Recent Discussions
Introducing "Request sign-off" - an approval flow that requires no set up
We are happy to announce a new feature in SharePoint called "Request sign-off". The goal is to provide you an easy way to send an item for approval to someone else. This feature enables an open approval process that allows you to easily record whether or not a document or list item was approved or not. There is no setup required. Request sign-off makes use of SharePoint's integration with Microsoft Flow. You can use it by selecting a file or list item (but not a folder), and then pulling down the Flow menu in the modern library or list UI, and selecting "Request sign-off". This flow will appear alongside any other custom flow that you or others may have added to the library. Once it is invoked, Request sign-off will create a new text column in your library called "Sign-off status". This column will record the state of your request. It works just like any other text column, you can sort, filter or group by it to organize your library. On invocation, this will tell you that it will send an approval request on your behalf, and ask your consent. Once this is provided, you can pick one or more approvers, and write a message to them for your approval request. If you add more than one approver, any one of them can approve your request: The person you sent the approval to will receive an approval request. This will be an actionable message on clients that support it (meaning you can approve it directly from within Outlook). The approver can also provide some comments along with their decision. There will also be a link included that lets the approver view the item in question: The sign-off status column is then updated with the decision, and the person who sent the approval request will receive an email with the comments: By saving you the trouble of setting up a flow and creating a new column to track status, we hope that this feature will make it easy to add a lightweight approval process to your libraries and lists. We expect this feature to start rolling out to our customers in targeted release (previously called first release) after April 9. Barring any issues we will continue to roll it out to the rest of our customers in two phases late April and early May.ROLLING OUT: SharePoint Online team sites + Office 365 Groups & Pages
Today marks the beginning of bringing the full power of SharePoint to Office 365 Groups, with additional benefits to SharePoint Online all up! New and existing groups will get modern team sites, which come with an updated Home page, the ability to pin items within the new Quick links web part, and to see what's going on in the site via the new Activity web part. These team sites within Office 365 Groups, and existing team sites throughout SharePoint Online, will also have the ability to create publishing pages - fast, easy to author pages that support rich multimedia content, and look great on mobile browsers and via the SharePoint mobile app. Get ready to communicate and share your ideas within SharePoint like never before. Additionally, Microsoft will increase the site collection limit in SharePoint Online to "up to 25TB" (previously "up to 1TB); this will be refelcted in an update to the official "SharePoint Online boundaries and limits" support article. Please review the associated blog on blogs.office.com, "New capabilities in SharePoint Online team sites including integration with Office 365 Groups" with numerous links to new and updated support.office.com articles. Let us know what you think, Mark
Update: Document Sets in Modern Document Libraries
I am pleased to announce some updates on the plan and timeline for improving the Document Set experience in modern document libraries. In January, we communicated a March delivery date for these improvements. We apologize for missing that date. We’re now planning on rolling out this change in May. We will be making the official announcement to the Message Center very soon with exact dates. Thank you all for your patience! This change allows organizations to use the power of document sets to group related documents together with consistent metadata and structure without having to go back and forth between classic and modern experiences. Document sets now look and feel like ordinary folders in modern libraries, and benefit from all the cool new features in modern. This means that users can drag and drop content to upload to document sets, link to content that lives outside the document set, pin files to the top of the document set, start flows on document set items, and define conditional formatting on document set items. It also means that the Document Set experience can be customized using SharePoint Framework Extensions, just like all other modern list views. All the content management rules you can define on document set content types are still supported. No business processes were harmed in the making of this change! Document set metadata can be viewed and edited in the details pane while in a document set. Shared metadata specified in a document set content type continues to work as it always has; values inside shared columns will be copied to items inside the document set. Columns that are identified as Welcome page columns in the content type are sorted to the top of the details pane, so that users can find them easily. Content and structure rules specified in the document set content type are also supported, including the default content and default view settings. Document set versioning functionality will appear under the context menu on document set items in the modern list view, include “Capture Version” and “Version History.” Other document set-specific actions from the Document Set ribbon are still there, but only in classic. Just like any other modern list view page, you can click “Return to classic SharePoint” in the lower left hand corner to go back the classic document set experience back. The one caveat is that customized document set welcome pages are not supported in modern. This change will not affect document sets that use welcome pages that have been configured with custom HTML or web parts; those welcome pages will still be displayed in classic mode, as they are today.UPDATE: Support for Structured/Managed Navigation enabled on Modern Pages in Classic Team Sites
