Welcome to Microsoft Mechanics.
Coming up on the show we'll look at updated collaboration experiences
across SharePoint and OneDrive.
Including mobile and web experiences for helping you work with and share your team's files,
recently launched improvements to the SharePoint team site,
allowing you to easily create a home for your Office 365 groups content.
Cross-platform mobile apps to help you connect with your team members and content while on the go,
and keep watching as we look at what's coming next for SharePoint.
Microsoft Mechanics
I'm joined today by Adam Harmetz, Group Program Manager on the SharePoint Engineering team, welcome.
Great to be on the show today, Jeremy.
Your team has been working on some really great updates for SharePoint and OneDrive for business,
really delivering what we call the mobile and intelligent intranet.
We saw a lot of that in May,
but what are some of the capabilities that people are starting to see
light up in their Office 365 tenants?
Yeah, we delivered a lot since May.
We launched a new home for SharePoint on the web.
We since shipped the SharePoint iOS app.
We refreshed lists and integrated them with Microsoft Flow and PowerApps.
We made it easy to author a SharePoint page that looks great on mobile.
And, we recently hooked up all these team sites capabilities to Office 365 groups.
We really focused on making the SharePoint team sites simple and easy-to-use,
and a great addition to any Office 365 group.
Today, let's take a look at how all this comes together.
So, I'm going to start on my mobile device
because I think it will be great way to show just how approachable Team Sites is.
I'm using an iphone here.
What I'm going to show you is also built for android and windows 10 mobile.
A scenario here, let's imagine were working on a project to build a loyalty program
for a fictional company called Contoso Clothing.
We work with somebody named Mark
and Mark has been working on a document.
OneDrive just notified me using an in-app native of mobile notification
that he shared the document with me.
Great power of the integration as a mobile and native app.
Yeah exactly.
So I'll go ahead and take a look at the OneDrive App.
You can see that not only does it allow me to look at my personal files,
it also allows me to look at my group and SharePoint team site files as well.
So I click into this loyalty program.
You can really see the SharePoint has been integrated,
and OneDrive is really a file explorer for all my files no matter where they're stored.
I can do really cool things like you can peak into a particular library,
I can open a particular document that opens in rich PowerPoint.
I can select a couple documents or files and take them offline.
Or I could take a file and get a quick link and invite people to it.
First if I copy this link, I will be sure that anybody in Contoso has the ability to take a look at it.
It's a really great tool to be able to get to all your files for a team site or through OneDrive for Business,
but I know you've also made some great updates to the SharePoint
mobile app that we released back in June.
Yeah, let's go ahead and take a look.
So from the OneDrive App, I'll click on Open Site.
And, I'm taking to the home for my Office 365 groups content and people.
We're really focused on making this a great way
to bring together all the resources for the team.
Here, we lead with something called news.
I've been working on this road show deck
and I really wanted to make sure we were spotlighted to the team,
so I put it on the top of News.
Below that we have Activity, powered by the Office Graph.
It remembers things that I've been to before
as well as things that are popular to other people who have seen it,
and show them to me right there.
As I click on the nav to the site,
we can see all the teams resources right there.
The Power BI Dashboard or this Team Charter page that I created
using the new SharePoint page authoring technology.
It really allowed me to create a page that looks great on mobile.
So for instance I've added a little bit of context at the top.
I've embedded the PowerPoint presentation I used to kick off the team.
Our CEO was kind enough to record a video that I've embedded here and can play right in line.
And, our data scientist team has a Power BI dashboard of customer data that I've imbedded
and can play with right from the mobile app.
Yeah, the last thing here is a feed of all the documents that are important to the Contoso loyalty program
right here, so the page stays up-to-date.
So really great use to run the power of SharePoint right from your phone.
I know people have been asking us about lists
and when do we get to support list with the mobile app?
Yeah exactly.
So right here we have a list, it's a departmental contact list.
