If you've not had time yet to work with SharePoint 2013 Preview, here's a look at
what's new so far. Your assessment of the value of said new
features will vary, depending on your mileage and usage.
Authentication
Microsoft says that SharePoint 2013 Preview has
been improved to make claims-based authentication easier to use.
It extends support for application authentication via Open Authorization 2.0 (Auth)
as well as for server-to-server authentication.
Users can grant apps in the SharePoint store and
catalog access to certain resources and data. Server-to-server security tokens
that contain user identity claims enable cross-server authenticated access
between, say, SharePoint 2013 Preview and Exchange
2013 Preview. (See also Microsoft's architecture posters website for the one
labeled "Extranet with Dedicated Zones for Authentication" and
to see full views of the image excerpts below.)
Business Connectivity
Services
Microsoft added a bunch of new features to BCS in
SharePoint.
You might like these: Support for OData Business
Data Connectivity (BDC) connections, in addition to connections for WCF, SQL
Server, and .NET assemblies. Automatic generation via Visual Studio 2010 of BDC
models for OData data sources. An event listener with an event subscriber on
the SharePoint 2013 Preview side, to enable SharePoint users to receive notifications
of changes to the external system. Self-contained apps for SharePoint.
But wait--there's more: Enhancements to external
lists that bring them to functional parity with other SharePoint lists. The
exposure of the REST APIs for web and mobile app developers to use. Six new
Windows PowerShell cmdlets specifically for OData. And the ability, via
Business Connectivity Services Client Runtime, to have side-by-side
installations of Office 2010 and Office 2013 Preview on the same client
computer.
eDiscovery
Showing SharePoint's increasing presence in the
world of litigation, eDiscovery improvements have been added that,
unfortunately, are probably sorely needed. They include a new site template,
the eDiscovery Center, which creates a portal for managing cases—you can access
cases to search, hold content, and export content.
Microsoft has added improvements to in-place
holds, including site-level preservation; the ability for users to work with
content that's preserved; and the ability to define the scope of preservation
via a query filter.
You can also now take the results of your
eDiscovery search—including documents, wiki pages, Exchange email messages and
tasks-- and export them into a review tool.
Mobile devices
Optimized viewing for mobile device users was a
no-brainer addition to SharePoint Server 2013 Preview—it had to be done.
Other new features include the following: The
ability to render a single SharePoint published site in multiple formats for
different devices. The ability to enable a push notification service on a
SharePoint site to send device updates to a Windows Phone device.
We're not done yet: A new geolocation field type
for use in mobile app development. The ability for
some devices to display PerformancePoint Web Parts, Excel Services reports, and
SQL Server Reporting Services reports. And finally, enhanced viewing of Office
Web apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) via mobile browsers.
Records management
and compliance
Reflecting perhaps not a dearth of added
features, but the distance SharePoint 2010's records management features had
improved from SharePoint 2007's, you'll find that SharePoint 2013 Preview has
enhanced compliance simply by extending retention policies to SharePoint sites.
This also applies to any Exchange Server 2013
Preview team mailboxes associated with those sites.
Business intelligence
SharePoint 2013 Preview adds tons of new
features, including the following: New features in Excel for business
intelligence (BI): In-Memory BI Engine (IMBI) for near-instant analysis of
millions of rows of data; Power View Add-in for Excel, which offers
visualizations, animations, and smart querying to enable users to visualize
modeled data; decoupled PivotChart and PivotTable reports allowing for the
creation of PivotChart reports without having to add a PivotTable report on the
same page; and the ability to do trend analysis from cells in PivotTable
reports that use OLAP data.
It also adds Excel service enhancements such as
an updated Business Intelligence Center site template, and improved timeline
controls.
Visio Services improvements include the ability
for users to add comments to a Visio drawing on the web via Visio Services.
And PerformancePoint improvements include the
ability for users to copy dashboards and dependencies to other users or site
collections; an enhanced UI; support for Analysis Services Effective User
feature, which eliminates the need for Kerberos delegation for per-user
authentication; and support for PerformancePoint on the Apple iPad.
Social computing
It's no surprise that Microsoft wanted to beef up
the social computing features in SharePoint, and with SharePoint 2013 Preview,
it's on track for doing so. Basically, it's enhanced the administration and
user experience, and added ways for enterprise users to collaborate more fully
and naturally using social media features.
One way is by enhancing the ability create
discussions—via two new templates called Community Site and Community Portal.
Microsoft also redesigned the UI for MySites, and added Microblog and Newsfeeds
features, and improved features users need around saving, synchronization,
sharing, and moving content.
Because of the new MySites features, you'll also
find Microsoft made several changes to the User Profile service application
settings in Central Administration around configuring permissions, privacy,
micro-blogging and newsfeeds, and more.
Web content
management
Microsoft improved the video upload process for
content authors, and improved image display and performance of a site with its
image renditions feature, which reduces the size of an image file that is
downloaded to the client.
It added an integrated translation service that
gives content authors or managers the ability to choose which content will be
exported for human translation and which for translation by machine.
And cross-site publishing does just as it says,
giving you the ability to display content in one or more publishing site
collections. You can also designate any library or list as a catalog, enabling
content to be reused on publishing site collections.
It added managed navigation, which lets you use
term sets to define and maintain navigation on a site. And it added the ability
to create more user-friendly URLs.
In the area of branding, Microsoft made it less
mysterious, and now designers use such tools as Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft
Expression Web, or another HTML editor, rather than having to use SharePoint
Designer or Visual Studio 2013 to brand a SharePoint site.
And it added the ability for designers to design
sites for display on different devices, such as tablets, smartphones, and
desktops. Additional features enhance search, authoring, and publishing.
Workflow
Microsoft made architectural changes in
SharePoint Workflow. If you want to have the nearly identical experience of
building workflows in SharePoint 2013 Preview as you do in SharePoint 2010, you
simply install SharePoint Server 2013 Preview.
But if you want the SharePoint 2013 workflow
platform, you need to install and configure Windows Azure Workflow to
communicate with your Preview farm. SharePoint Designer 2013 Preview includes
new functionality designed specifically for Windows Azure Workflow, and called
the SharePoint 2013 Workflow platform.
These new features include a visual workflow that
uses a Visio 2013 Preview add-in, the ability to enable no-code web service
calls from inside a workflow, new actions for the task process, the ability to
start a workflow built on SharePoint 2010 from a workflow built on SharePoint
2013, and new workflow building blocks called Stage, Loop, and App Step.
Note that to manage and monitor the Windows Azure
Workflow in SharePoint 2013, you must use Windows PowerShell. (To get a head
start on working with PowerShell, consult our latest SharePoint and PowerShell
article "Exploring and Inventorying SharePoint Using Windows PowerShell.
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