SHAREPOINT - THE FOUNDATION FOR CO-RELEASE FEATURES AND PRODUCTS
- 2 days ago
- 9 min read
Author: Jonathan Stuckey
Audience: SharePoint solution designer, Technology and operations lead, Project manager
This article unpacks the Microsoft 365 release approach and the tied license model for integrated apps. With more products being underpinned (or repackaging) SharePoint platform features, organisations need to understand what co-release means and how it drags other services you didn't know you wanted (or might need). It is not bundling, but there are definite signs of co-dependency.
This article does not review the Microsoft PAYG or updated $ / person per service agent models
What do we mean by Co-release features?
Microsoft increasingly moved to bolster feature and functionality releases in SharePoint with co-releases that leverage other services, features and products. In most cases this is a feature release leveraging products which customers are often unaware of until they have unmanaged uptake. Rather than providing incremental feature releases for users paying existing subscriptions, Microsoft's approach is repackaging existing capability as a new product and introduce it in feature enhancements. This approach brings in new licensing models and a significant upsell for Microsoft.
So, co-release is introducing new products?
...hmm, no. Well, sometimes. Mostly co-release is a new strategy for licensing strip-mined SharePoint features and functionality subsequently released under a different badge (e.g. Pro, Premium) or a new brand identity (like Viva or Copilot).
There is innovation and enhancement attached to the new licenses required by the co-release product, but the functionality often just leverages the existing SharePoint platform services and capability. Take Viva Amplify for example, it's a thin veneer of different Chrome over the top of SharePoint publishing pages, with a slightly new channel publishing mechanism. Underneath it's all SharePoint (Pages).
If you want to understand this better, the following sections give just a few of the examples where this has been done over last few years.
SharePoint Co-Releases
The following is a quick run-down of major product co-releases over last 5 years:
These aren't the only ones, but they're probably the most interesting ones for most of use because they are increasingly important in the choice of digital future for our users.
SharePoint + Microsoft Lists
Q: Microsoft Lists - a fresh start which is now fading, or old wine with a new label?
This was the first in this line of co-release approaches, using re-labelling existing functionality and pretending it's something else. Offering a separate, but dedicated UI to SharePoint with richer interactive experience over the tried-and-tested SharePoint List, with classic Office app model of Browser + Desktop + Mobile app experience.
As a trial-run for this co-release approach it did pretty well, and 5+ years Microsoft Lists brought through tests of New UI over SharePoint list functions, with a dedicated (if somewhat reduced) offline desktop app experience and mobile experience, but where Lists fails is it doesn't pull-through additional revenue.
The roadmap stalled for a bit between 2021 - 2023, but its had a couple of nice enhancements since. The product experiment is starting to be wound-up now with the retirement of the iOS and Android mobile apps, no development roadmap announced and now application or product identification on the roadmap service.
Verdict: A good crack at product with some value the new user-interface, but it will go away (probably to be folded back into SharePoint UI). If you've used it for anything business critical - get off client app versions by mid-year next year.
NOTE: SharePoint lists are not going away, apps and business tools built using this platform capability will continue to be supported.
SharePoint + Viva (Amplify, Connections, Engage)
Q: Has Viva Amplify made SharePoint Publishing worth paying attention to?
Honestly, SharePoint’s native publishing analytics have always been so shallow they were barely a puddle. Amplify lifts it a lot for campaigns and user-engagement over various channels. Current analytics finally offer meaningful channel and campaign tracking and actually hint at audience engagement, rather than just tallying “views.”
Early rollout of Amplify felt like you were paying for a new hat, but recent updates deliver some substance alongside the style; it’s steadily moving past “Just SharePoint” and leveraging campaign-based comms. It’s still playing catch-up with modern media management, but improvements are landing.
Cost-wise, the dedicated “Communication and Communities” bundle at NZ$3.20/user/month for Amplify, Engage, and Connections makes it more a viable proposition - though minus Glint or Pulse.
It’s not quite the dream toolkit... but it does offer great value for organisations with significant inner-loop comms or community needs; If your situation is more occasional corporate comms, the free E-plan features with SharePoint publishing will probably suffice.
Verdict: Improving but niche. Worth a close look if comms are mission-critical - otherwise, review your needs before reaching for the credit card.
Q: Does Viva Connections add genuine value, or just repackage the home site?
Connections elevates user experience, transforming the SharePoint home site into an integrated launchpad for Teams, news, resources, and communities. Smart dashboarding makes it easier for users to find and act on news that matters for their role (audience).
After nearly 5 years it's still clunky and the out-of-the-box components offer a fraction of what you can do with native SharePoint webparts and services ...even though the 'Dashboard' is just a SharePoint .aspx page, and the components (cards) just another form of display template.
The roadmap has been very sparse for most of its life, but has picked up a lot this year with expanding number of dashboards, out-of-the-box component cards, and better integration support for branding and news. Future of Connections is still very vague though, even after the Ignite conference.
Pay close attention to licensing... because Connections is included in core Enterprise plans, and the basic single dashboard option is available for M365 Business plans, making its value proposition more about adoption strategy than extra spend.
Verdict: A welcome UI/UX boost that’s available out-of-the-box. Significant for intranet engagement, especially in distributed or hybrid workplaces. If you are a MS Teams shop, you should be thinking how you can use it to bring your intranet into the user's day-to-day working experience.
Q: Is Viva Engage still just Yammer by another name, or does it justify its inclusion?
Viva Engage builds directly on top of Yammer’s social feed roots but wraps it with better group and campaign management, and deeper reporting. If your org needs active communities or knowledge sharing, the improvements are tangible. Included in the Enterprise plans, but not the Business plan options, its licensed with a 'Freemium' option i.e. you get the core functionality thrown-in, but pay for the governance, reporting and insights over its use.
