This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Microsoft SharePoint Blog articles.
July brought the heat to many cities across the world, so we at Microsoft thought we’d bring a little heat of our own via SharePoint and related tech updates that rolled out this month. This is the all-inclusive recap plus the Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: July 2019 podcast episode – the bonus monthly audible companion to help answer, "What's rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?"
To answer that question, listen and scroll below (info, links and screenshots galore) to stay informed on what features and updates arrived this past month - plus a few teasers of what's to come:
In this podcast episode, I, too, talk with Lauren Khoo (LinkedIn | Twitter), program manager on the Microsoft OneDrive engineering team who focuses OneDrive app for iOS and keeping people productive while on the go. We discuss the new OneDrive app for iOS redesign, the approach behind it and a few teasers of what will come next. Take this podcast and hear Lauren share how she and team are focused on making you productive on the go. And …. Go! ?:female_sign:?:male_sign::studio_microphone:
All the features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of July 2019 (possibly early August 2019).
Inform and engage with dynamic employee experiences
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SharePoint page/news authoring improvements
Refinements keep coming – simply to make it easier to create beautiful, consumable news and pages, with numerous new options for authors. Create your page or news article to best share durable, mixed-media information to your team or across the enterprise. Let’s look at the five new updates:
- Drag and drop files to the canvas. SharePoint authors will be able to upload images to the Canvas using drag and drop. SharePoint will automatically add the file viewer and upload the file to the document library.
- Link preview. We’ve also added a rich preview for links pasted into the text editor to embed videos from Stream and YouTube links or images with title and description from other links.
- On-page anchors. SharePoint will support anchor links, which allow readers to jump to a specific part of the page.
- Undo/Redo. SharePoint authors will have the option to undo changes prior to saving or publishing.
- Vertical sections. Modern pages can now have vertical sections.
Learn more about SharePoint news and how to create and share news on your SharePoint sites.
Site footer
SharePoint Communication sites will have an out-of-the box footer control, which the Site owner can control using the Change the look panel or by using PowerShell [FooterEnabled]. The site footer supports following elements: 8 links or labels, logo and name.
- Learn more. Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 33138.
Updated site usage page
The Site usage page in SharePoint sites received an improved user experience to showcase new "Unique Visitors" and "Site Visits" charts. There, too, is a new chart titled "Popular Platforms" where users can check the platform-type (Desktop, Mobile web, Mobile app, Tablet) to analyze where traffic from to better tailor their sites.
Go to the "gear" icon on a SharePoint site and then click "Site Usage" and check it out.
Altogether, on a Site usage page - you'll see insights about Unique viewers, Site visits, Site traffic (aka, heatmap), Popular Platforms, Most unique viewers, Most viewed, and Shared with external users.
- Learn more. Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 52155.
Teamwork updates across SharePoint team sites, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams
Microsoft 365 is designed to be a universal toolkit for teamwork – to give you the right tools for the right task, along with common services to help you seamlessly work across applications. SharePoint is the intelligent content service that powers teamwork – to better collaborate on proposals, projects, and campaigns throughout your organization – and is integrated with Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Yammer, Stream, Planner and much more.
360-degree image previewer
2D is so 2018. 2019 is all about visualizing in 3D. Customers will be able to view 360-degree photos in an interactive, panoramic manner, directly within SharePoint and OneDrive; photos truly come alive.
Alternatively, users can manually tag their 360-degree photos to end with ".360.jpg" or ".360.jpeg" to force activation of the 360-degree viewer, for those particular photos.
- Learn about all supported previewers.
- Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 49516.
OneDrive Azure Active Directory (AAD) business-to-business (B2B) sync (preview)
This preview integrates external sharing in SharePoint and OneDrive with Azure AD B2B. This includes external sharing of files, folders, list items, document libraries and sites. With this integration turned on, when a user shares an item in SharePoint or OneDrive with an external user then a Guest account is immediately created for that external user (if one does not already exist). As a result, any sign-in or conditional access policies in place in your organization will take effect on those external users.
