SharePoint Server 2016

Frequently Asked Questions

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Overview Note

This document provides customer-ready responses that can be used as responses to feedback/inquiries

regarding SharePoint Server 2016. It is not meant to be left behind with customers in digital or physical

form.

Table of Contents Overview .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3

General Q&A .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

SKUs, Language, and Pricing .............................................................................................................................................................. 6

IT Professional Q&A ............................................................................................................................................................................ 7

Developer Q&A .................................................................................................................................................................................. 10

SharePoint Online and Office 365 Integration ....................................................................................................................... 11

Enterprise Content Management Q&A .................................................................................................................................... 12

Forms and Workflow ................................................................................................................................................................... 12

Business Intelligence ........................................................................................................................................................................ 13

Social ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14

Search ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14

Web Content Management ........................................................................................................................................................... 14

Mobile .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14

General Q&A When will SharePoint Server 2016 ship?

SharePoint Server 2016 will ship in the second quarter of CY 2016.

Will SharePoint Server 2016 ship at the same time as Exchange Server 2016?

No. In effort to ensure a rich server release for our customers and provide sufficient time for the long tail

of testing and quality checks we delayed SharePoint Server 2016 from H2 CY2015 to Q2 CY 2016.

Will there be a SharePoint Server 2016 Beta or Preview release?

There are currently plans to ship both a Beta (planned for Q4 CY 2015) and Release Candidate. We are

not making any announcements on additional releases at this time.

Is SharePoint Server 2016 just a snapshot of SharePoint Online or an incremental update to SharePoint

Server 2016?

While SharePoint Server 2016 will be representative of our experience running SharePoint at scale in

Office 365 as SharePoint Online – and as such many improvements will be both indicative of capabilities

we delivered in Office 365 and accrue to on-premises across IT, Developer, and Information Workers

experiences, it will also include discrete additive investments unique to on-premises and hybrid

deployments.

What is the Forms and Workflow strategy in SharePoint Server 2016?

SharePoint Server 2016 will carry forward InfoPath Forms Services from previous versions of SharePoint;

however, a new Forms editor (client) will not be shipped. Customers will be able to use the InfoPath 2013

client to continue to create forms with SharePoint Server 2016.

Capabilities such as Workflow Manager and Windows Workflow Foundation will be carried forward from

SharePoint Server 2013 and are accessible through SharePoint Designer 2013. There will be no

SharePoint Designer 2016.

When SharePoint 2013 was released, there were new versions of InfoPath and SharePoint Designer at

the same time. Will SharePoint 2016 include new version of those products as well?

For the past decade, InfoPath and SharePoint Designer have been at the forefront of Microsoft solutions

for professional developers and information workers building lightweight business applications for the

enterprise. SharePoint 2016 extends our commitment to lightweight business applications.

As we continue to evolve, we recognize the need the for a long runway as we augment the business apps

story with new tools and capabilities. As a result, we’re updating the support timelines in conjunction with

SharePoint 2016.

InfoPath Forms Services will be included as part of SharePoint Server 2016. As a result, InfoPath

Forms Services on 2016 will be supported until ten years after the release date - meaning until

sometime in the first half of calendar year 2026.

InfoPath Forms Services on Office 365 will continue to be supported until further notice.

SharePoint Server 2016 will include an ongoing capability to host InfoPath Forms Services.

InfoPath Forms Services on SharePoint 2016 will be supported for the duration of SharePoint

2016’s support lifecycle.

InfoPath 2013 will be the last version of the desktop client. It will be supported until 2026.

SharePoint Designer is not being re-released with SharePoint 2016, although we will continue to

support custom workflows built with SharePoint Designer and hosted on SharePoint 2016 and

Office 365. We will extend the support lifecycle for SharePoint Designer 2013 to match that of

InfoPath 2013 – it will be supported until 2026.

Is SharePoint Server 2016 the last on-premises release of SharePoint?

We remain committed to delivering value to our on-premises customers, and innovations in SharePoint

Server, and we have no plans in place to make SharePoint Server 2016 the last release of SharePoint. We

envision a future where we will continue to have customers who choose a combination of on-premises,

cloud and hybrid deployments for many years to come.

Have you added any UI updates since SharePoint Server 2013?

