SharePoint Roundup December 2019.

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Audience targeting in SharePoint organizational news in Microsoft 365

SharePoint organizational news: Audience targeting

You can better define what news articles and pages appear on the home experience of your site by configuring what is visible to specific groups. Each person will have a unique experience that complies with what you wish them to view without creating multiple audience-specific sites, you can serve them all from within a more centralized location with a personalized, targeted experience. Audience targeting support will be enabled in news, pages and other web parts so that you can define and target who best to reach with content and site experiences.

Roadmap ID: 30695

You can show content to specific groups of people. This allows page authors and site owners to tag pages and news posts with Azure Active Directory (AAD) groups, and filter content within these web parts to people within those groups – to target them with relevant content.

From within the News web part, Megan (on the left), who works in engineering, sees the two news posts targeted for the Engineering Members group, where Nestor (on the right), who works in human resources (HR), sees the two posts targeted for the HR Members group. They both see not targeted content – the “Travel Updates Coming Soon!” news article.

The SharePoint start page, news on the mobile apps, and the News web part with audience targeting enabled, now show filtered views. Note: You can set one or more groups as the audience for any file.

First, enable audience targeting for the library

First, enable audience targeting which will create an audience property.

1. Go to your library. For example, if you’re working with pages or news, select Settings, then Site Contents, then Site Pages.
2. From the library, select Settings,then Library settings.
3. Under General Settings, select Audience targeting settings.
4. Select the Enable audience targetingcheck box.

Next, select the audience for a file

From the library, select a file and select a value for the Audience property in the details pane. Republish pages and update the news posts.

An audience is defined by security groups. If you need to, create an Office 365 group for the members of your audience. Or, if you’re an admin, you can create a security group from the Microsoft 365 admin center.

News will now be filtered by audience on the SharePoint start page and on the news tab in SharePoint mobile. Enable it on web parts with the following steps.

Enable audience targeting for the web part

The highlighted content web part and the news web part support audience targeting after it’s enabled.

1. Edit an existing page or create a new one;
2. Add or edit the web part;
3. In the Filter section, Enable audience targeting;
4. Publish or republish the page

File Upload for Microsoft Forms

Introducing File Upload

a type of question that allows responders to upload files, such as Office documents, images, and video, to their answers. These uploaded files are safely stored in your SharePoint or OneDrive for you to access with ease. With file upload, you can, for example, create a recruiting form that collects resumes or a photography competition form that requests images.

Roadmap ID: 59344

Build a form in minutes and now include the ability for people to send content as a part of their submission. This new feature allows form designers to choose a new question type, File Upload, which enables respondents to attach files as part of their response. Files can be accessed in either SharePoint or OneDrive in Microsoft 365, depending on the form type; group forms use SharePoint, while personal forms use OneDrive. Form creators can limit the number and size of files as well as specify file types. 

Note: File upload is not available when the form is shared externally. Change your form setting to “Only people in my organization can respond” within the “Send and collect responses” section under the form’s Share button.

Multiple updates to the SharePoint admin center

SharePoint admin – Root site swap (now a task within the SharePoint admin center experience)

Swap the location of a source site with another target site using the new Swap site button in the SharePoint admin center. Once swapped, the source site becomes the new SharePoint root site for your tenant. The previously designated root site automatically gets archived along with any subsites that may have existed.

Roadmap ID: 57309

SharePoint admin – Improved edit panel to manage site settings

We are releasing a new panel experience which will make it easier to view and manage more site properties, like how you would edit from within the site itself – through an edit pane that overlays the page you are working from. Select a site you wish to manage, and in the edit pane you will see several panels. The General panel displays a lot of the main site characteristics – and this is where you can rename the site name and URL. The Activity panel showcases site usage for file and people insights. The Permissions panel enables management of site admins, owners, members and visitors. The Policies panel provides visibility and access to manage site policies like external sharing, sensitivity labels and more. And finally, the Hub panel lets you know if the site is a hub site or associated to one.

Roadmap ID: 57314

We’re continuously updating the experience to allow additional admin controls (like viewing and managing permissions of a site), as we align the admin experiences across the different Microsoft 365 admin centers. This month, SharePoint admins can better replace their root site without PowerShell, adjust permissions, see people cards on-hover and more.

Replace root site – You can replace your root site with another site from the SharePoint admin center. The original root site is moved to a different URL and can be restored, if necessary.

Permissions panel – You can now see the site Owners, Members, and Visitors. If it’s an Office 365 Groups-connected site, you can see the group owners, and add or remove additional site admins if needed.

On-hover people cards – Hovering over the name of a user (on the Active sites list or in the details panel) lets you see details about the user – the same pervasive people card experience you see throughout Microsoft 365.

Customizable navigation pane – You can hide items you don’t use or collapse the navigation menu to see more content on the page.

More features page – The “Classic features” page has been renamed to “More features,” and all classic features are shown on the page so that you don’t need to click “More classic features” to see them.

Additional site-level sharing settings – For all sites, you can now limit sharing by domain, set the default sharing link type, and set default sharing link permission, (Previously, you could only do these tasks for classic sites on the classic site collections page.) You can also make “Anyone” links expire. Additionally, the External sharing column is now included when you export your site list as a .csv file.

