SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: October 2020

by | Oct 30, 2020 | Technology | 0 comments

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

In the spirit of Halloween, the Ghost of Roadmap Past shall be your guide – helping you to avoid becoming a Roadmap Scrooge. It’s a Dickens of a blog, all to help get you up-to-speed on everything recently released out into Microsoft 365 for SharePoint and related tech– including a few Ebenezer Teasers from our friend, the Ghost of Roadmap Future.


 


October 2020 brought some great new offerings: SharePoint Syntex, Organization Chart web part, new IT controls for Microsoft Lists, Microsoft Lists – commenting, OneDrive widget for iPhone, Task in Teams GA, and more. Details and screenshots below, including our audible, “ghostly-spirited at times” companion: The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: October 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 chat with Harsh Agarwal (LinkedIn), program manager at Microsoft on the Microsoft Teams engineering team. I talked with Harsh about the new file sharing experience in Teams channels and chat and the broader notion of a consistent file sharing experience across Microsoft 365.


 


Harsh Agarwal, program manager (Teams / Microsoft) [Intrazone guest]Harsh Agarwal, program manager (Teams / Microsoft) [Intrazone guest]


All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of October 2020 (possibly early November 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 Syntex


This is the first product to come from Project Cortex – a broader Microsoft 365 initiative, that applies advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to empower people with knowledge and expertise in the apps they use every day.


 


Syntex amplifies human expertise, automates content processing, and transforms content into knowledge. Syntex mainstreams machine teaching, enabling your experts to capture their knowledge about content in AI models they can build with no code.


 


 


Your experts train Syntex to understand content like they do, to recognize key information, and to tag content automatically. For example, a contract processing expert can teach the service to extract the contract’s value, along with the expiration date and key terms and conditions.


 


SharePoint Syntex can automatically suggest or create metadata, extraction as a part of ‘document understanding.’SharePoint Syntex can automatically suggest or create metadata, extraction as a part of ‘document understanding.’



Organization Chart web part


Visibility on hierarchy answers many questions on who’s who and who knows what. This web part allows page authors to generate an organization chart based off of a specific individual – just type in their name. The page author will have the option to determine how many levels up this org chart goes, and as you navigate, you’ll see who reports to who.


 


For users with edit permissions, the web part will be available in the web part toolbox when a page is in edit mode. Page consumer can then click on a person’s name or photo to learn more and navigate.For users with edit permissions, the web part will be available in the web part toolbox when a page is in edit mode. Page consumer can then click on a person’s name or photo to learn more and navigate.



IT control setting for Microsoft Lists


Governance depends on who can do what and what they can do. Based on Microsoft 365 admin feedback, we added new IT capabilities, along with new documentation, on how you can better manage *Microsoft Lists* via #PowerShell.


 


This means you can:



  • Control the creation of personal lists – a disable control, and

  • Manage the built-in, ready-made templates – so that only the ones you wish to be available to your people will appear.


Disabling ready-made list templates removes them from all places people create lists (the Lists app, within Microsoft Teams, and within SharePoint sites).Disabling ready-made list templates removes them from all places people create lists (the Lists app, within Microsoft Teams, and within SharePoint sites).


Learn more.


 


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.


 


New Teams file sharing experience


Share files on your terms. You can now create a shareable link for any file stored in Teams and directly set the appropriate permissions. Additionally, you can also set permissions for files stored in SharePoint or OneDrive while composing a private chat or starting a channel conversation.


 


The new file sharing experience in Teams adheres to set policies and give people the flexibility to share the way they want to share.The new file sharing experience in Teams adheres to set policies and give people the flexibility to share the way they want to share.


The copied link can then be shared with others, by pasting it into a chat or channel. On pasting the plain lengthy link, this feature converts the link into a visual file chiclet/image. The sender can also set permissions on the file link that they are sharing, at the time of composing the message itself, so that the recipients do not run into access issues.



Microsoft Lists – commenting


Have something to say? Say it. And say it in a native, natural way without breaking privacy or compliance policy. You will be able to add and delete comments on list items. Users can view all comments on a list item and filter between views that show comments or activity related to an item.


 


Add and delete comments on list items.Add and delete comments on list items.


Note: comments follow the permission settings inherent in SharePoint and Microsoft Lists. Users with read-only permission can only view comments. Those with list edit permission can make comments as well as delete comments; editing comments is currently not possible. 


 


A few FYI notes on “where and how are comments stored”:



  • Comments are stored in the schema for each list, which is based on the SharePoint storage platform.

  • If you are using a classic list template, it will not have this commenting feature.

  • Commenting on lists in Teams is not yet available; currently leverage Teams chat for lists in Teams.

  • And last, comments are not indexed by Microsoft Search.


 



 


Related technology


OneDrive widget for iPhone


Now, when you run iOS14 on your device, you can add a OneDrive widget to your iPhone home screen. The widget displays your photo memories “on this day” across previous years. And, if you don’t have any On This Day photos for today, you’ll see your most recent photos that you’ve saved to the cloud.


 


The new OneDrive widget on iOS14 shows your photo memories on this day across previous years.The new OneDrive widget on iOS14 shows your photo memories on this day across previous years.


Note: this feature is only available for personal OneDrive accounts (home and family).



Tasks in Microsoft Teams is now generally available


Tasks in Microsoft Teams desktop and web is now 100% rolled out to everyone with a Microsoft 365 subscription across all non-government tenants. Tasks in Teams lets you manage your team tasks from Planner and individual tasks from To Do in your hub for teamwork.


 


Tasks in Teams lets you manage your team tasks from Planner and individual tasks from To Do in your hub for teamwork.Tasks in Teams lets you manage your team tasks from Planner and individual tasks from To Do in your hub for teamwork.


Note: We’re working to make Tasks in Teams available for our government cloud offerings, with GCC going live in the coming months. GCC High and DoD will follow that.



Embed Visio files, stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, into pages in Atlassian Confluence


We’re excited to announce our first-ever non-Microsoft integration for Visio with Atlassian Confluence, a remote-friendly team workspace.


 


Atlassian Confluence connects to your Microsoft 365 account (OneDrive and SharePoint storage) to display a dynamic preview of the Visio file with governance and permissions intact.Atlassian Confluence connects to your Microsoft 365 account (OneDrive and SharePoint storage) to display a dynamic preview of the Visio file with governance and permissions intact.


Alongside embedding Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files, you can also easily add Visio diagrams to your Confluence pages – to then open them directly in a new browser tab – keeping the files where they are in Microsoft 365.


 


Your data remains secure—Confluence respects all privacy settings set in OneDrive and SharePoint, so no unauthorized users can access your content.



November 2020 ‘Ebenezer’ teasers


Psst, still here? Still scrolling the page looking for more roadmap goodness? If so, here is a few teasers of what’s to come to production next month that are sure to put Jacob Marley at bay…



  • Teaser #1: My Feed web part [Roadmap ID: 67148] 

  • Teaser #2: SharePoint Site performance page [Roadmap ID: 66196]


… shhh, tell everyone – especially Tiny Tim Cratchit.


 


Helpful, ongoing change management resources





  • 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 – October 2020 (blog/podcast). We are 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 those questions that haunt you. Push us where you want and need to get the best information and insights. We are here to put both our and your best change management foot forward.


 


Stay safe out there on the ghostly road’map, and thanks for listening and reading.


 


Happy Hallowed Eve,


Mark Kashman – senior roadmap ghost manager (SharePoint/Lists) | Microsoft)


 


The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop - October 2020 graphic showing some of the highlighted release features.The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – October 2020 graphic showing some of the highlighted release features.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

Submit a Comment