Microsoft on Wednesday announced the new version of its SharePoint Online (SPO) product, a component of the company’s Office 365 service, will be pushed out to all very soon. The company says the SPO release is based on feedback it received, resulting in new features, better performance, a simple user experience, more admin controls, and the stability improvements.
Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t say when SPO customers will be able to “self-upgrade” to the new version beyond just the word “soon” – there’s no date to mark on your calendar. That being said, the company did say Office 365 customers will be notified “approximately four weeks” prior to their upgrade.
Furthermore, as is typical for products that enterprises uses, customers will have the opportunity to postpone the update (for a minimum of two months). Businesses will naturally appreciate the gesture, though as my colleague Alex Wilhelm notes, this quite an amusing decision for a Web app.
Still, it’s a necessary one. Even Google, known for pushing updates very quickly, delays new features for the enterprise side of its apps.
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So, what exactly is new in the new SPO? Microsoft has a lengthy post explaining the top 10 features, which we encourage that you read. A brief overview is as follows:
- Users benefit with new ways to share internally and externally and anonymously, in how they search and discover the right information and people and how they build sites and experiences in a more self-service fashion.
- Project managers now have better ways to organize documents, project details and timelines.
- Developers are no longer limited on the types of solutions they can deliver to the Office 365 cloud.
- IT Professionals can more easily manage sites and permissions on behalf of their entire company.
If that floats your boat and you want to upgrade, all the details you need are available here. You can also find help over on the Office 365 Community forum.
Top Image Credit: Eastop
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