We’re excited to announce new improvements to the SharePoint Migration Tool for the month of January.
Designed to be used for migrations ranging from the smallest set of files to a large scale enterprise migration, the SharePoint Migration Tool will let you bring your information to the cloud and take advantage of the latest collaboration, intelligence, and security solutions with Office 365.
Improvements this month include:
A new, updated UI aligned with the Office 365 user experience
This release of the SharePoint Migration Tool includes improvements to the user interface with a new, simplified control service more aligned to the visual themes of SharePoint Online.

Ability to start new migrations without having to restart the SharePoint Migration Tool
Now in this release of the SharePoint Migration Tool you can start new migrations without having to restart the migration tool.

Improved interaction flow including simplified setting review experience
More easily access and view the settings needed to support your migration scenario with a new simplified interaction flow and review experience.

About the SharePoint Migration Tool
The SharePoint Migration Tool is designed to simplify your journey to the cloud through a free, simple, and fast solution to migrate content from on-premises SharePoint sites and file shares to SharePoint or OneDrive in Office 365. The SharePoint Migration Tool allows you to accelerate your journey to Office 365 overcoming obstacles typically associated with migration projects. With the SharePoint Migration Tool you can evaluate and address the information that matters the most to your organization, the Libraries, and now Lists that form the foundation of the SharePoint experience. Using the SharePoint Migration Tool you can start your migration today and take advantage of the full suite of features and security capabilities that Office 365 offers.
Keep reading to learn more about the SharePoint Migration Tool or download the latest version now at https://aka.ms/SPMT.
Getting Started
You can download the SharePoint Migration Tool at http://aka.ms/SPMT. Through this version of the SharePoint Migration Tool you’ll have available to you the innovation we’re delivering to help you bring your information to the cloud and take advantage of the latest collaboration, intelligence, and security solutions with Office 365.
What’s next…
Through continued innovation across migration scenarios we’ll be adding more capabilities over time to the SharePoint Migration Tool, including support for more SharePoint versions, site structure migrations, and more. Subscribe here to stay up to date on future announcements for SharePoint and Office 365.
Wrapping Up…
Whether you’re looking to migrate from file shares on-premises to SharePoint or OneDrive or from on-premises versions of SharePoint, the SharePoint Migration Tool is designed to support the smallest of migrations to large scale migrations with support for bulk scenarios.
Learn more about migrating to Office 365 at https://resources.techcommunity.microsoft.com/cloud-migration/.
Learn more about the SharePoint Migration Tool at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Introducing-the-SharePoint-Migration-Tool-9c38f5df-300b-4adc-8fac-648d0215b5f7.
Prepare your environment for migration using the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool by learning more at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53598.
EDITORS NOTE 1/3/2019
We have updated the blog to reflect that we’ve expanded the ability to control if Office attachments are protected for recipients inside Office 365 – previously this was only supported for non-Office 365 users. Changes are reflected below in the blog.
Summary
Administrators can now control whether Office attachments are protected for recipients inside and outside of Office 365 when the Encrypt-Only template is used. This was a key ask from Office 365 Message Encryption customers and is now available as a tenant-level setting.
Background
We have now made it possible for administrators to control how Encrypt-Only behaves for attachments. By default, when a user sends an email and attachments using Encrypt-only, the Office attachments are also protected with Encrypt-Only permissions and that encryption persists throughout lifecycle of the content. To provide more flexible controls for recipients, organizations can control if recipients have unrestricted permissions on the attachment or not for Encrypt-Only emails. For example, one scenario this is valued is when a doctor shares a protected attachment to her patient, and the patient wants to share this with his family, the attachment is no longer encrypted so they can open the attachment without any additional steps.
What is available
Admins can control whether attachments have unrestricted permissions for Encrypt-Only emails. Details on implementing the settings are below.
When the recipient signs-in to the Office 365 Message Encryption portal, they can preview attachments as before.

If the control to unrestrict the attachment is enabled, the document will be decrypted and the recipient will be able to view it normally. Additionally, the content will remain decrypted and unrestricted unless additional protections are applied.

