Introduction

I am currently involved in a SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 migration of a public website solution using SharePoint 2013. Despite WCM features in SharePoint have not evolved since SharePoint 2013, the option was to upgrade to SharePoint 2019 and take advantage of existing developments.

The solution uses Host Named Site Collections as the basis for a multi portal platform that can be used to create multiple public sites with the same platform, making it easy to create multiple portals with little development effort.

This post explains the configurations necessary to configure a Host Named Site Collection using HTTPS and how to automatically redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS.

To learn more on Host Named Site Collections, you can read the Microsoft official documentation or read a fantastic blog post about the topic.

In my case, I will assume the existence of a web application that acts as the container for the site collections. To simplify, lets assume the following configuration (web application and site collection were created using HTTP first).

• Web application URL (Default Zone): http://webapp.smartportals.pt, configured for anonymous access. This address will never be used by end users. This is the web application URL that was given to the web application when it was created. In this zone, we will automatically redirect HTTP to HTTPS in every page.
• Web application URL (Intranet Zone): http://auth.smartportals.pt, configured for Windows Integrated access only. This zone will be used as an authoring environment for content managers. However, this address will never be used by end users. This web application URL was created using a web application extension into the Intranet zone, which created a new IIS site for the same web application but to be used with different authentication settings. In this zone, we will also automatically redirect HTTP to HTTPS in every page.
• Web application URL (Internet Zone): http://search.smartportals.pt, configured for Windows Integrated access and anonymous access. This zone will be used only for search. This address will never be used by end users. This web application URL was created using a web application extension into the Internet zone. In this zone, we will NOT automatically redirect HTTP to HTTPS in every page since this will cause search issues when crawling the site collection (http://dev.site.pt) contents.
• Site collection URL (Default Zone): http://dev.site.pt, configured for anonymous access. This address will be used by end users to access the public website. The site collection was created a PowerShell script. To learn more on how to create a Host Named Site Collection, please read the Microsoft official documentation.
• Site collection URL (Intranet Zone): http://auth.site.pt, configured for Windows Integrated authentication. This address will be used by BackOffice users to manage content of the website.

How-To Steps

When configuring SSL in a SharePoint 2019 farm with Host Named Site Collections, the following topics are the most relevant:

• Install SSL certificates
• Configure Search
• Configure IIS bindings
• Configure Alternate Access Mappings
• Configure Anonymous Access for Public Web Site
• Configure Site Collection URLs
• Configure Web Application Authentication Providers
• Configure HTTP to HTTPS Automatic Redirect

Install SSL certificates

The SSL certificate must be a wildcard certificate for the same domain as the public address of the web site. I will not focus on this topic in the post since it is very well explained over the Internet. The SSL certificates will have to be installed in every SharePoint Frontend server. To learn more on this topic, please visit this blog post. In our case, we used a wildcard certificate issued by a known certificate authority.

Configure Search

As you remember, both in the Default and Intranet zones, we have automatic redirection between HTTP and HTTPS. The way we configured this redirect will be explained later in the post. In order for the Search Service Application to successfully crawl the site collection (http://dev.site.pt, at this point still in HTTP) contents successfully, we must set as the Search Content Source the Web Application URL for the Internet zone (http://search.smartportals.pt). The IIS site in the Internet zone WILL NOT have any automatic redirection between HTTP and HTTPS (only the IIS sites associated with the public website and the Authoring URLs will). For crawling purposes, the web application in this zone can use the HTTP protocol since, once again, the web application URL acts as a container and will never be accessed directly by end users. While crawling, the HTTPS address of the site collection (https://dev.site.pt) will be crawled successfully since it will later be the site collection URL associated with the Default zone of the web application. The reason, once again for this, is that in the Internet zone there is no HTTP to HTTPS automatic redirection in the IIS site associated with the URL used as a Content Source URL: http://search.smartportals.pt.

In our case, we created two content sources, one for the website and left the default Content Source with the remaining start addresses, used mainly to crawl user profiles.

Configure IIS bindings

In each frontend server, you will have to have two different IP Addresses. This is necessary since we need two IIS sites accepting wildcard certificates and the only way we can achieve this is having two different IP Addresses in the server, and have the bindings in the Public and Authoring IIS web sites to use different IP Addresses. These two IIS sites (Default and Intranet zones) will have automatic redirect between HTTP and HTTPS and will have both the HTTP and HTTPS bindings. We decided to stay with the default ports, even for the Public and Authoring web sites for simplicity.

