SharePoint Server Subscription Edition AMA

Hi everyone,

We're happy to announce the first set of new post-RTM features for SPSE. They're on track to be released by the end of this year, but keep in mind that these plans may change in the future for a variety of reasons.

1. Unified patch package: Starting in SharePoint 2016, we consolidated many separate monthly patch packages into 2: the "core" patch and the MUI/language patch. That's how our monthly patches have been delivered ever since, including for SharePoint 2019 and SPSE. But we heard your feedback that it's confusing to always have to install 2 separate patch packages each month, and even more confusing when we only update one patch package but not the other. So to solve that confusion, we're going to start releasing our monthly SPSE patches as a single patch package instead of 2 separate patch packages. You'll only have to install that one patch package each month to know that SPSE is fully patched.
2. Feature release rings: We know that some customers value getting new features as soon as they're ready while other customers want more time to validate feature changes to make sure there are no compatibility issues. We're going to introduce feature release rings which will let the customer control how soon new SPSE features from Microsoft will be enabled in their farms.
   • If customers opt into the Early release, then new feature experiences will be enabled in their farm as soon they're ready. These new feature experiences are supported for production use, but they may change based on customer feedback before they're available in the Standard release.
   • The Standard release is the default. New feature experiences are enabled in Standard release as soon as they're ready for all customers to enjoy by default and have finished going through additional validation in Early release.
3. Modern Lists and DocLibs: Based on customers' feedback, we're making several improvements to the modern document library and list experience. This is just a start - we'll continue to improve the list and document library experiences over time to meet the needs of our customers.
   1. “Copy” and “Move” enhancements: You'll be able to move a document to another document library in the same site or copy a document to another document library in another site, site collection, or web application.
   2. Column formatting enhancements: We're improving column formatting functionality by adding support for Excel-style expressions. You can use the same expression from SharePoint Online to customize the layout of your on-premises lists and document libraries.
   3. Bulk editing: You'll be able to multi-select list items and edit their properties at once through the editing pane in our modern UX.
4. Better SuiteNav customization: You'll have more control over the color of Suite Navigation bar in modern themes.
5. Newer Office UI Fabric: We're updating the Office UI Fabric from version 5.79.1 to the newest version in the 5.x series. Aside from bug fixes and new controls, this version upgrade allow us to start implementing highly requested features in modern list views such as "Totals in list view."

Thanks

Steve