I recently had an interview with Business Insider’s Matt Weinberger, where he asked me what made SharePoint so popular. Without hesitation, I said it was because it empowers people in the organization to do things without having to go to IT or a Dev all the time. But today’s users have different expectations and are accustomed to getting it themselves easily over the internet. It’s why SharePoint needs a change.

In many ways, today Microsoft is hitting Reset on SharePoint and bringing it to current expectations and requirements. Here is a list of what’s new for SharePoint.

New and Upcoming Features in SharePoint

Both SharePoint Online with Office 365 and SharePoint On-Premises are getting updates. You’ll see a lot of these show up in the next quarter, and others by the end of 2016.

I know you'll likely have a lot of questions about these, so stay tuned to this blog in the coming days as I will dive deeper into each one. To get the Microsoft version of updates, see their post.

This video summarizes everything new about the SharePoint Team Site, and all that works around it if you have 18min.

New Sites Home in Office 365

More than just a new look, I think this will help people create Sites easily, as well as find what they need quickly.

AND LOOK! It doesn’t say Sites anymore at the top, SharePoint is back on the map with its named tile.

And creating Sites in SharePoint now asks you a simpler question.

SharePoint Mobile Apps – Intranet in Your Pocket

I’ve been using the Mobile App for a few weeks now with On-Premises SharePoint, as well as Office 365, and it's awesome. You’ll even be able use it with your SharePoint 2013!

Microsoft Flow Is The New Workflow

Before you jump to conclusions, the SharePoint Workflows are still alive and strong. Today’s needs, however, are often a lot broader, and it'll take more than just SharePoint and the new Flow to solve these. As you see above, it’s available and integrated right from Lists and Libraries.

SharePoint 2016 Gets Love with Feature Packs

Customers with SharePoint 2016 will see updates called Feature Packs come their way to bring the updates done for SharePoint on Office 365 back to On-Premises.

New SharePoint Team Sites

SharePoint Team Sites are getting an update, and will also automatically create an Office 365 Group. The other way is also true: when creating a Group, it'll give you a full, modern Team Site now.

When creating Sites, you’ll also be able to identify whether or not it will contain sensitive data, so others in the site know what it’s for.

Once the Team Site is created, you’ll see a new Home Page that allows you to add or edit Posts for your site. You can also view this as a new way of doing announcements, as well. The Home Page also leverages Office Graph to show relevant content below the news section.

New SharePoint Document Libraries

I’ve already gone over the new SharePoint Document Library in detail, but now we know the Export to Excel is back, Explorer View is there, Custom Actions still work without any change or effort, and much more… Very exciting.

New Publishing Pages

Simple and responsive, you’ll be able to use the same Page Canvas you already have in Delve Blogs as Publishing Pages in your SharePoint Site.

Simple SharePoint Site Analytics

Finally, you can get a little more insight about your SharePoint Team Site by going to Site Contents.

Move and Copy Files from your OneDrive for Business to Team Sites and within Team Sites

Take files you're working on from within your OneDrive for Business (the “Me” place for your work), and move or copy the files to a Team Site when it becomes part of the “We” work in your organization.

You can also move or copy files to different document libraries within your Site.

The Future of SharePoint Is Bright

Though this was just a summary of the SharePoint updates, I can already tell you that I'm very excited about these changes. Easier to use and catching up to today’s expectations from software like SharePoint, I'm sure we'll see an even greater adoption of the platform.

Change is often difficult to take, as we're worried that it’ll impact us in a negative way, or that our routine will change. If you notice the screenshots, you'll still be able to return to Classic Mode, and this will be the case for months to come.

Those on SharePoint 2016 will get all of these updates, and will be able to choose when to install the Feature Pack themselves.

But, in general, given that there's no reduced functionality, and quite a lot of updates to the User Experience helping them use it more, my bet would be that you’ll want to make the switch sooner rather than later.

In the next few days, I will be diving deeper into each of these new SharePoint features and announcements. Stay tuned and watch Sharegate's blog for updates.