SharePoint is a web-based
collaborative platform that integrates natively with
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...
. Launched in 2001,
SharePoint is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, but the product is highly configurable and its usage varies substantially among organizations.
According to
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
, SharePoint had 200 million users.
Editions
There are various editions of SharePoint which have different functions.
SharePoint Standard
Microsoft SharePoint Standard builds on the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation in a few key product areas:
* Sites: Audience targeting, governance tools, Secure store service,
web analytics
Web analytics is the measurement, data collection, collection, analysis, and reporting of web Data (computing), data to understand and optimize web usage. Web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool fo ...
functionality.
* Communities: 'MySites' (personal profiles including skills management, and search tools), enterprise wikis, organization hierarchy browser, tags and notes.
* Content: Improved tooling and compliance for document & record management, managed metadata, word automation services, content type management.
* Search: Better search results, search customization abilities, mobile search, 'Did you mean?', OS search integration, Faceted Search, and metadata/relevancy/date/location-based refinement options.
* Composites: Pre-built workflow templates, Business Connectivity Services (BCS) profile pages.
SharePoint Standard licensing includes a CAL (client access license) component and a server fee. SharePoint Standard may also be licensed through a cloud model.
SharePoint Server
SharePoint Server is provided to organizations that seek greater control over SharePoint's behavior or design. This product is installed on customers'
IT infrastructure
Information technology infrastructure is defined broadly as a set of information technology (IT) components that are the foundation of an IT service; typically physical components (computer and networking hardware and facilities), but also variou ...
. It receives fewer frequent updates but has access to a wider set of features and customization capabilities. There are two editions of SharePoint Server: Standard and Enterprise. A free version called 'Foundation' was discontinued in 2016. These servers may be provisioned as normal virtual/cloud servers or as hosted services.
SharePoint Enterprise
Built upon SharePoint Standard, Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise features can be unlocked by providing an additional license key.
Extra features in SharePoint Enterprise include:
* Search thumbnails and previews, rich web indexing, better search results.
*
Business intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...
integration, dashboards, and business data surfacing.
*
PowerPivot
Power Pivot, formerly known as PowerPivot (without spacing), is a feature of Microsoft Excel, a computer software spreadsheet. It is available as an add-in in Excel 2010, 2013 in separate downloads, and as an add-in included with the Excel 2016 ...
and
PerformancePoint
Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server is a business intelligence software product released in 2007 by Microsoft. The product was generally an integration of the acquisitions from ProClarity - the Planning Server and Monitoring Server - into M ...
.
* Microsoft Office Access,
Visio, Excel, and
InfoPath
Microsoft InfoPath is a software application for designing, distributing, filling and submitting electronic forms containing structured data. Microsoft initially released InfoPath as part of the Microsoft Office 2003 family. The product features ...
Forms services.
* SharePoint Enterprise Search extensions.
SharePoint Enterprise licensing includes a CAL component and a server fee that must be purchased ''in addition to'' SharePoint Server licensing. SharePoint Enterprise may also be licensed through a cloud model.
SharePoint Online
Microsoft's hosted SharePoint is typically bundled in
Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, programs formerly marketed under the name Mic ...
subscriptions, but can be licensed separately. SharePoint Online has the advantage of not needing to maintain one's own servers, but as a result lacks the customization options of a self-hosted installation of SharePoint.
It is limited to a core set of collaboration, file hosting, and document and content management scenarios, and is updated on a frequent basis, but is typically comparable with SharePoint Enterprise.
Currently, additional capabilities include:
* Support for SharePoint Framework extensions
* New "
Modern
Modern may refer to:
History
* Modern history
** Early Modern period
** Late Modern period
*** 18th century
*** 19th century
*** 20th century
** Contemporary history
* Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century
Phil ...
" (Responsive) SharePoint UX (partially included in 2016 - Feature Pack 1)
*
Yammer
Yammer () is an enterprise social networking service that is part of the Microsoft 365 family of products. It is used mainly for private communication within organizations but is also used for networks spanning various organizations. Access to a ...
