How goes your resolutions so far? We here at Microsoft are resolved to continue to bring you new features and refinements that give you the best productivity tools and experiences a tech subscription can buy.
To start the year, January 2021 brought many new offerings: Yammer notifications in Teams, inclusive Yammer reactions, OneDrive settings in SharePoint admin center, 250GB file uploads, Microsoft Lists app for iOS, Lists rules, Lists forms customization, task publishing, and more. Details and screenshots below, including our audible companion: The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: January 2021 podcast episode – all to help answer, "What's rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?"
In the podcast episode, get a bonus discussion with Dan Holme (LinkedIn | Twitter), principal product manager lead on the Yammer and Groups team at Microsoft. Dan and I chat about his recent move to the Yammer engineering team after year in SharePoint product marketing. We zeroed in on Yammer tech: Yammer communities, latest Yammer + SP innovations, including a progress check sneak peek at future Yammer investments. We also touch on his new life in Arizona, being closer to family, warmer weather (not jealous, not jealous), and more.
![Dan Holme, Principal Product Manager Lead on the Yammer and Groups team (Microsoft) [Intrazone guest].](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/250870i18B2C8B3D2F7B4CA/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Dan - IZ RP - Jan-2021.jpg")
All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of January 2021 (possibly early February 2021).
Inform and engage with a dynamic employee experience
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.
Notifications from Yammer communities in the Microsoft Teams Activity feed
With millions of employees working remotely or in hybrid environments, it’s more important than ever for employees to feel connected. Teams makes it easier to collaborate with others, create workspaces, chat, meet virtually with others, and integrate your business solutions all from a single platform.
Last year, Microsoft released the Communities app for Microsoft Teams, bringing all your Yammer communities and conversations into Teams. And this month, that integration goes to the next logical level. Now, you will receive Yammer notifications in the Teams Activity feed on web, desktop, and mobile.
This means that you can be notified in Teams for high-value scenarios—when announcements are made in communities that you are a member of, and when you are @mentioned in a conversation. You can then like, read, respond to the post, and react with our new inclusive reactions - without leaving Teams.
- Learn more.
- Roadmap ID: 64015.
Inclusive Yammer Reactions
We believe that Yammer, a tool that connects people and helps build communities, has an important role to play for a sense of belonging and inclusion. And with the build for inclusivity, we celebrate it as well.
We want everyone to feel a deep sense of representation when interacting within the new Yammer. Once you select your skin tone (which you can set in both on web and mobile), you can react quickly without having to decide every time you reply.
Yammer will be the first of the Microsoft 365 products to offer inclusive reactions. We are excited to lead the charge with other product groups at Microsoft in keeping inclusivity at the center of everything we do.
- Learn more
- Roadmap ID: 71785.
Here, too, is a good summary of all Yammer innovation launched in January 2021.
OneDrive settings move into the SharePoint admin
Aligning to our coherence and modernization efforts, we are working to unify these experiences by bringing consistent design, naming conventions, look and feel, and more to enable a smoother admin experience across the Microsoft 365 admin suite. We’re happy to announce that you will have holistic control over OneDrive and SharePoint in the same location.
Now, from within the SharePoint admin center, you can:
- Control internal and external sharing
- Set user access controls
- Manage default storage limits
- Enable user device notifications
- Specify retention policies
- And manage sync controls for OneDrive
- This all alongside managing sites, policies, migration and more - to best control and manage your vast intelligent intranet from a single admin center.
- Learn more.
- Roadmap ID: 68814.
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.
250GB file uploads
250 is the new 100. Bring the GBs! Remote work and on-demand learning increases the need to share large files – like 4K /8K video files, 3D models, CAD files, or large scientific data sets-with your co-workers, clients and peers – reliably and securely.
We’re making it easier than ever for you to store, sync, and share large files in Microsoft 365. Our latest improvement will help increase the upload file size limit for Microsoft 365 from 100 GB to 250 GB—which includes uploads of files into SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive.
So, gain more flexibility with 250 GB file size support across Microsoft 365.
