Microsoft 365 Revolution

As described in my first discovery article about SharePoint spaces, the key findings are:

• SharePoint space is not a webpart or a set of web parts. It is rather a new “space” to organize specific 3D webparts so it is a new sort of page and it is placed at the same level as pages in SharePoint hierarchy. In this space (like in normal page) you have access to webparts (3D webparts here).

• No need to have complex 3D objects to put in your space, you have several cool ways to organize and present 2D objects (see Adding 2D Webparts in the space).

• You have right now basically four actions available : inspect, link to another space, play audio, link to a page or item.

Here are the basic steps of any SharePoint spaces configuration:

1. Creating my landscape
2. Creating my 3D objects
3. Giving life to the space by setting actions
4. Resulting space and next steps

1. Creating my landscape

I would highly recommend to have already defined and collected all your destination links. In my case, it is a corporate meeting with a live event in the morning and several workshops in parallel during the afternoon. These events, channels and organization have been created into Teams.

So it’s easy to get the links to the corresponding meetings

In SharePoint space, I just created a space, I choose the spiral structure

and a cool landscape picture

To make your space more customized or more contextual you have four choices:

Image is a real picture. Only natural landscape are available here.

Illustration is a very schematize picture with only two options. One landscape with mountains and trees (the one below) and one with sand dunes.

Color is a solid background.

Custom 360° file provide the best way to define a more corporate landscape. With this file:

you get the very cool view like that:

2. Creating my 3D objects

From there it is easy to put images and text artefact

Images can be selected from Stock Images (like in PowerPoint) or from SharePoint and OneDrive libraries:

Each object in the 3D space can be manipulated on a cube space :

Here is the resulting display:

On the left I have access to my plenary meeting and on the right I put 4 images one for each workshop.

In order not to have an empty space in front of the these images, I put an “Image 360°” webpart with a podium in front of that. The flat image is this one:

and it appears on the sphere in front of the screens giving access to the meeting rooms. It could obviously be bigger if needed.

3. Giving life to the space by setting actions

As said above you don’t have much actions available to give live to your small 3D world 😊. Here, for my needs, I have exactly what I need: link to a page or an item.

It is supper easy to select each image and set the “on trigger” (understand “on click” action)

once this done et space republished, you just have to click on your artefact in the 3D space (here my image) to jump outside the space to the Teams meeting:

And this was our business requirements.

4. Resulting space and next steps

So here is the resulting 3D space that could favorably be compared to a similar SharePoint landing page:

So for my first real business case with SharePoint space, I am pretty convinced by the fact it makes 3D design really easy and accessible to (almost) everybody. I feel confident that we can provide new innovative and interactive ways to share content using SharePoint spaces.

But as usual, we can expect and wait for more interactions than the 4 first ones.

And 3D design and content mastering is definitely not a quick and simple. So to improve your skills in this area that can be used in PowerPoint as well, Microsoft published an interesting page 3D Content Guidelines for Microsoft linking to this interesting a PowerPoint deck

Let me know if you find this example useful and what are your findings and feelings with SharePoint spaces in particular and with the whole Microsoft 365 in general.

I am very happy to have been able to build my first 3D spaces in SharePoint. Here are my first findings in 5 short paragraphs.

1. What is it and prerequisites
2. Creating your SharePoint space
3. Adding 2D Webparts in the space
4. Adding 3D Webparts in the space
5. Adding a Document Library or a file

I created a second post to describe My first 3D project on how to create a 3D landing page for a corporate event with SharePoint spaces

1. What is it and prerequisites

_{SharePoint spaces is a web-based, immersive platform, which lets you create and share, secure and extensible mixed reality experiences. Add a new dimension to your intranet by using 2- and 3D web parts to create your mixed reality vision.}

You can find documentation on Support.Office.com here.

The feature is still rolling out on the roadmap so you might still wait a little bit to test it in our tenant:

To use the feature, you must first activate it Site level. Go to Settings / Site Information/ View All site settings / Manage site features to activate the Spaces (preview) feature:

2. Creating your SharePoint space

Once enabled, you can create a space exactly as the same level as where you can create a page. So SharePoint spaces are not webparts!

You then have to choose a name (mandatory) and a description (optional):

You can as well here change the default structure which is the default 3D place where your artefacts will stand:

You can from here define the overall design of the space with many options.

Background image is interesting as it allows to use a flat image and curve it automatically to make it the virtual walls of the space, like that:

Flat image:

Automatically curved image in the space:

view to the top

view to the bottom

Another very interesting option is the capability to add a sound file as a welcome message and an ambient sound as well.

From here your space feel really empty so you need to populate it with some web parts. There is a plus sign on the upper left side of your space, clicking on it you have access to a palette of 9 webparts:

You have basically 2D objects like :

• Text
• Image
• People
• Video

which are displayed as a flat screen floating in the 3D space. You have many options there to precisely position your artefact in the 3D space. But on a 2D screen it’s not always easy to position these artefacts at the correct place. You should think that the default space is like a round table above which you put your things.

Selecting each object you can modify parameters by clicking on the pencil

With the podium parameter for example

Each object can be floating in the air or stand on a podium.

Each object have an Actions parameter pan where we can set default actions for when you click on the 3D object and others actions that will show up:

you have 4 types of actions possible:

So here for my text object here, I can define the following action in the parameter pane:

On trigger means the default action on left click and “More actions” will be proposed on right click. And it displays like that in the 3D space:

4. Adding 3D Webparts in the space

And then you have 3D webparts.

360° Image take a flat 2D Image and render it on a globe.

It’s exactly like taking a map of Earth and displaying it on a globe.

Here for example the two maps are from the same flat file.

It’s exactly like taking a map of Earth and displaying it on a globe.

360° Video take a flat 2D video and render it on a globe which can produce strange results.

3D object webpart allow to incorporate directly into the space a 3D model. and there a re a lot of already proposed 3D models.

5. Adding a Document Library or a file

And you have the document library object that can be used to display a combination of 3D objects, 36° images, 360° videos, documents and 2D videos. It is currently not supported showing 2D images in a document library.

By clicking on a file you make it bigger and have the option to open it

The funny part is that using the wheel of the mouse you can make the files rotate smoothly.

6. My first 3D use case: creating a 3D landing page for a corporate event

My first 3D use case was driven by a customer need. I had to create a 3D landing page for a corporate event. I described it on this second post:

Creating a 3D landing page for a corporate event with SharePoint spaces