Wictor Wilen

The Office Roadmap updates with the new announcements from the Future of SharePoint event has arrived (they arrived May the 4th to be precise). I’m back from the event and San Francisco and I’m full of the energy that the SharePoint team transmitted. You should specifically take a look at the In Development part here. That’s where we got the new and fresh stuff from the Future of SharePoint event. Changes 2016-06-06 Now Launched Delve Analytics: Do you want all the details on how and when you work Delve Details and an E5 subscription is all you need (from in development) Drive Shipping and Network Based Data Import for Office 365: Fast Track is getting more and more mature with import options (from in development) FastTrack | Box to OneDrive for Business Migration: Still using Box? Get your files over to OneDrive with Fast Track (from in development) FastTrack | Expanded language support: More languages available in the FastTrack (new) FastTrack | Power BI onboarding support: And Fast Track Power BI is now live (from in development) Multiple timeline bars in Project Online: This must be one of the features that’s been jumping back and forth the most on the roadmap (from rolling out) Office 365 Groups: multi-domain support: This is one of the most important feature releases of Groups. Read this article for full details and configuration options. (from in development) Office 365 Reporting Dashboard: Better reporting in the admin center (from rolling gout) OneDrive for Business Recent Files to Sway: Easier access to your OneDrive docs in Sway (from in development) Skype for Business App SDK: Get your coding skills on and build some Skype Apps (from in development) Skype for Business Mac Preview 1: The long awaited Skype Mac client is not out. Feedback on it has been moderate at best though (from in development) Updated people profile experience in Office 365: The Delve profile page is now fully rolled out. I wonder if Delve will stay as the document discovery feature or if it just will be renamed to “My Profile” or “People” or something, which would make total sense(new) Yammer user profile update from Azure AD: The one-time sync from Azure AD is now launched. Wonder if we ever will see a proper sync? (from in development) Rolling out Basic Chat: Basic Skype chat from the Skype icon in mail - it doesn’t say that it’s web based, but I guess it is(new) Office 365 Groups: usage guidelines: A very important update, this allows you to modify the usage guidelines for Groups (another feature copied from Yammer) (from in development) SharePoint Online - modern document library experience: The new doc lib experience, mayhaps rolled out a bit early and without any guidance (new) In Development eDiscovery Case Management, Hold & Permissions: more permissions control for eDiscovery and compliance stuff (from rolling out) New AutoCAD file format support in Visio: AutoCAD file support in Visio… (from rolling out) Office 365 Groups: search Groups files using Office Delve: Searching should now show documents from Groups (new) SharePoint home in Office 365: Finally Office 365 and SharePoint will get a proper home page. The Sites tile will be renamed and now point to this page. You can read more about this feature here. (New) SharePoint Online – Client-side Web Part for Existing SharePoint Pages: The new customization features announced at the Future of SharePoint Event. Client-side Web Parts created using the new SharePoint Framework on existing SharePoint pages. Read my post about it here (new) SharePoint Online - modern lists experience: A new lists experience, very similar to the new doc lib experience. A great and modern looking UX. (new) SharePoint Online - SharePoint Framework: The new client-side framework that will be used to make the future customizations and development of SharePoint. This is the Framework that Microsoft will build the new “NextGen” portals and the one we will use. There’s much more to read about this here. (new) SharePoint Online - Site activity and insights on the Site Contents page: Each site will get its own set of statistics that shows you how the site is used and what activities are going on (new) SharePoint Online – Webhooks on SharePoint Document Libraries: One of the first new extensions to the SharePoint APIs. I’m glad they are using standardized Webhooks, instead of some weird remote event receivers. Hopefully we’ll get the same for lists (new) The new SharePoint mobile app for iOS: Announced as the “Intranet in your Pocket”. The new SharePoint App will first come for iOS (actually I’m already using it) and then later for Android, and if Windows Phone is still alive by the end of this year those two users might get it as well (new) Cancelled Class Notebook: limit sharing and deletion of section groups: This is just weird, this was rolled out the other week and is now all of a sudden cancelled (from rolling out)

Today at The Future of SharePoint event Microsoft have announced the next iteration in SharePoint development - the SharePoint Framework. As one of the old ones who started with the Digital Dashboard Resource Kit, to the COM+ event handlers in SharePoint 2001, over to custom built DDFs, to WSP’s to Apps and Add-ins - this new framework is a very welcome change. For years SharePoint Developers have been forced to walk in shame in the outer rims of the developer guild. It’s been so hard to get over the threshold and once you were over it, there was very few who actually returned to a normal life. I’ve been struggling for years to get ASP.NET or web developers to get on over to SharePoint development with no luck. The Add-in model did not help in any sense here and just introduced new pitfalls and confusions.

