Hidden gems at Ignite: A conference guide from the SharePoint product team
Hi everyone! My name is Adam Harmetz and I run the Program Management team for SharePoint team sites, portals, biz apps & dev platform. I’m thrilled to be spending time with the community next week in Atlanta – the fantastic SP community is one of the main reasons I’m still working on SharePoint after joining the team 11 years ago. I sat in on over 17 hours of Ignite content reviews this past week – there is a fantastic amount of great content and the team is working overtime to get everything ready for the show. Of course, as you’d expect there are the various overview sessions (like Jeff Teper’s SharePoint keynote) and here’s a handy graphic Mark Kashman and I are using in our talk that highlights the major overview sessions in each aspect of the modern Intranet: What I wanted to share here was how you can get beyond the overview sessions and into some of the deep dives that often don’t get as much attention. We are doing some unique new types of talks this year and new types of speakers (designers, developers, security experts, accessibility drivers). If you are looking for the hidden gems or interesting spin on a topic, these suggestions might help: Behind the scenes: How we engineer SharePoint. Last time I was on a cruise ship, I paid extra to take the tour of the engine room and the bridge. I’m the type of person who loves to peak behind the curtains, and I know there are many of the same type of people coming to Ignite. We have two sessions for you here: BRK3246 Looking behind the scenes at how we're making SharePoint's front end/UX modern, responsive, and open looks at the client-side, SharePoint Framework-powered front end UX architecture (where the speakers are a design developer and a director of engineering!) and BRK3031 Peak Behind the Scenes of running and building SharePoint Online talks about deployment and back end tech from Zach who manages all our COGs and hardware purchasing. MVP + Product Team == Awesome. There are a ton of MVP talks and of course a lot of talks from the product team, but in a few cases, we decided to team up and join forces! Tejas and Eric are describing the latest How To guidance in branding with BRK3025 – Learn Best Practices for customizing and branding team sites. And I’m teaming up with Laura Roger to talk about the new experiences through the lens of customer adoption with BRK2041 – Get the most out of the new SharePoint. AMAs! I visited the Exchange conference (MEC) a few years ago and was impressed by some of the talks they did where the engineering team just took questions from the audience for the entire time. We figured we’d try it so on Thursday a bunch of us leaders across product, design, and development will answer whatever you ask with BRK2295 – Unplug with the experts on SharePoint and OneDrive. The MVP community is doing something similar with BRK225: Learn from MVPS: panel discussion on all things SharePoint. Build it live on stage! SharePoint has a long tradition of having a bit of fun with a session where we get multiple people up there building cool sites live on stage. It’s a great way to let the product itself do the talking. This time, Jeremy and Emma will be building a team site from the very first “create site” click. Check out BRK2247 – Watch us bring together the best features a team needs to get the most out of the modern SharePoint. Go WAY deep with the new SharePoint Framework. In BRK4015 – Build Client Side Webparts for Microsoft SharePoint, Chaks is going to go as detailed as you can go with SPFx (frankly, I didn’t even know there WAS such a thing as a 4000-level session code!). We did a similar talk at our internal TechReady conference in July and it was ranked the very top Office session of the entire conference. Meet the Security Experts. Five minutes – let alone 75 minutes – with Matt Swann will change your worldview about the cloud. Honestly, if you ever work with him, you’ll see he’s one of those people you’ll remember working with when you look back on your career. Hear from the guy in charge of SharePoint security directly in BRK3032 – Learn how SharePoint safeguards your data in the cloud Talk to coders! Our director of engineering and the development manager of a large chunk of our UX investments will be laying down the knowledge in BRK3026 - Learn how to build a fast, responsive portal in SharePoint Online. Part of coming to Ignite is hearing directly from those who write code – and together Russ and John have decades and decades of experience. Change Management: We’ve heard you! Many of you (including on this very forum), have given us feedback about what you expect from us as we roll out new UX. We added a session on it to both share our strategy and continue the conversation and feedback. If you have opinions on how we roll out new functionality, join Zohar at BRK2297: Learn how we move fast without breaking things by managing change in SharePoint Online SharePoint Dev’s Secret Weapon: PNP. Vesa was recently sharing with me the usage and community engagement stats from the SharePoint Patterns and Practices site and github – they floored me. It’s such a great virtuous cycle and we are starting to bring some of the scenarios from PNP directly into the product based upon our learnings. If you are a SharePoint dev, you must go to Vesa’s BRK2115 – Learn about PNP and the new SharePoint Framework. Geek out on very specific parts of the product. What would a SharePoint conference be without some sessions that dive incredibly deep into one aspect of the product? Three stand out to me here: an entire session just on doclibs with BRK2043 Review SharePoint Document Libraries: what’s new, what’s coming, and when to use what, a session just on the various ways you can create site templates with BRK3027 Learn best practices for creating and managing Site Templates, and a session on our new mobile apps with BRK2037 Explore what’s coming with the SharePoint apps Accessibility and Inclusive Design. At Microsoft, we take designing for all needs and abilities seriously as a core part of our processes. This year at Ignite, we are starting to open up and talk about that work a bit more and provide guidance for you. Melissa, who has been running our accessibility efforts in SharePoint for many years now, has some great guidance in BRK2214 Ensure your intranet sites are inclusive for people with disabilities. There are a lot more talks at the conference, of course (188 tagged with SharePoint) – including some great talks from the community. I didn’t include the community talks here because I didn’t help prep for those, but they are some of my favorite personally to attend myself. If you have any questions about how to maximize your time at the conference next week, feel free to leave us comments!SharePoint Server 2016 Recap from Microsoft Ignite