Integration & Office 365 Groups
* Integration with Outlook Web App
* Newer versions of Online Office Document Editor Tools
* Removal of various file size/number limitations
* Apps Concept
Missing capabilities include:
* Some search & UI customizations
* Many web publishing capabilities
* Service Application administration options
* Many customization/solution types will not run
* No ability to read error (ULS) logs
* No ability to share a Site Page (
ASPX
ASP.NET is an Open-source software, open-source, server-side scripting, server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sit ...
) to external anonymous visitors; only documents (Word, Excel, Picture, ...) may be shared as such
Applications
SharePoint usage varies from organization to organization. The product encompasses a wide variety of capabilities, most of which require configuration and governance.
The most common uses of the SharePoint include:
Enterprise content and document management
SharePoint allows for storage, retrieval, searching, archiving, tracking, management, and reporting on electronic documents and records. Many of the functions in this product are designed around various legal, information management, and process requirements in organizations. SharePoint also provides search and 'graph' functionality. SharePoint's integration with
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
and
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...
allow for
collaborative real-time editing
A collaborative real-time editor is a type of collaborative software or web application which enables real-time collaborative editing, simultaneous editing, or live editing of the same digital document, computer file or cloud-stored data – suc ...
, and encrypted/
information rights managed synchronization.
This capability is often used to replace an existing corporate
file server
In computing, a file server (or fileserver) is a computer attached to a network that provides a location for shared disk access, i.e. storage of computer files (such as text, image, sound, video) that can be accessed by the workstations that are ab ...
, and is typically coupled with an
enterprise content management
Enterprise content management (ECM) extends the concept of content management by adding a timeline for each content item and, possibly, enforcing processes for its creation, approval and distribution. Systems using ECM generally provide a secure ...
policy.
Intranet and social network
A SharePoint
intranet
An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, easier communication, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services within an organization, usually to the exclusion of access by outsiders. The term is used in c ...
or
intranet portal An intranet portal is the gateway that unifies access to enterprise information and applications on an intranet. It is a tool that helps a company manage its data, applications, and information more easily through personalized views. Some portal sol ...
is a way to centralize access to enterprise information and applications. It is a tool that helps an organization manage its internal communications, applications and
information
Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random ...
more easily. Microsoft claims that this has organizational benefits such as increased
employee engagement
Employee engagement is a fundamental concept in the effort to understand and describe, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees. An "engaged employee" is defined as one who i ...
, centralizing
process management Process management may refer to:
* Business process management
** Business Process Management Journal
** Dynamic business process management
** International Conference on Business Process Management
** Social business process management
* Manag ...
, reducing new staff on-boarding costs, and providing the means to capture and share
tacit knowledge
Tacit knowledge or implicit knowledge—as opposed to formal, codified or explicit knowledge—is knowledge that is difficult to express or extract, and thus more difficult to transfer to others by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. This ...
(e.g. via tools such as wikis).
Collaborative software
SharePoint contains team collaboration
groupware capabilities, including:
project scheduling (integrated with
Outlook
Outlook or The Outlook may refer to:
Computing
* Microsoft Outlook, an e-mail and personal information management software product from Microsoft
* Outlook.com, a web mail service from Microsoft
* Outlook on the web, a suite of web applications ...
and
Project
A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular goal.
An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of even ...
), social collaboration, shared mailboxes, and project related document storage and collaboration. Groupware in SharePoint is based around the concept of a "Team Site".
File hosting service (personal cloud)
SharePoint Server hosts
OneDrive for Business
Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) is a file hosting service operated by Microsoft. First launched in August 2007, it enables registered users to share and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage backend of the web vers ...
, which allows storage and synchronization of an individual's personal documents, as well as public/private file sharing of those documents. This is typically combined with other Microsoft Office Servers/Services, such as
Microsoft Exchange, to produce a "personal cloud",
WebDAV
WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for concu ...
can be used to access files without using the web interface. However, Microsoft's implementation of
WebDAV
WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for concu ...
doesn't conform to the official WebDAV protocol and therefore isn't compliant to the WebDAV standard. For example, WebDAV applications have to support the language tagging functionality of the XML specification which Microsoft's implementation doesn't. Only Windows XP to Windows 8 are supported.
