SHAREPOINT: ENHANCED EDITING REDUX
- Apr 14
- 3 min read
Author: Jonathan Stuckey
Audience: SharePoint solution designer, Intranet managers, Content authors
In January we did a tear-down of the pipeline of editorial features releasing. In between then and now there's been some tweaks changes and a sneaky new drop which means we get to do a revisit sooner than expected. Is it all exciting, daring and innovative? Hmmmm.
There's some pretty good stuff in there largely tied to Microsoft's SharePoint alternative News mgmt UI (a.k.a. Viva Amplify), we also see a lot of other capability being slowed-down while Microsoft ramps-up the SharePoint Agent focus. ...and that's a whole other article.
Enhanced editing experience
Table toolbar enhancements (394278)
a seemingly minor set of changes which crept in under the radar this week, replacing 'styles' (which were frankly awful as a formatting options) we get uplift with new tools plus actions like merge, split and add Space (?). Small, but significant because use is embedded on pages, including those generated from Viva Amplify for campaigns and digests.
For the first time in years table cut-n-paste from Word doesn't look awful and need a lot of reformatting to make it presentable on the page.
Hero webpart update: new layout and style options (395214)
Is this a much-needed make-over for layouts... or really just a distraction from lack of functional enhancement? Personally, it doesn't do a lot for the presentation experience in page editing and for the user we get.. Layers. In a page section. Hmmm.
There is a plus-side - because of the Viva Amplify campaign enhancements, new page-layout templates and Copilot 'Generative' creation of page content most things are now optimised for email as primary channel for consumption (as well as for cards in channels). Which means we can have handy tips on the page when adding flourishes using the Hero web part, so we'll know ahead of time it wont look good in the inbox.
Quick links webpart update: design ideas (482411)
Introducing use of Designer experience for Quick link setup. Providing formatting suggestions, it includes suggesting icons and images for a given link, as well as showing how the webpart would look with different card sizes, for single quick link webparts in a section.
It does the job fairly well.
Create pages with Copilot: (418126)
Use 1-click button, just a content scope and let Copilot generate page(s) of content. Having used it, if you are creating brochure-ware of generic content it worked ok. If you are happy to publish 'Microsoft Lite' pages of tech content, it worked ok. If you want a business process specific, localised version of content - you have a lot of curation to do.
What it is good at is generic quick-start - language is correct, grammatical and well presented. References are not captured from sources, and it lacks specifics for your organisation, but what it really needs is skilled editorial review of the output.
Today, it's not good enough for click-n-go, but its great as a starter. Consider though, 12-months ago we didn't even get this!
The downside
With the releases there have been a lot of dates pushed back. Some due to quality issue, some compatibility and others just timing of release. The one that we found frustrating:
Card animations (481510)
A much-needed addition to modernising content presentation in SharePoint (and by extension in Viva Connections, Engage and Microsoft Teams). This made a brief 'preview' in tenancy before being delayed until later in the year. The presentation experience left a lot to be desired on the rapid view we got but hopefully will get a better in actual release window.
Dashboard web part (486832)
The dashboard layout webpart will be made available on all sites and pages. Currently it is limited to Home sites only, so having access in any Team or Communication Site template is great news.
Addendum
In better news we are getting some pretty cool looking automation tools landing soon!
SharePoint Quick-steps (MC1025215) - more around automation, but useful in publish and release management, and
SharePoint Agents for Pages - embed an agent into a SharePoint page, to provide targeted experience and interactive assistance for the reader.
Assessment
On the whole these feature enhancements appear to work just fine. In the great tradition of rebranding and re-launching pre-existing functionality
Resources
Close
Keep an eye out for other SharePoint post on feature enhancements as they land. If you have questions and want to understand more about if or how Microsoft's services fit into your Intranet - give us a call: hi@timewespoke.com
About this article: No Generative AI was used in the creation of this article.
About the author: Jonathan Stuckey
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