New features for SharePoint Online 2013

Been working through some information from the recent SharePoint Conference about what’s coming done the pipe for SharePoint with the new version of Office 365 due soon. While doing so I found the above slide and some interesting information to note:

1. All versions of SharePoint Online will include the App Catalog and Marketplace.

2. The Small Business (P) plan will now include Form Based Applications. That seems to indicate it will now include some sort of form services (i.e. InfoPath services).

3. E-Discovery and compliance are only going to be available with SharePoint Online Plan 2 (and the E3 and E4 plans).

4. Enterprise search is only going to be available with SharePoint Online Plan 2 (and the E3 and E4 plans).

5. Access Services will be available for P and all E plans. That is a change (even though it is not noted in this slide) as it only used to be available for P, SharePoint Online Plan 2, E3 and E4 plans.

6. All SharePoint plans except Kiosk plans get something called Work Management (which I am not about as yet, but it is new).

The other general thing I will note here is to compare the feature set between SharePoint Foundation 2013 (the traditional Small Business SKU) and the SharePoint Online plans, even the Small Business P plan. The difference is VERY significant and this only further reinforces my opinion that you really shouldn’t be considering SharePoint Foundation 2013 at all.

This is very exciting if all of this is come to fruition Combined with all the other new features I can see more and more businesses moving to SharePoint Online with Office 365 in 2013.

Some information on new Office 365

Many people are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new Office 365 which is due any time now. With a new version on the way there are of course plenty of questions about what the product contains, what the upgrade path and options are and so on. Here a few resources I’ve found that may answer some of these questions for you.

Office 365 Preview Service Descriptions – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj819284.aspx

Office 365 Service Upgrade center for enterprise – http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/office_365_service_updates/office-365-service-upgrade-center-for-enterprise.aspx

Office 365 Service Upgrade Center for Small Business – http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/office_365_service_updates/office-365-service-upgrade-center-for-small-business.aspx

Interesting that these documents also say:

“We’ll be rolling out the service upgrade over the course of 2013, and it is completely automated: there’s nothing you need to do to prepare your Office 365 service for the upgrade. During the upgrade, email, instant messaging and sites will keep working, and you don’t need to reconfigure computers and mobile devices after the upgrade.”

All we need now is a date when it will actually be available.

Hey what about my Outlook?

So I thought that I’d install Office 2013 on a production machine in side by side mode. It WAS my understanding that you could install Office 2013 on a machine with Office 2010 and not replace ANY of the existing programs.

I completed the installed and did the following checks:

Two versions of Excel ? Check.

Two versions of Word ? Check.

Two versions of OneNote ? Check.

Two versions of Outlook ? FAIL.

That is disappointing as Outlook 2010 is REALLY one of the things that I wanted to retain. Now it is gone and I honestly can’t remember seeing a message or a warning informing me that it would be replaced. If I had seen a message I probably wouldn’t have continued with the installation.

Not a huge problem BUT still there is the lesson from today. Not replace actually means not replace everything EXCEPT Outlook in Office 2013.

You have been warned.

New product guide

As we ramp up to the full release of a swag of new software (Office 2013, Exchange 2013, Office 365 etc) we are beginning to see more resources become available for IT Professionals.

You can find all the products at:

http://officeignitelabs.cloudguides.com/default.htm

or if you just want Office 365 that is at:

http://officeignitelabs.cloudguides.com/Office%20365%20Labs.htm

At these locations you’ll find a swag of helpful videos that will give you a good overview of the new features and get you on the road to understanding how they can be used effectively. Jump on board now as it is going to be a big year.

Podcast Episode 44–Ishai Sagi

http://ciaops.podbean.com/2013/01/08/episode-44-ishai-sagi/

In this episode I speak with SharePoint MVP Ishai Sagi about the latest features coming to SharePoint 2013 whether on premise or via Office 365.

You can support this podcast via http://donation.ciaops.com

Don’t forget all the other podcasts at http://ciaops.podbean.com and appreciate a like over at http://www.facebook.com/n2kpodcast.

Remember if you want to be a guest please contact me (director@ciaops.com).

Foundation 2013 Search challenges

This was going to be a post about the fact that I managed to get Search working on SharePoint Foundation 2013, and I did have it working. Honest. The initial issue I experienced seemed to either be the fact that I had accidentally installed SharePoint Foundation 2013 on the member server as a local (rather than a domain) administrator or that the times on the workstation and the server were too different. Whatever it was I did have it working.

That was until I powered up the machines (server and members server) to get some screen shots of it all working. Problem is now it does again! I also noticed the the SharePoint machine was really, really slow and when I took a look at the resources I saw:

From this you can see how much memory and processing is being consumed by SharePoint Search alone! Wow. You are doing to need more hardware grunt of you are planning to implement SharePoint Foundation 2013 from what I can see.

Now admittedly I am only running this on a virtual machine for testing purposes but I can tell you I didn’t have these issues with SharePoint Foundation 2010! The more I work with Foundation 2013 the more I am beginning to dislike it. Don’t get me wrong, I love SharePoint 2013 but getting this blighter to work is proving very, very difficult. I certainly hope others aren’t seeing these issues. Another reason to focus on Office 365 in my books.

The positive thing, when I did get SharePoint search working, was that SharePoint Foundation 2013 now incorporates all the features of Search Server Express (obviously the reason why there is no more stand alone Search Server Express product). It also includes the ability to index PDF documents WITHOUT the need to install separate iFilters.

Now, if I could only show you that actually working but as I said, when I booted the machines backup SharePoint search no longer worked on Foundation 2013. Back to the drawing board yet again.

Getting Started with SharePoint 2013 eBook

My final eBook for 2012 is now available in a variety of formats.

This book helps novice users understand the basic usage and operation of SharePoint 2013. It examines the following basic components of SharePoint: Documents, Calendars, Tasks, Picture Libraries, Recycle Bin and Search. The reader will be taken through a tutorial process on how to use each item. Much has changed since previous versions of SharePoint, however there are still some similarities. As such, this book may still provide some insight into the basics of older versions of SharePoint. It will show you how to start interacting with SharePoint 2013 so it can be put to use in your business as well as provide a number of resources for continuing familiarity with SharePoint 2013.

This booked is aimed at users who have never used SharePoint and is only $1.99 and available in PDF, ePub and Kindle formats.

The best place to pick a copy of this and other title from the CIAOPS is at the Publications page at – http://www.ciaops.com/publications, however most titles are also available from Lulu and Amazon.