Hi everyone! Thank you for the feedback around wanting to move to the “modern” team site experiences, and needing support for structured/managed navigation. We’re pleased to announce that we have addressed this issue and will be rolling out the fix to the worldwide production environment in the coming days. Thank you for your patience – and to the community for helping us identify some issues during the initial First Release preview! With this update if you have enabled publishing on a classic team site, your structured or managed navigation will now render correctly in the modern experience (both global and current navigation), including any scoped or audience-targeted links. We haven’t pulled all the classic settings into the modern panels yet, so when you need to edit the navigation elements, the edit link will direct you to the classic settings page. Navigation settings on a classic team site: Now render correctly on a modern page: Additionally, subsites will correctly inherit from the parent web when structural navigation is used. Parent site: Subsite: We hope this unblocks you as you move to the modern user experience (UX). Try it out, and let us know if you have any questions. Thanks, Sean!UPDATE: SharePoint Online team sites + Office 365 Groups moving beyond First Release
As announced in August, 2016, we are bringing SharePoint Online team sites to Office 365 groups. This change rolled out to First Release tenants in the end of 2016 and is now beginning worldwide rollout. This next phase of the rollout will start Thursday, January 12, 2017, and is expected to complete to customers worldwide in 100% of production by the end of the month. The new SharePoint Online team site home page for an Office 365 group showcases important news, content and site activity. When you create a group, Office 365 gives the group a shared inbox, calendar, OneNote notebook, a Planner for task management—and now, a full-powered SharePoint team site. Each group gets a modern home page—with the ability to create additional pages—document libraries, lists and business apps. The integration of groups and SharePoint team sites means that any time a new team site is created, a new group membership will be created as well. You can easily see the members of the site, if the site is listed as public or private within your organization and how it has been classified. In addition, all existing Office 365 groups will be updated with their own team site. And once the rollout is complete for your tenant, all existing and newly created groups will get a team site by default. Within a group’s team site, this roll out brings a new home page, features News for highlighting important content in the team, and the Activity web part for showing recently active content. These team sites also include our new responsive and powerful page authoring and consumption experience – all connected to the overall Office 365 group experience. There is nothing you need to do but collaborate with your team in a more modern, connected way. Please ask in a reply to this thread if you have any questions. We are pleased to reach this milestone, and here with you along the way. Thanks, Mark
Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
When working as a team on Word files within SharePoint, I constantly have problems with things like heading numbering disappearing (or changing from numbers to bullets), bullets going missing or bullets turning into numbers. From what I can see, the custom list styles in the documents go missing. Other formatting things happen, like table column widths messing up. I can fix it all, PDF it, save and close, and when I open the Word doc again it's all gone haywire once more. I was always approaching this from a Word bug perspective, but maybe it's something I'm doing wrong in regard to SharePoint. Essentially, this is my workflow: 1. Create Word template. 2. Create documents from Word template (bid response schedules, one for each). 3. Upload all files to SharePoint. At this point, the template resides on my computer, in my OneDrive folder. As I understand it, this shouldn't be an issue because unless people play around with what template the document is linked to, it shouldn't change. However, often I found that the template had reverted back to "Normal". So, I started saving the template in a location on SharePoint (along with the documents) and making sure it was linked to it. When the document styles go haywire, to fix it all I need to do is link back to the template and update the styles. I have a macro that has the location of the template hard coded, and it links the document to the template, updates the styles, then turns off the checkbox again. (Note: I always make sure the "update styles from template" is kept off). Whether the template is on my computer or on SharePoint, once the styles start messing up they will continue to keep messing up, so putting the template on SharePoint doesn't seem to have fixed it. I'm outlining this process because all the forum posts I've found seem to treat SharePoint more as a space where templates are uploaded and people use the "New" button to create and then save documents straight into SharePoint from Templates that are uploaded into the site library. This is obviously not how we are using it: these Teams sites are created per project, we do our submission and then move on. I'm the only one creating documents and other people contribute to them. Is there something I'm doing fundamentally wrong and that's why these issues happen? If not, has anyone seen this issue and worked out what causes it?SharePoint Online: Collapsible sections on modern pages
