New and improved features in SharePoint Server 2016

APPLIES TO: 2013 2016 2019 Subscription Edition SharePoint in Microsoft 365

Learn about the new features and updates to existing features in SharePoint Server 2016.

For a comparison of SharePoint on-premises features between SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Server 2016 editions, see SharePoint feature availability across on-premises solutions. For new features in SharePoint Server 2016 for end users, see What's new in SharePoint Server 2016.

Summary of features

The following table provides a summary of the new features that you can try out in this SharePoint Server 2016 release.

Detailed description of features

This section provides detailed descriptions of the new and updated features in SharePoint Server 2016.

Access Services plus Access client and server

The following new Access features are available when you deploy Access Services in SharePoint Server 2016:

• Support apps for Office. For more info, see Spice up your Access app with add-ins for Office.

• Access App Upgrade. For more info, see Upgrade an Access app.

• Download in Excel feature available for users to pivot Access tables. For more info, see Introducing a new feature in Access 2013 web apps-Download in Excel.

• With the improved Related Item Control, you can do the following:

  • On the Related Item Control, select from any existing view for the dialog.

  • Add a new item on the Related Item Control when the parent record isn't saved.

  • At the bottom of the Related Item Control, turn off the Add link.

• The Cascading Combo box is now available in Access. For more info, see Introducing a new user experience feature in Access web apps: Cascading Controls.

Central Administration is no longer provisioned on all servers by default

SharePoint Server 2016 Central Administration is now provisioned on the first server in a farm by default when using the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard. Central Administration is not provisioned on additional servers in a farm by default.

You can provision or unprovision Central Administration on individual servers in a farm, no matter what the server role is by using the following methods:

• The Services on Server page on Central Administration > System Settings

• Microsoft PowerShell cmdlets:

  • New-SPCentralAdministration

  • Remove-SPCentralAdministration

• The psconfig.exe -cmd adminvs operation

• The SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard

Compliance features

The document deletion policy lets you delete documents in users' OneDrive sites after specific periods of time. The In-Place Hold policy allows administrators to preserve documents, email, and other files.

For more info, see Overview of document deletion policies.

Document Library accessibility

The following features are now available for working in SharePoint Server 2016 document libraries:

• Landmarks to a page make it easier to navigate, and there are alt text improvements for all major navigation links.

• Keyboard shortcuts are provided for the following document tasks:

  • Alt + N - N ew

  • Alt + E - E dit

  • Alt + U - U pload

  • Alt + M - M anage

  • Alt + S - S hare

  • Alt + Y - S y nchronization

• Focus improvements, such as keeping focus on prior elements and focus trapping.

• Announcements for upload progress.

• Announcements for file name and file types when browsing folder and file lists.

• Improved callout reading.

• Fixed use of color issues for views switcher.

• Updates to the Help documentation.

Encrypted connections

When you set up an SSL binding in Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager to host your web application, SharePoint uses TLS 1.2 connection encryption if your client application supports it. SharePoint also supports TLS 1.2 connection encryption when connecting to other systems, for example when crawling websites.

Fast Site Collection Creation

This new feature provides templates that work at same level as SQL Server, which reduces the round trips required between the SharePoint and SQL servers. Use the SPSiteMaster Microsoft PowerShell cmdlets to create sites and site collections quickly.

File names - expanded support for special characters

SharePoint has historically blocked file names that included the &, ~, {, and } characters, file names that contained a GUID, file names with leading dots, and file names longer than 128 characters. These restrictions are removed in SharePoint Server 2016 and are now available to use.

Hybrid in SharePoint Server 2016

In SharePoint Server 2016, new hybrid features are available to enable hybrid solutions.

Hybrid sites

Hybrid sites features allows your users to have an integrated experience while using SharePoint Server and SharePoint in Microsoft 365 sites:

• Users can follow SharePoint Server and SharePoint in Microsoft 365 sites, and see them consolidated in a single list.

• Users have a single profile in Office 365, where all of their profile info is stored.

For more info, see SharePoint hybrid sites and search.

Hybrid OneDrive

Hybrid sites features are used in concert with Hybrid OneDrive (introduced in SharePoint Server 2013 with Service Pack 1 (SP1)):

• Users can sync files with Office 365 and share them with others.

• Users can access their files directly through Office 365 from any device.

Cloud hybrid search

Cloud hybrid search is a new hybrid search solution alternative. With cloud hybrid search:

• You index all of your crawled content, including on-premises content, to your search index in Office 365. You can set up the crawler in SharePoint Server 2016 to crawl the same content sources and use the same search connectors in Office SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2010, and SharePoint Server 2013.

• When users query your search index in Office 365, they get unified search results from both on-premises and Office 365 content.

