Project Online – Performance Improvements related to Create & Publish operations

New changes are being rolled out as of 1st Oct 2018

How does this affect me?

After these changes takes place, your users will be able to: - Change the way After events are handled in Project Online with Asynchronous After Event Handling. Project detail pages will load more quickly if they use add-ins that rely on After events. Work with the developer of your add-ins to see if you can benefit from this change. If so, enable the new “Turn on Asynchronous After event processing” setting available in the Additional Server Settings page of your Project Online administration panel. - Get back to work quickly during a Publish Job. We are changing the way the Publish function works in Project Online. Now, when a Publish job is started (either by the user pressing ‘Publish’ or a Project Detail Page triggering it), the user will be able to get back to work quickly. - Start projects sooner with shorter wait times in the Project Create feature. We’ve moved the ‘Create Summary Resource Assignment’ task to a separate queue job. These feature changes are rolling out now and the rollout is anticipated to be complete by mid-October.

What do I need to do to prepare for these changes?

You don’t need to do anything to prepare for these changes. Microsoft is gradually starting to roll these changes out now.

Access Web Apps are being retired from SharePoint Online

Last reminder from Microsoft: Access Web Apps are being retired from SharePoint Online

Action required by 1 July 2018

As originally announced in March 2017 and communicated again over the last year, Microsoft no longer recommends Access Services for new apps. This feature is being retired from Office 365.

How does this affect me?

Starting on April 2, 2018, Access Web Apps databases were set as read-only. Starting July 1, 2018, Access Web Apps will be uninstalled (and underlying databases will be deleted).

What do I need to do to prepare for this change?

We encourage you to take immediate actions to migrate valuable data from active Access Web Apps. There are multiple ways to migrate Access web apps data; export to SharePoint Lists, export to local Access database (.ACCDB) and export to SQL Server – are a few examples. In SharePoint Server this feature will be supported in accordance with the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. This announcement has no impact on the Access Desktop product, and on Access Desktop databases (.accdb). We recommend customers explore PowerApps as the successor of Access web apps, and the future for declarative business applications.

If you need further assistance please contact: support@projectsolution.com

Office 365 Changes (21st May 2018)

Notification of NEW and UPDATED from Microsoft Office 365;

New feature: Customized Sharing Defaults per SharePoint Site Collection
In SharePoint Online, Default sharing link types and Default sharing link permissions are now available to be customized per site collection. We've begun rolling this out now, and it will be available worldwide by the end of June. While our goal is to ensure we notify you in advance of upcoming changes, we acknowledge we did not provide timely notice for this change. We will continue to look for ways to improve our notifications.

Updated feature: Versioning settings in OneDrive for Business, and team sites in SharePoint Online
  Major Update: Announcement
We're enabling versioning on all Document Libraries in OneDrive for Business, and team sites in SharePoint Online, including both group-connected team sites and team sites not connected to an Office 365 Group. We'll be gradually rolling this out to Targeted Release customers in early June, and the roll out will be completed worldwide by the end of July.

Updated feature: StaffHub admin page
We have updated consent information on the Microsoft StaffHub admin settings page. This is located in the Office 365 admin center, under Settings > Services & add-ins. StaffHub is now using TeleSign Corporation to deliver certain limited and ancillary services for StaffHub

Project Online desktop client with Project Server 2013

Important Note from Microsoft;

We continue to upgrade our Cloud offerings, including the Project Online Desktop, to provide our customers with the latest capabilities and up-to-date online experiences. Due to these ongoing updates, beginning September 15, 2018, we will be removing the ability for the Project Online desktop client to connect to those versions of Project Server outside of mainstream support, including Project Server 2013.

Overall, this milestone is part of the end-of-life journey for Project 2013 Standard, Professional and Server. Prior to this, support for the connection between Project Professional 2013 and Project Online ended on August 31, 2017 while April 10, 2018 marked the end of mainstream support for Project Server 2013.

SharePoint Online Social Bar (Major Update)

New feature: SharePoint Online Social Bar

	Major update: General Availability rollout started
	Applied to: All customers

The Social Bar is a new Office 365 feature. This feature is scheduled to roll out to Targeted Release customers later this week, and it will be available for all organizations on April 1, 2018. This message is associated with Office 365 Roadmap ID: 23708. [How does this affect me?] The Social Bar will appear on all modern SharePoint Online pages with the exception of the home page of a site. It will give your users the ability to like a page, see the number of views, likes, and comments on a page, and see the people who have liked a page. This visibility will be available to anyone that has been granted access to view the page. This feature will be launched default on. As administrator, if you wish to disable Social Bar for your organization, you can do so with the following PowerShell command: To disable Social Bar on a tenant level: Set-SPOTenant -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $true To disable social bar on a site level (for https://prepspo.spgrid.com site): Set-SPOSite -Identity https://prepspo.spgrid.com -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $true [What do I need to do to prepare for this change?] There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. Please click Additional Information to learn more.

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Mainstream support for SharePoint & Project Server 2013 will end in 4 months

Just a heads-up in case that you still have SharePoint environments running on SharePoint 2013:

Mainstream support for SharePoint 2013 will end on April 10th, 2018:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=sharepoint%202013

After this date only security fixes will be provided for SharePoint 2013. Regular hotfixes can no longer be requested.

If not already done we recommend to start planning the migration to SharePoint Server 2016 as soon as possible.

This is not the only thing to consider after this date: starting with April 10th, 2018 the required patch level to request support for SharePoint 2013 will also change.

Currently all patch levels starting with SharePoint 2013 SP1 are supported. Starting with April 10th, 2018 this will change. In order to request support from Microsoft after April 10th, 2018 the SharePoint server farm has be on a patch level of April 2017 CU or later. A year later, after April 10th, 2019, the SharePoint server farm has be on a patch level of April 2018 CU or later.

This change is outlined in the Updated Product Servicing Policy for SharePoint 2013 published on TechNet.

Below is a table which outlines the required patch level for SharePoint 2013 till end of the extended support phase:

SharePoint Server 2013 and SharePoint Foundation 2013 Releases
Support End Date

Service Pack 1
4/10/2018

April 2017 CU – March 2018 CU
4/10/2019

April 2018 CU – all future CU
4/11/2023