SharePoint 2019 New Features

The new features in SharePoint 2019 are based on three themes. These themes involve the users’ experience that is developed through SharePoint Online, content engagement across all platforms, and powerful scaling security and compliance capabilities.

What is new for SharePoint 2019? SharePoint 2019 will have many new and added features that enhance the “modern experience”, making it flexible, mobile, compelling and easier to use, especially for on-prem users. These new features include:

  1. SharePoint Home Page: The home page will provide users with the ability to easily find and access SharePoint sites within the organization. Additional information will include the news from the sites that they are following as well as from suggested sites. If the administrator has given the user permission, the user will have the ability to create new communication sites from the home page. There are three out-of-the-box templates available:

      Topic which consists of four default web parts (Hero, News, Documents, and Events);
      Showcase leverages the default Hero and Image Gallery web parts to visually highlight products, events, and people; and
      Blank which provides a clean canvas so that you can customize with your own modern web parts;

  2. Modern Lists and Libraries: Bringing List and Libraries in parallel with SharePoint Online, the modern experience is now the default for team sites, though Classic is still supported. Users will be able to copy and move files using the command bar as well as add files as links, filter and sort easily, pin documents, and apply column formatting including adding columns and rows to SharePoint Lists with JSON markup.

    By combining the powers of SharePoint 2019 and OneDrive, Libraries has a modern sharing experience with an updated and intuitive UI. Previous syncing and integration issues are now solved so that tasks, like creating new folders, saving documents, and uploading files in SharePoint and/or OneDrive, can be done at any time and from anywhere;
  3. New Team, Site Pages: As the communication site, users and teams can share messages, news, broadcasts and they can also display stories. With the new Hero web part, five items with text, image, and links can be displayed, drawing attention to the most important content;
  4. New Pages: Comprised of web parts, new pages are fully customizable to the needs of the user. Users will have the ability to add Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, images, feeds like Yammer, site activities, and embed videos;
  5. Modern Search Experience: Using intuitive logic, the modern search experience will suggest relevant content before the user enters a keystroke. The results update as the user types in the criteria. The search results page shows an overall of search results and is grouped by type;
  6. Lists: The modern lists simplify how users and teams create, curate, and interact with the information. Individuals and teams will be able to share, access, and collaborate around structured data. Additionally, information from other systems can be leveraged into SharePoint to support business processes.

True to its purpose, SharePoint continues to support collaboration between teams and individuals in their organizations. As SharePoint updates to 2019, there will be some features in 2016 and 2013 that will be deprecated and these six features will be:

  1. Aggregated Newsfeed: The tile in the app launcher and the option to implement the newsfeed capability will be removed. The existing aggregate newsfeed will become read-only. The suggested solution is to use communication sites and Microsoft Teams;
  2. Custom Help: The existing engine in SharePoint will be removed in the future. For the Microsoft legacy on-prem SharePoint help engine, it will be updated and will synchronize with O365;
  3. SharePoint Designer 2013: SharePoint Designer 2013 will continue to function with SharePoint Server 2019 until 2026 where support will officially end. Alternatives include PowerApps and Microsoft Flow and both are available via the on-prem data gateway;
  4. Multi-Tenancy: Inline with migrating services to the cloud, multi-tenancy capabilities are building dependencies on cloud technologies, and for on-premises environments, these capabilities are not available. Due to costs and complexities of providing on-prem alternatives, multi-tenancy will no longer be available;
  5. Visio Services: Rendering based on Silverlight will no longer be supported effective October 12, 2021. Switching to PowerBI is the recommended solution; and 6. Code-based Sandbox Solutions: These customization packages deployed at the site collection level have already been removed from SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online. They will be removed from SharePoint 2019. SharePoint add-ins are the suggested alternatives.

Summarizing the added new features and the deprecation of others, is a handy cheat sheet below:

Credits: ShareGate.com

The Modern Experience is not only here to stay, but it is being integrated into SharePoint 2019. If an older version of SharePoint on-prem is being used, it is highly recommended that the upgrade to SharePoint 2019 be implemented. With nearly all the modern functionalities available, it will bring on-prem up to par with SharePoint online. With SharePoint 2019, user experience and collaboration become modernized with greater ease of access and use for individuals and teams. 

SharePoint Content Services

Microsoft offers Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Services for Office365, OneDrive, and SharePoint.  Content Services manages the entire life cycle from document creation, sharing, consumption, knowledge, repurposing, records management, disposal, and archiving. By holistically embracing the whole document lifecycle from creation to archiving to disposal, content services management has become people-centric. As an integral part of content services management, policy and security is not only intelligent, but is simple and automated.

 

What is Content Services?