Last week we concluded our second Microsoft Ignite conference in Atlanta, GA and announced several new capabilities coming to on-premises customers who are using or considering SharePoint Server 2016 or hybrid implementations. This post is a brief recap of those announcements, as well links to additional sessions of interest related to SharePoint Server 2016, hybrid, and migration from Ignite. What did we announce? For SharePoint Server 2016 we announced the early arrival of our inaugural Feature Pack, Feature Pack 1, which includes several new capabilities driven by investments in the cloud and feedback from our customers to include: Logging of administrative actions performed in Central Administration and with Windows PowerShell Enhancements to MinRole to support small environments A new OneDrive for Business user experience Custom tiles in the SharePoint app launcher Unified auditing across site collections on-premises and in Office 365 Unified taxonomy across on-premises and Office 365 OneDrive API 2.0 To learn more about Feature Pack 1 and its capabilities see also the Feature Pack 1 announcement here https://blogs.office.com/2016/09/26/announcing-feature-pack-1-for-sharepoint-server-2016-cloud-born-and-future-proof/. For customers who are looking for more seamless intergration between their on-premises SharePoint deployments and Office 365, we’re introducing two new hybrid capabilities in Feature Pack 1 as described above to provide unified, granular insights into audit reports across on-premises and Office 365 in addition to the ability to share a common Term Store with the Managed Metadata Service. In addition, to help guide and support your journey to Office 365 we also announced new FastTrack offers and solutions designed to help facilitate your migration or hybrid implementation as well as enabling you to diagnose and remediate common issues that may impact your migration. To learn more about these announcements refer to http://fasttrack.microsoft.com/office. Related Sessions Explore Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 and Beyond [https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/1368] Dive into Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 Upgrade and Migration [https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/1370] Deployment and Provisioning Best Practices with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 [https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/1372] Get Started with SharePoint Server 2016 in Microsoft Azure IaaS [https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/1377] Get Started with User Profile Service Provisioning in SharePoint Server 2016 [https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/1379] Get Started with Data Security and Compliance with SharePoint Server 2016 [https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/1373] Empower Discover in SharePoint 2016 with Hybrid Search, Delve, and the Office Graph [https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/1371] Dive into Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint Hybrid Scenarios [https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/1376] Get Started with Hybrid SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business with FastTrack [https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/39774] Explore new SharePoint Hybrid Scenarios: Hybrid Auditing, Hybrid Taxonomy, and Hybrid App Launcher [https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/1378] Bridge the Cloud Divide with Hybrid Business Intelligence in SharePoint 2016 and Office 365 [https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/2722] Keep an eye out for Feature Pack 1 coming in November. Bill
How to search in SharePoint
Looking to get the most out of your everyday SharePoint searches? Look no further. This infographic covers all you would ever need to know to search as smartly as possible, garnering you the best results you can get. Share with your colleagues so they can get better search results... and maybe think before they complain about never getting the right hits. :) The full infographic is available here, and is much more detailed than the preview below: http://icansharepoint.com/infographic-search-sharepoint/Microsoft Access Version Comparison Matrix
Microsoft Access debuted in 1992 and recently celebrated its 25th Anniversary! Over the decades, Microsoft Access evolved with a large number of enhancements, database formats, and discontinued features. It's hard to remember all the changes. We created a page that shows the different Microsoft Access versions and changes in an easy to understand comparison matrix. Microsoft Access Version Features and Differences Comparison Matrix See when versions were released, their latest service packs, database formats, linked tables, field types, security features, Windows Operating Systems, and many other features both new and old. Hope this helps. Let us know if we missed anything.The Future of SharePoint - 7 videos - Demos and tours from the May 2016 announcement
