Preparing for the Office 365 SharePoint Online Service Update

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Microsoft is rolling out an initial phase of service update for Office 365 SharePoint online. As part of this service update existing SharePoint online sites doesn’t get upgraded to SharePoint 2013 and users will not get the new SharePoint 2013 interface or features. The only major enhancement that will be visible is the new office web apps improvements. However, because of the underlying design changes, there are some actions that SharePoint online users need to perform to continue working with SharePoint online sites

  • If you are using SharePoint designer 2010 to customize the site or create workflows then you should download and install SharePoint Designer 2013 as SharePoint designer 2010 will not work with the updated SharePoint online.
  • If you are using InfoPath then apply the hotfix for SharePoint designer 2013
  • If you are using SharePoint workspace 2010 for offline access then apply the hotfix for SharePoint Workspace 2010
  • If you have integrated MS CRM online with SharePoint online then perform the list component fix mentioned in this blog post
  • If you use Internet Explorer 7 or Safari 4.x, you should upgrade to a modern browser

Apart from the above list of items the SharePoint Online Service Update has several other known issues with manual resolution steps which are listed here.

During the update, users will also see minor outages like

  • Some administrative functions such as granting permissions or creating new document libraries will be disabled for a brief period
  • Newly added documents will not be indexed by SharePoint search for a brief period
  • Content will be read-only for a brief period

Contact IOTAP if you want to know about the new features available in SharePoint online 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 and how it can help improve your business productivity.