Bill Baer /bɛːr/

SharePoint Server 2016 Beta 2, released on November 18th, 2015, introduces several new hybrid capabilities that drive end-user familiarity and provide further abstraction of Office 365 when coexisting with SharePoint on-premises to include a new hybrid extensible App Launcher and profile redirection. Extensible App Launcher The App Launcher is a familiar feature in Office and it’s now been extended to SharePoint Server 2016. The App Launcher provides a common location to discover new apps and navigate SharePoint on-premises and Office 365.

Prerequisites SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview Office Online Server Preview Overview Durable Links provide a resource Id based link for Web Application Open Platform Interface Protocol (WOPI) documents served by SharePoint and Office Online Server. The resource Id assigned to individual documents is stored in the content database related to the source document. When using Durable Links when a user selects a link to a specific document, SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview looks up the file by the resource Id and opens it in Office Online Server Preview.

Overview The Distributed Cache service provides in-memory caching services to several features in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview. Some of the features that use the Distributed Cache service include: Newsfeeds Authentication OneNote client access Security Trimming Page load performance These features use the Distributed Cache for quick data retrieval. The Distributed Cache service stores data in memory and does not have a dependency on databases in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview.

A new System Center Operations Manager Management Pack is now available for SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview. The Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview Management Pack is designed to be used for monitoring SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview events, collecting SharePoint component-specific performance counters in one central location, and for raising alerts for operator intervention as necessary. By detecting, sending alerts, and automatically correlating critical events, this management pack helps indicate, correct, and prevent possible service outages or configuration problems, allowing you to proactively manage SharePoint servers and identify issues before they become critical.

The following table documents all Web Templates available in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview. For a downloadable version see also http://1drv.ms/1Lf6Cin. Name Title Description Compatibility Level ACCSRV#0 Access Services Site Microsoft Access Server 14 ACCSRV#0 Access Services Site Microsoft Access Server 15 ACCSRV#1 Assets Web Database 14 ACCSRV#3 Charitable Contributions Web Database 14 ACCSRV#4 Contacts Web Database 14 ACCSRV#5 Projects Web Database 14 ACCSRV#6 Issues Web Database 14 ACCSVC#0 Access Services Site Internal

Improvements in performance and scale in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview search now allow search to scale up to 500 million items, an increase of 250 million items SharePoint Server 2013 [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787.aspx#Search] based on 10 million items per index partition. In SharePoint Server 2013 and SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview each index partition contains a subset of the whole search index. If the number of indexed items is high in relation to how much memory the server has, affects the query response time negatively.

SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview is now available in the Windows Azure Platform Gallery. The image is based on the current Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter release and includes a complete installation of SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview. Getting Started To get started with SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview on Windows Azure navigate to the Windows Azure Portal (https://manage.windowsazure.com/) and sign-in with your credentials. Select + New. Select Compute, click Virtual Machine and then click From Gallery

Overview In SharePoint Server 2013 the List View Threshold specified the maximum number of list or library items that a database operation, such as a query, can process at the same time outside the daily time window set by the administrator during which queries are unrestricted. In SharePoint 2013 the List View Threshold is set to 5,000 or 20,000 for users and auditors respectively. Typically a users’ initial experience with List View Threshold is when it has been exceeded, the resultant error: The number of items in this list exceeds the list view threshold, which is 5000 items” as documented at https://support.

Fast Site Collection Creation is a new capability in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview that improves Site Collection creation performance by reducing Feature activation overhead. Similar to the approach associated with MinRole Site Collections that support Fast Site Collection Creation are Feature-optimized. Fast Site Collection Creation is a mechanism designed to improve provision performance of Site Collections through instrumenting a copy operation using SPSite.Copy at the Content Database level. The primary vehicle in addressing this scenario is the enablement of a Site Master or master copy of the Site Collection for an enabled Template that provides the source Site Collection when a request is made for creating a new Site Collection.

One of the key improvements to eDiscovery in SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview is the introduction on Sensitive Information Types to eDiscovery. In SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview Data Loss Prevention is now built into Enterprise Search. It allows you to search for sensitive content in your existing eDiscovery Center, keeping content in place and enabling you to search in real time. SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview provides a wide range of sensitive information types from different industry segments and geographies, such as credit card numbers, Social Security numbers (SSNs), bank account numbers, and other types, many of which you may already be using to search for sensitive content in email.