Everything You Need to Know About SharePoint — February 2018 Edition

Sharepoint Hero

Hey, it is Shane, your favorite SharePoint MVP, with a monthly break down of the content you need to know and my two cents on what you should do with it. Love it or hate it, I would love to hear from you in the comments on what I can do to make these articles better.

Shane

 

 

What the Heck Is Modern SharePoint?

That is a great question that thankfully I haven’t gotten directly. It turns out that some of my friends over at Microsoft get this question on a regular basis, so much so, that one of them, Bob German, decided to write a blog post on it. It is a great read even if you already know the answer. Why? One, it is a reminder of where we came from and also a reminder that while us die-hard SharePoint nerds love this stuff, the casual user doesn’t. So, looking at the information Bob outlined is a good guide for us to help with that conversation when we are selling users, especially on-premises users, the beauty and power of SharePoint Online. Give it a read and tell Bob he did a good job.

Are You Still Running SharePoint 2007, 2010 or 2013?

This month’s community content comes from me. Whoops. So far this year, the bulk of my customer work has been migrating SharePoint 2010 to something not so old. One client is going to 2016 on-premises with their eye on going to the cloud next year and the other customer is going straight to SharePoint Online but in a very manual process. These two have been the motivation behind a new series I am writing on what to do next with SharePoint. In the first article, I take us down memory lane by reminding you of the sins of the past (fab 40, I am looking at you), I answer the question should you go to on-premises or online, and remind you to stop thinking about this as an upgrade and instead, as a migration.

More SharePoint Online Web Parts

SharePoint, even after all of these years, continues to be the center of our O365 universe and these web parts just help to keep that going. This is nice because one of the bummers, to me, with modern pages, was the number of web parts went backward. I like quantity so more is better. There are new web parts for Planner, Twitter, Office 365 connectors, and Kindle Instant Preview. Also, there are updates to the Power BI and image web part just for fun. Notable here is the connector web parts, which let you pull data from Salesforce, GitHub, some of the project management toolboxes, and other locations. This is very practical. The opposite of notable is the Kindle web part that cracks me up. I wonder if I can embed a link with my affiliate code in the web part and make my co-workers give me referral fees. I am sure it has a real purpose, but my mind doesn’t work that way. Leave comments below and tell me how you are using these new web parts.

Happy Birthday SharePoint Framework SPFx

Happy birthday wishes are news? Maybe not, but I thought this was noteworthy to remind you that the SharePoint Framework is a thing. And it is used by A LOT of companies. If you have managed to ignore it, this long it might be time for you to take a look. And if you are using SharePoint on-premises today, keep your eyes open for Feature Pack 2 where SPFx support will come to you.

Not a Lot of News From the SharePoint Team This Month

To be honest, I struggled with content this month. Hopefully, you didn’t notice but I had to dig deep. And that brings me to this last note. Why was there less news? Are those guys all a bunch of slackers? Are they all on vacation because they are tired of the snow? OR are we seeing a slow down because they are gearing up for SharePoint Conference? I am 100 percent positive that is it. They have some major announcements coming in Vegas and apparently one is so important that they are not even telling MVPs ahead of time. Now I doubt it will ever live up to this level of hype, between you and me. I am pretty sure that they will be holding back features as they gear up for the event and then at the event they will crush us with new awesomeness. Which is all the more reason you need to be there, to drink from the firehose. Shameless plug, if you need to register, use the code YOUNG to get $50 off and a hug from me. How could life be better?