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What’s new for SharePoint – September 2024
Hey SharePoint fans! I’m back after a month-long break to focus on family, ready to dive into all the amazing SharePoint updates from September 2024.
This post is my way of catching up on everything I missed, and wow, there’s a lot to share! From the exciting second wave of Copilot to a major revamp of the branding center, and some fantastic updates to the Microsoft Lists experience, September was jam-packed with news. I’ve gathered all the highlights here so you can stay updated and make the most of these new features.
Let’s jump in and see what’s new in the world of SharePoint!
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Create themes for SharePoint and Viva Connections in brand center
The new theme creation experience in the SharePoint Brand center allows easy creation and management of themes for SharePoint and Viva Connections sites. Rolling out starts in early September 2024, with general availability by mid-October 2024. Organizations can standardize colors and themes, enhancing customization. Preparation requires enabling the SharePoint Brand center.
SharePoint: Manage your organization’s brand in the new Brand center
The SharePoint Brand center, part of Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 124838, centralizes brand asset management, enabling customization of SharePoint and Viva Connections. It’s available in Public Preview, with rollouts continuing until mid-October 2024. Global administrators need to activate the Brand center app, with steps varying based on current tenant configuration.
SharePoint: Introducing custom fonts
Microsoft SharePoint introduces custom fonts through the SharePoint Brand center, allowing organizations to express their brand creatively on sites and pages. This feature is part of Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 375490 and includes new web parts supporting custom fonts. Rollout phases include Public Preview, Targeted Release, and General Availability, spanning from April to October 2024. Brand managers can upload and manage fonts in the Brand center, creating custom font packages for SharePoint and Viva Connections Desktop experiences. Default Microsoft font packages are provided, and the feature is available by default with no admin action required.
SharePoint: Introducing archival and other enforcement actions with inactive site lifecycle management policy
Address inactive content on your tenant with inactive sites policy. Admins can configure policies to Detect inactive sites, send notifications to all site owners, and archive these sites or put them in a read-only state if there is no action from notification recipients.
OneDrive: Find files faster with the improved search experience in OneDrive for the web
An improved search experience is coming to OneDrive for the web, enabling users to find files more efficiently with new filters and a clickable location column. Rollout starts late September 2024, completing by late October 2024, and requires no admin action.
OneDrive for Business: Colored folders in the OneDrive folder in Microsoft Windows File Explorer
An improved search experience is coming to OneDrive for the web, enabling users to find files more efficiently with new filters and a clickable location column. Rollout starts late September 2024, completing by late October 2024, and requires no admin action.
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SharePoint: Site ownership policy
Site ownership policy is a one-stop solution to effectively manage ownership needs of all SharePoint sites in your tenant. It helps you to define your organization’s ownership criteria and identify sites that are not compliant. You can further notify predefined set of users of your choice to find the next best site owner or admin. You can also choose to automate actions on sites that remain ownerless for more than 3 months to prevent risks of data mismanagement.
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SharePoint: Editorial Card web part in SharePoint Pages and News
A new Microsoft OneDrive feature allows bulk export of admin reports on device status, including various user and sync details. It’s linked to Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88870 and will be available between December 2024 and January 2025. Organizations should enable OneDrive sync reports for data availability.
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SharePoint: Auto-run Data Access Governance (DAG) reports
You can now schedule to run your DAG reports automatically every 28 days and also receive notification when the auto-run completes.
SharePoint: Site access review from Sharing link reports in Data Access Governance
Site access review allows SharePoint admins to delegate access governance to site owners in the context of potential oversharing as defined within DAG reports. We earlier released site access review from within “Content shared with everyone except external users” report. Now, the same functionality will be available from all “Sharing link” reports as well.
OneDrive: Sync – Shared Item Delete and Local Mass Delete Confirmation Dialogs
We are shipping an items delete confirmation that will trigger when the user is about to delete shared items. This UI format will also replace the existing mass delete experience. These confirmations will occur when files are deleted from File Explorer when the user is running OneDrive and not paused.
