SharePoint 2010 workflows are being turned off in SharePoint Online…

Let's set the scene. For the past decade SharePoint users around the world, in offices big and small, have used workflows to replace and automate enormous amounts of paper-based processes and repetitive tasks. With the move to Office 365 and SharePoint Online, these wonderful enterprise workhorses made the jump as well, and continued to serve us well. But.. and there's always one - they didn't talk to the other parts of the Office 365 family like Dynamics or Forms.

To solve this dilemma and provide a fully integrated environment, Microsoft introduced Flow (now called Automate) which has become the binding between not only the Microsoft 365 apps, to hundreds of other cloud-based platforms as well. The writing was on the wall - Flow/Automate would eventually supplant the venerable 2010 and 2013 workflow engines.

This week’s announcement has heralded the end of the classic era - SharePoint 2010 will stop working November 1, 2020, and 2013 workflows will no longer be available for new tenancies after that date. While we don't have an end-of-life date for 2013 workflows yet - it's coming.

What to do? Stay calm. If you think you have a mission critical workflow in your SharePoint Online call us on 1300 611 359 for a free discussion on your options. We can assist your administrators with a review and audit to identify what's running and where. From there - is this an opportunity to revamp an aging process into a modern powerhouse? Our consulting team has years of practice building Automate Flows, as well as custom development of PowerApps to act as high quality data entry forms to kick them off.

This year, I had the pleasure of attending the annual SharePoint Conference (SPC) with one of our Senior Consultants, Shannon Carey, in tow. SPC is the premier SharePoint event offering sessions with expert tips on how to best utilise the platform and updates about the product roadmap as well as providing opportunities for networking with colleagues across the industry. This year was no exception as it was the 20th year since SharePoint’s humble beginnings running on an old server under Jeff Teper’s desk.

SharePoint Home Sites

The keynote session opened the conference with a range of speakers from Microsoft, and so too came one of the biggest announcements of the event, the launch of SharePoint Home sites. Through leveraging Communication sites, Home sites combines news, events, content, conversations and video which will emphasise organisational priorities and branding. Home sites are intended to be used with one per Office 365 tenancy and will eventually become the Home page on the SharePoint mobile app. 15 SharePoint Home sites launch partners were announced to coincide with the release and we were proud to hear Sharing Minds partners LiveTiles, Hyperfish and Wizdom are part of this cohort.

SharePoint Search Updates

There are many improvements to the Search functionality rolled out across the Microsoft 365 suite. In December 2019 custom refiners and verticals, display templates, more extensibility, more scalability, more content types, inline @Office help assistance and many more updates will be made available. As a result, content will be searchable within 15 seconds of an addition or change.

Multi-Geo Capabilities. Image credit: Microsoft

Multi-Geo Capability

New multi-geo capabilities have been announced for Office 365 Groups and SharePoint, which will enable users to store data in one or more locations they have selected. These capabilities satisfy data sovereignty requirements in each location and the user requirement has been lowered to organisations with 500+ users. This makes this feature available to more businesses that before and provides enterprise functionality for mid-sized organisations.

SharePoint Admin Centre - Site URL Rename

A host of improvements and updates to the SharePoint Admin Centre were announced during Jeff Teper’s opening keynote address. The most notable of which, site URL rename, was met with a raucous applause by the room of SharePoint devotees. This change will allow for the URL address of a site to be updated simultaneously when the site name changes and all future requests redirected to the new URL.

OneDrive Updates

Rolling out later in 2019 will be OneDrive Differential Sync, a new functionality which will only sync changes to files within a OneDrive, avoiding the need for the whole listing to be synced. This will save data and time usage for OneDrive users on the move.

Between sessions, I managed to find a few friendly faces around the exhibition, including Sharing Minds partners AvePoint, LiveTiles, Nintex and ShareGate. Keep an eye out on the Sharing Minds social media channels for some exclusive interviews I recorded with each of the partners about their product roadmaps and exciting updates.

Ben Creamer with Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Office, OneDrive SharePoint and Office Media Group.

A personal highlight of the event for me was meeting the legendary Jeff Teper. Known in the industry as the Godfather of SharePoint, it was a real honour to meet with Jeff and have a quick chat about the journey of SharePoint and where its headed in the future.

Already looking forward to next year’s SPC!

Cheers,
Ben
Ben.Creamer(at)sharingminds.com.au

They're doing what? It's a Sharepoint shakeup!