A new SharePoint Look and Feel: What’s Changing and Why It Matters
SharePoint is getting a refreshed look and feel designed to make the product feel simpler, clearer, and more focused on your content. We’ve recently introduced a new SharePoint experience, organized around helping you discover knowledge, publish content, and build solutions. Along with that new experience, we’re introducing visual updates across key product surfaces that reduce visual noise, improve readability, and bring more consistency to the interface while preserving the branding investments your organization has already made. We call this work the SharePoint visual refresh: a thoughtful update to the product’s visual language that helps SharePoint feel more modern, approachable, and easier to use. Background Over time, SharePoint’s capabilities have continued to grow, which has given us an opportunity to update the look and feel as well. These updates not only make the SharePoint UI fresh, but it ensures that we are consistent across M365. The SharePoint visual refresh, rolling out to general availability now, is part of a broader collaborative effort across Microsoft 365 to modernize the suite and improve usability with this bold, new visual design, while also responding to customer feedback about visual clutter and the need for clearer focus on content. These updates are grounded in core design principles that prioritize usability, coherence, and a sense of delight in everyday interactions. This bold, new design is part of a larger update across many apps (such as Microsoft 365 Copilot) and platforms that family together to create a cohesive, modern look and feel. Goals The Visual Refresh is guided by several key goals: Deliver a more contemporary, polished look aligned with the broader Microsoft 365 experience to existing and new SharePoint experiences Improve consistency, usability, and accessibility across key SharePoint surfaces, including Sites, Pages, and Document Libraries and the new Discover, Publish, Build destinations. Reduce visual clutter to improve focus on what matters most: your content Create a design system that scales, from simple team sites to complex enterprise scenarios Consistency Across Experiences Once adopted, the visual refresh will strengthen alignment between SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams and the Microsoft 365 shell, reducing visual fragmentation across navigation, pages, and components. By aligning how our UI looks and our theming approaches, we aim to create a more predictable experience for users moving between tools and surfaces, helping avoid visual dissonance and reducing cognitive load across day‑to‑day workflows. What’s being updated Canvas elevation: putting content in the spotlight One of the most noticeable changes is the elevation of the SharePoint site canvas. By adding a subtle shadow, refined spacing, and a light gray shade to backgrounds, the refreshed design helps your content stand out, making it easier to scan, read, and interact with pages. Importantly, this is not achieved by changing your content. Instead, the improvements come from thoughtful adjustments to padding, layout spacing, and visual framing, ensuring that the emphasis remains on the information you create and manage. This does not effect existing layouts or how sites reflow. Neutral theming for app surfaces We’re also evolving how themes are applied within SharePoint to improve consistency, accessibility, and clarity across experiences by separating the core SharePoint user interface from customer content. Updated neutral theming of app surfaces provides a more stable visual foundation and establishes a unified set of navigational UI, where the customer brand remains in an anchor position and is in harmony with the new neutral navigation. This approach allows customer branding to be expressed more clearly without competing with structural UI elements, clarifies the distinction between customer branding and the SharePoint app, reduces visual competition, and improves focus on primary content. ual noise, improving usability. Styling updates Additional updates to typography, spacing, and corner rounding introduce a more cohesive and contemporary visual language across SharePoint surfaces. Updated typography and spacing enhance readability and create more consistent rhythm across pages and components, making information easier to scan and interact with. At the same time, increasing corner radius of the UI makes it feel more approachable, and through a flexible system brings greater consistency to our products, helping related components feel more integrated and visually connected. Together, these refinements simplify the overall interface, reduce unnecessary visual noise, and contribute to a lighter, more