Scope
This setting is available for the Encrypt-only template and not for the Do Not Forward or Custom templates.
It’s enforced at the tenant level.
How to control the setting
To manage whether to allow recipients to download Encrypt-only attachments without encryption, follow these steps:
Connect to Exchange Online Using Remote PowerShell (see https://aka.ms/exopowershell)
Run the Set-IRMConfiguration cmdlet with the DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly parameter as follows:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly <$true|$false>
For example, to allow download of attachments without protection for Encrypt-only:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly $true
If you decide that you want to revert the setting and keep attachments protected even after download:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly $false
Please note, as of 12/13/18, we have deprecated DecryptAttachmentFromPortal. It will continue working for existing customers who have run the old cmdlet but new customers should start using the new cmdlet (DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly) updated above.
Additional Resources
This was a key ask from organizations that had a broad set of scenarios which requires email recipients to “own” the attachment by unrestricting permissions on the attachment. We hope this additional control can provide more flexibility in collaborating on protected content for all users. Your feedback matters- leave us a comment below or go to uservoice and submit your feedback/vote!
For additional resources on Office 365 Message Encryption – you can find them below:
EDITORS NOTE 1/3/2019
We have updated the blog to reflect that we’ve expanded the ability to control if Office attachments are protected for recipients inside Office 365 – previously this was only supported for non-Office 365 users. Changes are reflected below in the blog.
Summary
Administrators can now control whether Office attachments are protected for recipients inside and outside of Office 365 when the Encrypt-Only template is used. This was a key ask from Office 365 Message Encryption customers and is now available as a tenant-level setting.
Background
We have now made it possible for administrators to control how Encrypt-Only behaves for attachments. By default, when a user sends an email and attachments using Encrypt-only, the Office attachments are also protected with Encrypt-Only permissions and that encryption persists throughout lifecycle of the content. To provide more flexible controls for recipients, organizations can control if recipients have unrestricted permissions on the attachment or not for Encrypt-Only emails. For example, one scenario this is valued is when a doctor shares a protected attachment to her patient, and the patient wants to share this with his family, the attachment is no longer encrypted so they can open the attachment without any additional steps.
What is available
Admins can control whether attachments have unrestricted permissions for Encrypt-Only emails. Details on implementing the settings are below.
When the recipient signs-in to the Office 365 Message Encryption portal, they can preview attachments as before.

If the control to unrestrict the attachment is enabled, the document will be decrypted and the recipient will be able to view it normally. Additionally, the content will remain decrypted and unrestricted unless additional protections are applied.

Scope
This setting is available for the Encrypt-only template and not for the Do Not Forward or Custom templates.
It’s enforced at the tenant level.
How to control the setting
To manage whether to allow recipients to download Encrypt-only attachments without encryption, follow these steps:
Connect to Exchange Online Using Remote PowerShell (see https://aka.ms/exopowershell)
Run the Set-IRMConfiguration cmdlet with the DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly parameter as follows:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly <$true|$false>
For example, to allow download of attachments without protection for Encrypt-only:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly $true
If you decide that you want to revert the setting and keep attachments protected even after download:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly $false
Please note, as of 12/13/18, we have deprecated DecryptAttachmentFromPortal. It will continue working for existing customers who have run the old cmdlet but new customers should start using the new cmdlet (DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly) updated above.
Additional Resources
This was a key ask from organizations that had a broad set of scenarios which requires email recipients to “own” the attachment by unrestricting permissions on the attachment. We hope this additional control can provide more flexibility in collaborating on protected content for all users. Your feedback matters- leave us a comment below or go to uservoice and submit your feedback/vote!
For additional resources on Office 365 Message Encryption – you can find them below:
EDITORS NOTE 1/3/2019
We have updated the blog to reflect that we’ve expanded the ability to control if Office attachments are protected for recipients inside Office 365 – previously this was only supported for non-Office 365 users. Changes are reflected below in the blog.
Summary
Administrators can now control whether Office attachments are protected for recipients inside and outside of Office 365 when the Encrypt-Only template is used. This was a key ask from Office 365 Message Encryption customers and is now available as a tenant-level setting.
Background
We have now made it possible for administrators to control how Encrypt-Only behaves for attachments. By default, when a user sends an email and attachments using Encrypt-only, the Office attachments are also protected with Encrypt-Only permissions and that encryption persists throughout lifecycle of the content. To provide more flexible controls for recipients, organizations can control if recipients have unrestricted permissions on the attachment or not for Encrypt-Only emails. For example, one scenario this is valued is when a doctor shares a protected attachment to her patient, and the patient wants to share this with his family, the attachment is no longer encrypted so they can open the attachment without any additional steps.
What is available
Admins can control whether attachments have unrestricted permissions for Encrypt-Only emails. Details on implementing the settings are below.
When the recipient signs-in to the Office 365 Message Encryption portal, they can preview attachments as before.

If the control to unrestrict the attachment is enabled, the document will be decrypted and the recipient will be able to view it normally. Additionally, the content will remain decrypted and unrestricted unless additional protections are applied.

