Earlier this year in May, Microsoft introduced the future of SharePoint. This included a new envisioning for how SharePoint, Microsoft’s collaboration and content management cloud service, and OneDrive work together.
The announcement also included a statement from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella who said the reenvisioning of SharePoint would be part of the company’s mission to “reinvent productivity” and make Microsoft more of a mobile-first cloud-first company. What that means is the development of a more modern looking SharePoint that tightly integrates with the rest of Office 365 and has brand new mobile apps.
But when the announcement was made, there were no hard dates given for the rollout of certain features. Recently, however, we’ve started seeing preview apps appear in the Windows Store. Now, Microsoft has announced that new capabilities in SharePoint Online will start rolling out next week.
SharePoint Online team sites
When the rollout is completed, Office 365 customers will be able to use new capabilities in SharePoint Online’s team sites and enjoy closer integration with Office 365 Groups. Team sites have been redone so that they are more modern pages and are easier to publish.
The new SharePoint toolbox for easily adding web parts to your pages
Team site users will be able to quickly add web parts to their SharePoint pages by clicking the + sign. A toolbox will then appear that allows users to quickly add and publish documents, images, videos, events, Yammer feeds, and more. To learn more about adding a page to a SharePoint team site, you can visit Office Team’s guide here.
Integration with Office 365 Groups
Office 365 groups are also being more closely integrated with SharePoint team sites. Office 365 Groups allow groups in an organization to have a shared inbox, calendar, OneNote Notebook, and Planner. Now, Office 365 Groups will also automatically get their own modern SharePoint team site.
The new modern SharePoint Online homepage via Office Blogs
This will include all the standard features in SharePoint team sites, such as a Home Page, Quick Links, and a list of recent Activities. But it will also include the new modern features of SharePoint such as lists and support for Microsoft Flow and PowerApps, modern document libraries, and updated site contents page.
Microsoft is also increasing the storage limit for SharePoint Online sites to accommodate all of the new capabilities. Starting next week, SharePoint Online storage limits will start increasing from 1TB to 25TB.
The new features should start showing up next week for Office 365 First Release customers, and then continue rolling out in the weeks to come to the rest of Office 365 customers. Let us know in the comments if you’re looking forward to using all of this new SharePoint functionality.
Further reading: Business, collaboration, Enterprise, Microsoft, Office 365, Office 365 Groups, SharePoint Online