SharePoint 2016 includes many user interface improvements based on customer feedback and Microsoft’s

Office 365 core design principle of keeping the focus on the content to deliver an improved user

experience. You may notice a number of UI enhancements first delivered in SharePoint Online that

provide greater differentiation over SharePoint 2013, and increased use of color, redesigned pages, and

other subtle design changes throughout SharePoint 2016.

SKUs, Language, and Pricing What is the full list of products you are releasing for SharePoint Server 2016?

SharePoint 2016 includes the main SKUs available in the SharePoint Products and Technologies family:

SharePoint Server 2016 Standard Edition

SharePoint Server 2016 Enterprise Edition

Will there be a SharePoint Foundation 2016?

SharePoint Foundation 2016 will not be shipped in parallel with the SharePoint 2016 release.

SharePoint Foundation, previously Windows SharePoint Services was provided as an integrated

component of the Windows Operating System until late 2006 when WSS 3.0 was released as a standalone

product. It was intended to facilitate light collaborative needs and to enable customers to “preview” the

capabilities provided by SharePoint.

As we move forward into a cloud first, mobile first world, a number of alternatives exist for evaluating

SharePoint capabilities to include on-premises options, such as the evaluation versions of SharePoint

Server in addition to SharePoint Online.

We’ll reevaluate the decision to not sim-ship SharePoint Foundation 2016 at a later date. Delaying

SharePoint Foundation also allows us to focus wholly on the development and innovation with SharePoint

Server.

How much will SharePoint Server 2016 cost?

We are not making any announcement on licensing or pricing at this time.

What languages will SharePoint Server 2016 be available in?

SharePoint Server 2016 will support all languages currently available for SharePoint Server 2013. Refer to

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff463597.aspx for additional information.

IT Professional Q&A What feature improvements have you added for IT Professionals in SharePoint Server 2016?

SharePoint 2016 is the first on-premises server release to be designed with a cloud-inspired infrastructure,

improving both performance and scale. Drawing from our learnings with SharePoint Online and Office

365, SharePoint Server 2016 has more flexible and simplified deployment options. You can choose from a

fully on-premises deployment or a new simplified hybrid approach bringing together on-premises and

Office 365 capabilities, without changing the user experience.

With a simplified user experience and integration with products such as the next release of Windows

Server, the next generation of SQL Server, and Exchange Server 2016, SharePoint Server 2016 will simplify

end-user training and support for IT. Data from multiple enterprise systems can be integrated through a

consistent presentation layer that makes customization easier for non-technical users.

Finally, we're focused on enabling a broad ecosystem of solutions and partners through a standardized

set of APIs and experiences that span on-premises and the cloud.

What are the system requirements for SharePoint Server 2016?

The values in the following table are minimum values for installations on a single server and for Web,

Application, and Cache servers that are running SharePoint Server 2016 Preview in a multiple server farm

installation.

For all installation scenarios, you must have sufficient hard disk space for the base installation and

sufficient space for diagnostics such as logging, debugging, creating memory dumps, and so on. For

production use, you must also have additional free disk space for day-to-day operations. In addition,

maintain two times as much free space as you have RAM for production environments.

Scenario Deployment type

and scale

Processor RAM Hard disk

Database server

running a single

SQL instance

Development or

evaluation

installation with

the minimum

recommended

services

64-bit, 4

cores

12-16 GB 80 GB for system drive

100 GB for second drive

Database server

running a single

SQL instance

Pilot, user

acceptance test

64-bit, 4

cores

16-24 GB 80 GB for system drive

100 GB for second drive and

additional drives

running all

available services

NOTE

Hard disk space and number of drives depends on the amount of content and the way you

choose to distribute data for a SharePoint environment.

SharePoint Server 2016 Preview is supported on Windows Server 2012 R2 and the Windows Server

Technical Preview "Threshold". You can download evaluation copies of both operating systems from the

TechNet Evaluation Center.

Windows Server 2012 R2

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2012-r2

Windows Server Technical Preview

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-technical-preview

SharePoint Server 2016 Preview is supported SQL Server 2014 and SQL Server 2016. You can download

evaluation copies of both database servers from the TechNet Evaluation Center.