About a year ago I wrote a blog article called SharePoint Team sites are dead. An article that stirred up many feelings in the community and started an interesting (and somewhat harsh) discussion - which was kind of the point. Fast forward to May 2016 and this is a totally different ball game! SharePoint Team Sites are back! Modern team sites Jeff Teper, CVP at Microsoft, writes in the just now published The Future of SharePoint blog post: “Team sites has always been at the heart of collaboration with SharePoint”, a statement I absolutely agree with. Team Sites is what made SharePoint such a successful product. The post I wrote about how Team Sites are supposed to be dead are still true though - Team Sites are not what they used to be, they have transformed and merged with Office 365 Groups into something more powerful - the new Modern Team sites.

Updates, updates and updates. This time around there’s a great deal of clean up on the Office Roadmap. Mayhaps they are adding space for all the neat SharePoint things we expect to see next week at the SharePoint Future event. There’s also a bunch of new stuff added to the In Development category, scroll down and learn something. Also worth noticing is that the Yammer team has started to catch up on the feedback they received over the last few years. I think that in just a few weeks they made more than they actually been able to do for years. Good job - now if you only could focus on some proper integration; with identities, search, threading and stuff that matters.

Here’s some really big updates of the Office Roadmap this time around. Two major themes of this update, part from the now more or less traditional copy paste errors; Planner - the Planner team have tons of nifty and neat stuff coming our way. Edu - Microsoft is all in on school and Edu features at the moment! Check the “In Development” section - you will like it. Wonder how much more good stuff they are saving for the May 4th event!!

I’m happy to just have recieved the e-mail that informs me that I’m renewed as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), for the seventh time. This time it’s in the Office Servers and Services category after last years change in the program. Previously I was awarded within SharePoint Server. To be honest with you, the last few years has been well…average, but this year will be epic in the history of SharePoint, Office and Office 365! Looking forward to all the continued co-operation with Microsoft and my MVP peers.