Default zone (Public website, anonymous access):

Intranet zone (Authoring website, Integrated Windows Authentication):

Search zone (Search IIS site, Integrated Windows Authentication and Anonymous Access):

Configure Alternate Access Mappings

Alternate Access Mappings are an essencial part on any web application configuration and will play a very important role in our configuration. Each web application can have up to 5 different Public URLs that can be used to have users access the same web application using different addresses and potentially different authentication providers (Default, Intranet, Internet, Extranet and Custom). To learn more about Alternate Access Mappings, read the official Microsoft documentation.

Important Notes:

• Search IIS site address must be the default zone URL. To read more about the advantages of doing this, read the Official Microsoft documentation. With Host Named Site Collections, the Site Collection that we want to crawl must also be configured for the Default zone so that the search results will always return results starting with that URL (in our case https://dev.site.pt)
• The HTTPS web application URL set in the Authoring IIS site must be set to the Intranet zone since we will configure the Authentication provider in this zone for Windows Integrated Authentication only to ensure that only authenticated users can access this address.
• The HTTPS web application URL set in the Public IIS site must be to the Internet zone since this is the zone where we will configure the authentication provider with Windows Integrated Authentication and anonymous access so that users can access the site collection URL (in our case https://dev.site.pt).
• The remainder zones are for the HTTP addresses of the Public and Authoring IIS sites

Configure Anonymous Access for Public Web Site

To complete the configuration of anonymous access, you have to go to SharePoint permissions page (using the public address but as an authenticated user) and set anonymous access.

After anonymous access has been enabled, you have something like the below image in your Site Collection permissions.

Configure Site Collection URLs

In this section, we will configure the different site collection URLs for the relevant zones configured in the Alternate Access Mappings in the previous section.

To do this, we must use rename the http://dev.site.pt to https://dev.site.pt (Default zone) using old STSADM.

stsadm -o renamesite -oldurl http://dev.site.pt -newurl https://dev.site.pt

After that, we can set the remain zones URLs using SP-SiteURL PowerShell cmdlet as follows:

Set-SPSiteUrl (Get-SPSite 'https://dev.site.pt') -Url 'https://auth.dev.site.pt' -Zone Intranet
Set-SPSiteUrl (Get-SPSite 'https://dev.site.pt') -Url 'http://dev.site.pt' -Zone Internet
Set-SPSiteUrl (Get-SPSite 'https://dev.site.pt') -Url 'http://auth.dev.site.pt' -Zone Extranet

If you need to remove any Site Collection URL, you can set use the Remove-SPSiteURL as follows:

Remove-SPSiteURL -Url http://auth.dev.site.pt

After running the commands, we will have our HTTPS Public web site address (the one we want for Search) in the Default zone and the remaining zones set to allow the Public site web site access (HTTP and HTTPS) to be anonymous and the Authoring address to require Windows Integrated Authentication.

Configure Web Application Authentication Providers

Authentication Providers are associated with the security zones of the web application (Default, Intranet, Internet, Extranet and Custom). To learn more about Authentication Providers, please read the Microsoft official documentation.

For the Default and Internet zones, we set anonymous access and Windows Integrated Authentication. Default zone will allow temporarily Windows Integrated Authentication so that we can properly set Anonymous Access in the Site Collection (already explained above). The Windows Integrated Authentication setting should be removed in the end to prevent authenticated users to try accessing the Public web site as authenticated users. Internet zone must also include Windows Integrated Authentication so that the Search can properly crawl the Site Collection contents.

Configure HTTP to HTTPS Automatic Redirect

Since this is a migration from a SharePoint 2013 site using HTTP to a SharePoint 2019 using HTTPS we want to ensure if we have HTTP links in any page of the website and while Google is indexing the new site after migration is complete, that HTTP requests will be automatically redirected to HTTPS.

To achieve this, we installed on each of the SharePoint Frontend Servers, the IIS URL Rewrite module.

After installed, we must add the following XML configuration on the web.config on the IIS sites associated with the Default and Intranet zones (Public and Authoring web sites).

