Preface

SharePoint is no longer a standalone tool; in the Microsoft cloud, it is the backbone of collaboration for tools such as Teams and Yammer. It is also intertwined with M365 Groups. It works for and with the Power Platform, Microsoft Forms, and Microsoft Purview. This book is not a how-to document or a step-by-step guide. There are tons of online resources that give you that and help you better keep up with the pace of change. This book is a planning guide to help you with context, capabilities, and considerations for implementing SharePoint Online in the most successful way possible and helping your organization adopt it to meet its business needs.

Who this book is for

This book is for the long-time SharePoint on-premises admin who is making a leap to the cloud. It is for the IT architect who has experience in other areas but has never worked with SharePoint. While someone with a background in IT could use this book to learn about SharePoint Online, it is best used by those with some experience in the SharePoint world or of other aspects of Microsoft 365.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Classic versus Modern SharePoint, will explore how the world of SharePoint changes as we move from on-prem farms to SharePoint Online. This will include a review of classic site templates, pages, and web parts, and how they have been either replaced or deprecated in the move to the modern experience. We will also use this chapter to introduce the capabilities of modern SharePoint sites and pages to readers who may not be familiar with them.

Chapter 2, Making the Move – Migration Options and Considerations, will look at how on-premises SharePoint can be moved to SharePoint Online and the common roadblocks along the way. We’ll look at migration tools and understand the process of moving to the cloud, including the best practices for handling different types of content and customizations.

Chapter 3, Modern Options for Customizing SharePoint Online, will define the best practices for customizing the SharePoint Online UI, including site templates and site themes. JSON formatting for lists and adaptive cards will be reviewed along with options and best practices for SharePoint development using SPFx.

Chapter 4, Understanding M365 Groups as the Foundation of Collaboration, will look at how M365 Groups are the building blocks of team sites in SharePoint as well as Microsoft Teams, Yammer, and Outlook Groups. The provisioning and governance of Groups, including securing and labeling them, will be a major portion of this chapter.

Chapter 5, Integrating SharePoint Online and Other Collaboration Tools, will reinforce the point that SharePoint doesn’t stand alone, but is a tool in the broader M365 toolbox. We’ll explore how SharePoint is the core of tools such as Teams, Yammer, Lists, and Stream, but also works with Planner, To Do, and Microsoft Forms to form a complete solution.

Chapter 6, Making SharePoint More POWERful, will explore how SharePoint integrates with Power Automate for workflow management and processing, Power Apps for form customizations, and Power BI for visualizing data. We’ll also plan for Power Platform governance.

Chapter 7, Up with Hubs, Down with Subs – Planning Hub Sites, will plumb the depths of the concept of hub sites available only in SharePoint Online. Hubs are a way to connect sites together to organize and navigate complicated organizational relationships. Viva Connections as an outcome of the work with hubs will also be explored.

Chapter 8, The Mega World of Metadata, will guide us along our planning journey to understand and best utilize metadata to drive the searching, sorting, and filtering of data in SharePoint and help us to leverage retention and sensitivity labels. SharePoint Syntex and Viva Topics will also be explored as knowledge management tools.

Chapter 9, Keeping Things Secure – Permissions, Sharing, and DLP, will deep-dive into how SharePoint security works in the cloud, including how M365 Groups play a part. Best practices for configuring and securing external sharing in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business, with the help of Microsoft Purview and DLP, will also be explored.

Chapter 10, The Human Side of SharePoint – Adoption and Managing Change, will focus on the adoption and change management aspects of moving your organization to SharePoint Online and M365. Our focus will be on the ProSci methodology of change management and practical advice for attaining deep and habitual adoption of our collaboration toolbox.

To get the most out of this book

Previous experience with SharePoint will be helpful to get the most out of this guide, as will any experience with the Microsoft 365 suite of tools. A desire to plan for, design, and architect compelling and adoptable solutions based on SharePoint is a must!

Questions at the end of each chapter are provided to guide your discovery and planning process. Please use the questions as a starting point to build your own architecture and governance document for SharePoint Online and the associated technologies that work alongside it in Microsoft 365.

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://packt.link/8fwP6.

Important note

The content inside some images in the book may appear blurred. These are only the instances where the content is irrelevant, and the reader is supposed to see how the interface looks.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: “The path is Apps/Yammer and gets automatically created and connected when the community is built.”

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: “Each channel has a Files tab, which displays the set of files stored for that channel.”

Tips or important notes

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