For more info about cloud hybrid search, see the public Microsoft cloud hybrid search program on Microsoft Office connection.

For more info, see Plan for hybrid OneDrive.

For more info about the hybrid solutions available today, visit the SharePoint Hybrid Solutions Center.

Identify and search for sensitive content in both SharePoint Server 2016 and OneDrive documents

With this new capability, you can:

• Search for sensitive content across SharePoint Server 2016, SharePoint in Microsoft 365, and OneDrive.

• Leverage 51 built-in sensitive information types (credit cards, passport numbers, Social Security numbers, and more).

• To discover sensitive content relating to common industry regulations from the SharePoint eDiscovery Center, from the eDiscovery site collection, select DLP Queries, identify offending documents, and export a report.

• Turn on DLP Policies from the Compliance Policy Center site collection to notify end users and administrators when documents with sensitive info are stored in SharePoint and automatically protect the documents from improper sharing.

Info about configuring and using this feature is documented in SharePoint and Microsoft 365. For more info, see:

• Search for sensitive content in SharePoint and OneDrive documents

• Use DLP in SharePoint to identify sensitive data stored on sites

Image and video previews

In SharePoint Server 2016, when you post images and videos to a document library, you can see a preview by hovering the mouse over the image or video, or by selecting them.

Information Rights Management

For more info, see Secure and sync with Information Rights Management on OneDrive and Apply Information Rights Management to a list or library.

Large file support

Previous versions of SharePoint did not support uploading or downloading files larger than 2,047 MB. SharePoint Server 2016 now allows you to upload or download larger files. You can configure the desired maximum file-size limit on a per-web application basis in your SharePoint farm.

MinRole farm topology

The role of a server is specified when you create a new farm or join a server to an existing farm. SharePoint automatically configures the services on each server based on the server role, optimizing the performance of the farm based on that topology. There are eight predefined server roles that are available, as shown in the following table.

For more info about the MinRole feature, see Overview of MinRole Server Roles in SharePoint Server 2016 and Planning for a MinRole server deployment in SharePoint Server 2016.

Mobile experience

When you use a mobile device to access the home page for a SharePoint Server 2016 team site, you can tap tiles or links on the screen to navigate the site. You can also switch from the mobile view to PC view, which displays site pages as they are seen on a client computer. This view is also touch enabled.

New controls for working with OneDrive

You can select a control to create new Office documents, upload files, synchronize your files for offline use, and share your files. For more info, see "Simple controls" on The OneDrive Blog.

Open Document Format (ODF) available for document libraries

The Open Document Format (ODF) lets you create new files in a document library and save as ODF files so that users can edit the new file with a program they choose. For more info, see Set Open Document Format (ODF) as the default file template for a library.

Project Server 2016

Project Server 2016 for SharePoint Server 2016 has many new capabilities and features, including:

• Resource Engagements: Now project managers can request needed resources from resource managers to complete their projects. Also, resource managers can use the new heat map functionality to see where resources are spending their time.

• Multiple Timelines: Project and Portfolio managers can now create richer timelines that display multiple timelines in a single view.

• Simpler administration: Project Server now has multi-tenant storage capabilities and has combined data storage with SharePoint. This greatly reduces IT overhead by eliminating the dedicated Project Server database and improves backup and restore capabilities.

• Cloud grade performance and scale: Many performance and scalability improvements that have been added to Project Online have also been added to Project Server 2016.

For more info, see What's new for IT pros in Project Server 2016 Preview.

Power Pivot add-in and Power View are now available to use with SharePoint Server 2016

SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.1 is now available. You can now download SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.1 to use the Power Pivot for SharePoint add-in. You can also use Power View by installing SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) in SharePoint-integrated mode and the SSRS front-end add-in from the SQL Server installation media.

Download SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.1 from Microsoft Download Center.

The following SharePoint Server 2016 business intelligence features are available when you upgrade to SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.1:

• Power Pivot Gallery

• Scheduled Data Refresh

• Workbooks as a Data Source

• Power Pivot Management Dashboard

• Power View reports

• Power View Subscriptions

• Report Alerting

For more info, download the new Deploying SQL Server 2016 PowerPivot and Power View in SharePoint 2016 white paper. For details about configuring and deploying business intelligence in a multiple server SharePoint Server 2016 farm, download Deploying SQL Server 2016 PowerPivot and Power View in a Multi-Tier SharePoint 2016 Farm.

Request Manager service improvements

SharePoint Request Manager now provisions on the server roles shown in the following list, to support both throttling and routing scenarios:

• Application

• Distributed Cache

• Front-End

Additionally, the Request Manager service will no longer prevent sites from rendering when the service is enabled while you have no routing rules defined.