    <staticContent>
      <remove fileExtension=".dll" />
      <remove fileExtension=".exe" />
    </staticContent>
    <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule name="Redirect to HTTPS" enabled="true" patternSyntax="Wildcard" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url="*" negate="false" />
          <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny">
            <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" />
          </conditions>
          <action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}{REQUEST_URI}" redirectType="Found" />
        </rule>
      </rules>
    </rewrite>
 </system.webServer>

And that’s it! Hope that this can help anyone that needs to do something similar! Any feedback and suggestions to improve to the configuration we used is welcome!

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you want to learn how you can rename a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you want to learn how to save time time scheduling your meetings, click here.

If you want to learn how to enable Microsoft Teams Attendance List Download, click here.

If you want to learn how to create a dynamic org-wide team in Microsoft Teams with all active employees, click here.

If you want to modernize your SharePoint classic root site to a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you prefer to use the traditional method to update your farm and want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated, click here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2010 farm to SharePoint 2016, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from Ignite and some more recent announcements, including Microsoft Search, What’s New to Build a Modern Intranet with SharePoint in Office 365, Deeper Integration between Microsoft Teams and SharePoint and the latest news on SharePoint development, click here.

If your organization is still not ready to go all in to SharePoint Online and Office 365, a hybrid scenario may be the best choice. SharePoint 2019 RTM was recently announced and if you to learn all about SharePoint 2019 and all its features, click here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post How to configure HTTPS with HTTP redirect in SharePoint 2019 using Host Named Site Collections appeared first on Blog IT.

Introduction

Organizations are rapidly moving into the Cloud with Office 365, but some are still not ready to move completely to Office 365 and SharePoint Online.

Upgrading to SharePoint 2019, that has an improved support for a hybrid scenario, can be a valid solution to allow organizations to gradually take the path to the Cloud.

A hybrid scenario in SharePoint 2019 will allow you the following:

• Hybrid App Launcher
• Hybrid Sites
• Hybrid OneDrive for Business
• Hybrid Business to Business (B2B) sites
• Hybrid self-service site creation
• Hybrid auditing
• Hybrid taxonomy and content types
• Hybrid Business Connectivity Services
• Hybrid Search

With these scenarios, organizations can keep some of their workloads On-Premises and start taking advantage of all the innovations in SharePoint Online and Office 365.

Enabling Hybrid Experience

To enable an hybrid environment in a SharePoint 2019 farm, you will have to follow the following steps in Central Administration:

• Select the “Configuration Wizards” option

• Launch the Hybrid Configuration

• Select “Next”

• Select the SharePoint 2019 and Office 365 accounts that will allow the hybrid experience to be enabled. The Office 365 account must be of a global administrator. In the end, select the “Validate credentials” option so that both credentials can be validated.

• Next, the credentials are going to be validated

• The Hybrid Configuration prerequisites are going to be validated. In my case, some errors were found.

The errors that the wizard showed were originated by the fact the App Management Service was not configured in the farm. To solve this problem, I had just had to create a App Management Service service application. In my case, I used an automated way to create the service application using AutoSPInstaller.

• To confirm that the App Management service application was successfully created, go to the Service Applications page and check if the service application is listed

• After creating the service application, I started the Hybrid Configuration Wizard again and the prerequisites are now correcty validated.

• Select the features you want to use in your hybrid environment. In my case, I selected Hybrid OneDrive, Hybrid Sites, Hybrid B2B sites and Hybrid App Launcher.

• Wait until the Hybrid Configuration Wizard finishes configuration.

• After the successful run of configuration wizard, SharePoint server environment will be connected to Office 365. To finish the process, click “Close”.

• To complete the process, perform an IISReset on the SharePoint 2019 server.

Testing the Hybrid Environment

After the hybrid environment is configured, you can test it:

• Hybrid App Launcher: the App Launcher will now allow users to start using Office 365 (ex: OneDrive)

• Hybrid OneDrive: when users select “OneDrive” in the App Launcher, they will be redirected to OneDrive for Business in the connected Office 365 tenant

Technical Considerations

There a few important technical notes to consider:

• You have to register your domain with Office 365 (ex: contoso.com)
• You have to create a UPN domain suffix in your On-Premises Active Directory domain that matches the public domain
• You have to sync On-Premises Active Directory with Azure AD and Office 365

For more details on these requirements, click here.

