Friday, October 29, 2021

SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: October 2021

Let us start with a mighty Mwah-hah-hah-hah of evil laughter In the spirit of Halloween. I’ve transformed into Mark “The Count” Kashman, here to guide you through all things that go bump in the night of SharePoint in Microsoft 365. I require only a SharePint of your blood in Exchange – that’s the kind of email neck attachment I like to see in my inbox.

 

So, return your wooden stake to its sheath. No need to fear. October 2021 brought some great new offerings: SharePoint hub to hub site association, new site templates, modern site-level term store, edit images in OneDrive and SharePoint, Calendar view in List web part, view transcripts from Teams meetings, establish official Yammer Communities, and more. So much, you’ll invite The Count in year-over-year.

 

You’ll find all the spooky details and screenshots below, including our frightful audible companion: The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: October 2021 podcast episode – all to help answer, "What's rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?"

 

 

In the podcast episode, I chat with Cathy Dew, senior program manager on the SharePoint team focused on the integration of SharePoint and Microsoft teams, with new ownership of SharePoint hub sites. We chat with Cathy about the new hub to hub association capability and the value of organizing your intranet and extranet in the ways that make sense and work best for your employees and partners.

 

Cathy Dew, senior program manager on the SharePoint team.Cathy Dew, senior program manager on the SharePoint team.

All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of October 2021 (possibly early November 2021 (if they survived the night ;)).

 

Inform and engage with dynamic employee experiences

Build your intelligent intranet on SharePoint in Microsoft 365 and get the benefits of investing in business outcomes – reducing IT and development costs, increasing business speed and agility, and up-leveling the dynamic, personalized, and welcoming nature of your intranet.

 

SharePoint: Hub to hub site association

We’re adding the ability to associate a SharePoint hub site to another hub site, with a primary benefit to expand search results across multiple hubs in your organization. When hubs are associated with each other, content can be searched for and displayed on hubs up to three levels of association.

 

SharePoint hub sites can be associated to other hubs (up to three levels of association) and what site content will appear in search for users searching on any of these sites.SharePoint hub sites can be associated to other hubs (up to three levels of association) and what site content will appear in search for users searching on any of these sites.

 

New SharePoint Site templates - for retail, healthcare and non-profit

This update will bring four new SharePoint site templates to retail customers, non-profits, and healthcare organizations. All allow organizations to better track, manage information, and collaborate.

 

Select your template during site creation to customize your site to align with your business objectives and desired outcomes. Shown above, Volunteer site (left) and Retail (right).Select your template during site creation to customize your site to align with your business objectives and desired outcomes. Shown above, Volunteer site (left) and Retail (right).

Here's a few highlights about each:

  • Retail: The new retail management and store collaboration templates allow retail employees to manage the store operation more efficiently and foster a better collaboration environment.
  • Non-profit: The new volunteer center template will allow organizers to point volunteers to one place to find key information, access learning materials, and connect with other volunteers.
  • Healthcare: The new healthcare collaboration template will allow medical practices and healthcare agencies with a safe, secure way to share information that can help you provide better patient care and reduce operational costs.

 

 

Modern SharePoint site-level term store

We've updated the experience when creating and managing site-level taxonomy terms; this matches the previously updated, central term store in the SharePoint admin center. It's now easier to navigate your taxonomies and create and edit terms when classifying & discovering your Syntex and SharePoint content.

 

Updated SharePoint site-level term store.Updated SharePoint site-level term store.

Just head to the “Term store management” option under “Site Administration” when in Site settings.

 

Teamwork updates across SharePoint team sites, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 is a universal toolkit for teamwork – to give you the right tools for the right task, along with common services to help you seamlessly work across applications. SharePoint is the intelligent content service that powers teamwork – to better collaborate on proposals, projects, and campaigns throughout your organization – with integration across Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Yammer, Stream, Planner and much more.

Edit images in SharePoint and OneDrive

You'll be able to rotate, crop (both freeform crop and fixed aspect ratio crop) and flip your images - horizontally and vertically. This update also includes options to adjust the light and color saturation of your images. There’s no better feeling than watching an image transform from muted colors and low contrast to richly colored and stunning. Now it’s easy to make those transformations with adjustments for brightness, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, and color saturation.

 

Trim out unwanted parts of an image to bring more focus to your subjectTrim out unwanted parts of an image to bring more focus to your subject

Note: Currently, Photo editing in OneDrive and SharePoint is currently limited to JPEG and PNG formats.

