So soon, June, we say goodbye, but not without wonderful new offerings brought forth for SharePoint and Microsoft 365.
That’s right, June 2022 brought us: New Stream (on SharePoint) web part, Playlist view in the SharePoint List web part, Viva Connections supports different audiences, OneDrive Home update, Loop Components sync with Planner and To Do, get ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot, and more. Details and screenshots below, including our audible companion: The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: June 2023 podcast episode – all to help answer, "What's rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?"
We, too, added a sneak peek of Sync Up - The OneDrive podcast (it's back!). And pulled audio of Jason Moore (VP of Lists and OneDrive) to frame the essence of OneDrive and its new Home experience that began to release in June. Last, stay to the end for a bonus snippet of the conversation between Jeff Teper and his manager Rajesh Jha - where they talk about the early days and decisions evolving BPOS > Office 365 > Microsoft 365.
All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of June 2023 (possibly early July 2023).
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.
Stream Classic webpart retirement and new Stream (on SharePoint) webpart availability
This one is for you, those who add videos to SharePoint Pages and news posts. Microsoft will retire the Stream (Classic) webpart on Aug 15, 2023, and it will no longer be available for use after this date.
The updated Stream web part will display single and multiple videos on SharePoint pages with inline playback - instead of popping you out to the Stream web app page. Whether you're highlighting a product demo, leadership update, or an event recording, the updated Stream web part will elevate your video content with transcripts, closed captions, search, chapters, and variable speed playback.
You'll find it easier to publish stunning video pages that captivate your audience.
- Learn more about transition.
- Roadmap ID: 124800
Playlist view in the SharePoint List web part
After you create a playlist - which is a new, easy-to-use Lists template that enables you to present collections of audio and video files in one nice experience - you can either share it as is - just the playlist - or now, use the List web part on a SharePoint page or news article - with the playlist view intact - to show it within the context of other content.
Imagine a quarterly review with Teams meeting recordings from various segments - all playable in sequence, alongside the PowerPoint from the meeting, any meeting notes, links to relevant sites and people, and more. The video and audio plays back without leaving the page - and everything on the page looks great across all devices.
- Roadmap ID 124808
- Learn more: Blog and Tetsuya Kawahara’s example tweet.
Create a distinct experience in Viva Connections for different audiences in the Microsoft 365 admin center
It's now in your admin hands to create and manage multiple Connections experiences and home sites targeted to specific audiences. This feature is ideal for subsidiaries and conglomerates that want to provide distinct, audience targeted experiences with relevant and personalized information, resources, and apps to their employees.
Reminder: You must have Global Admin or SharePoint admin permissions to access the Microsoft 365 admin center. Once designed and deployed, this gives you greater flexibility in how your highest-level intranet site shows up and serves your internal community.
- Admins | Learn more.
- Roadmap ID 99916, 117421
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.
OneDrive Home update
This new Home experience - for work and school accounts - lets you swiftly retrieve your important files, no matter where they reside within your organization. This past month, the two areas of focus in OneDrive Home were with the Recent view and a focus on boosting efficiency.
The Recent view in OneDrive Home displays all the files you’ve recently opened or used, regardless of whether the file is stored in your OneDrive, shared with you by a colleague, or stored in SharePoint. Now, you won’t need to go searching through multiple locations to get back to the files you were just working on. In Recent view, if you want to quickly share or favorite a file, you can do it easily. If you’re looking to get back to a specific file, you can apply quick filters to the Recent view. You can filter by file type including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF. You can also see the file activity, such as comments, shares, edits, and views, giving you an at-a-glance way to catch up on what's happened in a document since you last opened it.
The OneDrive telemetry team observed a boost in efficiency when it comes to finding and accessing your files. Their data shows that over 50% of files opened from Home happen within 10 seconds of visiting OneDrive. In comparison, just 32% of files are opened within 10 seconds in “My files” view which displays a list of folders and files. We’ve also observed an 8.5% increase in the number of users interacting with shared content.
So, get back to recent and get boosted - there's more coming, too, in the coming months.
Tasks in Microsoft Loop components sync with Planner and To Do
With this change, all tasks created in these lists will automatically sync and be visible in Planner, and assigned tasks will show up in To Do in the 'Assigned to me' smart list. These tasks will also be visible in all apps that show Planner and To Do tasks such as the Tasks app in Microsoft Teams.
