Since its launch in 2001, Microsoft's vision for SharePoint has always been to become the world's most flexible content platform, offering rich experiences for collaboration and personalization.
SharePoint is growing faster than ever: the software series has now surpassed 200 petabytes per month to power new experiences across Microsoft 365, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Stream, Microsoft Lists, Microsoft Loop, Microsoft Syntex and more.
The last few weeks have been packed with announcements and new features in the Microsoft 365 universe, including the arrival of Copilot, the Microsoft Loop application (in preview), the new version of Microsoft Teams (in preview), Copilot in Microsoft Viva and Microsoft Security Copilot. SharePoint is no exception.
Indeed, Microsoft has just announced a set of innovations designed to transform the SharePoint experience. On the one hand, the company is building on the promise of AI, which is very much in vogue at the moment, to help site authors start creating content.
On the other hand, Microsoft is offering SharePoint new designs and integrations aimed at encouraging users to engage more with the platform.
Microsoft expects these changes to redefine the intranet experience, making it easy for users to create SharePoint content that is visual and engaging.
SharePoint in the age of AI
Copilot in SharePoint
The new SharePoint simplifies the experience of content authors. Its goal is to bring powerful, intuitive and expressive experiences with fewer manual steps and the help of AI. The vision is to make it easier for millions of site owners, news authors, page creators and portal administrators to write, tag, publish and share content.
Copilot in SharePoint helps turn your words into powerful tools for creating and editing SharePoint sites and pages. It's built on the Copilot system, which combines the power of large language models with your data in Microsoft Graph. And all within the framework of Microsoft's existing commitments to data security and confidentiality.
As a web design partner, Copilot in SharePoint also takes your existing document or presentation and transforms it into a page that uses SharePoint's best-of-breed web design visualizations. It can also help you rewrite key passages of text on the page, helping you find the right tone to encourage your readers' engagement.
More convincing and engaging sites, in line with brand image
Employees have high expectations when it comes to the digital experience. Since they want an engaging and attractive experience, Microsoft is extending SharePoint's aesthetic capabilities to enable the creation of bolder, more sophisticated pages and sites than ever before.
Since branding is essential to the SharePoint experience, the new Brand Center in SharePoint lets you specify fonts, colors, logos and other design elements that reflect the identity of your organization, products, subsidiaries and more. You can reuse these brand elements across multiple sites.
Microsoft's investments therefore focus on the whole spectrum of solid Web design: branding and theming, typography and fonts, grid and layout, video and images, and animation and motion. Copilot ensures that your sites take advantage of all the latest design elements.
SharePoint's integration in Teams
New SharePoint integrations with the Microsoft Teams application, thanks to Microsoft Viva, will enable users to easily access SharePoint content in their workflow.
But what's the point?
Integrating a SharePoint intranet directly into Microsoft Teams offers a number of interesting advantages. Here are just a few of them:
Centralized information
By integrating a SharePoint intranet into Teams, you can consolidate all important content and information within a single platform. Users don't need to switch between different tools to access documents, SharePoint sites, lists or libraries.
Collaboration made easy
Teams is a powerful collaboration platform that enables team members to work together efficiently. By integrating a SharePoint intranet into Teams, you can take advantage of Teams' collaboration features while gaining access to SharePoint's advanced functionalities, such as document management, workflows and metadata.
Greater accessibility and visibility
Teams is often used as the central point for communications and collaboration within an organization. By integrating a SharePoint intranet, you can increase the visibility of your SharePoint content and facilitate access to it for all team members. This promotes better use of information and greater adoption of SharePoint tools.
Designing videos through SharePoint with Microsoft Stream
Microsoft Stream's video playback platform has undergone significant improvements that will benefit users. Video content will be more visible and usable where and when they need it.
In addition, the web application player includes enhanced features such as transcripts, subtitles, chapters, sharing, background noise suppression, variable speed playback and analytics.
Updates to the web part of Microsoft Stream
The updated Microsoft Stream webpart displays single and multiple videos on SharePoint pages, with folders and playlists.
Video page templates
Producing professional video content for your intranet will be easier than ever with the new update: new video-focused page templates help you publish professional content, whether you're working from SharePoint or Microsoft Stream.
If you need to create content where video is the main element, to highlight the recording and content of a particular video, you can use the new video page templates. You can create video pages not only from SharePoint, but also from Microsoft Stream.
Pricing
At this stage, Microsoft has not provided specific details regarding pricing and licensing options for AI integration and content creation functionality in SharePoint and Microsoft 365.
Organizations interested in using these features should watch future announcements for more information on costs and any changes to existing Microsoft 365 licenses or additional licenses.
Microsoft has announced that the content component will be available by the end of Q3 2023, while the AI pre-release for content creation is scheduled for the end of Q4 2023, with further enhancements and features planned for 2024.
Microsoft Syntex : SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) - Share policies
Excessive content sharing is a common concern for many organizations. Indeed, it's quite common for users to mistakenly share content with a wider audience, resulting in unauthorized access to the content.
This problem of over-sharing is becoming increasingly common, and is developing at a new level with hybrid working and external collaboration.
SharePoint data access governance analyses are now available. With these analyses, no matter how many sites you have in your organization, you can see which sites are being shared too much, so you can act accordingly.
The restricted access control policy for SharePoint sites is also available. With this advanced policy, you can now restrict access to any SharePoint site (whether connected to Teams or Microsoft 365 groups), only to existing members of the parent Microsoft 365 group or a security group.
To conclude
As a dynamic, forward-looking company, Jint has proven experience in adapting the ever-changing SharePoint landscape. Our mission is to help companies take advantage of the latest features and updates, to create Digital Workplaces that are more engaging and efficient than ever.
With the announcement of the Viva suite, and more specifically Viva Connections, Jint has once again proved its ability to stay ahead of the curve. We've already integrated this tool into our products, enabling organizations to foster employee engagement, collaboration and productivity. As we prepare for the next chapter in the employee experience, we remain ready to adapt and evolve alongside new developments in Microsoft 365.
As we know, the look and feel of an intranet is crucial to maximizing employee experience and adoption. In native SharePoint, creating a theme with fonts and various components has always been relatively complex, requiring custom development skills. Jint has been simplifying this process for years, adding components to enhance the design.
Finally, with Microsoft's latest announcements, particularly those concerning the Brand Center, Jint will continue to offer these design features, and will also add support for the new theming features introduced by Microsoft. Would you like to find out more about our solutions? Contact us now!
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