Previous versions of SharePoint
have struggled with scalability. Versions of SharePoint up to 2013 often run
very slowly when attempts to scale up are made. While SharePoint 2016 offers
improved scalability compared to the older versions, it still has a few
drawbacks that may prove burdensome to new users.
That said, SharePoint
2016 also provides better support for hybrid and cloud environments
than older versions. Hybrid and cloud environments have many advantages over
systems that are held solely on-premises, including better accessibility and
increased ease of patching and implementing system updates.
On-premises systems always
experience some downtime when they are updated or patched, which can lead to
decreased productivity, as well as a loss of earnings for businesses. The cloud
environment allows patching without downtime, which is an important advantage
for many organizations.
Despite these marginal
improvements, there are still distinct challenges presented by SharePoint 2016.
In the past, it was possible to
install SharePoint on a single server. This is no longer possible in this new
version. The removal of this important feature will prove inconvenient for some
organizations, although many will be able to leverage cloud server installation
instead without facing any problems.
Microsoft has also removed the
free, scaled-down version “SharePoint Foundation” of the product from this
release. That means small organizations now have to pay for the full enterprise
product, rather than being able to benefit from SharePoint with a more modest,
free offering.
Although the removal of this
option is likely to anger some users, this will not impact most enterprises who
are already paying for the full version of SharePoint, as the free version has
always been very limited in its capabilities.
Also of note, SharePoint 2016
lacks business intelligence capabilities. Microsoft has removed
business intelligence services from SharePoint 2016, along with social tagging
features such as the ability to “like” certain content. However, alternative
cloud services are available for organizations that were previously relying on
these features.
Finally, the future of InfoPath
Forms Services, a tool that integrates with SharePoint to allow users to modify
SharePoint list forms, is still unclear. Some users made heavy use of this
tool, creating hundreds of thousands of list forms. Around two years ago,
Microsoft announced it was planning to withdraw support from InfoPath.
Currently, the tool still receives support, but it is not clear for how long
this is likely to continue.
Though this has been available in SharePoint 2013 since SP1,
with SharePoint 2016 you can redirect your My Sites to your Office 365
subscription’s OneDrive for Business host. In other words, if a user clicks on
OneDrive, he'll be redirected to his Office 365 My Site and no longer to his
On-Premises.
Sites you follow in one place
Now users can click on “Follow”
both On-Premises and on their Office 365 and see them all in one place under
the “Sites” app in the App Launcher.
The wizard to configure either of
the simple scenarios above work very well, as long as you follow the
requirements.
This is what a lot of us have
been waiting for, a unified Search experience. Put simply, the Office 365
Search will take your On-Premises SharePoint Search Index so that it can give
you results from both for the same query.
You should know that you'll have
to use the Office 365 Search for this to work. If SharePoint 2016 On-Premises
users query against their On-Premises Search service, it'll continue to only
give them local results only.
However, once available, this
will allow users to fully embrace Experiences like Delve in Office 365 and more to come in
the future.
Our users couldn’t care less
about the technology they have to use, and even less if they're in Office 365
or SharePoint 2016. That’s why it’s important to provide them with an (almost)
identical interface to navigate both.
SharePoint 2016 introduces the
App Launcher, as well as changes to the UI, to help it match the Office 365
experience.
“SharePoint 2016
was built from the Cloud-Up” – Bill Baer
Hybrid isn’t the only thing to
get attention with SharePoint 2016, a lot of polishing has been done by
Microsoft after having used the platform themselves with Office 365.
You can now install just the role that you want
on particular SharePoint 2016 servers. This will only install what’s required
there, but even better, it'll make sure that all servers that belong to each
role are compliant. You’ll also be able to convert servers to run new roles if
needed.
You can even look at the services
running on the SharePoint 2016 server and see if they are compliant as well.
Now this will surely please many
of you managing the SharePoint servers, the size and number of the packages are
immensely reduced. They’ve also removed the downtime previously required to
update SharePoint servers.