Custom web applications
SharePoint's custom development capabilities provide an additional layer of services that allow rapid prototyping of integrated (typically line-of-business) web applications. SharePoint provides developers with integration into corporate directories and data sources through standards such as REST/OData/OAuth. Enterprise application developers use SharePoint's security and information management capabilities across a variety of development platforms and scenarios. SharePoint also contains an enterprise "app store" that has different types of external applications which are encapsulated and managed to access to resources such as corporate user data and document data.
Content structure
Pages
SharePoint provides free-form pages which may be edited in-browser. These may be used to provide content to users, or to provide structure to the SharePoint environment.
Web parts and app parts
Web parts and app parts are components (also known as
portlets
The Java Portlet Specification defines a contract between the portlet container and portlets and provides a convenient programming model for Java portlet developers.
Portlets are pluggable user interface software components that are managed and ...
) that can be inserted into Pages. They are used to display information from both SharePoint and third-party applications.
Content item, Content Type, Libraries, Lists, and "Apps"
* Content item is a resource in electronic form. Following are some examples:
** Document: always has a "Name"
** Contact: may have Email address and/or Phone number.
** Sales Invoice: may have Customer ID.
* Content Types are definitions (or types) of Content items. These definitions describe things like what metadata fields a Document, Contact, or Sales invoice may have. SharePoint allows you to create your own definitions based on the built-in ones. Some built in content types include: Contacts, Appointments, Documents, and Folders.
* SharePoint Library stores and displays Content items of type Documents and Folders.
* SharePoint List stores and displays data items such as Contacts. Some built-in content types such as 'Contact' or 'Appointment' allow the list to expose advanced features such as
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily an email client, Outlook also includes such functions as Calen ...
or
Project
A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular goal.
An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of even ...
synchronization.
In SharePoint 2013, in some locations, Lists and Libraries were renamed 'Apps' (despite being unrelated to the "SharePoint App Store"). In SharePoint 2016, some of these were renamed back to Lists and Libraries.
Sites
A SharePoint Site is a collection of pages, lists, libraries, apps, configurations, features, content types, and sub-sites. Examples of Site templates in SharePoint include: collaboration (team) sites, communication sites, organization sites, wiki sites, blank sites, and publishing sites.
Configuration and customization
Web-based configuration
SharePoint is primarily configured through a web browser. The web-based user interface provides most of the configuration capability of the product.
Depending on your permission level, the web interface can be used to:
* Manipulate content structure, site structure, create/delete sites, modify navigation and security, or add/remove apps.
* Enable or disable product features, upload custom designs/themes, or turn on integrations with other Office products.
* Configure basic workflows, view usage analytics, manage metadata, configure search options, upload customizations, and set up integration.
SharePoint Designer
SharePoint Designer is a semi-deprecated product that provided 'advanced editing' capabilities for HTML/ASPX pages, but remains the primary method of editing SharePoint workflows.
A significant subset of HTML editing features were removed in Designer 2013, and the product is expected to be deprecated in 2016–7.
Microsoft SharePoint's Server Features are configured either using
PowerShell
PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell (computing), shell and the associated scripting language. Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell, it ...
, or a Web UI called "Central Administration". Configuration of server farm settings (e.g. search crawl, web application services) can be handled through these central tools.
While Central Administration is limited to farm-wide settings (config DB), it provides access to tools such as the 'SharePoint Health Analyzer', a diagnostic health-checking tool.
In addition to PowerShell's farm configuration features, some limited tools are made available for administering or adjusting settings for sites or site collections in content databases.
A limited subset of these features are available by SharePoint's
SaaS
Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software.
SaaS is cons ...
providers, including Microsoft.
Custom development
* The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) provides a development model based on the
TypeScript
TypeScript is a free and open source programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are ...
language. The technical stack is
Node.js
Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript code ou ...
, Yeoman,
Gulp,
NPM, and
Webpack
Webpack is a free and open-source module bundler for JavaScript. It is made primarily for JavaScript, but it can transform front-end assets such as HTML, CSS, and images if the corresponding loaders are included. Webpack takes modules with depen ...
. It embraces a modern web technologies development method. It is the only supported way to customize the new modern experience user interface (UI). It has been globally available since mid 2017. It allows a web developer to step into SharePoint development more easily.
