Microsoft celebrated the product launch of SharePoint Server 2016 on May 4th with an event called “The Future of SharePoint”. It was a great show with many announcements. “SharePoint is back!” and it will not be the last on-prem release – a bold message by Microsoft. Because of this and to show how important SharePoint is, Microsoft decided to rename “Sites” in Office 365 to “SharePoint”.
Ok, let’s see what’s coming to SharePoint Online (the cloud release in Office 365):
SharePoint Home
SharePoint home is a central entry page to access your cloud and on-premises SharePoint sites.
Modern team sites
Modern team sites combine the power of SharePoint team sites with Office 365 Groups. When you create a team site a corresponding Office 365 Group is also provisioned to manage the membership of this site. You’ll get a personalized page with news and activity using the power of Office Graph. Libraries and lists come with an intuitive user experience and rich metadata. Modern team sites are responsive and can be customized by embedding Sway, Video, PowerPoints or a Calender.
Microsoft Flow and PowerApps
Microsoft Flow automates workflows across apps and SaaS services. Microsoft Flow can also be used to access, share and collaborate structured data in your SharePoint lists to exchange it with other services.
PowerApps is a web-based service which you can use to create and share business apps in minutes. The integration of PowerApps in modern team sites enables you to utilize SharePoint lists and libraries as a data source.
Roadmaps
Microsoft presented the following roadmaps to show availability of certain features. The green checkmark means the features is available today.
File access and sharing roadmap
Mobile and intelligent intranet roadmap
Open and connected platform roadmap
Security, privacy and compliance roadmap
Interested in what’s new in SharePoint Server 2016? Read this post: SharePoint Server 2016 (on-premises) news and features
