Hello Reader,

Day 1 of the Microsoft 365 Community Conference in Orlando just wrapped up, and I'm hanging out in my hotel room writing this email. It was a great day of discussing Microsoft 365 with various people in the Ask the Expert room, a couple of keynotes, and just hanging out with old friends and meeting new ones. If you're down here too, and I haven't seen you, let me know! I would love to meet up!

💡A Microsoft 365 Management Tip: 🎉 News from the Microsoft 365 Community Conference in Orlando 🎉

This week we're mixing things up a bit and departing from our regular tips and tricks as I wanted to fill you in on some of the news from the conference and the keynotes this morning.

So...onto the news...

• ​Microsoft launches SharePoint eSignature integration with Adobe and Docusign - Integration with Adobe and Docusing for electronic signatures has existed for a while, even in SharePoint on-prem. This is something new that is coming later this year. SharePoint eSignature is a new feature that's part of SharePoint Premium (Syntex) that adds additional functionality to the eSignature process. Until now (or when this is released), you could only use the Microsoft-included eSignature platform. With this, you can now use Adobe and DocuSign instead.
• ​Announcing SharePoint advanced management innovations for the AI and Copilot era - these are primarily updates around oversharing controls for SharePoint. With Copilot and AI, security has become a concern. Not because Copilot allows people to access anything more than they could previously; it just allows them to find information they have access to faster. A term used sometimes in SharePoint is "Security by obscurity"; hide stuff and hope people don't find it. That doesn't work as well anymore with Copilot. It surfaces data more broadly and quickly. More controls are being released in SharePoint advanced management to help report and remove permissions where that method has been used and content has been shared more broadly than it should.
• ​Unveiling the Newest OneDrive Capabilities - Guess what? The first is Copilot coming to OneDrive later this year (I know..big surprise). This was actually already announced, but it is getting closer. Everyone needs more Copilot, right? 😬 A little more "under the covers": there are some updates around the file viewer in OneDrive; you can now preview up to 300 file types as well as load those previews faster. Another one that is interesting is using what was known as Project Nucleus is now bringing Offline mode to the browser for files in OneDrive. We may have a future tip on this one and the ramifications for what this means for the space your browser (and its cache) takes up. However, this should also help with faster load times or internet "blips" when accessing files via the browser.

Just a few more overall updates from the month as well:

• ​Microsoft SharePoint Roadmap Update - May 2024​
• ​What’s New in Microsoft Teams | April 2024​
• ​What’s New in Copilot | April 2024​

That wraps up some of the news highlights so far from this week. I guess if I were to come up with a tip for the month, I would say to keep up with the news in Microsoft 365. There is so much changing in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem daily, weekly, and monthly that it's important to stay up-to-date. Various options are available through blog posts, YouTube, podcasts, newsletters, etc. Hopefully, this is a resource that helps you stay up-to-date. If you have any questions about anything or want more details on any of these topics, feel free to reach out!

Thank you all, and have a great day!

Ben Stegink

P.S. Are you interested in working with me to become a Microsoft 365 Expert?​

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