* The SharePoint "App Model" provides various types of external applications that offer the capability to show authenticated web-based applications through a variety of UI mechanisms. Apps may be either "SharePoint-hosted", or "Provider-hosted". Provider hosted apps may be developed using most back-end web technologies (e.g. ASP.net,
NodeJS
Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript code ou ...
,
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...
). Apps are served through a proxy in SharePoint, which requires some DNS/certificate manipulation in on-premises versions of SharePoint.
* The SharePoint "Client Object Model" (available for
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...
and
.NET), and
REST
Rest or REST may refer to:
Relief from activity
* Sleep
** Bed rest
* Kneeling
* Lying (position)
* Sitting
* Squatting position
Structural support
* Structural support
** Rest (cue sports)
** Armrest
** Headrest
** Footrest
Arts and entert ...
/
SOAP
Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are use ...
API
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...
s can be referenced from many environments, providing authenticated users access to a wide variety of SharePoint capabilities.
* "Sand-boxed" plugins can be uploaded by any end-user who has been granted permission. These are security-restricted, and can be governed at multiple levels (including resource consumption management). In multi-tenant cloud environments, these are the only customizations that are typically allowed.
* Farm features are typically fully trusted code that need to be installed at a
farm
A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...
-level. These are considered deprecated for new development.
* Service applications: It is possible to integrate directly into the SharePoint
SOA bus, at a farm level.
Customization may appear through:
* Application-to-application integration with SharePoint.
* Extensions to SharePoint functionality (e.g. custom workflow actions).
* 'Web Parts' (also known as "portlets", "widgets", or "gadgets") that provide new functionality when added to a page.
* Pages/sites or page/site templates.
Server architecture
SharePoint Server can be scaled down to operate entirely from one developer machine, or scaled up to be managed across hundreds of machines.
Farms
A SharePoint farm is a logical grouping of SharePoint servers that share common resources. A farm typically operates stand-alone, but can also subscribe to functions from another farm, or provide functions to another farm. Each farm has its own central configuration database, which is managed through either a
PowerShell
PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell (computing), shell and the associated scripting language. Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell, it ...
interface, or a Central Administration website (which relies partly on PowerShell's infrastructure). Each server in the farm is able to directly interface with the central configuration database. Servers use this to configure services (e.g.
IIS, windows features, database connections) to match the requirements of the farm, and to report server health issues, resource allocation issues, etc...
Web applications
Web applications (WAs) are top-level containers for content in a SharePoint farm. A web application is associated primarily with
IIS configuration. A web application consists of a set of access mappings or URLs defined in the SharePoint central management console, which are replicated by SharePoint across every IIS Instance (e.g. Web Application Servers) configured in the farm.
Site collections
A site collection is a hierarchical group of 'SharePoint Sites'. Each web application must have at least one site collection. Site collections share common properties
detailed here, common subscriptions to service applications, and can be configured with unique host names. A site collection may have a distinct content databases, or may share a content database with other site collections in the same web application.
Service applications
Service applications provide granular pieces of SharePoint functionality to other web and service applications in the farm. Examples of service applications include the User Profile Sync service, and the Search Indexing service. A service application can be turned off, exist on one server, or be load-balanced across many servers in a farm. Service Applications are designed to have independent functionality and independent security scopes.
Administration, security, compliance
SharePoint's architecture enables a 'least-privileges' execution permission model.
SharePoint Central Administration (the CA) is a web application that typically exists on a single server in the farm; however, it is also able to be deployed for redundancy to multiple servers.
This application provides a complete centralized management interface for web & service applications in the SharePoint farm, including AD account management for web & service applications. In the event of the failure of the CA,
Windows PowerShell
PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and the associated scripting language. Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell, it was made open-sourc ...
is typically used on the CA server to reconfigure the farm.
The structure of the SharePoint platform enables multiple WAs to exist on a single farm. In a shared (
cloud
In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may co ...
) hosting environment, owners of these WAs may require their own management console. The SharePoint 'Tenant Administration' (TA) is an optional web application used by web application owners to manage how their web application interacts with the shared resources in the farm.
Compliance, standards and integration
* SharePoint integrates with
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...
.
* SharePoint uses Microsoft's
OpenXML document standard for integration with Microsoft Office. Document metadata is also stored using this format.