Sharing

The following list shows the sharing improvements that are available for SharePoint Server 2016:

• Create and Share folder

• Sharing Hint

• See who the folder is shared with when viewing a folder

• Members can share

• Improved invitation mail

• One-click email to approve or deny a request for access

• Recently Shared Items cache, see Enable the Recently Shared Items (RSI) cache to quickly populate the Shared with Me view.

SharePoint Search Service application

SharePoint Search supports indexing of up to 500 million items per Search Server application. For more info, see Overview of search architecture in SharePoint Server. For info about SharePoint cloud hybrid search, see Learn about cloud hybrid search for SharePoint.

Simplified SSL configuration for Central Administration site

We've simplified the process for configuring Central Administration to use SSL bindings. The following command parameters are now available to use:

• New-SPCentralAdministration -Port <number> -SecureSocketsLayer

• Set-SPCentralAdministration -Port <number> -SecureSocketsLayer

• Psconfig.exe -cmd adminvs -port <number> -ssl

You must assign a server certificate to the Central Administration IIS web site by using the IIS administration tools. The Central Administration web application won't be accessible until you do this.

If you specify port 443, it will automatically create an SSL binding instead of an HTTP binding even if you don't include the SecureSocketsLayer or SSL parameters.

The Central Administration public AAM URL will be automatically updated to use the appropriate protocol scheme, server name, and port number.

Site collection upgrades

There are three options available for upgrading site collections. For more info, see Upgrade a site collection to SharePoint Server 2016.

SMTP connection encryption

The following list shows the SharePoint 2016 requirements that are needed to negotiate connection encryption with an SMTP server:

1. STARTTLS must be enabled on the SMTP server.

2. The SMTP server must support the TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, or TLS 1.2 protocol.

   Important

   SSL 2.0 and SSL 3.0 protocols are not supported.

3. The SMTP server must have a server certificate installed.

4. The server certificate must be valid. Typically, this means that the name of the server certificate must match the name of the SMTP server provided to SharePoint. The server certificate must also be issued by a certificate authority that is trusted by the SharePoint server.

5. SharePoint must be configured to use SMTP connection encryption.

To configure SharePoint to always use SMTP connection encryption, open the SharePoint Central Administration website and browse to System Settings > Configure outgoing e-mail settings and set the Use TLS connection encryption drop-down menu to Yes. To configure SharePoint to always use SMTP connection encryption in Microsoft PowerShell, use the Set-SPWebApplication cmdlet without the DisableSMTPEncryption parameter. For example:

$WebApp = Get-SPWebApplication -IncludeCentralAdministration | ? { $_.IsAdministrationWebApplication -eq $true }
Set-SPWebApplication -Identity $WebApp -SMTPServer smtp.internal.contoso.com -OutgoingEmailAddress sharepoint@contoso.com -ReplyToEmailAddress sharepoint@contoso.com

To configure SharePoint to never use SMTP connection encryption in SharePoint Central Administration, browse to System Settings > Configure outgoing email settings and set the Use TLS connection encryption drop-down menu to No. To configure SharePoint to never use SMTP connection encryption in PowerShell, use the Set-SPWebApplication cmdlet with the DisableSMTPEncryption parameter. For example:

$WebApp = Get-SPWebApplication -IncludeCentralAdministration | ? { $_.IsAdministrationWebApplication -eq $true }
Set-SPWebApplication -Identity $WebApp -SMTPServer smtp.internal.contoso.com -DisableSMTPEncryption -OutgoingEmailAddress sharepoint@contoso.com -ReplyToEmailAddress 
sharepoint@contoso.com

Site folders view

For more info, see "Site folders" in The OneDrive Blog.

Sites page pinning

You can now pin sites that you see on the sites page. A pinned site shows at the top of the list of sites that you're following.

Suite Navigation is themable

You can now apply themes to your Suite Navigation.

Use SMTP ports other than the default (25)

To configure SharePoint to use a non-default SMTP port open SharePoint Central Administration, browse to System Settings > Configure outgoing email settings, and set the SMTP server port to the port number of your SMTP server. To configure SharePoint to use a non-default SMTP port in PowerShell, use the Set-SPWebApplication cmdlet with the SMTPServerPort <port number> parameter. For example:

$WebApp = Get-SPWebApplication -IncludeCentralAdministration | ? { $_.IsAdministrationWebApplication -eq $true }
Set-SPWebApplication -Identity $WebApp -SMTPServer smtp.internal.contoso.com -SMTPServerPort 587 -OutgoingEmailAddress sharepoint@contoso.com -ReplyToEmailAddress 
sh  arepoint@contoso.com

Related Topics

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