A Document Library can have
30,000,000 documents, that’s never been an issue. However, many of you know
that 5,000 seems to be the actual limit for many end users that don't know they
had to index their columns.
I'll spare you the details, but
the 5,000 view threshold is actually necessary, or your entire SharePoint would
be slowed down. It prevents SQL from locking the entire database, really.
Instead of removing this
unpopular threshold, they automated the creation of Indexed Columns. This means
that, technically, the limit is still there, but you won’t have to worry about
it.
Though I still wouldn’t recommend
storing large files in SharePoint, you can now go way beyond the previous 2GB
limit for files. Though there's no real limit, Microsoft has strongly
recommended it stays at 10GB. Otherwise, end users will very likely get
disconnected, or get a time out while uploading large files.
By using a template, they're now
able to create Site Collections in 1 second. This compares well to SharePoint
2013 that takes up almost over 40 seconds sometimes. This will require a level
of configuration with PowerShell to set up.
Not only can you leverage a lot
of the compliance features in Office 365 with your On-Premises SharePoint 2016,
new sites have been introduced to help you stay in control.
The In-Place Policy Hold Center
and the Compliance Center allow you to build your own policies and apply them
against your environment. New basic policies allow you to delete data in
OneDrive for Business sites after an x amount of years for example, not unlike
“Retention Policies” if you think about it.
Can’t really go to work without a
mobile device of some kind these days and that expands to tablets as well now.
For this reason, you’ll find SharePoint 2016 comes with a touch friendly
interface.
The concept is simple, make sure
that links you sent to people to open or work on your content continues to work
regardless of what happens to the document. If the file name is changed or the
document moved, durable links should make it seamless to the user.
Problem is, I have no idea how it
actually works for a SharePoint user. I took the URL in the hover panel of a
picture, changed the filename and pasted the old URL and it did not work. I am
sure I am missing something, but will update this as soon as I find out more.
Update: It turns out that
Durable Links isn't necessarily a SharePoint 2016 new feature, you'll actually
need to have Office Online Server previously known as Office Web Apps Server.
Granted we typically have this when installing SharePoint On-Premises so
customers should benefit from Durable Links anyway. It works as described
meaning your URLs to documents will always work, great news.
The OneDrive for Business area is
turning out to be more than just a My Site. It aims to bring users to one place
to help them work with their files regardless of where they are. Now, you’ll
also be able to navigate your Sites and their libraries from there.
The following features and functionality have been
deprecated or removed in SharePoint Server.
Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP cannot be
deployed with SharePoint Server 2016. SharePoint Server 2016 doesn't have any
Duet components, so it will not install.
If you want to deploy Duet Enterprise for Microsoft
SharePoint, you must use SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise Edition.
SharePoint Foundation 2013 remains available for use.
Previous releases of SharePoint Server included SharePoint Foundation, a free
edition of SharePoint that included most of the core functionality and
architecture provided by the commercial editions of SharePoint. SharePoint
Foundation is no longer available in the SharePoint Server 2016 release.
SharePoint Server 2016 doesn't support the standalone
install option, so it is no longer available in the setup program. Use the
MinRole during installation and choose one of the available install options.
The Single Server Farm option where everything is installed on the same
computer is supported for dev/test/demo purposes. When you use this option, you
must install SQL Server yourself and then run the SharePoint Server 2016 farm
configuration wizard.
Earlier
versions of SharePoint used ForeFront Identity Manager client (FIM) to
synchronize between Active Directory and SharePoint. SharePoint Server 2016 no
longer uses FIM as the synchronization client. The default process is Active
Directory Import. You can also use any synchronization tool such as Microsoft
Identity Manager 2016, or any third-party tool. We'll soon release tools to
help you deploy and configure Microsoft Identity Manager 2016 to work with
SharePoint Server 2016 for identity synchronization.
Excel Services and its associated business intelligence
capabilities are no longer hosted on SharePoint Server. Excel Services
functionality is now part of Excel Online in Office Online Server (this is the
next version of Office Web Apps Server), and SharePoint users can use the
services from there.
