The Future of SharePoint – The Latest from Microsoft

• Microsoft
• Office 365
• SharePoint
• SharePoint 2016

Microsoft yesterday unveiled a cloud-first, mobile-first revamp for SharePoint to “empower people, teams and organizations to intelligently discover, share and collaborate on content from anywhere and on any device”.

In a blog post titled The Future of SharePoint, Jeff Teper, corporate vice president for the OneDrive and SharePoint teams, explained four areas of innovation for the SharePoint platform:

1. Simple and powerful file sharing and collaboration on any device.
2. The mobile and intelligent intranet, with modern team sites, publishing and business applications on your desktop and in your pocket.
3. An open and connected platform that evolves SharePoint extensibility to embrace modern web development.
4. Investments in security, privacy and compliance across Office 365.

Better Collaboration and Document Management

The first innovation is described as “unified access and intelligent discovery” of your files, giving you the ability to easily create, manage and collaborate on documents – no matter where you are and what device you are using.

Document management across devices. Image: Microsoft

Check out this blog to learn more about the improved document management and collaborative capabilities coming to SharePoint.

Mobile and Intelligent Intranet

To me, one of the most exciting announcements in the post was the announcement of SharePoint mobile apps designed for iOS, Android and Windows devices. The apps will provide access to your full SharePoint environment through a beautifully-designed app, right in the palm of your hand!*

SharePoint app in iOS. Image: Microsoft

Further, by leveraging the Office Graph, the new SharePoint homepage and modern team sites will surface content that is personalized based on what you’ve been working on and collaborating with.

SharePoint homepage in Office 365. Image: Microsoft

SharePoint Team Site in browser and iOS app. Image: Microsoft

Among other innovations are integration with Flow and PowerApps, enhanced document libraries and a better experience with lists.

The SharePoint Framework

SharePoint was built as a platform designed to be extended, and Microsoft recognize the changing needs of developers in the SharePoint solution ecosystem.  As a result, they have announced the SharePoint Framework, which is “a page and part model that enables fully supported client-side development, easy integration with the Microsoft Graph and support for open source tooling… The SharePoint Framework extends the scope of solutions that can be built on SharePoint, in the cloud and on-premises.” 

Security

In the area of security, Teper notes “dynamic conditional access,” that will grant access to SharePoint based on details like user, the device or app being used, and network.  The post also mentions SharePoint Insights (to be launched later this year), which will give admins a complete look at usage across SharePoint in the cloud and on-premise.  For more information on these investments in SharePoint security, check out the Office 365 Trust Center.

Finally, here’s a video of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sharing his excitement as they reinvigorate SharePoint align with his cloud-first, mobile-first strategy for Microsoft.