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Microsoft SharePoint Blog
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SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: December 2023

Mark-Kashman's avatar
Mark-Kashman
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Jan 02, 2024

Ho ho ho, Merry SharePoint! We ho ho hope you found time away from screens and unwound with fun, family, and friends. December 2023 brought a lot to review AND a lot to look forward. So, without delay, in this here beginning of 2024… let, us, go!

 

We'll focus on everything that landed this past month: SharePoint eSignature, Stream: Add a survey, poll/quiz/link/text, Viva Engage: Community creation API, OneDrive app for Teams, OneDrive: Open in app, Microsoft 365 Backup (Public Preview), Microsoft Loop moves to loop.cloud.microsoft, and notification of the Delve Web retirement on Dec. 16, 2024.

 

We take a glance back and highlight the top 5 SharePoint tech items of 2023, peek ahead at 5 anticipated features slated for CY24-Q1 and shine a light on a few related items and the always-fun teasers. AND we’ve a special bonus, festive song within the companion podcast episode – titled, "It's beginning to look a lot like SharePoint" – queried at number one on the Power BI charts :).

 

Details and screenshots below, including the full audible companion: The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: Month 2023 podcast episode – all to help answer, "What's rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?"

 

All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of December 2023 (possibly early January 2024).

 

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.

 

Microsoft SharePoint eSignature

Might I get your John Hancock, please. Microsoft's native eSignature service allows you to request simple electronic signatures from internal and external recipients for a PDF document in SharePoint. Recipients sign the documents without the document leaving the trusted boundaries of Microsoft.

 

From a SharePoint document library, open the document for which you want to start the eSignature process. In the document viewer, select More options (...), and then select Get signatures (pictured below). Once sent, the status of the request is set to In progress and recipients are able to add their signatures. An email notification is sent to the creator and the recipients.

 

On the SharePoint eSignature panel, add up to 10 internal or external recipients you want to sign the document, and then select Next.

The SharePoint eSignature service is set up in the Microsoft 365 admin center. SharePoint eSignature uses simple electronic signatures. Before you begin, determine whether this feature is appropriate for your needs and then read the Microsoft SharePoint eSignature terms of service. This is a PAY-As-You-GO service with a charge per request. In order to setup SharePoint eSignature, please read the admin support documentation: Set up SharePoint eSignature

 

Stream: Add a survey, poll, or quiz to a video at specific times

Make your video interactive and more engaging by adding a survey, quiz, or poll using Microsoft Forms. You can add forms anywhere in the video timeline. Great for training scenarios or anytime you want get info and insights from your viewers in the flow of viewing.

 

A survey automatically overlays over the Stream video during playback, here showing the Microsoft Form that pops up inline.

Interactivity can be added, edited, and previewed in Stream Web App in Edit mode by users with editing permissions. You then go to Microsoft Forms to view responses and share a summary link with answers and scores in Microsoft Forms. Viewers can use video timeline markers to navigate in and out of interactive content.

 

Stream: Add a hyperlink or text callout to a video at specific times

Another way to Make your video interactive and engaging is by adding annotations that can include hyperlinks and text. This could be a call out to highlight important moments or share links to related documents and other additional resources. You can add text and links anywhere in the video timeline to help guide your viewers to the right information.

 

Creating Callout text for a Stream video in Microsoft 365 – noting an in-point and an out-point for when the text/link appears over the video while playing.

And again, Viewers can use video timeline markers to navigate interactive content.

 

Viva Engage Community creation API | Available within Microsoft Graph Beta

Many of our customers have requested this capability in the past to programmatically create communities instead of creation via Engage UI. We invite you to try this beta endpoint and provide us with feedback. Some things to note about the API:

  • It is Microsoft 365 Groups unified.
  • It supports app-delegated (user auth) and app-only access.
  • It is limited to networks in Native mode only – legacy and external Yammer networks will not be able to use this API for community creation.
  • Community creation for an existing Microsoft 365 group is out of scope.

Sample screen when submitting the API request for Viva Engage community creation.