SQL Server from the TechNet Evaluation Center at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-

sql-server-2014.

The required version of .NET Framework is different for Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server

Technical Preview “Threshold”.

Windows Server 2012 R2: SharePoint 16 requires .NET Framework 4.5.2

Windows Server Technical Preview "Threshold": SharePoint 16 requires .NET Framework 4.6

Preview, which comes with Windows Server Technical Preview "Threshold".

NOTE

Starting January 13, 2016, .NET Framework 4.5.2 will be the minimum version of .NET Framework 4.x

supported by Microsoft. See the Microsoft .NET Framework Support Lifecycle Policy FAQ at

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/Framework_FAQ for more information.

Will customers be able to upgrade directly to SharePoint Server 2016 from SharePoint Server 2010?

No. Customers will need to first upgrade to SharePoint Server 2013 prior to moving to SharePoint 2016.

How will the upgrade process work?

SharePoint Server 2016 Preview supports upgrade from SharePoint Server 2013.

When you upgrade from SharePoint 2013 Products to SharePoint Server 2016 Preview, you must use a

database attach upgrade, which means that you upgrade only the content for your environment and not

the configuration settings. After you have configured a new SharePoint Server 2016 Preview environment,

you can copy the content and service application databases from the SharePoint 2013 Products

environment to the SharePoint Server 2016 Preview environment. You use a backup and restore process

to copy the database, and you can also choose to set the databases to read-only in the SharePoint 2013

Products environment so that users can continue to access their information, but not change it. This

article contains the steps that you take to copy the databases.

NOTE

Site collections provisioned in backward compatible SharePoint 2010 (14) mode, must be upgraded to

2013 prior to upgrading to SharePoint Server 2016 Preview. For additional information on upgrading site

collections to SharePoint 2013 see also https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219650.aspx.

What platforms are support by SharePoint Server 2016?

SharePoint Server 2016 supports the following operating systems and database servers:

Windows Server 2012 R2

Windows Server 2016

SQL Server 2014

SQL Server 2016

For additional information on hardware and software requirements refer to the Appendix.

What Office clients and browsers are supported with SharePoint Server 2016?

SharePoint Server 2016 will provide a similar level of support that currently exists for Office 365. For

additional information see also https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office-365-system-

requirements.aspx.

Will the maximum file size limit change in SharePoint Server 2016?

Yes. The maximum file size limit has been increased to 10GB.

Will there be any changes to the Service Application architecture in SharePoint Server 2016?

SharePoint Server 2015 carries forward the Service Application architecture that was introduced in

SharePoint Server 2010/2013 and adds several new Service Applications which include: Project Web

Application.

In April Microsoft announced AppFabric support for Windows Server will end on 4/2/2017, how does

this affect Workflow and Distributed Caching in SharePoint?

We've received several questions surrounding this announcement due to the relationship between

AppFabric and SharePoint Products. We remain committed to our published support lifecycle which

includes individual products that constitute a release and/or releases which take dependencies on other

products. The April 2015 announcement does not impact supportability of SharePoint Products and/or its

capabilities in which AppFabric remains supported per our product lifecycle

[https://support.microsoft.com/en-

us/lifecycle/search?sort=PN&alpha=Microsoft%20SharePoint%20Server%202013&Filter=FilterNO]. For

customers this change does not affect support of existing and/or future deployments of SharePoint

Products.

Will SharePoint Server 2016 integrate with Exchange Server 2013, Exchange Server 2016?

SharePoint Server 2016 will integrate with in-market releases of Exchange Server; however, some

capabilities will require Exchange Server 2016 to include Modern Attachments and unified data loss

prevention and auditing controls.

With recent data and security breaches in the news my customer is increasingly concerned about

security and compliance. How is SharePoint Server 2016 addressing those concerns?

Compliance is one of the primary investments areas for SharePoint Server 2016 on-premises, in the cloud,

and in between. Auditing and data loss prevention solutions will be designed for customers in each of

these three configurations.

