Archive: 2021 Release Notes
In-page click analytics with a heatmap
Administrators and power users will now have access to in-page analytics allowing them to see the heat map of page clicks on pages.
More details: In-page analytics heatmap for SharePoint Online and On-prem
Site directory will now get its ownership from the Owners group
Site directory will now get its ownership from the Owners group in SharePoint and not from the Authors list as was previously. This will provide the most up-to-date information about who are the site owners.
For groups, the directory will display a group name, and for individual owners, it will display the users’ name, see highlighted names below.
Site Directory is getting few UI improvements
Site Directory is getting few UI fixes to make sure it fits into tighter areas, like the right-hand side panel. Among these few fixes: the site tag will now be displayed below [All] and [Favorites] and Owners name will be cut if it overlaps with the site tag.
Info Directory is getting a few improvements
Info Directory is getting a few improvements:
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Users who prefer to use a mouse when searching will have an icon to help them initiate the search
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Content owners who have access to modify items in the info directory will now have the ability to delete the item from the [Edit] slide-out panel as shown below:
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To prevent accidents, we’re adding a confirmation window when the delete button is pressed:
News Carousel: Show or hide the events panel
You can now show or hide the events panel whether there are any events on the site or not. This way you can use the SharePoint events web part to show events elsewhere and not at the front of the page.
Example with events showing:
Without events:
The additional space, when events are hidden, will be given away to other parts of the carousel.
This feature is available in the web part properties
More details: Featured News & Events (legacy)
Banner: choose the text size
The banner will now let you change the size of the text.
The new property is available in web part options as shown below:
More details: Page Banner App (legacy)
People Directory: show additional profile attributes
People Directory can now display a custom searchable attribute for each employee. This attribute can be one of the existing SharePoint searchable attributes or a new attribute (ex.: assistant’s name).
More details: People Directory
FAQ: sort items in desired order
You can now choose how the order of FAQs will appear by providing the sort field. You can sort by Title, Date, Order etc
The web part property will allow you to provide any field you need or leave blank to let the system decide.
More details: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) App
Important Alerts Bar: Only alerts that fall within Start and End will show
It was reported that the alerts bar is showing all alerts regardless of the Start and End dates.
The issue is now resolved.
Poll: Suggest new poll now saves new suggestions in the list
It was reported that The Poll app is no longer saving new poll suggestions in the list on the SharePoint site.
The issue is now resolved.
Info Directory: Search for forms now matches words in any order
It was reported that the Info Directory doesn’t find items that don’t match exact order as they appear.
The issue is now resolved.
New Org Chart app (classic app still available)
In addition to a classic Org Chart still available, we’re adding a new org chart with improved navigation, branding, and extra options. Here is how it looks, and you can also find all the details about how it works here.
More details: Org Chart (SharePoint Modern in Office 365)
New People Directory look and options
People Directory now has a new look and many new options. You don’t need to do anything in your tenant, previous People Directory UI has been upgraded automatically.
Among other visual options, we’ve added:
- Ability to set how many users you can see at once:
- Ability to page through results:
- Ability to show and hide which fields will show in the employee contact card:
- Ability for end-users to switch between full contact view and compact view:
More details: People Directory
People Directory: show photos from AD or SharePoint user profile
People Directory can now pull employee pictures directly from AD or user profile.
More details: People Directory
Scroll to a section titled: [Advanced: Pull employee pictures from Azure AD or SharePoint User Profile]
5000+ more Icons: Premium Fontawesome icons are now available
You can now use any of the premium Fontawesome icons.
That’s 7,865 to chose from (as of this writing)
More details: Icons for Quick Links
FAQ app: limit how many items are displayed before View More button is shown
You can choose to display a certain number of FAQs on a page and if there are more FAQs than that, the app will display the [View More] button to load more.
More details: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) App
Scroll to section titled: [Limit how many FAQs are displayed on a page]
Info Directory: Web Part not loading when placed on the root SharePoint site of the tenant
The web part failed to load for tenants who placed it on the root SharePoint site.
The issue is now resolved.
Site Directory: slow load for users who have access to many sites
It was reported that the Site Directory app takes a while to load (sometimes up to 40 seconds) when there is a large number of sites that a particular employee has access to.
The issue was related to site ownership information loading all at once for all sites.
The solution involved updated to the user interface where owners are now loaded on demand when hovered the [owners] icon.
Recognitions app: employee picture not loading when the app is placed at the SharePoint root site
It was reported that the Recognitions app doesn’t display employee pictures if the app is on the root SharePoint site of the tenant.
The issue is now resolved.
Search analytics for the Info Directory app
You can now see what your employees are searching for in the Info Directory, how many results they’re getting, what are the searches that get no results, and what are the top searches.
More details: Info Directory app (Templates & Samples / Policies & Procedures)
Scroll to the section titled: [Advanced: Enabling search analytics]
Info Directory: Chose how initial result set before the "Load more" button is shown
You can now make the Info Directory app take less space by limiting the number of results to show before the “Load More” button is displayed.
This option is controlled via the Info Directory web part properties:
Feedback app
You can now quickly collect feedback from your employees on the site. Among a few new improvements, we added the ability to inherit the look and feel of the app from the main theme and customize the header to help you communicate what kind of feedback you’re looking for.
More details: Email Feedback App
Info Directory: Permissions for authors
It was reported that the app was displaying the [+New] and [Edit] buttons to all users even though no editing was allowed.
