SharePoint Monthly Recap – March 2024

Discover the latest innovations and enhancements for SharePoint, Microsoft Lists, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, and more.

March 2024 was a busy month for SharePoint and Microsoft 365, with many new features and updates rolling out to help you create, collaborate, and communicate more effectively. Whether you want to design engaging pages and news, find answers and insights with Microsoft Search and Viva, manage your tasks and projects with the new Microsoft Planner, or leverage the power of SharePoint Premium and SharePoint Embedded, there’s something for everyone in this month’s roadmap pitstop. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.

SharePoint: New section backgrounds in Pages and News

You can now customize your SharePoint pages and news by adding curated image or gradient color backgrounds to page sections. This will make your content more visually appealing and accessible, as you can also adjust the focal points, fill mode, overlay, and opacity settings. To add a background, simply edit a page or news section, select Edit section, and choose an image or gradient color from Background options.
There’s been a lot of amazing SharePoint UI features either announced or released lately. As a SharePoint MVP, I’m loving it. The amount of focus on the page experience will lead to an increase the richness of content within SharePoint, which I feel will lead to more engaged and informed users.

Answers in Viva found within Microsoft Search

Answers in Viva is a new way to tap  into the collective knowledge of your organization and get answers to your questions. You can now find Answers content within your Microsoft Search results, whether you search in Office.com, SharePoint.com, or Bing at Work. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, you can also post your question to Answers in Viva right from within Microsoft Search. Plus, you’ll receive the Answers digest, a convenient email that collects relevant questions you may be able to answer.

SharePoint Premium: Enable/disable Unstructured, Structured, and Prebuilt Document Processing

SharePoint Premium users can now enable or disable Unstructured, Structured, and Prebuilt Document Processing individually. These are capabilities to automatically classify files and extract information from unstructured documents, such as letters or contracts. You can also turn off each document processing service across your tenant, if you are a Microsoft 365 admin, to control your costs and usage.

As customers experiment and implement with AI in their organization, products like SharePoint Premium will become more useful. The content processing and management features of SharePoint Premium will empower your data and improve productivity.

Manage SharePoint Embedded containers through the SharePoint admin center

SharePoint Embedded, currently in Public Preview, is an API-only solution that empowers app developers to leverage the file and document storage in Microsoft 365 to create line-of-business or multitenant applications. Microsoft Loop is an example of a SharePoint Embedded application that uses a SharePoint Embedded repository as its backend storage. With this update, you can manage SharePoint Embedded applications registered in your tenant directly through the SharePoint admin center, if you have the SharePoint Embedded administrator role. You can view, edit, delete, and restore SharePoint Embedded containers, as well as manage user permissions.

Microsoft Lists: New forms experience

In Microsoft Lists, you can now collect information on your lists with new native Lists Forms. Lists forms can be created quickly and shared with a link. The recipient can focus on filling out the form without seeing your full list. All submitted responses appear immediately as new list items that list collaborators can see and refine. Lists forms work well in scenarios such as recruitment tracking, managing orders, tracking customer issues, filing expenses, and more. For example, an event organizer can create and manage multiple forms for the same list to track attendees, feedback, logistics, and more, with each form collecting a part of the full list.

OneDrive: Create with templates

We’re refreshing the file creation experience in OneDrive for the web. When you select the Add new button, you will have the option to create a new blank file or to choose from high-quality, beautifully designed templates in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You’ll also be able to create new files using your company templates. This will help you jumpstart your work and save time.
Microsoft Viva Goals: New URL
Microsoft Viva Goals is a new way to align your personal and team goals with your organization’s vision and priorities. You can now access Viva Goals with a new URL: goals.cloud.microsoft. This is part of the broader effort to bring Microsoft 365 apps and services onto the single cloud.microsoft domain.

These are just some of the exciting new features and updates that SharePoint and Microsoft 365 delivered in March 2024. To learn more, check out the SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: March 2024 podcast episode and blog, where you can also find helpful resources and links to stay on top of Office 365 changes. And don’t forget to tune in next month for another roadmap pitstop, where we’ll bring you more news and insights on SharePoint and Microsoft 365.