New and Improved Features of SharePoint 2016

Access Services

Following access features are available when we deploy SharePoint Server 2016.

• Support for Apps is added in Office. Apps in Office are custom add-ons which can be plugged into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook and in SharePoint.

• We can now use app for Office to integrate data from outside services into your Access app. It can also display data in your Access App visually, such as on a map, in a chart, or in a graph.

• We can now also upgrade an Access App.

 How to upgrade: 

Create an Access web page, and save the web page as a package which users are using it and make design changes to a separate copy of the web app that users are not using it. When you are satisfied with your changes, you can save a new version of the web app and then upgrade the “production version” of the web app that users are using.

Important: Access web app upgrades are available only for web apps that are on Office 365 or SharePoint Online Sites. You also need to have an Access 2013 with Service Pack1 installed or higher version, so that you will be able to save Web app packages for upgrade. Access web app upgrade does not work with Desktop version of Access.

• A new feature “Download in Excel” is now available with Access 2013 with Office 365. This feature is only available to the users who are using or working with Office 365.

• Related Item Control has been improved. Now we can perform the following functions given below:

• On the related Item control, we can choose from an existing view for the dialog box.
• We can now turn off the Add Link given at the bottom of the Related Item control 
• We can also now add a new item on the Related Item control when the parent record is not saved

• Cascading Controls are now available with Access 2013 for Office 365 users.

Compliance Features

New compliance features are in place like Document deletion policy and In-Place hold policy.

Document Deletion Policy allows site owners to delete documents on all sites in a Site Collection such as on OneDrive for Business sites after a specific period of time. You can create and manage document deletion policies by using Document Deletion Policy Center.

The In-Place Hold policy or Retention policy allows administrators to preserve documents, email, and other files.

Customized web parts

The compile time for customized XSLT files used for Content Query, Summary Links, and Table of Contents Web Parts is improved.

Document Library Accessibility

New features for document libraries has been introduced in SharePoint Server 2016. They are:

·     Keyboard shortcuts are put in place for the following document tasks:

• Alt + N  =  New
• Alt + E  =  Edit 
• Alt + U  =  Update 
•  Alt + M  =  Manage 
•  Alt + S  =  Share 
•  Alt + Y  =  Synchronization

·     Announcements are added for upload progress and for files names and types when browsing files lists and folders.

Durable links

When documents are renamed or moved, links are retained for resource URLs.

Encrypted Connections

SharePoint Server 2016 supports TLS 1.2 connection encryption by default.

Fast Site Collection Creation

SPSiteMaster PowerShell cmdlet is used to create sites and site collections quickly. This feature introduces templates which lies at the same level as SQL so that round trips can be reduced.

Filenames - expanded support for special characters

SharePoint Server 2016 now supports some special characters like &, ~, {, and} characters to be used in file names that were blocked in previous versions of SharePoint.

Hybrid in SharePoint 2016

New hybrid features are introduced to enable hybrid solutions. They are:

• Hybrid Sites – Users can now have all their data or information stored at one place where they have their profile in Office 365.

•  Hybrid OneDrive for Business - Users can sync, share and access their files from anywhere through Office 365.

•  Cloud Hybrid Search

• We can now index and search all our crawled content from both on-premises content and Office 365. 
• In this, when users query search index in Office 365, search results comes from both on-premises and Office 365 content.

Identify and search for sensitive content

Data loss prevention capability have been enhanced. We can now search for sensitive information across SharePoint Server 2016, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online using DLP queries and by turning on DLP policies.

Image and video previews

We can now preview images and videos in SharePoint Server 2016 document libraries either by clicking or hovering our mouse on them.

Information Rights Management

SharePoint Server 2016 uses Information Rights Management (IRM) capabilities in order to secure information by encrypting information on SharePoint libraries.

Large file support

It now supports uploading and downloading files larger than 2,047 MB. We can also configure the desired maximum file-size limit on a per-web application basis in our SharePoint farm.

MinRole Farm Topology

In MinRole feature, farm administrators can now define each server role in farm topology. Now we have six predefined server roles. They are: 

•  Front End 
•  Application 
•  Distributed Cache 
•  Search 
•  Custom 
• Single Server Farm

Mobile experience

It now offers an improved mobile navigation experience. The view is touch enabled, we tab tap tiles or links on the screen in order to navigate on the site and also can switch from mobile view to PC view.

New controls for working with OneDrive for Business

New controls for creating, uploading, sync  sharing of the document are added at the top of the document folders which makes common tasks in OneDrive for Business more accessible.

New Recycle Bin in OneDrive and Team sites

A link for the Recycle Bin is added in the left navigation pane of the OneDrive and Team sites.

Open Document Format (ODF)

Support is added for Open Document Format (ODF) files to use in document library templates so that users have the capability to create, edit and save files in a format they want to use.

ReFS file system support

Support has been added to support drives which are formatted with the ReFS file system.

SharePoint business intelligence

Support is added for SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.1 and the Power Pivot add-in and Power View.

SharePoint Search

SharePoint Search now supports indexing of up to 500 million items per Search Server application.

Sharing improvements

New Sharing options are added like create and share folder; sharing hints; members can share; recently shared item cache; improved invitation email; and one click email to approve or deny a request.

Site Folders view

A new Site Folders view is added that lets us access the document libraries in sites that you're following.

Sites page pinning

We can now pin sites that we see on the sites page. A pinned site shows at the top of the list of sites which we are following.

SMTP Connection encryption

Added the support for sending email to SMTP servers using STARTTLS connection encryption.

SMTP ports (non-default)

Support is added for SMTP servers to use TCP ports other than the default port (25).

Web Application Open Platform Interface Protocol (WOPI)

We can now rename files, create new files, and share files from within the WOPI iFrame on the browser page.