See why we're excited for SharePoint Server 2016

SharePoint 2016

Our top picks from the upcoming SharePoint Server 2016 are: Server Role Configuration, Combined Server and Office 365 experience and a familiar look and feel.

Microsoft have released the SharePoint Server 2016 preview for IT professionals to get a look and feel for how the new system works. There is a lot of new features coming, these are the ones we are most excited about:

REVIEW OF 5,000 VIEW LIMIT:

As many of you know a document library can hold 30,000,000 documents, however realistically you could only view 5,000 of them on a query if you hadn’t indexed the columns. This limit hasn’t been removed, but SharePoint Server 2016 has automated the creation of indexed columns, so the results from queries are more accurate so the 5,000 limit isn’t such a problem.

SERVER ROLE CONFIGURATION:

When configuring SharePoint Server 2016 you can specify what the server’s role is within the server farm. For example a Front End role is optimised for fast performance, so you would select this role for servers that have a high rate CPU. Alternatively you might have a server with high processing functionality so you would configure that server for Application or Distributed Cache so it’s optimised for high throughput.

FAMILIAR LOOK AND FEEL:

SharePoint Server 2016 has been updated to look very similar to the Office 365 SharePoint experience. This includes an app launcher in the top right corner which can be modified to include regularly used apps, as well as new ones that your developers create bespoke for your business. Additionally the Office 365 API has been included in SharePoint Server 2016 so newly developed apps can be launched and shared across both hosting methods.

Specify Server Role

COMBINED SERVER AND OFFICE 365 SEARCH EXPERIENCE:

It’s been a long time coming, but now if you use the Office 365 search it will take your On-Premise SharePoint Search index and return results from both areas for the same query. This however does not work the other way, as in an on premise search will only yield results from local sources.

There is plenty more functionality coming with SharePoint Server 2016, take a look at this blog from Benjamin Niaulin for a deeper look into it.

Jesse Lawrence

Jesse is our marketing manager, keeping an eye on the latest news in the market as well as having worked on the GDPR legislation.