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Microsoft SharePoint Blog
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SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: August 2019

Mark-Kashman's avatar
Mark-Kashman
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Sep 03, 2019

August was a busy delivery month. And we hope some of that busy output has crept into your work day-to-day already, to help you be more productive and connected with your projects and peers.

 

Below is the all-inclusive roadmap release recap plus the Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: August 2019 podcast episode – the bonus monthly audible companion to help answer, "What's rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?"

 

To answer that question, listen and scroll below (info, links and screenshots galore) to stay informed on what features and updates arrived this past month - plus a few teasers of what's to come:

 

 

Plus, in this podcast episode, I talk with Wayne Ewington (LinkedIn), program manager on the SharePoint engineering team who focuses on the backend infrastructure of SharePoint in Office 365. We discuss the new Site Swap feature, and the approach of how Microsoft is making your intelligent intranet more agile. :studio_microphone:

 

Wayne Ewington, program manager (SharePoint/Microsoft) [Intrazone guest]

All the features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of August 2019 (possibly early September 2019).

 

Inform and engage with dynamic employee experiences

Build your modern intranet on SharePoint in Office 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 and welcoming nature of your intranet.

 

Site swap

Your root site originally began as a classic, non-group connected SharePoint team site. And now you can make your root site one that is meant more for communication across the company – a modern communication site (recommended). And you, too, can swap in a modern team site if preferred.

 

Like a magician’s trick (that we’ll tell you the secret to how it’s done), the power to invoke a SharePoint Online site swap allows (magical) admins to swap the location of a source site with another target site using a new PowerShell cmdlet: Invoke-SPOSiteSwap. Ta da! Rabbit out of the hat. Once swapped, the source site becomes the new SharePoint root site for your tenant. The previously designated root site automatically gets archived along with any subsites that may have existed.

Note: Before and during the site swap, the source or target sites cannot be "associated" with an Office 365 group or be connected to a SharePoint hub site. If the site is "associated" to a Hub Site, then the association can be removed, the swap performed, and the Hub Site re-associated after performing the swap. And it may be that you wish the newly swapped in root site to be a hub site – which you can establish – after the swap.

 

 

Joining SharePoint hubs can be performed by site owners

This is a pretty simple, and powerful, update. Previously, to associate a SharePoint team site or a communication site to a hub site required site collection level admin privileges. We are updating this permission so site owners, too, can associate their sites to a hub they have permissions to join. This provides a more consistent experience across SharePoint at the level of site ownership.

 

The site owner can open the "Eastern Sales" site information pane and associate the site to the broader "Sales" hub site.

 

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 – and is integrated with Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Yammer, Stream, Planner and much more.

 

Comments on non-Office files

When you work with your files in OneDrive, you can comment on Office docs in Office on the web, you can comment on other file types in OneDrive on the web (such as PNGs, JPGs, or PDFs). You can also comment while using the viewer in OneDrive. If, for example, you are working with a PDF, you can use the Details pane to add comments.

 

Select a file and then click the circled-“I” icon to add comments and @mention other people to draw their attention to your comment right from within the file itself in OneDrive.

 

Direct links to individual PowerPoint slides

Focus your sharing to the benefit of others. Get a link to an individual slide and share it with recipients. Help others land on the most relevant information without having to seek and find what you were trying to show them. Save time and share with a purpose.

 

Using PowerPoint Online, go to the slide you wish to share, right-click on the slide's thumbnail and choose "Link to this Slide."

To do this in PowerPoint Online, go to the slide you wish to share, right-click on the slide's thumbnail and choose Link to this Slide. You can adjust the link settings using the consistent sharing experience – and when the recipient clicks on the link, they’ll be taken directly to that slide with preferred or enforced sharing settings intact.

 

 

"Popular around me" within the Shared with me tab within the OneDrive Shared view

Don’t get lost when looking through all the files that have been shared with you. Now you can find important, relevant content at the top of the Shared with me view in OneDrive. You can surface files which are recommended based on your working relationships to help you find relevant and trending information faster and discover content you might not have been aware of. 

 

AI highlights relevant content. “Popular around me” appears at the top of the Shared with me view of OneDrive in Microsoft 365 to call attention to important shared files.

 

Activity Highlights in the File Hover Card

This feature shows relevant activities related to the files you’re working on. If someone you work with edits, comments, or @mentions you, this activity will be displayed in the File Hover Card, along with a link to take you directly to the relevant activity.

 

View file activity such as adding, deleting, and editing in a document library to be sure things are on track. You can see file activity for a single item, or an overview of all activity in a document library.

Note, at this time, this roll out is excluded from Office 365 subscriptions in the Government Commercial Cloud (GCC).

 

 

Related technology

Samsung + OneDrive announcement

Microsoft joined Samsung on stage in New York City at their Galaxy Unpacked 2019 event to share a vision for the future of productivity and how the continued partnership in the coming years will empower people to achieve more across new Samsung devices and Microsoft experiences.