modern experience that aligns more closely with the broader Microsoft 365 design ecosystem. What’s Not Changing While the visual refresh introduces meaningful visual improvements, core SharePoint concepts and workflows remain familiar. Your content, structure, and brand are preserved Existing site architecture remains unchanged Day‑to‑day workflows continue to work unchanged There is no impact on existing SPFx extensions or solutions with this change This update focuses on evolution, not reinvention, so users can benefit from improved clarity and modern visuals while familiar work flows and patterns remain the same. Evaluated with Research Across our research studies, participants consistently favored the Visual Refresh due to the cleaner and more contemporary look and improved labeling and structure. A calmer, more modern UI that’s easier to scan. Elevation + neutral theming made the page feel cleaner and it is easier to focus on the content. Clearer actions in the command bar. Stronger affordances (like button outlines) make common tasks - edit, undo, save, share - more obvious and easier complete workflows. Less guesswork when navigating. Icons and labelling in the app bar reduced friction and participants spent less time hovering and interpreting icons, especially those less familiar with SharePoint. Overall, the Visual Refresh provides users with a new look they prefer without slowing down their workflow. Looking Ahead The SharePoint Visual Refresh is part of an ongoing journey. We’ll continue refining the experience, learning from customer feedback provided directly in-product, and shipping improvements incrementally, so SharePoint keeps getting better without disrupting how people work. Familiar workflows will remain in place, now enhanced by improved clarity, consistency, and a more modern feel. We welcome all feedback! See this post for more information about SharePoint’s exciting next chapter.The Retirement of SharePoint Alerts is a Pain in the Rear
I’ve used a SharePoint alert to create an emailed daily digest of changes made to files in a document library for seven years. Microsoft plans to retire SharePoint Alerts in July 2026, and the race is on to find a replacement. Regretfully, neither Power Automate nor SharePoint Rules seem capable of generating an equivalent daily digest, perhaps because these solutions don’t handle the number of file versions created by AutoSave well. https://office365itpros.com/2026/03/27/sharepoint-alerts-replacement/Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform product updates call
💡Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform product updates call concentrates on the different use cases and features within the Microsoft 365 and in Power Platform. Call includes topics like Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Search, Microsoft Lists, SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps and more. 👏 Weekly Tuesday call is for all community members to see Microsoft PMs, engineering and Cloud Advocates showcasing the art of possible with Microsoft 365 and Power Platform. 📅 On the 23rd of June we'll have following agenda: News and updates from Microsoft Together mode group photo Anshul Jethwani & Harish Swaminathan – Getting started on using Agent Builder templates to kick start your agent journey Paolo Pialorsi - Understanding Work IQ Bert Jansen & Vesa Juvonen – Getting started with building Sharepoint Copilot Apps 📞 & 📺 Join the Microsoft Teams meeting live at https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-join 🗓️ Download recurrent invite for this weekly call from https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-invite 👋 See you in the call! 💡 Building something cool for Microsoft 365 or Power Platform (Copilot, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc)? We are always looking for presenters - Volunteer for a community call demo at https://aka.ms/community/request/demo 📖 Resources: Previous community call recordings and demos from the Microsoft Community Learning YouTube channel at https://aka.ms/community/youtube Microsoft 365 & Power Platform samples from Microsoft and community - https://aka.ms/community/samples Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community details - https://aka.ms/community/home 🧡 Sharing is caring!I built a free, open-source M365 security assessment tool - looking for feedback
