June 21, 2016

SharePoint 2016



 

SharePoint 2016 vs. Previous Versions

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.

 

Limitations of SharePoint 2016

Despite these marginal improvements, there are still distinct challenges presented by SharePoint 2016.

 

Single Server Install

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.

 

Free SharePoint

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.

 

Business Intelligence and Social

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.

 

InfoPath Forms Services

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.

OneDrive Redirection

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.

Hybrid Cloud Search

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.

 

App Launcher and UI changes in SharePoint 2016

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 Infrastructure and Performance Improvements

“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.

 

MinRoles

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.

Zero Downtime Patching

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.

 

Removed 5,000 View Threshold – sort of

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.

Increased File Size for uploads

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.

Fast Site Creation

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.

New Compliance Center in SharePoint 2016

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.

 

New Collaboration Experience in SharePoint 2016

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.

Durable Links

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.

 

Site Folders

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.


Features deprecated in SharePoint Server 2016

The following features and functionality have been deprecated or removed in SharePoint Server.

 

Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint

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

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.

 

Standalone Install mode

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.

ForeFront Identity Manager client (FIM)

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 in SharePoint

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 BI capabilities

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

Tags and Notes

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.

A snapshot of the cloud

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.

Upgrades and migrations

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.

Summary of features

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.

FAQ’s

What Direction Is Microsoft Heading with Office 365 AND SharePoint 2016?

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.

What Is New for IT Professionals in SharePoint Server 2016?

·         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.

What Is Being Taken from IT Professionals in SharePoint Server 2016?

·         Stand-alone installs are no longer supported in SharePoint 2016. The option has been removed from the configuration wizard.

How Do We Upgrade to SharePoint Server 2016?

·         Upgrading to SharePoint 2016 will require coming from SharePoint 2013 and be accomplished through the database-attach method.

How Do We Migrate to SharePoint Server 2016?

·         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.

Any Improvements to Help Migration to Office 365?

·         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.

What Will Be New for Hybrid Environments?

·         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.

Will OneDrive for Business Sync Be Improved?

·         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.

Will Content Thresholds Change in SharePoint Server 2016?

·         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.

What’s New for SharePoint and Office 365developers?

·         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!

What Are Nextgen Portals?

·         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.

What Are Office 365 Groups?

·         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.

What Is New for Yammer?

·         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.

When Do I Use Yammer and When Do I Use Office 365 Groups?

·         Office Groups will be great for small dynamic teams; You’ll want to use Yammer if for more open communication across the organization.

Some important Functionalities that can be used by User Type Defined

 Branding

·         Deep Dive into Safe SharePoint Branding in Office 365 Using Repeatable Patterns and Practices

 

Development

·         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

Infrastructure

·         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



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