Getting Excited about Sharepoint 2013??
Features and functionality of Sharepoint 2013
Microsoft will unveil its 2013 version of Sharepoint sometime early next year. In the meantime, Office 2013, 365 Enterprise which was released this summer includes the Sharepoint 2013 server.
Sharepoint is an office-based application used by 78% of fortune 500 companies. SharePoint can be used to provide “intranet portals,document & file management, collaboration, social networks, extranets,websites, enterprise search, and business intelligence.”
Using cloud technology, the newest version of Sharepoint will include more social aspects, allowing users to share information within an organization as well as linking to external social sites providing for more collaboration with colleagues and experts.
Most of the enhancements from 2010 center around 2013’s ability to more centralize workspace information in one place by adding technology by conceptClassifer that provides the “same functionality as the Content Query Web Part, but is instead based on the search functionality available within SharePoint.”
Some of the social features that are new to Sharepoint 2013 for the end user experience are the updated “My Sites” feature, Community searches, News Feed and “Reputation Builder.”
The new “My Site” features incorporates many of the components that users of social networks like Facebook and Twitter will find familiar. Users can “like” posts, use hash tags to highlight comment threads and the My Site page is split into three sections for News Feed, SkyDrive and Sites.
The “Community” feature encourages Sharepoint 2013 users to interact with people within the organization by encouraging discussions on forums. In tandem with the Community feature is the “Reputation Builder.” This feature allows other users to promote posters on the forum by “liking” a string, giving “badges” for good posts and marking discussions and answers as “best replies,” which is then displayed on the member’s page.
“The Newsfeed displays information from other users or things that you follow, such as people, documents, sites, and tags. It displays 20 items, sorted in reverse chronological order.” Of course, users can add other feeds from external websites as well. (See a slideshow on the top 10 features of Sharepoint 2013 here)
When it comes to uploading and storing data on Sharepoint 2013, one improvement in the functionality of the site is the shortening of URL addresses for accessing documents.
“In previous versions of SharePoint you were required to have longer URLs that contained references to the specific location you were trying to access. Within SharePoint 2013 you can now configure the URL so that it can be more easily referenced. An example of this would be the following two URLs:
Previous SharePoint Versions: http://www.contoso.com/Pages/Computers.aspx#/ID=453&Source=http%3A%2F1010101
SharePoint 2013 Friendly URL: http://www.contoso.com/Computers/model101”
While the newest version of Sharepoint offers a wide range of new features, it is likely that many companies will continue to use the earlier version that they are currently working with at least for a couple of years.
“Large clients who rolled out SharePoint 2010 in the past two years are going to find it hard to justify moving on to 2013 in the near future, unless they can find a business justification for spending the time and money it will take to make the transition.” (CMS Wire)
It may be “a real distraction for day to day users to be concerned about the “new” functionality of SharePoint 2013: Social, My Sites enhancements, Managed Navigation, the App Store. To upgrade to 2013 is a business decision that will have to be justified at a much higher level than the end user. Will the business gain enough impact to make that upgrade worthwhile?” (CMS Wire)
Whether or not Sharepoint will be right for you or your business depends upon your companies needs. Is it worth staying ahead, and pushing into the future by Sharepoint 2013’s side? Or is it best to keep something that is obviously stable, and quite frankly works incredibly well?