SharePoint Online (SPO) is the Microsoft 365 document management system. Its service is consumed by other applications like Teams, OneDrive for Business, and Planner.
It’s possible to use PowerShell to create a report detailing the SharePoint Online site URLs used with Teams. My first attempt used the Exchange Online module, but is the Graph any faster? As it turns out, not really. At least, not for interactive sessions using the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK (things are different when running SDK code using a registered app). I tried several approaches, but Graph permissions got in the way every time.
For whatever reason, SharePoint Online doesn’t allow administrators to control the settings of document libraries. In particular, default sensitivity labels. It seems crazy that other Microsoft 365 workloads allow administrators to manage the settings of things like mailboxes, groups, plans, and teams, but SharePoint Online holds steadfast to not allowing administrators go deeper than a site. It would be nice to see consistency around administrator access across all workloads.
The SharePoint News in Outlook feature allows users to email news items to recipients within the same tenant. It’s like the Teams Share to Outlook feature and is just about as exciting. Some new templates allows users to post and email news items by displaying a screen to collect email properties. Interestingly, the feature supports multi-tenant organizations, but I suspect that this is an error.
A new setting for SharePoint Online sites turns them into “restricted sites,” meaning that only site members noted in assigned groups can access site content. I thought that’s the way sites connected to Microsoft 365 groups work, but this is the “to be sure, to be sure” lockdown features. You can also restrict sites that aren’t connected to Microsoft 365 Groups. Add some sensitivity labels and the block download policy, and sites can be pretty secure.
For years, I have scanned the audit log to find FileDeleted events to report deletions of SharePoint and OneDrive documents. Now, FileRecycled audit events are used instead. This wouldn’t be a problem if Microsoft had told customers, but not a trace can be found to let organizations know that the audit data they use for compliance operations has changed. I don’t know if this is the only activity name change, but given that one update has happened (and for a relatively important audit event), it’s likely that others lurk in the undergrowth.
Microsoft 365 apps now boast a simplified sharing experience. In other words, Microsoft has overhauled and revamped the dialogs used to create and manage sharing links. This is the first real change in the area since 2020-21. It’s a good time to make sharing easier for people because the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot means that overshared files and folders will be exposed.
On July 31, Microsoft announced that Clipchamp for Work will roll out to targeted release Microsoft 365 commercial tenants in the next few weeks. Although it’s good that Microsoft 365 tenants will get a very capable video editor, the goodness of the announcement is reduced by the fact that Microsoft is not making Clipchamp for Work available for Office 365 enterprise SKUs. That seems like a great pity, but it’s all part of Microsoft’s plan to nudge customers toward Microsoft 365.
At the Inspire conference, Microsoft briefed their partners about the Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Archive products they plan to launch at some time in the future. Microsoft’s biggest advantage is their access to data and the speed at which they can process the information. Whether this gets people past the “all digital eggs in the Microsoft basket” issue remains to be seen.
Sensitivity Label PDF support is now available in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. In effect, this means that SharePoint can protect and process PDFs in the same way as it handles Office documents. Given the widespread use of PDFs in many organizations, this is an important step forward for those wishing to protect their most sensitive information.
SharePoint Online makes extensive use of file versioning. Coming in November 2023, we will see SharePoint Intelligent Versioning based on usage and the probability that a version will be needed for a restore. The new intelligent mechanism will replace the current method of setting a fixed version count for document libraries. Sites that need fixed version counts can continue, but SharePoint intelligent versioning should become the default when the feature reaches general availability in early 2024.
The SharePoint Preservation Hold Library is where files needed for retention or hold purposes are stored. In the past, the library stored separate copies of each version of a retained file. Now it stores files complete with the entire version history, which is more intelligent and means that SharePoint consumes less storage for retention.
The need to find SharePoint documents with sensitivity labels might arise during a tenant divestiture to decrypt the documents before the split. As it turns out, searches against the SharePoint InformationProtectionLabelId property is a good way to find the files. After that, the need arises to decrypt the documents, which is where Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (premium) might come in handy.
