the curated guide to office 365 adoption
TRANSCRIPT
curated guide to Office 365 migration and adoption
The
Preparing an effortless move to Office 365 4
On-Prem to the Cloud: why migrate to SharePoint Online? 6
Getting started with Office 365 – SharePoint administrator checklist 10
What you need to think about when migrating files to SharePoint Online 13
Choosing the right tool for migrating your documents to SharePoint Online 16
Learn more on Office 365 best practices and the SharePoint Online modern experience 20
The periodic table of Office 365 22
Do we really need SharePoint? 24
What is Modern SharePoint and why should I care? 27
Modernizing your approach to site architecture in SharePoint and Office 365 37
How to stay up to date with O365 44
Key takeaways 46
Knowing the ropes to Office 365
Contents
Here at ShareGate, we’ve discussed with many
IT professionals throughout the years who
have taken on the tremendous task of moving
their organization’s business applications from
SharePoint On-Premises to the cloud.
The takeaway from most of these conversations
is that the pressure on IT is high to ensure these
big projects run smoothly, primarily because of
the sheer amount of sensitive data involved,
but also because businesses have high
expectations when it comes to Office 365 user
adoption. They’ve heard that collaboration and
productivity will skyrocket - and IT has to make
sure it happens.
Luckily, Microsoft has put measures in place,
like the SharePoint Modern Experience, to
ensure a positive experience for end users as
well as to increase adoption and productivity.
Thing is, the path to the modern experience is
anything but a straight line.
If this is your first migration project, it might
seem like a long and complex ride to get to the
cloud and fully understand what it offers. But
don’t despair! There are tons of IT professionals
and consultants that have been doing this
for years, and most are eager to share their
knowledge with the community via forums,
websites, blog posts and the like. But we know
you’re on a tight schedule, so we’ve curated
what we think are some of the best articles,
written by professionals, that can help you plan
your migration and increase the adoption of
your Office 365.
You can read the magazine from cover to cover,
but if you’ve already moved to SharePoint
Online or Office 365, just jump to the second
part. There, you’ll learn more about the modern
experience and what Office 365 is all about.
Migrating to the cloud is a long and complex
process that requires a lot of planning. You
may have upgraded your SharePoint Server to
newer versions over the years, but migrating to
Office 365 is a different story. And it’s no longer
a matter of if your business should be moving to
the cloud, but when.
If you’re feeling nervous, it’s normal. You just
want this project to be successful! That’s why
we’ve brought together our top articles, written
by experienced consultants in the field.
In this first section, you’ll find insights on how
to build a strong business case to get your
management’s buy-in, tips on planning your
project, and tricks on picking the right solution
for your migration scenario.
Preparing an effortless move to Office 365
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e recently ran an event that looked at how organisation’s still utilising SharePoint 2013 on-premises, or older legacy versions, can
successfully migrate to SharePoint Online. So, we thought we would compile some steps to help add value to those still using dated on-premises technologies thinking of making the move.
Reasons to Upgrade to SharePoint Online Since SharePoint was introduced in the early noughties, with that “classic” SharePoint look, some would argue that unlike a fine wine, on-premises versions of SharePoint do not get better with age. Since its initial incarnation, Microsoft have looked to improve and develop new features within the platform, all be it within the constraints of the original framework.
When dealing with clients in the SharePoint world, many have dismissed the platform. Older versions of the platform have the perception of being clunky, aesthetically unpleasing and incompatible with cutting edge technology.
What Does a Modern SharePoint Look Like? On their quest to continually innovate and improve SharePoint, Microsoft has added a whole bunch of cool functionality for Modern SharePoint Sites. Site classifications and labels for example. This is important for the impending GDPR world that looms ahead of us. End-users can now see if a site contains Personal Identifiable Information (PII) data. They can then label and classify these in the interest of compliance.
A new and Modern UI Design Microsoft has done a lot of work to improve the aesthetics issue that once turned a lot of people off SharePoint.
What does this mean? It means more flexibility on the layout aimed at the actual users of the platform rather than Admins. It also means SharePoint is mobile friendly
out-of-the-box. It’s important to note, that unless you have heavy customisations on-premises, in older versions of SharePoint it was always the pinch and scroll technique that prevailed. This is no longer the case.
Communication Made EasierThrough Modern Communications Sites, teams can quickly create engaging news and roll-up content from multiple areas within SharePoint. Articles, reports, highlighted content and documents – you name it – content can now be dynamically displayed from document libraries, a SharePoint Site, a site collection, or all sites.
A Central Hub for Your Content With SharePoint Hub Sites on their way later in 2018, SharePoint Online will have the functionality to bring all related Communication and Team sites together in one place. You’ll be able to increase the visibility of associated sites through cross-site navigation. Provide a single place for users to read aggregated content, news and related sites. And, most importantly of all – a consistent look and feel across SharePoint.
Innovations keep rolling in with SharePoint Online. Users can now collaborate on content together within teams and with external partners. Users can navigate around related content with intelligent recommendations from Delve and create and configure Team sites and publishing sites quickly and more easily than ever before. Finally, users can automate business processes with Microsoft Flow and PowerApps – allowing end-users to focus on the most valuable commodity of all: their time.
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Yet, contrary to the popular, unfounded rumours that SharePoint is dead, Microsoft has continued to invest heavily into the platform. Microsoft has now made SharePoint Modern.
Modern SharePoint Team Sites now work natively on mobiles and web parts are easier to use and implement.
• Navigation – Define a top navigation
in the Hub Site that is inherited by associated sites.
• Theme – Define the look and feel of the Hub Site, and that theme remains consistent across associated sites.
• Logo – It may be an obvious one but, brand identity is key. A consistent logo defined by the hub site and used by associated sites says, “You are here, and you have not left.” With older iterations of SharePoint, there could be a disconnection felt between the user and the organisation.
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On-Prem to the Cloud: why migrate to SharePoint Online? To get you started on your move to Office 365, the Content and Code
team has listed the advantages of SharePoint Online in the following article.
They also discuss market trends and how SharePoint Online will help you
follow them. Enjoy!
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“Getting out of the Business of Running Servers” IT have always had the challenge of end-users taking matters into their own hands. Something we see time and time again is IT battling with end-users and “Shadow IT” – uncontrolled and unregulated platforms out of its control. By moving everything from an on-premises environment to the cloud now removes this issue.
Most important of all is the strain that on-premises SharePoint adds to the IT budget.
By taking the step towards the cloud service availability is also improved, and critical functionality such as external sharing is made a whole lot more compliant and secure.
With a Modern SharePoint, there is now a focus on agility! As was the case with many IT rollouts in the past, the move to SharePoint Online negates the need for lengthy procurement times for new hardware. SharePoint Online sits under the Office 365 umbrella, and therefore benefits from the evergreen nature of the platform. Users can take advantage of capabilities that are exclusive to Office 365, such as Delve and Stream. The bottom line is, once the initial investment is made, you will then benefit from the consistent updates and innovations pushed out by Microsoft into the platform.
Older Versions of SharePoint Unsupported by Microsoft With SharePoint 2007 unsupported and SharePoint 2010 in extended support, mainstream support for SharePoint 2013 is now due to end in April 2018. As a result, among many other issues, security updates are no longer issued and Microsoft charges for all support calls related to the application.