So as you can imagine for the Contoso loyalty program,
we're putting together people from all various departments.
And, you can see who the primary contact for each department are right here.
One of the things we've done since we shipped the ios App in june, is add list editing.
So for instance, I can go to the business development team and click Edit.
If Jeremy isn't a good backup for you,
I can go add somebody named Alyssa maybe as a backup.
I can hit save.
And, just like that we've added a list item from the SharePoint Mobile App.
So really productive right from your mobile phone.
But, I know beyond even mobile,
we've done a ton of work in terms of browser experience
to make sure that your productive while you're at your PC's.
And for that, I want to switch over to my PC and show a couple of demos.
Sounds Great.
So here I'm in my groups conversation view
and I can see all the great conversations going on
on the team for the loyalty program that you invited me to.
Thank you very much for that.
I can see my calendar.
I can see Notebook, Planner and all the that we not only talked about on shows
on the Mechanics before.
But, also some great new things like Files.
I'm gonna go ahead and click on the new experience for Files.
That's gonna take me right into this great new SharePoint experience
to be able to browse all the documents from the document library.
Here you can see I've got some some files that are pinned up on the top.
The loyalty program roadshow deck
so my team can get to that very quickly and very easily.
I also see all the things that are added below
in terms of all the rest of the files in that library.
I'm going to go ahead and add a link
because this is something else that we can do to really link to external content.
For this I'm going to add a link to a YouTube channel.
The Microsoft Mechanics one.
Let's give that a name.
Yeah this is great because it allows you to bring all the content of the team related all in one place,
even files that aren't stored in library.
Once that pops up you can see it here on the bottom of the page.
That is something that my team can get to really quickly.
Now, one other thing that's really cool in terms of some of the newest updates here is
I can take that and also give it a tile view.
So I can not only look at the list of things there,
but I can get a rich preview of all of the different contents of that library
right here in the tile view.
One really cool new addition is the ability to look at photos in a slideshow mode.
So here, we have some trip report photos.
And I can see thumbnails of those photos,
but to really see the power of how those photos actually looking full screen
I can get a great new experience here
and really thumb through all of those very quickly on this device
to really have a nice rich content consumption experience for those photos.
But, beyond even what we see here sharing is also gotten much easier
in some of the work that your team's done.
I'm going to hop back into documents.
What I want to do is actually take one of my documents and share it.
So I'm going to select that document.
And, I'm going to go ahead and say get a link.
Once I grab that link, it's already here.
I'm going to go ahead and put that into our conversation view.
So I'm going to hop back into conversations
and go ahead and reply to a link in here who wanted an answer about some of the incentives.
I'll show him that we've got some great new content, here for him to to review.
We'll go ahead and put that link back in.
The nice thing is that in Outlook
whether I'm in the conversation view or in Outlook on the web
it will give me a nice rich preview of that file right there from my messages.
Yeah, just a great way the suite is coming together to help solve collaboration problems
Adam your teams also built out some great experiences beyond just files
that can really take advantage of sharePoint in Office 365 groups.
Can you give us a look?
Yeah, let's switch to my device here
and we can see a team site for the loyalty program group.
This is the same team site that you were just looking at that the documents were from,
as well as the same team site we were looking at on the mobile phone.
You can see that the header here tells me it's a group
and I can access my group conversations and group membership,
group metadata, the logo for the team site in the group.
And, the same navigation elements that you saw before in the phone appear right here too.
The home by default leads with News and Activity just like in the mobile app.
News is a chance to spotlight content and activities in the Office Graph
to keep me updated about what's going on.
Of course, you can edit the homepage if you need to as well.
I'd like to talk about news a little more
because I think it's a great way that we've been able to use the page offering technology in a new way.
I think it'll make it a lot easier to create pages
and show the value of what a team site can provide.
And that's something brand-new.
Yeah exactly.
So I'm going to go ahead and add a page.
Let's suppose here that you and I are on a trip to a retail conference or something like that.