On-Premises

Out-of-the-box data classifications

Sensitive content discovery via eDiscovery in-place

Save, query, hold, and export results

3rd party reporting

Cloud Connected Experiences

Centralized policy management from the Unified Compliance Console synchronized to

on-premises and cloud

In-place evaluation and enforcement

Custom classification and fingerprinting

Item-level encryption

Integrated reporting for cloud and on-premises content

Out-of-the-box classifications exposed via cloud search for on-premises content in

2010/2013

Developer Q&A What feature improvements have you added for Developers and Development Teams in SharePoint

Server 2016?

As a developer, you have new scenarios to create contextual solutions that span SharePoint Server 2016

and Office 365 from the web, mobile apps and Office. You have new robust APIs and tool improvements

to make building solutions easier than ever before. And your solutions have the potential to reach a vast

number of users across businesses, government organizations, and schools, who spend hours every day

using Office on-premises or in the cloud with Office 365.

The new Office 365 APIs, available in SharePoint Server 2016, enable you to provide access to your

customer's SharePoint Server 2016 and Office 365 data, including the things they care about most: their

mail, calendars, contacts, users and groups, files, and folders. All right from within your app itself. No

matter your development platform or tools.

Will SharePoint Server 2016 support the use of Full Trust Code?

Yes.

Will SharePoint Server 2016 support the Cloud App Model?

Yes.

What is the Office Cloud App Model?

It is a brand new development model available for Office and SharePoint, that embraces industry web

standards to give developers choice and flexibility to develop a new generation of Office solutions: apps

for Office. Developers can reuse their existing skills, familiar languages, their favorite development tools

and hosting services to build and deploy apps for Office, as they would build any web application. Using

the new available JavaScript API for Office, apps can then interact with Office content within documents,

spreadsheets, projects or mailbox items and run across multiple Office applications.

How do I choose between the Cloud App Model and a full trust solution?

By default, you should always try to use the new Cloud App Model for a number of reasons. First, it can

scale much better than a full-trust solution. Second, it provides security and isolation between the app

and SharePoint. Third, your app is not tightly coupled with SharePoint. And finally, the Cloud App Model

allows for a greater resource pool of developers to develop and maintain apps.

SharePoint Online and Office 365

Integration The rapid pace of innovation in Office 365 (SharePoint Online) has widened the parity gap between

on-premises, how will SharePoint Server 2016 address that?

In previous versions of SharePoint, we looked to our on-premises release to define our service presence,

with SharePoint Server 2016 we refined our approach to look to the cloud to define our on-premises

release. Our development approach is thereby to look first at what cloud innovation can be brought to

on-premises as a wholesale proposition, second, for those that do not meet that criteria, what capabilities

can be brought to on-premises through cloud acceleration (hybrid), and third, determine what unique

value can be brought to on-premises. This approach allows us to narrow the parity gap while continuing

our commitment to on-premises value.

Will Office Delve and/or the Office Graph be available on-premises?

Office Delve and the Office Graph are technologies design explicitly for and powered by the elasticity of

the cloud. SharePoint Server 2016 will enable on-premises customers to unify their search index in Office

365 by sending document metadata (and signals) to the cloud. This new search experience enables

customers to leverage Office Delve with content that resides on-premises without having to send that

content to Office 365.

Will SharePoint Server 2016 continue to support hybrid implementations?

SharePoint Server 2016 fundamentally changes our approach to hybrid enabling customers to enrich

traditional SharePoint scenarios with cloud innovation with investments in hybrid and cloud accelerated

Team Sites, Extranet, and OneDrive for Business scenarios.

Will hybrid configurations with SharePoint Server 2016 be any easier?

In parallel to the SharePoint Server 2016 release we’ll also offer a hybrid configuration wizard to simplify

planning and deployment of hybrid and cloud accelerated scenarios.

Will Groups be available on-premises?

Groups are a membership construct explicitly designed for Office 365 and will not be made available on-

premises or through hybrid configurations.

Enterprise Content Management Q&A What’s new in eDiscovery in SharePoint Server 2016?

SharePoint Server 2016 builds on the eDiscovery investments in SharePoint Server 2013 including several

new important capabilities such as the Compliance and Policy Centers in addition to new out-of-the-box

Sensitive Information types.

In-Place Hold Policy Center

The new In-Place Hold Policy Center provides a single unified location through which an organization can

apply business-wide retention policies.

