SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

As I am going about my Labor Day weekend, I am slowly installing SP2016 for my development box at home.

This is part 3 of this mini blog series as I detail what I encounter and find new and interesting things to explore…

Where we left yesterday was letting the configuration wizard run (usually a big no no for people, but you have to try these things now and again… I know it leaves your configuration databases with GUID’s etc… but for the sake of this testing period, I’m OK with it.)

So to start with, we choose the services.  I am keen to know how well the default runs so I am leaving the check boxes as they are.

We kind of have a new Managed Service:

• Project Server – Now part of the standard SharePoint installation.  This should make patching and life in general easier!  (Previously it was a separate install and quite easy to get the versions out of sync if you weren’t careful)

We also have the Services section at the bottom with something new…

• Microsoft SharePoint Insights – not too much to go on for this one with the documentation but Bill Baer suggests that future unannounced functionality is coming in this MSDN Forum post last week: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/b5d745f3-e4a0-4879-aaff-1cb157cb718a/the-service-instance-microsoft-sharepoint-insights-could-not-be-provisioned-because-of-the?forum=SP2016

I press Next and we get the familiar working on it screen from SharePoint 2013 and are then requested to create a site collection:

Once created, we get our success screen of all services:

On this screen we have the ability to configure the new Hybrid features with Office 365 such as Search integration (via a new managed service) and OneDrive cloud integration (I shall investigate this in a later post)

Lastly, I check that the site collection worked as expected:

The site collection (team site) came up as expected with very little change apart from the top bar which has the app launcher on the left and the new site actions / user menus on the right.  This resemble the ones that have been on Office 365 for a while now.

You can find out a bit more of the end user experience regarding the App Launcher for Office 365 in this blog here: http://epmsource.com/2014/12/07/customising-the-nav-bar-app-launcher-in-office-365/ (Thanks Alex :)).  On initial inspection, the capability is not quite the same here but I will be investigating further.

In Office 365 they have just released the capability of adding your own icons via the tenant admin: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Add-custom-tiles-to-the-My-apps-page-and-app-launcher-1136115a-75af-4497-b693-640c4ce70bc6 – I will confirm that this is available On-Premise also.

Lastly, if you want to code your own via an Azure App…https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/connect-your-app-to-o365-app-launcher – This is again for Office 365 but I suspect there is similar capability for On-Premise.

Looking at the site settings, we have a couple of new things (or perhaps things I hadn’t noticed in 2013 SP1…)

• Site Closure and Deletion policies – this will be useful for those operational cleanups and potential compliance requirements large enterprises have.
• Search and offline availability – Search availability is not new, but the offline availability I do not remember being in SP2013 via this menu (perhaps permission levels with remote interfaces).  Again this could be good for compliance purposes, especially for Legal sites.
• Lastly, Site collection health checks… I need to start these running but if we can code our own health checks based on company governance… this could be awesome!

Anyway… I am off to a baseball game in an hour… one of the last games of the season for the Round Rock Express.  They are playing the Iowa Hawkeyes!  This is the first game I have seen since moving over here… exciting stuff!

VS.