We are excited to announce that GPT Prompts with Prompt Builder, a new feature of AI Builder, is now generally available! GPT Prompts are powerful tools that enable you to add Generative AI capabilities to your automated workflows.
Power Automate for desktop comes with new additions in 2023 December’s release, including the support of input variables to a run URL and the introduction of Power Fx to desktop flows.
Credential management is new feature that allows customers to create windows credentials using Azure Key vault secrets and use them in desktop flow connections.
Streamline your organization’s approval processes with the Approvals Kit – a no-code, ready-made kit built on top of Power Platform components. With over 20 cloud flows and a Power Apps app, the Approvals Kit offers sophisticated approvals such as conditional branching, delegation, admin overrides, and more. And the best part? You can configure all of this without writing a single line of code. Try the Approvals Kit now and see how it can empower every person in your organization to ‘do more with less’ for your approval needs.
We are delighted to announce the launch of the Microsoft 365 Connectivity Test Tool specifically designed for our customers using Microsoft 365 operated by 21Vianet. This tool, which has been successfully used in the global market for several years, has now been tailored to meet the specific needs of the China market, aiding in the diagnostics and enhancement of your Microsoft 365 service connectivity.
The tool is user-friendly and accessible without the necessity of logging in. To use the tool, simply visit https://connectivity.office365.cn and select the “Run Test” button. It will initiate a web test, following which you will be prompted to download a client application to complete the device test. On finalization of both tests, a comprehensive report will be generated detailing your connectivity performance along with actionable recommendations for optimization. The report can be conveniently saved as a PDF or printed for dissemination amongst your peers, service providers, or directly to our team for further assistance.
As of now, the tool provides support in both Simplified Chinese and English, dependent on the language preferences set in your web browser. We are working to incorporate support for Traditional Chinese and Japanese in the imminent future.
This tool is presently in a preview phase, and we wholeheartedly welcome your feedback and suggestions. We encourage you to share your inquiries and feedback at the official community (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/deployment-networking/bd-p/DeploymentNetworking) or by contacting our customer support service directly for more personalized assistance.
Test guidance
Automatically detect location. This is the default option; we will detect your location by web browser. You will be asked to grant the “location” permission to the tool.
Add your location. If you don’t grant the permission to the tool, or you find the location which detected automatically is not accurate, you can add your location manually and then run the test.
Save your report. Once you get the details report, you might want to share it to your peers, service providers or our customer support team. You can save the report by print it as a PDF file by the web browser’s built-in function.
The advanced test client requires .NET 6.0 Runtime. If you run the advanced test client without that, you’ll be directed to the .NET 6.0 installer page. Be sure to install from the Run desktop apps column for Windows. Administrator permissions on the machine are required to install .NET 6.0 Runtime.
What is Microsoft 365 service front door?
The Microsoft 365 service front door is an entry point on Microsoft’s global network where Office clients and services terminate their network connection. For an optimal network connection to Microsoft 365, It’s recommended that your network connection is terminated into the closest Microsoft 365 front door in your city or metro.
What is the best Microsoft 365 service front door?
A best Microsoft 365 service front door (formerly known as an optimal service front door) is one that is closest to your network egress, generally in your city or metro area. Use the Microsoft 365 network performance tool to determine location of your in-use Microsoft 365 service front door and the best service front door(s). If the tool determines your in-use front door is one of the best ones, then you should expect great connectivity into Microsoft’s global network.
What is an internet egress location?
The internet egress Location is the location where your network traffic exits your enterprise network and connects to the Internet. This is also identified as the location where you have a Network Address Translation (NAT) device and usually where you connect with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). If you see a long distance between your location and your internet egress location, then this may identify a significant WAN backhaul.
a banner depicting the title of the blog with tagline ”Your monthly IT admin blog for all things Microsoft 365”
Welcome to the Microsoft 365 IT admin blog, your monthly source of tips, insights, and best practices for managing and optimizing your Microsoft 365 environment. In this edition, we cover the upcoming AMA on Microsoft 365 Copilot, briefly recap a knowledge-filled Ignite, and talk about the latest enhancements and updates relevant to Microsoft 365 admins including end of support for Office 2016 and Office 2019, setting up auto-claim policies, and adding organizational data to Viva.
