Let us start with a mighty Mwah-hah-hah-hah of evil laughter In the spirit of Halloween. I’ve transformed into Mark “The Count” Kashman, here to guide you through all things that go bump in the night of SharePoint in Microsoft 365. I require only a SharePint of your blood in Exchange – that’s the kind of email neck attachment I like to see in my inbox.
So, return your wooden stake to its sheath. No need to fear. October 2021 brought some great new offerings: SharePoint hub to hub site association, new site templates, modern site-level term store, edit images in OneDrive and SharePoint, Calendar view in List web part, view transcripts from Teams meetings, establish official Yammer Communities, and more. So much, you’ll invite The Count in year-over-year.
You’ll find all the spooky details and screenshots below, including our frightful audible companion: The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: October 2021 podcast episode – all to help answer, "What's rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?"
In the podcast episode, I chat with Cathy Dew, senior program manager on the SharePoint team focused on the integration of SharePoint and Microsoft teams, with new ownership of SharePoint hub sites. We chat with Cathy about the new hub to hub association capability and the value of organizing your intranet and extranet in the ways that make sense and work best for your employees and partners.
All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of October 2021 (possibly early November 2021 (if they survived the night 😉).
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: Hub to hub site association
We’re adding the ability to associate a SharePoint hub site to another hub site, with a primary benefit to expand search results across multiple hubs in your organization. When hubs are associated with each other, content can be searched for and displayed on hubs up to three levels of association.
- Roadmap ID: 85613
- Learn more + "Getting started with hub site associations in SharePoint - building the hub of hubs" demo video by Cathy Dew
New SharePoint Site templates - for retail, healthcare and non-profit
This update will bring four new SharePoint site templates to retail customers, non-profits, and healthcare organizations. All allow organizations to better track, manage information, and collaborate.
Here's a few highlights about each:
- Retail: The new retail management and store collaboration templates allow retail employees to manage the store operation more efficiently and foster a better collaboration environment.
- Non-profit: The new volunteer center template will allow organizers to point volunteers to one place to find key information, access learning materials, and connect with other volunteers.
- Healthcare: The new healthcare collaboration template will allow medical practices and healthcare agencies with a safe, secure way to share information that can help you provide better patient care and reduce operational costs.
- Roadmap ID 85659.
- Learn more – view and apply all templates from the SharePoint Look Book.
Modern SharePoint site-level term store
We've updated the experience when creating and managing site-level taxonomy terms; this matches the previously updated, central term store in the SharePoint admin center. It's now easier to navigate your taxonomies and create and edit terms when classifying & discovering your Syntex and SharePoint content.
Just head to the “Term store management” option under “Site Administration” when in Site settings.
- Roadmap ID 85638.
- Learn more.
Teamwork updates across SharePoint team sites, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams
Microsoft 365 is 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.
Edit images in SharePoint and OneDrive
You'll be able to rotate, crop (both freeform crop and fixed aspect ratio crop) and flip your images - horizontally and vertically. This update also includes options to adjust the light and color saturation of your images. There’s no better feeling than watching an image transform from muted colors and low contrast to richly colored and stunning. Now it’s easy to make those transformations with adjustments for brightness, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, and color saturation.
Note: Currently, Photo editing in OneDrive and SharePoint is currently limited to JPEG and PNG formats.
- Roadmap ID: 85625
- Learn more.
Calendar view in List web part
Have you ever wanted to build out a mini-dashboard for an internal event or project schedule and needed to represent your list of information as a calendar? Well, October is your lucky month. The SharePoint List web part in Microsoft 365 allows you to display a list from your team or site on a page and customize it with your own title, view, and even size. And now, if you have created a Calendar view for your list, it will show properly in the List web part.
It's a great visual tool for your internal communications - esp. when things are date driven. I now use it all the time, and it not only looks nice, it conveys more of what I want people to see like a marked up calendar in the break room.
- Roadmap ID: 70750
- Learn more.
Related technology
Microsoft Stream: Viewing the transcript for a Microsoft Teams meeting recording
For Teams meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint that were recorded with Teams Live Transcript, you'll now be able to view the transcript from that meeting directly in the transcript pane next to the video player. And during playback, people can see the transcript and click it to jump back and forth to specific sections in the video.
This can be a real time saver when looking for that part of the meeting where the discussion turned to a topic of interest. It, too, adds a great level of accessibility to see what was spoken for meetings or any kind - planned or ad-hoc. Just turn on transcripts and the rest is there for you and your colleagues when you need it.
- Roadmap ID: 82057.
- Learn more.
Establish official Yammer Communities
Now you can designate your most important communities as "Official" to show that they are company-endorsed within the network. Things like CEO Connections, Contoso News, IT Help, HR Support, etc.). This is very similar to how you see in public social spaces, where certain people or entities are verified.
Official communities offer a way to guide employees to the correct communities when they are searching for answers by using a familiar ‘verified’ icon represented by a check mark. Network admins designate official communities in your organization, and the benefits of clarity and trust follow for end users.
- Roadmap ID: 80464.
- Learn more.
October 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: Private drafts for SharePoint pages and news [Roadmap ID: 85629]
- Teaser #2: Updates to the site creation experience [Roadmap ID: 85683]
… shhh, tell everyone.
BONUS | Three Halloween 2021 TV entertainment suggestions
Before we wrap up, and being in the Halloween spirit, I thought I'd share three recent shows that resonate the horror and fright most excellently:
- If you like monsters and a great "it takes a village" story, Sweet Home is an intense series on Netflix I highly recommend; it's gory, brave, and very entertaining. You never know who's gonna turn, or what they'll turn into.
- This one is no longer a hidden gem; it's literally killing at the virtual box office. You guessed it: Squid Game - also on Netflix; not really horror, but haunts your heart, nonetheless. Such a great series - it keeps you guessing right up to the last minute. Hey - maybe we'll play a game of Red Light, Green Light at the next community event? Ummmmm, you go first.
- And last, a very specific episode on Disney Plus - S1.Ep5 of Marvel's "What If...?" series where the Avengers are infected with the zombie plague; Superheroes that want to eat your brains - yes, please; take my word for it - it's awesome.
Helpful, ongoing change management resources
- Upcoming events + new on-demand workshop:
- Microsoft Ignite (Nov.2-4.2021; digital event) - Save the date announced | @MS_Ignite
- Microsoft Tech Community Live: Microsoft Viva Edition - a video AMA (Nov.16.2021 8am-12pm PST)
- Teams Day Online (Nov.17.2021)
- European Collaboration Summit (Nov.29 - Oct. 1.2021)
- Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference - Vegas (Dec.7-9.2021)
- 365 EduCon - DC (formerly SP Fest) (Dec.12-16.2021)
- 365 EduCon - Dallas (formerly SP Fest) (Jan.31-Feb.4.2021)
- Microsoft Lists workshop [available now on-demand]
- 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
- OneDrive Facebook | Twitter | OneDrive Community Blog
- Follow me to catch news and interesting SharePoint things: @mkashman; warning, occasional bad puns may fly in a tweet or two here and there, plus my new blog on Substack: The Kashbox.
Thanks for tuning in and/or reading this episode/blog of the Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – October 2021 (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 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, and thanks for listening and reading.
Cheers,
Mark Kashman – senior product manager (SharePoint/Lists) | Microsoft)
Welcome to the SharePoint Blog! Learn best practices, news, and trends directly from the SharePoint team.