SharePoint Online

SharePoint Online will see a new customization framework, closer integration with other Office 365 services, security updates, and better file-sharing applications in 2016.Some of these features more closely integrate SharePoint Online with other Office 365 services. These incremental changes should be rolled out through the end of 2016, and many of the customization improvements will be ported to SharePoint Server on-premises in 2017. While these features could make the Microsoft-hosted version of SharePoint more attractive to organizations that currently host the software on-premises, they could require significant planning and preparation, and items currently on the roadmap are subject to delay or cancellation.

SharePoint Online Background

SharePoint Online is a Microsoft-hosted service, sharing most features of SharePoint Server 2016, which is part of Office 365. (Microsoft also offers a dedicated SharePoint hosting service, not discussed here, for governments and large commercial customers.) SharePoint Online delivers most SharePoint Server functions, including team collaboration, corporate portal hosting, enterprise search, and content management, and new features are delivered to SharePoint Online first. SharePoint Online works with the OneDrive for Business technology for file sharing. (See the chapter “OneDrive for Business“.)