The end of searching in SharePoint?

Author

Steve Corey
July 14, 2024

As I mentioned in my blog post, Microsoft stopped developing a search scope feature for the Microsoft Search bar in SharePoint. We know they’re pushing Copilot hard. Is the long-term plan to replace traditional keyword-based search with conversational AI-based searching? I’m not entirely sure whether this is a good move or not, but I’ll be paying close attention to future changes to see whether or not this is the path they take.

Speaking of Copilot, the private preview of Click-to-Copilot is happening this month. I don’t believe Microsoft has announced a public preview just yet, and unfortunately I’m in the private preview. Hopefully we won’t have long to wait for this very cool new SharePoint feature.

This is probably the end of the quiet summer period with few updates. I think the rest of the year will be very interesting and filled with big updates. What features are you excited for? What would you like to see? Let me know!

Take advantage of this quiet period to learn some new skills, though. We know how busy it gets when kids are back in school, everyone is back from vacation, and projects get started.

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

Steve

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ROADMAP
Microsoft Stream: Changes to version history for Stream videos

You know how every time you change metadata on a file, a new version is created, doubling the storage consumption for that file? Stream will be updated soon so that the versioning won’t apply to Stream files. Look for this change to start rolling out in August. Link to roadmap

SharePoint: Scoping Control for SharePoint Online

Well… Microsoft axed this feature. It would have helped find content using the MS Search bar. I’d bet my money that they thought this wouldn’t be needed since we have Copilots all over the place. Big mistake, if you ask me, because not all customers want Copilot. At least not at this point. Link to roadmap

New enhancements to Restricted access control using Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Entra security groups

Updates to the RAC (restricted access control) is in preview this month. This update provides additional visibility into the effect of applying a RAC policy to a site. RAC is a popular topic right now as organizations try to quickly prepare their environment for Copilot for M365. Link to roadmap

Employ user authentication and parameters in plugins

You’ll soon be able to specify parameters for your M365 Copilot plugins. This will let you gather additional info from the user before your plugin executes. In addition, authentication it passed to your plugin so that it executes in the user’s context. This is in public preview this month! Link to roadmap

BLOG

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One of the most popular posts on my blog. It’s just the thing to help you get started learning this advanced tool.

ANNOUCEMENTS
SP Premium free promo extended

Microsoft extended the SharePoint Premium promo for another year, so if you didn’t get a chance to use those free monthly allowance for the various offerings, do it! It’s fun to try these things out, and you get free monthly capacity. I still need to try out the Autofill columns. What about you?

VIDEOS

A new JSON formatting attribute lets you embed videos now?

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