Microsoft 365 tenants have long been able to define file type exclusions for the OneDrive for Business sync client through the SharePoint Online admin center, PowerShell, or GPO. A change in the client now exposes the excluded file types to user view for the first time. Meantime, the OneDrive Personal client also gains support for file type exclusions.
Although SharePoint Online doesn’t support the allocation of OneDrive storage quotas via group membership, this is an easy solution to code with PowerShell. In this article, we discuss the steps needed to use groups to set a desired storage allocation for group members and how to apply those allocations to OneDrive for Business accounts. If you don’t want to use groups, Azure AD administrative units or even Exchange Online dynamic distribution lists would work too.
When Microsoft released the preview of the Loop app, we figured out that Loop uses a special form of SharePoint Online to store its workspaces and pages. Now we know that Loop uses Syntex Repository Services, a new offering that allows apps to create storage partitions within SharePoint Online and use those repositories to store the files needed by the app. It’s still early days for both the Loop app and Syntex Repository Services (in private preview) and many operational details need to be explored, but the new offering is an interesting choice for app developers when it comes to deciding where to store their data.
SharePoint Online now supports the Request Files feature to allow users to create links for external people to upload files to a folder in a document library. It’s a feature that will appeal to some organizations and horrify others who see the ability for external people to upload files to SharePoint Online as just another avenue for attack. The feature depends on the tenant allowing Anyone links, which are blocked by many organizations.
SharePoint Online has a new block download file policy that stops users from downloading Teams meeting recordings. The policy applies to all sites and OneDrive for Business accounts in the tenant and is due to be part of the feature set covered by the Syntex-SharePoint Advanced Management license.
SharePoint Online is embracing Azure AD more closely by forcing new tenants to use the integration between the two Microsoft 365 components. In addition, site sharing will use the Azure AD invitation mechanism instead of SharePoint’s own code. The changes make a lot of sense and shouldn’t cause much disruption for tenants. It’s a good reminder to check the relevant policies that control external access via Azure B2B Collaboration.
The new SharePoint block download policy applies at the site level to stop users downloading files, even to work with them using the Office desktop apps. It also stops people printing and synchronizing files. In this article, we explain how to apply the policy with PowerShell, including how to apply the SharePoint block download policy to all sites assigned a certain sensitivity label.
Applying a default sensitivity label to a SharePoint Online document library is just one of the set of security and management and governance features requiring the new Syntex Advanced Management license. The new license is in preview so all the features that it covers might not be fully baked. Microsoft 365 customers might well ask if this is yet another example of Microsoft bundling features into a new paid-for add-on license. Of course it is. You don’t expect new functionality for free, do you?
SharePoint Online is a critical piece of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Its document management service is consumed by many apps like Teams, Yammer, and Planner. OneDrive for Business, the personal side of SharePoint Online, also contributes to SharePoint’s success with components like the synchronization client. Without SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 would be a very different offering and a worse platform to work with.
Microsoft has released the preview version of the Stream migration tool to move videos from Stream classic to Stream on SharePoint. The tool uses the same Mover technology as employed to migrate data from other repositories to SharePoint Online. Generally, it works well. The big decisions are all around what content to move and what can be left behind.
The Stream for SharePoint browser client includes the ability for people to record short (up to 15 minute) videos. The input comes from workstation cameras (including software cameras like Snap Camera) or the screen. Videos are stored in OneDrive for Business and can be updated and shared from there. The question we have is what role will Clipchamp play in the Microsoft 365 video playbook?
Document label mismatches happen when users create, upload, or update Office documents in SharePoint sites and give the documents a higher-priority sensitivity label than the one assigned to the site. When this happens, SharePoint Online creates a DocumentSensitivityMismatchDetected audit event. Unhappily, that event doesn’t tell us who caused the mismatch, but some work with PowerShell reveals all.
Microsoft is rolling out the public preview of the ability to set a default sensitivity label for SharePoint Online document libraries. This is likely to be a premium feature when it is generally available. For now, Office documents are supported, but Microsoft promises to support PDFs in the future.
There are many versions of PowerShell scripts to report SharePoint external users online. Most don’t handle team-connected sites, so we take the time to explain the oddities of the Get-SPOExternalUser cmdlet and create some data that we can report using the PSWriteHTML module. All in day’s work with Microsoft 365.