* SharePoint provides various
application programming interface
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...
s (APIs: client-side, server-side, JavaScript) and
REST
Rest or REST may refer to:
Relief from activity
* Sleep
** Bed rest
* Kneeling
* Lying (position)
* Sitting
* Squatting position
Structural support
* Structural support
** Rest (cue sports)
** Armrest
** Headrest
** Footrest
Arts and entert ...
,
SOAP
Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are use ...
and
OData
In computing, Open Data Protocol (OData) is an open protocol that allows the creation and consumption of queryable and interoperable REST APIs in a simple and standard way. Microsoft initiated OData in 2007. Versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 are relea ...
-based interfaces.
* SharePoint can be used to achieve compliance with many document retention, record management, document ID and discovery laws.
* SharePoint is compatible with
CMIS
Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) is an open standard that allows different content management systems to inter-operate over the Internet. Specifically, CMIS defines an abstraction layer for controlling diverse document manag ...
- the Content Management Interoperability Standard, using Microsoft'
CMIS Connector
* SharePoint by default produces valid
XHTML
Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages. It mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated.
While HTML, prior ...
1.0 that is compliant with
WCAG 2.0
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are part of a series of web accessibility guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main international standards organization for th ...
accessibility standards.
* SharePoint can use claims-based authentication, relying on
SAML
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML, pronounced ''SAM-el'', ) is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, in particular, between an identity provider and a service provider. SAML is an XML-based m ...
tokens for security assertions. SharePoint provides an open authentication plugin model.
* SharePoint has support for
XLIFF
XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) is an XML-based bitext format created to standardize the way localizable data are passed between and among tools during a localization process and a common format for CAT tool exchange. The XLIFF T ...
to support the localization of content in SharePoint. Also added support for AppFabric.
Other SharePoint-related Microsoft products
History
Origins
SharePoint evolved from projects codenamed "Office Server" and "Tahoe" during the Office XP development cycle.
"Office Server" evolved out of the
FrontPage
Front Page or The Front Page may also refer to:
Periodicals
* ''Frontpage'' (techno magazine), a German magazine for electronic music
* ''FrontPage Africa'', a Liberian daily newspaper
* '' FrontPage Magazine'', an online political magazine so ...
and Office Server Extensions and "Team Pages". It targeted simple, bottom-up collaboration.
"Tahoe", built on shared technology with Exchange and the "Digital Dashboard", targeted top-down portals, search and document management. The searching and indexing capabilities of SharePoint came from the "Tahoe" feature set. The search and indexing features were a combination of the index and crawling features from the Microsoft Site Server family of products and from the query language of Microsoft Index Server.
GAC-(Global Assembly Cache) is used to accommodate the shared assemblies that are specifically designated to be shared by applications executed on a system.
Versions
Successive versions (in chronological order):
* Office Server Extensions
* SharePoint Portal Server 2001
* SharePoint Team Services
* Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (free license)
* SharePoint Portal Server 2003
* Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (free license)
* Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007
* SharePoint Foundation 2010 (free), SharePoint Server 2010 (commercial extension for Foundation), and SharePoint Enterprise 2010 (commercial extension for Server)
* SharePoint Foundation 2013 (free), SharePoint Server 2013 (extension on top of Foundation), and SharePoint Enterprise 2013.
* SharePoint Online (Plan 1 & 2).
* SharePoint Server 2016 and SharePoint Enterprise 2016.
* SharePoint Server 2019 and SharePoint Enterprise 2019.
Notable changes in SharePoint 2010
Changes in end-user functionality added in the 2010 version of SharePoint include:
* New UI with
Fluent Ribbon, using wiki-pages rather than 'web-part pages' and offering multi-browser support.
* New social profiles, and early
social networking
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
features
* Central Administration rebuilt.
* Restructure of "Shared Service Providers" - Introduction of "Service Applications" SOA model.
* Sandboxed Solutions and a client-side object-model
API
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...
s for JavaScript, Silverlight, and
.NET applications
*
Business Connectivity Services
Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."
Having a business name does not separat ...
