What's New in SharePoint 2013?

What’s New in SharePoint 2013?

Installation Changes

The installation process is not radically changed from the SharePoint 2010 installation process. If you can install SharePoint 2010, with a little effort and a small amount of stumbling, you can install SharePoint 2013 too.

•          System Requirements
•          The installation process
•         Upgrading from SharePoint 2010
•          Patching

Reference link: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262957.aspx

Central Administration

The Central Administration site is like home base for SharePoint administrators, often called just Central Admin. Central Admin in SharePoint 2013 bears a very striking resemblance to Central Admin in SharePoint 2010. They look much alike, that SharePoint 2013’s Central Admin could probably use SharePoint 2010’s Central Admin’s ID to get into bars if it had to.

Some differences are mentioned below:

·         Branding

·         Layout changes that are universal to SharePoint 2013

-          Flat look and the location of the Site Settings gear

·         Apps are new to SharePoint 2013

Other than that, all those Central Admin navigating skills you honed in SharePoint 2010 transfer directly over to SharePoint 2013. Administrators of SharePoint 2013 will be glad to find that Central Administration retains its familiar style of being wide rather than deep.

Service Applications

The service application architecture has not changed as shown in the ‘Manage Service Applications’ dialog in the figure

List of the new Service Applications in SharePoint 2013

·         Access Services

·         App Management

·         Machine Translation

·         Work Management

·         PowerPoint Conversion

Search Service Application

The Search Service Application has received some improvements in SharePoint 2013, rebuilt to be better and stronger. Microsoft rebuilt the SharePoint Search service application and properly integrated FAST technology in to it. The interface in Central Admin is roughly the same, as in SharePoint 2010. There are additional links for the new functionality that was added. New SharePoint 2013 search Administration interface is shown below

List of six search components and what they do:

·         Index – Stores and replicates portions of the search index.

·         Query Processing – Responds to the user search queries and provides results

·         Search Administration – The Search ringleader, this component controls the other components. There can be only one Search Administration component per Search Service application

·         Crawl – Crawls the content sources and passes on their contents to the Content Procession components

·         Content Processing – Processes the documents retrieved from the Crawl component and writes the results to the Index component.

·         Analytics (new component in SharePoint 2013) – Creates usage analytics and search analytic reports.

“Changing the Search topology can no longer be done in the comfort of Central Admin. That’s now a task that only PowerShell can accomplish.”

Managed Metadata Service Application

Managed Metadata was expanded to include support for custom navigation. This capability enables you to design and store complex global navigation structures in the Managed Metadata service application. These navigation structures are stored like regular metadata, making it easier to work with them.

User Profile Service Application

User Profile service application now supports quicker synchronization with Active Directory. Microsoft has added back the Active Directory Import connection that was used in SharePoint 2007 did. It’s just read-only, but its faster than the FIM-based profile synchronization of SharePoint 2010, and it supports LDAP filters, as of SharePoint 2007 did. This is great news for smaller shops that are not ready to take advantage of all the functionality offered by the User Profile Service.

Office Web Apps (OWAs)

In SharePoint 2010, You need to install the Office Web Apps(OWAs) on your SharePoint Servers and expose them as Service Applications.

In SharePoint 2013, the OWAs are now their own product, and they must be installed on their own, non-SharePoint Server. The OWAs have increased functionality, even in SharePoint. They can give you document previews right in your document libraries, for instance. You can also use the OWAs to render office documents in Outlook Anywhere in Exchange 2013.

Claims and Authentication

One of the more significant changes in SharePoint 2013 is the emphasis on Claims- based authentication(CBA). CBA is no longer just recommended, it’s the default authentication provider for SharePoint. When a new web application is created in Central Administration, classic-mode authentication is no longer even an option. You can use any authentication type you want if it’s claims-based.

However, classic-mode authentication, while discouraged, is still available using PowerShell cmdlets.

If you want to give user logins for SharePoint but not add them to your corporate Active Directory. CBA can do that. Your users can use any authentication store that supports Security Assertions Markup Language(SAML) claims.

Example: Microsoft’s Live ID and OAuth, which is used by Google and Facebook.

Managing SharePoint 2013 with Windows PowerShell

SharePoint 2013’s command-line interface continues to be PowerShell, though now it is based on PowerShell V3.

PowerShell V3 Improvements include (SharePoint 2013):

•          Integrated scripting environment(ISE) that is much improved over its V2 version.
•         PowerShell Web Access, which provides a way to execute PowerShell commands in a web browser.
•          Bevy of commands and syntax improvements
•         SharePoint Management Console includes nearly 300 new cmdlets

SharePoint Apps

The most significant change in SharePoint 2013 is the addition of SharePoint apps

.

Benefits - Administrators:

•          Apps provide another way to add functionality to your SharePoint farm.
•          Apps can run on SharePoint, another server entirely or even in the client browser.
•          App Management and Subscription Settings service applications should be created and configured.

Benefits - Developers:

•  Money
•  Includes a public SharePoint App market where developers can publish and sell their apps to users who want to add them to their farms. Their apps can also be sold on Office365.

Workflow Manager

Out of the box, SharePoint 2013 supports all workflow functionality that existed in SharePoint 2010. While SharePoint 2013 natively supports SharePoint 2010 workflow, there are two additional workflow options: SharePoint 2013 workflows and Project Server 2013 workflows.

The SharePoint 2013 Workflows are available after you install the SharePoint 2013 Workflow Manager, which is an additional download. The Workflow Manager doesn’t need to be installed on a SharePoint server, and for performance reasons it probably shouldn’t be. After you have successfully installed the Workflow Manager, you are only one carefully crafted PowerShell cmdlet away from being able to use the SharePoint 2013 Workflows.

If you install Project Server 2013 workflows, you’ll obtain even more workflow options.

New User Experience

·         Faster

·         Prettier

Getting Social

Here are the enhancements made to the social experience in SharePoint 2013:

•          Much like Facebook, users can post status updates to let coworkers know what they are up to.
•          As with Facebook, users can us the @ sign to mentions coworkers, which makes it easy to find out who is talking about you.
•         These status updates can fellow users and trends, and you can tag threads with keywords using the hashtag (#).
•          SharePoint also supports users posting pictures to their newsfeed.
•          You can also follow individual documents. You can also post comments and create threads about individual documents.