On the Future of SharePoint

Impressive stuff announced out of Redmond last week with the upcoming changes to SharePoint. Two of the more significant pieces were the mobile app and SharePoint homepage.

The existing SharePoint Newsfeed app has been nothing short of embarrassing (currently 2.5 stars on iOS) and was incredibly long in the tooth. SharePoint mobile had been an oddly neglected focus, mainly as the whole Yammer buzz rose and subsided over the past few years, so there’s only room for improvement here. Is it time to finally say the path forward is SharePoint and not Yammer? I hope so.

And there’s no better showcase for how the Office Graph shines than with the new SharePoint home page. It cuts through any poor site structure or navigation an organization has built and brings sites that actually matter to each user right to the front page.

The gaping miss still seems to be in how SharePoint lines up against Spark or Slack. They’re absolutely different in working style, but Microsoft can’t afford to not address this market. Regardless of whether it makes any sense for a business the new workforce wants to work this way, and not having a story is inviting the competition. It’s especially painful because Microsoft already owns a fantastic product in this space with GroupMe via their acquisition of Skype. Bringing GroupMe functionality to Office 365 Groups seems like a no-brainer to me, but there doesn’t seem to be a focus from Redmomd on this working style.

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Some personal background, links to related projects, and other ways to connect.

Hi there. My name is Tom Pacyk and this is my small home on the web. I love the intersection of design, technology, and communication, which is a combination that led me to a career in sales and marketing roles at places like Zoom and ServiceNow. They're a bit old now, but I also had the opportunity to publish a couple of books along the way.

Portland, Oregon is home for me, my wife Beth, and our three kids, but I'm actually a Midwestern transplant—I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and went to school at Purdue and Illinois. When I find some free time I'm probably going to concerts, rooting for the Portland Timbers, or working on my Sunshine Burn Photography project.