Latest SharePoint Online topics

In today’s collaborative work environment, it’s essential to seamlessly interact with individuals outside your organization. Microsoft 365 offers a way to invite guest users—external individuals—into your tenant to work together within your environment. This capability fosters cooperation with clients, partners, or contractors, but it’s important to manage these external users carefully to ensure they only access what they need.

Permissions in Microsoft 365 can be complex, but a clear approach can help simplify management, protect data, and enhance collaboration. Below, we break down the highlights from our recent Ask Sympraxis session, The Many Faces of Permissions in Microsoft 365, which explores our philosophy on permissions, the many sharing settings, and best practices for permissions in Microsoft 365.

At Sympraxis, we love hosting our Ask Sympraxis Anything sessions, where we answer questions directly from our audience. These episodes provide an opportunity to dive deep into the challenges, innovations, and nuances of Microsoft 365. Below are some highlights from our recent session! Can you trigger multiple edit items from PnP Modern Search web parts? Yes, you can! You can achieve this by using a custom list column. Start by creating a custom HTML anchor tag with a URL that directs users to the edit item view. When users click the link, it opens the item in a new tab for editing. Additionally, you can customize the anchor tag as a query.

What Happened with SharePoint Lists? The new Microsoft Lists user experience has rolled out for SharePoint. With this a lot of changes have happened. In the past, the lists and libraries experiences in SharePoint were owned by different teams at Microsoft. Meaning that the same features would be implemented by two different teams, which often resulted in two different user experiences. Additionally, the Microsoft Lists app, likely managed by yet another team, further complicates this issue. The Microsoft Lists experience was intended to bring about performance improvements and increase efficiency. However, some of these improvements have inadvertently created new challenges that we discuss below.

The SharePoint platform has been evolving rapidly, bringing new features and adjustments that can impact both user experience and governance. While many of these changes offer exciting opportunities, some also introduce challenges. In this session we take a closer look at key updates to SharePoint’s editing experience, offering insights on what works well, and where caution is needed.

Backup and archive: understanding the differences Backup and archive serve distinct purposes, although many confuse them for the same thing. Backup refers to warm storage, focusing on active content and ensuring easy access to recover data if a problem arises. On the other hand, archiving is akin to cold storage, dealing with inactive content that isn’t regularly used. Syncing data does not serve as a backup or archive; it merely keeps two copies of the same data synchronized, without providing the backup or archived version.

In this Ask Sympraxis session, we expand on the foundational concepts discussed in the previous episode, focusing on the role of SharePoint Managed Metadata for Search. If you haven’t caught up on that episode yet, we recommend starting there to better understand the central role of the term store and managed metadata in building a robust information architecture. Term store vs. managed metadata The term store and managed metadata are often mentioned together, but it’s important to differentiate between the two. The term store is essentially the repository where terms are created, managed, and stored, while managed metadata refers to the method by which these terms are integrated into SharePoint. Though they work hand in hand, they serve different purposes within SharePoint’s ecosystem.

In this Ask Sympraxis session, we delve into the intricacies of the SharePoint Term Store, a critical component for maintaining consistency in how we categorize and tag content across an organization’s intranet. What is the SharePoint Term Store? The Term Store in SharePoint is essentially a repository for commonly used terms. It provides a tenant-wide or site-wide source of terms organized hierarchically, ensuring we use the same language when working in SharePoint. This consistency is crucial as it makes information easier to find. However, agreeing on the terms can sometimes be challenging since different groups might prefer different terms, such as “policy” versus “guideline.” To address this, the Term Store allows for alternate labels or synonyms. When users type an alternate label, SharePoint pulls up the actual term, making it easier to standardize language across the organization.

In this session, we explore the significant updates to Learning Pathways in version 5 and the changes to the Lookbook. Developed by Julie and Stefan Bauer, Learning Pathways has developed into a great tool for most organizations. With Derek’s help maintaining the code updates, this knowledgeable team has collaborated to bring you the latest improvements in the beta version of v5. If you’re looking for more in-depth assistance with Learning Pathways beyond this 30-minute session, we highly recommend our new 1-hour Jumpstart focused on this tool!

As we mark the milestone of our 100th episode of Ask Sympraxis, it’s incredible to reflect on the journey we’ve embarked on since our first episode on April 20, 2020. Back then, the world was quite different, and in many ways, so was the landscape of technology. Over the years, Ask Sympraxis has grown, evolved, and adapted, much like the tech ecosystem we seek to demystify.