What this means is that your data could be at risk as your system will not have the most up-to-date security features to protect you from more advanced cyber-attacks. Therefore, any issues that arise with your SharePoint farm will only be resolved with significant time, resource and investment. Organisations that have SharePoint 2007, 2010 or 2013 need to plan an upgrade to a newer version (or SharePoint Online) as soon as possible. So here where SharePoint Online comes in.
Don’t Forget the Hyperscale Cloud Any guesses at how much 12.5 Exabytes would cost in SharePoint Online today? At good quality, a four-minute song is 8.4 megabytes. An exabyte would give you 119 billion songs that would last 906,000 years.
Here’s the math:
12.5 EB = £1.875bn per month or £22.5bn per year
THE ACTUAL amount you can purchase in the Office 365 admin portal is about 3.5 Petabyte (PB) – about £5m a year
Let’s have a look at the scale: 15 GB per file; 25 TB per Site Collection; 30 trillion documents; and up to 12.5 EB (!) per tenant. (In decimal terms, an exabyte is a billion gigabytes.)
It’s important to note here that although Site Collections can be allowed to grow to 25TB, clients should be aware that their tenant storage quota may not be 25TB. An out-of-the-box Office 365 tenant will have 1TB SharePoint storage and 0.5GB per licensed user. e.g. 1TB + (5,000 licensed users x 0.5GB) or 1TB + 2,500GB = 3,500GB storage limit for the SharePoint tenant (not including OneDrive for Business storage).
Industry leaders in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Collaboration As a Microsoft Partner, we would be amiss if we didn’t highlight this fact. So, here’s the marketing plug: when you choose Microsoft, you have comfort in knowing that you have chosen an industry leader in ECM and Content Collaboration.
Joking aside, it is important to note here that Microsoft was a challenger not a leader in the 2016 Gartner MQ for ECM (evaluated against SP2013, not SP2016). By adding rich new features to the platform, SharePoint Online has elevated Microsoft to pole position in both the Gartner ECM MQ, and Forrester ECM Wave.
This is testament to the amount of investment that Microsoft has pumped into creating an Enterprise Content Management system that both works well for the day-to-day user and one that eliminates the scalability barriers that challenged older, on-premises SharePoint editions.
According to the Forrester report into Business Content Services in 2017, “Microsoft’s launch of SharePoint 2016 and ongoing investment into Office 365 and SharePoint Online have proved to be significant catalysts in enterprises’ decisions to move enterprise content to cloud services”.
In addition to this, those organisations looking for help migrating from SharePoint on-premises to SharePoint Online and ultimately Office 365, Microsoft’s FastTrack migration program is well positioned to help. The service provides a range of options for customers that want to move documents out of their own in-house data centres or on-premises SharePoint sites.
Enter Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) If you move into SharePoint Online, you don’t just get Hyperscale and a leader in ECM and Content Collaboration. You also get access to capabilities like the EMS. Essentially EMS is made up of five distinct pillars of technology:
• Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)
• Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
• Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA)
• Microsoft Intune (MDM and MAM)
• Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS).
In conjunction with out-of-the-box Office 365 security features, these technologies allow businesses to better manage their mobile devices, apps, and the various user requirements associated with mobile working.
• The Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security suite brings a bunch of cutting-edge technology to cloud apps that are integrated with Azure AD.
• Conditional Access allows you to replicate the controls you’ve traditionally had at your perimeter within Microsoft’s cloud, and extend them using Microsoft’s intelligent security graph.
• Intune protects mobile devices accessing cloud apps secured by the Microsoft ecosystem.
• Azure Information Protection (AIP) offers classification, labelling and encryption capabilities, even for documents that have left your network perimeter, helping you to achieve GDPR compliance.
• Naturally, these controls can be applied to Office 365, but some of these technologies can be integrated with third-party SaaS apps such as (in the interest of transparency) Box, Dropbox and G Suite.
Moving to the cloud takes IT out of “the business of running servers” – allowing IT to focus on other business critical objectives and core responsibilities without the need to maintain, patch and support dated on-premises technologies.
So, what’s the key takeaway from this? Typically, there is no need for a separate ECM system with Office 365.
Current Enterprise Content Management market trends to consider:
• There has now been a shift to looking at records or life-cycle management as a transparent service — not a bolt-on. Has your organisation started to look at this?
• With security, compliance and data regulations becoming more prevalent as the threat landscape changes there is now an emphasis place on embedding security policies into the collaboration or file-sharing process. What steps are your organisation taking to ensure critical data is protected?
• The way in which employees work in a mobile-first world has seen a move towards IT needing to support mobile content use with enhanced administrative controls. Is your organisation keeping up with a diverse, agile and mobile workforce?
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NOTE: In case you are a global company that spans multiple time zones, set the time zone that would suit the majority of your employee base (i.e. company headquarters). Your employees can follow these instructions to set their own, personal time zone as well.
Set the Proper Time Zone on the Root Site Collection By default, the root site collection in SharePoint is set to US Pacific Time Zone. That is probably because Microsoft headquarters are located in Redmond, WA, which is on the West Coast of the United States in a Pacific time zone (PST). Unless your company is located in the same time zone, you need to change it. Otherwise, the timestamps on any content uploads or changes (i.e. Created or Modified dates) will show a wrong time. Moreover, when you create subsites in your site collection, they assume the time zone from the parent site. So you better set the time zone right away, to assure any future subsites use the appropriate time zone. Additionally, if you already created subsites in your environment, even after setting proper time zone at the root of the site collection, you will need to repeat the steps for all subsites manually.
Here is how to properly set a time zone for a site collection:
1. Navigate to the root of a site collection (the very top-level site)
2. Gear Icon > Site Settings
3. Under Site Administration, click on Regional Settings
4. Click on the Time Zone drop-down (most likely it will be set to Pacific Time (US and Canada)
5. Adjust to your specific time zone and click OK
For useful screenshots to guide you through the steps, visit:
sharepointmaven.com/getting-started-with-office-365-sharepoint-administrator-checklist/
Getting started with Office 365 – SharePoint administrator checklistNow that you’ve gotten the approval to start running some tests and prep
for the big move, you’ll want everything to run smoothly. Who doesn’t,
right? Common pitfalls can easily be avoided with some preparation -
starting with making sure that your destination environment is ready.
This administrator checklist will help you accomplish that. Gregory, the
author of the following article, refers to it as his go-to each time he
creates an intranet or project portal for his clients. We thought it could
also help you avoid a few headaches before starting your testing phase.
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2 Configure Settings in SharePoint Admin Center
Another important thing you need to do as a SharePoint Admin to adjust SharePoint settings in the SharePoint Admin Center. Most of the time, you would leave them as default. However, there are a few that are absolutely a must for you to address.
Add Yourself as a Term Store Administrator
Next, you need to make yourself a Term Store Administrator. Just because you are a Global Office 365 Admin or SharePoint Administrator, does not automatically make you a Term Store Administrator. And you really will need to be one, if you want to utilize the term store to manage your metadata with the organization. To make yourself a Term Store Administrator, follow these steps:
Configure External Sharing Settings
I am sure you will be sharing externally from within your SharePoint environment. To do that in an organized manner and to prevent your Intranet from becoming a Wild West with externally shared content all over the place, you will need to set up certain site collections for internal and external sharing accordingly. I provide a detailed explanation of external sharing in this post.
