SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: December 2020

Before. 2020. Blink. Breathe. 2021 (soon). Breathe. Begin.

 

To close out the year, December 2020 brought many a new offering: SharePoint site header updates, send pages to Yammer, “SharePoint Success” site template, add Microsoft Teams to SharePoint team sites update (aka, Teamify), Microsoft Lists adoption center, Microsoft Graph Toolkit v2.0, and more. Details and screenshots below, including our audible companion: The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: December 2020 podcast episode – all to help answer, "What's rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?" Blink. Breathe.

 

 

In the podcast episode, listen to an exclusive chat with Tejas Mehta (LinkedIn | Twitter), principal program manager on the SharePoint team who owns content services integration work with Microsoft Teams. I nabbed a 6ft-apart check-in with Tejas to talk about life for SharePoint before Teams, ongoing integration work including this month’s #teamify update, and what the future may bring in this space. Also, exclusive this month on The Intrazone, we share the Top 10 SharePoint features released in 2020.

 

Tejas Mehta, principal program manager at Microsoft (SharePoint + Teams integration) [Intrazone guest]; myself and Tejas social-distanced, 6ft-pic-nic table-apart podcasting at Sammamish Commons.

All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of December 2020 (possibly early January 2021). Blink. Breathe.

 

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.

 

SharePoint site header updates

We are making it easier to customize the header of your site. The default site header for new SharePoint sites will be the compact header instead of the standard header. Site owners will see updated options in the "Change the Look" panel, including: a minimal header which has a reduced height to provide quick, visual access to content, an extended header includes an optional background image, expanded site logo widths, and options for logo alignment - left, middle, right. And now it's easy to toggle site title label to be on or off.

 

From the upper-right gear icon, click into the “Change the look” panel, select “Header” and then customize it the way you prefer.

Now you can truly control your site's first impression, starting at the very top with the site header – just the way you want it.

 

• Roadmap ID: 63776
• Learn more

 

Send SharePoint pages to Yammer

Expand the reach and the conversation of your SharePoint pages news posts. You can now send articles from SharePoint directly into Yammer communities and include questions, polls, praise, and rich text. It's also possible to upload images and files to the post linked to the share.

 

The SharePoint Send-to-Yammer dialog provides a rich preview for media and the ability add text to the post.

Page to post in a few clicks.

 

• Roadmap ID: 66183 
• Learn more

 

"SharePoint Success" site template

Now available via the SharePoint Look Book, the “SharePoint Success” site template is a ready to deploy, customizable SharePoint communication site that helps your colleagues create high-impact sites to meet the goals of your organization. It comes pre-populated with site creation inspiration and training on how to create high quality and purposeful SharePoint sites. You'll find Microsoft maintained SharePoint training content feed, success stories, and site creation guidelines.

 

Make this site your own to establish a learning destination to help everyone make SharePoint a success for your organization.

• Learn more

 

Teams and OneDrive destinations when using Migration Manager in the SharePoint admin center

Admins now have greater visibility and choice selecting destination(s) for files and folders when moving content from on-premises file shares into Microsoft 365. New beyond SharePoint, admins can select OneDrive usernames or URLs and/or select various Teams team and channels as migration destinations - moving files exactly where you want them.

 

When moving files and folders into Microsoft 365 from on-premises file shares, admins choose OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams as destinations.

A note on credentials: You need to have access to the destination as a global admin or OneDrive/SharePoint admin to the Microsoft 365 tenant where you want to migrate your content to, and access to the source; aka, Windows credentials that have read access to any of the network file shares you plan to migrate.

 

• Roadmap ID: 68884
• Learn more

 

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.

 

Add Microsoft Teams to your SharePoint team site

We’re pleased to announce that we are making it even easier to bring SharePoint content into Teams, in the same motion of adding Microsoft Teams to your team site, aka #teamify. As you connect SharePoint to Teams, you choose what lists, libraries, and pages you want to bring into Teams as tabs in the new, default General channel.

 

Choose what SharePoint lists, libraries, and pages to bring into Microsoft Teams as tabs in the new, default General channel when adding Teams to your SharePoint team site.

By default, your team site home page will be selected, you can change it to suit your needs, and you can fully navigate the primary document library from the Files tab – just follow the new folder breadcrumbs from the channel folder up to the root of the library. This helps bring content and collaboration to more of the sites you use for teamwork excellence.

• Roadmap ID: 46990
• Learn more

 

Microsoft Lists adoption center on adoption.microsoft.com (managed by Andrea Lum)

Simplify and accelerate your time to value throughout your organization. We know your time is important, so we’ve created adoption materials to help onboard employees at scale while being confident that you are improving the employee experience.