 

Calendar view in List web part

Have you ever wanted to build out a mini-dashboard for an internal event or project schedule and needed to represent your list of information as a calendar? Well, October is your lucky month. The SharePoint List web part in Microsoft 365 allows you to display a list from your team or site on a page and customize it with your own title, view, and even size. And now, if you have created a Calendar view for your list, it will show properly in the List web part.

 

Use the List web part with Calendar view to showcase upcoming information as a calendar - as shown above for The Intrazone team site home page for upcoming episodes.Use the List web part with Calendar view to showcase upcoming information as a calendar - as shown above for The Intrazone team site home page for upcoming episodes.

It's a great visual tool for your internal communications - esp. when things are date driven. I now use it all the time, and it not only looks nice, it conveys more of what I want people to see like a marked up calendar in the break room.

 

Related technology

Microsoft Stream: Viewing the transcript for a Microsoft Teams meeting recording

For Teams meeting recordings saved to OneDrive and SharePoint that were recorded with Teams Live Transcript, you'll now be able to view the transcript from that meeting directly in the transcript pane next to the video player. And during playback, people can see the transcript and click it to jump back and forth to specific sections in the video.

 

View video transcripts during playback and jump to certain portions of the video when you click on text from the Transcript.View video transcripts during playback and jump to certain portions of the video when you click on text from the Transcript.

This can be a real time saver when looking for that part of the meeting where the discussion turned to a topic of interest. It, too, adds a great level of accessibility to see what was spoken for meetings or any kind - planned or ad-hoc. Just turn on transcripts and the rest is there for you and your colleagues when you need it.

 

Establish official Yammer Communities

Now you can designate your most important communities as "Official" to show that they are company-endorsed within the network. Things like CEO Connections, Contoso News, IT Help, HR Support, etc.). This is very similar to how you see in public social spaces, where certain people or entities are verified.

 

Official Yammer community – the “Leadership Connection” with blue checkmark icon showing.Official Yammer community – the “Leadership Connection” with blue checkmark icon showing.

Official communities offer a way to guide employees to the correct communities when they are searching for answers by using a familiar ‘verified’ icon represented by a check mark. Network admins designate official communities in your organization, and the benefits of clarity and trust follow for end users.

 

October 2021 teasers

Psst, still here? Still scrolling the page looking for more roadmap goodness? If so, here is a few teasers of what’s to come to production next month…

 

  • Teaser #1: Private drafts for SharePoint pages and news [Roadmap ID: 85629] 
  • Teaser #2: Updates to the site creation experience [Roadmap ID: 85683]

 

… shhh, tell everyone.

 

BONUS | Three Halloween 2021 TV entertainment suggestions

Before we wrap up, and being in the Halloween spirit, I thought I'd share three recent shows that resonate the horror and fright most excellently:

 

  • If you like monsters and a great "it takes a village" story, Sweet Home is an intense series on Netflix I highly recommend; it's gory, brave, and very entertaining. You never know who's gonna turn, or what they'll turn into.
  • This one is no longer a hidden gem; it's literally killing at the virtual box office. You guessed it: Squid Game - also on Netflix; not really horror, but haunts your heart, nonetheless. Such a great series - it keeps you guessing right up to the last minute. Hey - maybe we'll play a game of Red Light, Green Light at the next community event? Ummmmm, you go first.
  • And last, a very specific episode on Disney Plus - S1.Ep5 of Marvel's "What If...?" series where the Avengers are infected with the zombie plague; Superheroes that want to eat your brains - yes, please; take my word for it - it's awesome.

 

Helpful, ongoing change management resources

  • Follow me to catch news and interesting SharePoint things: @mkashman; warning, occasional bad puns may fly in a tweet or two here and there, plus my new blog on Substack: The Kashbox.

 

Thanks for tuning in and/or reading this episode/blog of the Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – October 2021 (blog/podcast). We are open to your feedback in comments below to hear how both the Roadmap Pitstop podcast episodes and blogs can be improved over time.

Engage with us. Ask those questions that haunt you. Push us where you want and need to get the best information and insights. We are here to put both our and your best change management foot forward.

 

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

 

Cheers,

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

 

The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – October 2021 graphic showing some of the highlighted release features.The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – October 2021 graphic showing some of the highlighted release features.

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