One thing you might want to do right away is to make sure that your default site collection is not set up for external sharing. That’s because this is where your corporate Intranet will reside. This will ensure that users don’t share any internal sites and content externally.
Office365 Theme/Logo
Now that we took care of the important stuff, it is time to spice up/personalize your Office 365 environment. You don’t have lots of options here, but one thing you can to do is brand the Office 365 navigation bar and company logo. I provided detailed instructions on how to do this in a separate blog post, check it out here.
What you need to think about when migrating files to SharePoint OnlineNow that your destination has been prepped, let’s take a closer look at
your source. If you’re choosing to lift and shift, you might not need
as much preparation. However, chances are you’ll be cleaning and
reorganizing part of the content. What are the key factors to successfully
achieve these tasks?
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igrating your organizational data to SharePoint Online requires careful planning to be successful. The purpose of this article is to provide you with
some high-level points to consider as you’re embarking on this journey.
Sources and Destinations For “lift and shift” migrations, the grouping of files at the destination will closely resemble the source. You can think of groups as being specific drives or folders. These types of migrations don’t require you to do a lot of mapping of files and you can migrate your files group by group.
On the other hand,
Volume
Today, the limits in SharePoint Online are quite high, allowing you to store up to 30 million files and folders in a library. In many cases, this limit will suffice for storing the files. However, as the number of documents grows so does the time it will take to render a document library view that displays them. Therefore, you should carefully plan out how you will view these files online. In cases, where you expect to have over several hundred files in a single view, you should consider adopting some techniques for managing large libraries.
File Sizes Each file you upload can be up to 15GB in size. Those numbers are not uncommon when dealing with large architectural drawings, geospatial mappings, or creative files. Depending on the Office 365 plan that your organization is using, the amount of available space will vary. For example, for an Office 365 Mid-size Business account, you can store up to 1TB per site collection. So before moving those large files into Office 365, you want to connect with your IT department to find out what your specific limit is.
File Types
In the past, there were restrictions on the types of files that could be added to a SharePoint Online document library. However, recent enhancements made by Microsoft have removed these limitations. There are currently no known file types restrictions.
File and Folder Names There are also restrictions on the characters, names, and length that you can use in a file or folder names. There are certain legacy names used in Windows systems, which cannot be used as either file or folder names. These names are: AUX, PRN, NUL, CON, COM0, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT0, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, LPT9. As well, names cannot begin with a tilde (~), which is typically used to indicate a temporary file.
when you are reorganizing the content into different locations and structure, you need to carefully plan out the structure and consider the Volumes and File and Folder Names points listed below.
When you’re migrating your files, try to break down the process into smaller batches that will be quicker to migrate and verify within a given time.
The characters that you cannot include are also blocked by Windows as they have a special meaning, such as “\” for a path and “:” for a drive. Therefore, the following characters cannot be included in any file or folder names: “ * : < > ? / \ | . In addition, # and % may or may not be supported in file names by your organization.
When you are migrating your files and folders to SharePoint Online, you need to also consider the overall file name and path lengths. The overall path, including the file name, must be no more than 400 characters in length. One strategy to reduce file path is to map some of the paths to custom metadata that can be associated with the files.
Metadata One of the many advantages that SharePoint offers is the ability to associate additional metadata with each file. If you are looking to add custom metadata to your files as part of the migration, then you need to think about where this metadata will be captured and how it will get applied to the files.
There are different ways to achieve this, such as via PowerShell scripting or 3rd party tools. Make sure that you identify all required metadata prior to the migration to avoid situations, where migrations fail due to missing metadata.
Scheduling Migrations
• Parallelizing Migration – by using several VM’s, networks, or physical computers, you can increase the migration speed as each environment will have some limits applied to it. So, if one machine can upload 1TB/day, then running 5 VM’s in parallel could result in 5TB/day uploads.
• Metadata complexity – uploading files is directly impacted by the number and complexity of metadata fields required for each file. The more metadata, the slower the upload speeds
• Limiting package sizes – try uploading groups of no more than 1000 files and less than 100MB per group at a time.
• Leveraging Azure – leveraging Azure as a temporary storage for the files provides better overall speeds even though an extra step is added to the process. This stems from the fact that uploading to Azure is much faster than uploading to SharePoint Online directly. You can even select the datacenter you wish to use for the migration. So, you can choose wisely and select the same datacenter location for your Azure and Office 365 locations.
Given all these factors, it would be a good idea to do a few test migrations to understand what type of throughput you are getting for your specific scenario before performing the actual migrations. Once you have a good idea, you should also work with the business users to establish a schedule that will enable you to confidently migrate complete groups of files (whether it’s by department or another logical unit).
Training
Conclusion A successful mile migration to SharePoint Online requires careful planning. There are several parameters that you must consider for increasing the chances of success. This article provided a high-level overview of some of the key considerations.
There are several factors that can impact the migration speeds that you may experience. These include:
No matter if your migration will be a simple “lift and shift”, or reorganize all the files into different sites with lots of metadata, you should plan for training for your end users so they understand not just where the files are located in the new environment (SharePoint Online), but also understand the rationale behind any changes made and how to work within the new confines.
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Choosing the right tool for migrating your documents to SharePoint OnlineThroughout the migration process, always keep your end users in mind.
Why? Because in the end, the success of your migration will, in part,
be determined by how easy it is for users to find and access their files
in this new environment. A variety of tools on the market can help you
reach that goal; this article lists the available options to help you choose
the most appropriate one for your scenario.
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0 ill Bayer recently announced the release of the SharePoint Migration Tool v2, which includes many fixes and new features from its earlier version. With
this new tool added into the mix, my users are asking which is the best approach for them. There are many factors that will help you make that decision, as I’ve discussed in my previous article on What you need to think about when migrating files to SharePoint Online. I this article, I’m considering these factors to help you choose the best approach.
Migration Approaches As with many things in SharePoint, you have different options available to you to migrate your documents to the cloud. These approaches have been grouped into the following five options:
1. Windows Explorer - through the use of OneDrive for Business, users can set up a continuous synching mechanism between a SharePoint document library and a Windows Explorer folder on their device. The same SharePoint document library can be set up to sync with different devices at the same time, keeping them all up to date.
2. SharePoint Document Library - the simplest of all the methods is to have users upload documents directly to a SharePoint Document library by selecting files from their device for upload drag-and-drop them directly onto the document library browser window.
3. SharePoint Migration Tool - the new Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool is meant to simplify the migration process by allowing users to copy files from their current SharePoint on-premises or network folder location to SharePoint Online in batches.
4. PowerShell - through scripting, IT admins can create scripts that can copy files from various locations to SharePoint Online and manipulate them in the process. For example, files from one location may get distributed to different document libraries in SharePoint Online or have their metadata (e.g. name, Created By, Modified Date, etc.) altered.
5. 3rd Party Tools - there are some great 3rd party tools available on the market today to help with complex migrations of documents from various sources to SharePoint Online. Like the PowerShell option, they allow manipulation of metadata and selection of destination document libraries based on specific rules.
B
What is being copied?