Join the next AMA on Microsoft 365 Copilot
We’ll be hosting the next AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Microsoft 365 Copilot on Wednesday, December 6, in the Microsoft 365 Copilot Tech Community. The upcoming AMA will be focused on Copilot for Microsoft 365 and follow up on any questions you might have coming out of Ignite 2023. In our previous AMA, we had great discussions on how to use Copilot and what to expect, extending Copilot through Microsoft Graph connectors and plugins, and admin controls and how to measure success. You can catch up on the previous AMA here.
You can send in your questions to the event page now, and a team of experts will join us to help answer them during the event.
Recapping Ignite 2023
Earlier this month, Microsoft hosted our annual Ignite conference in Seattle. Some highlights this year include announcing the Private Preview of Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin, enhancements to simplify managing multi-tenant environments, an in-depth look under the hood of Copilot for Microsoft 365, and how you can prepare for Copilot. Check out this blog for the highlights at Ignite that are most relevant to Microsoft 365 admins.
In case you missed them, here are some session recordings and videos that are highly recommended:
What’s new for Microsoft 365 admins: This session covers the latest updates for Microsoft 365 admins with topics ranging from Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin, the cloud.microsoft unified domain, managing multi-tenant and cross-tenant environments, to network provider data and actionability
Getting your enterprise ready for Copilot for Microsoft 365: Hear from experts on preparing an organization for Microsoft 365 Copilot including information protection, compliance, privacy, deployment prerequisites, information access optimization, and extensibility options.
How Copilot for Microsoft 365 works: Go behind the scenes to understand the architecture and dataflows behind Microsoft 365 Copilot including retrieval augmented generation techniques, app commanding, and options to securely connect to external data.
Highlights across Microsoft 365 administration
Let’s check out some of the latest features we launched in the Microsoft 365 admin center and how they can help you get things done.
End of Support for Office 2016 and 2019 clients connecting to Microsoft 365 services
In October, Microsoft announced that it had ended support for clients connecting to Microsoft 365 services for Office 2016 and Office 2019. Customers affected by these End of Support milestones should transition to a supported Office version to prevent potential security, compliance, and productivity risks. Organizations seeking a solution that is always supported are recommended to consider transitioning to Microsoft 365 E3 that comes with not only the Microsoft 365 Apps, but also capabilities like foundational security, streamlined endpoint management, and enhanced productivity and collaboration features.
For customers who are unable or not yet ready to move to the cloud, there are other options. As previously announced, we will be making the next version of Office LTSC generally available in the second half of 2024. For our server products including SharePoint Server and Exchange Server, we are also committed to supporting our on-premises customers as long as there is substantial demand.
New eligible products for Auto-Claim policy and license request notifications
Auto-claim policies help reduce the need for admins to go into the Microsoft 365 admin center and assign licenses to individual users. With Auto-claim, you can now set up a pool of licenses on a per product basis that automatically gets assigned to a user they launch an application or service that a policy has been set for, helping reduce time for user onboarding and admin time spent on repetitive tasks. Microsoft recently added support for PowerApps and PowerAutomate to auto-claim eligibility, with support for Microsoft Project coming soon, and more. To learn more about setting up auto-claim, check out this article.
New devices available for Teams Rooms and more market availability
Microsoft now offers IT admins the ability to discover and purchase devices from the device store in the Teams admin center in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Ireland, France, and Portugal with availability in Austria, Spain, Greece, Belgium, and Netherlands coming soon. Microsoft recently announced new devices available through the store specifically catering to customers who have simpler requirements. For more information on some of these offerings, check out this article.
Organizational data now supported in Viva
We’re excited to announce that Microsoft 365 now supports importing organizational data as part of your subscription. Upload your organizational data via .csv file to power high-value capabilities and new scenarios across Microsoft Viva and Microsoft 365, such as Viva Amplify reporting and more personalized experiences in Viva and Microsoft 365.
Organizational data in Microsoft 365 is built on Microsoft’s current commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise. There is no change to these commitments. Organizational data in Microsoft 365 is integrated into Microsoft 365 and adheres to all existing privacy and compliance obligations. To learn more, check out this article.
Stay Updated
As always, stay current with the latest updates on the Microsoft 365 admin center from the Microsoft 365 roadmap and the message center. In addition, we also highlight new feature releases and enhancements released each month in our What’s new in the Microsoft 365 admin center article.
