SharePoint Online Wish List

SharePoint Online continues to iterate at a furious pace. Even in recent months with advancements such as SharePoint Copilot experiences, the new Brand Center, and SharePoint pages via e-mail, Microsoft has demonstrated that the platform shows no sign of slowing down.

However, there are still a few core aspects of the platform I wish Microsoft would address to advance it even further. Here are some wish lists items I have for SharePoint Online as of the end of 2023.

Modernize the Settings Pages

It is puzzling to me why the SharePoint team has spent so much time advancing the front end with the modern experience but has completely left the majority of the settings pages render in the classic UI. Not only is it jarring to go from modern to classic simply for admin experiences, but there are even feature parity mismatches between the classic pages and the modern experience. I understand that a lot of things that an admin would have to edit are now editable in the modern UI, but I would still love to see the admin pages get the same attention.

Make Templating Suck Less

Templating in SharePoint Online is still way more complicated than it needs to be. Site Designs are limited in what they can support, and PnP Remote Provisioning is a pain (particularly in the sovereign clouds). We should be able to create a site, customize as needed, and create another site from that template easily in the site creation experience by designating those as tenant templates. We can do it with Microsoft Teams, but for some reason it’s still very painful to create SharePoint site templates.

In addition to site templates, I really wish the page template experience would get a facelift. Right now when you create a page template it is limited to only that site collection. That’s a far cry from the old page layout model we used to have. I don’t miss master pages, but I do miss the flexibility and universal deployment of page layouts. It doesn’t appear the new brand center is going to solve this problem either.

Bring More Search Extensibility into the Admin Center

Right now extending Microsoft Search is limited to a handful of options in the admin center. While it has continued to improve and become more flexible, if you really need a lot of customizing, you’re forced to deploy the PnP Search Web Parts. I understand that keeping the solution as an open source solution does have some benefits, but it also requires deploying, updating, and it also limits support provided directly by Microsoft.

Much like the page layout comments above, as a long-time implementer, I remember the days of having a lot of customization directly inside the SharePoint admin experience. The Semantic Index is one of the most exciting advancements to search in Microsoft 365 in a long time, and I’d love to see that married with more integrated customization.

Advance the Term Store and Content Type Publishing

The Term Store and Content Type publishing have barely changed since both were originally made available. The Term Store has changed very little since SharePoint 2010, and there are so many things that would be wonderful additions to the taxonomic capabilities of a modern content management system. Advancing the polyhierarchical flexibility of the Term Store and significantly improved reporting are just two things that could make a big difference. This is especially true as tools like Syntex and Viva Topics are leaning into using the Term Store in really exciting ways.

Content Type Publishing is one of the most puzzling platform additions. The concept of Content Type Publishing is good, but in practice it is a nightmare to manage. From publishing errors, not handling changes well, and more, it’s not nearly as useful as it needs to be in a modern SharePoint architecture world.

SharePoint Advanced Management Should Be Free

I understand why Microsoft has introduced SharePoint Advanced Management as a premium tier. They are trying to find new revenue sources for customers who have already their base license investments. However, I feel like most of the features including sensitivity default label controls, reporting, and the lifecycle management policies should be available to all tenants. Requiring a $3/month license for every licensed user in the tenant really makes this a hard sell. This is especially important as customers are preparing for Microsoft 365 Copilot, and trying to get a customer to buy SAM and Copilot licenses is challenging.

Conclusion

There are other things I could get into such as expanding and maturing the out-of-the-box web parts and expanding tenant-level experiences, but this list stands out to me as some of the items that I interact with every day and would love to see progressed. Hopefully in time these items will get attention to improve the core experiences that have made SharePoint great for so long.