Windows Explorers
SharePoint Document Library Drag-and-drop
Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool
PowerShell / Custom Scripting
3rd Party Tools
Copy files from single drive with folders to single Document library in SharePoint � � � � �Copy files from single drive with folders to single Document library in SharePoint � � �Automatically update file names � � �Modify OOTB metadata fields � �Modify custom metadata fields � �Include multiple versions of the same document � �Migrate from On-Premises to SharePoint Online � � � � �Migrate from Sharepoint Online to SharePoint Online � � � �Ongoing Synchronization � �
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File Sources Migration can take place from any number of systems to SharePoint Online. As long as you have the proper access, you can copy files with little effort into SharePoint Online. Of the five approaches presented, any of them allow you to copy files from a network drive or SharePoint on-premises environment to SharePoint Online. However, if your source includes moving documents from one SharePoint Online environment to another or from a different system, then your choices are limited. You may need to consider moving your content to network drives in a structured way and then have them move into SharePoint Online.
Source and Destination Structure Some of the simplest migrations are ones, where files are simply moved from one location to another while keeping the same structure. An example of this is when users are asked to move documents from their legacy network drive to OneDrive for Business. For those simple cases, any of the migration approaches can be used.
In many cases, however, migrations are part of a larger initiative that involves restructuring and reorganizing of information. Documents from one source location need to be distributed to different locations. The distribution of such documents can be based on some predetermined rules, such as a folder name that the documents are located in, or be more specific to the files themselves. In either case, performing such a migration manually using the Windows Explorer or SharePoint Document Library upload approaches becomes very tedious and error-prone. To simplify the process, consider using the SharePoint Migration Tool, PowerShell, or a 3rd party tool. All of these options allow you to create an inventory of your documents (usually in the form of a CSV file) and may the source and destinations directly in them.
Altering Metadata The metadata is information contained within each file that describes its content. There are a number of metadata fields that are associated with any document, such as the title, creation date, and file owner. At times, the files names used for files on a network drive may not be acceptable in SharePoint Online because it may include
some characters that are not permitted. If you’re using the Microsoft SharePoint Migration Tool, PowerShell, or 3rd party tools, you can define rules for replacing invalid characters with other ones.
In SharePoint, you have the ability to add additional metadata fields and encapsulate them in the form of content types for better organization. When migrating files from legacy network drives to SharePoint Online, users are often faced with the daunting task of deciphering deep folder structures and determine how best to represent them in the new SharePoint Online environment.
Multiple Versions We’ve all been there, where file names had versions, dates, and other metadata included in them. SharePoint supports the use of multiple versions for the same file. If you have been diligent in the naming convention, then it is easy to map these different documents into a single document with numerous versions. Using the PowerShell or 3rd party tool approaches, you can merge these different versions of the same document into a single document in SharePoint Online and even select the version numbers for them. The latest version number will be the one that users will see by default.
Conclusion Migrating files to SharePoint Online requires careful planning to ensure that, when you’re done, documents will be structured in a way that will work well for your users.
One way to get rid of the folders is by replacing them with metadata fields, which make it easier to later search for these files. Today, such mapping is complex and can only be done using a custom PowerShell script or by using 3rd party tools.
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In the previous section, we discussed the best
ways to prepare for your move to SharePoint
Online while making sure your end users face
the least downtime possible. Once your migration
project is done, there will be more challenges to
face - it’s an ongoing process. Keeping yourself
informed of all the updates will definitely help
you to fully embrace Office 365 and what it has
to offer.
User habits don’t change overnight, so at first it
will feel like nothing much has changed. This is
okay! Sure, there’s new technology now available
to them, but keep in mind that it can take some
time for user habits and business processes to
change. However, as a key player in this important
time of transition, you must know where you
can turn to ensure user adoption and eventually
achieve greater productivity company-wide.
New ways of working: Office 365 and the SharePoint Modern Experience20 21
The periodic table of Office 365So, now your content is finally in SharePoint Online. That’s great! But
as you know, Office 365 isn’t all about SharePoint. It offers plenty of
other tools for different needs, like chatting, social networking, business
applications... This myriad of options can quickly become overwhelming,
especially when you need to explain their use to end users.
The following Office 365 Periodic Table is a good way to keep track of
these tools. Visit jumpto365.com for the interactive version, providing
more insights avout each one!
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umpto365’s Periodic Table of Office 365 is the best way to represent the Office 365 ecosystem. Built by Matt Wade (USA) and Niels Gregers Johansen
(Denmark), the Table displays the main Office 365 apps, grouped by use type. The table is interactive, so you can filter it by Office 365 license type or open it in your native language; more than a dozen languages are available. Click an app to read a concise, user-friendly description written by a Microsoft MVP with links to resources, communities, and other critical information. If you’ve ever
wondered “which tool when”, you’ll be especially happy to know that the Table provides a searchable tool that recommends apps based on your use case. Whether you’re new to Office 365 or a veteran administrator, you’ll find value in the Periodic Table. Make the most of it by embedding it into your Office 365 help center today. Plenty of organizations already have, and many report that it’s replaced the App Launcher as employees’ entry point to their modern workplace. More information is available at jumpto365.com.
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Do we really need SharePoint? Between Teams, Yammer, Office 365 Groups, Planner and OneDrive
for Business, you clearly need to know what SharePoint’s place is and how
it complements the other available tools. When should users be using what?
Is SharePoint still useful? Gregory gives us 7 reasons why SharePoint is
here to stay.
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got an interesting email a few days ago from CIO of a prospective client of mine. He asked me whether his organization really needed SharePoint. His
viewpoint was that he already got Office 365 Groups for conversations and file storage, Teams and Yammer for communication, Planner for task/project management and OneDrive for personal stuff. Specifically, he wanted to get my opinion on whether or not to spend a lot of time “configuring SharePoint” and “training folks” on it. With this post, I would like to tell you what I essentially told him in my email and later in a phone conversation.
Being a SharePoint consultant and a guy who configures hundreds of out of the box Intranet portals for small to medium-size businesses, I am obviously biased towards SharePoint, no argument about it. But in this post, I would like to explain tangible reasons for why you really need SharePoint despite all of the new tools that are available.
Reason 1: SharePoint is a Backbone of Office 365 Groups
You may not realize this, but anytime you create a new Office 365 Group you actually provision a brand new and fully functional SharePoint site collection. That means that you can create subsites underneath, change the look and feel of pages as well as create custom lists and web parts like in “regular” SharePoint. True, if you are just after simple conversations and occasional file storage, you can get away with just an out of the box Office 365 Group. But should you require fancier customization, you need to know SharePoint.
Reason 2: Tight Integration With SharePoint Whether you are using Teams or Planner, they tightly integrate with SharePoint. Anytime you upload a file or share it, the file management is happening in SharePoint. Once again, in theory, you can get away and store all the files in Office 365 Groups Document library and even OneDrive, but anytime you need to add metadata or rely on advanced document management, you kind of need to know SharePoint.
Reason 3: Project vs. Operational Stuff All these new tools such as Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Planner, Yammer and Office 365 Groups are not meant to be a replacement for SharePoint. They are supposed to complement it. For example, if you don’t need formal project management, you may use Planner. If you don’t need superb customization capabilities of team sites, you may use Office 365 Groups. What I see Planner and Teams and Office 365 Groups great for are project-type stuff. Something that is temporary in nature. But for operational-type stuff (i.e. department sites, wikis) – SharePoint would be a better fit – since such sites would be permanent in nature and would need customization and greater flexibility/scalability in the long term.
