Monthly SharePoint News Digest - January 2025
New month, new features for the Microsoft 365 Collaboration Tools 🚀
🗓️ Events around Microsoft 365
💡 Trick & Tips
What better way to begin by cleaning your Azure Active Directory and managing your guests' access and accounts?
By default, for any sharing to an external user made and accepted (recipient clicks on the link), a guest user account is created in your environment.
Following your sharing policy, the sharing link can expire. If the sharing file is deleted or moved, the external user can probably have no access anymore. If the sharing settings of the file have been reset, the external user would not have access anymore to the file. All of these scenarios ensure that a user guest account was created and may not be active in your environment anymore.
For security reasons, it is not advised to keep this kind of account without any policy or lifecycle management.
The first recommendation consists of grouping these accounts into a Dynamique Security Group to apply specific conditional accesses, policies, and monitoring.
Then, you can check the activity of the accounts and disable some accounts... It is not advised to delete the account to keep track of some changes and history. If you delete several accounts, a few months later, you will see "unknown" users rather than your guests' information.
As an administrator, you can configure a guest access review workflow with stages to manage these accounts without additional script or custom workflow 😉💪🏻
📢 Announcements
- OTP Authentication through WhatsApp
- Pay-as-you-go billing for Agents in SharePoint
- Microsoft has started to implement the update for unlicensed OneDrive accounts
Favorite Feature of the Month
📰 News
Entra ID
OTP on WhatsApp
This news is mainly for Entra administrator. As usually, I'm only sharing information that I can try on my side on my environment. In some exception, like this one, I'm sharing information that is coming because it is something that will pushed by default and have an impact on users.
By default, the default channel to send a One-Time-Passcode (OTP) will be WhatsApp if the user has configured it with his device and cell number, otherwise, the message will be sent by SMS - So, don't be surprised 😅
How Microsoft can know if you have configured WhatsApp: "To check if a user has WhatsApp, we silently try to deliver them a message in the app by using the phone number they registered for text message verification."
Viva Engage
Mute Conversations
As a user, you were able to mute a whole community to be not disturbed... but sometimes, because of one feed only, you were spammed by notifications that maybe not interested you at all or anymore.
Microsoft afford the solution 🙂 you are now able to just mute the conversation only 🚀
SharePoint
Viva Connection appears in the SharePoint Bar
To improve the user experience, Microsoft introduce Viva Connection directly into the SharePoint App bar. The main purpose of this addition is to facilitate the switch from a SharePoint site and the intranet/home site.
SharePoint
Documents Approval
After the lists only, now it is the turn of the SharePoint libraries... you can finally remove your Power Automate approval flow to replace it with the OOTB one 🚀💪🏻
Such as the list, enable the feature from the library commands bar and enjoy - this is a really cool feature to add a granular lifecycle to your documents ❤️
SharePoint
New Accessibility Assistant
Did you notice this new little boy visible from the SharePoint toolbar?
If you are not familiar with web accessibility, this little boy will help you. By clicking on the "pain", you will be directly redirected to the Web Part component - ready to fix 🙂
Viva Engage
Community Expert
What an interesting feature 🙂
For example, you have a tech community about a specific technology, such as Microsoft Collaboration tools for example 😅
When people were throwing information around... how do you know if this information was relevant to the organization? Was this person's knowledge sufficient to elaborate on certain topics? etc.
It is now possible to designate one or more members of the community as "experts" from the community settings.
Exchange
Colored Folders
After OneDrive and SharePoint, it is the turn of Outlook to have the colored folders feature 🤓
Viva Engage
Verified Answer
When someone is asking a question, all the community members can afford an answer. Before, when the answers were correct, it was possible to mark it as "Best answer". This feature by the way is awesome ❤️.
Now, in addition to the "Best Answer" feature, an expert or an admin of the community can mark an answer as a "Verified answer" 🤔...
Key Benefits of "Verified Answers":
- Enhanced credibility: With Verified Answers, users can confidently rely on the accuracy of responses, knowing that they have been reviewed and endorsed by designated experts.
- Streamlined knowledge sharing: Verified Answers are highlighted and pinned at the top of discussion threads, making it easier for everyone in the community to access key information quickly.
- Robust community engagement: This feature not only recognizes the expertise within your community but also fosters a culture of trust and thorough knowledge exchange.
Exchange
How do to Pronounce your name?
If you are working with colleagues who do have not the habit of pronouncing your name, this feature can be really helpful ❤️
Your first name, last name, or both of them are quite complicated to pronounce. Help your colleagues by recording your pronunciation and your colleagues will be able to listen to it 🚀
[Note] Note
This feature is available on Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Teams.
SharePoint
New SharePoint Editors Experience
Cut and pasting combination keys or deleting the content to rebuild it elsewhere in a SharePoint page was not the funny part if you are someone who is working every single day with SharePoint pages.
Microsoft drastically improved the drag & drop Web Part experience on the pages; to be honest, I ❤️ it so much!
Win time, less effort, and improve your value as an author 🤩
- Cursor icons have been updated to reflect drag & drop actions
- You can now drop a web part on the plus button between sections to add a new one-column section to the page with the dropped web part
- You can replace images that exist on the canvas by dropping an image from the content pane toolbox on top of the pre-existing image
- Default stock images on the content pane toolbox will update based on the SharePoint page title
Exchange
Pin Shared Folder
Are you working with some colleague or a Shared Mailbox with a Shared Folder?
In some cases, being able to PIN these kinds of folders can be useful evermore if you are using them every day and you don't want to get them at the bottom of you other mailboxes or folders. Good news, now you can PIN Shared Folder into Outlook 😁
SharePoint
Leaders Feed Conversation
A new option is available for the Conversation Viva Engage Web Part: Leaders.
A Viva Engage Premium license is required to benefit from this feature 😞
For more information about Leadership Corner, check this link:
Hoping this post will help you, see you next month... 😉
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