 

For Microsoft Lists, you’ll find an adoption playbook, day-in-the-life guides, a quick start guide, a look book, internal communication templates, pointers to documentation and training, plus materials to help build an internal Lists champion program within your organization.

 

Screenshot showing the Microsoft Lists adoption center at https://aka.ms/ListsAdoption.

Learn more:

• Microsoft Lists adoption center
• Microsoft adoption center | Envision, onboard and drive value with Microsoft 365 adoption tools.

 

Related technology

OneDrive 2020 summary of highlights

It was a big year for OneDrive. And much of the value you see promoted by and for OneDrive also improves productivity experiences within SharePoint and Teams. Things like differential sync, 100GB file uploads, Add to OneDrive, expiring access for external users, and more.

 

This month’s The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: December 2020 audio companion (above) contains a segment of audio where we hear from Randy Wong, Principal PM Manager, recap 2020 and explain the 200 million monthly active user impact on the service and how the team work hard to keep pace with both scale and innovation.

 

PowerPoint slide from Microsoft Ignite 2020 highlighting the OneDrive 2020 roadmap.

The above below is a roadmap summary PowerPoint slide from Microsoft Ignite 2020, taken from the “What’s new and coming to OneDrive” session presented by Ankita Kirti and jasmo.

 

The Microsoft Graph Toolkit 2.0

A better dev toolkit is better for everyone. The Microsoft Graph Toolkit is great for developers of all experience levels looking to develop a web application, Microsoft Teams tab, or SharePoint web part that connects to and accesses data from Microsoft Graph. Collectively, it’s a collection of components and providers designed to ease app integration with Microsoft Graph - as easy as writing two lines of code. In 2.0, you'll find reusable, framework-agnostic components and authentication providers for accessing and working with Microsoft Graph:

 

• Now broken into several packages so you only get the code you need.
• A new React package, making it simpler to use the toolkit when developing React applications by wrapping all components and exporting them as React components.
• New components like the Person Card 2.0, a new To Do component, and all components have better caching, theming, localization, accessibility with general bug fixes all around.

 

1.0 was so yesterday. 2.0 is here and awaits your Graph-powered apps. Dev with it today!

 

• Learn more; article by @elisenyang

 

SharePoint and Microsoft Lists sweater backgrounds for Microsoft Teams meetings

Be the foreground. Be it in memory of the holidays, a New Year’s Eve Teams call, or you just wanna get cozy and warm on any chat or concall in 2021. SharePoint, Lists and many others got your back(ground) in Teams meetings.

 

Some examples of what the cozy Microsoft-365-app-inspored holiday backgrounds look like in Microsoft Teams; clockwise from top left: Wenvi Hidayat + SharePoint + Christmas, Ben Truelove + Lists + Christmas, Mark Kashman + SharePoint + Hanukkah + Teams, and YOU + SharePoint.

Big thanks to my colleagues Wenvi and Ben-Truelove for creating and getting these out there - and to our community members, Jason Custer and Michael Gillet.

 

Follow this all-in-one tweet thread to see all the designs (SharePoint, Lists, OneDrive, Teams, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Microsoft), and link to grad the full-res version that most captures your mood. Plus learn how to change your background for a Microsoft Teams meeting.

 

January 2021 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 | JSON list form customization: footer, header, body [Roadmap ID: 63519]
• Teaser #2 | Microsoft Lists: Integrate menu item [Roadmap ID: 64869]

… shhh, tell everyone.

 

Helpful, ongoing change management resources

• "Over 200 million users rely on SharePoint as Microsoft is again recognized as a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Content Services Platforms Magic Quadrant Report"
• "Stay on top of Office 365 changes"
• "Message center in Office 365"
• Install the Office 365 admin app; view Message Center posts and stay current with push notifications.
• Microsoft 365 public roadmap + pre-filtered URL for SharePoint, OneDrive, Yammer and Stream roadmap items.

• SharePoint Facebook | Twitter | SharePoint community blog | UserVoice
• OneDrive Facebook | Twitter | OneDrive community blog | UserVoice

• Follow me to catch news and interesting SharePoint things: @mkashman; warning, occasional bad puns may fly in a tweet or two here and there.

Thanks for tuning in and/or reading this episode/blog of the Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – December 2020 (blog/podcast). 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 questions. 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, and thanks for listening and reading.

 

Appreciate your time,

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

 

The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop - December 2020 graphic showing some of the highlighted release features.

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The Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 intelligent intranet: https://aka.ms/TheIntrazone.