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you want to learn how you can rename a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you want to modernize your SharePoint classic root site to a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you prefer to use the traditional method to update your farm and want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated, click here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2010 farm to SharePoint 2016, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from Ignite and some more recent announcements, including Microsoft Search, What’s New to Build a Modern Intranet with SharePoint in Office 365, Deeper Integration between Microsoft Teams and SharePoint and the latest news on SharePoint development, click here.

If your organization is still not ready to go all in to SharePoint Online and Office 365, a hybrid scenario may be the best choice. SharePoint 2019 RTM was recently announced and if you to learn all about SharePoint 2019 and all its features, click here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post How to Configure a Hybrid Experience with Office 365 in a SharePoint 2019 farm appeared first on Blog IT.

This post assumes a single SharePoint server but if you have multiple SharePoint servers, you must follow these steps on all SharePoint servers in your farm.

Introduction

The SharePoint world is rapidly moving into the Cloud with SharePoint Online and Office 365, but some organizations are still not ready to move completely to Office 365 and SharePoint Online.

Upgrading to SharePoint 2019 that has support for a hybrid scenario can be a valid solution to allow a gradual move to the cloud.

Installing a SharePoint 2019 farm can be done in an automated way using PowerShell and AutoSPInstaller. One additional advantage of this installation process ensures that the SharePoint farm is installed with the latest updates, leaving the SharePoint farm updated and working properly (if you want to learn how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way, click here and here).

To ensure that after the installation, the SharePoint server is kept always updated, we must ensure that both the Windows Updates and specially the SharePoint Cumulative Updates are properly installed.

Installing SharePoint Updates

To install the latest SharePoint Cumulative Updates in your farm, follow the following steps:

• Download the SharePoint Cumulative Updates
• Backup SharePoint Farm and Configurations
• Install the Cumulative Updates in the SharePoint Farm (using PowerShell)
• Run SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard
• Post-Installation Steps

Download the SharePoint Cumulative Updates

All starts by downloading the latest SharePoint Cumulative Updates. To do that, you must download:

• SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019:
  • The latest language independent SharePoint updates
  • The latest language dependent SharePoint updates (even if you just have the English language pack installed in your farm)
• SharePoint 2013:
  • The latest SharePoint 2013 Server updates (if you have SharePoint 2013 Server installed)
  • The latest SharePoint Foundation 2013 updates (if you have only SharePoint Foundation 2013 installed). This update is not necessary if you have SharePoint 2013 Server since SharePoint Foundation 2013 is included in SharePoint 2013 Server

To stay up to date and download the latest updates, click here for SharePoint 2019, here for SharePoint 2016 and here for SharePoint 2013.

Backup SharePoint Farm and Configurations

Before applying the updates, you should perform the following backups:

• Backup the SharePoint farm by running the following command:
  Backup-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolder> -BackupMethod Full -Verbose

The backup folder should be a shared folder on the network, accessible by both SharePoint and database servers.

Ensure the SharePoint Server VSS Writer service is started on the SharePoint server (not started automatically).

Ensure the SQL Server VSS Writer service is started on the database server.

For more details about SharePoint farm backup, click here, here and here

• Backup all SharePoint databases in the database server that supports the SharePoint farm using SQL Server Enterprise tools
• Backup the web.config files for all web applications
• If you have custom developed solutions using server-side code, backup the solutions. To make this easier, you can download a PowerShell script from my GitHub repository

Install the Cumulative Updates in the SharePoint Farm (using PowerShell)

After downloading the latest updates and taking the necessary precautions, you are ready to install them in your SharePoint farm.

If you want to use the traditional method to update your farm, click here. If you want to learn the PowerShell way and speed up the installation of the Cumulative Updates in your SharePoint farm, read on!

To download the SharePoint Patch PowerShell script, click here. This script, written by Trevor Seward, is an improved version of a PowerShell script originally created by Russ Maxwell for SharePoint 2013.

