SharePoint Conference 2014 ReviewKeith TuomiSharePoint Server MVPwww.itgroove.net@itgroove_keith Blog: http://yalla.itgroove.net

ktuomi@itgroove.net

Keith Tuomi, SharePoint MVP

SharePoint Consultant

SharePoint MVP

MVPMCPDMCTSMCSE

Agenda

- The Event- The Content- The Takeaways

The Event

SharePoint Conference 2014http://www.sharepointconference.com/SharePoint Conference 2014 was held March 3-6, 2014 at the Venetian Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. It is the largest Microsoft SharePoint event in the world, and has grown each year since it debuted in 2006.

The conference offers a wide variety of presentations, labs, certification testing, Q&A sessions, workshops, and networking events for attendees to build their skills and meet other SharePoint and Yammer professionals.

SPC14 is designed for three major audiences, Developers, IT Professionals, and Executives with content ranging from overviews and introductory lessons to deep dive sessions.

KeynotesBill ClintonPretty awesome.. not so much related to SharePoint. See for yourself (not available on Channel 9): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRKa7qti9ZU

- Fairly technology focused, and truly positive and inspirational; great speaker and humanitarian.

- Bill did make references to the audience that gave some of us the impression that he thought we all worked at Microsoft.

- A little heavy on the “humans as ants” analogies

“ Technology needs to do more with less. “- Bill Clinton

KeynotesJared Spatero – GM, MicrosoftWorking like a network - http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC112

Jeff Teper - Corporate Vice President, Office Servers & Services Program Management, Applications & Services, Microsoft “Office Graph one of the biggest innovations ever in SharePoint”http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/KEY01 @ 11:00

Julia White – GM, MicrosoftDemos new Groups Experience, codename “Oslo” & new Power BIhttp://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/KEY01 @ 21:50

The Content

View & Download SPC14 ContentView all sessions at:http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/

Keith’s OneDrive stash of all SPC14 Videos & get the PowerPoints:http://1drv.ms/1dy9sVz

Introducing codename “Oslo”- Introductions at this year’s conference included

the unveiling of a new app for Office 365 codenamed “Oslo.” - Based on a new Office Graph concept, Oslo is designed to display

documents or information relevant to each user based on the projects they’re working on or their connections within the organization.

Introducing codename “Oslo”- While Oslo displays the information on the user’s desktop in an easy-to-

read graphic format, Office Graph uses machine-learning to determine what content is most relevant.

- Example: when a user has missed a meeting, and then surfaces the meeting presentation on the user’s Oslo desktop for review later.

- While the technology looks amazing, it’s important to remember that everything must be on Office 365 for it to work correctly.

Watch the in-depth session at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC2015

Future of on-premise SharePointThere will be at least one more on-premises version of SharePoint, but it’s unclear how many more after that (Microsoft may take a “wait and see” approach). The next version will be “SharePoint 2015” (or at least it will be released in 2015).

Yammer Ramping Up The social capabilities in SharePoint 2013 will NOT be developed further Lot’s of integration in the pipeline for Yammer – this will mainly be on the Office 365 side until the SP2015 release though. Includes things like:

- Groups - create a group, and automatically get a site/inbox/OneDrive library for docs - Conversations around documents (i.e. comments displayed next to document) – in Office Online (new name for Office Web Apps), rather than Office clients on your desktop however - Integrated profile/identity (no longer separate Yammer and SharePoint profiles) – this will unlock other scenarios going forward

New Office 365 APIsThe new product announcements show some good new direction. I’m particularly excited about the New Office 365 APIs that bring Office 365 closer to parity with SharePoint Server 2013 as a platform for business applications (http://bit.ly/PkMEO2).

New Content EnablementThe new content enablement that is provided for PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook applications (http://bit.ly/PkMEO2) is hot.

Improvements to Power BI Across the board and the release of Power Map. (Even though this was announced a month ago, I’m adding it here (http://bit.ly/PkOvmd)

SharePoint Online announces 1TB site collections and unlimited tenant storage scaleA 1TB site collection limit for OneDrive for Business and team sites: allowing your teams to store more content in a single location.

Infinite tenant storage scale: bringing your content to the cloud without compromise.

http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/14/sharepoint-online-announces-1tb-site-collections-and-unlimited-tenant-storage-scale/

Retirement of InfoPath- Earlier this year, Microsoft announced they were discontinuing future versions of InfoPath

- In the session talked about the future of not just InfoPath but also with the entire electronics forms story from Microsoft.

- They affirmed that InfoPath is not dead, it has simply been discontinued. For those currently using InfoPath or InfoPath Services in SharePoint, you are going to be supported through 2023.

Session: Update on InfoPath and SharePoint Forms

Related content:SPCtv Insights into the Future of FormsSPCtv IT Pro Insights into the Future of InfoPath

Retirement of InfoPathIn the session they didn’t provide concrete plans for InfoPath’s sole replacement. Rather they discussed a multitude of different options. These include the following:

- Structured Docs < new concept

- App Forms- Excel Surveys- List Forms

..One thing Microsoft is very interested in is getting your feedback… they’ve setup a UserVoice site for you to provide it! http://officeforms.uservoice.com.

Retirement of InfoPath

The Takeaways

Office is everything – Yammer and Outlook and People/Presence and Search and SharePoint and the traditional productivity tools for people in their everyday work.  The vision from the conference was to enable users to quickly be able to wrap all of these into a unified experience, wherever and whenever on whatever device.  

Hybrid was acknowledged as a need.  Not just as a transition strategy but as a reality that their customers are demanding.  There will be another release of SharePoint on-premise in 2015, but it will be a catch up release of the 365 features that are needed on-premises.  More importantly, Hybrid was acknowledged as a strategy to distribute some functionality to the cloud and to enable some to remain on-premises.

OneDrive is a big deal.  All of the Google Drive and Box and Dropbox talk in the press has irritated Microsoft and they are going to come at this with real marketing spend.  The challenge isn’t whether Microsoft can do this, it will be how straightforward it will be for difference classes of use cases and customers from the perspective of scale, IT maturity, SharePoint maturity, and patience.  

The newly announced API that allows you to call Exchange from the existing SharePoint or Office Apps is a huge game changer. This really does differentiate the platform and empower organizations to start having a seamless experience across all parts of Office 365. For more information check out this landing page. There are some new REST APIs and tooling also.

Marc Anderson’s wrap up - http://sympmarc.com/2014/03/09/sharepoint-conference-2014-spc14-wrap-up/

Jeremy Thake’s top 5 takeaways - http://www.jeremythake.com/2014/03/my-top-5-takeaways-from-the-sharepoint-conference-2014-spc14/

Joel Oleson - http://www.collabshow.com/2014/03/11/next-version-of-sharepoint-will-be-in-2015-and-other-things-i-learned-at-sharepoint-conference/

More Reviews..

My Favourite Session?

Scott JamisonSPC217Making SharePoint Collaboration Rock by Increasing Discoverability

“Want to get the most out of your SharePoint investment and maximize adoption, especially for content management and search?

Using the new features of SharePoint 2013 and Office 365, Scott shows you how to best use a mix of Metadata Columns, Folders, OneDrive for Business, Search, SharePoint mobile apps, and other fantastic features to get the most out of storing, organizing, and finding document content in SharePoint.”

Surprisingly, it wasn’t on the Dev track..

Any questions?

Thanks!Keith Tuomiwww.itgroove.netEmail: ktuomi@itgroove.netBlog: http://yalla.itgroove.net Twitter: @itgroove_keith