Microsoft Ignite October 2022: Part 2: Security and Compliance Across SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams

In continuation from our first article, Part 1: Security and Compliance Across SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams, we will continue to examine the announcements from Ignite 2022 of how Microsoft is offering new measures of cybersecurity as it resolves to meet the high Zero Trust standard of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity has been highlighted with the hybrid work environment with many organizations being prey to hackers, and in some situations, being held hostage to pay fines and ransoms. These situations can cause severe loss of income to the bankruptcy of an organization.

Not to be taken lightly, Microsoft has introduced six new security and management capabilities to help counter these cyberattacks. As announced at Ignite 2022, these counter measures include:

  1. Advanced access policies for secure collaboration
  2. Security controls to safeguard content
  3. Comprehensive compliance
  4. Migration enhancement
  5. Advanced sites lifecycle management
  6. Organization lifecycle management.

In our previous article, we examined Advanced Assess Policies for Secure Collaboration, and in this article, we will review the remaining new announcements for security and management.

Security Controls to Safeguard Content

User-Defined Permissions (UDP) Support for Office Files in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams: Private Preview

Expanding and innovating with Sensitivity Labels, User Defined Permissions, Office files will be protected with labels containing User Defined Permissions (UDP). Admins will be able to apply sensitivity labels that are associated with admin-defined permissions, such as who can view and co-author files in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams.

Protected PDFs Support in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams: Private Preview

By bringing the security controls that power Office files to protected PDF files, sensitivity labels can now be viewed in the Document Library’s sensitivity column when labeled and encrypted PDF files are uploaded to SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams.  Compliance and security admins, by using their established DLP or eDiscovery policies, can govern these protected PDFs.

Default Sensitivity Labels for SharePoint Document Libraries: Public View

The default sensitivity label for SharePoint Document Libraries can be set through the Library Settings in the information panel. Once the appropriate sensitivity label has been assigned, all documents in that library will be labeled automatically. These documents can be newly created ones or ones that are being modified. The concept of labeling with rich sensitivity labels that have been applied with Office files, SharePoint Sites, Teams, and Microsoft 365 groups can now be applied to new and uploaded documents in SharePoint Document Libraries.

Programmatic Way to Assign Sensitivity Label to a File in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams: Private Preview

A premium capability, a programmatic endpoint in the Microsoft Graph Beta will allow users and applications to allow the labeling of files.

Anti-Malware Scan on File Download: General Availability

Advancing towards Zero Trust, the third layer of protection is added in addition to the asynchronous antimalware scanning in SharePoint and OneDrive with anti-malware scanning during downloading of unscanned files through the browser or in Teams.

Forensic Malware Identification and Extraction: General Availability

Through the use of the simple SharePoint PowerShell cmdlet, administrators will not need to elevate their access to the SharePoint or OneDrive site where malware and infected content is present. They will be able to determine what type of malware is present in a file that is marked infected and extracts the infected file from the site in order to perform further analysis, circumventing the existing challenge of how to gain access to infected files without needing to gain access to all the files in the source site.

Comprehensive Compliance

Information Barriers (IB) 2.0: IB Modes and Multi-Segment Support: General Availability

The needs of users can be tailored with the capability provided through the Information Barriers (IB) modes while maintaining corporate information barriers. With five IB modes (Owner-moderated, Open, Explicit, Implicit, and Mixed), there is flexibility and customizability to support site/team owners to bring in incompatible segments users to the site/team to participate in multiple regulatory projects to successfully complete projects while meeting mandatory regulatory needs.

Migration Enhancements

Migration Manager

With Migration Manager, Bulk download reports, Migration filters, and Estimated time to migrate are new features added to simplify the migration of content from file shares, Dropbox, Google Drive, Egnyte, and Box.

Bulk-Download Detailed Reports

When performing cloud migrations, gone is the time-intensive download of detailed reports that are chosen one by one. Instead, this can now be done with one click by selecting tasks in the scans and migrations tab.

Migration Filters

Content can be curated in M365 by filtering the files and folders containing invalid characters, excluding by folder names and file extensions, and by date of creation and modification. There is an option to replace invalid characters with valid characters.

Estimated Time to Migrate

An estimate of time to complete the migration project and the task level is provided based on scans, file sizes, and other factors.

SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) Improvements

Scanning and migration from On-prem Server are streamlined within one tool while the navigation page flow is intuitive for managing migration jobs and creating migration-by scenarios.

