Okie before this if you have a doubt whether there will be any on-premise version of SharePoint 2016 or not or only Online version, the answer is even if Microsoft is investing heavily or planning heavily for SharePoint Online, Office 365, but still SharePoint 2016 will have both On-Premise as well as cloud version. But there will be no foundation version. So there will be no Free version which has previously with each versions of SharePoint.
Well in SharePoint 2016, Microsoft introduced the new hybrid site features. Hybrid sites features allows your users to have an integrated experience while using SharePoint Server and SharePoint Online sites. What does this mean? User will have seamless experience when they use SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview and Office 365 for enterprises together.
Hybrid site features usually does two things:
- Once you configure hybrid feature, then hybrid users will have a single place of information in Office 365. So the profile information of all the hybrid users will be maintained in Office 365. So now if you click on any user profile in SharePoint server, it will redirect to their Delve profile in Office 365.
If you choose a SharePoint audience while configuring hybrid site feature, your on premises non hybrid users will have a SharePoint server profile as well as they will have a Delve profiles in Office 365 if they are licensed Office 365 users.
- Consolidated user followed sites in Office 365. Previously If you are using both SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint online, whenever you followed a site, then there will be different followed lists for sites in each location.
But if you enable hybrid site feature then When a user follows a site in SharePoint Server, it is added to the followed list in both SharePoint Server and Office 365.
When ever user click on The Sites tile in the app launcher it will redirect to Office 365.
Remember this feature will be only for sites, not for follow document or follow people. Those things will not affect.
Remember followed sites lists in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview are not migrated to Office 365 when you turn this feature on, user will have to manually follow there SharePoint server sites after the feature turned on.
Hybrid OneDrive for Business:
SharePoint 2013 introduces Hybrid OneDrive for Business, if user clicks on OneDrive, s/he'll be redirected to her/his Office 365 My Site and no longer to his On-Premises. Meaning when user choose for SharePoint personal files in App launcher in SharePoint server 2016, user will be redirected to OneDrive for Business in Office 365. User can access there documents from anywhere in any devices like iPhones, Windows Phones, tablets etc.
Cloud hybrid search:
SharePoint 2016 introduced Cloud hybrid search.
Through Hybrid Search, you can search files and documents across SharePoint Server 2016 and SharePoint Online.
Through this you index your on-premise content to your Office 365 SharePoint online search index. Now when users query your search index in Office 365, they get unified search results from both on-premises and Office 365 content.
2- Identify and Search Sensitive Information or content in SharePoint 2016 and OneDrive using DLP (Data loss prevention):
- Microsoft provides Search for sensitive content across SharePoint server 2016, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. DLP for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business is now built into your existing Enterprise Search. It allows you to search for sensitive content in your existing eDiscovery Center. Permission to use the eDiscovery Center is role protected to ensure that the right peopl, not everyone in your organization, have access to run these queries and review sensitive content.
- There are 51 built in sensitive information types such as credit cards, passport numbers, Social Security numbers, bank account numbers etc. Check out all
here.
- You can identify offending documents, export a report, and adjust accordingly if required.
3- Preview Image and Video in document library:
In SharePoint 2016, When you upload image or video files into a document library, you can see a preview by hovering the mouse over the image or video, or by clicking on them.
4- Larger File Support:
Here is a good news if you are dealing with larger files, SharePoint 2016 supports uploading or downloading files larger than 2,047 MB (2GB). You can download or upload file size upto 10GB. Which you can configure on per web application basis.
5- File Name Character Restrictions Expanded:
In SharePoint 2016, Microsoft removed below restrictions from file names:
- You can use &, ~, {, and } characters in file names.
- Also Microsoft allowed file names that contained a GUID, file names with leading dots, and file names longer than 128 characters.
6- UI Changes with App Launcher in SharePoint 2016:
I personally did not see a major UI related changes in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview. But in SharePoint 2016, Microsoft introduced the App Launcher which was there in SharePoint Online Office 365 previously.
7- Document Library accessibility and Open Document Format (ODF) Support:
In SharePoint 2016, you can use Keyboard shortcuts for below document tasks:
Alt + N - New
Alt + E - Edit
Alt + U - Upload
Alt + M - Manage
Alt + S - Share
Alt + Y - Synchronization
Also SharePoint 2016 provides drag drop as well as it displays progress bar while uploading document library.
SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview adds support for Open Document Format (ODF) files to use in document library templates. User can create new files in a document library and save as ODF files.
8- Enhanced Mobile Experience in SharePoint 2016:
If you are accessing a Team site in your mobile then you can tap tiles or links on the screen to navigate the site. You can also switch from the mobile view to PC view easily.
9- MinRoles:
Now you can install specific role that you want on any particular SharePoint 2016 servers. SharePoint automatically configures the services on each server based on the server role, optimizing the performance of the farm based on that topology. There are 6 predefined server roles provided by Microsoft:
- Front end
- Application
- Distributed Cache
- Search
- Custom
- Single-Server Farm
10- No Downtime Patching:
In SharePoint 2016, there will be no downtime while installing any patches in the server. If this will be case then your SharePoint farm will be online when you are doing patches.
11- Fast Site Collection Creation:
SharePoint 2016 provides a template and You can now create site and site collections very quickly using PowerShell and that template.
12- Improvement in Threshold Limit:
This is another cool feature, SharePoint 2016 will do an automatic indexing when your SharePoint list increases the threshold limit. Just you have to choose this option in the Automatic Index management section.
13- SharePoint Search Improvements:
SharePoint 2016 Search supports indexing of up to 500 million items per Search Server application.
14- Sharing Improvements:
SharePoint 2016 has some improvements in Sharing. You can create and Share folder, You can see who the folder is shared with when viewing a folder. There is improvements in the invitation email.
15- New Recycle Bin in OneDrive and Team sites:
SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview adds a link for the Recycle Bin in the left navigation area of the OneDrive and Team sites.
16- Improvement Compliance Features:
In SharePoint 2016, through document deletion policy you can delete documents in user's OneDrive for Business sites after specific periods of time.
17- Information Rights Management:
SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview provides Information Rights Management (IRM) capabilities to secure information by encrypting and securing information on SharePoint libraries with OneDrive for Business.
18- Site Folders:
SharePoint 2016 provides Site folders is linked to OneDrive for Business web and takes users directly to the document libraries within sites they follow. Users can access all their work files at one place and manage them all from one location in OneDrive for Business.