The issue is now resolved and the app displays [+New] and [Edit] only to users that have access to make changes.
Info Directory: Interface improvements for authors
We made a few usability improvements to how new items are added and edited in the Info Directory.
Among these changes are:
- More obvious [Save] button
- Less intrusive [Delete] button
- Easier way to add links and files
- More guidance on special characters that are not allowed
Info Directory: Open in new window not working
It was reported that the [Open in new window] option when adding files or links has stopped working. This is related to the roll-out of the new Microsoft URL router to simplify the page load.
This issue is now resolved and the app has been made compatible with the new URL router.
Banner: Color setting ignored until image removed
It was reported that the new instance of the Banner did not allow to change the background color unless the placeholder image was first added and then removed.
This issue is now resolved.
Idea Directory: Author not loading
It was reported that the idea directory fails to load the name of the author.
This is now resolved and the author picture along with the author name is loading for each card.
Heatmap analytics can be collected in parallel with Google Analytics
You can now collect data with Google Analytics while also collecting heatmap and scroll depth data on your pages.
To set start tracking with Google Analytics, enter your Google Tag Manager as described here:
Install Google Analytics tracking in your SharePoint site
To collect Heatmap and scroll depth page analytics enter the following key in the Config list on your Hub site:
Title: HeatmapAPI
Value: [URL provided by your ORIGAMI customer success manager]
Modern Org Chart: Updates take a while to pick up
We’ve got reports that the Modern Org Chart takes too long to pick up changes to the organization structure. We’ve updated the Org Chart to refresh itself every 8 hours.
Quick Links: Open in new window not working
It was reported that the [Open in new window] option in Quick Links has stopped working. This is related to the roll-out of the new Microsoft URL router to simplify the page load.
This issue is now resolved and the app has been made compatible with the new URL router.
Info Directory: Unable to add links with special characters
It was reported that the idea directory fails to add links that have some of the special characters common with SharePoint [share a link] functionality.
This is now resolved and these links can now be added to the directory.
Personal quick links / my bookmarks app
Based on the popular requests we’re adding the app that will allow employees to create and manage their own list of quick links, only visible to each employee. Here is an example:
This app will require an additional configuration in your tenant, be sure to read how to set it up here:
My Bookmarks / Personalized Quick Links app in SharePoint (legacy)
Modern Org Chart: Cache issue resolved
We’ve got reports that the Modern Org Chart cache took too long to refresh. The cache refresh has been now set to 8 hours.
News Header web part, Quick Links web part improved speed of load
We have improved the speed of load for the News Header web part and the quick links web part.
NOTE:
The solution in part uses caching of news items. This means that new items will appear in the carousel and featured items section after 20 minutes.
Banner: select from approved style guide colors
Banner has quickly become one of our most popular apps and it’s used everywhere.
We noticed that when authors add a banner to pages they don’t always know the HEX color of their approved corporate colors. To make it easier for authors, the banner will now have a picker with the approved style guide colors.
If a custom color is required it can still be entered manually as before.
Here is an example:
Modern SharePoint Org Chart: hide select users
It was reported that sometimes specific users need to be hidden from the Org Chart, even though they are still active in the system and have a manager assigned.
This functionality has now been added and users whose AD attribute msExchHideFromAddressList is set to 1 will not be shown in the Org Chart.
The same result can be achieved by setting Hide from address list option in Exchange Online for a specific recipient.
More on how to set this up: Org Chart (SharePoint Modern in Office 365)
Idea Directory: Choose which SharePoint site will keep your posts
Until now, all posts in the Idea Directory were stored on the current SharePoint site. This works great if you are the author of the post and also the site author or admin.
If you need Read-only users to be able to create new posts, this was a problem. Now, you can create a separate site where your new posts are stored and still show them on any page without users having to have Member access to that page.
More details on how to set this up: Idea Directory, Crowdsourcing/ Staff bulletin board in SharePoint (legacy)
Idea Directory: show or hide authors name
You can now choose to show or hide the author’s name in the card by using this option:
The result:
SharePoint sites with a background image
Customers who use the background image on their site were reporting that some web parts at the bottom of the page are surrounded by an extra white chrome.
This issue is now resolved.
News Carousel: Show or hide the events panel
You can now show or hide the events panel whether there are any events on the site or not. This way you can use the SharePoint events web part to show events elsewhere and not at the front of the page.
Example with events showing:
Without events:
The additional space, when events are hidden, will be given away to other parts of the carousel.
This feature is available in the web part properties
More details: Featured News & Events (legacy)
People Directory: show additional profile attributes
People Directory can now display a custom searchable attribute for each employee. This attribute can be one of the existing SharePoint searchable attributes or a new attribute (ex.: assistant’s name).
More details: People Directory
FAQ: sort items in desired order
You can now choose how the order of FAQs will appear by providing the sort field. You can sort by Title, Date, Order etc
The web part property will allow you to provide any field you need or leave blank to let the system decide.
More details: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) App
Important Alerts Bar: Only alerts that fall within Start and End will show
It was reported that the alerts bar is showing all alerts regardless of the Start and End dates.
The issue is now resolved.
Poll: Suggest new poll now saves new suggestions in the list
It was reported that The Poll app is no longer saving new poll suggestions in the list on the SharePoint site.
The issue is now resolved.