Comment below if there are IT admin or change management topics you would like us to explore in future!
The Microsoft 365 Commercial Support Team resolves customer support cases and provides you assistance to be successful and realize the full potential and value of your purchase. Our support services extend across the entire lifecycle and include pre-sales, onboarding and deployment, usage and management, accounts and billing, and break-fix support. We also spend a considerable amount of time working to improve the supportability of Microsoft 365 services to reduce the number of issues you experience as well as minimize the effort and time it takes to resolve your issues if they do occur.
Today, we’re excited to share more about some of our supportability work with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your organization’s data – all in the flow of work – to turn your words into one of the most powerful productivity tools on the planet. It works alongside Microsoft 365 Apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more. Copilot provides real-time intelligent assistance, enabling users to enhance their creativity, productivity, and skills.Copilot for Microsoft 365 has been in use by tens of thousands of enterprise customers as part of our Early Access Program (EAP) for several months and our support teams have been there every step of the way assisting IT Admins with their questions. Starting November 1, Copilot became generally available for enterprise customers worldwide.
A small group of senior engineers in our Microsoft 365 Commercial Support Team have been working closely with the Copilot product engineering teams since the early stages of development, well before the first customer ever onboarded, to learn the service and build readiness and training assets for our global support teams. Today, I’m excited to welcome three of these engineers to share their knowledge, insights, and guidance on getting ready for Copilot for Microsoft 365and ways IT Admins can be most effective in deploying, managing, and supporting Copilot with users in their organizations.
Brian: Welcome Jason, Rob, and Parth! It’s great to have your Copilot expertise here and I know you’ve been working with Copilot for Office apps (Word Excel, PowerPoint), Outlook, and Microsoft Teams for quite a while. What’s it been like getting the support team ready for the Copilot for Microsoft 365 launch? How has it been different than other product releases that you’ve worked on over the years?
Jason:The development cycle was really rapid and accelerated over a compressed period of time, especially from when we first engaged to the launch of the Early Access Program in July. It required a lot of teamwork and coordination to gather and digest information from across various sources and product technologies and then turn that into consumable content for support engineers. The synergy and the way teams have come together within support and across product engineering and marketing has been super impressive. I’m sure it will contribute to a positive experience for customers. Parth: Just to add to Jason’s comments, Copilot was definitely a unique experience given how quickly it went from concept to getting into the hands of our valuable Early Access Program customers. Keeping up with feature progress, and specifically on which platform they would be landing, meant paying really close attention to engineering team progress daily. Our planning program managers were super awesome in coordinating with the engineering teams to get us access to new Copilot features and information so we could use and test the service and develop troubleshooting documentation.
Brian: What are some things that customers should know about the Copilot service and how it operates, including how data, security, and privacy are handled?
Rob: Copilot for Microsoft 365 respects the permissions model and only shows you data that you have permission to view. It’s important to use the permission models in Microsoft 365 to make sure the right people have access to the right content. Copilot only searches for information within your organization, and it does not search in other organizations that you might have access to. When you use Copilot, your prompts, the data retrieved, and the results stay within the Microsoft 365 service boundary, following our privacy, security, and compliance commitments. Copilot uses Azure OpenAI Services, not OpenAI’s public services, so all of the processing stays within the Microsoft 365 service boundary. Here’s a great illustration of the Copilot architecture, showing how this works across the different components:
And then keep in mind a “Copilot” not an “Autopilot,” particularly when it comes to new content creation. Copilot is highly proficient at generating content, but as it pertains to newly generated content, it always needs to be factually verified.
Rob: Prompts are the commands or questions that you type or speak to Copilot to request assistance. If you are not sure what to ask Copilot, try choosing from our selection of prompts to create, edit, and get more done over at our Copilot Lab on https://aka.ms/CopilotLab.
Brian: Talk a little about indexing with Semantic Index and what to expect at both the user and tenant level following Copilot purchase and license assignment.
Jason: Semantic Index is an indexing map of data within the tenant and triggers automatically after Copilot has been purchased. It provides semantically related results in Search and Copilot based on the indexed content and relationships, which is important for providing context and keeping the results “grounded” in relevant data. Note you can disable specific SharePoint sites from appearing in search and omit them from the index.
