SharePoint
2013 comes with powerful features which incorporate considerably
upgraded search abilities along with new provisions for
intranet-oriented searches, enhanced digital content management, web
content usability as well as cross-site publishing. Let us have a
brief overview of the new functionality and features of this new
version of SP and compare it with older versions.
New
Licensing Model
Owing
to the licensing changes in Sharepoint 2013, an “external
connector” is not required by “external users”, as was the case
for previous versions. This ensures substantial reduction of cost for
clients because it facilitates access to SP solutions like external
project collaboration sites, customer portals or websites by vendors,
partners, customers or other outside users.
Fresh
Search Features
The
FAST search technology has been integrated into the 2013 version of
SP. As a result, the search functionality has been enhanced ensuring
the following benefits:
- Continuous Crawl: The indexing and crawling components have undergone a major upgrade in SharePoint Search. A great deal of content could not be frequently crawled in SharePoint 2010 but currently it is possible to index content frequently. This is of great significance because files added within SP can be located instantly by the users.
- Query Conditions or Rules Engine: This feature facilitates the dynamic display of content by the web pages. Search has been incorporated with a new query engine which makes room for application of rules and display of results depending upon particular conditions. SharePoint 2010 did not possess this feature. As this feature has been incorporated in the latest SP version, it enables better control over sorting and displaying of results as per user attributes.
- Service-Oriented Page Design: This allows web pages to dynamically come up with content that is most relevant to the user, while facilitating storage of the content within a central repository. This was also available in SharePoint 2010, but in the latest version, this feature is more practical and efficient as it is loaded with new enhancements and web parts.
- Query Actions: These help to manage the presentation of the search results. Currently it is possible to specify the categories of records that will be displayed in search results using custom HTML. This could not be done in an efficient manner in SharePoint 2010.
Intranet-Oriented Search Advantages
Along
with the search enhancements made through the introduction of fresh
search features, there are certain improvements that have proved to
be of immense significance to Intranet users.
- File Preview: It is possible for users to preview Microsoft Office files from the search results page. Optimization and sorting of search results can be done on the basis of users clicks. Because it is possible to preview files prior to opening, increasingly accurate search results can be obtained for the end users, a feature which was not available in SharePoint 2010.
- Deep Links: In case of SharePoint 2013, major sections and chapters from a file are displayed with the results. One can conveniently jump to particular sections without downloading the file and searching for the required content.
Enhanced
Web Content Usability
- WYSIWYG Improvements: Content can be copied directly from Word and pasted within the SP text editor. The text gets displayed in the website's defined style, which implies that much editing is not required. Compared to the earlier versions, SharePoint 2013 allows more convenient editing of content and web pages.
- Friendly URLs: This features renders user-friendly URLs for all SharePoint pages as against the long URLs characteristic of SharePoint 2010.
- Flexible Branding: Non-SharePoint tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver can now be utilized for branding as well as page design.
- Video Embedding: With the help of this feature, SharePoint 2013 enables convenient embedding of videos from third-party hosting solutions. Hence the user can efficiently add videos to the sites.
Digital
Asset Management
Companies
which have great volume of videos, images or other content can now
efficiently leverage SharePoint for organizing their assets. Images
can be effectively stored in a central repository and can also be
reused on pages across the site.
Cross-site
Publishing
This
aspect helps in storage and maintenance of content in a single or
more than one authoring site collections. Again, this content can be
displayed in one or more than one publishing site collections. This
feature in the 2013 version of SP ensures consistency of content
shared throughout diverse areas and sites.
The
above-mentioned features indeed make SharePoint 2013 more advanced
and convenient to use than the previous versions. It also comes with
other significant enhancements such as SkyDrive,
increasingly robust work-flow platforms and improved site
performance. You can hire developers from top SharePoint
application development
services companies in India who can help you build products within
allocated budgets and time schedules.
We
provide custom
SharePoint development
services. If you would like to talk to one of our certified
SharePoint
developers,
please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.