The way this PowerShell script ensures that the SharePoint patch process time is reduced from 4 to 5 hours to less than one hour is by doing the following:

• If you choose to (use the -Pause switch parameter), suspends the Search Service Application. This is very important since if a search crawl was triggered during the installation of the Cumulative Update, the Search Application could get corrupted and you could be forced to rebuild the entire Search Service Application, recreate any custom managed properties and perform a Full Crawl again to ensure you have search results and all search based solutions work properly
• For SharePoint 2013 (not necessary for SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019), the following services will be disabled and then stopped:
  • Search services are disabled
  • Search services are stopped
  • IISAdmin and SPTimerV4 services are disabled
  • IISAdmin and SPTimerV4 services are stopped
• If you choose to, the Cumulative Updates are installed in passive mode (without any necessary user interaction) but you can still see the installation process in the UI
• When the installation of the Cumulative Updates is complete:
  • For SharePoint 2013 (not necessary for SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019), the following services will be set to automatic:
    • Search services
    • IISAdmin and SPTimerV4 services
  • If you choose to use the -Pause switch parameter, the Search Service Application will be resumed

To start the installation process, open the SharePoint PowerShell window (run as administrator) and execute the following commands:

• Import-Module .\SharePointPatchScript.psm1
• Install-SPPatch -Path -Pause
  • Example: Install-SPPatch -Path D:\SharePoint\Updates -Pause

For SharePoint 2016 and 2019, a monthly Cumulative Update typically contains both the language independent (“sts” file) and the language dependent (“wssloc” file) packages. Sometimes, a Cumulative Update only includes the language independent package. If that is the case, and you already have the latest language dependent package installed, you can run the PowerShell command with the -OnlySTS switch parameter:

• Import-Module .\SharePointPatchScript.psm1
• Install-SPPatch -OnlySTS -Path -Pause
  • Example: Install-SPPatch -OnlySTS -Path D:\SharePoint\Updates -Pause

This will start the SharePoint farm update process (examples for SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2019).

For SharePoint 2013, SharePoint Server or SharePoint Foundation packages will be detected automatically and installed. The example below is for SharePoint 2013 Server.

For SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019, both language independent and language dependent packages will be detected automatically and installed.

Instead of taking hours to perform, the updates should be installed in less than one hour.

A reboot to the server may be necessary.

Run SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard

To finish the farm update process, you must ensure that after the updates are properly installed, you execute the SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard that will ensure the following:

• The database schema for all SharePoint databases is updated to the latest version
• Copies the required binaries from the install location into the _app_bin directories of all web applications
  
• Fixes security settings on the file system to match SharePoint’s needs
• Updates features registrations with SharePoint

To start, run the SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard and select Yes when prompted to reset IIS, SharePoint Administration and SharePoint Timer services.

Depending on your environment, the process will take some minutes to execute the 10 steps of the process.

After a few minutes, the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard will finish executing, hopefully with success.

After clicking on Finish, the Central Administration will automatically be launched.

Post-Installation Steps

To ensure that the farm was successfully updated, it is important to check that the Databases Upgrade Status page.

If the page shows any database still needing upgrade (showing the “Database is in compatibility range and upgrade is recommended” status), some additional steps must be followed.

These steps must also be followed if you encounter the error below while running SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard, saying that there is a mismatch between SharePoint installed version (after updating the farm) and the database schema version.

To ensure all databases are properly upgraded, follow the following steps:

• Upgrade the content databases by executing the following PowerShell command (executed with “run as administrator”):

Get-SPContentDatabase | Upgrade-SPContentDatabase

• Upgrade the remaining content databases, executing the following command (in command prompt with “run as administrator”):

Psconfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force

• Run the SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard (PSCONFIGUI.EXE) again. After running SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard again, it should run without errors.

To confirm the databases upgrade was successful, go back to the Databases Upgrade Status page. After the previous steps, all SharePoint databases were successfully upgraded.

To ensure the upgrade process was successfully finished, go to the Patch Status page and the Upgrade Status page.

