News

Microsoft Readying Previews of New SharePoint Online WebParts

• By Kurt Mackie
• February 21, 2018

Office 365 subscribers will begin seeing previews of new and updated SharePoint Online WebParts in about two weeks' time, according to Microsoft.

WebParts are components that end users can insert into SharePoint pages using a graphical user interface. In a Monday announcement, Microsoft described some upcoming WebParts, including Planner, Office 365 Connectors, Kindle Instant Preview and Twitter.

The new Planner WebPart can be added to any page or news article, showing the overall status of a project along with the progress of individual team members in a graphical display.

Office 365 Connectors WebParts let users connect to information from outside sources. For instance, it's possible to connect to services from "Asana, Bitbucket, Jira, GitHub, Stack Overflow and more," according to the announcement, although these Connectors are "only available for use within group-connected SharePoint team sites."

The Kindle Instant Preview WebPart lets users place links to previews of books for access by Amazon Kindle e-readers.

The Twitter WebPart permits the embedding of Twitter feed links.

Microsoft also plans to update its Power BI WebPart, permitting interactive reports to be added. It's also planning to update the Image WebPart with the ability to automatically suggest "alt-text" metadata tags for use with inserted images.

The arrival of these new and updated WebPart test versions is somewhat ambiguous. Microsoft described a rollout to "Targeted Release" subscribers (meaning those who get test releases) in this way:

New and updated web parts will begin to roll out to Targeted Release customers two weeks from the time of posting and will be completed within 3-4 weeks. We are targeting end of February 2018 for complete worldwide roll out.

That description seems to mean that Office 365 subscribers to SharePoint Online test releases will see the changes at the end of this month or sometime in March.