SharePoint Addiction

Thursday, July 18, 2024

The following are some top updates and trends for SharePoint Online in 2024:

Copilot in SharePoint: This feature combines AI and data from the Microsoft Graph to help end user’s author sites and pages more efficiently.
Real-time Coauthoring: SharePoint allows multiple users to collaborate in real-time while creating and editing pages.
New Start Experience: The new start experience for SharePoint makes it easier for end users to create personal pages filled with creativity.
Section Backgrounds: This feature allows authors to add curated images or gradient color backgrounds to page sections, thus enhancing the visual appeal.

The following are three of the latest and most exciting aspects of SharePoint Online in 2024:

Copilot in SharePoint: This feature leverages AI to assist users in creating compelling content. Copilot combines the power of AI with data from the Microsoft Graph to help write and design sites and pages more effectively.
Real-time Coauthoring: SharePoint supports real-time collaboration on pages. Multiple users can work simultaneously, thus making it easier to create and edit content.
Enhanced Visual Design: SharePoint has new section backgrounds, allowing page authors to add curated images or gradient color backgrounds to page sections. This includes improved focal points, fill mode, overlay, and opacity.

The following are the top 5 historical features and milestones of SharePoint:

Project Tahoe: SharePoint traces back to a project named Tahoe, which was the foundation for the first version of SharePoint, it focused on top-down portals, search, and document management.
Integration with Office: SharePoint had been integrated with Microsoft Office, providing document management and collaboration.
Document Version History: Feature which allows tracking and managing changes to documents over time, ensuring data integrity and collaboration efficiency.
FAST Acquisition: The acquisition of FAST enhanced SharePoint’s search capabilities,this made for finding and managing content across an organization a reality.
Evolution into a Service: SharePoint has evolved from a content management system into a service which powers many Microsoft 365 applications such as Loop, OneDrive, Teams, and Viva,these aspects are a central role in the Microsoft ecosystem.

The following are three historical milestones for SharePoint:

1999: SharePoint began as Tahoe, which was connected to WebDAV.
2001: Official launch of SharePoint Portal Server 2001, marking the beginning of SharePoint as a web-based collaborative platform.
Acquisitions and Product/Service Spinoffs: SharePoint growth has included various versions, acquisitions, and spinoffs, including the integration of Site Server & Site Server Commerce Edition between 1997-1999, and later the incorporation of technologies from the FAST acquisition, which enhanced Microsoft’s search capabilities.

The following are three SharePoint Online reports to track search usage and identify popular queries:

Navigate to Site settings > Site collection administration > Microsoft Search > Configure search settings > Insights.
Aspects shown are graphs and tables generated from searches executed on modern sites. Reports show the past 31 days (daily or monthly for the previous year).
Key reports include:

Query Volume: Shows the number of search queries performed, helping one to identify trends.
Top Queries: Shows the most popular search queries (searched at least three times with clicks on results).
Abandoned Queries: Shows popular queries with low click-through rates.
No Results Queries: Highlights queries that returned zero results.
Impression Distribution: Shows impressions over time in regard to result types.

Report provides the top 10 most popular search queries along with the top three clicked results for each query. This helps in understanding user search behavior and result performance.

Reports (example: top queries, abandoned queries, no result queries, and query volume) aggregate data over Bing, SharePoint home, and Office.com which are Microsoft Search entry points.

The following are three SharePoint Online features for collaboration and streamline workflow:

With Office 365, one can create group-connected SharePoint team sites in seconds. These sites come with a shared inbox, calendar, OneNote notebook, and a default place for files (the team site document library).
The modern team site has pages, lists, libraries, and team news, allowing a group to collaborate, and communicate more efficiently.

Quickly and easily customize the appearance of a SharePoint site to reflect the professional style and brand.
Choose from default SharePoint themes, customize them as needed, or utilize company-approved branding.
Adjust site headers (layout, logo, background) and footers (logo, text, links) to create a site to fit one’s needs.

If an organization collaborates with vendors, clients, or customers, SharePoint Online allows one to share content securely with external parties.
One can control permissions, set expiration dates, and collaborate seamlessly across organizational boundaries.

The following are three key SharePoint Online points regarding large data in lists and libraries:

SharePoint can hold up to 30 million items in a single list or library.
While the default threshold for displaying items in a view is by default 5000, it’s possible to work with larger lists by planning ahead and applying filtering and sorting techniques.
Using the modern experience, improves the functionality and time aspects compared to the classic experience.

Treating a list as a database is fine for power users, and lists with more than 5000 items can indeed work.
As a site owner, one can be proactive in managing lists and libraries to avoid hitting the threshold.

Plan carefully, so that end-users and power-users do not encounter issues when the threshold is exceeded.
The threshold affects the view presentation, not the actual data stored in the list or library.