Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced some changes to SharePoint Online this week that should make larger enterprise customers happy.

For starters, Microsoft is increasing Active Directory support from 20,000 to 500,000 Active Directory user objects. That's a significant increase and it changes the dynamic of the online product from a smaller organizational focus to a full-blown enterprise one.

Administrators should also like the ability to retrieve deleted materials from the SPO Administrative Center. And this is not your father's Recycle Bin. This new functionality even lets you recover entire site collections, as well as sites, documents, lists and list items.

If you make a mistake and delete something you shouldn't, you can recover, but it makes me wonder what kind of impact this could have on eDiscovery. Lawyers might be asking you to check the Recycle Bin.

What's more, you can now invite external users to collaborate in a SPO site, even when the user doesn't share a domain, which has to be a big relief for companies that work with a lot of outside vendors, suppliers and partners.

One other minor feature enhancement lets you open PDFs automatically in Adobe Reader instead of downloading them and opening them up manually. This should have been a given from day one, but at least it's there now.

For more information, including more details and links to related online resources:
- see the Microsoft Blog post announcing the new SharePoint Online enhancements

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