SharePoint

What is Microsoft SharePoint and what is it used for?

Microsoft SharePoint is a document management and?collaboration platform?that helps a company manage archives, documents, reports and other content that is vital to its business processes. SharePoint's?enterprise content management?capabilities are helpful to organizations in all industries and in any department within an organization.

SharePoint is configured using a web browser. It provides most of its capabilities via a web user interface (UI) and web applications. SharePoint is used to manipulate content and site structure, create and delete sites, enable and disable product features, configure basic?workflows?and manage analytics.

New and updated SharePoint features

SharePoint 2019 is the latest version of the application. SharePoint is part of the?Office 365 suite, where it is known as?SharePoint Online. Microsoft also offers an on-premises version for organizations that prefer to keep their data in-house for compliance or security reasons.

Notable features in SharePoint include:

• Business intelligence (BI).?SharePoint 2019 is integrated with Microsoft Power BI, providing access to?BI
• Compliance.?SharePoint's In-Place Hold Policy Center and Compliance Policy Center let a company's central administration build and apply policies. Users can delete documents from?OneDrive?for Business sites.
• Document library accessibility.?SharePoint provides page landmarks for easy navigation, keyboard shortcuts for various tasks, updates on upload progress, improved callout readings and updates for help documentation.
• Expanded file names.?Support is available for file names with special characters, leading with dots and longer than 128 characters.
• Folder sharing.?Users can see who is sharing a folder and can invite participants and approve or deny access requests.
• Better integration with Office 365 tools and services, including?Microsoft Sway.
• Information rights management.?Digital rights management capabilities protect sensitive information and intellectual property from unauthorized access.
• Large file support.?There is no limit on file size. However, Microsoft recommends a 10 GB maximum. There is a 250 GB maximum file upload limit.
• MinRole.?Administrators can install only the roles they want on SharePoint servers.
• Mobile experience.?A touch-friendly mobile interface has been added, giving users a more modern experience. It's easy to switch from mobile view to PC view.
• Navigation UI.?SharePoint includes megamenus that render and display on desktop and mobile versions of the platform to enhance site navigation. Developers can natively deliver shortcuts to webpages in SharePoint.
• Project server.?Project managers can request resources from other resource managers and use a?heat map?function to see where resources spend time. They can also create multiple timelines. The project server has improved backup and restoration capabilities.
• Project Syntex.?SharePoint integrates with Microsoft intelligent search to help employees locate relevant metadata in emails, presentations and other Office services. Syntex uses?artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate content processing?and turn content into knowledge.
• Security.?SharePoint 2019 includes coauthoring and autosave features for encrypted documents, information barriers and automatic expiration of external access.
• Site page pinning.?Users can pin sites to follow them when on premises or through Office 365.
• Team sites.?These are locations where teams can work on projects and share information from anywhere. A team site includes a group of related webpages, as well as a default document library for files, lists for data management and web parts that are customizable.
• Yammer.?The?Yammer?social networking platform has customizable social feeds that let employees interact in the SharePoint environment.

Microsoft SharePoint versions and history

SharePoint has existed in one form or another since 2001. It has grown to more than 200 million users within 250,000 organizations. There have been nine SharePoint versions released since 2001, with SharePoint 2010 Enterprise being the first enterprise-based offering.

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 was launched in 2010 with close integration with Microsoft Office and?Active Directory. The benefits of SharePoint 2010 included the ability to quickly develop and build websites without programming knowledge. Such websites could be used to manage collaboration tools such as document libraries,?discussion boards, shared task lists, shared calendars, blogs, wikis and surveys.

SharePoint 2013 was released as a collaboration platform for customized webpages in November 2012.

The initial release of SharePoint 2013 offered a simplified user experience, as well as new enterprise social media capabilities. Those features expanded upon previously offered capabilities for website management, including shared calendars,?blogs,?wikis, surveys, document?libraries?and shared task lists.

SharePoint 2013 also launched with a community forum for users to communicate with each other and categorize discussions. It included a microblogging capability and enhanced search capabilities, as well as?e-discovery?functionality, claims-based?authentication?and mobile support. The BI tools in SharePoint 2013 enabled users to organize goals and processes and create customizable data models, reports and dashboards.

SharePoint Server 2016 has the same code as SharePoint Online. As a result, on-premises customers have the same support and performance capabilities for their SharePoint?server farms?thanks to a few architecture changes.