Semantic index does not require any administrative configuration. The indexing process is automated and adheres to the same trust standards as the rest of the Microsoft 365 suite. The indexing process at the tenant-level works through about 95% coverage of OneDrive and SharePoint Online text-based documents within a week, with full coverage taking up to 28 days (about 4 weeks).
Semantic indexing respects any site and library indexing restrictions as well as the People and Item insights settings found in the Search & Intelligence admin portal. User-level indexing includes user mailbox content, which is indexed in 2 days, with outliers taking longer, sometimes up to 2 weeks.
After initial indexing is complete, updates are likewise automatically done in near real-time, with OneDrive/SharePoint document content sometimes taking up to 48 hours (about 2 days) to be added to the index.
Brian: Can you share some tips and guidance for some of the most common questions you’re seeing from customers right now?
All: Make sure you’re fully aware and understand the Copilot for Microsoft 365 requirements. For the Microsoft 365 desktop apps, make sure they are on the Current channel and running the latest build. This will also apply later when Copilot appears in the Monthly Enterprise Channel (MEC). Parth: Right now, it can take up to 72 hours for Copilot license assignment. We expect that time to reduce in the near future as Copilot continues to evolve.
In terms of language support, here are the languages currently supported by Copilot for Microsoft 365 for prompts and responses: Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish. Note that Copilot in Excel is currently supported in English only.
Here are a few other suggestions for getting the most out of Microsoft 365 Copilot interactions:
Do’s
Be Clear and specific.
Provide specific instructions to Copilot, such as topic, purpose, tone, and required length.
Check for accuracy.
Occasionally, Copilot may make mistakes. Always check Copilot’s responses for accuracy, grammar, and style, and watch out for irrelevant or inappropriate content.
Keep it conversational.
Give feedback to Copilot based on the quality of its responses to help the AI learn and match your preferences.
Provide details.
Provide Copilot with contextual details to help it generate more accurate, consistent responses. For example, the genre, characters, and plot to a story.
Give examples.
Use clear and specific keywords or phrases when asking Copilot to write a piece of text for you. This helps it generate more relevant and creative copy.
Be polite.
Using kind and respectful language when chatting with Copilot helps foster collaboration and improves the AI’s responsiveness and performance.
Ask for feedback.
Requesting feedback from Copilot helps it to understand your needs and preferences, and to provide you with more relevant, helpful responses.
Write legibly.
Use correct punctuation, capitalization, and grammar when writing prompts, as this will help the AI produce better quality text and responses.
Don’ts
be vague.
When prompting Copilot, avoid using vague language, and be as clear as possible to receive better quality responses.
Give conflicting instructions.
Prompting Copilot to perform a task that includes multiple or conflicting pieces of information in the same request can confuse the AI and result in lower quality responses.
Request inappropriate or unethical content.
Copilot is not responsible for the content or the consequences of your writing. You should respect the local laws, rules, and the rights of others.
Interrupt or change topics abruptly.
This could disrupt the Copilot’s writing process. Always close or finish a task before starting a new one. When starting a new task write “new task”.
Use slang, jargon, or informal language.
This may cause Copilot to give low quality, inappropriate or unprofessional responses.
Issue
Recommendations
Copilot is not showing up or shows up only in some places.
When Copilot is not appearing as expected, and all requirements have been met, consider the following:
After assigning a Copilot license to a user, it can take up to 72 hours (about 3 days) for the background refresh of you license to take effect in Windows apps. You can force a refresh via the File > Account > Update license button (located directly under the Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise logos).
Verify the active signed-in account is licensed for Microsoft 365 Copilot if you have multiple accounts connected to Office.
Impact of Search & Intelligence portal controls on Copilot behavior.
Disabling People or Item Insights will prevent “people data” from document collaboration and recommended documents from being included in Copilot results. Disabling will also have an effect beyond Copilot such as in the microsoft365.com Feed and My Content areas.
Brian: And finally, what are some of your favorite resources and sites that admins should know about and keep close at hand as they work with Copilot?
Brian: Thank you, Jason, Rob, and Parth, for sharing all these great insights and information!
Jason Haak is a Senior Support Escalation Engineer in the CSS Modern Work Supportability Team focused on Office with Microsoft 365.
