Microsoft recently disclosed their progress on OneDrive and SharePoint, and it’s made big news. Among the details revealed in the announcement, the most intriguing was the brief mention of a SharePoint Server 2019 product they’ve been working on.
Normally, Microsoft delivers their SharePoint online innovations first before releasing server products. The impending release of SharePoint Server 2019 was announced by Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for SharePoint. The new server for the popular Microsoft technology solution was formally introduced at Microsoft’s Ignite event.
Jared Spataro, the General Manager of Microsoft Office, later stated the preview of SharePoint Server 2019 can be expected to arrive by mid-2018.
That said, here are a few highlights for what’s coming to SharePoint.
1. SharePoint Admin Center Revamp
Microsoft announced that they created a revamped SharePoint Admin Center. The new Admin Center would be released for SharePoint online testers in early 2018 according to an official announcement from the tech giant.
The home page of the new Admin Center will show SharePoint and OneDrive notifications, activity patterns, service health information etc. They have also reportedly included sharing controls and device policy controls for compliance, access, and data leakage.
2. New SharePoint Migration Tool
Microsoft will also be releasing a new Migration Tool to handle small and large migrations. The tool would enable users to move documents and library files from SharePoint Server sites located at datacenters to the cloud-based SharePoint online service or the OneDrive Office 365 service.
3. Security
The company has also added new capabilities, referred to as Multi-Geo Capabilities in Office 365, for both SharePoint and OneDrive including data residency and compliance. Organizations will now be able to choose regional locations for storing data and search index.
Microsoft also mentioned enhanced protection for OneDrive and SharePoint Online. Organizations can provide keys to customers for service-level encryptions, and can revoke them to deny access. The company is also working on a compliance policy for Office 365 shared device scenarios. The system automatically signs out from a session if it detects no activity for a specific period of time.
4. Personalized search for SharePoint Online
This feature would be available by the end of 2017, and will grant a faster search experience. Microsoft also explained that the feature will include all content in a SharePoint, and can be accessed via the Windows Taskbar.
Another Office 365 service, Bing for Business, has been announced to be at the private preview stage. It can surface content by using the Microsoft Graph search service, and won’t be serving ads in the results. The company is also planning to add natural language processing capabilities to the service next year which might lead to big changes in the SharePoint development services sector.
5. New WebParts for Communication Sites and Team Sites
Other improvements announced by Microsoft includes new Web Parts for both Communication Sites and Team Sites. The Web Parts for Communication Sites include Microsoft Forms, Planner, File Viewer, Spacer and Divider, Twitter etc., which will be made available by the end of this year.
With the new improvements, it’d be possible to connect Team Sites with an Office 365 Group and SharePoint Hub Site. The feature will be added in the first half of 2018.
Conclusion
Not just SharePoint, but the other popular Microsoft technologies will be getting a bunch of updates next year as well. Many new capabilities will be added by December. And more improvements can be expected next year. Though this doesn’t make a huge difference in the software development sector, all the improvements can still make things easier for developers next year.
