After proving itself to be much more than a fad, Microsoft SharePoint is flying out of the nest to make it big in the world. Evolving both as a platform and as a brand, it is evident to stay here for several years to come. According to Stephen Fishman, SharePoint is crack, and Microsoft is the pusher. Let’s gaze into our crystal ball to determine how SharePoint is going to make an impact in the near term—for better and worse.
SharePoint Then & Now
Unveiled in 2001, the platform is recommended by almost over 125 million users across the globe. Being one of Microsoft’s fastest-growing products, SharePoint is moving forward to adapt to industry trends to a great extent. Anyone who has previously worked or is currently working with the popular platform must have witnessed the product going through several ups and downs.
Today, it seems a significant shift is taking place by converting into a content services platform. Gone are the days when the tech giant used to promote SharePoint for team collaboration. Initially emerged as the go-to destination for getting team-based collaborative work, it plays as a core where the content is stored. The collaboration aspect has many nuances, most of which no one really talks about. What actually happens is, the platform drops a word document in a shared space allowing us to collaborate and add things to it off and on passively.
Speaking of which, in broader terms, Microsoft Sharepoint lacks in things like more communication options, video, etc. Fortunately, with the emergence of Office 365, SharePoint serves as a content services platform.
So far, so good…
The only drawback with SharePoint is it acted as a touch of cart before the horse; I mean it was released before all of the features had been completed. Due to its availability and a strong alliance with Outlook, OneDrive, and Yammer, companies started embracing the platform at a fanatic pace. All of a sudden things became pretty confusing as people had left in limbo whether to keep developing on the classic experience using the older (but mature) technologies or go with its alternatives. Basically, in the initial years, Sharepoint was only used:
- To create some workflows and forms
- To create more interactive form-based solutions, with Workflows giving you business logic
- To write full-blown applications that run on your server with the help of Fire up Visual Studio and C#
With the introduction of SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint Online, these approaches all begin to seem out to look outdated. Keeping today’s cloud-connected, multi-device world in mind, apps can run anywhere and connect to anything. Which means SharePoint has Mobile Apps on iPhone and Android. Using cameras, geo-location, and RFID has become a little passé. New tools are being taken into account featuring client-side, JavaScript technologies to give end-users fast, responsive, accessible solutions that work anywhere.
SharePoint 2019
Microsoft has already mentioned that they’re taking features from SharePoint Online and bringing them down to on-premises (like they did with SharePoint 2016).
Ref- https://mspoweruser.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/SharePoint-2019.jpg
The latest version focuses on three areas:
- User experiences developed through SharePoint Online
- Content engagement across all browsers and devices
- Powerful scaling security and compliance capabilities
Migrating sounds scary at times. Know you are not alone who is making a crucial decision of choosing the move to a new on-premises, hybrid or cloud solution. SharePoint 2019 On-Premises enables developers to keep the original user experience the same in backward compatibility mode. I must say it is great for those concerned with having to adjust to a different view! Apart from this, let’s have a look what to expect in addition.
New user Experiences
In the present times, people interacting with technology has grown over just “look and feel”.
The latest version focuses on three areas:
- User experiences developed through SharePoint Online
- Content engagement across all browsers and devices
- Powerful scaling security and compliance capabilities
Migrating sounds scary at times. Know you are not alone who is making a crucial decision of choosing the move to a new on-premises, hybrid or cloud solution. SharePoint 2019 On-Premises enables developers to keep the original user experience the same in backward compatibility mode. I must say it is great for those concerned with having to adjust to a different view! Apart from this, let’s have a look what to expect in addition.
New user experiences
In the present times, people interacting with technology has grown over just “look and feel.” Great experiences are the ones which are great regarding look and work flawlessly, entertain and engage, with rich, contextual, and relevant content. SharePoint Server 2019 ensures reliability, performance, and security and is easy to use.
Lists and Libraries
Living under real-world pressures of scale and complexity is not easy, and with the new version, the list and libraries bring the experience up to date with SharePoint Online. Although, you may find the default list and library experience optimized for the most common tasks such as copy and move files using the command bar as well as pin documents, add files as links, filter and sort easily and apply
Communication sites
There is no denying in the fact that SharePoint has always been at the core of collaboration where you will find different people working together on files, lists, and libraries. SharePoint developers will be interested in knowing how the latest version embraces and provides a new generation of the mobile and intelligent intranet. As a result, people can easily communicate throughout your organization with dynamic, mobile-ready communication sites and pages. It mainly focuses on providing an environment where everyone is informed and engaged.
In a nutshell
I am quite impressed with the innovation and expediency with which Microsoft is working on SharePoint and Office 365. Innovations are bound to happen; it depends on your organization to keep up with the latest developments or not. For example, big companies featuring more rules and regulations might not whereas, smaller ones can afford to be more agile, and adapt faster. Lastly, I think the tech giant exactly knows how to strike a good balance between the rate of their release schedule and how many customers can actually adopt their products. So that’s all for now! Keep watching the space to have a better perspective regarding the same.
After working for more than 15 years in Microsoft technologies like SharePoint, Office 365, and Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI), I thought will share my SharePoint expertise knowledge with the world. Our audiences are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. For my expertise knowledge and SharePoint tutorials, Microsoft has been awarded a Microsoft SharePoint MVP (9 times). I have also worked in companies like HP, TCS, KPIT, etc.