Parth Sharma is a Support Escalation Engineer in the CSS Modern Work Supportability Team focused on Microsoft Teams with Microsoft 365.
Rob Whaley is a Senior Support Escalation Engineer in the CSS Modern Work Supportability Team focused on Exchange and Outlook with Microsoft 365.
Brian Stoner is a Director in the CSS Modern Work Supportability Team where he leads a team of technical and business program managers.
The CSS Modern Work Supportability Team delivers innovative self-help solutions and diagnostics, in-service enhancements, and support programs to help customers get maximum value from their Microsoft 365 commercial subscriptions and create an easy-to-use, connected support experience.
Am a keen follower of Microsoft's SharePoint Blog and proud to provide this direct from the Microsoft Tech Community:
At the Microsoft 365 Conference in May 2023, we unveiled our vision for making it easier than ever to build more compelling and engaging SharePoint sites and pages. We shared how we are delivering on four key themes: simpler authoring, compelling content, deeper engagement, and a flexible platform. In this blog post, we’ll share our progress with you on our journey to enable everyone to make beautiful, impactful SharePoint sites and pages.
Simplified Authoring
Ever since the beginning days of SharePoint, customers have relied on the product to constantly make creating and managing sites easier. The complexity of creating web content can be a barrier to getting started, and sites often involve the collective work of many people.
Back in May we introduced Copilot in SharePoint, which will combine the power of LLMs, your data in the Microsoft Graph, and our best guidance and suggestions for making engaging web content. With it, you’ll be able to have immediate help in authoring content for your pages, finding just the right imagery, or getting suggestions on content layout. A new SharePoint start experience was also introduced for creating personal pages, so there’s less overhead in getting started with SharePoint. This updated SharePoint start page features templates that connect the intranet directly to your most common team and organizational communication needs. SharePoint’s page authoring capabilities are becoming more collaborative with real-time coauthoring. Coupled with the simplified page sharing launched earlier this year, it will be easier than ever for editors to come together and produce beautiful, impactful SharePoint pages. Finally, we’re adding the ability to have section-level commenting within pages so editors have the tools they need to work together to craft their content.
Multiple authors can simultaneously collaborate on a SharePoint page or news post.
What’s shipped:
Simplified canvas actions: Page authors can now find the top actions for configuring page sections and webparts directly on the page authoring canvas, streamlining your authoring flows and improving the intuitiveness of the UX.
Simplified page sharing: Share pages and news posts individually without having to share an entire site, just like other Microsoft 365 files.
Private drafts: Some pages require more privacy during authoring than others might. Now authors can create private drafts of pages to work on until they’re ready to publish to a broader audience on their sites.
Advanced image editor: Powerful and consistent tools make on-canvas image editing simple and efficient.
New site template experience: Choose from a selection of curated site templates during creation to quickly and easily get started building beautiful sites.
What’s Coming:
Page Coauthoring: Collaborate in real-time with others while creating and editing SharePoint pages.
Copilot in SharePoint: Copilot combines the power of AI and your data in the Microsoft Graph to help you author sites and pages.
New Start Experience: A place for your personal pages that’s filled with inspiration about what you can create.
Employees have high expectations for engaging and beautiful digital experiences, and that’s why we’re expanding the aesthetic capabilities of SharePoint to empower you to make pages and sites that are bolder and more sophisticated than ever before.
We’re building even more capabilities for SharePoint to reflect the aesthetic you aspire to for your site and page content. The new Brand Center in SharePoint empowers you to specify fonts, colors, logos, and other design elements that reflect the identity of your organization, products, subsidiaries, and more. You can reuse these branding elements across sites, and SharePoint will provide the right guardrails so you can be confident that site owners are aligning with your branding guidelines. The upcoming content pane is going to make it easy to find great content – images, video, documents, webparts and sections – to help you make your pages bold and engaging. The content pane, along with Copilot, will suggest layouts for your content to look great.
Microsoft Stream is the future of video in Microsoft 365. We recently launched new Stream webpart, and we’re developing a set of new video-focused page templates to make it easier than ever to showcase video content in pages. Stream has recently rolled out innovations like auto-generated transcripts, enhanced screen recording, and more. And, Microsoft Clipchamp, the video editor for Microsoft 365, is now generally available to customers with Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 plans and Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Business Premium plans.
