Death of a Salesman

In my fairly recent “Time to move on 🙁” post I forewarned about the impending demise of the SharePoint Online Public Facing Web Site.  Well, today the dreaded, bordered in black, letter fell through my digital letter box.

The message in full:

You can read the full rationale, the plan and your options at: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/3027254/information-about-changes-to-the-sharepoint-online-public-website-feature-in-office-365

So, today is the 7th April and unless I take urgent action my public facing web site will be become inaccessible to my customers on the 1st May.  That leaves me just 3 weeks, which ain’t much time unless you have been steadying yourself for this to happen.

Being prepared for this is exactly what I advised in the above linked post and I have decided (for reasons I won’t repeat here) to transition my on-line presence to WordPress.  The problem is that I am not quite there yet (you are reading this post on my new web site but there are still some missing bits from the web site itself).

It’s all a little bit disappointing because my business is all about how to get the best out of SharePoint and if I can’t use it myself to show off my wares to the public then it sends entirely the wrong sort of message.  So, its a sad day.  Those of us who use the public facing web site of SharePoint Online as their shop window now have to endure the agonising death of their salesman.

I suppose I can’t bitch too much as I’ve know that this was going to happen for 2 years and, if Microsoft are true to their word, I can still claim an additional grace period of 10 more months.  It seems likely that this new extended deadline of 31 March 2018 (extended only for those request it) is likely to be hard and fast.  If you haven’t sorted you life out by then, well tough.

The process to request/set up a stay of execution to 31 March 2018 seems simple enough. Go to the SharePoint Admin site and click Settings (note, not the Settings menu in O365 Admin).

Select the stay of execution radio button and click OK to save the setting.  And, if Microsoft have done things right then I’ve still go the best part of 11 months left to complete the transition – I guess we’ll see on the 1st May.