Missed the live webinar? Jill Hannemann, Director of Advisory Services, and Daniel Cohen-Dumani, CEO of Portal Solutions, had so much to say during our webinar, “SharePoint 2016 – The Future Is Hybrid,” that they couldn’t fit it into 60 minutes.So Jill and Daniel rounded up the questions they didn’t have time for and answered them for you.
Here’s what they had to say:
Question: Do you know if there are long term plans in which Yammer and the new Groups merge into one product since they are so similar?
Answer: Yes, there are plans where Yammer and Group will converge. In the meantime, groups and yammer serve a different purpose. Groups are based on Exchange and rely on email for conversation where yammer is a social platform.
Question: Can I search on-premises content on Office 365? How are both connected (on-premises and cloud content)?
Answer: Yes, using cloud connected search connector.
Question: We have many on-premises solutions using Bamboo and other 3rd party web-parts. How will these be affected by a move to the cloud?
Answer: Many of the 3rd party web parts may not function and will require updates. Specifically, web parts relying on server side code will not work with SharePoint Online. You need to plan and research availability or alternatives.
Question: What will replace Excel Services?
Answer: Power BI
Question: Is Windows Explorer view and web dev supported in SharePoint 2016? What about in Office 365?
Answer: Yes, it is supported.
Question: Will excel files be given shared editing features like word has now? Or will it continue to be single editor only?
Answer: Excel Online supports co-editing, the desktop version does not yet support co-editing. We are not sure of future availability.
Question: Can you elaborate on why Excel Services is being discontinued?
Answer: It is being replaced with a more advanced platform such as Power BI.
Question: SharePoint Designer is going away – what will developers use to fill this gap? Will Visual Studio work on a local workstation without having the SharePoint objects available locally?
Answer: Microsoft has a different vision. New tools will be released in 2016 including PowerApps.
Question: With no SharePoint Foundation 2016, will there be any kind of upgrade path for existing Foundation customers to whatever version they would need to switch to?
Answer: Upgrade to SharePoint Online or SharePoint Server 2016 will be supported.
Question: Any mention of a replacement for InfoPath forms?
Answer: Not yet, new product will be released in 2016 and beyond.
Question: All of the mobile apps from Microsoft ONLY support Office 365…are there any plans to support on-premises access from the mobile apps: OneDrive and office?
Answer: Not at this time.
Question: If SPD is going away, how will we do workflows? (I.e. send an email notification.)
Answer: SPD is currently supported until a new tool is made available.
Question: Can SharePoint 2016 run completely and only on-premises?
Answer: Yes, it can.
Question: Are all these features available for Office 365 SharePoint?
Answer: Yes, they are.
Question: Does hybrid search still separate the results into two buckets (Office 365 and on-premises)?
Answer: No, it is unified but the user can visually identify on-premises vs. cloud content.
Question: Will the updated Yammer integration still require a paid yammer account?
Answer: Yes, it will.
Question: Are hybrid results security trimmed from both sources in a single search?
Answer: Yes, they are.
Question: I heard video will do voice to searchable text, is that true?
Answer: This will be a feature of Cortana Analytics.
Question: Obviously the mobile apps need Office 365 for now so not sure what was meant for enhanced mobile options for SharePoint 2016?
Answer: What was meant is mobile responsive access.
Question: Will Skype for Business/Lync be an integration with SharePoint 2016? On-premises and cloud?
Answer: Yes, it will.
Question: Speaking of shared file stores, are there any plans by Microsoft to integrate SharePoint with such services as Box or Egnyte (shared, secured Enterprise file storage in the cloud)?
Answer: Third party solution exists for this use case.
Question: What is the meaning of “No standalone installation”. Will the installation role base?
Answer: Standalone server is the ability to install everything on one server SharePoint + SQL Server. With SharePoint 2016, you need to install SQL on a different server and have at least two servers.
Question: When you say private cloud, do you mean on-premises?
Answer: I’m referring to a highly scalable on premise cloud like environment.
Question: Zero based downtime for patching sounds great. However, won’t you need to architect your on-premises farm appropriately to take advantage of it?
Answer: No actually, this is part of the standard farm configuration.
Question: Any info available now regarding the needed topology in order to do zero based downtime patching?
Answer: The standard installation will support this including a small farm.
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