If you currently use Excel Services in SharePoint 2013 and
upgrade to SharePoint Server 2016 you must also deploy Office Online Server
with Excel Online to ensure Excel Services functionality remains available.
The
following Excel Services functionality has been deprecated:
o
Trusted
data providers
o
Trusted
file locations
o
Trusted
data connection libraries
o
Unattended
service account
o
Excel
Services Windows PowerShell cmdlets
o
Opening
of Excel workbooks from SharePoint Central Administration site
The
following Excel Services functionality requires Excel Online in Office Online
Server:
o
Viewing
and editing Excel workbooks in a browser (with or without the Data Model)
o
Excel
Web Access web part for SharePoint
o
ODC file
support (no longer requires Data Connection Libraries)
o
Programmability
features such as JavaScript OM, User Defined Function Assemblies, SOAP and REST
protocol support
SharePoint Server 2016 requires updated versions that will
ship later this year. The SQL Server 2014 Power Pivot and Power View
add-ins for SharePoint Server 2016 cannot be deployed or used in SharePoint
Server 2016. To deploy these, add-ins you need to upgrade to SQL Server 2016
CTP 3.1. The following business intelligence features are available with
SharePoint Server 2016 when you download SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.1:
·
Power
Pivot Gallery
·
Scheduled
Data Refresh
·
Using
another workbook's Data Model as a data source
·
Power
View reports (standalone or embedded in Excel workbooks)
·
Power
View Subscriptions and Report Alerting
·
Power
Pivot Management Dashboard
·
BISM Link
support
The Tags and Notes feature is deprecated in
SharePoint Server 2016. Users can no longer create new tags and notes or access
existing ones. However, an administrator can archive all existing tags and
notes by using the Export-SPTagsAndNotesData cmdlet.
SharePoint Online and Office 365
run SharePoint 2013, but at a massive, multi-tenant, global sort of scale. The
product group develops new features, tests bug fixes and uncovers and fixes
other issues and conditions while running this software in production for
hundreds of thousands of customers. What emerges is a “SharePoint 2013 + Office
365 fix pack + Premium Cloud Add-on” sort of amalgamation that is sort of the
previous on-premises product version and sort of a cloud-specialized edition of
the product.
Microsoft took a snapshot of the
cloud service with all of these new features baked in and used that as a
starting point for further work on the on-premises product. Some features, like
Office Graph and Delve, were not really in a form that could be baked into an
on-premises version, but for these features there will be “cloud accelerators”
that one supposes will speed up the connection between corporate deployments
any existing Office 365 tenants a given company or organization has.
Interestingly, all SharePoint
2016 deployments will be farms consisting of multiple servers (or virtual
machines as the case may be). There are no more stand-alone deployments, even
in a lab scenario. Patching and updating has been significantly revamped with
the promise that with two MSIs per SharePoint core service and one language
pack, services can be updated during production business hours without taking
the service down.
Lots of work has gone into the
authentication and authorization stack for SharePoint 2016, as we move into an
increasingly cloud based world. Azure Active Directory, for instance, is
trusted by default. You will see SharePoint 2016 moving away from Windows
identities and more towards claims based authentication, authentication using
SAML, OAuto and WS-Federation—all to make deployment of both applications on
top of SharePoint 2016 and hybrid on-premises and cloud/Office
365 installations more seamless.
Finally, there is a new search
service that indexes both on-premises content within SharePoint 2016 and also
Office 365 or SharePoint Online content. The indexes will then be combined and
users can search a single time and have results that match their search query
string populated from both locations without any additional fuss.
As far as what the upgrade
process looks like, it’s decent if you’ve already moved to SharePoint 2013.