An excellent example of explaining Microsoft Content Services is comparing the actions of content management to the lifecycle of money and a bank. Imagine that the files you create (your data) is the money that you are earning. When you bring your files for storage and management with Microsoft Content Services, it is very much like bringing your hard-earned earnings to the bank for depositing into your savings account. When you need to access it, the data is always accessible, just like your money. Once your data is stored, it becomes not only accessible to you, but to those who you allow access to, similar in fashion to the funds that are deposited into the bank. The bank coordinates how the funds are shared and with whom, and Microsoft Content achieves the same goals of coordinating the file sharing amongst authorized users, devices, and features in the organization, and with external providers.  Collaboration and access are targeted to a specific audience (your teams), and to prevent unauthorized users from accessing your files and data, security is put in place to keep your data safe and secure, just like at the bank for your money. Harvesting the files, like a withdrawal, will place the files in either an archive repository or they will be permanently deleted. What we have explained are the four actions of Content Services Management in SharePoint:

1.  Create: create, collect and classify content

2.  Coordinate: enrich libraries with Tenants, Flow and coauthoring

3.  Protect: manage compliance, lifecycle, DLP, encryption and eDiscovery

4.  Harvest: search, manage and dispose of content

 

What Creates Content Storage?

Content creates the need for storage, and the function of the content defines the type of storage required. The function of the content can be categorized as perpetual (always there), policy driven (response to administrative and/or IT behavior), and user-centric (response to user activities like collaboration and sharing). These three categories form the enterprise content services platform.

The platform on its own, is not functional, but by layering applications on top of it, it becomes functional. These applications are not only developed by Microsoft but are also built and developed with Microsoft partners. Through partnering, content can be provided on a range of devices from mobile to desktop, regardless of the operating system. In addition, if the content is stored in the cloud, then users on any device will be able to access this content.

 

Announcements

There are some amazing new features and enhancements with Content Services Management at Microsoft that were announced at Ignite 2018.

Tap: based on Microsoft Graph, and used in Office clients, Tap allows you to “reuse” document sections, that have been indexed, into new documents. In addition, metadata can be inserted as quick parts

Intelligent Search: based on Microsoft Graph, and spanning across Office365, it can be personalized to your work network, harvesting and curating knowledge that is more applicable to your projects for resourcing and collaboration. Fully functional across all devices, it provides knowledge no matter where you are working and no matter which platform you are working off of. Private, compliant and trustworthy

Central Asset Library: a central repository for approved images, such as headers, galleries or webparts, and it allows you to register one or more document libraries that are available in SharePoint

File Card: for every document that is indexed, AI extracts from the document, relevant information and terms. These are then shown on an index card that appears when you hover over the document in the library. The file card provides pertinent information that allows the user to make the decision to open it to read or to continue to the next document. Looking to see what information resides in a document without opening it is one of the best new features for users. Additional flexibility is added as the user can edit and supplement with document metadata plus key points can be edited in SharePoint

Mobile Capture: documents and images can be scanned into SharePoint or OneDrive with the OneDrive mobile app.  Users can add custom metadata when saving the files directly to a SharePoint library, eliminating the need to retag images inside a browser

Document Templates: default templates are always available, but now there is the ability to upload documents and duplicate it with the New menu in document libraries to create new and custom document templates

Predictive Indexing: add indexes to libraries and lists of any size with a maximum of 30 million items

Modern Document Sets: work with document sets in SharePoint with the modern user experience

PowerApps Integration and SharePoint Libraries: use SharePoint libraries as the data source to build apps and forms

Updates to Taxonomy APIs: using REST-based APIs from Managed Metadata Service, develop, design and create solutions that consume content types and terms

Flow for Document Management: in Office 365, move and copy files by leveraging Microsoft Flow including the generation of shareable links while maintaining the integrity of the metadata

Attention Views and Bulk Edit: summarizes the items in a library requiring metadata where the metadata is incomplete or not entered by the user. It also shows the location of the missing metadata, making it easy to add this information. This is time saving as you do not have to review line by line to see what and where the metadata is missing. You can either enter the data, or you can notify the owner to fill in the data  

SharePoint Server 2019: targeted at on-prem clients, modern lists and libraries are deployed with bulk edit, attention views, filter panes and more

File Plans: implementing Excel-based formats, import, manage, and classify multiple retention rules

Label Analytics: for each applied retention rule, analyze usage, trends and content

Metadata-Driven Labels: retention labels can be automatically applied to content with rules based on metadata and content types

Immutable Labels: to meet special regulatory requirements, a document is tagged with an “immutable” mark or label. This marks it as undeletable and irreversibly unchangeable

There are many exciting enhancements and new capabilities rolling out for SharePoint, Office365, and SharePoint Server 2019. From the time saving file card, to the repurposing of document information with Tap, to the retention of metadata and links with file management, SharePoint and Office 365 continue to revolutionize the platforms for office collaboration amongst teams in your organization.

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.