Advanced Sites Lifecycle Management

SharePoint Data Access Governance (DAG) Insights V1: General Availability

The lifecycle of a site starts at the time of its creation and evolves to the active state when content and collaboration occur with users. During this active state is when oversharing or accidental sharing occurs. With DAG, administrators can discover the top 100 and the top 10,000 sites of millions of sites that an organization may have and that requires the closest monitoring/validating/tailoring for share and access policies for these sites.

Sites Lifecycle Policies – Inactive Sites: Preview

With Sites Lifecyle Policies, administrators can create tailored inactive site policies that target specific SharePoint sites, Teams created sites, Public labeled sites, or sites with information segment of Research. These policies will trigger an alert to the respective site owner, providing them the option to delete, keep or exercise other actions on these inactive sites.

Site History and Recent Admin Actions: Preview

The Site History capability in the SharePoint Admin centre addresses the inability of SharePoint admins to troubleshoot inaccessible team sites, know the lifecycle state of a site, manage the lifecycle, and know the activities carried out by site owners. The Site History will provide a history of all changes made to site properties by all site owners and admins in the admin actions panel and will show the latest site changes such as site URL, site name, storage limit, and share settings. Admins will also be able to export 30 days of changes.

Organization Lifecyle Management

SharePoint Tenant Rename: General Availability

For tenants with less than 10k sites, SharePoint Tenant Rename allows SharePoint admins to rename the tenant’s SharePoint URL should the organization need to rebrand due to a merge or expansion across satellite locations.

OneDrive Cross-Tenant User Data Migration: General Availability

With OneDrive Cross-Tenant User Data Migration, admins can move users’ OneDrive and mailboxes across two tenants by implementing a simple set of SharePoint PowerShell cmdlets. Sharing links to old URLs will continue to work even though the URL of OneDrive has changed. Why would admins need to migrate users across two tenants? Situations arise when companies expand through mergers and acquisitions, which are part of an organization’s lifecycle. When mergers and acquisitions occur with a common footprint in Microsoft 365, OneDrive Cross-Tenant User Data Migration makes easy work of moving users from one tenant to the next while retaining content integrity and security.

Microsoft Ignite 2022 has had some exciting announcements, including its stance on Zero Trust concerning cybersecurity and the many ways it is addressing and proactively implementing to achieve this standard. From sensitivity labels to access policies, from site lifecycle management to secured migration tools, Microsoft is providing organizations, admins, and their users several layers, methodologies, and processes to retain control of content at the organization, admins, and user levels. Cybersecurity with Zero Trust is the new standard and Microsoft is working adamantly towards this high bar of security.

SharePoint Online Multilingual: The Site Editor and Content Creator

In our previous article, SharePoint Online Multilingual: The Site Owner, Site Admin, and Translator, we reviewed the steps necessary to enable SharePoint Online Multilingual capabilities from the perspective of the Site Owner, Site Admin, and Translator. When creating the Communication Site, it is important to remember that the language chosen during the Communication Site creation will become the default language. Once the Communication Site is created, the default language cannot be changed.

Now that the site is created and the translators are assigned, we will continue the process as Site Editors and Content Creators in implementing SharePoint Online Multilingual. Editors and content creators will define the site structure and create the content in the native language of the Communication Site.

As new content appears, translators will be notified by email request to translate the pages. Once translated, translators will publish the content which in turn will generate an email to the site owner or site admin notifying them that the translation is complete.  

Creating Pages for the Languages You Want

Next, you can create the pages for translation by following these steps:

1. Go to the default language page that you would like to have translated;

2. Select Translation on the top bar; and

3. Choose one of the two options:

a. Create for All Languages which will create a page for translation in each of all the languages available for your site; or

b. Create for only specific languages.

After creating the translation pages, publish or republish the default language page. This will ensure that the translation pages will be shown in the corresponding language site, News web part and Highlighted content web parts will be displayed correctly, and all the languages you enabled will appear in the dropdown menu at the top of the site.

Now that the page or pages are created, the status of the page, such as draft saved or published, is displayed in the translation pane next to each language. Once the page is saved and published, an email will be generated and sent to the assigned translator informing him or her that there is a request for translation for the page or pages.

Viewing a Translation Page on its Site

At the top of the default site language page, select the dropdown. Choose the language for the translation page that you want to view. By choosing the language in this dropdown, the language will apply for all pages on the site for the duration of the browser session. This does not affect your user language preference or the language displayed for the site name, title, and navigation.

