What's New in SharePoint 2016?

Microsoft persistently improves SharePoint to make it a better fit to match the needs and requirements of users in the modern business landscape. With SharePoint 2016, Microsoft has effectively launched its seventh update since 2001 and added new features (and removed some!) to adapt to the changing business world. Some features have been replaced with better, improved and more powerful alternatives.

If you ask how SharePoint 2016 is different from SharePoint 2013, the biggest difference would be that the newer version is built to play nice with Office 365 applications. When SharePoint 2013 was launched, not many customers used Office 365; however, by 2016, Microsoft acknowledged that on-premises and cloud-based SharePoint deployments have their place and that many organizations use both.

Improved Hybrid Functionality Of Sharepoint 2016

SharePoint 2016 is built with a clear-cut emphasis on hybrid technology, cloud data storage and mobile access. The simplified hybrid configuration means the end users can easily take advantage of notable new features like Hybrid OneDrive for Business and Hybrid Cloud Search, and hence work seamlessly in both environments.

The long-awaited hybrid search is also one of the biggest focuses on SharePoint 2016. This new feature makes SharePoint 2016 achieve a truly unified search experience for SharePoint on-premises and SharePoint Online for the end users. While previously, the results of Hybrid search from your on-premises sites and SharePoint Online were shown in separated lists within one page, with the SharePoint 2016 Hybrid Search, you can index all of your crawled content, including on-premises content, to your Office 365’s search index. This way, when querying your search index in Office 365, you will acquire unified search results from both on-premises and Office 365 content.

UI Changes and App Launcher in SharePoint 2016

SharePoint 2016 has introduced the App Launcher, as well as changes to the UI, to help it match the Office 365 experience. Similar to Office 365, an App launcher has been introduced to quickly launch the apps.

Focusing on improving user experience, SharePoint 2016 has made a small but crucial UI change to the ribbon from SharePoint 2013, which now matches the Office 365 ribbon. Users swapping between systems will come across a consistent experience.

Zero Downtime Patching

The Zero downtime patching is one the interesting features of the latest version of SharePoint. Whenever new Service Pack or Cumulative Update had to be installed on older versions, including SharePoint 2013, administrators had to take the entire farm offline. SharePoint 2016 allows admins to plan such installation in stages and hence condense the impact of such updates on the business. The concept of zero downtime patching is associated with a combination of smaller update packages, backward compatibility, and MinRole.

SharePoint’s New Mobile (Touch Friendly) Experience

People are increasingly accessing the internet through mobile devices. With SharePoint 2016, users can utilize their mobile devices to interact with SharePoint via a newly designed touch enabled interface.

With the SharePoint Mobile App, SharePoint 2016 offers a much more user-friendly mobile experience. It results in more responsive mobile SharePoint pages and an enhanced user experience. This clearly indicates SharePoint’s focus on the user experience and creating a new, cool, modern and fresh feel to encourage more production from an easily accessible mobile platform.

SharePoint 2016’s Increased File Size limit for uploads

SharePoint 2016 came with another long-awaited improvement – improved file size limit. In SharePoint 2013, the default file upload limit is 250MB with a maximum 2GB (configurable). In this new version of SharePoint, the default file size limit is set at 2GB and goes up to 10GB. Microsoft strongly recommends – 10GB is a boundary and you can't go beyond it. However, users may experience performance issues on the farm if too many files are of the maximum size limit.

MinRole in SharePoint 2016

“MinRole is a new farm topology based on a set of predefined server roles introduced in SharePoint Server 2016.”

This new feature has attracted a lot of interest among users. When you run the configuration wizard, you get a window asking you to specify the Mini Role. Based on each server’s role in a farm topology as assigned by a SharePoint farm administrator, Mini Roles optimize the functioning of the servers.

MinRole farm topology simplifies deployment, capability planning and farm scalability, and improves performance and reliability.

There are so many other new things about SharePoint 2016, which cannot be discussed in one blog. Now, since you have some knowledge about the new stuff in SharePoint 2016, you can learn and upgrade your current SharePoint knowledge to meet your current business requirements. If your company is using SharePoint 2016 or planning to adopt it, you can take Microsoft SharePoint 2016 training from well-known training vendors and learn the advanced new features and functionality.

QuickStart – Learn What's New in SharePoint 2016

QuickStart is a renowned IT development and technical training center that provides a range of online and classroom courses for IT professionals looking to give a boost to their career. With over 250,000 trained professional and team of experts and skilled instructors, QuickStart provides a personalized learning experience that will help you develop skills and knowledge to give right direction to your career.

The Advanced Technologies of Microsoft SharePoint 2016 training course by QuickStart covers the planning, configuration and management of the new and advanced features in the SharePoint 2016 environment. This Microsoft SharePoint 2016 online course will help professionals update their existing SharePoint knowledge with new skills and knowledge that can benefit the organization.

QuickStart’s Advanced Technologies of Microsoft SharePoint 2016 online course also covers how to develop and implement a governance plan, and how to perform an upgrade or a migration to SharePoint 2016. Professionals with experience in planning and maintaining SharePoint Server and other related core technologies can take this course. Students must have completed Course 20339-1A: Planning and Administering Microsoft SharePoint 2016 course, or should have gained equivalent knowledge can go for this course.

Certified Microsoft SharePoint 2016 professionals after learning advanced technologies from QuickStart get hired by top technology companies around the world.