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What is Modern SharePoint and why should I care? It’s been said many times: SharePoint isn’t going anywhere. Microsoft has
made efforts to simplify its use and make it compatible with the most recent
technologies. The impact of these efforts is so remarkable that we’re now
talking about a new modern experience. While some of you might already
have a good idea of what the modern experience is, inexperienced or
On-Premises users might not know as much about it.
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Reason 4: Advanced Features Related to one of my previous points, the idea behind all these other tools was to simplify organizational collaboration. So the most important reasons for the existence of these new tools was the end user experience. However, as an organization, you might also need other advanced capabilities, like advanced document management via metadata, retention policies and records management, advanced/custom search experience, consistent drop-down navigation, form and workflow customization. All of the above requires some deep SharePoint know-how and obviously require that you do have and configure SharePoint as a backbone of your Intranet.
Reason 5: Company Intranet Speaking of Intranet, while you might end up with all of these numerous Office 365 Groups, hundreds of Plans in Planner and various channels in Microsoft Teams, you kind of need one place/home to tie it altogether. It is like with regular company websites, just because you can create a company page in Facebook or LinkedIn these days or create a Twitter handle does not mean you no longer need a company website. Likewise, you still need a single, structured (and customizable) place for your employees to go to for company stuff, like HR Employee hub or project hub with PMO information and project dashboard. You may also use Intranet as a communication channel with employees, using recently released Communication Sites.
Reason 6: Microsoft Flow and Power Apps The other two applications that Microsoft released in the last few years are Microsoft Flow and PowerApps. Microsoft Flow is the workflow application, allowing you to build workflows (business processes) unique to your organization. PowerApps allows to building custom apps, both mobile and PC-based that allow for data collection and smooth end user experience. While both are independent of SharePoint and can function and connect with other applications and sources of information, both really can make SharePoint more interactive and “user-friendly” by providing advanced features and functionality that did not exist previously with SharePoint Designer and InfoPath. Both are tightly integrated with SharePoint lists and libraries and links to both are prominently featured in both.
Reason 7: Training No matter what your opinion is on SharePoint and all the other available applications, training is a fundamental piece you should not ignore or avoid. Those who follow my posts know that I am a staunch advocate of training and user adoption. Even with tools like Office 365 Groups, Planner, Teams – you do need training. Otherwise, you risk the whole Office 365 platform becoming an unmanageable Wild West of company collaboration and intellectual property.
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he question I get the most these days is, “what is this modern SharePoint you keep talking about?” It might sound like an oxymoron! All my SharePointy
friends know about it, and debate the finer points over beer at SharePint, but to the casual user, or someone who’s been working on premises, it may be a bit of a mystery. It’s only available online (at the time of this writing anyway), and is slowly being phased in as developers build it out.
So here it is: Microsoft is on a mission to modernize SharePoint, to save it from fading into obscurity as a once innovative but now persnickety old war horse of a product. This article will explain how they’re doing it, and why you might want to take a fresh look at this stalwart collaboration product.
Anything but SharePoint SharePoint’s “classic” user interface was introduced in late 2002. Since then, new features have been layered on top, staying within the constraints of that original foundation. Unlike guitars and whiskey, software doesn’t improve with age. As a SharePoint consultant, clients often asked me to make it look like “anything but SharePoint”.
A SharePoint Intranet arrived in pieces, like the parts of a house delivered to a building site, leaving customers to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars putting them together. Of course, there will always be value in helping to design an Intranet that fits an organization’s business and culture, but all too much time was spent applying arcane customization techniques that had accumulated over the years.
Microsoft was at a crossroads: overhaul the aging collaboration product, or watch it die a slow and painful death.
So last year they started phasing in new “modern” SharePoint pages based on up-to-date web technology. These pages, and sites built from them, remove decades of frustration and are a pleasure to use.
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Here is one of the modern sites, a Communication site, which would be used for publishing information on an Intranet. No customization or advanced configuration was needed. It would have taken a lot of work to make a classic SharePoint site look like this! Moreover, the site automatically adapts to a narrow phone screen, keeping the page readable without sideways scrolling on any screen size.
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What is Modern SharePoint?
Modern SharePoint is a whole new user experience. It’s more than a fresh look, it’s designed from the ground up to work on mobile devices, and it addresses dozens of nagging usability issues. So far, modern SharePoint exists only in SharePoint Online.
Lists and libraries have the new look; here is a classic document library next to a modern one so you can compare.
Classic Modern
The difference is subtle, but
the modern page is definitely easier to use, and allows more advanced filtering and bulk editing.
The experience of SP2019 is consistent with SharePoint Online. Follow the link below for more details
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-SharePoint-Blog/Welcome-to-SharePoint-Server-2019-a-modern-platform-for-choice/ba-p/194162
Update!
It’s more dramatic on a small screen, like a smartphone. (The screen shot shows Chrome emulating an iPhone X)
Classic Modern
Notice how the classic screen shrinks to fit, making for microscopic text and requiring a microscopic finger to tap. It’s pretty much impossible to use. The modern screen is still fully functional; you can select files and do whatever you need to by tapping the screen with your normal sized finger.
Have you ever tried to move a file in SharePoint? It’s nearly impossible in classic SharePoint, and is one of many things made easy in the modern version.
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That’s a big part of SharePoint’s popularity: any business user can create a website in minutes! It’s less compelling, however, if the site looks like it was designed to run on an early version of Internet Explorer. (Because … well … it was.)
The full impact of modern SharePoint is evident in the editable pages. This is where users can innovate by arranging web parts on a page to show just the information they want.
Classic Modern
To test it out, I put the same information into two team sites, one classic, one modern. Both sites have a news web part; in the classic site, the news feed has little social messages (I attached a picture); in the modern site, the news feed has SharePoint pages with news articles on them. Those articles are automatically fed into the SharePoint mobile app and SharePoint home pages. In the classic site, the calendar is stored in SharePoint and is pretty ugly, causing the dreaded horizontal scroll bar at the bottom. On the modern site, the calendar is stored in Exchange as part of an Office 365 group. Exchange calendars work much better than SharePoint calendars.
Now here are the same two pages in the iPhone X emulator:
Again, the classic page was shrunk to fit, and is way too small to use. The modern page was rearranged to fit.
In SharePoint Online, lists and libraries are modern by default; web part pages are modern if you create a “modern team site” or “communication site”. You can also add new, modern pages to existing team sites (but not yet to classic “publishing sites”). Once a new page is set up, it can be set as the site home page, and the site will gain almost all the advantages of a fully modern team or communication site.
Classic Modern
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Sites are compellingThis is the most obvious advantage; it’s no longer a goal to make it “not look like SharePoint”, and in general, users will be happier with the results.
Mobile friendly It’s pretty standard these days that websites should work well on a mobile phone or tablet. Trying to do that in classic SharePoint was an exercise in frustration and sideways scrolling.
Faster, everywhereIn Classic SharePoint, most of the page is created on the server, and the whole layout needs to be sent over the network for every page. That’s the way the web worked in 2002. This creates a bottleneck in the servers, and leads to large network payloads. If the server is halfway around the world, the speed of light slows things down even more.
(SharePoint Friends, please do not mention the “minimal download strategy” at this point! Beer or preferably whiskey is required for that discussion!)
In modern SharePoint, most of the page is created in the web browser. Big chunks of SharePoint (including the “SharePoint Framework”) are stored outside of SharePoint servers, close to users around the world (on CDNs or Content Delivery Networks). They are also easily cached right on your computer, so they run nearly as
fast as a locally installed program. Pretty much only the content needs to be retrieved from the SharePoint servers.