 

Top 5 tech from SharePoint and related tech shipped in 2023

It was a Banner year. Some Marvel enthusiasts might even say it was a Bruce Banner year. And to not make you angry, I shall not delay… Two of the biggest releases were undoubtably Copilot for Microsoft 365 AND New Teams… we count and credit those behemoths for sure, but not have them count against the SharePoint top five of 2023.

 

So, counting down, here are the top 5 SharePoint and related tech features and updates from 2023:

#5: OneDrive: Simplified sharing

#4: Stream Playlists (powered by Microsoft Lists)

#3: New Stream (on SharePoint) web part

#2: Loop components in Teams channels

#1: SharePoint news to email

 

Three bonuses | One for each core Microsoft 365 persona:

  • BONUS for everyone: Microsoft Feed
  • BONUS one for admins: SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM)
  • BONUS for devs: Advances in Microsoft Graph connectors

 

OK, “The sun’s getting' real low,” time to deescalate and keep things moving into our teamwork section…

 

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 app for Microsoft Teams

By now, you may have seen or used our new OneDrive experience on the web.  And if so, you know how it makes finding and organizing what’s important to you, incredibly easy – no matter where your content is stored or how it’s shared with you.   

 

Now Microsoft Teams is giving you access to that same OneDrive experience, with all the new enhancements, directly from within Teams. The new OneDrive app for Teams is now rolling out to customers worldwide and will replace the generic Files app in Teams; this is the Files app you've seen on the left-hand rail of Microsoft Teams - now it's simply branded "OneDrive" (as it should be) :smile:

 

Highlights of the value of access full OneDrive from within Microsoft Teams.

This new experience means you’ll have a consistent and familiar file management experience across both Teams and OneDrive Web. To learn more about the OneDrive app experience for Teams, please check out the Microsoft Teams post: Effective file management with the next generation of OneDrive app for Microsoft Teams  

 

OneDrive: Open in app

Fewer clicks, tighter integration, less content leaving your tenant trust boundaries. In the same way that you can open a Word, PowerPoint, or Excel file in their respective desktop apps, you can now open any file in its desktop app directly from OneDrive, edit it, and the changes will sync to OneDrive. From OneDrive’s My Files or SharePoint’s Documents, users can now select Open in app to open a file in its native app.

 

Open any file from OneDrive for Web in its native desktop app.

Note: this feature is powered by OneDrive’s Sync – it requires having OneDrive.exe installed on the user’s machine. In case it’s not running, 'Open in app' will start the OneDrive executable. 

 

Microsoft 365 Backup (Public Preview)

Microsoft 365 Backup Service is a product offering spanning across the OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange Online services. This service provides customers with a consistent, cross product solution, to recover their Microsoft 365 data from cataclysmic events such as: at scale ransomware attacks, or malicious/accidental data deletion/corruption by end users.

 

Microsoft 365 Backup architecture | Data never leaves the Microsoft 365 data trust boundary or the geographic locations of your current data residency. The backups are immutable unless expressly deleted by the Backup tool admin via product offboarding. OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange have multiple physically redundant copies of your data to protect against physical disasters.

Microsoft 365 Backup Service is available on a pay-as-you-go basis and can be enabled through the Microsoft 365 admin center. Global admins can backup and restore content across the defined services (SPO/ODB/EXO). To protect content for any defined service, they need to create a backup policy for that service and add the relevant sites/accounts/mailboxes that they want to protect to that policy. SharePoint admins can backup and restore content for both SharePoint and OneDrive but not Exchange. Similarly, Exchange admins can backup and restore content only for Exchange but not SharePoint and OneDrive; per boundaries and delegation of each admin role.

 

Related technology

SharePoint Embedded (Public Preview)

At its core, Microsoft 365 offers industrial strength capacity and management for your critical enterprise content in the apps you use every day. And much of that is based on the foundational content management capabilities of SharePoint. Imagine if you didn't have to build a robust content store for your line of business application…

 

We’re pleased to have announced that SharePoint Embedded, a new way to build custom content apps for enterprises and ISVs, and it's now in public preview. SharePoint Embedded offers a headless, API-only pattern to build content apps that integrate management capabilities like collaboration, security, and compliance into any app by storing content inside an enterprise’s existing Microsoft 365 tenant.

