May 2020 brought the Save for later web part, updated Yammer Conversations web part, scheduling pages and news, an extended site footer, ease of migration into Microsoft Teams, lists flexibility and more. Details & screenshots below, including the audible companion: Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: May 2020 podcast episode – all to help answer, "What's rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?"
In the podcast episode, I interview Simon Bourdages (LinkedIn | Twitter), senior program manager at Microsoft who works on content migration technology. Simon and I talk about the broader migration portfolio and capabilities offered by Microsoft and our partners – with a highlight on how you can bring content in from on-premises directly into Microsoft Teams.
Simon Bourdages, senior program manager (SharePoint/Microsoft) [Intrazone guest]
All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of May 2020 (possibly early June 2020).
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 home sites are LIVE - aka, available to everyone.
A home site is the top landing page for your organization’s intelligent intranet. With a simple PowerShell cmdlet, you deem a communication site the home site. It will then be a highly visible and unique entry point, including the new home button in the SharePoint mobile app.
A SharePoint home site is a communication site that is designed and designated to serve as the top portal in your organization.
In addition, your home site will be automatically setup to be an organizational news site and have organization-wide search pre-configured.
Once your SharePoint home site is set up, the home button in the SharePoint mobile app automatically takes each user to it.
So, Set-SPOHomeSite -HomeSiteUrl <siteUrl> today.
- Learn more about setting up a home site.
- If you would like to enable a home site on a new or existing SharePoint communication site, run this PowerShell command in the latest version of the SharePoint Online Management Shell: Set-SPOHomeSite -HomeSiteUrl
- Roadmap ID: 26842.
Saved for later web part is now available for modern pages
We’re adding a new way for each user to see the content they’ve saved when they view your page. There are a few places Microsoft uses the Saved for later web part, and now you can use it where it makes sense.
The Saved for layer web part shows each user the content they’ve saved when they view your page.
Page authors determine the source of Saved items that will show up: All saved items (to show all of the page viewer's items across SharePoint) or Saved items from this site (to show all of the user's saved items from the site on which the page is located).
- Roadmap ID: 57810
- Learn more how to use the Saved for later web part.
The Yammer Conversations web part gets a nice update
You'll now see the new Yammer experience embedded into SharePoint pages. You'll be able to create any type of Yammer post directly in SharePoint, start a conversation in any community, upload images and files into Yammer conversations - all directly from SharePoint.
The Yammer Conversations web part, shown here on a SharePoint home site, enables two-way employee engagement across your intelligent intranet.
It is the Year of Yammer and that includes updating the bi-directional conversation value you can build into your site and portal experiences.
- FYI | we've got a two-part discussion on The Intrazone with our Yammer leads covering all the new #YearOfYammer innovation. Part 1 is out already, and part 2 is coming next week.
- Learn more how to use a Yammer Conversations web part in SharePoint.
- Roadmap IDs 63385 and 63530.
Scheduling pages and news posts
We’re introducing the ability for SharePoint page authors to schedule pages and news posts for publication at a future date and time. SharePoint site owners will have the option to enable scheduling on their sites; note: it is disabled by default.
Schedule pages and news posts for publication at a future date and time.
When scheduling is enabled, page authors will be able to set a date and time for their pages and news posts to publish. It's that easy. Plan ahead, and rest easy knowing pages and news can go live on schedule.
If you need to edit a scheduled page to update the content or change the scheduled time and date, you must schedule the page again by selecting Schedule. If you don't do this, the page will not publish at any time. You can also edit a page and remove scheduling. In this case, you can publish the page immediately by selecting either Publish, Post news, Republish or Update news.
- Learn more about scheduling a SharePoint page or news post to go live at a specific time.
- Roadmap ID: 62892.
Pre-publish overview experience for SharePoint pages and news
When page authors select an action, such as Publish, Republish, Post news, Update news, Schedule, or Submit for approval, the pre-publish panel appears on the right. Here you'll get an overview of the site name, a thumbnail preview, and information about what happens when you publish.
Get actionable insights before you publish your page or news article in SharePoint.
The pre-publish panel also has a link to the Page details pane so authors can make changes if needed. Pre-visualization is the key to pre-publishing success.
- Learn more.
- Roadmap ID: 63257.
Extended Site Footer
The site footer in modern communication sites will now include a new layout option - "Extended" - which means you can show more content and links at the bottom of your communication pages. You can also select a distinct background color to distinguish it from the other sections above.
You can now choose an Extended layout for the communication site page footer.
Note: The site footer feature is only available on communication site site pages. They are not available for default list pages or library pages. You can add one level of up to eight links or labels.
- Learn more. For details about adding or editing links and labels, see Customize the navigation on your SharePoint site.
- Roadmap ID: 61063.
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.
Microsoft Lists (first public disclosure)
Microsoft Lists is an evolution of SharePoint lists, expanding on the ability to support a multitude of work management scenarios so you can stay on top of what matters most to your team - like tracking issues, asset management, managing events, inventory tracking and more using customizable views and smart rules to keep everyone in sync.
