SharePoint 2013: What You Need to Know

With an initial release in October of 2012, SharePoint 2013 is still in the early phases of adoption for most organizations. For those currently considering a transition, this article gives a quick look at the core offerings of SharePoint 2013.

Improvements have been made to workflow management.

Workflows are more powerful and capable in SharePoint 2013 than in any previous version. The creation of workflows has also been made more intuitive, and SharePoint is now fully integrated with Microsoft Workflow Manager.

SharePoint 2013 gives major social features.

Long-time users of SharePoint will know that SP 2007 had only superficial social features and that SharePoint 2010 dramatically improved those offerings. The leap forward with SharePoint 2013 is even more substantial.

While phrase “Facebook for enterprise” is likely an exaggeration (despite having been thrown around a lot in the past few months), the offerings are formidable and include: the chance to show and filter activity feeds, engage in micro-blogging, develop more socially integrated sites, and the option to “follow” coworkers and discussions.

SharePoint Search has been dramatically improved.

New features in SharePoint Search, including the inclusion of external websites, new customization options, better organization, and more intelligent site ranking all combine to make SharePoint Search a powerful productivity tool. While few have used SharePoint Search as a core part of their daily work in the past, that’s changing with the 2013 release.

Everything is cloud-ready.

Cloud-based storage for documents has been ramped up, with the “My Sites” model being traded in for the far more capable Microsoft SkyDrive. The ability to save documents easily and effectively improves user adoption, allows for seamless synchronization, enables healthier collaboration, and much more.

We have reached a point of stability.

In our September newsletter last year we discussed SharePoint 2013 and some of the opportunities it provided. We here at SharePoint Engine were as excited as anyone, but we also knew from years of experience that Microsoft releases could come with a slew of bugs. Now that we’re well past the public beta and deep into the official release, those bugs have been squashed. A few known issues remain, but SP 2013 now stands as a reliable enterprise content management system.
While there are plenty of other features worth discovering, these core offerings give a strong sense of SharePoint 2013’s value. If you’re looking to migrate or to improve your recent implementation, we encourage you to take advantage of our no-obligation consultation and contact SharePoint Engine today.

Feel free to contact our Sharepoint Consulting team here.