 

Samsung plus OneDrive ensures your photos and files are synced and available across devices.

OneDrive will be natively integrated into the Samsung Gallery app, providing automatic syncing of your photos and videos and enabling new protection and cross-device experiences. The Galaxy Note10 will be the first to get the OneDrive integration, with more Samsung devices to follow. Coming this fall, you’ll have the option to sync your photos and videos to the cloud where they will be safe and accessible across all your devices.

 

 

Yammer mobile app updates

With this update, the Yammer mobile app has a new launch experience that takes you right to your feed, not just your groups. As the first action, you can get caught up on what’s happening across your network – reducing visual clutter to help you get caught up on conversations across your company.

The Yammer mobile app Feed is a combination of All Company and people you follow.

In addition to the Feed experience, the latest update to the Yammer mobile app now supports:

  • Participating in a Live Event
  • Asking and answering questions via the new Yammer Q&A function
  • The new Yammer icon

 

The new Yammer logo

 

Microsoft To-Do "List groups"

List groups are a simple way to organize your lists. Getting ready to attend an event like, say, Ignite 2019? You might have a few lists then: sessions, workshops, evening events, people to track down, etc. Create a list group by clicking or tapping on the icon next to New List, name your group, and you’re ready to go. You can drag any existing list your new list group. List groups will help you get even more stuff done by letting you focus only on those lists you need, when you need them.

Create a new list group and group several lists together, like a “Travel”, “Work” or “Archive” list group.

For me, I’ve already created a list group for my various OneDrive and SharePoint lists, events lists and a new best practice list group called "Archive-- where I put the lists I’d like to keep, not delete, while saving some precious vertical space for my more active lists.

 

 

September 2019 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…

 

  • Thing 1 – New document management actions for SharePoint in Flow. [roadmap ID: 34267]
  • Thing 2 – Recommendations web part for pages and news to show related and recommended content. [roadmap ID: 52604]

 

… shhh, tell everyone.

 

Helpful, ongoing change management resources

  • Follow me to catch news and interesting SharePoint things: @mkashman; pre-warning of occasional bad puns, too.

 

Thanks for tuning in and/or reading this episode/blog of the Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – August 2019 (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 roadmap -- and thanks for listening and reading.

 

Happy end of August 2019,

Mark Kashman – senior product manager (SharePoint/OneDrive | Microsoft)

 

The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop - August 2019 graphic showing some of the highlighted features released in August 2019.

Updated Sep 03, 2019
Version 2.0
Product Updates
  • Thierry Barthel's avatar
    Thierry Barthel
    Iron Contributor
    Sep 03, 2019

    This site "swap" is a very good idea but as main root classic site are allready in use we need to migrate every list and libraries manually and this is not very easy and friendly to do :sad:

  • Jimmy Hang's avatar
    Jimmy Hang
    Brass Contributor
    Sep 04, 2019

    Hi Thierry Barthel, agree with the challenge of the "swap", but think about the "swap" as a way to go 100% modern with a new site landing and structure. otherwise hopefully this will help "Enable-SPOCommSite – Can be used to transform existing classic team site from the root site collection of a tenant as a communication site" whenever it got released, still waiting for this in my tenant. :smile:

  • gauravmahajan's avatar
    gauravmahajan
    Brass Contributor
    Sep 04, 2019

    Thierry Barthel Jimmy Hang The documentation for Invoke-SPOSiteSwap does mention the root site will be archived along with any sub-sites that it contains. You will need to redirect the users to the new URL but all your lists and libraries should be there. Am I missing a point here?
    Thanks!

  • Thierry Barthel's avatar
    Thierry Barthel
    Iron Contributor
    Sep 04, 2019

    Jimmy Hang I'm waiting for this one too 

    gauravmahajan Great information, thanks ! 

     

    On my side I'm actually waiting for the Home site  before picking my choice, actually my classic team site as a root site with modern home page set has a Hub site do the trick for us.

  • KevinCrossman's avatar
    KevinCrossman
    MVP
    Sep 03, 2019
    Lots of great updates across the suite. I like the direct link to a slide feature. What is "PowerPoint Online"
  • Lynn Towle's avatar
    Lynn Towle
    Iron Contributor
    Sep 09, 2019

    What base permissions should the new site have when swapped? One of my older tenants had Company Administrator as the owner of the root site, does the new site need that also? I understand about mapping normal user permissions, but just want to make sure that the new root site has the base permissions setup correctly.

  • Paul Mitchell's avatar
    Paul Mitchell
    Brass Contributor
    Sep 11, 2019

    @Jimmy Hang - I see the feature was postponed - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/sharepoint-online/Enable-SPOCommSite?view=sharepoint-ps

     

    As mentioned by gauravmahajan all the sub-sites will be archived so I assume no longer included in search?  We only have around 15 sub-sites, but a few are being used as file shares with OneDrive sync on most users desktop  If the sub-site the URL changes, then I assume we would need to re-sync?