With some attention and babysitting, you’ll most likely be able to do an
in-place upgrade of your deployment to SharePoint 2016 without a lot of
additional work. To get this going, you’d simply attach your SharePoint 2013
database to SharePoint 2016. If you have sites on SharePoint 2013 that are
still using the SharePoint 2010 experience (in the industry these are known as
“14.5” sites to signify they’re between version 14 of SharePoint, which was
2010, and version 15, which was 2013), you’d need to move them to the 2013 user
experience before attaching the database.
|
Feature
|
Description
|
|
Access Services
|
New Access features are available when you deploy Access
Services in SharePoint Server 2016 .
|
|
Compliance features
|
New compliance features for SharePoint Server 2016 include
the document deletion and in-place hold policies.
|
|
Customized web parts
|
The compile time for customized XSLT files used for
Content Query, Summary Links, and Table of Contents Web Parts is improved.
|
|
Document Library accessibility
|
SharePoint Server 2016 includes new document library
accessibility features.
|
|
Durable links
|
Resource-based URLs now retain links when documents are
renamed or moved in SharePoint.
|
|
Encrypted Connections
|
SharePoint Server 2016 supports TLS 1.2 connection
encryption by default.
|
|
Fast Site Collection Creation
|
The Fast Site Collection Creation feature is a rapid
method to create site collections and sites in SharePoint.
|
|
Filenames - expanded support for special characters
|
SharePoint Server 2016 now supports using some special
characters in file names that were blocked in previous versions.
|
|
Hybrid in SharePoint 2016
|
Hybrid in SharePoint Server 2016 enables you to integrate
your on-premises farm with Office 365 productivity experiences, allowing you
to adopt the cloud at your own pace.
|
|
Identify and search for sensitive content
|
SharePoint Server 2016 now provides the same data loss
prevention capabilities as Office 365.
|
|
Image and video previews
|
You can now preview images and videos in SharePoint Server
2016 document libraries.
|
|
Information Rights Management
|
SharePoint Server 2016 provides Information Rights
Management (IRM) capabilities to secure information by encrypting and
securing information on SharePoint libraries with OneDrive for Business.
|
|
Large file support
|
SharePoint Server 2016 now supports uploading and
downloading files larger than 2,047 MB.
|
|
MinRole
|
MinRole is a new feature in SharePoint Server 2016 that
allows a SharePoint farm administrator to define each server’s role in a farm
topology.
|
|
Mobile experience
|
SharePoint Server 2016 offers an improved mobile navigation
experience.
|
|
New controls for working with OneDrive for Business
|
SharePoint Server 2016 provides controls at the top of
your personal document folders that make common tasks in OneDrive for
Business more accessible.
|
|
New Recycle Bin in OneDrive and Team sites
|
SharePoint Server 2016 adds a link for the Recycle Bin in
the left navigation area of the OneDrive and Team sites.
|
|
Open Document Format (ODF)
|
SharePoint Server 2016 adds support for Open Document
Format (ODF) files to use in document library templates.
|
|
Project Server
|
New Project Server features are available in SharePoint
Server 2016.
|
|
ReFS file system support
|
SharePoint Server 2016 now supports drives that are
formatted with the ReFS file system.
|
|
SharePoint business intelligence
|
SharePoint Server 2016 now supports SQL Server 2016 CTP
3.1 and the Power Pivot add-in and Power View.
|
|
SharePoint Search
|
SharePoint Search Server Application has significant
changes to its deployment.
|
|
Sharing improvements
|
SharePoint Server 2016 has many new sharing improvements
available.
|
|
Site Folders view
|
SharePoint Server 2016 provides a new Site Folders view
that lets you access the document libraries in sites that you're following.
|
|
Sites page pinning
|
This new feature helps you see and follow sites.
|
|
SMTP Connection Encryption
|
SharePoint Server 2016 supports sending email to SMTP
servers that use STARTTLS connection
encryption.
|
|
SMTP ports (non-default)
|
SharePoint Server 2016 adds support for SMTP servers that
use TCP ports other than the default port (25).
|
|
Web Application Open Platform Interface Protocol (WOPI)
|
You can now rename files, create new files, and share
files from within the WOPI iframe on the browser page.
|
It is very clear that Microsoft
is putting its focus on the cloud. Up until recently, Office 365 was built from
the foundation and features of SharePoint. For the past year or so, this has
changed. The focus of new features and innovations come to Office 365 and
SharePoint Online first and new versions of on premise SharePoint will
incorporate the user features and back-end infrastructure that powers Office
365 going forward.