Backed by GroupsClassic SharePoint sites were self-contained, which meant using SharePoint lists and libraries for everything. That might seem clever, but let me tell you, a calendar or discussion hosted in a SharePoint list is not a good thing.
If I had a dollar for every time I was asked, “how come my SharePoint calendar isn’t the same as my Exchange calendar,” I’d have a nice pile of cash. Well, now they’re the same! Modern SharePoint sites are backed by an Office 365 Group, which means they get a real Exchange calendar and shared mailbox, a real OneNote notebook, a Planner plan, and so on, in addition to lists and libraries. That greatly improves matters, and also lets you choose to work with all your calendars in Outlook, or all your notes in OneNote, across all sites and your own personal use.
Flexible organization
Classic SharePoint is based on lots of small hierarchies called site collections. Each site collection has a top-level site, and can also have child sites, grandchildren, etc. These hierarchies are very inflexible, and notoriously difficult when organizations change.
For example, suppose a product moves from Division A to Division B in a company, and the product site is in the Division A site collection. Your SharePoint person is about to have a bad day. There is no easy way to make the change and he or she will end up re-creating everything in a new site over in the Division B site collection. Unless they have another reorg first.
Its URL won’t even change, so favorites and links won’t break.
A consequence of this is that the new world of SharePoint is flat. SharePoint installations that have a flat structure with lots of single-site collections will have a lot easier time modernizing.
Top 10 reasons to use Modern SharePoint
Modern sites use a concept called “hubs” where sites are more loosely connected. The product site can just be switched from the Division A to the Division B hub, and it will get the navigation, search, and look of a Division B site.
List and Library improvementsThere have been many list improvements, including easier filtering, conditional formatting, and attention views, which once and for all provide a sensible way to show items that are missing required information. Modern lists also (finally!) address the dreaded “5,000 item view limit” that has frustrated SharePoint users for years. It does this by automatically creating indexes as they’re needed, based on user interaction. It’s not perfect, but for most situations it removes this perennial pain point.
In addition, the forms and workflow applied to lists and libraries is being modernized. PowerApps are slowly getting closer to parity with the legacy InfoPath forms designer, and Flow (and its big sibling Azure Logic Apps) are replacing SharePoint’s built-in workflow options. The biggest advantage of these new tools is that they’re not locked into SharePoint; they can work with all sorts of cloud services, both within Office 365 and beyond.
If you have an investment in InfoPath and SharePoint workflow, don’t worry! InfoPath and the old workflow engines aren’t going away any time soon. However, you’ll need to live with their limitations, as they’re pretty much on life support at this point.
Expose new featuresMicrosoft has introduced a number of cool new features that only work on Modern sites. These include:
• Site classification and labels, so users can see when they’re on a site that contains sensitive information, and easily label the contents for compliance reasons
• News feeds which automatically distribute links to pages (articles) across the sites in a hub and to the SharePoint mobile app and home page
• New web parts: There are a ton of cool new web parts that only work on modern pages. Sandra Ussia has great information on the new web parts on her blog (Part 1 and Part 2). Tracy van der Schyff has written a lot of them up on her blog as well.
In general, Microsoft’s web parts either work in classic or modern pages but not both. The only web parts that work both places are those written by 3rd parties (like you!) for the new SharePoint Framework, which allows developers to target both modern and classic pages with a single code base.
Easier to configure
Some classic web parts were easy enough to deal with, but others required arcane knowledge of XSL style sheets, display templates, and other outmoded web technology. The new web parts are much easier and more intuitive to set up, and don’t require any special technical know-how.
The modern team site page was a lot easier to set up than the classic one, mainly due to quirks in the old UI that often refuses to cooperate.
More secureClassic SharePoint sites would run any JavaScript you might want to put there; they even provided web parts for that purpose (the Script Editor Web Part and Content Editor Web Parts). That might seem benign enough, but in today’s world, you can’t be too careful.
For example, suppose Joe E. is an administrator of a SharePoint site. (Nobody knows, but the E is for “Evil!”). Joe writes some script and puts it on the home page of his site. Then he gets the CEO to visit the page. When she does, Joe’s script now has all of her permissions, and can do anything the CEO could have done on the SharePoint farm (or, more specifically, in the web application). Maybe his script approves a workflow, or gathers confidential information using SharePoint search. Bad. News.
Modern sites are more locked down than that. There are limits to how much you can lock down the script on any website, but by default, you can’t just drop a script on the page. IT can easily set it up so Joe and his Evil siblings can’t add arbitrary script to the pages.
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Modernizing your approach to site architecture in SharePoint and Office 365 Alright, so we’ve covered the modern experience enough to have a
better idea of what it’s all about. Moving forward, how should we build
our site architecture around it? How do the classic team, publishing,
and communication sites, as well as Teams, interact in Office 365? In
the following article, Stephanie discusses the approach that was good
for site architecture in the past, compared to how it should be today.
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5Future Investment Microsoft has been very clear that they’re not turning off classic sites any time soon, but let’s face it, classic sites are just on life support at this point. Any work you put into a classic site is work you may want to redo later on. If you’re building a new web part, configuring the way a list is shown, or just setting up a web part page, why not do it the modern way so you can take advantage of Microsoft’s investments in the future?
TeamsSo much for the top 10, I thought of another one! There’s been a ton of enthusiasm recently over Microsoft Teams, a new collaboration tool that’s centered on persistent chat. Microsoft Teams brings together nearly all of Office 365 under a single “pane of glass.”This brings up more questions, like, “Should we use Teams or a SharePoint Team Site”, or “Won’t Microsoft Teams put SharePoint out of business?”
These questions are based on a common misconception that it’s an either/or situation. Did you know that every Microsoft Team has a SharePoint team site, and that a Team can be easily added to a modern SharePoint Team Site? These products aren’t competing, they’re converging!
If you’re using teams, try this: go into the Files tab, click “View in SharePoint”, and you’ll be on that SharePoint site. Now go to the site’s home page, and copy its URL to your clipboard. Back in a Teams channel, click “+” to add a tab, and paste in the URL. There it is - the SharePoint site in Teams. SharePoint even hides the site navigation so it fits into Teams’ navigation scheme. This integration is likely to improve, with easier connections and more feature integration over time.
How do I get There? If you have an Office 365 subscription (and permission to do so), you can go modern right now! Just go to the SharePoint Home page and click “+ Create Site” to create a modern Communication or Team site.
If you have an existing site in SharePoint Online, you probably already have modern lists and libraries. If the site doesn’t use the Publishing feature (such as a Team site), just create a new page (in the “Site Pages” library) and by default it will be modern. Easy peasy. This article has a lot more advice on converting sites from classic to modern.
Microsoft hasn’t tackled Publishing sites … yet. There’s a lot to be modernized in SharePoint!
Modern Migration
A lot of customers are migrating to SharePoint Online to get out of the complex business of managing a SharePoint farm. It makes sense to leave that part to Microsoft, and never need to install another upgrade. But after that migration, all the SharePoint sites are still classic.
Will there be a second migration then, from classic to modern? Some enterprises may want to do that, and others may just go modern on new sites.