SharePoint’s new look empowers you to make pages and sites that are differentiated, bolder, and more sophisticated than ever before.
What’s shipped:
Text overlays on images: Building on the capabilities of the new advanced image editor, you can now add text overlays to the images on your pages.
New Stream Webpart: Video is some of the most important content to highlight within a SharePoint page, and the new Stream video webpart lets you easily highlight a single video, or a set of videos.
Auto-generated video transcripts: Stream now automatically generates transcripts for videos uploaded in places meant for wider sharing of content like SharePoint sites, Teams teams, & Viva Engage communities.
Enhanced Screen Recording: When starting a screen recording from Stream, you can choose your layout of screen share and web camera, including the shape your picture-in-picture to appear in.
Microsoft Clipchamp: With its intuitive interface and rich feature set, Clipchamp makes it easy for anyone to create professional-looking videos in minutes and is now available for Enterprise and business plans.
What’s coming:
Video Page templates: Create video centric page content, like highlighting meeting content or executive messages with the new video pages templates.
Content pane: The content pane surfaces relevant authoring tools that help authors quickly browse and add content to SharePoint pages. Drag and drop web parts, media, and section templates for creating rich and engaging pages.
Page Design ideas: Design ideas offer authors beautiful ways to improve the look and feel of their SharePoint pages. This is done through tailored section level design suggestions.
Brand Center in SharePoint: Manage your brand elements like fonts, logos, colors, and imagery centrally for use in any site.
Organizations face a multitude of challenges in effectively communicating with their employees. As the workforce becomes more dispersed and diverse, maintaining engagement and alignment has become increasingly complex. Content and communications are the most effective when they’re discoverable right in the flow of work. Customers rely on SharePoint, and now Viva Amplify not only to create content but to help generate engagement and reach the right audiences.
In October we announced Microsoft Viva Amplify is now generally available. Viva Amplify is the newest addition to the Viva Suite, poised to transform the way organizations meaningfully reach and engage their employees. As businesses navigate an ever-evolving digital landscape, effective internal communication has become more crucial than ever before. With Viva Amplify, organizations can leverage centralized campaign management, multi-channel publishing, and reporting capabilities to empower corporate communicators to connect with every employee effortlessly. And earlier this year we launched SharePoint News in Outlook to help you have even more tools to reach your audience where they are. Included in that release were 6 new news post templates to help you get started authoring and ensure your pages look great in email and on the web. In Viva Connections, we released the ability to have multiple Viva Connections Experiences within an organization, so leaders can craft different experiences to cater to the diverse needs of their employees. Along with a new ServiceNow dashboard card, the upcoming refreshed landing experience for Viva Connections makes it easier than ever for users to find the content they need and navigate to the apps they rely on.
Publish messages to Outlook, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Viva Connections, and (coming soon) Viva Engage
What’s shipped:
Viva Amplify: Centralized campaign management, multi-channel publishing, and reporting capabilities to empower corporate communicators to connect with every employee effortlessly.
News in Outlook: News authors can preview and send full news posts as emails to their readers’ inboxes. Also introduced are 6 new news post templates designed to look great in Outlook and SharePoint. Authors can see unified page view analytics across both Outlook and SharePoint
Multiple Viva Connections Experiences: Create multiple Viva Connections experiences within your tenant to cater to the diverse needs of your employees.
Viva Connections Announcements – Communicate targeted, time-sensitive information to employees. These important messages are delivered through push notifications and announcements surface across Connections experiences on desktop, mobile or tablet.
Dedicated Search in Connections – Find what you are looking for with dedicated search experiences across Connections app experiences.
Viva Connections Analytics – Understand how and when users engage with components of the Viva Connections experience, including traffic data, usage and engagement metrics.
New Cards for Viva Connections – We’ve rolled out new cards and capabilities to make it easy to find the information you need, accomplish tasks and take action from the employee app. The News card expands the sources of company news content that can surface on a dashboard card. The Search template card allows you to build a card that searches against different repositories and opens up new search experience scenarios such as finding conference rooms, trainings or other line of business data. We’ve also introduced support for Microsoft Sway, Microsoft Forms and PowerApps cards to be engaged directly from the dashboard without leaving the Connections app.