For those who prefer to remain on
premise, there are many improvements coming to SharePoint 2016 that will help
make SharePoint a more scalable and easier to manage platform. Microsoft has
learned a lot by hosting Office 365 themselves. They are experiencing the same
pain points that IT Pros feel while managing on premise SharePoint. Therefore,
while Microsoft continues to make things more scalable and easier to manage for
themselves in Office 365, those with on premise infrastructure will benefit
from these improvements as well.
If you are considering a hybrid
environment (both on premise SharePoint as well as Office 365) the story is
looking very strong going forward. Along with the many infrastructure
improvements, there are many new features coming that make it easier to connect
the on premise environment with the cloud and vice-versa. Many of the
innovations in the cloud, including the Office Graph, are required to remain in
the cloud due to the enormous amount of processing power needed to power these
services. However, new connectors will be available to allow on premise to
utilize these features.
·
Role Management has been built
into the configuration wizard and PowerShell for installations. A server can be
assigned to a role (Web Server, App Server, etc.) and the server is automatically
optimized for that role. Health checks have been put into place to monitor the
assigned roles and show warnings when the server has deviated from its role.
Role assignments are optional but recommended for peak performance.
·
SharePoint Server 2016 will
utilize zero-downtime patching.
·
File Upload performance has been
improved in SharePoint 2016.
·
The User Profile Service has been
improved with performance and reliability improvements as well as bidirectional
sync.
·
Faster site collection creation.
·
SAML will be the default
authentication protocol for SharePoint 2016.
·
Stand-alone installs are no
longer supported in SharePoint 2016. The option has been removed from the
configuration wizard.
·
Upgrading to SharePoint 2016 will
require coming from SharePoint 2013 and be accomplished through the
database-attach method.
·
Nothing has really changed with migration.
You will use the same methods and 3rd party products to migrate to a SharePoint
2016 environment as you would to a SharePoint 2013 environment.
·
A Data Migration Pipeline API was
developed by Microsoft to make migration to Office 365 much faster, easier, and
more reliable. 3rd Party migration tools will likely utilize this API to
improve migrations to Office 365.
·
A unified user profile. Followed
documents and sites will also follow you across both environments.
·
A new Cloud Search Service
application will be provided in SharePoint Server 2016. This service
application will provide a unified search index that will be used by both your
on premise environment as well as your Office 365 environment.
·
The Cloud Search Service
application also allows on premise environments to integrate with Office Delve.
While Delve itself will remain in the cloud, it can include content from your
on premise environment.
·
Yes! A new OneDrive for Business
Sync client will be pushed out later in 2015. This new sync client will be
essentially the same as the personal OneDrive sync client. It will be more
reliable, faster, and it will also provide selective sync capabilities.
·
Yes! While we don’t know the
details yet, we know site collections will be supported up to 1 TB and the
5,000 item list view threshold will be increased.
·
Most of the news around
development was announce at the Build conference that occurred the week before
this Ignite conference. Overall, Microsoft is taking a big step toward modern
web technologies for future versions of SharePoint. This opens up SharePoint
development to all web developers who understand JavaScript, HTML5, CSS and the
modern frameworks and tools that are used for web development today.
·
Development for Office 365 and
future versions of SharePoint is stronger than ever. As proven by the Patterns and Practices team and Microsoft, nearly everything
you could develop on premise can also be developed in the cloud.
·
Site Templates and features are
still supported but are no longer a focus. Instead, using the robust SharePoint
REST APIs are preferred. This will allow provisioning to be cleaner, faster,
and easier to migrate. It will also allow developers and vendors to create a
SharePoint provider hosted app that will provision both on premise and
SharePoint Online site collections and sub sites from one location!
