Top Five Roadmap Items for Internal Comms

Microsoft 365 is always changing and it's important when working in Internal Comms or other roles that have heavy involvement in creating content and applications for an organisation to stay on top of what is coming.

At Dapt we support organisations in creating intranets that work, are adopted and surface the right content at the right time to the right people. This is a key for getting important messages across to people in your organisation.

We've captured 5 of our top Microsoft 365 roadmap features you need to know about if you work in internal communications and help manage your intranet or other internal SharePoint portals.

01: Private drafts for SharePoint pages and news - expected April 2022

Microsoft is adding the ability to create private drafts for pages and news posts. A private draft is visible only to the page author, the people the author chooses to share it with, and site admins. It's great for creating and editing content that’s not ready for others to see except the people you want to collaborate with.

Feature ID: 85629

Added to roadmap: 9/24/2021

Last modified: 2/18/2022

Product(s): SharePoint

Cloud instance(s): GCC, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC High, DoD

Platform(s): Web

Release phase(s): General Availability, Targeted Release (Entire Organization), Targeted Release (Select People)

02: Microsoft Lists and SharePoint document libraries Gallery view - expected March 2022

Configure your lists and library items using a dynamic Gallery view - choosing how your documents and list items appear.

Feature ID: 57304

Added to roadmap: 11/4/2019

Last modified: 12/17/2021

Product(s): SharePoint

Cloud instance(s): GCC, Germany, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC High, DoD

Platform(s): Web

Release phase(s): General Availability, Targeted Release

03: Add chapters to help viewers find the right part of a video - expected March 2022

Users with edit access to a video uploaded to SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and Yammer can now add chapters to help viewers identify information in the video. For each chapter, you can specify a point in time in the video and title of that chapter which will show up in the table of contents side pane for the video as well as on the video timeline.

You can find out about more upcoming releases for Stream here - Features in Microsoft Stream (on SharePoint) - Microsoft Stream | Microsoft Docs

Feature ID: 88525

Added to roadmap: 11/2/2021

Last modified: 11/2/2021

Product(s): SharePoint, Microsoft Stream, OneDrive

Cloud instance(s): GCC, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC High, DoD

Platform(s): Web

Release phase(s): General Availability

04: Section Templates for SharePoint Pages - expected January 2022

When you add a new section to a page, you can select a blank template with popular image and text combinations for a quick start.

Feature ID: 88838

Added to roadmap: 1/6/2022

Last modified: 1/6/2022

Product(s): SharePoint

Cloud instance(s): Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant)

Platform(s): Desktop

Release phase(s): Targeted Release

05: MSFT Editor Spellcheck and Grammar in SharePoint Pages - Rolling out

Microsoft is adding the Microsoft Editor service to SharePoint Pages and News and enabling their spellcheck and grammar capabilities. This will allow proofreading to take place in SharePoint without relying on the Editor browser extension. This feature changes the suggestions colours to monochrome when they're shown on a themed background to increase visibility.

This is already being rolled out to tenants so keep an eye out for this one. Helping with proofreading will seriously improve productivity time!

Feature ID: 88534

Added to roadmap: 12/3/2021

Last modified: 1/7/2022

Product(s): SharePoint

Cloud instance(s): Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant)

Platform(s): Desktop

Release phase(s): General Availability, Targeted Release (Entire Organization), Targeted Release (Select People)

There are loads more features coming too such as the ability to create news articles directly from within Teams without needing to leave the app. Follow us on LinkedIn for more great tips and updates on Microsoft 365!