Finally!! Much awaited feature - collapsible sections on #SharePoint modern pages will be released soon Collapsible/expandable sections on modern pages Show sections in an accordion view or as tabs (future release) Roll out begins in early July More details at: SharePoint: Collapsible sections on modern pagesNew Group calendar web part rolling out now
The SharePoint team is excited to announce the new Group calendar web part! This web part will be added to the toolbox when creating team news articles and modern pages. We are rolling out to First Release customers now! Note: only tenants that have First Release (FR) set to on for the entire tenant will see these features. Per user first release flighting is not applicable when creating new content that could be seen/viewed by non FR enabled users. What are modern pages you ask? “Modern team site pages are fast, easy to author and support rich multimedia content. And pages look great on any device, in a browser or from within the SharePoint app. Using pages is a great way to communicate and share your ideas—such as status and trip reports, how-to write-ups, know-before-you-go guides and frequently asked questions.” - from our blog post last year. Group calendar The Group calendar web part allows you to easily view the calendar of an existing modern group on a page. Just select the group you’d like to link, select the number of calendar events per page you’d like to show, and the web part will automatically populate the events. Easily switch between past and upcoming events, get more details about a specific event, and even download the event to add to your calendar. In the future, we will be listening to customer feedback and adding features! See our support documentation here.Configure modern search results to search all of your organization (rather than the current site)
Hey everyone, We heard from many of you the need to be able to change the scope of your modern search results pages. When you create a new communication site or team site in SharePoint Online today, and type into the search box, you are taken to the modern search results page. This page shows results from your current site by default, and allows you to expand the scope of your search to the hub that the current site is associated with (if there is one), or to the whole organization. But there is a desire for being able to change the behavior to always search over the whole organization, or across the hub a site is associated with, without needing an additional click, especially if the site in question will be used as a modern landing page for your organization. I'm happy to say that with the latest version of the SharePoint PnP PowerShell extensions, it is possible to run a simple command as the site owner, and make your site use the organization, or the hub scope by default. To change this setting: 1. Start PowerShell in administrator mode as you will be installing the PnP extensions. 2. Run the following commands to in this order: PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline # If you previously had installed this module, you may need to use the "-Force" parameter to install the newer version. PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://contosodemosg.sharepoint.com/sites/Strategy -UseWebLogin # this will prompt you to sign into your site. Use the site owner credentials to sign in PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $web = Get-PnPWeb PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $web.SearchScope = 1 # 1 for Tenant, 2 for Hub, 3 for Site, 0 for default behavior PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $web.Update() PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Invoke-PnPQuery After running these commands, the site will start to show results from the whole organization. To go back to the default setting, run the commands again with the value provided to "SearchScope" parameter to 0. To search across the Hub, use 2 as the SearchScope value. We will be providing a way to set this setting using the UI in a future release as well. Updated in April 2020 to reflect the ability to search across Hubs.
UPDATE: Create Office 365 Groups with team sites from SharePoint home moving beyond First Release
We recently completed the worldwide rollout for Office 365 Groups getting full-powered SharePoint team sites at the end of January 2017. Our next step is to now bring the ability to create SharePoint team sites connected to Office 365 Groups from SharePoint home beyond First Release. This next phase of rollout will begin today, and is expected to reach all customers worldwide over the next month. We also wanted to share some of the additional capabilities we’ve added to group-connected team sites since we first began roll out to First Release. No matter where you create an Office 365 Group from – whether SharePoint, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Yammer, or elsewhere – you consistently get the full collaborative power of a connected SharePoint Online team site among the other services groups provides (shared inbox, shared calendar, Planner plan, team notebook, and more). This move beyond First Release includes the capabilities described in our November blog post: Fast creation of sites connected to Office 365 Groups from the SharePoint home page Editable team site home pages that look great at your desk and on your phone Modern creation panels for new libraries and lists In-place navigation editing Site settings panels for editing site information and site permissions Modern page creation in classic sites Admin controls for team site creation The site permissions panel listed above has been enhanced to include options for adding members to the site’s Office 365 Group or simply sharing only the team site without providing access to other group resources. The panel is intended to provide simple permissions management, but also includes a link to ‘Advanced permission settings’ for site owners that have a need to do things like add custom SharePoint permissions & mappings. Note this panel also allows you to add users