Microsoft SharePoint is a firm favourite of businesses of all shapes and sizes. With over 190 million users and fifteen years of successful service, there is a lot to recommend the system. Despite that, it faces stiff competition from the likes of Slack and Box so cannot afford to let its guard down one bit.
That’s why Microsoft is introducing a raft of updates to keep existing customers happy and to entice customers away from the competition. So what is there to look forward to in the new SharePoint 2016?
Microsoft Flow
Microsoft Flow enables SharePoint to pull data from business sources and create lists with conditional logic. Users can then leverage PowerApps to view and manipulate that data in any way you see fit. PowerApps doesn’t replace InfoPath, but is another tool to manage all that data.
SharePoint Home
SharePoint Home is the new name for the Sites tile. SharePoint Home features a new, more modern look that fits into the Office 365 schema. It shows recently active documents, recommended links, rapid site creation, Office 365 Group provision and much more. It makes creation and management of your sites much easier.
New SharePoint User Experience
Like SharePoint Home, the look of the whole platform has had something of a facelift. Team Sites, Document Libraries and Publishing are three areas that have been given a new look, with some already introduced and others being introduced soon.
SharePoint Mobile Apps
SharePoint Mobile Apps aren’t here yet but the mechanics to provide them was introduced in this new update. iOS, Android, and Windows 10 Mobile apps will all make their way to the platform this year, with iOS arriving in June and Android and Windows 10 sometime later.
These mobile apps will allow users to interact with SharePoint while on the move, enabling access to intranet sites, document libraries and content.
New SharePoint Framework
Last but certainly not least is the new SharePoint Framework. It enhances site creation by offering a new canvas-based page model that can help create some pretty powerful sites. It allows client code to work within SharePoint, so all those JavaScript specialists out there can still work their magic while playing nicely with SharePoint.
The new framework will also enable user to continue using open source libraries and code in a multitude of ways.
These updates and future plans for Microsoft SharePoint show that there is still plenty of life in the old dog yet. Like Office, SharePoint has evolved into a very usable and powerful platform. Long may it continue!
