It is that time of year again – when we are all getting ready to head to Orlando to learn about all things Microsoft.  I am excited about next week and hoping to make the most of things while in Orlando!  I’ve listed all the details for my sessions below and I would love to meet more of the community, so if you want to sync up, leave a comment or find me on twitter (@jennifermason) and we can set up a time to meet in the community lounges.

Here is a quick list of the sessions I will be presenting and where you can find me next week:

Pre-Day (Sunday) : The SharePoint mobile and intelligent intranet: Empowering you, your teams, and your organization

Join the SharePoint product group and top MVPs for a deep dive into best practices for building an intranet with SharePoint that empowers you, your teams and your organization. Understand how team sites, communication sites, personalized experiences and mobile apps can be used to support collaboration, communication and engagement. We cover the “big picture” so you can make informed decisions about how to best drive digital transformation with SharePoint and related technologies including OneDrive, Office Delve, Microsoft PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, Yammer, Power BI, Outlook Groups and Microsoft Teams.

Wednesday 12:45 pm W205: Understanding your collaboration options in Office 365

Have you noticed that you now have multiple ways to connect and collaborate in Office 365? Teams, Groups, SharePoint, Yammer, email – how do you provide guidance to your users so that they can make good choices? Too much choice can lead to chaos, while not enough choice can create too much friction for effective collaboration to happen. This session provides guidance and a framework to help you make the right choices for your organization to help your users get real work done in a hyper-connected world. We look at some of the metrics that matter, aspects of your culture to evaluate, and how to manage the type of content each method of collaboration supports.

Thursday 10:20 am – Expo Theater 1 : Building a unified experience across Office 365

This session explores creating a unified collaboration experience using Microsoft Teams, Groups and Sites. There are so many different ways that a team can collaborate and work together. With so many options, how do you know what to use, and when? Sometimes the greatest results can be found when you use the best of all of them. We cover:

• Using a Group Calendar to track major milestones and deadlines
• Using Planner to manage large team projects and efforts
• Using Teams for persistent, searchable team conversations and discussion
• Using Modern Document Libraries to organize and structure reusable templates
• Using Teams to jump into additional products (Planner, Power BI, SharePoint Libraries)

I hope to see you there!

This post is about another feature that I have been waiting to hit Office 365.  With this new Groups Calendar Web Part you can simply display the calendar events from the Groups location on your SharePoint site.  This is a great addition because many teams I know are using a combination of the features within Groups and Modern SharePoint sites.  So if your team is using a Group calendar vs a SharePoint Events list – this web part will help you display the relevant content anywhere within your team site.

It is pretty straightforward – you simply add the Groups Calendar Web Part on your modern team site:

By default it will connect and configure to the group associated with your site and display several events in a list form.

You can currently only configure two options at this point  – the associated group and the number of items you want to display by default (max 10).

This is a good step in helping us use whatever tool makes the most sense, while still allowing us to view the data from anywhere.  This may be a small web part, but it will have big impact for those that are using Group calendars.

I have been talking to quite a few people in the last few weeks about Office 365 and new features that are on the roadmap.  Once we start diving into things it always seems to turn in a conversation about “you know – I wish it did this!” or “I wish I knew what was coming next”.  It never fails that the conversation always leads back to the event that is happening on May 16th– where Microsoft is going to be sharing with us the plans they have for the next year in SharePoint.  This is the second event of its kind and one that you really won’t want to miss!

Here are my top 5 reasons for attending the event –

1 – Microsoft has something to say!

If you attend any of the big Microsoft conferences, you know that the keynotes are full of big moments that are meant to really excite and inspire the audience.  With the merging of the SharePoint Conference into TechEd (now Ignite) it is hard to get big spotlight moments dedicated to one product.  While it is great to see the overall Microsoft picture, it leaves a bit lacking if you want to deep dive into a specific set of products.  With this event being specific to SharePoint, it is a guarantee that you will get very specific content and information that drills deep and explains what the next year might look like.

The event will be led by Corporate Vice President Jeff Teper and he will be joined by James Phillips & Chuck Friedman.  They will be discussing how Office 365, Windows and Azure can reinvent what productivity means for you teams.

2 – Real World Examples & Case Studies

Built into the agenda, Microsoft has dedicated time to for customers to showcase their achievements with SharePoint.  These are typically case studies that show off the impact that the new advancements in SharePoint have had within a business.  They are really meant as an example of creative and innovative ways that you can use SharePoint internally.

3 – All the Cool Kids are Doing it!

With this being the SharePoint event of the year, it is guaranteed that Twitter and Social Media will be full of community folks who are ready to share information about the news that is being released and provide their thoughts and opinions on it.  I am sure there will be a very active #hashtag going on with lots of interesting discussions and commentary.  Besides the activity on twitter there will sure to be many different blog posts and articles released post event that help you drill down deeper in to the new content they discuss at the event.

