Prepare for SharePoint 2016

On March 14, 2016, Microsoft announced the general availability for SharePoint 2016. We have been testing it, along with many companies for the past year or so, and it offers great features and enhancements to the previous versions. If you have done so, I encourage you to download the software, test it out, and start preparing to move to it.

In this article, we will review some of the great new and improved features in the new SharePoint 2016 release:

Hybrid in SharePoint Server 2016

In SharePoint Server 2016, hybrid attributes are available to empower options for organizations:

1. Hybrid Sites: Hybrid sites characteristics allow your users to have experience that is integrated while using SharePoint Server and SharePoint On-Line portals. Users see them consolidated in one list, and can follow SharePoint Server and SharePoint On-Line sites.
2. Hybrid OneDrive for Business: Organizations can use profiles in Office 365, instead of on-premise; this is great feature if companies want to save on-premise storage.
3. Hybrid Cloud Search: With cloud hybrid search, all this stated functions can be carried out:
   1. You index each of your crawled content, including on-premises content. You can create the crawler in SharePoint Server 2016 Release Candidate. Use the exact same search connectors in SharePoint Server, and Office SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2010 and to crawl the same content sources 2013.
   2. When your search index is queried by users in Office 365, they get search results that are incorporate from both on- premises and Office 365 content.

App Launcher and UI changes

SharePoint 2017 and Office 2013 are pretty much identical now with the enhanced UI changes to 2016 and the introduction of the AP Launcher.

MinRoles

You can now select the role for the server when you configure SharePoint. By selecting the role, it will only install what’s required for this role, and nothing else, but it does better than that, it will make sure that all servers that belong to that role are compliant. But if you change your mind later, you can convert the server to a new role if needed.

Zero downtime patching and feature packs

No more downtime when patching your farm, but it requires high availability of each role. The updated bits will be much smaller and faster to install to allow the support of zero downtime. Also, Microsoft will be moving into more Feature Packs rather than Service Packs, to make the on-premise version as close as possible to Office 365 when applicable. And no, you will not have an on-premise Delve J. Expect the first feature pack to be ready for us in 2017.

List Threshold

The 5,000  view threshold has been removed; kind of J. SharePoint has always supported 30,000,000 items, but there was a limit not to have more than 5,000 items in a view, to prevent SQL locking that can affect your entire farm.

The 5,000 limit is necessary, but now the index will automatically be created, so technically, the limit is still there, but you don’t have to worry about it.

File Size Upload

Although I don’t recommend uploading large files for performance to store then in a SharePoint database, but the you can upload files beyond 2 GBs now.

Fast Site Creation

You can now create site templates to be used to create site collections in less than 1 seconds (compared to about 60 seconds in some cases). Using a PowerShell command, you will enable this feature and will allow you to start using the Fast Site Creation feature.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

With this particular new capability, you can:

1. Search for Company across SharePoint Online SharePoint Server 2016, and OneDrive for sensitive content.
2. Leverage 51 built-in sensitive information types (credit cards, passport numbers, Social Security numbers, and more).
3. Use DLP Queries in the site collection that is eDiscovery to find sensitive content relating from the SharePoint eDiscovery Center to business regulations that are common, identify violating files, and export a report.
4. Turn on DLP Policies from the Compliance Policy Center site group when documents with sensitive information are stored in SharePoint to notify administrators and end users and mechanically shield the files from improper sharing.