Actually, for users the majority of the value is in the core product, and for most medium-large businesses there is value in using it as part of your overall Communication channel strategy for Employee Engagement. For sustained use it needs ongoing tending and content moderation, regular maintenance and access management. Some channels should be moderated, like Executive or All organisation ones, and others not e.g. team or community owned ones. Integrated into SharePoint sites for managing any images, documents etc shared in the community channels and discussions, but confusingly jammed into Microsoft Teams UI along with Teams Org-wide teams channels and group chats.
The step-up licensing is available via dedicated “Communication and Communities” bundle at NZ$3.20 per user per month which makes the package more attractive, though standalone value for small organisation and teams is just not there.
The other step-up option is bundled with the Viva Suite at NZ$19.40 per user per month which includes additional Employee Engagement tools like Pulse, Glint, Learning and Insights step-up. All of which are (technically) new, discrete products.
Verdict: Solid enhancement for employee engagement-heavy environments; less impactful for smaller organisations or where social tools are peripheral to the main means of engagement. Requires way more investment than thinking its self-sustaining social-networking like LinkedIn.
SharePoint + Copilot | Agents
Q: Is Microsoft 365 Copilot in SharePoint make AI practical, or just pricier?
Copilot brings intelligent search, summarisation, and content surfacing to SharePoint—leveraging underlying APIs like Graph and Search. In environments with complex knowledge management, the ability to surface relevant materials quickly saves time. The 'Co-release' model starts to lose its uniqueness with Copilot (and Agents) - these absolutely depend on your content (SharePoint) to function and deliver value, but as the automation aspects grow so does the integration and pull-through across a slew of other products including:
PowerApps
PowerAutomate
SharePoint Syntex
Azure | Entra services
Microsoft Loop
...
Cost is a consideration, as Copilot needs an additional license. Currently, its value scales best in larger orgs with rich, diverse content stores. The license is still highly debatable on whether it is worth it at NZ$48.50 per person per month, but the low-cost of entry for using Pay-as-you-go Agents in your environment is starting to tip the balance as Microsoft pours more investment into developing something more than just a friendly Q&A bot experience.
Roadmap: This is a massively evolving area, with gaming change (and job changing) impacts, and its sometimes hard to unpick real useful developments from the "AI-washing" of older products going on. The continued embedding and targeting of the Copilot experience based on the individual app integration is continually improving and the support Governance tools and reporting (SharePoint Advanced Management, and Copilot Control System services) are starting to be of value.
NOTE: Don't even try the Microsoft Roadmap tool - everything is touched by "Copilot" at the moment.
Verdict: Substantial leap in productivity for knowledge-heavy teams, but the licensing uplift means it’s best justified via hard ROI analysis. There is value here and its worthwhile investigating - properly.
SharePoint + Loop
Q: Is Loop just the evolution of Fluid components? Or is it collaboration tasks on steroids?
Microsoft Loop takes the classic “container” model and atomises it. Even the smallest list or task becomes a .loop file, living independently but perfectly synchronised across your Microsoft 365 environment. Instead of a single document locked to SharePoint, Loop lets you spin up a voting table, tracker, or note, embed it in Teams, Outlook, or OneNote, and have it update everywhere instantly.
Fundamentally this is rebadging Fluid components and jamming them into Loop (SharePoint) pages, held in Embed (SharePoint) sites for management - without relying on SharePoint UI. Uniquely Loop introduces genuine cross-app integration! The components used aren’t tied to a single space i.e. a bulleted list started in a Teams meeting can migrate to a note in OneNote, resurface in a Planner task, and be actioned in SharePoint without losing context or sync. Which is pretty cool. Be cautious though, governance requires special care because Loop’s security model is a mess to manage, and external sharing is limited to the tenant.
Microsoft Loop is included in both the M365 Business and Enterprise plans so is available at no additional cost, but Loop components and Loop workspaces count towards your SharePoint and OneDrive quotas and the SharePoint Embedded sites used to hold the content are not fully integrated into the available management UI or frameworks for the rest of SharePoint. Also, need to monitor storage usage as part of Capacity planning - extra SharePoint storage is not cheap (~0.20c/GB).
Verdict: Excellent for fluid, cross-app work; incremental for static use cases. Licensing impact is currently low as the functionality is more tied to use patterns than costs. Investigate and understand what they are and how to manage them - Loop fundamentally changes the concept of 'document' in your environment.
Any others not covered?
Yes, there are quite a number, some are more interesting than others. Some extended the older integrations consolidating other products and services - Like Planner slowly subsuming To Do, Project Web App and so on, others slapping a new wrapper on recycled technologies like Stream and Clipchamp revamping the SharePoint/Azure media streaming services and desktop media editing suite.
So why have we posted this?
The goal of this article is to show you that, while we may be seeing a lot of other Microsoft 365 related products, new brand-names, and seemingly endless slew of 'feature releases' it's really important to understand that Microsoft's platform strategy for content is SharePoint.
Whether you can see it, like with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agents on sites, or you can't because its hidden underneath the surface (as with Microsoft Loop), you really need to understand the architecture behind the platform - because it's not going anywhere soon.
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If you have questions and want to understand more about Microsoft SharePoint, and why it is a critical part of 365 platform, give us a call: hi@timewespoke.com
About this article: Generative AI was used in the creation of images and to assess consistency in QA of this article. All content was created by author, based on released information from Microsoft. Any errors or issues with the content in this article are entirely the authors responsibility.
About the author: Jonathan Stuckey
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