Design updates

Details panels have been widened, to provide space for future enhancements and match the design of other Microsoft 365 admin centers. And the Settings page has been redesigned as a list that lets you see the current value for each setting.

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.

New modern list features released in December 2019

Column totals

Users will be able to display column totals and subtotals in the footer of a group or a list/library view in the modern SharePoint experience without needing to change to classic mode.

Roadmap ID: 46102

SharePoint lists – Conditional formatting rule builder with new rich-text capabilities

You will have the ability to use If/Then logic to format rows and columns based on attributes like numerical, date, etc. to apply color formatting across SharePoint lists and libraries. You, too, will have greater flexibility for how your text appears within your items by using the enhanced rich text editor – to bold, color, underline, etc. more closely to how you wish your text to appear.

Roadmap ID: 57305

SharePoint lists – Alternate row formatting

Provide a cleaner, more visual view of your documents and data with column formatting that alternates every other row. Click into Format view, select your color preference for Odd and Even rows and watch it take effect in real time. Once you’re satisfied with how it looks – dare I say how it pops – click the Close button and know your data comes across intact with clarity and style.

Roadmap ID: 57306

The SharePoint team has been ramping up investments in lists this last year. And as this month’s latest releases, they are certain to continue to deliver the value for how you best represent and track your data. Below are the three latest list innovations… SharePoint makers, are you ready?

Column totals settings – Show totals, or not, it is your choice – and easier than ever to accomplish. Users will be able to enable and disable column totals in the SharePoint list experience; previously this was only achievable when in classic mode. You’re able to display column totals and subtotals in the footer of a group or a list/library view. Custom views allow you to add calculated fields, such as totals or averages, to the footer of a group or the entire list. And, totals also appear in List and Library web parts.

To adjust Totals for a particular column of a SharePoint list, click the down-facing arrow to the right of the column header > select Totals > and then select your preferred Totals type.

Rich text formatting – Beyond standard column formatting, you now have a rich palette off which to design more visually meaningful, actionable list items.

You’ll then see all Format options available to reflect more visually the meaning of each word or status of the column(s) – including the ability to adjust Font (bold, italicize, underline), Icon, Borders (style and color) all while seeing a real-time preview of your design.

To adjust how text appears for a particular column of a SharePoint list, click the down-facing arrow to the right of the column header > select Column settings > Format this column > click Edit styles and then click the pencil icon to the right of an item choice and click More styles.

Alternate rows – Users will be able to create a document view for list data that features column formatting and/or alternating colors by row.

To apply alternate row formatting to a SharePoint list, click the down-facing arrow to the right of the top All Items list header option > select Format current view > then click Edit row styles. Here you can then adjust the row font, colors, border style – all with a real-time preview of your design.

Retirement of SharePoint classic and Delve blogs

This one comes as an FYI with guidance. SharePoint classic blogs and Delve blogs are being retired. Existing SharePoint classic blogs will continue to work as expected, including the ability to create new posts, but you will not be able to create new blog sites after a period of time. Delve blogs will no longer be available for creation, and existing blogs will eventually be removed, after an extended period of read only access.

Related technology

Microsoft Flow is becoming Microsoft Power Automate

As announced at Microsoft Ignite 2019, Microsoft Flow is being renamed to Microsoft Power Automate to better align with the Microsoft Power Platform.

Microsoft Flow is now Power Automate. In the context of a SharePoint document library, you’ll now see the “Automate” drop-down menu to create and configure flows.

You will start to see Microsoft Flow be replaced by Microsoft Power Automate throughout the service. These changes will start to become visible in Microsoft documentation, Admin center, etc. in the near future. And for OneDrive and SharePoint, you’ll see this primarily in lists and libraries.

Outlook on the web as a progressive web app

Outlook on the web – progressive web app

Outlook on the web can be installed/added as a progressive web app in Chromium based browsers.

Roadmap ID: 59250

With this update, your users will be able to install Outlook on the web as a progressive web app in Chromium-based browsers. PWAs are websites that that provide native app-like features on supporting platforms and browser engines. When Outlook is installed as a PWA, users can launch it from the Start menu, pin it to the Taskbar, or run it in a standalone browser window that removes standard browser interface elements. Microsoft will continue to update Outlook on the web with additional app-like capabilities.

It’s the best of OWA – where Outlook often ships the latest features, like the new files experience for Groups, tasks powered by To Do built in, a nice Unsubscribe button for unwanted newsletters, nicer previews of attachments – esp. images, and more.

Been using it a week now to try it out, and think I’ll keep it as my daily mail and calendar driver.

Use Outlook in the new Microsoft Edge

1. In Microsoft Edge, sign in to your Outlook on the web or Outlook.com account;
2. Select Settings and more at the top of the window;
3. Select Apps > Install this site as an app.

Use Outlook in Google Chrome

1. In Google Chrome, sign in to Outlook on the web or Outlook.com account;
2. Select Customize and control Google Chrome at the top of the window;
3. Select Install Outlook.

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