It’s that time of year again — time to reflect on what’s coming in Microsoft 365 after Microsoft’s Fall Ignite 2021 event.

The event was jammed packed as usual, so we want to share what value we see in the new features coming to the Microsoft 365 platform. This is Part 1 of the article focused on Collaboration features, and in Part 2 we discuss document management, search and administration updates.

In the next year or so, we’ll see more mention of Microsoft’s new app and component set for managing work: Microsoft Loop.

Microsoft Loop is an evolution of the Fluid framework introduced by Microsoft a couple of years ago.

Loop is composed of 3 elements: components, pages and workspaces. It looks like it will also have its own standalone app to manage workspaces and to see all Loop components in one place.

Yet another Microsoft 365 app?! Yes, the trend continues 😊 However, it’s likely that when people get started with Microsoft Loop, it won’t be through the Loop app, it will be through Teams. Loop components will work in multiple places including Teams and Outlook. One way we heard them described is as a “canvas that moves across applications.” They are collaborative, easy to edit bits of work that can be shared in multiple ways.

The vision is that you can edit anything inline in Teams. For example, adding and editing Dynamics or other business data within a chat was shared as part of the vision (because we all know that updating a CRM is not an easy habit to build):

This should make it easier to make quick changes or confirm if something is up to date with colleagues.

If you want to start playing with Loop-like components, try it from a Teams chat > Insert live component. This adds a component that chat participants can edit together:

Questions we have are:

“Where do some of the Loop components get saved, if there isn’t another app for them?”

“How does Loop work for compliance and records management?!”

We need to wait to get answers to these. Our hunch for where the components are saved is OneDrive if it’s going to follow the Whiteboard model. These questions and more will be answered in time as Microsoft rolls this out more broadly.

There were so many announcements for the Teams app, so here’s a quick snapshot:

External collaboration with Teams Connect

One announcement that caught our eye for Teams is better external collaboration. It will be possible to share channels with people outside your organization without switching tenants and going through all those extra steps. This feature, called Teams Connect, will be in public preview in the next few months.

Delay delivery

A small but mighty feature is the ability to delay delivery of messages to avoid interrupting others during off hours, or when working with people in different time zones:

Mesh for virtual immersion

And last, but not least, there’s Mesh for future immersive experiences in meetings. It’s the “metaverse” for the enterprise. Or in Microsoft’s intro video, jokingly referred to as the ‘legless-verse’ 😊

Microsoft pitched the 3D vision and the 2D option for joining meetings as an avatar to help with ‘camera fatigue.’ Here’s a snippet of the vision video where the idea is that employees can interact in a virtual office environment:

There are many other Teams updates that we don’t have space to list here, so check out this article for all the details: Microsoft Ignite Fall 2021: Innovations coming to Microsoft Teams

SharePoint is the backbone behind so many apps. Here are a few enhancements that we think are especially useful coming in the next few months:

Site templates

The ability to use site templates in SharePoint has been a core feature for years, but it’s never been easy to change the template of an already-existing site. A useful addition for site owners is available with this: apply a site template to an already existing site. This will be possible through Site Settings:

When designing a SharePoint/Teams implementation, it’s also important to think about what templates will be available to users. Typically, we think of site templates, page templates, list templates, and there are Teams templates. In the future, the best of SharePoint site templates will be combined with Teams templates into the same creation flow with Microsoft 365 connected templates.

The first iteration of these connects SharePoint and Teams, and resources are added to Teams tabs automatically. Since they are called “Microsoft 365 connected templates” these will likely incorporate other parts of the platform too. These templates will be useful to reduce the number of steps site owners go through when setting up Teams and SharePoint for new teams and projects. This one will be important for IT pros to keep their eye on!

Content Type Publishing

This feature wasn’t technically part of the Ignite announcements, but it’s recent addition that is super helpful for administrators of metadata and content types in SharePoint.

Previously, when you published a content type for your users, a copy of that content type was added to every site in your organization. This was a resource intensive operation, where syncing content types across all sites could take time, especially as sites and content grew.

As the support article states, SharePoint content types are shifting to a pull method instead:

“To address these issues and help optimize the syncing of published content types to sites and libraries, we’ll be switching from a push everywhere model to pull as needed approach.”

