Matt Mulherin – Applications Consultant
SharePoint 2016 is scheduled to be released in the second quarter of 2016 with many new features for both cloud and on-premises (on-prem) deployments. Of the 26 new SharePoint 2016 features listed on Microsoft’s TechNet site, I will highlight my favorite five. The big focus with SharePoint 2016 seems to be helping organizations to bridge the gap between their on-prem SharePoint data with their Office 365 data, which Microsoft refers to as Hybrid. Many organizations still choose to use the on-prem SharePoint product and do not want to fully commit to the cloud (SharePoint Online via Office 365). Some organizations may choose to invest in some of the Office 365 offerings such as email, Office web applications, and OneDrive. I understand the hesitation of some organizations to fully commit to the cloud, and based on the SharePoint 2016 features, it appears Microsoft also understands this.
Here are my five favorite features:
- New Hybrid in SharePoint 2016
- Sharing Improvements
- File Size and Name Limits Improved
- Mobile Touch Friendly Interface
- Protect the Organization’s Sensitive Data
New Hybrid Support
Is there confusion around your organization’s strategy regarding where to store documents? Some organizations have two OneDrive deployments, one on-prem and one in Office 365. If so, SharePoint 2016 can remedy this by redirecting the on-prem OneDrive to the Office 365 OneDrive.
Does your organization have sites on-prem and in Office 365? If so, you can help your users by allowing them to “pin” a site, which will add the site to a combined list of sites that can reside on-prem and in Office 365.
Do your users complain they can’t find information because some of it is on-prem and some in the cloud? One of the most highly anticipated hybrid features allows users to search both on-prem and Office 365 content in one place.
Sharing Improvements
Collaboration and the sharing of information between your employees is key to the success of any company. SharePoint 2016 boasts some new and improved sharing features. Users will be able to do the following:
- Create and share folders
- View sharing hints
- Quickly see who the folder is shared with currently
- Share with other members
- Take advantage of improved invitation email
- Approve or deny a request for access with one click
File Size and Name Limits Improved
SharePoint has historically blocked files larger than 2GB and files with certain characters in the name. In SharePoint 2016 users can upload files up to 10GB in size and the names of the files can contain special characters like &, ~, {}, leading dots, and the name can be longer than 128 characters.
Mobile Touch Friendly Interface
People are increasingly accessing the internet through mobile devices. With SharePoint 2016, users can utilize their mobile devices to interact with SharePoint using a newly designed touch enabled interface. Here is a screen shot of what it looks like in the Preview version of SharePoint 2016.
Protect the Organization’s Sensitive Data
Responsible organizations today use a variety of controls and policies to keep their data safe and secure. Sometimes users will unknowingly upload documents into SharePoint with private information in them (e.g. Social Security Numbers, Credit Card Numbers, etc…). SharePoint 2016 has a way to help find this sensitive data and assist in the process of removing it. SharePoint Administrators can run reports that find sensitive data residing in SharePoint and OneDrive documents. The exportable reports identify offending documents so the document owners can properly protect this sensitive data.
More to Come
As we think about the next version of SharePoint, it appears Microsoft is focused on delivering value to customers as part of their on-prem deployments, while at the same time making it easier to take advantage of cloud innovation thru hybrid deployments of SharePoint. New features are being developed and we know they be will categorized as improved user experiences, cloud-inspired infrastructure, and compliance and reporting. Keller Schroeder is committed to our clients utilizing SharePoint and we plan to publish more insights about the exciting new features of SharePoint 2016 in the future. Stay tuned!