Checking Status of Pages

In the translation pane, the status of each page is displayed next to the language. These statuses may include draft saved, published, submitted, and so on. To check the status of pages:

1. Go to the default language page; and

2. At the top of the page, select Translation. Here, the translation pane will be on the right-hand side which will display the status of the pages. Additionally, there will be a link, View Page, that will take you to the page if you click on it.

More Tidbits

What about the menus – how do the site, navigation and hub navigation menus work?

On the site, when a user of the defaulted language navigates, the language will appear as the default language. However, if the user is a multi-language user and navigates the site, the site will automatically point that user to the translated pages.

If the site owner adds a node to the page, it will appear on all pages in the default language. The translator will need to go in and edit the node to read in the chosen multi-language. Users can switch between languages easily with the drop-down menu on the top right.

How does SharePoint know the user’s default language? In O365, the user profile has a language associated with this and in the active directory, this is what is used to determine the default language. If there is no language associated with the active directory or O365 profile, then the site web language is used.

A Communication Site is composed of two portions. The site structure itself which includes the site title, navigation nodes, and footers, which are defined by the Site Admin or Site Owner. The second portion is the content which includes pages and SharePoint news modern pages experience, which is created by the Site Editor or Content Creator.  Creating a multilingual experience from site structure through the delivery of curated content, and by providing the end-user the ability to switch between languages, the end-user will experience a full multilingual user experience.

SharePoint Online Multilingual: The Site Owner, Site Admin, and Translator

SharePoint Online Multilingual is a new feature that enables multilingual experiences for end-users. Organizations will be able to build out their portals on SharePoint communication sites, published pages and news, with important, multilingual content.

SharePoint Online Multilingual ensures employee engagement, providing modern workplaces the ability to be inclusive by catering to a diverse audience. The recognition, application, and utilization of multi-languages will provide the ability to deliver accurate and highly curated content in the preferred language of the end-user for consumption.

On a global scale, the targeted release will be in March 2020 with general availability in May 2020.

Available Out of the Box

With this roll-out, SharePoint Online Multilingual will be available out of the box. With great adoption of the base communication site platform, more advanced features are being enabled. These advanced features will continue and enhance employer/employee engagement and collaboration.

Site Creation

When creating a site, there are two options: Team Site and Communication Site. To create multilingual sites, choose the Communication Site followed by Design.

Next, choose the language of the Communication Site. It is important to understand that when you choose the language of the Communication Site, it becomes the default language for the site. For example, if you choose English as the language, then English becomes the default language and all pages will be created in English. Copies of these pages can then be translated into other languages.

A very important note: The default language of the Communication Site cannot be changed after the site is created.

SharePoint Online Multilingual is supported in Communication Sites only as Communication Sites are the primary portal for communication, which is done through publishing pages and news. Team Sites, on the other hand, are built for collaboration through communication.

Remember: the default language is defined at the site creation level.

Enabling SharePoint Online Multilingual Feature

Go to Site Information and then to View All Site settings. It is in the View All Site settings that you will find Site Language settings. Next, click on Site Language settings.

For existing Communication Sites and new Communication Sites, the Enable pages and news to be translated into multiple languages is defaulted to be disabled. Slide the toggle to turn on the Enable pages and news to be translated into multiple languages and choose the pages and the language that you want them to be translated into.

When SharePoint Online Multilingual is rolled out, existing Communication Sites will be able to access Enable pages and news to be translated into multiple languages. However, the default language of existing Communication Sites cannot be changed.

Once enabled, choose the pre-defined language or languages from the list that is provided by SharePoint, matching those that you want to be available for your end-users. Once the language or several languages have been chosen, assign a translator to each language. Assigning a translator will enhance the communication between the content creator in the default language and the translators who are responsible for translating the content in the site. Translators can be anyone in the Active Directory but not all members of the Active Directory are permitted to edit. If that person that is associated with the language does not have permission to edit but tries to edit the site, they will be redirected to a web page for them to request permission to access.

Once the languages and translators are determined and assigned, select Save to save the settings.

The Translator’s Role

The Translator has an important role in SharePoint Online Multilingual as the Translator manually translates the copies of the default language page into the language(s) specified. Translators are notified via email when copy(ies) of the pages are created. The email is a request for translation and embedded in the email is a link to the default language page and the newly created translation page. Upon receipt of the email, the Translator will:

1. Open the email and select the Start Translating button;

2. Select Edit at the top right of the translation page;

3. Translate the content;

3. Translate the content;

4. Select Save as Draft (if not ready to be visible to readers) or Publish or Post News (if ready to be visible for consumers of that language on the site);

5. Select Submit for Approval (if approval is required before publishing) or Publish Later/Post Later (if scheduling is turned on); and

6. Send email notification to the person who requested the translation.  

Page Updates

What happens when a page is updated after it is published?

