No matter what news broke this week, the big deal was always going to about the general release of SharePoint 2016.
That became especially true after Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jeff Teper announced two months ago that Microsoft would outline the roadmap for SharePoint along with the release.
Sure enough, Wednesday’s event was big and there were plenty of releases, upgrades and tantalizing tidbits of information on where the whole SharePoint circus is going now.
Better Integration With OneDrive
Microsoft plans to beef up document analytics and how documents will be surfaced from OneDrive.
While Microsoft will not provide synchronization of SharePoint Online document libraries with OneDrive until the end of this year, it's giving users access to SharePoint Online document libraries through the new SharePoint app now. That effectively provides mobile access to documents stored in SharePoint.
Users will also be able to discover and surface OneDrive documents from both OneDrive and SharePoint. Discovery means finding documents in a repository that a user does not know exists, as opposed to search, where users simply search for documents they know about. You will also be able to copy documents from OneDrive to SharePoint.
One of the most interesting new additions, which will land before the end of the year, is the document analytics app. This will be used to surface documents in OneDrive, as well as show what those documents have been used for, who has been using them,and what their impact has been.
SharePoint General Manager Seth Patton told CMSWire this is really a leap forward.
"When people take time to build or introduce a document it is hard to work out if it is having an impact or not. We see this [document analytics] as doing for documents what Instagram did for photos. Its really a visual representation of the life of the file. We think this will change the way people view and use documents."
AvePoint’s SharePoint 2016 Response
With something as big as SharePoint 2016 now in general availability, a lot of vendors that feed into the SharePoint ecosystem are upgrading their offerings or adding new capabilities.
Just a week before the general release of SharePoint 2016, AvePoint released DocAve 6 Service Pack (SP) 7, an addition to its enterprise-class infrastructure management platform for SharePoint.
With this release, AvePoint helps organizations migrate to SharePoint 2016 whether its to an on-premises, cloud or hybrid environment.
DocAve enables direct migration to SharePoint 2016 and Office 365/SharePoint Online from previous versions of SharePoint as well as other legacy collaboration platforms.
Enterprises moving to the cloud and using Nintex Workflow can also migrate, replicate and transform on-premises document-based workflows into Nintex Workflow for Office 365, while keeping document workflow definitions intact.
“We’re allowing organizations to take advantage of SharePoint’s latest enhancements faster without compromising their ability to maintain an environment that is secure, effectively managed, and optimized for users,” John Peluso, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy, AvePoint said in a statement.
E-Signatures for SharePoint 2016
E-signature provider SIGNiX and its partner, infrastructure specialist Micro Strategies, is integrating its e-signature solution with SharePoint.
The integration will seamlessly embed the s-signature solution into both SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server.
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SIGNiX claims its technology is fundamentally different than other electronic signature products on the market because it is designed to be valid decades into the future, no matter how technology changes.
The SIGNiX and SharePoint integrated technology will be available to other Microsoft partners and consumer companies of any size looking for a complete digital workflow that offers a secure and simple way to get business documents signed online.
In Other Document News:
Laserfiche Upgrades ECM
Document management vendor Laserfiche announced the release of Laserfiche 10.1, which pushes version 10 along the enterprise content management road (ECM) with improved case management, content analytics, and business process management (BPM).
The case management improvements simplify process optimization with the expansion of the Business Process Library, which allows users to select from an online library of common, prebuilt processes and import them directly into Laserfiche for immediate use.
The new collaboration features enable team communication on processes with features like team discussions, messaging and document linking using Laserfiche Discussions, an integrated social community platform.
V10.1 also provides content analytics through embedded dashboards that provides insights into workloads, task status, performance and other work-associated information.
V-Rooms Improves Sensitive Document Storage
Finally, this week, V-Rooms, a specialist in sensitive document storage, added a couple of new features added to its cloud-based virtual data room solution, Document Viewer and DocuSign Templates.
Document Viewer provides users with an easy way to control download, printing and watermarking without the need of a special plugin. The viewer supports 50+ different types of files, including PDF files as well as all Microsoft Office documents.
For its part, DocuSign Templates enhances DocuSign integration. Users can now use DocuSign Templates to support wide distributions of standardized documents. Standardized documents can be converted to DocuSign templates and then signed directly within V-Rooms thereby increasing the accuracy and speed of document transactions.
Combined, the two new addition will enable users to view and control documents without the expense or complications of additional technology as well as replicate and distribute standardized documents with DocuSign Templates.
Title image by Raynaldy Dachlan