Here’s some more updates on the Office Roadmap. A couple of days late due to me being offline and chasing bunnies and chickens. Highlights of these updates are the awesomeness going on in the Office 365 Video team and also that the OneDrive sync team is back! Changes 2016-03-28 Launched Class Notebook Add-in for OneNote: The Class Notebook add-in for Onenote is released. (NEW) February Updates in Office Mobile Apps for Android devices: Android apps received some updates with auto-save and collab authoring in Word and PowerPoint (NEW) February Updates in Office Mobile Apps for iOS: And iOS got some as well with Box integrations (NEW) February Updates in Office Mobile Apps for Windows devices: And Windows Phone did too (these users can be counted on one hand nowadays); inking and Excel updates was on the menu (NEW) Office 365 Admin app - Group functionality: Group admin options in the admin app, nice but for me the UX works fine with 10-15 groups, imagine an enterprise with thousands (from in development) Office 365 Admin app - Push Notifications for Message Center: Get them push notifications from the admin app and always know when there is Office 365 issues. Great! (from in development) Office 365 Admin app for Windows 10: The Windows 10 Universal App for Office 365 is here. Currently in Beta, but (NEW) Office 365 Video - Choose Your Own Thumbnail: A great video addition (from in development) Office 365 Video - Improved upload experience: easier to upload videos, one step forward to a real video internal Youtube (from rolling out) Office 365 Video - Insert video from SharePoint edit page ribbon: use videos in your SharePoint sites (from rolling out) Office 365 Video - Upload your own subtitle files: Wow! Awesome addition to the video portal! (from in development) Office 365 Video - Video Viewer Statistics: I like this, but I’d like to see better overall statistics. Right now its a copy paste job from many sources (NEW) Office 365 Video - Yammer settings per channel: about time, and the best thing is that you can turn the Yammer integration off! (back from previously launched) Rolling out Manage Yammer licenses in Office 365: To Yammer or not to Yammer - that is no longer the question, but up to you! (from in development) Office 365 Reporting Dashboard: This new reporting dashboard is awesome! (from in development) Search on Yammer iOS app: giggles, not commenting on this one (NEW) In Development Allow/Deny list external sharing domains: long awaited feature (NEW) Bitcoin Currency Format Support: Bitcoins is back( NEW, well it was here before but disappeared for a while) Delve People Experiences - Praise: Prais feature is now back in development (from rolling out) Expiring Yammer Announcements: Instead of fixing the read item count issues (any of them) the Yammer team thinks, hey let’s focus on something else instead… (NEW) Improvements to Outlook Add-in Store: better in-Outlook experience when getting Add-ins (NEW) March Updates in Office Mobile Apps for Android devices: RTF support for Android devices and SmartArt editing (NEW) March Updates in Office Mobile Apps for Windows devices: RTF and Sway features in the WinPhone apps (NEW) OneDrive for Business Deny List of File Types for Sync: Allows admins to deny certain file types (NEW) OneDrive for Business Pause Sync: looks like the OneDrive sync team is back from the coffee break (NEW) OneDrive for Business Shared folder Sync: sync someone elses folder (NEW) OneDrive for Business SharePoint Online Document Library Sync: The end of groove.exe? (NEW) OneDrive for Business Windows 8.1 Support for Next Generation Sync Client: Anyone still on 8.1, slackers! (NEW)

I got some news for you. The Office Roadmap is updated, actually it was updated yesterday but I had other stuff to do. Let’s jump right into the changes and look at them Groups thingies!! Changes 2016-03-17 Launched Dark theme for Outlook 2016: Somehow someone thought this was important. Personally I’m not a fan of the dark theme in Office, specifically not in Outlook - it looks all weird and funky since e-mails have a white background. (from in development) Directory pictures in Outlook 2016 search suggestions: When searching in Outlook (on the desktop) you should see profile pics of people - I don’t, and I’m on the Office first release branch… (from in development) Learning Tools for OneNote: There are some new Learning tools in OneNote for people with learning needs. (NEW) Office 365 Groups: dynamic membership: Dynamic membership in groups should be rolled out. Love the feature! You configure the dynamic membership in the Azure AD portal and it also requires Azure AD premium if you wondered (from rolling out) Office 365 Groups: files quota management: File quotas for group - one of those things we waited for are here, anyone seen it by the way. The description still says “we plan to” - but it is marked as launched (from rolling out) SharePoint Online uses Exchange Web Services to send mail: SharePoint alerts and mails are no longer marked as spam (from rolling out) In Development Focused Inbox for Outlook for Windows, Mac and web: The focused inbox feature from the Outlook iOS/Android app will come to Outlook for Windows and Mac as well as web (NEW) Message Center improvements Spring 2016: some filtering features and a new weekly digest e-mail incoming for the message center (NEW) Office 365 Groups: guest access support: YES! YES! YES! FINALLY! (NEW) One-click Archive: archive your stuff in Outlook if our using Outlook for Mac with a single click (NEW) Outlook 2016 for Mac two step authentication: Modenr AuthN and two-FACTOR authentication for Outlook for Mac (NEW) Upload local Outlook attachment to OneDrive & OneDrive for Business: automatically upload your attachments to OneDrive when sending e-mail using Outlook for desktop (NEW) Moved off into the previously released list Skype for Business for Android

Ok, let me first start by saying that I might have overreacted in the last blog post about the roadmap. I still don’t think it is ok to have this kind of chaos on such an important and official document/page. But stuff happens, we all know that (I’ve done some pretty serious dumba** stuff with my blog posts over the years). So back to the good news. We have an Office Roadmap update. And this time around it looks all fine! It’s a bit long this time, due to stuff getting back to where they are supposed to be, but there are some really hidden gems in here. Have a nice read y’all.