Foundation for the Future: SharePoint Server 2016 Your Intranet in Your Pocket: The SharePoint mobile app The Mobile and Intelligent Intranet: SharePoint sites and PowerApps Effortless File Sharing on Any Device: OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Security, Privacy and Compliance for SharePoint and OneDrive for Business Accelerating Innovation with Hybrid: SharePoint Server 2016 and Office 365 Open and Connected Platform: The SharePoint Framework
Announcement: Copy and Move Files between SharePoint and OneDrive
Following on the announcements the SharePoint team made at our May 4th Future of SharePoint event, we’re happy to announce that we’ve begun the first phase of our rollout for copying and moving files between SharePoint and OneDrive. Read about it in Chris McNulty's blog post in the Network!Microsoft Office 2019 Now Available – Comparing 2019 vs 2016 vs 365, New Features in Access & Excel
Microsoft Office 2019 is out! Microsoft started the roll-out today of Microsoft Office 2019 for Windows & Mac – with major updates to Access, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Project, Visio, and Publisher – to commercial volume license customers. Microsoft is following up with Office 2019 releases to consumers and other business customers, as well as SharePoint / Exchange / Skype / Project Server 2019 releases, in the coming weeks. Office 2019 provides a subset of features Microsoft has added to Office 365 over the past three years. As Office 2019 is a one-time release, Office 365 is still the better choice with not only far more features (Co-Authoring, etc) unavailable in Office 2019, but also far earlier access to them than on-premises, non-subscription Office 2019, etc. editions. Speculation has been that Office 2019 may be the last perpetual license (on-premises / non-subscription) release of Office, so that Microsoft can focus in on its Office 365 subscription offerings. However, Microsoft has responded in one case that there is likely to be one more perpetual license release after this one. Either way, Microsoft Office 2019 product pages even describe Office 2019 as a "one-time release" with Office 365 being needed to gain access to new features after that. It may also be that there are fewer editions available for Office 2019 than for Office 2016. Whether you move to Office 2019 or 365, it's suggested you don't delay doing so, as Office 2016 cloud support will be dropped in 2020, with Office 2016 installs barred from connecting to Microsoft's cloud-based services, including hosted email (Exchange) and online storage (OneDrive for Business), after Oct. 13, 2020. New in Office 2019 Word – text-to-speech, improved inking & accessibility, focus mode, translator, Learning tools (captions & audio descriptions), @ Mentions PowerPoint – Morph transitions, Zoom, SVG, 3D model, play in-click sequence, 4k video, @ Mentions Excel – Power Query (Get & Transform) enhancements, Power Pivot included with all editions, new functions & connectors, publish to Power BI, AI-driven Excel Insights for chart suggestions, new charts, @ Mentions Excludes Co-Authoring, new Data Types like Stocks, and some other new features only available in Office 365 Outlook – @ Mentions, Office 365 Groups OneNote – OneNote for Windows 10 (Modern App included with Windows) has replaced OneNote desktop app (though OneNote 2016 will be available via Volume License Install tool) All Office apps – Ribbon customizations and roaming pencil case Microsoft Access - including the many updates we've seen recently such as: Modern Charts New Linked Table Manager Dark theme Big Int Salesforce & Dynamics connectors Other Recent Developments with Microsoft Access It's especially exciting to see all the new features, growing user base and communities, new integrations, and development team responsiveness seen with Microsoft Access of late. Inclusion on the Office templates page Which I hope will become permanent soon SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) updates ODBC and OLE DB driver updates – for optimized use and new feature support for SQL Server, Azure SQL and other back-ends databases Power BI support (via On-Premises Data Gateway) Considering On-Premises Data Gateway is shared with PowerApps, hopefully that means we may see PowerApps support too in the future New & growing Access conferences and user communities: New Access Developers' Day in Amsterdam DevCon in Vienna, AEK in Germany, UKAUG in UK, PAUG in Portland, Access Day in Redmond, Access Madrid in Spain Presence at Microsoft Ignite and other conferences Access User Groups (AUG) webinars and local chapters (Chicago, Denver, Madrid, Hertfordshire, etc.) Access now included in most Office editions Included in nearly all (besides Online-only) editions Access in Office 365 Home, Personal, Business, Business Premium, ProPlus, E3, and E5 editions Access in Office 2016 Professional and ProPlus editions With MS Access having been added to most Office editions, presumably it will likewise be available with most Office 2019 editions now too. It's great to see these features available to Office 365 subscribers (or even sooner if opt-in for Insiders program) now being made available to others with Office 2019, and I look forward to the many more new advancements with Microsoft Access and Office to come. Links to More Info about Office 2019 You can find out more about Office 2019 with the following articles, FAQs and product pages: Office 365 vs. 2019 Editions Office 2019 Commercial FAQ Microsoft's Office 2019 Announcement Office 2019 and Discontinuing of Office 2016 The Verge release article ZDNet release article Endgadget release article VentureBeat release article TechSpot release article -- Dan Moorehead Founder & Chief Software Architect PowerAccess (www.PowerAccess.net) "Empower Microsoft Access – with new Tools | VBA Framework | PowerGit | Power Query-like PowerSQL | VSTO-like .NET API | CodeGen | Excel Formulas & Functions | Consulting | Excel ➜ Access ➜ SQL Conversion Tools"
