M365 Changelog: SharePoint spaces to be available by default in New menu

MC235288 – Note: The PowerShell cmdlets will be available as part of the January 29, 2021 update to the SharePoint Online Management Shell. We apologize for any inconvenience.

SharePoint spaces allows the creation and sharing of immersive or browser-based mixed reality environments using assets such as 3D models, 360° images and videos, and 2D content such as videos, images, and office documents. In October 2020 (MC224942), SharePoint spaces became generally available.

We are now including spaces in the site level +New menu by default.

Key points

• Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 67135
• Timing:
  • Targeted Release (organization): early February 2021
  • Standard Release: mid-February through mid-April 2021
• Roll-out: tenant level
• Control type: admin control
• Action: review and assess by 3/01/2021

How this will affect your organization:

Users with appropriate permissions to create content on a site will see an additional entry for creating a Space in the +New menu on all SharePoint sites.

As with pages, SharePoint site owners will continue to have the option to turn off the spaces feature for their sites using the Manage Site Features page or using PowerShell cmdlets described below.

What you need to do to prepare

You should determine whether you want to maintain the current behavior (where site owners must enable SharePoint spaces at the site level before it will show in the +New menu) or have spaces show in the +New menu by default across your tenant.

• If you want to show the Space menu item on the +New menu by default across your tenant, you don’t need to do anything except notify site owners and authors of this change. You may also want to train users or provide them with documentation as well as notify your help desk.
• If you don’t want the Space menu item to show in the +New menu across your tenant by default, you’ll need to enable the tenant-level control by executing the following PowerShell command:
  Set-SPODisableSpacesActivation -scope tenant -Disable $true
• You can reverse this action and re-enable the spaces entry in the +New menu by executing:
  Set-SPODisableSpacesActivation -scope tenant -Disable $false

In addition to the tenant level control, you can also use PowerShell to enable or disable the spaces entry in the +New menu for individual sites.

• To disable the space entry in the +New menu on a specific site, use the following PowerShell command:
  Set-SPODisableSpacesActivation -scope site -Disable $true -Identity $siteURL
• Reverse this action and re-enable the spaces entry in the +New menu on a site by executing:
  Set-SPODisableSpacesActivation -scope site -Disable $false -Identity $siteURL

For both site-level commands, the variable $siteURL contains the URL to the specific SharePoint site where you want to enable or disable the +New menu entry.