What s New in SharePoint 2016 and Office 365
Introduction Microsoft announced in August 2015 the availability of the SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview, and has also discussed the new version in various blogs and interviews. While general availability is still anticipated in the first half of 2016, here is a summary of new features, enhancements and changes you can expect in SharePoint 2016. Information in this document is based on the SharePoint 2016 IT Preview and is subject to change before general availability. 2
System requirements SharePoint 2016 will be supported on Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016. One of the notable improvements is that SharePoint 2016 will support Resilient File System (ReFS) in addition to current support to NTFS. SharePoint 2016 will be supported on SQL Server 2014 and SQL Server 2016. Deprecated features FOREFRONT IDENTITY MANAGER (FIM) In SharePoint 2013, user profile synchronization relies on Forefront Identity Manager, which provides a two-way import from Active Directory to SharePoint and vice versa. However, this has been one of the more problematic services in SharePoint since its introduction in SharePoint 2010. In SharePoint 2016, the built-in version of Forefront Identity Manager is being retired and replaced by Microsoft Identity Manager. Accordingly, in SharePoint 2016, the built-in version of FIM is being retired and replaced by Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM). Essentially, SharePoint will no longer have a built-in two-way synchronization engine; it will simply have a built-in import engine, which is Active Directory import. Active Directory import was introduced in SharePoint 2013 and provides a performance gain for one-way imports of user profile information from Active Directory Domain Services into SharePoint. This change is of particular importance to organizations that leverage Business Connectivity Services (BCS) for synchronization for example, enterprises that augment their user profiles by having one connection to Active Directory and another connection to an HR system. It is also important to organizations that use two-way synchronization between 3
SharePoint and Active Directory. Microsoft is planning to provide upgrade scripts to enable you to migrate your configuration from SharePoint 2013 into SharePoint 2016. However, organizations with more complex user profile synchronization will have to carefully plan and test their migration from SharePoint 2013 to 2016. STAND-ALONE INSTALL OPTION With SharePoint 2016, Microsoft is removing the stand-alone installation option offered in SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013. This option, which was used primarily for development environments, automatically installed SQL Server Express and configured the farm on a single computer. To achieve similar results with SharePoint 2016, you will need to deploy SQL Server and then configure the SharePoint farm separately using the SharePoint Farm Configuration Wizard in Central Administration. SHAREPOINT FOUNDATION SharePoint 2016 will not have a Foundation Edition. Organizations using this free on-premises deployment will have to either stay with SharePoint Foundation 2013 or upgrade to SharePoint 2016 Server Standard or Enterprise edition. SHAREPOINT DESIGNER AND INFOPATH Microsoft is not planning to release a new version of either SharePoint Designer or InfoPath. However, the current versions (possibly with some service packs) should work just fine with SharePoint 2016. 4
New infrastructure features ENCRYPTED CONNECTIONS A security vulnerability was identified in the SSL 3.0 protocol that could allow an attacker to decrypt data. For enhanced security, some SharePoint features now by default disable SSL 3.0 connection encryption, as well as certain encryption algorithms (for example RC4) with known weaknesses. To address this issue, SharePoint 2016 uses TLS 1.2 connection encryption as follows: When you set up an SSL binding in Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager to host your web application, SharePoint 2016 uses TLS 1.2 connection encryption if your client application supports it. SharePoint 2016 also supports TLS 1.2 connection encryption when connecting to other systems (for example, when crawling websites). SharePoint 2016 will also support restricting access by IP addresses configured directly from SharePoint rather than IIS. The user must be using an SSL-enabled URL. SMTP ENHANCEMENTS SharePoint 2010 and 2013 always leverage port 25 for any communication, and data cannot be encrypted. SharePoint 2016, however, enables you to choose other ports for communication, and it supports STARTTLS connection encryption. These options can be configured through Central Administration: Browse to System Settings -> Configure outgoing email settings and set the SMTP server port to the port number of your SMTP server and PowerShell, using the Set- SPWebApplication cmdlet with the -SMTPServerPort <Port number> parameter. Note that if SharePoint 2016 is configured to use SMTP connection encryption, it will send email messages only if it successfully negotiates connection encryption with the SMTP server. If connection encryption negotiation fails, it will not fall back and send email messages unencrypted. If SharePoint 2016 is not configured to use SMTP connection encryption, then it will always send email messages unencrypted, even if the SMTP server supports connection encryption. SharePoint 2016 enables you to choose ports other than port 25 for communication, and it supports STARTTLS connection encryption. 5
ENFORCED SERVER ROLES FOR BETTER COMPLIANCE Although previous versions of SharePoint included documented recommendations for server roles, such as front-end or application server, these roles were not enforced. As a result, understanding, optimizing and scaling the SharePoint topology was difficult, and security was problematic there was no way to prevent a search crawler from running over the front end, for example. In SharePoint 2016, these server role recommendations are codified with MinRole. MinRole provides five predefined server roles, each optimized to support its function within a server farm environment. When provisioning SharePoint Server 2016, the administrator selects the appropriate role for each server (web front end, single server farm, search, application, distributed cache or special load), and the role determines which services run on the server (see Figure 1). Subsequent health checks will trigger alerts if a given server is no longer compliant with the role it was set up with. To ensure flexibility, the special load role enables a server to be deployed with no rules about the services that must run on it. AUTOMATIC INDEXING OF LARGE LISTS SharePoint 2016 includes a new automatic indexing timer job for large lists, named job-list-automatic-index-management. This job automatically creates list indexes on a daily basis when the list is smaller than twice the list view threshold. With the default threshold, this job applies to lists smaller than 10,000 items. Automatic list indexing is enabled by default, but it can be disabled and reenabled on a list-by-list basis using PowerShell. CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK (CDN) FOR STATIC RESOURCES Figure 1. When provisioning SharePoint Server 2016, the administrator selects the appropriate role for each server, and the role determines which services run on the server. The SharePoint 2016 IT Preview includes a feature to use a content delivery network for static resources, such as JavaScript. Resource files depend on the version of SharePoint 2016 (to find your version, use the command Get-SPFarm.BuildVersion). By default, SharePoint 2016 will use SharePoint Online as its CDN. 6