What’s coming:
Refreshed Viva Connections Landing Experience: This updated look and feel that can be customized to your brand with a dedicated hero section to highlight organizational news. It also revamps the Dashboard and Resources sections and introduces a new place for announcements and curated and individually managed links that supports icons.
Connections theming: Viva Connections will offer a new set of theming options to reflect brand colors consistently across desktop, tablet and mobile experiences. With this new functionality customers will have the choice of applying existing SharePoint themes or a custom theme to their Connections experience as well as the SharePoint home site hosting the Connections experience.
Viva Amplify publish to Viva Engage: Corporate communicators can use Amplify to draft, preview, and publish messages to Viva Engage
Developers play an essential role in ensuring SharePoint is integrated deeply into their organizations’ workflows and tools. One out of every three pages in SharePoint include an embedded part to a custom business process or application. Customers rely on SharePoint to provide site and page templating, UX-layer parts and plug-ins using the SharePoint Framework, and data access via Microsoft Graph.
The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is the easiest way to build your enterprise solutions for Microsoft 365 with automatic single sign-on, automatic hosting and with industry standard web stack tooling. Earlier this semester we released three updates, SPFx 1.18, 1.18.1 and 1.18.2 which included more flexibility for Viva Connections card layout options, Fluid UI React v8 support, updates to Microsoft Teams solutions templates, and much more. For more information on the SharePoint Framework, visit the SharePoint Framework documentation and check out the hundreds of samples we have available from the Unified Microsoft 365 & Power Platform sample gallery.
SharePoint Framework can be used to power experiences across Microsoft 365.
In July we announced the new SharePointWeb UI kit focused on giving designers expert tools to customize SharePoint to meet any design challenge. Between the SharePoint Framework and the new Web UI toolkit, SharePoint is a stronger platform to build on than ever before.
SharePoint Web UI toolkit: The first iteration of the SharePoint Web UI kit will allow you to design a company and organization news communications site based on the example provided in the SharePoint look book.
What’s coming:
Bot Framework powered Viva Connections extensibility: Enables to extend easily existing Microsoft Teams bot framework implementations also to be used in Viva Connections.
Viva Connections Card Designer with Microsoft Graph support: Powers end users to create Viva Connections card experiences which connect to Microsoft Graph APIs or even customer custom APIs.
New placeholder to override within SharePoint portals: Will enable more extensibility options with the SharePoint sites, like by overriding navigation experience.
Page Toolbar Extensibility Support: Enables embedding custom experiences on the SharePoint page toolbar.
More flexibility with the Viva Connections extensibility: Enables more powerful and engaging experiences for the Viva Connections powered by SharePoint Framework.
SPFx and Copilot integration scenarios: SharePoint Framework and AI integrated scenarios.
Aligning to Teams packaging model: Aligns the SharePoint Framework packaging model to the Microsoft Teams packaging model.
Improved experience for blocked 3rd party cookies: Better handling of different browser settings for more secure experience.
Tooling improvements: Continuous improvements on the tooling to streamline the onboarding and development experiences.
Here’s the updated look at our developer and extensibility focused roadmap as we head into 2024.
Here is an updated look at our product roadmap as we head into 2024.
And here is an updated look at our sites and pages product roadmap as we head into 2024.
SharePoint sites and pages product roadmap
SharePoint at ESPC23
This year in Amsterdam the SharePoint community will come together to learn from experts, network with peers, and discover innovative technologies – to help you achieve your goals. You can find more information here: ESPC23 – Amsterdam | Event guide and we want to highlight key SharePoint and related session where we will share and demo more:
Microsoft Opening Keynote | “AI Transformation of Work” – Jeff Teper, President of Collaborative Apps and Platforms – Microsoft, with Omar Shahine, Adam Harmetz, Denise Trabona, Jason Moore, Miceile Barrett, and Michel Bouman.
Also, we’re pleased to announce the public preview of SharePoint Embedded – a new approach to building content-centric apps powered by SharePoint that can go beyond traditional Microsoft 365 user experiences. Read today’s blog post Announcing SharePoint Embedded Public Preview at ESPC23 to learn more.
If you can’t make it to Amsterdam, we’d love to see you at next Microsoft 365 Conference at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort, in Orlando Fl. We’ll have even more great news to share, more progress to show, and newly released capabilities to tell you all about.