Ignite 2018 Announcements

I am here  in Orlando attending Microsoft Ignite with 30,000 other friends enjoying connecting with good friends, the new announcements, the weather and of course the parties. But the better part of this, is blogging about the announcements and sharing my views on them throughout the week. So here is a first of few posts about Ignite 2018.

Microsoft announced many new and exciting features for SharePoint and Office 365. Even more exciting is the continued development of AI and its integration into many of the new key features.


Microsoft Teams vs. Slack


As the competitor to Slack, Microsoft Teams is alluring more organizations in joining its platform. Microsoft Teams is the “hub for teamwork” and now has over 329,000 organizations utilizing it. To continue growing its customer base, Microsoft Teams will be targeting specific groups of potential customers by adding tools that are specific to these groups. The first targeted group of workers is those who do not sit at a desk or computer all day. Instead, they have direct contact either with customers or with equipment and are defined as firstline workers by Microsoft. Firstline workers will have the capability to manage their schedules. Not only will they be able to create and share schedules, but they will be able to submit requests for time off, perform shift swapping, and access important announcements. These features are expected to roll out in October.


Healthcare is another specialized organization that Microsoft Teams will be targeting. Highly regulated, Microsoft has developed a new patient care coordination tool which meets the Health Information Privacy Access Act (HIPPA), making it HIPPA compliant. This tool will integrate with electronic health records systems, making it more secure than standard chat functions. This feature is currently in private preview.
Microsoft Teams is now leveraging AI-powered capabilities, which are generally available. In its ongoing commitment to transform business meetings, a new feature, Background Blur, blurs your background during video meetings through facial recognition.
Another integration with AI is Meeting Recording which provides speech-to-text transcription. The generated transcript is searchable and automatically applies captions to the recorder.


Office 365 and LinkedIn


At $26.2B, Microsoft’s 2016 acquisition of LinkedIn was one of the biggest purchases in the company’s history. LinkedIn is one of Microsoft’s fastest-growing businesses and continues to roll out integrations for the combined companies. The newest, and deepest, integration will provide LinkedIn users the ability to co-author documents in Office 365 with their business social network contacts. Office 365 programs that will be included are Word, Excel, and PowerPoint while Outlook provides allow users the ability to email their LinkedIn contacts. As exciting as this is, there is no announced
date of the rollout for these features, but it was announced that they will be coming soon in a staged rollout.


Safety in the Cloud

Every day, organizations focus on keeping their data safe from unknown cyber threats and data breaches. Microsoft announced that IT will be empowered with tools to unlock the security capabilities of the intelligent cloud. Focusing on three things, the cyberwar will continue to tip in favour of breach prevention. These three focal points are security operations on a global scale for both Microsoft and its customers, enterprise-class technology, and broad cybersecurity partnerships.
On the enterprise-class security technology, Microsoft is using the cloud to secure organizations broadly with new security features in products that will protect against a range of threats, securing the network, and protect sensitive information. These features include Microsoft Threat Protection for Microsoft 365.
Microsoft Threat Protection uses human research and AI to speed up investigations, thereby eliminating threats faster. It is a comprehensive solution that protects, detects, and remediate cyber threats. This protection and auto-remediation is a single integrated experience in Microsoft 365 as it protects across email, PCs, identities, and infrastructure.


Investing in Our Future with AI for Good Program


Microsoft announced the third and latest program which will utilize its vast artificial intelligence resources for the humanitarian crisis. Pledging $40 million over five years, the new AI for Humanitarian Action initiative will focus on four aid areas: children’s needs, disaster recovery, protecting refugees and displaced people, and human rights. The vision is to leverage artificial intelligence, technology, and cloud technology so that frontline relief, such as global relief organizations, can proactively anticipate, predict, and target response efforts. By integrating and being proactive, then more lives can be saved, suffering can be alleviated, and human dignity can be restored. Technology and artificial intelligence, integrated together, can change humanitarian efforts.
As part of the AI for Good program, AI for Humanitarian Action is only one of three launched pillars. The AI for Good program has pledged a total of $115 million where $50 million was allotted for AI for Earth which launched in July 2017, and $25 million for AI for Accessibility which was launched in May 2018.
The AI for Good Program is one of the most vigorous and philanthropic programs. Microsoft is on the bleeding edge of not only technology but also on contributing back to the communities. Well done, Microsoft. Well done.

Modern SharePoint metadata

Metadata – What is it?

Metadata is compromised of meta tags which are short snippets of text that describe the page’s content. With accurate metadata, search engines locate and find pages of content that are relevant to the search criteria that was inputted by reading the metadata on the pages. Metadata is key in search engine optimization (SEO), a term which you may or may or may not be familiar with. With SharePoint and Office 365, metadata is now used to bring accurate, relevant, and targeted pages to its audience.

Why use Metadata in SharePoint and Office 365?