You can opt-in to the preview, and if not, this roll out does not affect you.
- Learn more. Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 33415, and prevent it from being used: 33413.
Quick Edit Improvements for SharePoint lists and document libraries
These improvements will allow users to easily edit their metadata by enabling new features within the Quick Edit mode such as filtering content, dragging and dropping column widths, showing all view and column formatting, and improved user/choice field type support.
- Learn more & support. Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 30556
Bulk approvals for SharePoint for items in a workflow.
Many documents may be part of an approval workflow. Starting soon, you can select multiple items and decide to either approve or reject them together. To use this new feature, you can select multiple items and then “Approve/reject” all in one motion. You, too, can add optional comments into the Flow and out to associated stakeholders.
- Learn more, plus a video from Chris McNulty on how to streamline business processes with Microsoft Flow.
- Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 52716.
Enhancements to the Preservation Hold Library
A new 30-day grace period for the release of SharePoint Online holds prevents the hold from being immediately released. During the grace period, any deleted item will continue to be preserved in the preservation library and items will not be deleted from this location until the hold is removed.
Preservation Hold Library items are now moved to the “Second Stage Recycle Bin” before being purged to allow admins to recover for a short time period before items are purged.
These two new capabilities of the SharePoint preservation hold library help protect customers from inadvertent data loss.
- Learn more. Roadmap ID 52431.
Related technology
Outlook on the web - new cloud doc sharing experience
Outlook on the web is updating how you share cloud docs from OneDrive and SharePoint. Now when you paste a link for a OneDrive or SharePoint file in a message, it will replace it with the name of the file and the corresponding Office app icon. That link will also allow you to manage permissions for the file using a new sharing dialogue.
- Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 51553.
OneDrive app for iOS refresh
This is a broad design overhaul to the OneDrive mobile app. We are excited to begin pushing out the refreshed look and feel of the OneDrive app for iOS. We, too, are updating how you work with recent files, annotate PDFs, link to files via Outlook mobile and more.
Here is a summary of the collective update to the OneDrive app for iOS:
- User interface redesign (Fluent UI): large header, list changes, MS Search at top. [roadmap ID: 49085]
- Recent list now includes PDFs and scans [roadmap ID: 49083]
- Updated PDF annotations, including notes [roadmap ID: 49084]
- Updated settings experience [roadmap ID: 53230]
Learn more: "Designing a Fluent Microsoft OneDrive Mobile Experience"
- Related webinar: "Redefining mobility with OneDrive" (aired July 31, 2019)
- Lauren Khoo shares more about the updates in the above associated podcast, with additional information about what’s to come.
July 2019 teasers
Psst, still here? Still scrolling the page looking for the rolled out goodness? If so, here’s a few teasers of what’s to come to production next month…
- Thing 1 – Save for later. [roadmap ID: 49095]
- Thing 2 - Automated email news digests [roadmap ID: 49603]
… shhh, tell everyone.
Helpful, ongoing change management resources
- "Stay on top of Office 365 changes"
- "Message center in Office 365"
- Install the Office 365 admin app; view Message Center posts and stay current with push notifications.
- Microsoft 365 public roadmap + pre-filtered URL for SharePoint, OneDrive, Yammer and Stream roadmap items.
- SharePoint Facebook | Twitter | SharePoint Community Blog | UserVoice
- OneDrive Facebook | Twitter | OneDrive Community Blog | UserVoice
- Follow me to catch news and interesting SharePoint things: @mkashman; pre-warning of occasional bad puns, too.
Thanks for tuning in and/or reading this episode/blog of the Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – July 2019 (blog/podcast). We’re open to your feedback in comments below to hear how both the Roadmap Pitstop podcast episodes and blogs can be improved over time.
Engage with us. Ask questions. Push us where you want and need to get the best information and insights. We're here to put both our and your best change management foot forward.
Stay safe out there in space and on the roadmap -- and thanks for listening and reading.
Happy end of July 2019,
Mark Kashman – senior product manager (SharePoint/OneDrive | Microsoft)