I work as an IT consultant, and a good chunk of my time is spent assessing Microsoft 365 environments for small and mid-sized businesses. Every engagement started the same way: connect to five different PowerShell modules, run dozens of commands across Entra ID, Exchange Online, Defender, SharePoint, and Teams, manually compare each setting against CIS benchmarks, then spend hours assembling everything into a report the client could actually read. The tools that automate this either cost thousands per year, require standing up Azure infrastructure just to run, or only cover one service area. I wanted something simpler: one command that connects, assesses, and produces a client-ready deliverable. So I built it. What M365 Assess does https://github.com/Daren9m/M365-Assess is a PowerShell-based security assessment tool that runs against a Microsoft 365 tenant and produces a comprehensive set of reports. Here is what you get from a single run: 57 automated security checks aligned to the CIS Microsoft 365 Foundations Benchmark v6.0.1, covering Entra ID, Exchange Online, Defender for Office 365, SharePoint Online, and Teams 12 compliance frameworks mapped simultaneously -- every finding is cross-referenced against NIST 800-53, NIST CSF 2.0, ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS v4.0.1, CMMC 2.0, CISA SCuBA, and DISA STIG (plus CIS profiles for E3 L1/L2 and E5 L1/L2) 20+ CSV exports covering users, mailboxes, MFA status, admin roles, conditional access policies, mail flow rules, device compliance, and more A self-contained HTML report with an executive summary, severity badges, sortable tables, and a compliance overview dashboard -- no external dependencies, fully base64-encoded, just open it in any browser or email it directly The entire assessment is read-only. It never modifies tenant settings. Only Get-* cmdlets are used. A few things I'm proud of Real-time progress in the console. As the assessment runs, you see each check complete with live status indicators and timing. No staring at a blank terminal wondering if it hung. The HTML report is a single file. Logos, backgrounds, fonts -- everything is embedded. You can email the report as an attachment and it renders perfectly. It supports dark mode (auto-detects system preference), and all tables are sortable by clicking column headers. Compliance framework mapping. This was the feature that took the most work. The compliance overview shows coverage percentages across all 12 frameworks, with drill-down to individual controls. Each finding links back to its CIS control ID and maps to every applicable framework control. Pass/Fail detail tables. Each security check shows the CIS control reference, what was checked, what the expected value is, what the actual value is, and a clear Pass/Fail/Warning status. Findings include remediation descriptions to help prioritize fixes. Quick start If you want to try it out, it takes about 5 minutes to get running: # Install prerequisites (if you don't have them already) Install-Module Microsoft.Graph, ExchangeOnlineManagement -Scope CurrentUser Clone and run git clone https://github.com/Daren9m/M365-Assess.git cd M365-Assess .\Invoke-M365Assessment.ps1 The interactive wizard walks you through selecting assessment sections, entering your tenant ID, and choosing an authentication method (interactive browser login, certificate-based, or pre-existing connections). Results land in a timestamped folder with all CSVs and the HTML report. Requires PowerShell 7.x and runs on Windows (macOS and Linux are experimental -- I would love help testing those platforms). Cloud support M365 Assess works with: Commercial (global) tenants GCC, GCC High, and DoD environments If you work in government cloud, the tool handles the different endpoint URIs automatically. What is next This is actively maintained and I have a roadmap of improvements: More automated checks -- 140 CIS v6.0.1 controls are tracked in the registry, with 57 automated today. Expanding coverage is the top priority. Remediation commands -- PowerShell snippets and portal steps for each finding, so you can fix issues directly from the report. XLSX compliance matrix -- A spreadsheet export for audit teams who need to work in Excel. Standalone report regeneration -- Re-run the report from existing CSV data without re-assessing the tenant. I would love your feedback I have been building this for my own consulting work, but I think it could be useful to the broader community. If you try it, I would genuinely appreciate hearing: What checks should I prioritize next? Which security controls matter most in your environment? What compliance frameworks are most requested by your clients or auditors? How does the report land with non-technical stakeholders? Is the executive summary useful, or does it need work? macOS/Linux users -- does it run? What breaks? I have tested it on macOS, but not extensively. Bug reports, feature requests, and contributions are all welcome on GitHub. Repository: https://github.com/Daren9m/M365-Assess License: MIT (free for commercial and personal use) Runtime: PowerShell 7.x Thanks for reading. Happy to answer any questions in the comments.