If a page is edited and saved, an email will be generated, notifying the associated translator that there has been an update to the original page. Using version control, the translator will be able to see the changes that were done on the page and will be able to apply and translate the same changes on the translated page. 

Oops! I Need to Delete a Translation Page!

Deleting a translation page can be done, but it will require a few extra steps as the association between the default language page and the deleted translation page must be broken. To delete a translation page:

1. Go to the Pages Library for the site;

2. Go to the language folder that is adjacent to the default language page. Here you will find the page you want to delete. The language folder can be identified by the 2 or 4 letter language code;

3. Open the folder and select the page you want. Click the ellipses (…) to the right of the selected page;

4. Click Delete;

5. After the page is deleted, go to the default language page. Make sure you are in edit mode or the remaining steps will not work. At the top right, select Edit;

6. Select Translation which is located at the top of the page;

7. The Translation panel will open with a message stating that an association with the page has been fixed; and

8. Republish the default language page.

Your translated page has now been deleted.

Advanced Settings

The Override Translations has been in SharePoint for a long time and is hidden under the Advanced settings and is a legacy remnant with MUI. Override Translations will remove any rights to translators to perform translations, and therefore, it is not advisable to enable this if you are enabling multi-language and translators.

As a site owner or site admin, your responsibility for SharePoint Online Multilingual is enabling multi-languages and assigning translators. Once this is completed, the process continues with site editors and content creators. Join us in the next article SharePoint Online Multilingual: The Site Editors and Content Creators as we finalize and share content with SharePoint Online Multilingual capabilities.

SharePoint List: How to Add Formatting for Rows

It is a challenge to read monochromatic, long, scrolling lists on the screen, especially when searching and reading for any length of time. In SharePoint List, we can now format odd and even rows with a background colour. Alternating background row colours will help the user easily consume the content, especially when the list is lengthy.

Alternating the background row colours is advantageous for many reasons, including increased productivity as lists become more easily read and searched. Adding rows formatting in SharePoint Lists is straightforward and is easy.

Formatting rows with background colour can be done by following these steps:

1. Create a List;

2. Choose to either:

a. Create a New View; or

b. Edit the View for the default “All Items” view;

3. Click on the “Alternating row styles” button which is located at the top right-hand corner. By clicking on this button, you have now enabled the ability to edit the alternating row styles in your SharePoint List;

4. Once enabled, the default colour for alternating odd rows is grey. To change the default colour of the odd rows and the colour of the even rows, choose the “Edit Row Styles” link;

5. There are now two options for editing and choosing alternating background row colours:

a. Colour Palette Icon:

Choose either the Even or the Odd row to be assigned a colour. Click on the Colour Palette icon to the right. When you choose a colour, it will appear automatically within the list, providing you a preview of the colour combinations before you save it.

Keep in mind that certain colour combinations are difficult for the user to discern the difference in row colours, can be difficult to look at for long periods, can cause eye strain, can tire the eyes with brightness, and some combinations are difficult to work with. An example of a colour combination that poses difficulty in distinguishing the two colours is a blue and grey combination. If the blue is a cool grey-blue, then it can look similar to the grey, rendering difficulty in distinguishing between the rows. The intensity and hue of the colour will also affect the legibility of the content. For example, black font colour is difficult to read if the background colour is dark or too bright.

Choosing the background colours for the alternating rows requires an understanding of how colours affect productivity, psychology, and ease of use for your users.

Once you have completed this process for one type of row, repeat with the other type (ie. modify odd rows, then modify even rows); and

b. Customized Solutions:

Flexibility in creating advanced solutions is available by clicking on the “Advanced Mode” button. For this solution, you can add your custom JSON to create unique experiences. Customizable solutions allow you to choose relevant colours, such as underscoring your organization’s branding and creating a uniform experience for your user. As an example, alternate background row colours can be your organization’s two dominant brand colours.

When applying customized solutions, it is still important to take into consideration the factors that are discussed above regarding colour contrast for ease of discernment, colour intensity for eye strain, and colour hues for psychological impact on your users.

If feedback from your users indicates that there is too high of colour contrasts, it is straightforward to revise your colour selections.