SharePoint and Office 365 are all about collaboration and keeping your teams informed of the latest news. By applying the concept of SEO with metadata in the internet world to the world of collaborative intranets, SharePoint and Office 365 can curate and provide accurate and relative content to targeted audiences.

In addition to the metadata, the ability to custom Pages library columns to filter information and to target the pages results in more accurate, specific, and powerful information to the right audience.

How to Define and Decide the Metadata

It is easy to go overboard with metadata but by following 4 simple steps, this can be avoided. To begin defining the metadata, review the naming convention that is followed for the folders as the logic of sorting and organizing begins here for the data. The top-level folders indicate the first custom column in your Pages library. The second level folders may indicate the second customized column. You now have the first two metadata columns. For the next step, review and analyze the naming convention for the document files. Users will name their documents with built-in search criteria that make it easy for them to find it. Perhaps, the naming convention would include the year, month, date, project name, and version control. By reviewing the naming convention carefully, you can determine the hierarchy of terms which become searchable. For example, the metadata that can be defined is the year or the project name. An important step is to think like your users: how will they search for that information? The words or phrases (the criteria) that you arrive at can be also defined and added as another customized column.  Finally, reach out to your users and ask them what their criteria for searching would be. By doing this, you will arrive at enterprise keywords.  The responses elicited maybe extremely varied but by filtering, one could arrive at the most common phrases/search criteria to develop and define the metadata.

 

How to Add Custom Meta Tags to SharePoint Pages

By using the Page details edit pane, you can create custom columns which contain your metadata information. Located within the Pages library of your site, these custom columns can be used to filter, organize, and target pages when the metadata is used with web parts like Highlighted Content and News.

Adding Custom Metadata to SharePoint Pages

In the Pages library, add a new custom property to a page. Then create a column for that property. This column contains the metadata or searchable properties of that Page. This is now available on the Pages detail edit pane for each page of that site. In edit mode on a page, open the edit pane by clicking Page details. If you are an author, then you will have the permissions to edit or add values to any of the metadata columns in that corresponding pages library.

Viewing, Editing, and Adding Page Properties

Page properties can be viewed and edited. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click Page Details at the top of the page;

2. Under the property name, click the value of the property that is to be edited. Type in the new vale and press Enter. To edit multiple properties at a time, click Edit All. Edit the properties that are to be revised. When done, click Save.

At the bottom of the pane, click More Details to view additional information about the page.

Adding Page Properties

Adding a property to the page can be done by creating a customized column in the pages library. The customized column contains the metadata, the searchable properties, that the search engines use to locate and curate the content. Not only can the metadata be seen and edited in the pages library, it is also available in the Page details pane for each page.

1. In the Pages library, click Pages on the left navigation pane. If you do not see Pages, then click Settings which is located on the top right. Next, choose Site Contents and then from Site Contents, choose Site Pages;

2. Click Add Column+ to the right of the last column name at the top of the library or list;

3. Choose the type of column you want from the dropdown list. The dropdown list includes Single Line of Text, Multiple Lines of Text, Number, Yes/No, Person, Date, Choice, Hyperlink, Picture, Currency, and More…;

4.  In the Name field that comes up in the dialogue box, type in the title or the column heading;

5. Click Create.

Adding More Column Types

1. Click Pages on the left navigation pane in the pages library. If you do not see Pages, click Settings located on the top right and then choose Site Contents. From Site Contents, choose Site Pages;

2. In the library that you want to add a column, from the All Items or All Documents view of the list, select Add Column+ at the end of the heading row. Then, select More….

3. In the Name and Type section, key in the name that you want for the column in the Column Name box;

4. From the dialogue box titled The Type of information in this column is, select the type of information that you want to appear;

5. There is a Description Box in the Additional Column Settings which provides the opportunity to add a description. Though optional, it is highly recommended to provide the descriptor to assist users in understanding the purpose of the customized column. Depending upon the type of column that was selected, additional options may appear in the Additional Column Settings section.

Filtering, Targeting, and Organizing SharePoint Pages

Organizing and grouping individual pages can be achieved by using the properties (metadata) set for each page. Web parts and pages dynamically display if the source in the Highlighted Content or News web part is changed to “The page library on this site” along with setting the filter option to “Page properties”. 

Display Page Metadata for Your Audience

Greater context can be provided to your readers by exposing some of the metadata on the page with the use of the Page Properties web part. First, add the Page Properties web part to the page. Next, add the page properties that are to be displayed. Then, choose different information to be displayed across different pages. The Page Properties web part supports managed metadata columns, which can be entered in manually or by choosing the icon from the available terms.

By determining, deciding and implementing metadata into your pages, the most relevant and current information can be delivered to your readers based on their search criteria and on the parameters/filters that you set.

Rollout to Targeted Release customers will be completed shortly with a worldwide rollout beginning at the end of July 2018.

