Improvements and new capabilities in SharePoint 2013

I have already posted about the enhancements in SharePoint 2013 in my previous posting SharePoint 2013 Changes and Enhancements from SharePoint 2010. In continuation to the previous posting here your will get more details about the SharePoint 2013 enhancements.

SharePoint 2013 Architecture:-

In general the model on which SharePoint 2013 is built on is same as the previous version SharePoint 2010 , however there are numerous platform level improvements and new capabilities introduced in the SharePoint 2013

• Shredded Storage
• SQL Improvements
• Cache Service
• Request Management
• Themes
• Sharing

Service applications in SharePoint 2013:-

There are new service applications introduced in SharePoint 2013 and improvements done in existing service applications. Office web app and Web Analytics are no longer a service application. Below is the list of all the service applications in SharePoint 2013

Access Services Web Service Application App Management Service Application Business Data Connectivity Service Application Search Service Application Excel Services Application Managed Metadata Service PerformancePoint Service Application PowerPoint Conversion Service Application Secure Store Service Application Machine Translation Service Usage and Health Data Collection Service Application User Profile Service Application State Service Visio Graphics Service Application Security Token Service Application Application Discovery and Load Balancer Service Application

I will write a separate post about service applications in SharePoint 2013, you need to wait for some time -J

Enterprise Content Management:-

SharePoint 2013 now supports Site-level retention policies with following features:-

• Compliance levels extended to sites
• Policies include:
• Retention policy for sites and Team Mailbox associated with site
• Project closure and expiration policy

Below screen shots shows the Site Policies screen in SharePoint 2013

Discovery Center is a new feature in SharePoint 2013

• Designed for managing discovery cases and holds
• Establishes a portal through which you can access discovery cases to conduct searches, place content on hold, and export content

eDiscovery capablities

• Support for searching and exporting content from file shares
• Export discovered content from Exchange and SharePoint

Team folders feature of SharePoint 2013 provides seemless integration of Exchange and SharePoint to provide best of both world and end user flexibility

Web Content Management:-

Following features are introduced in SharePoint 2013 web content management:-

• Support the tools and workflows designers use
• Variations & Content Translation
• Search Engine Optimization
• Cross Site Publishing
• Video & Embedding :- Now you can embed YouTube videos in SharePoint 2013 sites very easily, below is the screen shot showing video embedding

• Image renditions :- Wao, this is a great feature, now SharePoint 2013 will take care of image resizing without loos of image quality. Below screen shot shows image rendition feature in SharePoint 2013

• Clean Urls:- Now you can have a short URL with this feature
• Metadata navigation

Social:-

Micro-blogging a new feature in SharePoint 2013

• Share content, links, and media
• Follow people, sites, content, and conversations

Activity Feeds: - Now we have got very rich activity wall

• Provides a view into recent activity related to content, links, media, and people

Communities

• Community sites with self-service administration and moderation
• Modern community features such as achievements and reputation

Discussions

• Modern discussion boards

Blogs: - Blog portal was there in SharePoint 2010, however there few modification done in Blog which are

• Client application integration
• Categories, comments, and moderation 

Search:-

If something is changed drastically in SharePoint 2013 that is Search. Search is now made very powerful, SharePoint 2013 is now all in one search, now bye bye to Microsoft Search Server and FAST

Here are the Search capabilities in SharePoint 2013:-

• New Search architecture with one unified search
• Personalized search results based on search history
• Rich contextual previews

Business Intelligence:-

Excel BI

ž   Instant analysis through In Memory BI Engine

ž   Power View Add-in

Excel Services

ž   Improved data exploration

ž   Field List and Field Well Support

ž   Calculated Measures and Members

ž   Enhanced Timeline Controls

PerformancePoint Services

ž   Filter enhancements and Filter search

ž   Dashboard migration

ž   Support for Analysis Services Effective User

Visio Services

ž   Refresh data from external sources – BCS and Azure SQL

ž   Supports comments on Visio Drawings

ž   Maximum Cache Size service parameter

ž   Health Analyzer Rules to report on Maximum Cache Size

Mobile:-

Classic and Contemporary views for mobile browsers

Automatic Mobile Browser Redirection

Target different designs based on user agent string

Office Mobile Web Apps

ž   Excel

ž   PowerPoint

ž   Word

Push notifications

In SharePoint 2013 you can define master pages for different mobile devices, it allows you to create device channels and then you can define master pages to each channel.

All above content are referenced from the training material provided by the Microsoft. I will write more blogs on individual features of SharePoint 2013. Meanwhile share your comments on this post and wait for the next blog.

Enjoy SharePointing!!!