The new tenant admin Microsoft Graph API allows access to read and update SharePoint Online tenant settings. Although the API offers limited capabilities for now, it marks the start of Graph support for tenant settings that are currently managed through admin portals or PowerShell. It’s a welcome development.
Microsoft has improved the functionality of the Teams Files channel tab since its introduction. The most recent update adds SharePoint’s Grid View and Details pane, and the net effect is that the Files channel tab is now almost as functional as the SharePoint browser interface.
Microsoft’s work to create Stream on SharePoint continues unabated, and a handy spreadsheet is available to check features against Stream Classic. One thing’s for sure. Stream on SharePoint (or Stream 2.0) is very different to the Office 365 video portals that have gone before. It’s all about video management services and leveraging SharePoint storage now.
Teams likes to control the channel folders it creates in SharePoint Online, which is why it removes the Delete and Move to options from the folder menu. But once Teams removes a channel permanently, shouldn’t it allow the SharePoint folder to be removed?
Surprisingly, Microsoft has decided to retire the SharePoint Inside Look feature. This is where background processes extract three points from the text of Word documents and use them to help users understand the essence of the document. The text is also used in SharePoint sharing notifications. It’s a pity that the feature is going, but it’s English only and the resources needed to accommodate other languages might be too much for the predicted return.
An update for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business means that the Office desktop apps (Windows and macOS) will apply default sensitivity labels to documents that aren’t already labeled. This is a good change because it helps to close a gap for organizations that want to be sure that every document is labeled.
A new SharePoint Online setting allows tenants to switch the target for the Stream tile in the app launcher to the new Stream. The intention to is have users become accustomed to the features of the new GUI and the way that Stream can manage video content anywhere inside Microsoft 365. The downside is that migration from Classic Stream isn’t available yet. It’s coming, just like Christmas.
If you run a search in Office.com, Microsoft Search now includes Teams and Outlook messages in its results. This is similar to the capability exposed when Bing.com connects Microsoft Search to include work items in its results. Loop components are also available in search results.
A recent session at the Microsoft 365 conference offered some insight about the growth of SharePoint Online in both storage and sites. Adding 100 petabytes of storage monthly is a lot of data, but about a third of it could be consumed by Teams meeting recordings. And the 8 million sites created each month is large, but maybe not so big when you consider the reasons why Microsoft 365 tenants create sites. Teams, including private and shared channels, drives a lot of the growth in sites.
A new control in the SharePoint Online configuration is available to enable or disable Microsoft Loop components in Microsoft 365 apps, just in time for their introduction in OWA and Outlook for Windows. However, before we get all excited, there are some important issues with loop components when exported in eDiscovery search results that might make tenant administrators ponder. Just a tad…
A new sensitivity label setting is available (in preview) to control site sharing permissions for SharePoint Online sites. The new setting is an advanced setting, meaning that it can only be set using the PowerShell Set-Label cmdlet. It’s a welcome addition to the control sensitivity labels can exert over containers.
Sometimes useful features show up in a Microsoft 365 app long after they should have been there. This is the case of SharePoint Online’s document library dropdown menu, which is very helpful in navigating sites with multiple libraries. Unfortunately, not too many sites have multiple libraries because most are Teams-enabled and have a single library. Teams is another app where features show up after they should. The listing of the teams a user belongs to in the Teams admin center is a good example.
Microsoft is rolling out a new feature to allow users to move OneDrive shortcuts to shared or private folders. Although a nice upgrade, being able to move shortcuts is not the biggest OneDrive issue. What stops me using shortcuts is the clash between them and the OneDrive sync client. It seems like it should be an easy fix for Microsoft to apply, and when they do, I’ll happily move OneDrive shortcuts around.
A post by the Exchange development group tried to explain why mailboxes have SharePoint Online proxy addresses. It’s all down to the Microsoft 365 substrate, which needs the proxy addresses to ingest digital twins from SharePoint Online into Exchange Online for use by shared services like Microsoft Search. The upshot is that you can’t remove a mailbox permanently without some background processes kicking in to make sure that SharePoint is taken care of.
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