SharePoint already had a long evolution over the years. Every new release boosted in a set of good features. And the most updated version, SharePoint 2016 had made it even better. Microsoft had two most important drives behind this release.

Firstly, to utilize the recent innovations that Cloud Technology provides. And next is to make substantial enhancements to its Hybrid Infrastructure. For those inquisitive minds questioning what a Hybrid Infrastructure of SharePoint is, here you go. In simple terms, it is a means of connecting your on-premises SharePoint sites to SharePoint Online.

With solid experience implementing SharePoint Intranet services to a quite number of satisfied clients, we know what customers are expecting. In this blog post, let us discuss the most exciting features that we absolutely love as a SharePoint service provider. There are reasons why you should love those too.

For a complete list of new features in SharePoint 2016, click here.

Hybrid SharePoint 

The most talked about feature of SharePoint 2016 is Hybrid. Microsoft has invested a lot into Hybrid Technology that makes hybrid installations easy and automated. It comes up with a new ‘Hybrid Scenario Picker’, which programmatically configures the server to server and authentication connections. With this, you can get your SharePoint up and be running in no time. With Hybrid Infrastructure, now you no longer have to be exclusively on-premises or completely rely on the cloud. That is the beauty of it.

The most appealing feature of hybrid is the App Launcher. You have easy access to Office 365 apps like OneDrive, Delve etc. straight through your App Launcher. Next, you have the Hybrid Search feature, with which you can search both your on-premises and cloud space from one place. How nice a feature it is? Such a unified search experience leaves your end users completely relaxed while looking for files.

Mobile Experience

Prior to SharePoint 2016 release, Microsoft did not have a dedicated app. Accessing SharePoint on mobile devices was a nightmare. No responsive design, No dedicated app. But, that is not the case anymore. With the launch of the recent SharePoint 2016, Microsoft has really made it big with an exclusive Mobile App. The look and feel of the App and its navigation are mind-blowing with a modern design.

Access to your SharePoint on your mobile device is an effective means of making work collaboration easy. Thanks to Microsoft for the Responsive User Interface Package for SharePoint on-premises which enables to adapt SharePoint views to fit your screen size. Now, it is fun working on any device irrespective of the screen size.

Encrypted Connections 

This is really an important update that every single company will find extremely useful. How often we have heard the news of data being ‘hacked’, ‘leaked’, ‘breached’ from top name multinationals. Adobe, eBay, Yahoo, Evernote, Morgan Stanley and there is an endless list of examples where data is either stolen by culprits or ended up as a result of ineffective Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies. With SharePoint holding sensitive official data of companies including even the Fortune 500 players, it should undoubtedly have a strong encryption in place. Microsoft has a lot of reasons to concentrate on getting better encryption with SharePoint 2016. And it has delivered it perfectly well too with this new release.

SharePoint now supports TLS 1.2 (Transport Layer Security) connection which provides complete privacy and data integrity between two communicating apps. It is also the most commonly used security protocol for safe file transfers, VPN connections etc. With the latest SharePoint in your office with TLS security enabled you have nothing to worry about data theft.

Other Cool New Features: These three are the notable enhancements that have made SharePoint 2016 a great update. Let us look into a couple of other cool new features. Though they seem elementary at the first sight, they are the limitations Microsoft would want to remove with the new release and give the end users with a much better user experience.

Support for Large Files

Many a time, you would have a need to upload and maintain huge files. Previous versions of SharePoint doesn’t support files sizes bigger than 2047 MB, which is close to 2 GB. SharePoint 2016 now supports unlimited file sizes, although you can configure per-web application basis.

This feature comes in handy if the nature of your business demands preserving and sharing file sizes greater than 2 GB. Sure, a cool feature SharePoint users were expecting in this new release.

Media Preview

Now, you can preview your images and videos at the hover of your mouse. Know what the file is even before opening them. Now, your document library got even better with an effective way to preview your media files.

Durable Links

When you rename or move your files from the document library, users no more will lose access. This is achieved by providing a Resource ID based link for Web Application documents hosted in SharePoint. So when you search for a document, instead of searching for the filename, it searches for the resource id mapped with the file stored in the content database. This enables moving the document without having any changes to the URL associated with the file. Not to mention, a worthwhile feature. 

These are the new SharePoint 2016 features that we absolutely love. Probably now you would agree that SharePoint 2016 got even better with all these cool features. What do you think?

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