Overview
Good news for all SharePoint lovers. SharePoint 2019 has arrived. I remember the day when SharePoint 2016 was launched by Microsoft and soon news spread that 2016 would be the last SharePoint OnPremise version. The future development and directions from Microsoft for SharePoint would be SharePoint Online. Although SharePoint Online offers an excellent SaaS (Software as a Service), for organizations who like to have their own farms for any reason (could be because of security concerns moving to the cloud or an investment they already had in the OnPremise) this news was disappointing.
Microsoft later gave a hint of SharePoint 2019 through various events and finally it is here. Microsoft has announced SharePoint 2019 in SharePoint Conference at North America on 21-May-2018. Microsoft also announced their vision, investment areas and featured timelines for SharePoint 2019. This certainly is good news for customers who are maintaining SharePoint and OneDrive workloads on-premise.
What’s New in SharePoint 2019
SharePoint 2019 will definitely have larger improvements from its earlier versions. The improvements will include Modern UI, out of the box responsiveness, modern team sites, modern communication sites, improved hybrid capabilities, and newer development options. In short, we can say SharePoint 2019 will have a subset of Office 365’s features.
OneDrive for Business (OD4B)
Over the year OneDrive has become an integral part of business and is widely used in Office 365. However this feature was lacking in OnPremise version. SharePoint 2019 will bring OneDrive features to the on premise world. This will also include the Sync Client as is in Office 365.
Improved Sharing Experience
To date we have to open the browser or send an email to share the synced OneDrive and SharePoint files. From now on we can simply right click and share the file using a secure url.
We will be also be able to share the documents from within office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)
SharePoint 2019 will also provide statistics on shared files. This will be an analytics report for file views. We will be able to track who has viewed our shared files.
Shorter Urls
SharePoint 2019 will provide shorter urls for documents. This will help while sharing the urls with someone and while adding url reference to any content. We will not have to worry about the 255 character limitation while embedding the url within SharePoint content.
New WebParts
Based on the user voice, SharePoint 2019 has introduced new webparts:
- Yammer WebPart
Microsoft is again focusing on Yammer and there will be webparts supporting Yammer integration; e.g. Feeds, users etc.
- 3D File Viewer WebPart
Helps to interact with 3D models. More details to follow.
- Connector WebPart
Helps to connect various data sources to render data in pages.
- Activity WebPart
Similar to Delve, to display what other users are working on.
- Planner WebPart
Display planner items
- Microsoft Forms
To carry out quick surveys
Infrastructure / Admin Improvements
As with developers, there will be new features for Administrators.
- PowerApps and Flow integration
There will be an integration with PowerApps and Flow.
- Workflow Manager 2019
Although SharePoint 2019 will offer Microsoft Flows, the old age Workflows are not going to go anywhere. Workflow Manager 2019 will replace Workflow Manager 1.0.
- SMTP Authentication for emails
Instead of setting up relays, we can use SMTP authentication while sending out emails.
- Hybrid environments
Features to monitor health of hybrid configuration. There will be direct links in central administration to getting started with setting up hybrid environments.
What is new for Developers?
For developers who have been using classic SharePoint over the years, there will be a sudden shift of gears. Unfortunately developers will not be able to add JavaScripts all over the place to make the functionality work. There will be a governance around this using SharePoint Framework (SPFx) based development. The future development and deployment will be based upon SharePoint Framework (SPFx), SPFx extensions, Node JS, Angular JS, React JS and more client side development.
What is NOT included in SharePoint 2019?
As mentioned earlier we can treat SharePoint 2019 as a subset of Office 365’s features. So what will we have to live without in SP2019?
- Hub sites
Hub sites are recently launched in Office 365 and will not be a part of SharePoint 2019 to start with.
- Power BI
Power BI webparts from Office 365 will not be available in SharePoint 2019. We can still export SharePoint lists to Power BI for analysis.
- Newer WebParts in Office 365
Preview webparts in Office 365 will not be available in SharePoint 2019.
Deprecated Features
There are few features we have to leave behind.
- Newsfeed
Newsfeed will be deprecated and might be available as read only.
- Authentication
Any other authentication like ADFS, SAML provider can be used as it is as of now. SAML 2.0 might not be available to start with.
Migration to SharePoint 2019
Microsoft will release tools and features in the near future to migrate to SharePoint 2019. There will be a new Assessment tool and Migration tool launched apart from one we have at the moment from Microsoft.
SharePoint 2019 will offer links directly from Central administration to create migration tasks and execute from there itself. More details to follow.
Summary
Microsoft announced SharePoint 2019 GA (generally availability) to customers in the second half of this year and SP2019 preview will be available by Summer 2018. We have time until then to think over and plan our migration to SharePoint 2019 journey.
Wish you a happy new SharePoint 2019!