Forum Discussion
Modern - all or nothing?
RobOK, you are correct that the default search in a Communication site is only within the site. You can then switch to everything. The Hub site that will come next year will solve this issue. From a Hub site you the search default will be through all connected sites.
The Hub site will also solve part of your Navigation issue. It will provide a shared top navigation for all connected sites. Default position of the current navigation of a modern teamsite will stay on the left.
Structural navigation will not be available though. The key word here is: performance. So you will have to manually create your Navigational nodes.
Search from a modern site is Microsoft Graph-driven. That simply is very different from classic SharePoint search. If you have highly structured content with lots of content types and heavily used meta deta, than Modern Search will not be very helpful.
Admittedly having not read any of the responses here, one observation I'd like to make is that check in/out is a baaaaaaaaaad practice in SharePoint Online/2016 IMHO.
Unless you have an absolute need (the only qualifying ones I can allow in my head are legal or compliance requirements, which is very uncommon), drop the check in/out step in all your [non-automated] business processes. It may have been nice in the past, and it may help keep configuration control a bit more in check, but its value really isn't there when SharePoint offers so many other features that make up for check in/out's disadvantages. The biggest issue is the fact that check in/out is a mutually exclusive concept to co-authoring, which is now the norm.
I'd be curious to know what exactly your org's check in/out requirement is and whether it's worth reconsidering for the sake of making sure there are as few bumps in the road as possible. This would also relieve the major complaint you have with the modern UI. (Not all, of course, but that's the one you called out.)
I've published an article detailing why I despise check in/out if you're curious to understand in more detail where I'm coming from. http://icsh.pt/SPCheckOut
Great note, thanks. I think at this point it is just a cultural norm that admittedly has a learning curve when people start.
Some related points (that I don't think will strongly make our case):
- a perception that a "checked out" document is being worked on, or at least you can see that someone is working on it
- versions - I'm not sure how versions work without Check In
- We use Check In comments extensively for statusing
Co-authoring is not something we use currently but maybe in the future.
EDIT: also, for some of our highly formatted documents, we have had document corruption with DOCX files vs. DOC. So for certain documents we use DOC only which I think cannot be Co-Authored.
Also, is co-authoring available in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint client software, or just the Web versions fo the programs?
I will look at your article too, appreciate your thoughts.
Rob.Co-authoring works both in the clients and in the Online versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel.
The great thing is that as soon as you open a document you can see who else is looking at or working in the document. Read this article to see how: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Collaborate-on-Word-documents-with-real-time-co-authoring-7dd3040c-3f30-4fdd-bab0-8586492a1f1d.
Regarding versioning: by default all SharePoint Online libraries keep 500 major versions of all documents. In the library settings you can change this setting to also include minor version. In that case you have to publish a document to make it a major version. When you do that you get a window were you can leave comments about the version.
About the issues you have had with highly formatted documents: I wonder how long ago those issues have been. DOCX is around for over 10 years already. I would recommend to modernize your formatted documents in this case. You are right that co-authoring does not work in .doc files.
Rebekka Aalbers-de Jong wrote:
The great thing is that as soon as you open a document you can see who else is looking at or working in the document.
When you do that you get a window were you can leave comments about the version.
About the issues you have had with highly formatted documents: I wonder how long ago those issues have been. DOCX is around for over 10 years already. I would recommend to modernize your formatted documents in this case. You are right that co-authoring does not work in .doc files.
Good points... Re; Doc vs DocX, sometimes these are emotional points not necessarily fact based! It only takes one or two examples to prove and DocX (or really Word 2016) does have bugs and file corruption. It is hard to prove it is related or not related to the file format.
We'll see....i'll start encouraging co-authoring and see if a change is coming!
Deleted Hear Hear!