Important Notes

Some important notes on using SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard (PSCONFIGUI.EXE) and PSCONFIG.EXE (command line version):

• You should not run PSCONFIG.EXE as a replacement of SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard (PSCONFIGUI.EXE)
  • PSCONFIGUI.EXE is the UI based configuration wizard which performs several tasks one after the other after installing fixes. It is the preferred option to ensure that the SharePoint farm update is completed after installing updates in your SharePoint farm
  • PSCONFIG.EXE is the command line tool which gives users granular control over all tasks that are executed and which is therefore often quicker than PSCONFIGUI.EXE but if misused will not make all the necessary tasks required after installing updates in your SharePoint farm
  • If you want to run PSCONFIG.EXE, ensure you run it with the correct parameters: “PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures -cmd secureresources -cmd services -install”
    • Above, I used “Psconfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force” since I already had used
      SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard (PSCONFIGUI.EXE) and the only thing I wanted to ensure was that SharePoint databases schema were upgraded
• PSCONFIGUI.EXE should always be executed even when installing SharePoint security updates

For more details, check Stefan Goßner’s articles here and here.

Troubleshooting

During an update there are a few errors that can occur while the patch is being validated against your SharePoint environment before is starts being installed. The most common errors are the following:

• “The expected version of the product was not found on the system” – this article by Stefan Goßner explains the error in detail and what can cause it. Basically, SharePoint is typically composed of the following components:
  • SharePoint Server or SharePoint Foundation*
  • SharePoint Server or SharePoint Foundation English Language Pack*
  • Any additional SharePoint Server or SharePoint Foundation Language Packs*
    
    * – SharePoint Foundation existed from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2013 and in SharePoint 2016 and 2019, only SharePoint Server is available
    
    To solve this error, you must ensure that all components have the same patch level. If any of the installed components has a lower patch level or doesn’t meet the Cumulative Update Prerequisites, the error above will be shown and you won’t be able to install the Cumulative Update in your SharePoint farm.
    
    Example: Install the May 2019 Cumulative Update in a SharePoint 2013 farm that has Service Pack 1 (15.0.4571.1502 patch level). The installed components have the following patch levels:
    • SharePoint Server 2013 – 15.0.4571.1502 (Service Pack 1)
    • SharePoint Server 2013 English Language Pack – 15.0.4571.1502 (Service Pack 1)
    • SharePoint Server 2013 Portuguese Language Pack – 15.0.4420.1017 (RTM)
      
      The “The expected version of the product was not found on the system” error will be shown since of one of the components (the Portuguese Language Pack) has a lower patch level. To solve this, you must install the SharePoint Server 2013 Portuguese Language Pack Service Pack 1 (you can get the download link here)
      
      To help you to identify the problem, you can use Roiscan which generates a detailed report of all installed Office components, including SharePoint, and verify the patch level of each components.
      
      You can also take a look at this article that can help you ensure that the information about all installed patches is correctly updated in the SharePoint configuration database.
      
• “No product installed for contained patch” – this can occur if you are installing a Cumulative Update for the wrong version of SharePoint. The most common case is when you are trying to install the SharePoint Foundation 2013 Cumulative Update in a SharePoint Server 2013 farm. In this case, you only need to install the SharePoint 2013 Server Cumulative Update

Other errors can occur while trying to run SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard after installing the patch:

• “Feature is referenced in database but isn’t installed on the current farm” – this is more common in an farm upgrade scenario (ex: upgrade from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019) but can also occur while installing a SharePoint Service Pack or Cumulative Update. To learn more details about this error and how to solve it, click here.
• “An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action.” when you run the following command “Psconfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force”. If you take a look at the ULS Logs, you may find messages like “PSCONFIG.EXE (0x1A8C) UpdatedConcurrencyException: The object SPUpgradeSession Name=Upgrade-20190531-122515-42 was updated by another user. Determine if these changes will conflict, resolve any differences, and reapply the second change. This error may also indicate a programming error caused by obtaining two copies of the same object in a single thread.”. To solve this problem, execute the following command:
  
  PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures -cmd secureresources
  
  NOTE: After solving these issues, to finish the process, run SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard again.

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you want to convert your tenant’s root classic site into a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you prefer to use the traditional method to update your farm and want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated, click here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2010 farm to SharePoint 2016, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

If your organization is still not ready to go all in to SharePoint Online and Office 365, a hybrid scenario may be the best choice. SharePoint 2019 RTM was recently announced and if you to learn all about SharePoint 2019 and all its features, click here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post How to install SharePoint Cumulative Updates In Less Than An Hour in a SharePoint Farm Step by Step appeared first on Blog IT.

