The long-awaited version of Office 2013 suite became available to the general public in March and along with this update, many people were particularly interested in the new features of one of its highly anticipated accompanying online components – namely SharePoint 2013.
There were a number of exciting updates and we wanted to help you get started exploring all the key changes and concepts available in SharePoint 2013.
Microsoft SharePoint 2013 has improved upon its predecessor’s features and functionality and is able to offer enhanced support for BI, Search, Mobile and Public Website Support. Mobile and social sharing are leading the way and Microsoft has injected ample doses of both in SharePoint 2013. In addition to the social networking features, the new SharePoint will provide storage and synchronization via SkyDrive Pro, which will replace the old SharePoint Workspaces feature.
Enhanced Business Intelligence
SharePoint Server 2013’s business intelligence tools let your company delve deeper into business insights and analytics. SharePoint and Excel now also offer tighter integration.
The PowerPivot program allows you to work with billions of rows and columns directly in memory because it is more powerful in SharePoint 2013. Power View provides intuitive ad-hoc reporting. With PerformancePoint Services, Dashboard Designer, and with Visio Services, you can create sophisticated dashboards capable of integrating reports and metrics from multiple data sources that are customizable for your audience. (see here for an overview of the Business Intelligence capabilities of SharePoint 2013.)
More Mobile Device Support
Many users expect to be able to use their desktop applications on any device, no matter how big or small the screen. Microsoft has addressed this by offering the user a better SharePoint experience for mobile devices than in previous versions. Users now can pick from three different mobile browsing options (namely Contemporary view, Classic view, Full screen UI) and SharePoint sites can now be better accessed with tablets and mobile devices.
Jonathan Hassel, IT journalist for CIO.com, says that “There is now an HTML5 coded view known as the “contemporary” view that is optimized for speedy access across iPhones, iPads, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone devices.”
Geolocation and push notification functionality has also been added. Push notifications allows SharePoint 2013 to reach out and push a message to your device based on a variety of factors. “Location awareness has been built in as well, if you plan to develop location-aware applications on top of the SharePoint platform,” says Hassel.
Better Social Sharing in SharePoint
New social features include the organisation’s newsfeed activity, the introduction of Community Sites, and other changes intended to better foster sharing and collaboration within an organisation.
Community Sites gives the user a forum experience and the ability to classify discussions around subject areas, and to connect users who have knowledge or seek knowledge about subject areas. SharePoint TechCenter says that My Sites now offers “an improved, more intuitive workflow for users to develop their personal profiles, store content, and keep up-to-date with activities of interest through the use of the new microblog and feeds experience.”
Search
The Enterprise search in SharePoint Server 2013 offers query processing and the ability to target search results so the user can easily find what they are looking for.
The improvement of search in SharePoint 2013, was intended for both IT and end users. A new feature allows one to customise the appearance of search results based upon content type, rather than simply delivering a uniform list as in the past.
eDiscovery
The eDiscovery function in SharePoint 2013 provides a new set of tools for managing the e-discovery process and offers better ways to help protect your business. SharePoint’s new eDiscovery Center allows for searches across SharePoint, Exchange and Lync environments, the ability to preserve and export discovered content, to preserve content in-place from Exchange mailboxes and SharePoint sites while allowing users to continue working with content, and support for search and export from file shares. Find out more about eDiscovery in SharePoint.
Improved branding
SharePoint 2013 offers improved processes for creating a public-facing or internal intranet site with pixel-perfect branding. This complicated process of branding a SharePoint site is now easier and if you are a professional web designer who is proficient in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you can design a SharePoint site with minimum effort. This will reduce your internal support expense, as the new features in the publishing site minimize the amount of SharePoint knowledge that is required to successfully design and brand a SharePoint site.
Best New features of SharePoint 2013
This video shows four SharePoint experts offering some top tips and describing the new features in SharePoint 2013 that excite them the most.
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