SharePoint 2019: All Important Features & Functions

It’s been sometime SharePoint 2019 has been with us, and the corporate world is raving about the smart features and functions that it offers. Microsoft announced detailed information about SharePoint 2019 for the first time at the current SharePoint Conference North America in Las Vegas. With SharePoint 2019, it is now easier to integrate the group content of your Office 365 with Microsoft Team and SharePoint Team Sites. It also allows you to connect your existing SharePoint team sites to a new group in Office 365, while allowing you to quickly access shared documents library, group calendar, and planner to managed your tasks.

With the latest release of SharePoint 2019, Microsoft has proved that it is still very much committed to its users who are using on-premise or hybrid environment of SharePoint. SharePoint has been released with a wide variety of features, however there are some features that always remains at the heart of its users. Here is a brief overview of the most important innovations:

OneDrive Sync

OneDrive has been at the center of Microsoft’s SharePoint strategy for some time – so far, however, only in the cloud. Now the storage service has its place in the on-premises server for the first time. Specifically, this means that synchronization with the OneDrive sync client will be possible with personal and team sites in the future. The new function of selective synchronization via files on demand is also supported.

Modern Experience Replaces Classic

With SharePoint 2016, Microsoft also introduced the new ‘Modern’ interface. Initially, the functional benefits were very limited compared to the old classic look, but the modernization in SharePoint Online has been pushed forward ever since. Much of this is now also incorporated into SharePoint 2019 – in the following areas:

• SharePoint Home: The homepage with sites and news known from Office 365 is now also available on-premises.
• Modern Team & Communication Sites– the center for collaboration and team-oriented publishing
• Lists & Document Libraries in a new outfit
• Pages, Web Parts & Editing: Compared to the classic SharePoint development pages, the modern counterparts are easier to use and content easier to create. There will be a number of modern web parts
• App Launcher & Waffle Menu – the now-familiar start menu of Office 365
• New Sharing Features: Sharing content in SharePoint has always been difficult to configure and use. The functions in Office 365 that have gradually been improved in recent years, especially when sharing documents with external contacts, are now also benefiting SharePoint 2019 users.

Administration, Infrastructure Improvements

• Links from central administration to the SharePoint documentation
• New PowerShell Commandlets.
• Workflow Manager 2019: Despite the great progress with Flow, Microsoft continues to use SharePoint workflows and extends the previous Workflow Manager 1.0.
• Further PowerApps and Flow integration.

Hybrid Environments

According to Microsoft, 70 % of SharePoint workstations are now in the cloud, but integration with the on-premises environment is all the more important. To further simplify this, the following news is coming:

• New SharePoint hybrid status bar shows the functional status of the configuration at a glance.
• Direct link in central administration to the Hybrid Configuration Wizard.
• OneDrive in the cloud as standard when setting up hybrid.
• Modern Search with improvements from Microsoft Office 365.

Further Improvements

• The special characters # and% can now be used for file and folder names.
• Extension of the URL paths to 400 characters.

What Is Missing from SharePoint 2019?

Due to the peculiarities of the cloud architecture, some functions cannot be easily implemented with the on-premises server. Here are three examples:

• Hub Sites: This function is probably too new for centralized portal frontends to be implemented in SharePoint 2019
• PowerBI: SharePoint lists can still be exported to PowerBI for analysis, but the new PowerBI web part for Office 365 will not be available in SharePoint 2019 for the time being
• Most of the newer web parts from Office 365, especially those that are heavily designed for cloud functions, cannot be found in the new server.

Old, continued functions

• The BI stack has been discontinued, but can still be installed in the new server.
• The news feed was also recently discontinued, but can still be used in read-only mode.
• Authentication: Alternatives such as ADFS or SAML providers can still be used.