4 – Technology changes more than my kids can remember to change their socks!

So this one may or may not be true!  If you look at the last several years, the rate at which new features, tools and applications within Office 365 change is quite astounding.  There seems to always be something new to be following and looking into. Part of the reason events like this are great is because they help give you insight into what the next months will look like.  They give you a foundation and roadmap for what we can expect to see.  Specific to SharePoint they tend to make major announcements at events like this and during larger events like Microsoft Ignite.  By attending these events you can at least hear directly from the source what is coming and what new things are on the horizon.

5 – Open Q&A with Microsoft

The agenda has some time specifically dedicated for open Q&A with Microsoft.  Not sure exactly how they will be accepting questions, but I do know that this will be a great time to get candid answers directly from the source.  These are some of the best sessions because they are often very focused on everyday, real world questions.

So these are my top reasons, I would love to hear from you why you are planning on attending the event and what you hope to learn from it!

Those of us that have been doing SharePoint for a while have a whole slew of tricks we use to add some emphasis to our sites and help users navigate the site easily.  With the whole modernization of SharePoint we are starting to see some simple improvements that can make our job much easier.  In this quick blog post I am going to walk you through the new Quick Links modern web part.  This is a direct replacement for the Promoted Links list and working with it couldn’t be easier.

From the home page, click edit.

Once you are in edit mode, select the (+) in the location you want to add the web part and select the Quick Links Option.

 Once the web part is on the page, you just click the (+) to add new items to the web part.

 For each link you want to include in the web part you simply add the URL and Title.  By default an image will be displayed with your link, but you can easily update and change the image to one that makes the most sense for you link.

 Once the link has been added to the list you can easily manage the links directly from the items.

This web part is persistent through the site, so if you add the same web part to another page the links will be included.  This allows for you to easily create and manage a common set of links for your users.  If you count the number of clicks it takes to do this in Classic SharePoint you will quickly realize that this approach is a real time save!  It hasn’t gotten too much love yet because it is one of the small things that has been added to the modern experiences.  But if you know me you know that I love the small things because when it comes to SharePoint they really can make the biggest difference.

I feel like I have been on a long journey of sorts with SharePoint. One filled with love and one sometimes filled with frustration (can anyone say SharePoint Designer?). With constant change and always moving forward, SharePoint has been a huge part of my career. While the product itself never really seemed to matter to me, since my focus for me has always been on building powerful business solutions – I was always excited when new methods, tools or product features were released that made my like easier. I remember waiting with such excitement for the new product to ship, ready to start a migration project so that we could take advantage of all the new things! When Office 365 came about, that all seemed to change – I was then excited about new features and waiting anxiously for them to show up in my First Release tenant. From the Video Portal to Groups, I was always excited to see what was coming next, in fact, I am still excited and follow it all pretty closely!

Things are a bit different now, with the release of SharePoint 2016. Instead of only looking at new features and configurations you have to ask yourself – what is available on-prem and what is limited to Office 365 and even still what can be done with a hybrid configuration. There are many more questions this time around and many more angles to consider. This is why the Future of SharePoint event on May 4^th is so exciting to me – for the first time in a long time it seems we have an event that is just focused on SharePoint and the future of things. The event promises to provide a clear overview of the “new vision” for SharePoint across on-prem, Office 365 and Hybrid configurations. Instead of simply being focused on one or the other – this even promises to bring things together. The event is being broadcast live from San Francisco and will also include some on-demand sessions that will provide a deeper dive into new innovations.

When it comes to business tools in today’s market there seems to be so many different options and ways to do things – things are constantly changing and new tools are always being developed. Many times I have heard people comment that “SharePoint is dead” or that “new innovation has stopped”. I can’t disagree more! Microsoft has is a big player in this space, just take a look at some of the recent innovations such as Planner and now Microsoft Flow. The way Microsoft is deploying might have changed and the way we consume the tools might be different, but I really think that the best it still yet to come! I know the team at Microsoft has been working very hard and I believe they are going to show us some things later this week that we will look to each other and say “I had NO idea THAT was coming!”. I fully expect a few WOW moments and I expect to leave the event feeling like an old friend (SharePoint) is back in the center of the conversation again.

I hope that all of my readers have registered for the event already, but if you haven’t there is still time! Just head over to the registration page. I will be attending the event and filling Twitter up with my thoughts – so expect a noisy few hours from me! I think the future for SharePoint is bright and I can’t wait to hear what Jeff Teper is going to share with us this week! I promise you that this the not to miss event of the year for SharePoint – so do yourself a favor and register now!