The latest mobile apps killed mobile first when working with files
Hi, I really enjoyed working only with mobile devices when we started with M365. On iOS the OneDrive app was paramount when organising files in SharePoint/Teams Sites. Easy up- and downloads, drag‘n drop. Move and copy all was there to manage a companies files on mobile devices even when only on mobile network connections. But the upgrades that happened over the last 1-2 years completely break this kind of workflows. There is no really mobile-first paradigm visible anymore. The OneDrive app was worst. All the pretty well integration file management stuff is gone. No drag‘n drop. No useful integration into iOS Files app. Copying between OneDrive and SharePoint got a pain. Bulk operation just silently fail. Files get renamed without any warning (numbers get added to the name or are just increased so no one will ever find the file again). So just two simple usability examples that are a mess: to select multiple files in a folder you have to press the word ‚Select‘ that is not a button or something. This shows up like a column heading in the file view. Right beside ‚Name‘ and ‚Date Modified‘. Why are active user elements placed in table headings? If you browse into some SharePoint folders and quickly want to go back to your OneDrive files you either have to press the back button over and over again until your back to the top level view or you can press-hold the back button and then select ‚Files‘. Butthe latter brings you to the top level Library view and you still have to manually go to ‚Files‘. The old app design just had a top menu bar where views could easily be switched. Am I the only one who wants to work on mobile devices? Does Microsoft still expect everyone to use a laptop and run desktop apps? Annoying.Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community call
💡 Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform weekly community call focuses on different use cases and features within the Copilot, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform - across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, SharePoint, Power Apps and more. 👏 Looking to catch up on the latest news and updates, including cool community demos, this call is for you! 📅 On 18th of June we'll have following agenda: Copilot prompt of the week CommunityDays.org update Microsoft 365 Maturity model Latest on PnP Framework and Core SDK extension Latest on PnP PowerShell Latest on script samples Latest Copilot pro dev samples Latest on Power Platform samples Picture time with the Together Mode! Reshmee Auckloo (Avanade) – Insurance Claims Assist using AI in SharePoint with Copilot Studio Garry Trinder (Microsoft) – No API, No Problem: Building Declarative Agents with Dev Proxy David Warner (Quisitive) – Powerful Animations - VS Code Extension Updates for M365 and Power Apps 📅 Download recurrent invite from https://aka.ms/community/m365-powerplat-dev-call-invite 📞 & 📺 Join the Microsoft Teams meeting live at https://aka.ms/community/m365-powerplat-dev-call-join 👋 See you in the call! 💡 Building something cool for Microsoft 365 or Power Platform (Copilot, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc)? We are always looking for presenters - Volunteer for a community call demo at https://aka.ms/community/request/demo 📖 Resources: Previous community call recordings and demos from the Microsoft Community Learning YouTube channel at https://aka.ms/community/youtube Microsoft 365 & Power Platform samples from Microsoft and community - https://aka.ms/community/samples Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community details - https://aka.ms/community/home 🧡 Sharing is caring!Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform product updates call
💡Copilot, Microsoft 365 & Power Platform product updates call concentrates on the different use cases and features within the Microsoft 365 and in Power Platform. Call includes topics like Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Search, Microsoft Lists, SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps and more. 👏 Weekly Tuesday call is for all community members to see Microsoft PMs, engineering and Cloud Advocates showcasing the art of possible with Microsoft 365 and Power Platform. 📅 On the 16th of June we'll have following agenda: News and updates from Microsoft Together mode group photo Vesa Juvonen – How to share and reuse SharePoint Skills - Introducing open-source SharePoint Skills Sahil Baid – Introduction to List Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot Vesa Juvonen & Bert Jansen – Introduction to SPFx Copilot Apps 📞 & 📺 Join the Microsoft Teams meeting live at https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-join 🗓️ Download recurrent invite for this weekly call from https://aka.ms/community/ms-speakers-call-invite 👋 See you in the call! 💡 Building something cool for Microsoft 365 or Power Platform (Copilot, SharePoint, Power Apps, etc)? We are always looking for presenters - Volunteer for a community call demo at https://aka.ms/community/request/demo 📖 Resources: Previous community call recordings and demos from the Microsoft Community Learning YouTube channel at https://aka.ms/community/youtube Microsoft 365 & Power Platform samples from Microsoft and community - https://aka.ms/community/samples Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community details - https://aka.ms/community/home 🧡 Sharing is caring!Restricting Access is The Most Important Step in a Microsoft 365 Copilot Deployment
I was asked what the most important step is in the deployment of Microsoft 365 Copilot. It’s a good question. Put simply, restricted access is the answer. That is, restricting Copilot access to information stored in Microsoft 365 locations until your tenant is ready for unrestricted Copilot search and retrieval. The fortunate thing is that tools exist today to make it relatively easy to establish guardrails for Copilot, which is exactly what you need to do. https://office365itpros.com/2026/06/10/microsoft-365-copilot-prep/