New OneDrive for Business capabilities announced SPCNA


You asked. You voted. You shall receive.

Microsoft has offered to listen to your feedback through a public, user driven forum aptly named OneDrive UserVoice (https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/filters/top). If you have a suggestion or have a request for an improvement or feature, this is the place to suggest it. In addition to requesting, you also have the capability to vote on other suggestions that have been submitted. As a collective voice, OneDrive UserVoice became the collaborative, driving force for the new capabilities that were announced at the SharePoint Conference in North America for OneDrive for Business.

Scan and Photos Experiences on Mobile

Scan Experience: a dedicated icon in the tab bar allows easier access to the built-in scan functionality. Annotating, adding multiple pages, and changing the destination folder or file name can now be done in the capture experience.

Camera Upload: photos and videos captured on your local camera roll in iOs and Android platforms are now automatically uploaded.

Sharing and Collaboration Security

Password Protected Links: Sharing a file or folder with your collaborators will have an additional level of security with the ability to not only set a password, but the recipient will also require a password. This will prevent accidental sharing of information if your recipient forwards or shares the link. Password protected links are unnecessary if secure external sharing is applied.     

Block Download: View-only links allow you to share Office documents in the cloud but with block download, users are prevented from downloading files for the purpose of keeping and storing them offline.

Deployment and Onboarding

Known Folder Move: Administrators will have the capability to seamlessly move folders such as Documents, Pictures, and Desktop, from their PC to OneDrive. This is supported during initial account configuration and for post-deployment migration.

Team Site Automount: Administrators can automatically connect and synchronize specific SharePoint Team Sites as part of the process of deployment or upgrading to OneDrive.

Sharing Controls

External Sharing Reports: Site administers will be able to see all the files that are being shared on their site, including files that are being shared through secure external sharing and anonymous links with this report. By setting filters, the data can be further refined for capture and can be exported to Excel or Power BI. This data report can then be used to analyze end user patterns, including sharing usage. These reports can also be imported into third-party management software as well as security software.  

Customization of Sharing Emails: For outbound and emails that are being shared with recipients, Administrators will have the ability to brand these emails with their company logo; however, Azure Active Directory Premium P2 is a requirement for this functionality.

Transfer Ownership for Deleted Users: A user’s ownership of their OneDrive files is currently transferred to their manager when they leave the organization. Soon, Administrators will have the ability to transfer the ownership to any individual in the organization.  

 

When does this all roll out?

These are truly exciting features that have been announced! The various stages of the updates and rollout dates can be found on the Office 365 Roadmap (https://products.office.com/en-US/business/office-365-roadmap?filters=#) and I suggest that you check here often as release dates have not yet been announced.     

Versioning Update for SharePoint Online and OneDrive


The Importance of Version Control

Version control, or versioning, allows a file or item to be restored to an older state that is chosen from the version list. With versioning enabled, items and files in the SharePoint list or library are protected from unwanted, miscalculated and inadvertent errors. 

Applications of Versioning

Track Version History: version history discloses information about when an item or file was changed, by whom, what was changed, and any comments that were made when files are checked into libraries

Restore Previous Version: file or items that are corrupt can be restored from a previous version. A previous version can also be restored if mistakes are made in the file or item, or if the previous version is more akin to what is wanted. The restored version becomes the current version

View Previous Version: Before reverting to a previous version, there is the capability to compare two versions within a Microsoft Office document, such as Word or Excel, to determine the differences between the two documents without overwriting the current version.    

What is New with Versioning

Versioning is becoming more crucial as software and technology advances, as exemplified by the evolution of AutoSave and Restore Your OneDrive. Leveraging versions allows greater confidence for users and administrators alike while delivering better user experience.

In line with development, Microsoft recently announced they will be enabling versioning on all Document Libraries in team sites in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business with a default of retaining a minimum of 100 major versions. If your library is set to retain 100 or more major revisions, then this update will not affect you. However, existing libraries that are set to retain less than 100 major versions will be updated to meet the minimum criteria of 100 events.

Roll out will begin in June for first release customers while remaining tenants worldwide will receive the update in July. The rollout is expected to be completed by the end of July.

Who is Impacted

As mentioned, all team sites for OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online will be affected. Will you be impacted if your team sites are not connected to an Office 365 group? The answer is “yes”, the rollout will update to the 100 minimum major revisions if you are not set to be 100 or above.

What if we are On-Prem for SharePoint? Will this affect us? The answer is “no”, this will have no impact on your SharePoint document libraries.   

What Else Changes

Once the update is rolled out to your tenant, site owners and administrators will not be able to set a versioning limit of less than 100. In addition to this, they will not be able to disable document library versioning as it will now be standard practice to have it enabled.

What About Storage Space?