As you can see, assigning and applying alternating even and odd row background colours for SharePoint lists can be easily accomplished but there are factors to consider when choosing the background colours. If chosen correctly, the application of the alternating even/odd row background colours in your organization’s SharePoint list will provide your users with easily consumable content.

Microsoft Ignite 2019 Announcements: The Intelligent Intranet: Part 1

As technology evolves, so have the platforms and offerings from Microsoft. Office 365 is now a part of Microsoft 365, and Microsoft has been announcing major enhancements to Microsoft 365. Microsoft Teams has, and is, seeing many new enhancements, and we can expect that SharePoint will also be receiving new features that are directly related to Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.    

For the majority of us, we know that SharePoint is known to be the cloud storage component of Office 365 and has been the cornerstone of the business intranet within an enterprise. As SharePoint moves with Office 365 to Microsoft 365, some significant changes are taking place. Fun fact: there are over 100 million active users of SharePoint in the cloud

SharePoint Home Sites

Powered by AI, SharePoint Home Sites is the landing page for an organization’s users that is customized based on the user’s role. Super intelligent, SharePoint Home Sites provide a customized view of relevant information for the user based on the information that they search, require, and interact with based on their roles and the teams that they belong with. Collaboration tools like Yammer and Stream are pulled into SharePoint Home Sites, making access easy and streamlining the processes for collaboration. Other features include:

1. Targeted Navigation: a mega menu appears on the Home Sites. Recognizing that large enterprises span different countries with many offices, the mega menu can be configured with the advanced navigation capabilities to target sites that are role and site-specific;

2. Web Feed: based on the Graph, the web feed can be personalized to preview relevant conversations, news articles, and videos from within the organization but also include news articles from the internet that are being discussed within the teams. Videos can be created with Microsoft stream, and with noise cancellation driven by AI technology, videos play sharp and clear; and

3. Integration of the New Yammer: integrated for communities inside your SharePoint intranet, Yammer provides one of the social platforms for collaborative discussions and the sharing of news.

Branding

Branding is vital to the instant recognition of an organization through visual association with the product or service that it delivers. SharePoint provides consistent, visual, and text branding to its customers, and now, it has added more features to ensure device-wide organization branding across the intelligent intranet and sites. These new abilities include:

1. SharePoint Mobile App Co-Branding: an organization’s branding can easily be added and featured in the SharePoint Mobile app. No longer will the organization name be SharePoint at the top;

2. SharePoint Mobile App and an Organization’s Custom Branding: an organization’s custom branding is now supported in the SharePoint Mobile app with a logo image, text, app theme colours (top navigation bar), and accent colours for a co-branded experience for the organization’s employees;

3. Expanded Footer: located at bottom of the Page, as a requirement, the customizable footer is applied to all Pages of the organization’s intelligent intranet. Background colour choices are supported along with the ability to organize links in the footer;

4. Shy Header and Options: a Shy Header allows the size of the site header to be reduced. Additional options include the ability to hide the site title and add a site logo thumbnail for the sites;

5. Microsoft Fluent Design System: customer needs are delivered across platforms through the utilization of innovative technology;

6. SharePoint Teal Default Theme: the SharePoint brand colors will be converted from the existing blue default theme to the new Teal theme for new and existing modern and classic communication team sites and for non-group connected team sites; and

7. Classic Sites with Modern Communication Sites Experience: classic team sites that are not modern group connected can now have a modern communication site experience. Classic team sites that have the classic publishing feature will also be able to experience the modern communication site.

New Hub Capabilities

Providing a point of organization for content across SharePoint sites, hubs can be used to organize content, teams, divisions or resources throughout the organization based on attributes such as region, division, department, and project. Hubs were first announced in Ignite 2017, and at Ignite 2019, new features and enhancements are being announced for hubs. These include:

1. Hub Permissions: centralizing the management of access to associated sites;

2. Hub Analytics: providing hub-wide usage insights including total visitors, popular content, page views, and other useful analytical data;

3. Associated Hubs: enabling discovery and search experiences across hubs with easy navigation between them; and

4. Audience Targeting: navigating hubs based on specific criteria such as office location and user role as defined in an organization’s Azure Active Directory group. Targeted navigation is one of the new enhancements for SharePoint Home Sites.

There have been numerous mind-blowing announcements ranging from Project Cortex to the flexibility and collaborative nature of Microsoft Teams to the new and improved intelligent intranet. Believe it or not, but this is not the end of the new features for the intelligent intranet. Our next article will discuss the SharePoint Lookbook and the new page authoring and publishing features.

