Recently, during the SharePoint Virtual Summit, Microsoft unveiled yet another roadmap for SharePoint and OneDrive. If you haven't had a chance to join you can view the recording here.
The most exciting part of all of this is that we won't have to wait long to see these new capabilities become a part of our SharePoint ecosystem. Most of the features announced are geared towards SharePoint Online and OneDrive in Office 365, which emphasizes Microsoft's strong push to the cloud.
- There are more than 250,000 organizations and over 85% of Fortune 500 companies that have SharePoint as a part of their Office 365 tenant.
- Just in the last year, SharePoint usage has grown 90%, content stored has grown 300% and more than 10 million new SharePoint sites have been created.
- More than 60% of SharePoint licensed seats are now online, reflecting the value customers see with SharePoint in Office 365.
So, let's take a look at what Microsoft has coming down the pipe.
OneDrive Files On-Demand - Summer 2017 (Windows 10)
This is exciting, and I'm sure we have all been eagerly waiting for this new capability. Files On-Demand enables us to see and work on all of our files in File Explorer, across OneDrive and SharePoint, without having to download them and take up that precious storage space on our devices.
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| Files On-Demand |
Share directly from File Explorer - Summer 2017
Available for Windows 10, Windows 7, and Finder on Mac, users will soon be able to share their files from SharePoint and OneDrive directly from File Explorer. Users can share a file or folder with specific people or send a link to anyone who needs access, both internally and externally.
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Share files directly from File Explorer on Windows 10 and Windows 7
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| Share files directly from Finder on Mac |
To add to that, users will also be able to control link expiration periods, and easily manage permissions on the file or folder.
Connect existing SharePoint team sites to Office 365 Groups - Coming later this year
During the last year's updates, SharePoint team sites got some much needed attention with new modern UI and connectivity with Office 365 Groups. With the upcoming updates, users will now have the ability to connect existing team sites to Office 365 Groups. All this means is if you had any SharePoint sites that were provisioned without Office 365 Group joined at it's hip, now you'll be able to connect one to it.
Add SharePoint pages as tabs in Microsoft Teams - Coming later this year
Microsoft Teams is a new real-time team collaboration canvas, enabling teams to partake in chat-like conversations. Besides just being an outlet for team chat, Microsoft Teams native integration with SharePoint and OneDrive allows us to consume those resources without ever leaving the Microsoft Teams session. Now, you can even create navigational tabs which can consume pages from SharePoint. This build upon the existing ability to add tabs for SharePoint document libraries.
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| Add tabs for SharePoint pages in Microsoft Teams channel |
Custom forms with PowerApps - Summer 2017
With the upcoming update this summer, we'll be able to user PowerApps to create custom forms that surface right within the context of a SharePoint list or library. Ability to create, view and interact with data using your custom form is a huge leap forward from using default SharePoint forms, or writing lines of code to achieve the same result. Bravo!
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| No-code custom forms and digital experiences with PowerApps |
Better ties between SharePoint and Microsoft Flow - Coming second half of 2017
Soon, Microsoft Flow will be even more integrated with SharePoint. New built-in approval flows will allow users to send any document for approval with a custom message. The recipient can approve the request and provide feedback directly from within their inbox.
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| Integrated Microsoft Flow approvals |
NEW! SharePoint Communication Sites - Summer 2017
Many would argue that this a long overdue face-lift for Publishing Sites. This new addition to SharePoint sites ushers the next generation of intranets. Communication Sites use modern dynamic layouts, allowing you to reach out to your audience in a refreshing style. You can easily configure default web parts on sites's pages and customize page layout with new multi-column sections and drag-n-drop authoring.
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| New Communication sites |
Unlike team sites, where sharing is typically conducted within a group, communication site allows you to share more broadly across the organization. Content published as news on a communication site appears on SharePoint Home in Office 365 and on SharePoint mobile to anyone who has access rights to the site.
Faster and more powerful Search - Q3 2017
Search advancements get more personalized in the upcoming update, leveraging artificial intelligence and Microsoft Graph for bringing faster and more relevant results. Recommendations now appear instantly as soon as you click on the Search box inside SharePoint home in Office 365, showing you the most recent files, content, sites, and news.
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| Faster and smarter search |
Search results will also include people whose skills, interests and projects are relevant to the search criteria you provide. This activates newly introduced People Cards, quickly allowing you to gain insightful knowledge about a person and what they are working on.
Yammer web part is BACK!
SharePoint communication sites will have the new conversational layer added by using the existing Yammer embed capability, allowing for users to partake in contextually relevant discussions right within SharePoint on the web, desktop and mobile.
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| Yammer conversation web part |
Redesigned SharePoint Admin Center - Q4 2017
New SharePoint Admin Center brings new insights with interactive usage reports, Message Center posts and a Service Health dashboard.
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| SharePoint Admin Center insights |
Settings used to configure sharing, access and services are more accessible, and the new Site Management page lets you view, filter and edit the configuration of all the SharePoint sites in your tenant environment.
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| Better site management in the new SharePoint Admin Center |
New toys for the Developers
Innovations for developers allow for extending of SharePoint experiences and building custom applications with SharePoint and Microsoft Graph. SharePoint Framework (SPFx) updates include new extensions for sites and libraries (coming up in preview). Other enhancements include, but not limited to:
- Better integration with web part connections and File Handlers version 2 (in preview)
- Microsoft Graph's new production endpoints for site data, and extended APIs for lists (in preview)
Staying committed to SharePoint On-premises and Hybrid
Long live SharePoint Server! I think it's safe to say that on-premises version of SharePoint isn't going away yet. Cloud-first methodology that Microsoft brings to the table is making sure that customers who are transitioning from SharePoint Server to Office 365 have all the necessary tools to do it in a gradual fashion. Feature Packs for SharePoint 2016 are bridging some gaps between on-premises and cloud.
At the summit it was announced that as a part of Feature Pack 2, set to release later in 2017, we will be seeing SharePoint Framework starting to be introduced to SharePoint Server 2016. Developers will then be able to leverage updated client-side development patterns to create web parts and solutions for on-premises and hybrid environments.
For more details on the new SharePoint and OneDrive capabilities please visit the following:
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