Scope
This setting is available for the Encrypt-only template and not for the Do Not Forward or Custom templates.
It’s enforced at the tenant level.
How to control the setting
To manage whether to allow recipients to download Encrypt-only attachments without encryption, follow these steps:
Connect to Exchange Online Using Remote PowerShell (see https://aka.ms/exopowershell)
Run the Set-IRMConfiguration cmdlet with the DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly parameter as follows:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly <$true|$false>
For example, to allow download of attachments without protection for Encrypt-only:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly $true
If you decide that you want to revert the setting and keep attachments protected even after download:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly $false
Please note, as of 12/13/18, we have deprecated DecryptAttachmentFromPortal. It will continue working for existing customers who have run the old cmdlet but new customers should start using the new cmdlet (DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly) updated above.
Additional Resources
This was a key ask from organizations that had a broad set of scenarios which requires email recipients to “own” the attachment by unrestricting permissions on the attachment. We hope this additional control can provide more flexibility in collaborating on protected content for all users. Your feedback matters- leave us a comment below or go to uservoice and submit your feedback/vote!
For additional resources on Office 365 Message Encryption – you can find them below:
EDITORS NOTE 1/3/2019
We have updated the blog to reflect that we’ve expanded the ability to control if Office attachments are protected for recipients inside Office 365 – previously this was only supported for non-Office 365 users. Changes are reflected below in the blog.
Summary
Administrators can now control whether Office attachments are protected for recipients inside and outside of Office 365 when the Encrypt-Only template is used. This was a key ask from Office 365 Message Encryption customers and is now available as a tenant-level setting.
Background
We have now made it possible for administrators to control how Encrypt-Only behaves for attachments. By default, when a user sends an email and attachments using Encrypt-only, the Office attachments are also protected with Encrypt-Only permissions and that encryption persists throughout lifecycle of the content. To provide more flexible controls for recipients, organizations can control if recipients have unrestricted permissions on the attachment or not for Encrypt-Only emails. For example, one scenario this is valued is when a doctor shares a protected attachment to her patient, and the patient wants to share this with his family, the attachment is no longer encrypted so they can open the attachment without any additional steps.
What is available
Admins can control whether attachments have unrestricted permissions for Encrypt-Only emails. Details on implementing the settings are below.
When the recipient signs-in to the Office 365 Message Encryption portal, they can preview attachments as before.

If the control to unrestrict the attachment is enabled, the document will be decrypted and the recipient will be able to view it normally. Additionally, the content will remain decrypted and unrestricted unless additional protections are applied.

