personal @mentions into one interactive list. Users can quickly access messages with @mentions across chats, channels, and meetings. 

  

Microsoft Teams: New calendar experience 

Alongside the new Meet app in Teams, the New Calendar app provides a single, modern, intelligent, and coherent calendar for both Microsoft Teams and Outlook users. This new opt-in experience will be available in Teams, allowing users to toggle to the New Calendar interface - relevant to Teams on Windows and Mac desktops. 

Watch | Microsoft MVP Giuliano De Luca's “How to use the New Calendar in Teams”:

To try the New Calendar, go to Calendar app in Teams and select the New calendar toggle in the top right of the Calendar. You'll see a new capability to Meet Now and Join with ID and new features such as filters, month view, split view, customizable time scales, saved views, sharing options, printing capabilities, and personalized calendar settings. There's also a nice Peek view experience to peek at meeting artifacts directly from the calendar, including a recap of completed meetings. 

It's a nice calendar upgrade in Teams - feels like your real Outlook calendar, in Teams. It also has a nice Pop-out experience: Right-click the Calendar icon to pop out the calendar for your multi-windows multitasking magnificence. 

  

Windows Server 2025 is now generally available. 

Windows Server 2025 builds on the Microsoft mission to deliver a secure and high-performance Windows Server platform tailored to meet diverse business needs. Windows Server 2025 offers advanced security, improved performance, and cloud agility. This release will enable IT administrators to deploy apps in any environment, whether on premises, hybrid environments, or in the cloud - all designed to safeguard your data and infrastructure. 

Windows Server 2025 also offers advanced multilayered security, modern hybrid cloud capabilities, and the ability to handle the most demanding workloads, including AI and machine learning.  

Discover the latest features including hotpatching, next-generation Active Directory, easier onboarding to Azure Arc for hybrid and multi-cloud management, and a simplified upgrade process.  

FIVE Microsoft Ignite 2024 highlights. 

#1 | Agents in SharePoint (GA) | Learn more. (by Adam Harmetz) 

It's time to turn SharePoint sites and documents into scoped agents that are subject matter experts for your business needs. Agents in SharePoint empower everyone to quickly surface insights, scale expertise, and make informed decisions. 

#2 | Copilot Analytics | Learn more. (by Sunita Khatri) 

Get business impact measurements ranging from out-of-the-box experiences for leaders to customizable reporting for deeper analysis. Copilot Analytics is part of the Copilot Control System, which will offer data protection, management controls and reporting to enable IT to confidently adopt and measure the business value of Copilot and agents - including agents in SharePoint. 

Copilot Analytics ‘Impact summary’ - To measure AI impact on your business.

#3 | SharePoint Advanced Management in Microsoft 365 Copilot | Learn more. (by Seth Patton)  

Microsoft 365 Copilot now will include SharePoint Advanced Management capabilities, delivering built-in content governance reports and controls to rapidly accelerate Copilot deployments and automate oversight at scale – insights to help identify and mitigate oversharing and content sprawl. 

Use SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) to prevent oversharing with fine-grained security and access policies.

#4 | Windows 365 Link | Learn more (by Anthony Smith (A.J.)) + its product page. 

This is a simple, secure, fanless, purpose-built device for Windows 365, so you can work securely in a familiar Windows desktop in the Microsoft Cloud with responsive, high-fidelity experiences. Windows 365 Link is in preview and will become generally available for purchase in select markets in April 2025 at an MSRP of $349. It's a Win/Win/Win'dows 365 Link situation. And I think you're going to like it. 

Watch | 🆕 Microsoft Mechanics episode, “Introducing Windows 365 Link”: 

#5 | Viva Engage Storyline now in Microsoft Teams | Learn more. (by Murali Sitaram) 

Enables the creation, sharing and discovery of content with others in your organization, fostering collaboration and connection through personalized content and experiences. Storyline integration into Microsoft Teams empowers you to follow updates and notifications from leadership, discover content, and contribute your ideas and perspectives while staying in your flow of work in Teams. 

BONUS | Stream + Clipchamp = Clipchamp | Learn more. (by Alli Parrett)  

The media team at Microsoft is spearheading a new, cohesive video experience for Microsoft 365, by evolving Clipchamp and Stream into a single, streamlined video solution that harnesses the strength and usage of both platforms. 

The update brings together Stream + Clipchamp value onto one, unified home page experience.

December 2024 teasers 

Psst, still here? Still scrolling the page looking for more roadmap goodness? If so, here is a few teasers of what’s to come to production next month… 

 

  • Teaser #1: Microsoft Loop – New personal Loop workspace [Roadmap ID: 422727]  
  • Teaser #2: Microsoft Syntex pay-as-you-go service: Simple document processing prebuilt model [Roadmap ID: 413430] 

 

… shhh, tell everyone. 

Helpful, ongoing change management resources  

Thanks for tuning in and/or reading this episode/blog of the Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – November 2024. We are open to your feedback in comments below to hear how both the Roadmap Pitstop podcast episodes and blogs can be improved over time. 

Engage with us. Ask those questions that haunt you. Push us where you want and need to get the best information and insights. We are here to put both our and your best change management foot forward.  

Stay safe out there on the road’map ahead. And thanks for listening and reading.  

 

Thanks for your time,  

Mark Kashman – senior product manager (SharePoint/Lists) | Microsoft)  

Updated Dec 03, 2024
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