This means that content types are available to add to any list/library, but are only added when you need them. This is a great change that optimizes for speed and efficiency. There is also a new user interface to add the content type, and no longer do we need to run a PowerShell script to add or clean up content types (although we can still script content types if needed).

Page authoring enhancements

Several features and UX improvements for SharePoint Pages are coming as well. One that is useful for communicators in larger teams, or people who draft content for employee portals or intranets is private drafts.

This makes it easier to keep pages to yourself until you’re ready to share them, or share with a few people before the page is published broadly.

Other improvements we welcome for page authors include collapsible sections and adding images inline with better control on alignment. These are good options for page authors to design the page and present content in the way they need. If you haven’t played with the latest authoring features in SharePoint modern pages, we recommend giving it a try.

Associate hubs to hubs

This feature was released a couple of months ago, but it’s an important site design consideration worth highlighting in case you missed it.

We had one level of hub site association before – i.e. associate several sites into a main hub.

With hub association, you can associate a SharePoint hub with another SharePoint hub.

Why do this? Primarily to make it easier for users to search across a related collection of sites. The Microsoft documentation states, as of this writing:

“When you associate hubs, there are no visual changes to the user experience except when viewing search results.”

In other words, this feature isn’t for inheriting navigation, permissions, or rolling up content to a parent hub site. The regular hub association does that.

This should help users discover related useful content through search and create a broader search experience that people expect.

Do you need help planning your SharePoint structure and navigation? Learn more about our SharePoint services.

The tour of Microsoft 365 updates is never complete without talking about Microsoft Lists. It’s great that these have broken out of SharePoint in the past few years and become their own first-order object. Here are a few highlights of what’s new or coming soon:

Board view

The redesigned Microsoft Lists already has powerful view and design options, and one more is coming: the Board view.

This view will be useful to move tasks/list items through a process flow, similar to Microsoft Planner.

There are pros and cons to using Lists vs. Planner, which is a topic for another day. However, the benefits of Lists are that you get a few more style and customization options, you can switch views into regular list view if you want, and you can still use the power user commands such as “Edit in grid view” for all your items. It’s a nice option depending on what you need to do with your swim lane tracking.

Other UX improvements

UX improvements including a rich text editor and (finally!) the ability to see the filters at the top when list filters are applied:

List templates

List templates are getting an update as well — they will come packaged with rules and business logic from Power Platform, so it’s easier to do things like add pre-configured workflows and notifications to lists.

This is HUGE and something we’ve been waiting for!

Our clients ask for this regularly, as it used to be possible to add workflows to content with SharePoint Designer.

The example Microsoft showed in demos is a recruitment tracker list that comes with reminders for interviewers already setup:

We see this as useful for teams across an organization who do similar business processes, such as onboarding, hiring, contract management, etc. They will be able to start from a list template that has a set of shared business rules and then modify from there, instead of starting from scratch.

With this feature combined with Microsoft 365 connected templates (see above), templates will be a powerful way to get going with work in SharePoint.

The major video announcement from Ignite 2021 is that editing clips will be easier in the future with Microsoft’s acquisition of Clip champ. There isn’t a timeline on when these features will be available in Microsoft 365, but you can get the app from the Microsoft Store or clipchamp.com for free (with a limited feature set).

Other important video updates for collaboration include better transcripts when viewing past meetings, and an improved timeline that shows points when the slides change, allowing people to jump to a point in the meeting recording more easily:

Office.com is often overlooked, but it’s a useful place to go to find documents, sites or links you might have lost track of. One tip is to make this open as part of opening a new browser window for easy reference.

The Recommended Actions area is a new area designed to get actionable updates from across the platform including tasks you need to complete, comments to view, etc.

Sometimes I run into a situation where I know someone shared a file with me, but I lost the link. The People tab will show a breakdown of shared files organized by People:

So simple, and it will be handy to find those documents that are scattered all over!

Summary

We hope you found this tour of the changes coming to Microsoft 365 insightful and useful. Reach out if you have any questions or want to talk about how to get value from these features (and more generally the Microsoft 365 platform). We’d love to hear about what you’re planning to use and chat about options!

Read Part 2 of our summary of Microsoft 365 Ignite announcements, which is all about document management, search and administration updates.