Classic vs Modern

Iron Contributor

We're still on classic UI and we were recently asked by our TAM what is preventing us from moving to the Modern experience. 

These are the reasons we had:

  1. No way to direct user to our classic search by default on a modern site search box. Modern search does not have support for refiners. Also doesn’t support display templates that we can use to customize the experience.
  2. Required fields are no longer mandatory. Modern is fine if you are not concerned about strict metadata requirements. We are, so it’s not usable for us currently.
  3. Document sets not supported yet.
  4. On lists/libraries the Title/Name field is truncated. Without customization, long titles/names will not be viewable.
  5. Issue/Task lists are not supported/fully implemented and alternate between modern and classic UI depending on what you are doing. Also the Gantt/task bar views are missing.
  6. Disconnect between the modern UI/ classic experience. Can be a disjointed experience for users.
  7. Buggy. It appears that Modern is in a permanent beta and bugs appear regularly. Classic is stable.

 

I'm curious to hear pros/cons for Classic/Modern from others working with large enterprise.

7 Replies
Valid points. Bugs aren't as bad thou. Specially if you stay in normal release. I find there are many pages and workloads that Modern makes sense for and works well. But in others not so much. Running a Hybrid setup should be a good path to look down.
I would go definitively for modern because while your points are really valid, there are some features in the modern UI that are awesome:
1. Filters Panel
2. Upload directly document templates in the modern UI
3. Flow integration
4. Modern Pages, Modern WebParts
In regards of some of your pain points, there are some that are already addressed / to be addressed
1. Modern document sets: They are working on it.
2. Title/Name field is truncated: You can change columnd width and save the view.
3. Search customization: It's coming next year and also take a look to what's caming with Microsoft Search

Not to mention the Calendar is not working in Modern UI (Currently Modern UI don't have any Calendar webpart).

Not out of the box, but at least I have seen one in the SPFx repository kept by the SharePoint Team that could be fien for you
We have to acknowledge that this is a hard choice. It is hard because of the differences in the user experience as well as the features. On top of all this Try to explain Microsoft Teams and SharePoint dynamic and inexistence of classic, it gets worse.
Yeah that takes some work with adoption. But I never hear my users say they hate sharepoint anymore after moving to modern. Just sayin.

If you think of only the negatives, you'd most likely still have SP2007.

 

The biggest reason why we upgraded was mobile access and alignment with O365 products and features. We had a customized SP2010 that fit our needs really well, it came down to the value that SP Online was creating through ability to access from anywhere easily in addition to new features and ease of collaboration. As others have mentioned, this is not to be taken lightly as it is significant work for both you and your users when it comes down to change management.