Something troubling is happening...

A major feature of Microsoft 365 is being stripped for parts?

Author

Steve Corey
April 13, 2025

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The roadmap news is a bit soft this week. I think Microsoft is keeping a lot of news under wraps since next month there’ll be two major conferences where big news usually is announced: Microsoft Build and M365 Community Conference. We may get some early leaks before then, because they’ve slipped up before! I’ll keep you updated if that’s the case.

I’ve seen some very troubling developments, though. Microsoft quietly started taking features away from Microsoft Search. Most recently, it was discovered in an unrelated MS Learn article that Q&A and Locations were removed from the Search and Intelligence center in the M365 Admin Center. These were fairly popular ones, at least when it came to the Q&A feature. I’m seeing Viva Engage as the new recommended solution to having Q&A, and it was already announced that Engage content would be surfaced in M365 Copilot responses.

Is Microsoft killing off features of Microsoft Search because they’re going to begin replacing it? Copilot Search was recently announced. Is this going to end up replacing the Microsoft Search bar, somehow? It’d be pretty expensive considering not every customer has M365 Copilot licenses deployed. They definitely won’t leave customers without an enterprise search solution, but what’s the plan? I’m using all my available resources to find out the answer to that question.

In the meantime, make sure to forward this email to a friend who needs to stay up to date as well!

Steve

ROADMAP
SharePoint: Advanced Page Analytics

SharePoint page analytics will add enhanced reporting capabilities including long-term data, distribution channel filtering, and reactions and promotions, data exports. Many customers have been turning to 3rd party solutions for analytics, so it’s no surprise that Microsoft is investing more time into improving the existing analytics capabilities. This will begin rolling out in May. Link to roadmap

SharePoint: Content Security Policy Control in Tenant Administration

SharePoint Online Tenant Administrators can now allow script sources for modern pages in SharePoint sites. This is particularly useful in scenarios where modern pages have custom code that load scripts (e.g. TypeScript code) from external sources like CDN. SharePoint will now report to administrators where are loaded from sources that have not been allowed giving administrators a way to identify those sources and take actions. Tenant Administrators can also enforce browsers to only load scripts from allowed sources. This behavior can be enabled using SharePoint Online Management Shell. This feature could break your web parts, depending on how Admins configure this setting. This has already begun rolling out. Link to roadmap

SharePoint: OneDrive and SharePoint – Compress your PDF

OneDrive for Web now lets you reduce PDF file size with compress feature. You can choose from three different compression levels that best fit your needs. This is a nice addition, but honestly, their time could have been better spent elsewhere, right? This has already begun rolling out. Link to roadmap

Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): People connectors for Microsoft 365 Copilot

People connectors for Microsoft 365 Copilot, based on top of Graph connectors, will integrate and enrich people data from various sources into Microsoft 365. This enriched data will enhance experiences in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, the profile card, and people search. This could be a very interesting feature to watch. I’ll be interested in seeing what data sources it comes with by default. This will begin rolling out in August, but don’t be surprised if we see this featured in the M365 Community Conference. Link to roadmap

BLOG

Copilot for Microsoft 365 vs Copilot Agents

Copilot was the buzz word of the year, but it looks like Agents is what everyone is talking about in the world of AI. Agents will do all the things that you can’t get Copilot to do. Find out the difference between M365 Copilot and Copilot agents.

Making custom lists and library look good doesn’t require 3rd party software. Use SharePoint’s little known advanced formatting to make your lists look impressive and powerful! Learn how to create unique and powerful lists and libraries that makes your boss’s jaw DROP. You don’t even need to be a developer!

Adam Harmetz’s post about managing the sea of agents your tenant is likely swimming in.

A really good announcement of the agent debugger (almost) hidden feature that’s now in General Availability. If you’ve been creating and debugging agents, you’ve hopefully been using this!

VIDEOS

ADDITIONAL INFO
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