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SharePoint Online: Enhancements to Text web part
New enhancements to SharePoint Online’s Text web part include custom font colors, paragraph styles, spacing options, line spacing, quote styles, and table column/row highlighting. Rollout begins early September 2024, with no admin action required. Users should be informed of these updates.
OneDrive: New prompt to confirm deletion of shared items and updated prompt for local mass item deletions
OneDrive is introducing a new confirmation prompt for deleting shared items and an updated prompt for mass local deletions, with rollout starting mid-September 2024. Admins can set policies to manage these prompts, which are enabled by default. No admin action is required before the rollout.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: AI Innovations in SharePoint and OneDrive
Satya Nadella and Jared Spataro introduced Wave 2 of Microsoft 365 Copilot innovations , including new Copilot agents that automate and streamline processes. Now anyone can easily create an agent with specific subject-matter expertise—from a coach to a brainstorm partner to a field-service technician. These updates represent a big stride forward in helping drive customer value with Copilot, and SharePoint and OneDrive will play a key part in this wave of Copilot innovations.
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Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Teams: Update on new Microsoft Lists rollout
The new Microsoft Lists rollout in SharePoint and Teams, starting late September 2024, will introduce features like ratings, direct image pasting, real-time collaboration visibility, tabbed view switching, and more. No admin action is required for preparation. Some features are already available as per the May 2023 blog.
SharePoint site content & policy comparison using AI
Secure sites by identifying sites with “similar files” and identifying different policies and settings. Admin now choose a site and compare the contents with ALL other sites. The report provides a percentage on how similar the contents of the sites are and then compares the settings. This helps admin to identify and administer same/similar settings and policies to similar sites all using the power of AI.
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Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Ground prompts using SharePoint Sites
Users will be able to search for and select SharePoint Sites in CIQ to scope their prompts to.
Enterprise Application Insights for SharePoint sites
Enterprise Application Insights is a powerful report which helps SharePoint Administrators to discover all the SharePoint sites that are allowed access by third-party applications registered in your tenant. The report also provides details on the application’s permission and requests count to help admins take further action to strengthen the security of the site.
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Copilot agents in SharePoint
SharePoint users can create a Copilot agent in SharePoint simply by selecting the SharePoint sites and/or files. Share these Copilot agents with your team to use in SharePoint and/or Teams.
OneDrive: View PDFs with Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels on OneDrive Web
With this capability, OneDrive users can open PDF files that are protected with Microsoft Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels and read them using OneDrive web in read-only mode. Only authorized users will be able to access these PDF files.
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Introducing Guest App Permission Management for SharePoint Admins
SharePoint Admins can soon manage guest app permissions using SharePoint Online Management Shell cmdlets. Updates to Get-SPOApplication and Set-SPOApplicationPermission will facilitate this. Rollout starts early October 2024 for Targeted Release, and mid-October 2024 for General Availability. Admins must download the latest SharePoint PowerShell version to prepare.
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Microsoft Syntex – simple document processing model
A prebuilt model that uses OCR and AI to detect the primary language of the file, key-value pairs, tables, selection marks, and barcodes. As with other models, it can be configured to extract this information to specified library columns.
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Authoring Copilot in SharePoint
Authoring Copilot in SharePoint combines the power of Large Language Models (LLMs), your data in the Microsoft Graph, and best practices to create engaging new web pages. It can utilize built-in templates or custom templates from your organization, along with existing documents as grounding data, to generate high-quality page content. All of this is achieved while upholding our commitment to data security and privacy in the enterprise.
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New data sync solution for Microsoft Excel for the web in Microsoft SharePoint Online and OneDrive
Microsoft Forms will soon introduce a new data sync solution for Excel on the web in SharePoint Online and OneDrive, replacing the old sync method. Rollout starts mid-October 2024 and should complete by mid-November 2024. This feature will be default and requires no admin action before rollout.
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