SharePoint 2016 – Great Hybrid Features for the Users

SharePoint 2016 IT Preview is here and it brings along a whole lot of new enhancements for the end user. Presumably, the focus is on hybrid possibilities to make SharePoint 2016 work well with Office 365. Hybridization results in a seamlessly integrated experience across SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview and SharePoint Online. With a single profile in Office 365 storing all the user profile details, things get only easier. Throw in Hybrid OneDrive for Business, and you can use any device to access your documents, files, folders etc. directly through Office 365.

The new Cloud hybrid search adds another cushy layer of convenience by indexing On-premise and other content to the search index in Office 365. In other words, use the Office 365 Search to get you results from both On-Premises SharePoint Search Index and Office 365 for the same search term results. SharePoint 2016 also can also crawl older SharePoint versions such as 2007, 2010 and 2013, without needing to upgrade. Besides, you do a “follow” for On-Premises as well as Office 365 and see them both in a single location in the “Sites” app – something you will find via the App Launcher in SharePoint 2016. Bill Baer’s statement best sums up the experience: “SharePoint 2016 was built from the Cloud-Up”.