As tasks are added or completed, the updates stay in sync across all the places the task list was shared, no matter where the edits are being completed.
- Learn more + related blog.
- Roadmap ID 124928
Related technology
Get Ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot
Whether or not you are participating in the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program, there are a few steps you can start taking today to help your organization get prepared for such experiences in the future. For example, you can learn more about getting your data prepared and how to detect and prevent oversharing. New technical content is available to help you learn more and answer some of the frequent questions you may have about how Copilot works, as well as about the privacy and security of your data.
Learn more about getting your data prepared for Copilot and how to detect and prevent oversharing by watching this, “How to get ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot” from the Microsoft Mechanics show.
Learn more about Microsoft 365 Copilot in this blog.
Microsoft To Do: Apple Watch app for To Do iOS
First, there was speech-to-text. And now, there is speech-to-task.
This is a simple and useful one. I just used it to add a task for myself to add Microsoft To Do + Apple Watch for The Intrazone roadmap pitstop: June 2023 - how convenient and meta.
Make sure To Do is up to date on your iOS device and then look for To Do in the list of apps on your Apple Watch.
- Roadmap ID 98122
A new community book offering, "Office 365 with SharePoint Online Cookbook Solutions: Maximize your productivity with Office 365 and SharePoint Online – published June 16, 2023 by Alex Pollard (Author)
According to Alex's book abstract: "You’ll get to grips with enabling workspace collaboration using Microsoft SharePoint Online, Teams, and the Power Platform.” It provides instructions for implementing Microsoft 365 apps, based on Alex's valuable insights; he is a Microsoft consultant with vast experience working with the full Microsoft business suite including solutions with SharePoint, Teams, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and more.
Give Alex's book a look and see if it can help maximize your productivity with Office 365.
Congratulations to the Financial Solutions firm: Allied Solutions
Sam Bridegroom (Global Administrator and Microsoft 365 advocate) and the Allied Solutions team, including Kara Seward, Erin Irick, Josh Leitman, Cassie Sanchez, and Becky Doemland - won several awards for their SharePoint-based intranet - introduced to Allied Solutions employees back in June 2022 - what they've named My Allied.
The focus on v1 sought to improve security, democratize site and content creation, improve search, and reporting - and establish their intranet on SharePoint in Microsoft 365 with bi-directional engagement between employees and company leaders -- moving beyond their previous intranet content management system that was losing functionality as web browsers advanced.
“Our intranet is 99%+ managed by our Corporate Communications team; other than 'true' admin tasks, the business runs it. We showed them around, helped them get started with the tools, and they've done some remarkable things with them. We went from concept to operational in just a few months." – Sam Bridegroom, Global Administrator and Microsoft 365 advocate – Allied Solutions.
And even more impressive, what they've added since the initial rollout in June 2022: Viva Connections brings the intranet to Teams desktop and mobile clients, Expanded us of Viva Engage to further their communications strategy, they're exploring use of new Power BI content into SharePoint and Teams to improve access to business data, and a very timely statement: They're eager to use the new Stream web part mentioned above to more seamlessly integrate video.
Congratulations Sam and team! Awards received for their SharePoint-based My Allied intranet:
- PR Daily - Winner in the Intranet Category
- Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Hoosier Chapter - Award of Honor
July 2023 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 Lists user experience (UX) update [Roadmap ID: 124867]
- Teaser #2: Microsoft Viva: Pulse [Roadmap ID: 117393]
… shhh, tell everyone.
Helpful, ongoing change management resources
- Sync Up – The OneDrive podcast (listen and subscribe today)
- Upcoming events
- Microsoft Inspire (Partner event) | July.18-19.2023 (virtual only)
- 365 EduCon - Seattle (plus PWR EduCon) | Aug.21-25.2023
- SEF 2023 | Sept.11-12.2023 (Tekniska Museet – Stockholm, Sweden)
- Microsoft Power Platform Conference | Oct.3-5.2023 (Las Vegas)
- 365 EduCon - Chicago | Oct.30 - Nov.4, 2023 (Chicago, IL)
- European SharePoint Conference | Nov.27-30 in (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
- European Cloud Summit | Dec.4-6.2023 (Wiesbaden, Germany)
- "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 | Feedback
- OneDrive | Website | Help and learning | @OneDrive | OneDrive community blog | Feedback
- 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 – June 2023. 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)
Welcome to the SharePoint Blog! Learn best practices, news, and trends directly from the SharePoint team.