or groups to the ‘Site Visitors’ permissions group, so it is easy to provide read-only access to the site. All you need to do is add a new person or group via the ‘Invite people’ button, and then change their permission level to ‘Read’. The user or group’s permission level determines which permission group they appear under – those with ‘Read’ permission will appear in the ‘Site Visitors’ category. Managing group-connected team sites Since new team sites are connected to Office 365 Groups, managing them involves possible interactions with Office 365 Group settings in addition to those provided by SharePoint. Examples include settings that apply to groups such as whether group creation is allowed in the tenant, which users are permitted to create groups, usage guidelines URL or group classification labels. Once the group-connected site is created, management of the site is likewise split between Azure Active Directory (AAD) PowerShell cmdlets and the SharePoint Online Management Shell. Anything dealing with creation, deletion, un-delete (restore) or membership happens through AAD. SharePoint-specific management, such as storage quota and link sharing policies, take place using the SharePoint management tools. For governing modern site creation, this support page details the administrative controls, but is useful to summarize the relationship between a group’s policy settings and how the SharePoint ‘Create site’ experience behaves. By default, if group creation is enabled in the tenant, the ‘Create site’ command will appear on SharePoint home, and if a user is permitted to create groups they will get the site creation experience. If the user is *not* permitted to create groups, they will get the classic self service provisioning experience that results in the creation of a subsite. The table below describes how the combination of group and site creation settings work together: * The current user is considered to have group creation permissions if the AAD property EnableGroupCreation is true, or it is false but the user is a member of the security group assigned to the GroupCreationAllowedId AAD property. ** Site creation is enabled via SharePoint Admin Center under Site creation settings: In addition to managing site creation, we are also enabling the SharePoint Online PowerShell cmdlets to administer modern, group-connected site collections. This means that modern team site collections can now be enumerated with the Get-SPOSite cmdlet with the following example: Get-SPOSite -Template GROUP#0 -IncludePersonalSite:$false Most parameters for these site collections can also be set using the Set-SPOSite cmdlet, with the exception of those that would result in breaking connection with their corresponding Office 365 Group (e.g. you cannot set the Owner property using this cmdlet – you would need to set the Group’s owners via AAD). Please refer to the respective documentation for each of the above cmdlets for additional details. For more information on using PowerShell to manage Office 365 Groups, this article may be helpful as well. What else is new? In addition to the above, this phase of the rollout includes a couple of previously unannounced capabilities. The first is a group membership management experience that lives in SharePoint itself. Now, when you click on the member count of the group in the site header, you will be presented with a new group membership panel that allows you to add members and change their roles between owners and members, or remove them outright. Users will no longer need to jump to Outlook to manage the group’s membership. The second is Content Type Hub syndication – modern sites can now consume content types that have been published from a central content type hub. We heard feedback that this is an important feature to enable, and we are including it in this rollout. As noted above, this rollout will take place over the course of a few weeks. We are very excited for you to take advantage of modern, connected team sites and look forward to any feedback or questions you may have. As always, please ask in a reply to this thread. Thanks, TejasAdd Location Details to SharePoint Data and Content
We are excited to announce a new capability for SharePoint lists and libraries. The new location column allows you to add rich location data from Bing Maps or your organization directory to any SharePoint list or library. You can then filter, sort, and search by any aspect of the location data such as address, city, or state. Creating a Location Column To add a location column, simply click Add Column then select Location You can then name the column and add secondary columns to display, sort, and filter by attributes such as city, state, or country. Now when creating or editing list items, you can search for location data from Bing Maps or your organization directory to associate it with your list item. Once you have added location data for your list items, you can sort and filter your list based on any of the additional columns added during the column creation process. If you want to filter by an attribute you did not include during column creation, it can be added in the Edit Column pane. Adding a new column type to SharePoint is a rare event. We can’t wait to see what uses you come up with for this new column! We anticipate roll out for targeted release will begin by the end of November, with full worldwide release by mid-December. Update: After resolving some issues that were discovered in targeted release, we are now finally ready to start shipping world wide. Location Column will now be available to everyone by MondayPlease help! ALL Modern pages impacted | SharePoint spacing issue
There have been spacing issues happening tenant-wide on all modern pages since yesterday. Not sure if Microsoft released a CSS patch? Looks fine in Edit mode but all content gets squished together after publishing. Please refer to the attachments to see the issue. Has anyone else seen this issue?
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