We want to come back.
We've written up a PowerPoint of lesson learned to taken a couple photos.
Let's package it all together and share it out to the team
by creating a News Post.
So let's say Woodgrove Retail Conference - Trip Report.
I'll go ahead and type some text here.
copy and pasting from the clipboard.
I can do whatever formatting I need to really get my point across like boldingthat right there.
Then I click this plus button and you can see our web part gallery.
This is a really powerful way we can bring together a bunch of content
or processes of these web parts and add them to the page.
It really makes the page come alive.
It makes it much more robust, very cool.
Yeah absolutely.
So for instance, right here I'll add a document because we were working on a lessons learned PowerPoint.
It's in my recent files right here so I can select it.
You get a full PowerPoint preview right here.
Or I can scroll through the PowerPoint.
Maybe add a little more text.
Talking about how the showroom floor was awesome.
I'm going to include an image of the showroom floor right here
so you can see another web part like the image web part.
And just like that you see the pages are immediately available right on the homepage.
And overtime we'll add stuff like Mobile notifications and email sharing.
So, it will just be a really great way of getting pages created
and keeping a team together.
Definitely and by the way, if you are SharePoint developer we've got a great new SharePoint Framwork.
Where you can build out custom web parts using
common web development tools in a brand-new toolchain.
More details on that we've actually filmed the show with Dan Kogan
for Microsoft Mechanics.
Yeah and if you've built your own web parts or anything like that,
they will appear right in that gallery that we were just looking at.
Let's move on, using Microsoft Flow in PowerApps,
you can be a hero and automate repetitive tasks
and organize how your team gets work done.
Yeah, so to set that up I'll show you a list that I have right here.
It's the rewards brainstorm list.
So you know when we establish this loyalty program
we need to give perks to our most loyal customers.
We just have a SharePoint list here that
brings together a bunch of ideas for the type of perks that we should be giving out.
Really cool and I know that you also built a PowerApp so that anybody
can actually add to and contribute to that list, right?
Yeah exactly, because we want everybody in the company able to participate.
I've got one of those actually running on this phone here and this is an Android phone.
So if I go ahead and click on our Contoso club
it's got a great new PowerApp for me to actually submit and look at different ideas.
So here once I'm into the Contoso Club App,
I can also see I've got a couple of options here.
I can either browse for ideas or submit an idea.
So here I can go ahead and browse the current ideas that have been submitted
by other members of the team.
Yeah and that's showing the data from the SharePoint lists in the mobile app.
Here I can vote it up, for example.
But, I actually want to submit an idea because I've got a great idea for another giveaway.
We'll go ahead and add Free Socks.
Free socks are an awesome potential perk.
Definitely.
So we got our free socks.
We'll go ahead and make that a free product and hit submit.
Now once I do that it's going to show up in your listing, right?
Yeah exactly, so it's once again a way that we can leverage the brainpower of everybody in the corporation
by using Power Apps to collect data and put it in SharePoint lists.
I had another idea though, as I was launching this app I saw something on the homepage.
It would be really great if we could actually edit the app
and have a way to contact us maybe via email.
And can you add that to the PowerApp?
Yeah absolutely, adding new functionality to the PowerApp is super easy.
There's a visual designer.
So from back on here in the PowerApps design studio
you can see the app that we were just looking at.
Here is the one word showing all the SharePoint lists data.
And you said we're going to add the email address to the group to the home screen.
That's really easy to do.
So I'll go ahead and insert a new text box.
Go ahead and say that people should be contacting us using the group's email address.
Format it to be the right size.
Maybe change the font to match what's on the screen.
And just like that it made an update to the app.
As I hit save, that app will be automatically published out to all employees.
It's really easy to rapidly develop and keep these applications updated.
That looked really easy.
But, where does all that data go and how does it kind of flow into our system?
Yeah, let's take a look at how Microsoft Flow can make the review of all these new ideas really simple.