·
NextGen Portals can be considered
a new destination available to end users that provide access to content across
the Office 365 suite. These portals are developed using JavaScript, CSS, and
REST using the Office 365 and SharePoint APIs that are available to developers.
They not only provide an easy to use destination for content, but also
demonstrate how powerful solutions can be developed on top of the existing
SharePoint platform.
·
The Office 365 Video and Office
Delve portals are already available. Office 365 video is your Video
destination. Powered by Azure Media Services, the portal handles all of your
video encoding and streaming for you.
·
Office Delve is your source for
finding content around people. You will want to visit your Delve portal if you
want to discover content that could be relevant to you. It is also a great
place to track your own content since it shows everything you have been working
on from across the entire Office 365 suite.
·
Microsites consists of a simple
UI around a collection of content. This content can be created using the new
Authoring Canvas that is coming to SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2016. This
authoring canvas provides a modern way to create content for a web page. It is
very similar to Office Sway. In fact, the team working on the Authoring
Canvas is working with the Sway team to provide a similar experience. The pages
produced with the Authoring Canvas are clean and mobile friendly.
·
Later this year, Microsoft will
release the new Knowledge Management portal (now code named “Infopedia”). This
new portal will pull definitive content that has been curated by users into a
single destination. This content will come from Boards, which are now
integrated into Delve, as well as more curated content in the form of
Microsites.
·
Office 365 groups are currently
being rolled out to subscribers. You can think of a Group as a distribution
list on steroids. Once a Group is created, it will be available in Mail,
Calendar, OneDrive, Delve, and OneNote. In the future, it may include Yammer
and Skype as well.
·
Another way you can think of
Office 365 groups is as a replacement for common SharePoint Team Sites. Rather
than users going to a single destination (a SharePoint site) to find all of the
content for the team, the content is now accessible across the Office 365
suite.
·
The advantage of Office 365
Groups is the fact that they are integrated across the entire Office 365 suite.
They can be created by anybody, and they provide an easier way to have
conversations and share content across both static and dynamic teams. They will
also be highlighted in Office Delve with their own profile pages.
·
Yammer will support single sign
on with Office 365 accounts. This is already being released so you may already
have it.
·
Users will be allowed to include
external users into their conversations. Yammer will automatically announce
when the external user has joined the conversation and also when they have left
the conversation.
·
A new, cleaner, and simpler user
interface will be coming to Yammer.
·
Yammer cards will begin appearing
in Office Delve for relevant conversations. You will also be able to have
conversations around any content in Office Delve just by clicking the Yammer
icon in the content card.
·
Office Groups will be great for
small dynamic teams; You’ll want to use Yammer if for more open communication
across the organization.
·
Deep Dive into Safe SharePoint
Branding in Office 365 Using Repeatable Patterns and Practices
·
Building Business Apps Like
They Do in the Valley with AngularJS, Node.js, and More
·
Get Your Hands Dirty with the
Office 365 RESTful APIs
·
Office 365 unified API
·
Using Git with Microsoft Visual
Studio Team Foundation Server or Visual Studio Online
·
Maximize Your Coding
Productivity for Modern Apps, Devices, and Services with Visual Studio 2015
·
Dealing with Application
Lifecycle Management in Microsoft Office 365 App Development
·
Microsoft Visual Studio for Web
Developers
·
Deep Dive into Custom App
Provisioning and Deployment in Microsoft Office 365
·
Billing and Subscription
Management in Microsoft Azure
·
Preparing for Your Office 365
Project: Proper Planning Prevents Poorly Done Deployments
- Containers in Windows, Azure and Beyond
- ExpressRoute for Office 365 and other Network Connection
Options
- Migrating to Microsoft: VMware to Hyper-V and Microsoft Azure
- Best Practices for Design and Performance in SharePoint
Online
- Implementing Next Generation SharePoint Hybrid Search with
the Cloud Search Service Application
- Configuring OneDrive for Business Deployment: Options and
Best Practices
