Here's What Got Announced At Ignite...

Author

Steve Corey
November 24, 2024

It’s been such a busy week! Microsoft Ignite happened, and right at the start tons of news dropped. The absolute biggest news (in my opinion) was that SAM (SharePoint Advanced Management) will now be included with M365 Copilot licenses. Prior to this, all users required a license ($3/user/month). Most customers never even knew this product existed, and the ones that did didn’t want to budget for it. With Copilot being prioritized across organizations, many realized that they were not prepared for how AI would expose data that was overshared or outdated. Because of that, I think that many organizations put off Copilot deployments until they got a handle on the situation.

I think that Microsoft made this announcement to help out with that. By including all the value that SAM has, Copilot licensing because much more valuable and now included the tools to get the environment ready for AI. It’s a big win for customers, and I couldn’t be happier.

Now that SAM will be on every customer’s mind, this is going to be a very valuable skillset, along with more advanced searching capabilities. Governance & content discovery will be very strong focuses going into 2025 as more customers get off the fence when it comes to AI and look for individuals with the skills to help them prepare. Will you the IT rock star for your organization? That’s entirely up to you and the effort you put in to develop those skill sets. I can assure you that it’ll pay off large in the long run.

Make sure to forward this email to a friend who needs to stay up to date as well!

Steve

ROADMAP
Enhanced functionalities to manage SharePoint Embedded Containers through SharePoint Admin Center

As cool as SharePoint Embedded containers are, they were a bit lacking from the SP Admin side of the functionality. We got the ability to manage containers on a basic level earlier this year, but now there’s proper management capabilities for admins to manage roles, as well as sort & filter through their various containers. This is about to begin rolling out now. Link to roadmap

SharePoint Advanced Management - Restricted content discoverability

SharePoint Advanced Management, probably the biggest Ignite announcement in the SharePoint space, has a new feature in public preview. Restricted Content Discovery will limit what sites Copilot (all of them) can access. It’s the long-term feature to manage this, as opposed to Restricted SharePoint Search which was a short-term solution. This in public preview now, with a broader rollout to customers in February 2025. Link to roadmap

Authoring Copilot in SharePoint

FINALLY, we get the first Copilot for SharePoint that was announced ages ago. This is going to be great and will let you author pages in edit mode. I’ve been so excited since this announcement, and it’ll be rolling out in January 2025! Link to roadmap

SharePoint Advanced Management - Site ownership policy

The problem of orphaned SharePoint sites will be over with the Site ownership policy. Part of SAM, this feature will ensure that when the number of site owners drops below a threshold, the remaining site owners are contacted to determine which new owners need to be added. Amazing quality of life feature that all admins will want. This is rolling out now. Link to roadmap

SharePoint Advanced Management - Using Data Access Governance to understand the tenant's current permission landscape

Another SAM feature to help you manage your data. This one gives you reports to understand things like sharing links in use across your tenant, or in this case, how many users have access to particular sites. This helps control oversharing, which is a major concern for organizations, but most especially those rolling out Copilot. Link to roadmap

SharePoint Advanced Management - Site Access Review offers a way for SharePoint tenants to empower site owners using Data Access Governance

One of the features of the Data Access Governance reports is the ability to trigger a site access review. This process sends the site owners a notification to review the current site access and certify that it is accurate. This, like most of the SAM features above, are rolling out to GA (General Availability) tenants. Link to roadmap

SharePoint Advanced Management - Introducing archival and other enforcement actions with inactive site lifecycle management policy

As part of the Site Lifecycle Management features of SAM, this one lets you take action on sites identified as inactive by the Inactive Sites Policy. You’ll have the option of making the site read only, archiving the site with M365 Archive, or doing nothing. This will be vital for admins trying to clean up old sites. Link to roadmap

SharePoint Advanced Management - Enterprise Application Insights for SharePoint sites

For the various reports that SAM can generate, this great feature uses AI to analyze the data in the report and explain any concerns that it finds. It’s great for administrators to have a “second set of eyes” to understand whether they should take action on oversharing reports as well as other reports. Link to roadmap

SharePoint Advanced Management - Auto-run Data Access Governance (DAG) reports

Having the ability to auto-run these reports every 28 days is great, although I’d prefer if we had the option to run it on the 1st of every month, personally. Still, this feature autoruns the reports and notifies you when they’re ready. It’s a great time-saver for admins. Link to roadmap

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While not technically free, this “free” feature is included in M365 Copilot licenses. Find out what SAM does to provide your organization with massive control.

Discover the latest security and governance capabilities coming to Microsoft 365 Copilot.

How SharePoint Advanced Management, included with M365 Copilot, will help you govern your content.

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