Last week at the Future of SharePoint event we were promised that many of the new features they were showing would be hitting first release soon.  True to their promise, the update Sites page is now being rolled out to First Release customers.  This means that if you have signed up for FR, then over the next several weeks you will see the updated page within your tenant.  In this blog post I am going to be reviewing some of updates and sharing information so that you can be prepared for the changes when they appear for you.

What is Changing

The first thing to review is exactly what is changing so you can know what to expect.  Currently in the Office 365 App Launcher there is a tile called “Sites” that opens a directory page for your organization.  With these changes, the tile will be renamed to “SharePoint” and will redirect you to a new, modern landing page. For the most part, the content that is displayed in the new page is very similar to what is displayed on the old page.  The big differences are around how the content is displayed and where the content is generated from.

Promoted Links

One of the most notable changes in this new page is that the promoted corporate links are no longer displayed on the home page in graphical images.  They are now displayed on the bottom left in the quick launch area under a heading called Links.

These links can be easily edited from the SharePoint landing page (assuming you have access to edit them).  The idea is that each organization will put their common links here that they want everyone to have access to.  These typically include your Intranet site, your HR site and sometimes even Training sites.

Followed Sites

On the classic Sites Page, the sites that you are following are displayed on the left side of the page, immediately below the Promoted links.  On the new SharePoint page the are displayed on the left in the Quick Launch, immediately below the location to create new sites.

Recent Sites

On the new SharePoint page, the Recent Sites area is replaced with the Frequent Sites.

Recommended Sites

On the new SharePoint page, the Recommended Links on the Sites page have been replaced with Suggestions.  The updated suggestions are generated through the Office Graph and they are designed to suggest sites to you based on your common activities and content.

What do These Changes Mean?

These changes are our first taste into the some of the new UX changes that will be coming to Office 365.  They provide a crisp and clean way to view the data that is most relevant to us.  Because this page is populated from information in Office Graph, it provides us with the most relevant information based on who we are, our role in the organization and our common actions.  The site is designed to provide a quick insight into your most relevant data.  The changes will be rolling soon to everyone in First Release and similar to other new features, when they are first pushed to the environment they are presented with some contextual guidance to get your users started.

I feel like I have been on a long journey of sorts with SharePoint. One filled with love and one sometimes filled with frustration (can anyone say SharePoint Designer?). With constant change and always moving forward, SharePoint has been a huge part of my career. While the product itself never really seemed to matter to me, since my focus has always been on building powerful business solutions – I was always excited when new methods, tools or product features were released that made my life easier. I remember waiting with such excitement for the new product to ship, ready to start a migration project so that we could take advantage of all the new things! When Office 365 came about, that all seemed to change – I was then excited about new features and waiting anxiously for them to show up in my First Release tenant. From the Video Portal to Groups, I was always excited to see what was coming next. In fact, I am still excited and follow it all pretty closely!

This week is going to be a busy one, full of many great events! There is still plenty of time to register. Just use the links below and if for some reason you can’t make the events live, you can always view them afterwards from the ITUnity site.

Office 365 Pulse with Jennifer Ann Mason

Every week, Microsoft releases new features in Office 365 that add significant capabilities and business value. How can you keep on top of these changes? How should you manage, help drive adoption, and use these new features to fuel productivity, collaboration, agility and innovation? 

 This week’s special guest is Mark Rackley.

Ask Me Anything about the InfoPath Update with Sonya Koptyev

Microsoft recently announced that InfoPath Forms Services will be included in SharePoint Server 2016 and will be supported in Office 365 until further notice. This announcement extends the life of InfoPath Forms Services, which in early 2014 was flagged to be supported only through 2023, and opens up the possibility for organizations to migrate InfoPath Forms Services workloads to Office 365 and to the next version of SharePoint Server.  Join Microsoft’s Sonya Koptyev, Senior Product Marketing Manager on the Office 365 Developer Program, for an in-depth look at the update, and what it means to you.  Sonya will also take your questions about the update in this “ask me anything” style event.

Online Office Hours – Jennifer Ann Mason – Building Solutions Using SharePoint OOTB Features

Join Jennifer Mason as she holds Online Office Hours as a follow-up to her sessions at SPTechCon. Her first Online Office Hours session will be focused around building solutions with SharePoint using Out of the Box features.  This will be an informal online discussion with Q&A.  If you were unable to join her session at SPTechCon, you are still welcome to join the webcast and discuss SharePoint Solutions with us!

Online Office Hours – Jennifer Ann Mason – Creating Simple Dashboards Using OOTB Web Parts

Join Jennifer Mason as she holds Online Office Hours as a follow-up to her sessions at SPTechCon. Her second Office Hours session will be focused around building Simple Dashboards in SharePoint using Lists, Libraries, Pages and Web Parts.  This will be an informal online discussion with Q&A.  If you were unable to join her session at SPTechCon, you are still welcome to join the webcast and discuss Simple Dashboards in SharePoint with us!