SHAREPOINT: PUBLISHING FEATURE RELEASES
Author: Jonathan Stuckey
Audience: SharePoint solution designer, Intranet managers, Content authors
After many (many) fallow-years for SharePoint web publishing and editing experience from Microsoft, they have extended areas of investment beyond just "Copilot", to enhance this key platform capability of content management and presentation.
The important themes that came through in the investments last year seem set to continue in the 2025 roadmap too. Areas which have been dead-in-the-water are now coming alive, such as:
applied brand identity
rich media management and sharing
publishing and editorial support
All of these things give organisations some of the control back to Communications and Branding roles, but accordingly they will now require the operational governance and training to support the users of this capability.
SharePoint Online Publishing Features released in 2024
2024 was actually a bumper year, with many of the features being released in a low-key manner, whereas in some cases there was completely unwarranted fan-fare for a few of them (see previous article on the Enhanced Editing Experience). The illustration below shows just how broadly focused the releases were - and we have covered most in deployment and review.
Upcoming Features and Enhancements for 2025
With nearly a quarter into 2025, the early release functionality has been a bit of a damp-squib (see early access of Flexible Sections), others in preview a looking very strong. At Spoke we are particular anxious to get hold of content creation, rich media and theming enhancements - there are many customers who have been waiting a long-time for these.
Excitement
One we are particularly interested to see how well it is delivered, is the approach to additional colours in themes - especially as Microsoft has not had a coherent model for applying this in SharePoint since 2016, and the Modern UI has some serious inconsistencies when they apply Primary, Secondary and Tertiary colours across chrome, pages, webparts and system admin areas.
With the focus on brand-identity showing in the roadmap, it would be good if we can get a good, consistent experience for applying it across SharePoint, Microsoft Teams and (some extent) Viva - and hopefully not in such a minimal application like the Font packages from Branding Centre.
Fingers crossed!
Assessment
3 months into 2025 and we are getting clarity on the releases, both which are good, and which are not so good and need more time. Enhancements to existing features or components and usually more robust, but the new features like Motion, Animation support and Accessibility checking will be a welcome addition, regardless.
Resources
Close
Keep an eye out for more posts later this year, where we show new content publishing features in action in the real-world.
If you have questions and want to understand more about if or how Microsoft's services fit into your Intranet - give us a call: hi@timewespoke.com
About this article: Generative AI was used in the creation of visual images used to illustrate the release content phasing. All content was created by author, based on released information from Microsoft. Any errors or issues with the content in this article are entirely the authors responsibility.
About the author: Jonathan Stuckey
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