There are a lot of things to consider in a modern migration, especially in sites that were customized. The biggest challenge will surely be where child sites (and grandchildren, etc.) are used, since modern SharePoint only works on the root of each site collection, and Microsoft is moving toward a flat, one-site-per-collection structure (see item 5 above). Maybe some of the migration companies will come up with a solution for that!
I hope this was useful, either as a way to learn about modern SharePoint, or as something to pass on to your colleagues who ask about it. It really is the most often-asked technology question I get!
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Another approach I would commonly see would look something like figure 2, where secure subsites were tucked under the publishing site for simplicity to the end-user. While this was never my preferred approach due to security concerns, I know plenty of organizations who implemented this way. This further complicates the idea of “where does my content belong?” I still consider you among the lucky ones – best of luck to those sorting their way out of the folder and item level security structures!
Our Approach Needs to Change While these approaches worked ‘ok’ in legacy versions of SharePoint, the complexities of managing broken inheritance and moving subsites around during re-organization always kind of haunted us a bit. More importantly, Microsoft has now come out and made a strong recommendation against using sub-sites. This is for good reason!! There is little benefit to using sub-sites in a modern site collection and you should consider it practically unsupported. Yes, you can still create subsites, and you can still break permissions, but do so at your own risk – I’ve heard reports of modern search not working correctly in some of those scenarios. I’ve added references to related blogs at the end of this article if you want to learn more about this significant change in recommendations from Microsoft.
At its core though, the idea I believed in is still relevant. *We still want the clear separation of what consists of a publishing site vs a collaboration space* One area, where you would have many readers and few content owners/creators and other areas where you could have many collaborators, without compromising security. So now what do we do?
f you’ve ever wondered how to structure your SharePoint sites, you’re not alone. For those that have been doing SharePoint for a while, you may already
know that we’ve long had the debate – where do your department sites go in SharePoint? Are they considered publishing sites or collaboration sites? Or both? Are they sub-sites or site collections? How can we structure sites, so we secure some content and still publish content for others, without making it too complicated? This concern often leads to a successful intranet build but prevents true collaboration from occurring in SharePoint. We watch as our HR teams, Finance, and others still resist adding their most secure content into SharePoint (and especially into the cloud!) when we know the file share is no longer the best place for that content. This issue gets even more complex when we bring Microsoft Teams– which are supported by SharePoint sites – into the picture. I want to take some time to talk through what is no longer considered a good approach, and then provide a replacement, modern approach to site architecture best practices in Office 365.
Legacy Site Architecture Approach and my Previous go-to Solution I was always of the opinion you should have sub-sites off the root site for your publishing intranet sites (see diagram). Then, create site collections for your more secure content. This provided two benefits:
There was a clear division between the site that is sharing content for others vs. what is secured information for the department (Example: HR provides 401k benefits information to everyone (root sub-sites), but employee reviews need to be locked down to a small group of individuals (site collection)) This limited confusion and security mistakes.
If you did more complex branding on your intranet site collection, it was also easier to configure the additional sites and corresponding navigation. Giving your collaboration sites a more basic look and feel also made them easier to manage and contributed to the user understanding whether they were in a secure site or publishing site.
Figure 1: Publishing sub-site and secure site collection approach
intranet.contoso.com
HR
IT
Finance
Marketing
Root Site (Publishing) HR (Secure collab) IT Finance Marketing
Figure 1: Publishing sub-site and secure site collection approach
intranet.contoso.com
HR
HR (secure)
IT (secure)
Finance (secure)
Marketing (secure)
IT
Finance
Marketing
Root Site (Publishing)
Figure 2: Publishing sub-site and secure sub-site collection approach
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Modern Sites Bring Modern Approaches The fog is beginning to clear and we are starting to see and hear a crystal-clear methodology emerging from Microsoft. The Microsoft World is, in fact, FLAT ! It’s time to flatten your site architecture from those deep legacy structures (see figures 1 and 2) into an architecture that
is easy to manage, secure, organize, and re-organize to your heart’s content. We’re also keeping our philosophy on separating published (intranet) content from collaboration content. So what does that mean? Our new structure will look something like this:
Classic Sites
Modern Communication sites
Teams w/ Modern team site
contoso.sharepoint.com
Apps
Videos
News rollup
Corporate News
Blogs
EmployeeSpotlight
Benefits
Links
Policies &Procedures
HR News
Employee Reviews(SharePoint)
Salary Information(SharePoint)
Policy Drafts(SharePoint)
Tasks (Planner)
Task List (Planner)
Files (SharePoint)
Notes (Wiki-OneNote)
Forms (PowerApps)
Root (Publish) News (Publish) HR (Publish) HR (Collab) Project #1 (Collab)
Figure 3: Modern approach to site architecture in Office 365
The Details Behind the Example Contoso Marketing department curates the corporate announcements and HR publishes content like the 401k benefits guidelines and links to the health care benefits websites. We assign Marketing to run the News & Communications site collection (isolated security). HR runs their own Communications Site collection for publishing content about benefits (isolated security). Both of these sites are linked to each other in the navigation (manually).
Individually, HR also has a Microsoft Team with a corresponding SharePoint site collection, where they can collaborate on new policies & procedures that no one
should see until they are finalized. They can also store secure content like salary information and employee reviews, without concern it will end up exposed in the publishing site.
Do you see what happens here? One site per function– simple security and a straightforward purpose on what it’s providing and who owns the content. This is easy to track! You shouldn’t be concerned about the number of site collections – you can have up to 500,000 per tenant and room to scale to 25TB per site collection! [Note: I went to update/verify this before publishing and I can no longer find a published limitation here. There IS a limitation that a user can only belong to 5,000 groups]
Figure 3: Modern approach to site architecture in Office 365
Planning: How do I know When to use Classic sites vs Modern Communications Sites vs Teams? In Office 365 and SharePoint Online, we have two modern site templates we can use while still utilizing classic sites when necessary:
What About Navigation? With everything flattened into a single level of site collections, you may already be cringing at the thought of managing the navigation between sites. If you don’t already know, SharePoint doesn’t automatically add navigation for new site collections, only sub-sites. This is a good feature; each site collection is its own secured silo! It’s almost like the site doesn’t exist until you make it visible through navigation. The beauty of this is that if you re-organize and suddenly HR belongs to Operations instead of Corporate, you’re not moving subsites around, you’re just moving links because of your flat site architecture. The downside, is that right now it’s a manual process and can be tedious if you have a lot of sites. If you’re up for some development, you can investigate search-based navigation as an alternative.
Classic Team or Publishing Site For the moment, this will still be your root site collection since modern is not available there.
• Use Modern Pages on Classic sites to help bridge the gap
• Customize the masterpage at your own risk (changes are always possible that could break your site)
• Suggestion: Share news rollups with search web parts, provide links to internal and external applications or even embed a video from Stream here! CEO’s love to share their message from the latest TownHall meetings on the home page.
• Another option - you can use a redirect from here to send users to a Modern site
Communication Sites These are best for the rest of your publishing sites (intranet sites)
• These sites cannot be “groupified”, meaning it’s a solo SharePoint site not associated with Group or Microsoft Team
• Great for sharing communications and publishing content and fantastic for the mobile experience
• This is your legacy intranet replacement! One Communication Site (site collection) per department
Microsoft Teams for Collaboration
• Every Microsoft Team created is backed by a modern team site in SharePoint
• Great for collaborating, team conversation, and the ability to utilize SharePoint side by side with Planner, Stream, PowerBI, and more from a single interface. All secured with a simple AD Group the Team owner can manage themselves
• Teams can replace shared folders on a file share
• Teams may not be department focused – think functionally! How do you work together? You may find that creating Microsoft Teams based on “Projects” are easier to manage!