SharePoint Conference 2019 (SPC2019): Announcements Part 2

There are so many great announcements at the SharePoint Conference 2019 (SPC2019)! The vision of Microsoft encompasses three pillars in building an intelligent workplace: teamwork and business process, employee engagement and communications, and search and content intelligence. By connecting these three pillars, with SharePoint underpinning as the connecting foundation, employees within your organization and those external that are teamed with them, become powerful through content management and collaboration across Microsoft 365 and Office 365.

Collaboration starts with individuals and through fostering inclusion and engagement, teams are built. Through engagement, collaboration becomes successful. Microsoft Teams provides the space for your teams, while engagement through learning, teaching, and sharing is provided through Yammer. Combining core applications like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Yammer, Microsoft Search, OneDrive, Stream, and AI, you now have a powerful tool that provides your employees and teams the ability to collaborate in several mediums, on the go, on any device, and across platforms and applications.

Organizational attributes in sites, such as project, department, division, or region, are organized and connected through SharePoint hub sites. The unified navigation experience is provided with hubs. Sites can be created for a specific function and these sites can be added to the hub. All sites in the hub can roll up content to the top. If you click down to a different site, all the branding and design is automatically applied. Just like adding, sites can be moved from one hub to another.

Keeping your data secure is one of the forefront priorities with Microsoft, and with Classification Labels, this process is now more streamlined and simplified. There are two types of Classification Labels: Retention Labels for applying retention policies on all data; and, Sensitivity Labels for applying consistent security and access policies to all data. This includes content marking, group privacy, controlling level of access on unmanaged devices and restricting access to specific users in your organization. Additionally, anonymous sharing of sensitive files can be blocked through the creation of a DLP policy. And, an audit can be run with your DLP policy for accessed denied requests.

Not only are documents secured, but site access by an external user can be set through a tenant wide limit that defines how long an external user can access content on a shared site. Once the limit is met, the external user will automatically lose access. Requests for an extension can be granted by the Admin in the Admin Centre under User Expiration. Likewise, the Admin can terminate the access immediately.

Managing the Classic experience and the Modern experience is now made easier as the full features in the Admin Centre in the Classic experience is now in the Modern experience. Sites can now be managed with just one-click with bulk actions.

The ability to change the URL of a site is one of the coolest and handiest features (in my opinion). This can be accomplished by going into the Admin Centre, then choosing “Change site address”. Next, type in the new URL in the popup. At the same time, the opportunity to change the name of the site is offered. Once you accept, links will be updated plus a check is made to ensure all links are valid. Old links pointing to an old site are handled with Automatic Redirect. With this running automatically, the user is redirected to the new site, eliminating the need for you to copy content from the old site to the new site.

Collaboration, in real-time with multiple users, is the goal, and with Fluid Framework, this is now possible. Fluid Framework provides the platform for the collaboration of multiple co-authors to work on the same document and at the same time while edits and additions appear almost instantaneously for real-time collaboration.

Microsoft Search combines the power of AI and Microsoft Graph to produce search results not only from files, conversations, and insights but can find people, tasks, or even take you to the spot where you left off in a document. Microsoft Search connects your users with relevant content and people across several platforms and applications, including SharePoint, OneDrive, Yammer, Microsoft Teams, Office, Outlook, Windows, and Bing. One powerful search engine across all Microsoft applications. One feel, and best of all, it brings your design, your branding, your company voice across all MS products.

These are just a few of the applications, and with so many applications, the Admin Centre has been redesigned. The newly redesigned Admin Centre allows the configuration of Microsoft Search settings across all apps and services. Using a third-party? No worries – with search connectors, third party and line-of-business application information will be connected and searchable.

The power of Microsoft Search in SharePoint is prominently featured in the header, like it is in all Microsoft apps and services, on the SharePoint Home Site. It is available when you are, wherever you are. Catching up on announcements and news or continuing where you left off in a shared document or finding sites that are relevant to you without endlessly scrolling through feeds or bookmarks, is made effortless with Microsoft Search in SharePoint.

One key feature is zero intent queries. Simply click on the new search box, and contextually relevant information pops up! What’s contextually relevant? Documents that you recently used, recent suggestions, and people (skills, projects, and interests are all searchable) are ranked based on insights from documents, sites, and people you work with. Matches with rich previews, from over 270 different file types, will display as a live site preview on the search results page, visually making it easy to identify the content you want. For people, a people card will appear that lists their basic information, who they report to, projects they are members of, and teams that they belong to. To help you decide on what content you want to open, and to highlight company endorsed content, Administrator curated answers with markers will appear in the appropriate space on your home page.

