Shiny new SharePoint features (with more next week?)

I'm hearing rumors about upcoming MS Build announcements....

Author

Steve Corey
May 12, 2024

Hi again, friends! It’s been a somewhat quiet week in the world of SharePoint, but that may change soon. I’m hearing rumors of something big that may be announced at the Microsoft Build conference, running from May 21-23rd. I’ve heard it’s Copilot-related, but it might not be! Or maybe it’s related to Copilot and SharePoint? I’ll keep my fingers crossed either way.

I strongly encourage you to experiment with the new SharePoint page editor options this week. There are the section backgrounds, but also the image shapes feature that lets you apply a mask/shape to an image, giving you some very creative options to apply to your page. We’ll be getting many more features related to SharePoint page editing, so staying up to date will be an ongoing process this year. (Did someone say Copilot for SharePoint???)

For extra credit, hop into Figma and check out the Web UI kit. This is a great option to wireframe pages. There’s definitely a learning curve if you’re not that familiar with Figma. I’ve been playing around with it occasionally. It’s got a lot of potential, and Microsoft has been putting an investment into adding more web parts to it. I’m really hoping to hear news this year about a way to take those Figma mock-ups and convert them to real SharePoint pages. The new SharePoint Pages API is released, so the technical capabilities are there. I think it’s only a matter of time before either Microsoft or someone in the community creates a tool to do this.

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

Steve

ROADMAP
New SharePoint Start

A new SharePoint Start page is coming! I’m glad, because I kind of hated the current one 🤣. This new one is supposed to be more user friendly, and designed to minimize the clicks it takes to create new content. You can expect this to start rolling out in June 2024. Roadmap link

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BLOG
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Learn how JSON formatting in SharePoint got easier through the use of this free tool.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Section Backgrounds Rolling Out

Starting this month, you’ll be able to add custom section backgrounds and gradients to your SharePoint pages. This is assuming you’re on the Targeted Release tenant option, of course. All customers should start getting this feature by the end of June. Yi Han made a great blog post about it here.

VIDEOS
The SharePoint Brand Center is OUT

TIPS
Did you know…

If you work in an environment where you have to PIM (Azure Privileged Identity Management) up to get SharePoint Admin rights, you know it’s a pain sometimes. Did you know you can get to the term store without PIMing up, or even going to the SP Admin Center?

You’ll have the same permissions you do going the SP Admin Route, too

  1. Go to a site. It really doesn’t matter which one

  2. Go into Site Settings (gear icon → Site Information → Site Settings)

  3. Under Site Administration, click Term Store Management

Thanks for checking out this edition of SharePoint Insights! Share this with a friend who can use this information as well! Until next time…

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