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If this is frustrating to you, don’t despair! Coming soon - you’re going to be able to create automatic navigation by joining the site collection to a Hub site. I haven’t mentioned that here so far because they aren’t available yet.
Hubsites will provide a way to bring together related sites – you can roll up news/activity feeds, created a shared navigation, and even share the look and feel of the site. You will be able to add and remove sites from hubs as needed. Your site architecture will still be flat, the sites do not become a sub-site to the hub site, but they will be associated with each other. No more re-organization headaches.
Hubsites have been available for a few months now! Learn what a SharePoint Hubsite is here:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-SharePoint-Blog/Welcome-to-SharePoint-Server-2019-a- modern-platform-for-choice/ba-p/194162
And some tips on how to plan them: 6 tips for planning SharePoint hub sites - Susan Hanley in ComputerWorld
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3280102/enterprise-applications/6-tips-for-planning-sharepoint- hub-sites.html
Updates!
This is a lot of new Information for me - Where can I Learn More? If you’re not familiar with the differences between modern and classic sites, or you just want to learn more about the all of the new features I’ve talked about in this article, then I have a bunch of resources here for you here:
• Bob German – What is a Modern Site and Why should I care? - https://bob1german.com/2018/02/09/what-is-modern-sharepoint-and-why-should-i-care/
• Mark Rackley - Classic vs Modern sites - https://info.paitgroup.com/blog/is-it-time-to-give-up-sharepoint-classic-sites
• Joanne Klein - Site Collections vs Sub-Sites - https://joannecklein.com/2017/11/03/sharepoint-site-collection-advantages/
• Matt Wade - What’s included in Office 365 Groups & Teams - http://icansharepoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/O365-Twitter-Post.png
• Office 365/SharePoint Online limitation reference - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/SharePoint-Online-limits-8f34ff47-b749-408b-abc0-b605e1f6d498#__toc351043094
• Hub Sites - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/SharePoint-hub-sites-new-in-Office-365/ba-p/109547
• Site architecture planning tools – Xmind - https://www.xmind.net/
You should also be following along on the Microsoft Tech Community Sites https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/ for the latest information, blogs, and support.
What if I’m not Ready for Microsoft Teams? Do you have to take this approach? Only if it makes sense for your organization. If you aren’t rolling out Teams yet, then try to create your collab-based SharePoint sites as Modern SharePoint team sites when possible. Your sites can be “groupifed” later so that you can utilize Teams and/or Groups when you are ready. So, don’t worry, you can grow into features as your organization is ready for them. I’m a big fan of rolling out Office 365 in phases. This makes for happy end users and a helpdesk that isn’t overwhelmed.
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How to stay up to date with O365We know it’s hard to stay informed while driving adoption, enhancing
collaboration and securing an Office 365 platform. Wouldn’t it be nice
to have all your resources in one place? Matt’s got you covered with
this infographic.
Writ
ten
by M
att
Wad
e oving to the cloud means you no longer control the upgrade, patching, and feature rollout schedule of your enterprise systems. To be the best Office 365 owner you can be, you’re going to have to stay current on everything that’s going on in the ecosystem. It’s hard to know which sources to use, so the below listing gives
you a starting point of official Microsoft resources and individuals. M
Office.com > Admin Center > Message Center
The admin’s source for specific feature rollouts, service outages, and requests for action within Office 365. Messages are specific to your tenant. Message Center content is only available to Office 365 admins and some other service admins (e.g., SharePoint Online, Exchange Online) and there is no public listing of the messages going out by tenant or data center. Notifications are also available through the iOS and Android apps.
https://icsh.pt/O365Roadmap
This is the place to find out which (usually major) features are on the drawing board and when they’re planned to be released. The Roadmap can be filtered by features and services and is updated regularly. Its content is useful for inclusion in an organization’s strategic and governance planning for Office 365. Beware: delivery dates are generally only accurate to the level of a calendar year quarter (range of three months).
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com
A combination of blogs and discussion forum, all of which are organized and separated by Office 365 app or service. Tech Community announcements generally fill the details gap in the Office Blogs and provide interaction with the more technical authors. Discussion forums are available for help, guidance, and technical support, made possible through community interaction between Microsoft representatives, Microsoft MVPs, topic experts, and users across the globe.
https://blogs.office.com/
Major, big-picture announcements are made on the Office Blogs. Generally written by high-level VPs at Microsoft, this blog will announce new applications, major integration upgrades, or reshuffling of services (e.g., introduction of Microsoft 365). Content will be less detailed and less technical than the Tech Community, though this can be helpful when a digestible version of upcoming changes is needed for upper management or the C-suite.
http://icsh.pt/2018Conferences
You’ll get a deluge of information after some Microsoft-led events. The annual Microsoft Ignite conference (usually in September) and—for the last couple years—a SharePoint update event (usually in May) will come with many news items, some major. Smaller events sometimes reveal incremental updates and feature rollouts to various Office 365 apps. Inspire, Tech Summits, and Build should be on your pay-attention calendar as well.
http://icsh.pt/2018Conferences
There’s no better way to stay in the know than by attending industry events like SPTechCon, SharePoint Fest, and European SharePoint Conference, among many other good ones. SharePoint/Office 365 Saturdays—free, one-day mini-conferences held in cities around the world—and local user groups help foster strong communities.
UserVoice and PowerUsers Community
Microsoft continually upgrades Office 365 based on constructive feedback, garnered through systems like UserVoice and the PowerUsers Community. User-provided feature requests, functionality suggestions, and bug reports are voted upon by the community. While higher-voted items generally get more visibility (and are more likely to be worked), less popular but still important items are regularly incorporated as well.
Office 365 Monthly Updates and Office Playlist on Microsoft Mechanics
Microsoft has two useful YouTube channels that provide updates and best practices: the Office 365 channel’s monthly updates playlist and Microsoft Mechanic’s Office playlist. Aimed more at admins than users, these videos can be useful viewing for anyone with an organizational oversight role of an Office 365 app or service. To stay most informed, enable YouTube notifications to know when these videos are published.
https://icsh.pt/O365UpdateSources
Twitter has become a powerful communication tool for Microsoft to announce updates, changes, and new feature rollouts (including minor ones that may not warrant blog posts). Most apps and services have their own official account and each generally has one or a few individuals who play the role of the face of the team behind the app or service. Find a list of recommended accounts to follow or simply subscribe to the Twitter list linked above.
Complete ListingBelow is a complete listing of all resources available for each Office 365 app or service. That includes blogs, community forums, roadmaps, feedback mechanisms, and useful Twitter handles. You can also view this via direct link. If you think something is missing, let me know and I’ll update it.
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Key takeawaysTo ensure a smooth migration to the cloud, carefully assess your environment. That way you’ll know what you should archive, delete, move with changes or move as-is.
Understand the gaps and limitations of the selected migration tool so you can figure out how much manual work your migration will involve.
Throughout the migration project, training and communication with end users is a key factor to drive adoption.
The more familiar you are with the Office 365 suite, the easier it will be for you to determine which tools best suit your organization’s needs and when the right time is to successfully adopt them.
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