 

Slide as presented during Jeff Teper’s opening keynote (November 28, 2023), to highlight how SharePoint Embedded is designed, “Build rich applications that go beyond Microsoft 365 with fully managed and controlled content inside your org trust boundary.”

SharePoint Embedded is available now for public preview, with general availability planned for mid-2024. It’s available under pay-as-you-go consumption terms, meaning you pay for the storage you use and the volume of API calls and data transfers – without the need for additional user licenses.

 

Microsoft Loop app transitioning to the cloud.microsoft domain

The Microsoft Loop app will soon, if not already, become available at the *.cloud.microsoft domain, accessible at https://loop.cloud.microsoft. Note: MC699714 · Published Dec 19, 2023

 

loop.cloud.microsoft is the new URL/domain for Microsoft Loop in Microsoft 365, updating loop.microsoft.com.

The cloud.microsoft domain was provisioned in early 2023 to provide a unified, trusted, and dedicated DNS domain space to host Microsoft’s first-party authenticated SaaS products and experiences. The cloud.microsoft domain has been a part of standard Microsoft network guidance on domains and service endpoints since April 2023. If you are currently following this guidance, this change should not impact users in your organization using the above applications under the new domain. 

Users will be redirected from https://loop.microsoft.com to https://loop.cloud.microsoft automatically. No specific user action is required. Admins should ensure that connections to *.cloud.microsoft are not blocked from their clients and enterprise networks. This should require no action if standard Microsoft network guidance on domains and service endpoints is being followed.

 

The legacy SharePoint Invitation Manager is being retired

This platform is currently used only when Document Libraries are shared externally or when an external user is shared with a custom role. These flows will now use Entra B2B Invitation Manager instead. This means that these flows will now also respect any policies or settings in the Entra B2B admin center. 

 

Microsoft will retire Delve Web on December 16, 2024
[Original, official message center post, MC698136, published Dec 14, 2023]

 

Originally announced by Satya Nadella at the Convergence Conference on March 16, 2015, then "Office Delve" was described as "an experience within Office 365 that surfaces relevant content and insights tailored to each person. It is powered by the Office Graph, an intelligent fabric that applies machine learning to map the connections between people, content and interactions that occur across Office 365." Plus, a small bit of trivia: The original codename for Delve was "Project Oslo" – Oslo being the hometown of the Fast product team – our original engineering team behind Delve, now driving Microsoft Search and people experiences across Microsoft 365.

 

Screenshot of Delve overview slide, as presented at Microsoft Ignite | May 4 – 8, 2015 | Chicago, IL.

We've always considered Delve as the first Microsoft app to tap into and realize the value of what we now call Microsoft Graph. And today, nearly every Microsoft 365 app and service is tuned and tied to Microsoft Graph; we learned a lot through Delve; much of what you use today was informed by it.

 

Screenshot of Office Graph (now Microsoft Graph) visual overview slide, as presented at Microsoft Ignite | May 4 – 8, 2015 | Chicago, IL.

We will be retiring Delve on December 16th, 2024. Most of the features and value offered by Delve today are already available and improved in other experiences in Microsoft 365. The main one being Profile Cards in Microsoft 365.

 

Here is a list of features offered in Delve and the experiences we recommend using instead:

  • Delve Home – discover relevant documents recommended on Office.com, in Office apps and in Profile Cards. [“For you” recommendation in OneDrive and Using search efficiently for organizational content]
  • Delve Profile – view profile data in the Profile Cards cross M365, through people in search on Office.com and search in SharePoint. [Profile cards in Microsoft 365]
  • Edit profile – a new edit profile experience tightly coupled with Profile Cards are being developed and will be released in second half of 2024. It is also possible for users to edit their profile data in the SharePoint profile edit experience (editprofile.aspx).
  • Organizational view – exists in the Profile Card and as a dedicated experience in Org Explorer [Org Explorer (requires Viva license)]
  • Favorites – favorites on Office.com and OneDrive is not connected to Delve and is a good option for users with similar functionality and improved availability. [Favorites in OneDrive]
  • Note: Boards found in Delve Web will not be replaced.