Scope
This setting is available for the Encrypt-only template and not for the Do Not Forward or Custom templates.
It’s enforced at the tenant level.
How to control the setting
To manage whether to allow recipients to download Encrypt-only attachments without encryption, follow these steps:
Connect to Exchange Online Using Remote PowerShell (see https://aka.ms/exopowershell)
Run the Set-IRMConfiguration cmdlet with the DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly parameter as follows:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly <$true|$false>
For example, to allow download of attachments without protection for Encrypt-only:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly $true
If you decide that you want to revert the setting and keep attachments protected even after download:
Set-IRMConfiguration – DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly $false
Please note, as of 12/13/18, we have deprecated DecryptAttachmentFromPortal. It will continue working for existing customers who have run the old cmdlet but new customers should start using the new cmdlet (DecryptAttachmentForEncryptOnly) updated above.
Additional Resources
This was a key ask from organizations that had a broad set of scenarios which requires email recipients to “own” the attachment by unrestricting permissions on the attachment. We hope this additional control can provide more flexibility in collaborating on protected content for all users. Your feedback matters- leave us a comment below or go to uservoice and submit your feedback/vote!
For additional resources on Office 365 Message Encryption – you can find them below:
We’ve been on a journey to modernize user experiences throughout SharePoint.
Lists and libraries are the primary containers for data and content, enriched with custom metadata. Previously, we introduced column formatting, which lets you cut and paste JSON scripts into a formatting window to add interactions, color coding, visualizations, or other transformations on data in a list or library column. This summer we also introduced view formatting – which let you use the same JSON techniques to build transformation for every element in a view — such as multiline displays, Microsoft Flow buttons, or data integrated from Bing maps or other business services.
Today, there are dozens of sample scripts you can use in our SharePoint patterns and practices GitHub repository. Some of these are highlighted here on the TechCommunity Resource Cenrter. We recognize, however, that this is a more advanced technique, and most users are unfamiliar with JSON syntax.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce custom formatting. It’s like column formatting, since it lets you add conditional coloring based on column values. However, custom formatting requires absolutely no scripting. Custom formatting works on choice, date and Boolean columns. When you select the “Format this column” option, you can apply a pre-built template, or you can adjust the colors if desired. For developers, you can still use “advanced mode” to apply a JSON script.
In the link below, you can experience custom formatting. It’s never been easier to transform and optimize the display of business data in SharePoint pages.
Custom formatting demo on TechCommunity
https://demobuilderwebcpptxz.blob.core.windows.net/custom-formatting/startdemo.html
Custom formatting will begin rolling out to targeted release customers in late December, with general release following in January. Later in 2019, we’ll add support for more column types.
We encourage you to share your thoughts and experience with us. Thank you, and happy holidays.
We’ve been on a journey to modernize user experiences throughout SharePoint.
Lists and libraries are the primary containers for data and content, enriched with custom metadata. Previously, we introduced column formatting, which lets you cut and paste JSON scripts into a formatting window to add interactions, color coding, visualizations, or other transformations on data in a list or library column. This summer we also introduced view formatting – which let you use the same JSON techniques to build transformation for every element in a view — such as multiline displays, Microsoft Flow buttons, or data integrated from Bing maps or other business services.
Today, there are dozens of sample scripts you can use in our SharePoint patterns and practices GitHub repository. Some of these are highlighted here on the TechCommunity Resource Cenrter. We recognize, however, that this is a more advanced technique, and most users are unfamiliar with JSON syntax.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce custom formatting. It’s like column formatting, since it lets you add conditional coloring based on column values. However, custom formatting requires absolutely no scripting. Custom formatting works on choice, date and Boolean columns. When you select the “Format this column” option, you can apply a pre-built template, or you can adjust the colors if desired. For developers, you can still use “advanced mode” to apply a JSON script.
In the link below, you can experience custom formatting. It’s never been easier to transform and optimize the display of business data in SharePoint pages.
Custom formatting demo on TechCommunity
https://demobuilderwebcpptxz.blob.core.windows.net/custom-formatting/startdemo.html
Custom formatting will begin rolling out to targeted release customers in late December, with general release following in January. Later in 2019, we’ll add support for more column types.
We encourage you to share your thoughts and experience with us. Thank you, and happy holidays.
We are happy to announce the release of page management and approvals, as we disclosed at Ignite 2018.
SharePoint page authoring makes it simple to craft beautiful immersive experiences that integrate applications, data, text, media and more. Pages are also essential for team news, which let you share impactful updates with an automated distribution engine that reaches portals, mobile, email, Microsoft Teams and more.
News pages can be highly visible, since they are automatically aggregated in hub sites, mobile apps and the SharePoint home page. Some organizations want to standardize page templates and layouts, and institute a review process to assure that all updates are approved.
Now you can setup approval processes, based on Microsoft Flow, to ensure page review if required. Inside the pages library, you can use the Flow pulldown menu option to create an approval process with just a few mouse clicks.
You can use the immersive demo link below to expereince page management and approvals.
Tech Community Demos
https://demobuilderwebcpptxz.blob.core.windows.net/page-approvals/startdemo.html
Configuring approvals is optional – you can continue to publish pages without an approval step based on your governance and publication style. Page approvals will begin rolling out to targeted release in mid-December 2018.
We are happy to announce the release of page management and approvals, as we disclosed at Ignite 2018.
SharePoint page authoring makes it simple to craft beautiful immersive experiences that integrate applications, data, text, media and more. Pages are also essential for team news, which let you share impactful updates with an automated distribution engine that reaches portals, mobile, email, Microsoft Teams and more.
News pages can be highly visible, since they are automatically aggregated in hub sites, mobile apps and the SharePoint home page. Some organizations want to standardize page templates and layouts, and institute a review process to assure that all updates are approved.
Now you can setup approval processes, based on Microsoft Flow, to ensure page review if required. Inside the pages library, you can use the Flow pulldown menu option to create an approval process with just a few mouse clicks.
You can use the immersive demo link below to expereince page management and approvals.
Tech Community Demos
https://demobuilderwebcpptxz.blob.core.windows.net/page-approvals/startdemo.html
Configuring approvals is optional – you can continue to publish pages without an approval step based on your governance and publication style. Page approvals will begin rolling out to targeted release in mid-December 2018.
Personal productivity is essential to teamwork. SharePoint lists and libraries have long allowed to you defined custom metadata columns to track dates. As announced at Ignite 2018, we are releasing a new capability that lets you set reminders for any of these dates. You’ll be able to receive a personal email alert ‘x’ days in advance of a date on any document or item in SharePoint.
Create a reminder flow
To create the reminder flow, your list or library should have at least one date/time column in the current view. You’ll then able to create a reminder by selecting the Flow->Set a reminder menu.

You can enter the number of days in advance for the reminder, based on the selected date column.

Based on your selection, you’ll get an email from Microsoft Flow for any items or documents ‘x’ days in advance of the selected data column value.

Once the flow is created, it can be edited from the Microsoft Flow website. You can modify “days in advance”, or add additional actions.
This feature is slated to begin rollout to Targeted Release on or about December 18, 2018. If you’d like to try it in advance, you can see reminders in action on the Business Apps Resource Center.
As always, we are listening for feedback. Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions. Thanks.