A key feature of Microsoft Search in SharePoint is the Megamenu. With the megamenu, not only content on your Home Site is accessible, but content across the entire estate is now at your fingertips.

Interestingly, traditional search engines are based off an inverted structure. However, Microsoft Search leverages machine learning to build optimal models that are refined based on the click thru rate, search results, and the use of documents by users in organizations. Microsoft Search is now the consistent search engine across all platforms and applications. The uniqueness of Microsoft Search is that it is an open source repository where teams across an organization build it cooperatively through collaboration and with AI, creating a repository that is the most relevant to the users.

With one click on the top left Apps Launch button, you can quickly navigate between apps like OneDrive, SharePoint, Outlook, Yammer, and more while corporate branding and navigation flow through. Being natively mobile, all content and conversations are available on the go. An excellent feature is the News Digest Summary which summarizes what you need to know, and with one click, it takes you to the specific article. On the go or no time currently to read it? Simply save it for viewing and reading later.

Even with all these new, enhanced and exciting features, there is more to come! Based on community feedback, Microsoft continues to listen carefully and develop SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft 365 and its applications to provide the best tools to its customers. Announced for the future will be the capability to unlock text in images that are stored as PDFs, find conversations in Teams and Yammer across all applications, having these listed in a dedicated vertical search area, search videos in Stream, OneDrive, and SharePoint in a dedicated vertical search area, utilize custom connectors with adaptive cards for the search results page (you can customize how it looks and take action from that card), and develop your apps with endpoint for MS Search in MS Graph API (currently available in private preview).

These are just a few of the upcoming enhancements, but Microsoft has and will be delivering many new features to SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft 365, OneDrive, Yammer, Stream, Outlook, and many more of their applications. Combining their powerful individual capabilities together, and coupling it with AI, these applications provide your employees with the tools to use to support, engage, and redefine how collaboration between them is performed.

SharePoint Fest DC 2019

Chicago Fest Chicago is April 29th to May 3rd, 2019, a full week packed with workshops, breakout sessions, Ask the Experts panel, and podcasts. This is one of my favorite conferences, and I am honored this year to present one workshop and 3 sessions:

  1. Workshop – 4/29/2019: OneDrive Deployment from Start to finish. This video gives you a quick overview of the workshop.
  2. Session 1 – 5/1/2019: The Evolution of SharePoint ECM to Content Services
  3. Session 2 – 5/2/2019: Increase your collaboration with Azure Automation
  4. Session 3 – 5/3/2019: Build an intranet with modern SharePoint

There is a great lineup of speakers, so make sure you check out the agenda and register for this awesome conference.

You can use Maadarani100 code and get a $100 discount.

SP Fest DC

SharePoint Fest Chicago

Chicago Fest Chicago is December 3rd, 2018, a full week packed with workshops, breakout sessions, Ask the Experts panel, and podcasts. This is one of my favorite conferences, and I am honored this year to present 4 sessions:

  1. OneDrive, the next Collaboration Hub
  2. Increase Office 365 Productivity with Azure Automation
  3. SharePoint modern vs. Classic: when to move and why
  4. Tips in migrating to SharePoint 2016 or Office 365, to avoid migration headaches

There is a great lineup of speakers, so make sure you check out the agenda and register for this awesome conference.

You can use Maadarani100 code and get a $100 discount.

SP Fest Code

Ignite 2018 Announcements: SharePoint, Office 365, OneDrive, and Microsoft 365

At this year’s Ignite, Microsoft has focused their enhancements on combining the power of SharePoint and Microsoft 365, delivering to employees across the organization targeted digital content that pertains to their needs. Displayed visually, targeted for teams, and easily accessible, files can be accessed for live team collaboration.

Engaging Employees

The purpose of SharePoint is to share digital content across the organization, promoting collaboration amongst team members. SharePoint is already effective for sharing information for collaboration, but with audience targeting, knowledge, news, services, and corporate visions can now be delivered to the appropriate teams and their members. External articles can now be shared as news with news links, another great new feature. Visually, there are new page designs and new, powerful web parts, both which will help create stunning pages. Visual tags can be used to accent and highlight Organizational News.

Video Streaming

What better way than to engage your employees with video? Everyone loves to watch video, and with video becoming the preferred method of creating compelling news that captivates the audience, not only is Microsoft Stream the intelligent video service in Microsoft 365, but it is the driving force for video experiences in SharePoint sites and for live and on-demand events for Yammer, Microsoft Teams, and Stream. The mobile app, Microsoft Stream, features offline viewing when in areas of limited or no internet connection. Videos that you can engage in can be found across the organization on Microsoft Stream mobile.