Prior to the redevelopment of the flat collection sites with Office 365, versioning of document libraries required large storage sites. This, in turn, created issues for the allocation of storage for site collections. The result of limited storage was the stringent, low versioning limit. With the new approach of flat collection sites, storage is less of a concern than it was in the past; however, with audits, the speed of change in technology, and the increase in collaboration between teams and individual members, errors and corrupt files can be incurred, which places a priority on the ability to restore and recover these files and items. Hence, the rollout of the new higher, minimum versioning limit of 100.    

Classic Sites vs. Modern Sites

 

The question many are asking is: Should we stay with SharePoint Classic Sites or should we switch to SharePoint Modern Sites?  In this post, we will delve into the advantages and disadvantages of the SharePoint Classic and Modern Sites.

Classic SharePoint is the SharePoint you are familiar with up to SharePoint 2016, and recently with SharePoint Online, which was based on ASP.NET web technology that was run from the desktop. Routing information back and forth from the server to the client is not only time intensive but is not new-technology friendly. SharePoint Classic Sites is developed for function, whereas SharePoint Modern Sites is developed for form and mobility.

Modern SharePoint pages, written in JavaScript, run faster on devices and are mobile responsive. Written and based on modern web development standards, native iOS and Android applications such as SharePoint OneDrive, Planner and Teams can leverage the new modern sites and pages in SharePoint.

In this article, we will try to address questions many are facing when it is time to deploy their new SharePoint Online experience, through a portal, global intranet or an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) implementation.

Architecture: Flat vs. Hierarchical of Classic vs. Modern

Since the early days of SharePoint, we have designed the portals, intranet and ECM sites as our traditional hierarchical structure where you have home site collection and either you will have subsites or you divide your intranet into multiple site collections with many subsite levels (depending on how big your organization is). Regardless, with any decision you have made, one or more site collections, each site collection usually contained many deep levels based on how the departments managed and maintained their sites. I have seen this architecture many times:

Classic Information Architecture

Although one site collection created a great place to manage your content types and metadata centrally, and it gave you the ability to maintain consistent global navigation and branding, it also gave many organizations a lot of headaches to maintain. The above architecture gave SharePoint administrators a lot of grief to manage the sites, specifically when it came to broken security inheritance at each site level. It was a nightmare to manage and administrators were always and consistently faced with two scenarios:

  1. Access to sites that you are not supposed to have access to; and
  2. Not being able to access documents even though you belonged to the team.

In addition to managing the sites, from a performance point of view, SharePoint Online did not handle many subsites well. Cloud architecture, for maximum performance, prefers a flat structure. The more sites you add to your site collection, the more trips it takes to load all the site structure, which in turn results in taxing the performance and loading of the sites, slowing it down considerably.

SharePoint has been adapting to new technology and new methodologies of collaboration on the go, and the architecture is once again changing to accommodate this. Flat architecture is once again preferred, but collection sites are organized by Root (Classic Sites), Modern Communications Sites and Teams with Modern Team Sites. Why? Deep hierarchies are more difficult to work with while shallow hierarchies allow content to be more easily discoverable. With proper navigation and metadata, hierarchies can be simulated. If binding sites together is required, then utilizing the Hub Site is the preferred method.

With one site per function, one can achieve simple security, clearly show the purpose of that site, and clearly show who owns the content. All this makes tracking easy. The utilization of Hub Sites gives us pause to rethink the hierarchical architecture that is required in SharePoint Modern Sites. SharePoint doesn't automatically add navigation for new site collections, only sub-sites. Each site collection is its own secured silo. The site doesn't exist until you make it visible through navigation. The flat architecture allows the movement of subsites through repointing of links. When corporate restructuring requires subsites to fall under their new reporting structure, the subsite is not moved, rather, the navigation link is repointed to the new destination. Simple and clean.   

Design and Branding – Master Page/Page Layouts vs New Branding Approach

Intranet sites customized with Classic SharePoint utilize Master Page to create strong branding on their SharePoint sites. Customers have full control of the UI but in exchange, they take full responsibility to risk breaking their design with future upgrades and maintenance in Office 365 and they must ensure that all customizations are working with SharePoint. Challenging, though doable, customization requires CSS knowledge and, quite often, JavaScript injection. This is more complex and costly but does not pose the same supportability challenges. The most important drawback is that Classic Sites do not provide a good mobile experience.

Modern SharePoint Sites does not support Master Page, though there is limited ability to brand on Modern sites.  Themes with simple colours, headers, and footers can be customized, but it is not as flexible as Classic Sites.  One of the main advantages of Modern Sites is the accessibility of online, on the go content that is both usable and legible on all devices. Unlike Classic Sites, Modern Sites naturally rearrange to fit onto the device screen. Gone are the tiny words and lines along with the impossible buttons to push. Instead, readable text and a user interface that provides links and buttons that one can use without a micro-sized finger. Microsoft’s decision to remove Master Page and retain full control over the UI guarantees that SharePoint online will show and maintain a consistent, visually pleasant, and usable mobile experience.