,
Claims-based Authentication, and
Windows PowerShell
PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and the associated scripting language. Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell, it was made open-sourc ...
support
Notable changes in SharePoint 2013
* Cross-browser drag & drop support for file uploads/changes, and Follow/Share buttons
* OneDrive for Business (initially SkyDrive Pro) replaces MySites and Workspaces.
* Updates to social network feature & new task aggregation tool.
*
Database caching
Database caching is a process included in the design of computer applications which generate web pages on-demand (dynamically) by accessing backend databases.
When these applications are deployed on multi-tier environments that involve browser-ba ...
, called ''Distributed Cache Service''
*
Content-aware switching, called ''Management''
* Audit center (service called eDiscovery)
* Rebuilt and improved search capabilities
* Removal of some analytics capabilities
* UI: JSLink, MDS, theme packs. No WYSIWYG in SP Designer.
Notable changes in SharePoint 2016
Sources:
* Hybrid Improvements
** Single Sites View
** Unified Search
** Search Sensitive Information in Hybrid Search
** Unified UI (O365)
* Performance, Scaling & Deployment Improvements
** Search Scaling Capabilities
** Site Collection Enhancement
** Deterministic View Threshold – Removing 5000 Limit
** Durable Links and Large Files Support
* Deployment Improvements
** MinRole
** Zero Downtime Patching
Notable changes in SharePoint 2019
Sources:
* Modern sites and page layouts
* Communication sites
* Large File Support, Character Restrictions, and File/Folder Names
Notable changes in SharePoint Subscription Edition (SE)
Sources:
* Authentication and Identity Management
** Support for OpenID Connect (OIDC) 1.0
** Enhanced People Picker for modern authentication
** Improved Integrated Windows authentication over TLS
* Deployment and Upgrade
** Support for Windows Server 2022
** Support for Windows Server Core
** Support for "N - 2" upgrade from SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019 (and Project Server 2016 and 2019)
** AppFabric Cache integration
* Farm Administration
** Support for host header bindings on Central Administration web application
** Support for Server Name Indication (SNI) for host header bindings
** Support for changing web application bindings
** Easier AAM configuration for Central Administration
** Federated service applications support "N - 2" consuming farms (SharePoint 2016, 2019, and Subscription Edition)
** Support for client certificate authentication to SMTP servers
* Health and Monitoring (new Health Analyzer rules)
** Certificate notification contacts haven't been configured
** Upcoming SSL certificate expirations
** SSL certificates are about to expire
** SSL certificates have expired
* Hybrid
** Better integration with Power Apps and
Power Automate
Microsoft Power Automate, formerly known as Microsoft Flow until November 2019, is an iPaaS platform by Microsoft for automation of recurring tasks. It is part of the Microsoft Power Platform line of products together with products such as Power A ...
** Improved hybrid search troubleshooting
* Search
** Search result page modernization
** Support for returning list content in the modern results page
** Thumbnails in the modern search result page
* Security
** SSL certificate management
** Support for TLS 1.3
** Strong TLS encryption by default
** Improved ASP.NET view state security and key management
* Sites, Lists, and Libraries
** Accessibility improvements
** Brick layout for document library thumbnails and image gallery web part
** Bulk check-in and check-out
** Bulk file download from document libraries and OneDrive personal sites
** Image and document thumbnails in document libraries and picture libraries
** Modern list and library web parts support adding, editing, and deleting content
** Modern document sets
* Storage
** New BLOB storage provider: Remote Share Provider
** Remote Share Provider diagnostic tool
See also
*
Enterprise portal
An enterprise portal, also known as an enterprise information portal (EIP), is a framework for integrating information, people and processes across organizational boundaries in a manner similar to the more general web portals. Enterprise portals p ...
*
List of collaborative software
This list is divided into proprietary or free software, and open source software, with several comparison tables of different product and vendor characteristics. It also includes a section of project collaboration software, which is a standard fea ...
*
List of content management systems
Content management systems (CMS) are used to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation. Many of them are built on top of separate content management frameworks. The list is limited to notable services.
Open source software
:''Th ...
References
External links
*
SharePoint Roadmap
{{Use mdy dates, date=October 2018
2001 software
Content management systems
Document management systems
Information management
Portal software
Proprietary database management systems
Records management technology
Microsoft Office servers