Modern Portals

The digital experience for your employee can be fast, dynamic, natively mobile sites and pages, personalized, beautiful, social, and most importantly, actionable. There will be over a dozen new features that will give you the tools to make your sites and pages look amazing. The new portal web part will help create these experiences, including the ability to personalize views of recent sites, recent documents, and personalized news. For SharePoint portals, the new mega-menu and site footer are game changers. The new Yammer conversations web part will engage and build a community site that brings conversation and content together, encouraging learning and open sharing amongst your audience.

Hub Sites, Your Intranet, and Modern SharePoint

Hub sites is a great way to organize your intranet. With the roll-up events feed and hub join approvals, not only can you deliver information targeted to each team but managing hub sites can be done effectively and simply through SharePoint Admin Centre. In preparation of transitioning and replacing classic publishing sites and portals, the number of hub sites in a tenant has now been increased to 100. By migrating to modern SharePoint, your teams can now experience the new digital content in SharePoint.

Microsoft Teams and SharePoint

Microsoft Teams will be experiencing a new makeover as it morphs to encompass full capabilities of SharePoint document libraries. Create custom views, gain insights into file activities add and format custom columns, and pin files to the top are all capabilities that will be available. With the familiar files command bar, syncing files from Microsoft Teams to your PC or Mac is another added new experience.
With diverse needs, Teams must be able to create solutions to solve their needs. Building composite apps that can also be surfaced in Teams with modern SharePoint pages part-to-part communications. Data and custom-built SharePoint Framework web parts solutions can be shared by adding a SharePoint list as a tab in Teams. Additionally, one will be able to add Teams apps to SharePoint sites, bringing many more apps to your intranet.
Collaborating in a SharePoint team site, a new visual indicator of channel folders will provide information regarding the folders that are associated with channels in Teams. The new link to Teams in the site navigation will navigate you quickly to Teams.
Connect any SharePoint team site to Teams. With your site connected to an Office 365 group, and from your site, create your team with one additional click.
As you can see Teams and SharePoint are coming closer together, providing a platform where your Microsoft Teams and groups can collaborate without compromise on the intranet.

Collaboration – Office 365

Only with Office 365 and with files in the cloud, collaborators can work together and co-author in real-time across mobile, web, and desktop versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Add Comments – OneDrive
Coming soon will be the ability to add comments with @mentions to all file types, including photos, CAD drawings, PDFs and more, in OneDrive. If permission is required to the document, an email notification with a link to the file to join in will be automatically be sent.

OneDrive – Files On-Demand
OneDrive connects you to all your files (personal and shared) in Office 365 whether you are on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, or web. OneDrive Files-On Demand in Windows 10 allows you to view and open files inside File Explorer, including files from Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. By opening up inside File Explorer, no storage space is used on your device. The files remain in the cloud and can be accessed, edited, and shared as if locally stored. If you choose to download and store locally, the file can be used. Once you connect back to the internet, your edits will be automatically uploaded to OneDrive. The power of OneDrive is enormous, and based on requests from UserVoice, OneDrive has now crossed platforms to Mac. OneDrive Files On-Demand for Mac is now available for consumer and commercial customers.

AI and Content Collaboration
Machine-learning and AI can aid in increasing productivity, making informed decisions, and keeping files more secure, and by combining AI with content stored in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business, these goals are achieved. In addition, video and audio transcription services will be coming soon to SharePoint and OneDrive along with scan and metadata capture with the OneDrive mobile app.

Deployment
The new SharePoint Admin Centre will allow you to manage all sites, including group connected team sites, hub sites, and communication sites. Deploy with confidence.

Recovery
Personal files are protected from malicious attacks and file corruption with Files Restore for OneDrive which provides the capability to move a user’s Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders from their Windows device into OneDrive.
This same protection is now available for shared files in SharePoint. A self-service recovery solution, administrators can restore files from any point in time from the last 30 days with File Restore for SharePoint.

SharePoint On-Prem

For SharePoint On-Prem customers, SharePoint Server 2019 will be available in October this year and will offer modern user experiences, support for SharePoint Framework, OneDrive Files On-Demand, and improved hybrid integration with Office 365. The SharePoint Migration Tool is free and highly recommended for moving complete on-premises SharePoint sites, including data from libraries, lists, and file shares.