Office 365 Distilled EP 48: A suspicious weasel and our Christmas wish list

In this episode, we talk about our wish list, the features that are on the roadmap to still come out in December, we would love to see being released, the things we are yearning for. We did this last year as well!

Wish list item 1: Break out rooms in Teams

This is probably the most obvious one. For all the Christmas parties to come, break out rooms would be just perfect. 

Update: This was released in 2020! Score for Microsoft!

Here is a great overview of the new Breakout Room features
 

Wish list item 2: Enable Communication site features in classic SharePoint sites 

This feature on the roadmap allows you to set up, via powershell, to move classic sites into Communication sites. 

As an added bonus, this would be possible to do for your root site as well. 

Wish list item 3: Whiteboard with external people in meetings 

I am a big fan of drawing while in meetings. The online version, Whiteboard is a pretty cool tool. You can, in a meeting work in a visual way. Unless you have external people in your meeting because Whiteboard doesn’t work with them. 

Padlet, Mural, Miro are apps that deliver these features, including external access. 

Here is the UserVoice item for it.

Update: Microsoft is planning this to be released in March 2021 according to the roadmap.

As a bonus, there are plans to store WhiteBoards in SharePoint according to this roadmap item.  

Wish list item 4: Add sensitivity labels to containers: Groups, Sites. 

This allows you to start archiving, information protection and retention labels on containers. 

Wish list 5: Calendar view for Lists 

Modern Lists are awesome. But as a longtime lover of everything SharePoint, the calendar view needs to come back too. 

It just makes sense. 

Update: This was released in 2020. It works brilliantly, but it could do with some of the formatting options that Lists get: If I can add colored labels just as I can in Outlook, that would just make sense to add some visual distinction of items. 

Wish list 6: Site report: Active time spend on the site 

A number of extra Site Usage reports are coming to your site. When you have a communication site, this might be a great way to show how people are using information. 

It might be used in the future to decide if a site can be archived (if nobody is visiting the site). 

Lockdown Whisky: Wild Weasel and Jura Superstition

Because of lockdown, Marijn is at home drinking a discontinued whisky from the Hebridean islands: A Jura Superstition. The Jura has no age statement, tasting notes has some “urinal cakes” as found online, but luckily that is nowhere to be found. It is kept in bourbon barrels and had caramel coloring. This Superstition is lightly peated. 

Steve stays in Belgium and tries the Wild Weasel Single Cask.

The Weasel is a 3-year-old single cask coming from the small, modern Wilderen brewery nearby Sint-Truiden in Belgium.  They have both a sherry cask and an oak cask whisky. Of course, Steve is going with the banana smelling oak cask.  

On the nose, salty and fruity. Golden amber warm color and a smooth honey and almond taste. The finish has pinapple and pepper.  

About: Marijn

Marijn Somers (MVP) has over 14 years experience in the SharePoint world, starting out with SP2007. Over the years the focus has grown to Office 365, with a focus on collaboration and document management. He is a business consultant at Balestra and Principal Content Provider for "Mijn 365 Coach" that offers dutch employee video training. His main work tracks are around user adoption, training and coaching and governance. He is also not afraid to dig deeper in the technicalities with PowerShell, adaptive cards or custom formatting in lists and libraries. You can listen to him on the biweekly "Office 365 Distilled" podcast.