 

January 2024 teasers + 5 roadmap item highlights coming CY24-Q1

Now, to kick off our teasers section this month, I wanted to look-look ahead-ahead, first beyond next month, to highlight 5 interesting, anticipated features live on the public roadmap -- projected to begin roll out in CY24-Q1 that's Jan-Mar 2024. We’ll then narrow in on two teasers for January 2024.

 

5 interesting features live on the public roadmap, aka, long-term teasers projected to begin roll out in CY24-Q1:

 

  1. Collaborate on SharePoint pages and news with co-authoring [Roadmap ID: 124853]
  2. Microsoft Viva: Viva Amplify - Publish to Viva Engage [Roadmap ID: 185105]
  3. Microsoft Teams: Ability for meeting participants to edit their display name [Roadmap ID: 122934]
  4. Microsoft Graph: SharePoint Pages API (Preview) [Roadmap ID: 101166]
  5. Microsoft Viva: Viva Goals in People Profile Cards [Roadmap ID: 117453]

BONUS long-term teaser: Microsoft Teams: Loop components in Teams chat for GCC [Roadmap ID: 93163]; coming ~ CY24-Q2

 

Review these and more on the public Microsoft 365 roadmap - anytime you like.

 

January 2024 teasers

  • Teaser #1: Community Campaigns in Viva Engage [Roadmap ID: N/A] 
  • Teaser #2: Microsoft Teams: Discover Feed in Channels [Roadmap ID: 187084]

… shhh, tell everyone about everything that’s public.

 

Upcoming events and helpful, ongoing change management resources

    • 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 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)

 

The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop - December 2023 graphic showing some of the highlighted release features.

FYI | “It's beginning to look a lot like SharePoint” lyrics

[Original "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" song written by Meredith Willson. | Parody lyrics written and sung by Mark Kashman (lightly out of tune; right on time; embedded within the above podcast episode, “SharePoint Roadmap pitstop: December 2023”) :stareyes:]

 

It's beginning to look a lot like SharePoint

Everywhere you scroll

Create a site with ease

Design it as you please

Web parts make each page whole.

 

It's beginning to look a lot like SharePoint

Powering the M365 apps you adore…

Oh the common collab you'll see

Across the pages, sites, files, videos, lists, loops, whiteboards, and more… will be

In your common content store.

 

It's beginning to look a lot like SharePoint

No matter where you post

A Stream video on each page

One from your CEO in Viva Engage

It's a wonderful employee experience host.

 

Yes, it's beginning to look a lot like SharePoint

The grandest of all content stores

And the prettiest home site you'll see

Is Viva Connections under the tree

Your New Teams front door.

 

Sure it's SharePoint… belov'ed SharePoint… once… more….

Updated Jan 03, 2024
Version 4.0
the intrazone
  • Kim Hubbard's avatar
    Kim Hubbard
    Copper Contributor
    Jan 08, 2024

    Mark-Kashman , I was excited to see the SharePoint eSignature feature because it's a challenge we have as a company to gather "signoffs" or attestations from employees on content - which could be SharePoint pages or documents.  The attestations could be for something like a change to a corporate policy, or a work instruction, where we need to gather and report that the employee has acknowledged that they have read and understood the content.  There could be thousands of employees who need to signoff on a communication.  We also need to have insight into who has signed off and who hasn't.    For years in SharePoint on prem, we used the circulations template, and have struggled since to find a replacement for that template since.    Can you provide any suggestions on what could be used for this case, keeping in mind that often it is our front line leaders on the shop floor that are issuing these types of communications.  Thank you.

  • Curt Kessler's avatar
    Curt Kessler
    Brass Contributor
    Jan 11, 2024

    Tried to start the process of getting eSign setup. The documentation is terrible. No instructions for setting up EVERYTHING you need (I get stuck at what Azure plan I need to use, but nothing says how to set that up if you don't have one). This process is a mess. I really wanted to use this, but we may just go to Adobe or DocuSign for simplicity even though those are outside of our main systems. I want a license I sign up for, apply to a user group for access, and be done with it like for everything else. Or at least proper documentation that starts at the beginning, tells you step by step what to do/setup, and not assume anything. Azure is already WAY too complicated to use occasionally, having us go through this with little or no detail means it fails. What Azure plan do I use? Where do I set that up? How to I get that to show in the drop down (another of ours doesn't)? How do I limit people with access?