Lists compliment the productivity portfolio alongside task management apps like Planner, file management, group calendars, chats, meetings, note taking - all the tools to best support sharing and working together.
Microsoft Lists is a Microsoft 365 app that helps you track information and organize work. List are simple, smart and flexible, so you can stay on top of what matters most to your team.
Microsoft published 10 new items to the Microsoft 365 public roadmap to indicate all everything, like the new Lists home page, ready-made templates, customizable forms, rules, comments, creating lists in Microsoft Teams, the Lists mobile app, and more; most will land this summer in Microsoft 365, and we know in advance that the Lists mobile app will come for iOS later in the year.
We're excited to signal the evolution of SharePoint lists, aka Microsoft Lists coming soon.
Last, a Lists Intrazone FYI, we published a unique episode all about Microsoft Lists this month, chatting with our Lists engineering leads, Miceile Barrett and Lincoln DeMaris - a great, informative discussion.
- Learn more about Microsoft Lists (resource center).
- Roadmap IDs, x10: 64160, 64161, 64162, 64163, 64164, 64165, 64166, 64167, 64168 and 64169.
Conditionally show or hide columns in a SharePoint list or library form
This allows people to show or hide columns in a SharePoint list or library form based on another column's value by specifying a formula. The formula is made up of equations that perform conditional checks on certain values.
You can show or hide columns in a list form based on another column's value by specifying a formula that are equations performing conditional checks on values in a SharePoint list or library.
For example, you could hide a number column from view if the row number is equal to or less than a specific number - thus only showing data that is over a certain desired threshold to call to attention.
- To learn more about this feature, and how to work with conditional formulas, see Show or hide columns in a list or library form.
- Roadmap ID: 63518.
Create a list from a Microsoft Excel table
This is a new way to create a list, saving you time while putting the data in a location that opens up new collaborative scenarios. To create a list from Excel, you select a table of data from the Excel file.
When you create a list from Microsoft Excel, you map table data to a new list – adjusting column types before you click Create.
Before importing, you can change the column types, and all your table data will be copied in as new rows of data in the new list. You can then assign and adjust data types to other columns, enhance visuals by designing row and column formatting, use conditional rules to make the list data intuitive and helpful, set reminders and build productivity apps with Power Automate (for custom flows) and Power Apps (for custom forms); your list then becomes the foundational data store.
One important note to close out on lists from Excel… you can analyze SharePoint list items at any time back in Excel. Excel creates a table with a one-way data connection; you can click Refresh All to get the latest from the list. Note: Changes made to the Excel table will not be sent back to the SharePoint list.
- Learn more.
- Roadmap ID: 61013.
SharePoint Migration Tool makes is easy to bring content from on-prem directly into Microsoft Teams
You define your source where the files will move from, and then select a team you own or have access to determine the channel you want to use as the destination.
Welcome to the SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) – migrate file shares or Sharepoint Server sites to SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams – all in Microsoft 365.
The real value beyond clicking the magic GO button is what you can now do with that set of files for greater co-authoring, working in the browser with Office for the web, syncing files for offline use, improved thumbnail previews, and more - plus the unique benefit of having a chat experience side-by-side with your content.
- Performance guidance
- File share to Microsoft 365 guidance
- Migrating from SharePoint Server on-premises guidance
- Migrate from Box into Microsoft 365 guidance
- Message center post: MC213376.
Related technology
Microsoft Stream to record your screen
Video creators can record any window or screen, add mic or system audio, and include webcam video. There is no need to download any additional software; the tool is web based and works with latest version of Edge or Chrome.
Using Microsoft Stream, you can create short screen recordings of up to 15 minutes, including your camera and microphone, without any additional software.
Show, don’t tell - but please, tell everyone they have a new tool to share an issue they're seeing, to demonstrate a new app or tool, or to build out training materials - all stream'lined within Microsoft 365.
- Find information about system compatibility, feature specifics and management here: Create a screen recording and related blog.
- Roadmap ID: 25687
Microsoft 365 Records Management is now generally available
Records managers, start your record declarations engines! You can now utilize the Records Management solution to help your organization meet your regulatory record-keeping obligations through discovering, classifying, labeling, retaining, and defensibly deleting content across your Microsoft 365 tenant - inclusive of third-party data.
Records Management solution to help meet your legal, business and regulatory recordkeeping obligations. Create retention labels and author policies from within the Microsoft 365 compliance center.
This new solution is the recommended and forward-looking approach to managing records in Microsoft 365 - available within the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center.
- Learn more
- Roadmap ID: 63058
June 2020 teasers
Psst, still here? Still scrolling the page looking for the rolled out goodness? If so, here’s a few teasers of what’s to come to production next month…
- Teaser #1: SharePoint default site theme changing from blue to teal [Roadmap ID: 60592]
- Teaser #2: Lists Quick Edit page size is expanding from 30 items to 100 [Roadmap ID: 64231]
… 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 – May 2020 (blog/podcast). We’re 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're 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 and thanks,
Mark “from the month of May” Kashman – senior product manager (SharePoint/Lists| Microsoft)
The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop - May 2020 graphic showing some of the highlighted features released in May 2020.