Bringing cloud features on premises The SharePoint 2013 paradigm was to allow organizations using SharePoint on premises to take advantage of services offered in Office 365 by creating hybrid architectures. SharePoint 2016 takes a different approach, instead bringing cloud functionality into on-premises installations. APP LAUNCHER The Office 365 app launcher simplifies navigation by making the apps and content you need most available directly from the top navigation bar, rather than hidden behind a menu. By customizing the app launcher, you can quickly access your email, documents, calendar or presentations, as well as services like newsfeeds, OneDrive for Business, Delve and Yammer. SharePoint 2016 will support the app launcher. CLOUD SEARCH SERVICE In SharePoint 2013, users can search for content across on-premises and cloud sites. However, the search relies on two separate indexes, one on premises and one online. With SharePoint 2016 and in SharePoint 2013 as of the August 2015 cumulative update Microsoft is introducing a cloud search service that enables you to consolidate your index for both on-premises and Office 365 SharePoint in the cloud. This approach enables, for example, ranking across all results. Figure 2. With Office 365 and SharePoint 2016, the apps and content you need most are available directly from the top navigation bar. DATA LOSS PREVENTION (DLP) SharePoint 2016 now provides the same DLP capabilities as Office 365. With this new capability, you can: Search for sensitive content across SharePoint Server 2016 on premises, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business Leverage 51 built-in sensitive information types (credit cards, passport numbers, Social Security numbers and more) Identify documents with sensitive content, export a report and adjust accordingly 7
New end-user features IMPROVED MOBILE EXPERIENCE When you use a mobile device to access the home page for a SharePoint 2016 team site, a touch-enabled view allows you to navigate by tapping live tiles or links on the screen. You can also switch from the mobile view to a view that displays site pages as they would appear on a PC. EXPANDED SUPPORT FOR SPECIAL CHARACTERS IN FILENAMES Previous versions of SharePoint blocked filenames that included any of the following: Special characters such as the ampersand (&), tilde (~) and curly brackets ({ and }) A GUID Leading periods More than 128 characters Most of these restrictions are removed in SharePoint 2016. However, restricted characters such as the percent sign (%) and hash sign (#) When you use a mobile device to access the home page for a SharePoint 2016 team site, a touch-enabled view allows you to navigate by tapping live tiles or links on the screen. are still not allowed in file names. More or less, you ll see that these are features that exist today in Office 365 that have been carried into SharePoint 2016. NEW CONTROLS FOR WORKING WITH ONEDRIVE FOR BUSINESS New controls at the top of your personal document folders in SharePoint 2016 make common tasks in OneDrive for Business more accessible. For example, you can click a control to create a new Office document, upload files, synchronize your files for offline use or share your files. SITES PAGE PINNING SharePoint 2016 lets you pin sites on the Sites page. Pinned sites are shown at the top of the list of sites that you are following. SITE FOLDERS VIEW SharePoint 2016 provides a new Site Folders view that lets you access the document libraries in sites you re following. RECYCLE BIN IN ONEDRIVE AND TEAM SITES SharePoint 2016 adds a link for the Recycle Bin in the left navigation area of the OneDrive and team sites. WEB APPLICATION OPEN PLATFORM INTERFACE (WOPI) PROTOCOL You can now rename files, create new files and share files from within the WOPI iframe on the browser page. IMAGE AND VIDEO PREVIEWS You can now preview images and videos in document libraries either by hovering the mouse over the image or video or by clicking it. 8
Migrations, patches and updates THE ONLY SUPPORTED UPGRADE PATH IS FROM SHAREPOINT 2013 Microsoft will not provide an upgrade path from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2016. Therefore, organizations running SharePoint 2010 must either upgrade first to SharePoint 2013 and then to SharePoint 2016, or invest in a third-party tool that supports a direct migration from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2016. NO IN-PLACE UPGRADES As with SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016 does not support an in-place upgrade. The only out-of-the-box option is a database attach upgrade: First, you configure your new SharePoint 2016 environment, copy the content and supported service application databases from SharePoint 2013, and upgrade the service applications. Then you attach and upgrade the content databases. NO UPGRADE FOR 2010 MODE SITE COLLECTIONS IN SHAREPOINT 2013 Some organizations face another migration hurdle because when they migrated from SharePoint 2010 to 2013, they did not completely migrate their site collections. Instead, they have site collections in SharePoint 2013 that are still running in 2010 mode. Organizations with these types of sites must upgrade them into the SharePoint 2013 farm before they can migrate to SharePoint 2016. SOFTWARE BOUNDARIES The search index will support up to 500 million items per search server application, up from 100 million in SharePoint 2013. The maximum file size will be 10GB instead of 2GB. Learn more at quest.com/solutions/sharepoint/ Microsoft will not provide an upgrade path from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2016. Organizations running SharePoint 2010 must either upgrade first to 2013 and then to 2016, or invest in a third-party tool that supports a direct migration from SharePoint 2010 to 2016. 9
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