Compliance Center

SharePoint Server 2016 includes new Compliance Center that enables an organization to create In-Place

Hold policies, Document Deletion policies for lifecycle management, and Policy Templates that implement

DLP Queries based on Sensitive Information Types.

Will SharePoint Server 2016 support CMIS?

Yes. SharePoint Server 2016 will continue to provide support as a CMIS Provider.

Will OneDrive for Business be available in SharePoint Server 2016?

SharePoint Server 2016 personal storage and people-centric collaboration capabilities (branded as

OneDrive for Business) are built on the capabilities of OneDrive for Business in addition to providing

enterprise grade content management, compliance, and administrative controls.

Forms and Workflow

Will a new InfoPath client be available for use with SharePoint Server 2016?

No.

Can I use InfoPath 2013 with SharePoint Server 2016?

Yes. Forms can be created with InfoPath 2013.

Why weren’t there any significant changes to InfoPath 2013?

InfoPath 2013 was updated to support the new features in SharePoint Server 2013 to insure there is a

good story for forms in SharePoint Server 2013. Going forward we look to enhance our forms story to

include better support for HTML5 and other web standards. One of the key components to forms was

connecting to data sources. Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint Server 2016 have been

expanded to include support for REST end points and OData v4. Enhancements have also been made to

External Lists giving greater flexibility in how data is handled in InfoPath forms.

Is InfoPath being deprecated?

No, InfoPath is not being deprecated. InfoPath still is a great tool for writing forms in SharePoint and we

intend on enhancing our form strategy and tools in the future.

How do vendor solutions such as Nintex and K2 compare, supplement, or fit within our workflow

solutions?

Creating productive business applications takes more than our native tools, PowerApps, open source,

mobile SDKs, Visual Studio and .NET. Our partner developer ecosystem adds a variety of capabilities for

crafting business applications -- from deeper and more flexible custom forms to a wider variety of

workflow conditions, actions – both within the SharePoint experience and in mobile applications. We love

welcoming new ways to enhance our customer’s investments in SharePoint and Office.

Is there a workflow roadmap?

We know from our system telemetry that the use of SharePoint 2013 style workflows has grown in the

past 12 months across the service. But we know we can do better. As we reinvent the modern intranet,

we expect to showcase event logic for common actions like approvals and workflows tightly coupled with

the rest of the document experience. Logic Flow has an intrinsic ability to orchestrate actions within and

beyond the Office/SharePoint horizon.

Can I still create older style (SharePoint 2010) workflows?

Yes, the engine in SharePoint Server 2016 is based on the .NET 4.0 Workflow runtime. SharePoint Server

2016 still supports creating .NET 3.5 Workflows (SharePoint 2010 workflows) and they can run side by side

with SharePoint Server 2016 workflows. In fact, SharePoint Server 2016 workflows can call SharePoint

Server 2010 workflows.

Are there any changes in Workflow for SharePoint Server 2016?

SharePoint Server 2016 will carry forward the workflow experiences delivered in SharePoint Server 2013.

Business Intelligence Will PerformancePoint Services be available in SharePoint Server 2016?

Yes.

Social Will the SharePoint social features be available in SharePoint Server 2016?

Yes. SharePoint Server 2016 carries forward the native social investments from SharePoint Server 2013.

Will there be more interoperability opportunities between SharePoint Server 2016 and Yammer?

No. SharePoint Server 2016 will provide support for the existing Yammer embed technologies.

Search Are there any improvements in Search scalability?

Yes. In addition to a new simplified deployment model, search can now scale to 500m items.

Web Content Management Are there any improvements to Web Content Management in SharePoint Server 2016?

SharePoint Server 2016 carries forward Web Content Management capabilities introduced in SharePoint

Server 2013.

Mobile What are we disclosing around SharePoint mobile apps at consumer preview?

SharePoint Server 2016 will introduce new native mobile applications across different device platforms

including Windows 8, Windows Phone and iOS, including iPad. In addition, SharePoint Server 2016 will

feature new a Web touch UX inspired by the OneDrive for Business experience in Office 365.

When the SharePoint mobile apps are available, where can I get them?

The SharePoint app will be available across multiple devices and downloadable from their respective apps

stores or marketplaces.

When will the mobile apps be available?

They will be available at general availability (GA).