- Learn more
- Roadmap ID: 70558.
Microsoft Lists app for iOS
Your iPhone, and soon iPad, users will now be able to access their lists on the go anytime anywhere. Microsoft Lists is a Microsoft 365 app that helps you track information and organize work. List is simple, smart, and flexible, so you can stay on top of what matters most to your team.
The app is fully functional - giving you the agility to create lists (from scratch and using our ready-made templates), manage list items, share lists, take lists offline, work in the dark with dark mode, and more.
Notes:
- To sign in, the Microsoft Lists app for iOS requires a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscription plan where SharePoint is included. You cannot sign in with a consumer Microsoft account credentials.
- iPad support coming soon
- And, we are working on a Microsoft Lists app for Android and will have more to share later this year.
- Learn more. Install the app today on your iPhone: visit https://aka.ms/MSLists/app/iOS from your device.
- Roadmap ID 64161.
Microsoft Lists: Rules
Create simple if/then rules, based on changes to list information, to set reminders and send notifications. Users with edit permissions on the list can create and manage rules. Users with read-only permissions can’t create or manage rules.
Once the feature is available to your users, they’ll be able to create a rule by selecting Automate and then Create a rule in the list command bar near the top of the page.
Learn more: blog, plus a few help articles:
- Roadmap ID: 64163.
JSON list form customization: footer, header, body text
You can configure the list form in a list or library with a custom header, footer, and the form body with one or more sections with fields in each of those sections. The form configuration does not change the data in the list item or file; it only changes how the form is displayed to users who browse the list or library. Anyone who can create and manage views in a list can use form configuration to configure the form with header, footer, and body with sections.
- Learn more
- Roadmap ID: 63519.
Related technology
Push tasks from corporate to frontline workers with task publishing in Teams
Task publishing is now generally available. Your leadership can create tasks centrally at the corporate level and publish them to targeted frontline locations like stores, clinics, or factories. Tasks can be assigned to all frontline teams or specific locations based on customizable publishing characteristics like size or layout.
After tasks are assigned, frontline workers see a simple list of their task assignments through Teams, while corporate has full visibility into progress across all locations.
- Learn more
- Roadmap ID: 59719.
The new WorkLab site from Microsoft
WorkLab leverages Microsoft expertise and research, as well as customer voices, to spark conversation on the changing world of work. You'll find stories like Together mode’s origin story (who knew Stephen Colbert was involved?) to tips on how to improve your meeting culture. You’ll hear from an expert on workplace friendships; learn about the technology opportunity for frontline workers; and discover new ways to find balance in the ever-evolving workday.
- Visit the WorkLab site today.
Microsoft Content Services whitepaper
Mainly want to share a link so you can read about our approach to grow your organizational intelligence with knowledge and content in Microsoft 365 - for those interested to go deeper in understanding our broad range of knowledge and content management capabilities.
This whitepaper showcases Microsoft Search, Microsoft Stream, Yammer, and Workplace Analytics. It's a good read. A good, foundational primer before jumping into tech like SharePoint Syntex and what's coming for Topics (pictured above) in Microsoft 365.
- Read the Microsoft Content Services whitepaper today.
February 2021 teasers
Psst, still here? Still scrolling the page looking for more roadmap goodness? If so, here is a few teasers of what’s coming to production next month…
- Teaser #1 | SharePoint web part toolbox updates [Roadmap ID: 70668]
- Teaser #2 | Microsoft Search in classic SharePoint sites [Roadmap ID: 57131]
… shhh, tell everyone.
Helpful, ongoing change management resources
- "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 | UserVoice
- OneDrive Facebook | Twitter | OneDrive community blog | UserVoice
- 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 – January 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 questions. 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.
Appreciate your time,
Mark Kashman – senior product manager (SharePoint/Lists) | Microsoft)
Subscribe to The Intrazone at aka.ms/TheIntrazone, or where you get your podcasts (direct links to The Intrazone on various podcast platforms:
And listen and subscribe to other Microsoft podcasts: aka.ms/microsoft/podcasts