So, here's an email that was automatically generated when you submit an idea.
It says who submitted the idea as well as what the idea was.
As a product owner I can quickly say whether it's a duplicate or a good idea.
I think new socks is a great idea, I'm going to click on that.
And just like that right from mail we've actually updated the SharePoint list with this.
So let me go back to the list and see what's happened.
Go ahead and click on this new view that I created that automatically groups by feasibility.
And you can see this idea for free socks you submitted
was tagged as a great idea because of a flow.
So there's definitely some workflow automation happening here under the covers.
How does that work?
Yeah, let's go ahead and show.
We've integrated both PowerApps and flow directly in the list.
That PowerApp that you saw before will be created by creating Create an App.
And for here, I'm going to go take a look at the flows that are already on this list
by hitting, See your Flows.
Let me show you how easy it is to set up this review process
we've just been looking at.
I'll go ahead and edit this flow that's already on the list.
And you can see a basic flow.
When a new item is created,
it says if the type of award which is pulling in metadata from the SharePoint list is free product.
Then it's going to send me an email with the list of options.
You can sort of see the options right there.
So it's really easy to have a visual designer go ahead and set this up.
As soon as I hit update flow it's live and running and any new submissions
to the PowerApp will automatically come flow through and run through this process.
You can go beyond this for example if you wanted to have it for a
Twitter feed or some social feed come in for external submitters
of ideas that's something else you could build too, right?
Yeah, actually we've even made that easy to set up.
If I go back to the list and hit Create Flow
You see we have these templates to make it really easy to get started.
So the one that we were looking at before was to send a customized email when a new list item is created.
That will get me started real quick.
Or you can see the example here that we were just talking about.
When a new tweet comes in from a specific hashtag,
we can edit the SharePoint list as well.
This would be great for this scenario.
Once we've launched a loyalty program customers could submit reward ideas too, via Twitter.
A lot of really great updates in terms of what we can do in mobile,
on the web, automation and workflow.
Where would you suggested people get started?
Yeah it's easy just create a new team site.
That will give you an Office 365 group as well.
And so if I go to the new home for SharePoint on the web and hit Create Site,
it takes me through a couple simple steps for creating a site.
So I can give this site a name which is going to create an Office 365 group with a particular email I'm told.
I can set some settings and add people to the group.
Just like that click finish.
And we're all done.
We have a SharePoint team site along with an Office 365 group.
Everything we showed today, you can start doing.
And vice versa, also if you create a group it will create a team site as we saw earlier with our groups view.
Yeah absolutely.
That's right, it's really important because there no compromises or trade-offs about which way you do it.
You get the same value either way.
And of course, everything you build will be mobile and responsive
and have the same capabilities we saw at the beginning of the video on your phone.
So really a lot of great updates that your team's built up, but where is all this going?
Yeah, there's a lot coming soon to expand collaboration of publishing
experience across SharePoint and OneDrive.
So we're working hard to deliver the next generation OneDrive Sync Client
on top of SharePoint team sites, including Office 365 groups.
We'll expand team news that you saw today.
We'll use Office Graph to provide a stream of personalized important news from across all the sites
and complement it with traditional corporate news articles.
And, we're going to make significant investments in publishing
to focus on out of-the-box experiences.
By publishing, I mean things like a publishing site.
A dedicated site that allows you to broadcast out your message to the company
as well as deep analytics and insights investments
so you can be confident that your message and content gets to the right employees.
Thank you Adam, that was really a lot of great updates in SharePoint
and more coming on the way.
Absolutely, and we couldn't do it without feedback from our community and customers.
So if you use the SharePoint mobile app, go ahead and shake your phone to send us feedback.
Or, you can use User Voice to send us feedback about anything in the product.
That's about all the time we have today.
But, keep checking back to Microsoft Mechanics as tech news breaks.
And, thanks for watching.
Microsoft Mechanics
www.microsoft.com/mechanics