With SharePoint Classic Sites, it was common to inject the pages, including the Master Page, with scripts to customize for branding and looks. However, this practice was not supported by Microsoft and could result in the loss of functionality within SharePoint after upgrades and releases. Realizing that many companies require a methodology to brand and customize, Microsoft has provided SharePoint Framework web parts and design patterns. Framework allows the same type of functionality as script injection; however, it provides control and organization around it. SPFx Application Customizer provides access to well-known locations on SharePoint pages that you can modify based on your business and functional requirements. Once again, it maintains its mobile-first advantages. It is important to note that, technically, if a customer truly wanted to customize their Modern Site, it could be done but this could result in breaks in other areas of SharePoint and/or with future additions and upgrades.

So, coming back to the original question:  should one stay with SharePoint Classic Sites or switch to SharePoint Modern Sites? Since SharePoint Modern Sites is focused on having content at your fingertips, whether you are in your office or on the go with your mobile phone, a consideration to migrate or not is to factor in how important it is to your corporation for mobile access.  If it is high on the priority list, then migrating to SharePoint Modern Sites is advisable.

Can you have both? Yes, you can migrate to SharePoint Modern Sites and toggle to Classic Sites, but it is important to ask whether your users will be appreciative of the different feel and inconsistency between the two sites.  Sometimes, it is better to commit to one side of the fence than sitting on it, as it is in this case, as the inconsistency may result in confusion for your users. 

When we consider and review the Road Map for SharePoint and Office 365, it is clear Microsoft will continue on the road for mobile applications that provide super responsive content while on the go with out of the box, ready to use while being easily customizable for content. It is also noted that new features, web parts and enhancements will be made on the modern SharePoint, where classic will stay as is without any further enhancements. Eventually, the decision will have to be made to migrate to SharePoint Modern Sites, but there is time as Modern Sites is still in its infancy. Until then, keep in mind the architecture, the Road Map, and the targets as you design your corporation’s infrastructure for SharePoint and Office 365. 

OneDrive and SharePoint Multi-Geo


Office 365 Multi-Geo provides an answer for many multinational companies who must meet local policies regarding local data residency. Or perhaps there are different levels of need, such as one office requiring local data residency while another may not. Multi-Geo enables a single Office 365 tenant to span across multiple Office 365 datacentre geographies (Geos) while addressing the needs of clients who may be required or need to keep data locally. The greater need that is addressed with Office 365 Multi-Geo is the ability for international satellite offices to collaborate with each other on a global scale.

Multi-Geo affects two types of data:  user attached resources, such as user mailboxes and OneDrive; and shared resources, such as SharePoint Team Sites and Office 365 Groups, which includes shared sites and shared mailboxes.

Multi-Geo is available in 3 geographical locations: North America, Europe and Australia. By enabling your tenant to be Multi-Geo, you could extend your tenant into nine potential geos. These nine geos include Asia-Pacific, Australia, Canada, European Union, India, Japan, UK, US, South Korea. Additional geos will be launched in the future, including France. At the time of writing, services available in Multi-Geo include Exchange Online (in preview), OneDrive for Business (in preview), and SharePoint Online (in development).

Because Office 365 Multi-Geo is a single tenant spanning across multiple geos, rolling out globally is very straightforward in the Global Admin Centre. Once your tenant is Multi-Geo enabled, open PowerShell where you will specify the:

ServiceType – which service do you want to extend such as Exchange, SharePoint or Skype For Business

Location – where you want to extend the content to (which geo will you extend to)

InitialDomain – what content do you want to extend to the geo. Because data in SharePoint and OneDrive, as it is provisioned, must be addressable by a URL, the InitialDomain specifies the URL for the content to reach the extended geo.  

Once executed, the system will refresh and update the URL for all affected users in the extended geos.  

Office 365 Multi-Geo: Common Foundations and Concepts

There are 3 basic concepts for the Admin and these are:

AllowedDataLocation: tenant level property that specifies the allowed geos for Office 365 applications. New and additional geos will not show up automatically and this setting will need to be set up initially or when Microsoft releases new locations.  

PreferredDataLocation (PDL): user-level property that specifies the location of Mailbox and OneDrive with one PDL assigned per user. On the user objects, configure PDL in Azure AD. This information will then flow into Exchange and OneDrive resulting in users mailboxes and OneDrives to be placed in their respective locations.

Azure AD Connect Tool: used to configure PDL, for On-prem AD, on synchronized user objects.

Exchange Online Multi-Geo: Mail & Calendar

Multi-Geo for Exchange Online has been in development for many years and had been implemented since it was first developed. Based upon these capabilities in Exchange Online, it is continuing to evolve. In Exchange Online, the global front-end service, single namespace, allowed service access via outlook.office.com and already multi-geo being the point of connection for the client to Exchange Online. With Office 365 Multi-Geo, you can now select where the users’ data is stored in the background.

Auto-discovery of mailbox location was implemented in On-Prem sites whereby Outlook automatically connected a user to their mailbox. In Office 365 Multi-Geo, auto-discovery automatically connects the user’s mailbox when they are moved from one geo location to another. For an end user, this will be like magic as this functionality runs in the background and is invisible to them.

Having a central site with multiple geos requires a standardization such as a single view Exchange Tenant Configuration. Stored in the Exchange Directory, the recipient information and tenant configuration ensure that the view of the tenant configuration is the same regardless of which geo you are accessing it from.

There are several Admin advantages with Multi-Geo when it comes to mailboxes. First, new mailboxes can be provisioned directly into a specified Geo. Second, existing Office 365 mailboxes can be moved into a specific Geo without disrupting the end user. Lastly, existing Exchange On-prem mailboxes can be on-boarded to a specific Geo.

From the end user’s perspective, Office 365 Multi-Geo is mostly invisible for both mail and calendar.  

OneDrive Multi-Geo: Files

OneDrive Multi-Geo

What is a OneDrive Multi-Geo? The central location for the satellites will have SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Exchange Online. The structure for the whole organization includes one global Azure Active Directory. Having a single tenant allows management of all users for the whole organization, regardless of where they are located. For each satellite location that the central location extends to, access to OneDrive for Business Multi-Geo and Exchange Online is given when the user is assigned their mailbox and OneDrive.

OneDrive Multi-Geo: Admin Centre

There is a separate OneDrive Admin Centre for each Geo because OneDrive is URL based. In the OneDrive Admin Centre, you will be able to see whose OneDrive is where, which will streamline the unlocking for the rollout of OneDrive. Another advantage of having separate OneDrives per Geo is the management of OneDrive settings. By having separate Admin Centres, the settings can be specified for each Geo.

In terms of licensing and other aspects of managing user aspects, one can access the Global Office 365 Portal Centre. Here, user-specific aspects such as passwords can be managed.

OneDrive Multi-Geo: Geo Users

The Geo user does not know that they are a Multi-Geo user. Once a user launches their app on the browser, they are automatically redirected to the Geo that they have been assigned to by the Admin. For the mobile client, Office Client, and OneDrive sink client, the user only needs to enter their email address. The Client is Geo-aware and will automatically connect the user to the corresponding OneDrive in the correct Geo.

Office 365 Multi-Geo: Delve, Profile, and Unified Auditing

How does the Delve experience look like when there are multiple users collaborating from different Geos? A user will see all the signals from all the users across the Geos, including their own Geo.

From a security compliance perspective, Unified Auditing allows the Admin to see a single unified view of all the activities that have occurred in your Multi-Geo tenant, regardless of what the user has done or where the content resides. The activities log can be exported or filtered according to the data that you require.

SharePoint Online Multi-Geo: Sites and Groups

The major difference between OneDrive Multi-Geo and SharePoint Online Multi-Geo is that SharePoint Online Multi-Geo satellites will have the full SharePoint Online experience. This includes SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business Multi-Geo, Exchange Online and Skype for Business. Team Sites and Office 365 Groups can be created in the satellite Geos in SharePoint Online Multi-Geo.

SharePoint Online Multi-Geo

SharePoint Online Multi-Geo: Admin Centre

Each Geo will be having its own Admin Centre. In the Admin Centre, you will be able to create Team Sites in that particular Geo. To create a Team Site in a specific Geo, you must first navigate to it and then create the Team Site. Otherwise, it will create that Team Site in whichever location are you currently in.

Another consideration is the sharing policy for data residency. As each Geo location may have its own requirements for data residency, the sharing policy can be configured for each Geo independently of the central location as well as with other satellites. If the same policy is to apply across all Geos, then in PowerShell you have the capability to push this policy across all Geos.

Each Geo is identifiable by a user, an Admin, or a compliance officer, based on its unique URL. Because you will choose the namespace for the URL for your SharePoint Admin Centre, it is important to consider how and what you will name this URL.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies can be created and applied to specific Geos. To These types of policies can be created by going to the Security Compliance Centre. Once created, they can then be applied to a specific Geo’s OneDrive Site, SharePoint Site or mailbox in that site. Each Geo can have its own security compliance policy.

Microsoft has continued to develop and evolve Office 365 Multi-Geo by integrating IT Admin best practices, shared services, and ensuring an invisible and seamless product for end-users. Office 365 Multi-Geo delivers OneDrive as well as SharePoint Online with a single global tenant, which provides centralized control over satellite locations, and each Geo has the capabilities to be customized for its local policies on data residency and policies. Office 365 Multi-Geo is meeting the demands of on the go collaboration across continents and its users.