This post assumes a single SharePoint server but if you have multiple SharePoint servers, you must follow these steps on all SharePoint servers in your farm.

UPDATE 02/05/2019:

The farm update process can take several hours. If you want to learn how to update your SharePoint farm in less than an hour, using PowerShell click here.

Introduction

The SharePoint world is rapidly moving into the Cloud with SharePoint Online and Office 365, but some organizations are still not ready to move completely to Office 365 and SharePoint Online.

Upgrading to SharePoint 2019 that has support for a hybrid scenario can be a valid solution to allow a gradual move to the cloud.

Installing a SharePoint 2019 farm can be done in an automated way using PowerShell and AutoSPInstaller. One additional advantage of this installation process ensures that the SharePoint farm is installed with the latest updates, leaving the SharePoint farm updated and working properly (if you want to learn how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way, click here and here).

To ensure that after the installation, the SharePoint server is kept always updated, we must ensure that both the Windows Updates and specially the SharePoint Cumulative Updates are properly installed.

Installing SharePoint Updates

To install the latest SharePoint Cumulative Updates in your farm, follow the following steps:

• Download the SharePoint Cumulative Updates
• Backup SharePoint Farm and Configurations
• Pre-Installation Steps
• Install the Cumulative Updates in the SharePoint Farm
• Run SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard
• Post-Installation Steps

Download the SharePoint Cumulative Updates

All starts by downloading the latest SharePoint Cumulative Updates. To do that, you must download:

• SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019:
  • The latest language independent SharePoint updates
  • The latest language dependent SharePoint updates (even if you just have the English language pack installed in your farm)
• SharePoint 2013:
  • The latest SharePoint 2013 Server updates (if you have SharePoint 2013 Server installed)
  • The latest SharePoint Foundation 2013 updates (if you have only SharePoint Foundation 2013 installed). This update is not necessary if you have SharePoint 2013 Server since SharePoint Foundation 2013 is included in SharePoint 2013 Server

To stay up to date and download the latest updates, click here for SharePoint 2019, here for SharePoint 2016 and here for SharePoint 2013.

Backup SharePoint Farm and Configurations

Before applying the updates, you should perform the following backups:

• Backup the SharePoint farm by running the following command:
  Backup-SPFarm -Directory <BackupFolder> -BackupMethod Full -Verbose

The backup folder should be a shared folder on the network, accessible by both SharePoint and database servers.

Ensure the SharePoint Server VSS Writer service is started on the SharePoint server (not started automatically).

Ensure the SQL Server VSS Writer service is started on the database server.

For more details about SharePoint farm backup, click here, here and here

• Backup all SharePoint databases in the database server that supports the SharePoint farm using SQL Server Enterprise tools
• Backup the web.config files for all web applications
• If you have custom developed solutions using server-side code, backup the solutions. To make this easier, you can download a PowerShell script from my GitHub repository

Pre-Installation Steps

To ensure that no crawls are started or running during the Cumulative Update installation, it is very import to suspend the Search Service. If a search crawl was triggered during the installation, the Search Application could get corrupted and you could be forced to rebuild the entire Search Service Application, recreate any custom managed properties and perform a Full Crawl again to ensure you have search results and all search based solutions work properly.

To avoid these problems and ensure there are no search crawls running during the installation, execute the following PowerShell command:

Suspend-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication –Identity “<Search Service Application Name>”

Install the Cumulative Updates in the SharePoint Farm

After downloading the latest updates and taking the necessary precautions, you are ready to install them in your SharePoint farm.

First, install the language independent update:

The update will take a few minutes, depending on your server capabilities.

After a few minutes, the update finishes the installation and a reboot to the server is necessary.

If you have a language dependent update, install it after installing the language independent update:

The update will take a few minutes, depending on your server capabilities. In my case, I installed the Portuguese (Portugal) Language Pack Cumulative Update.

After a few minutes, the update finishes the installation.

Run SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard

To finish the farm update process, you must ensure that after the updates are properly installed, you execute the SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard that will ensure the following:

• The database schema for all SharePoint databases is updated to the latest version
• Copies the required binaries from the install location into the _app_bin directories of all web applications
  
• Fixes security settings on the file system to match SharePoint’s needs
• Updates features registrations with SharePoint

To start, run the SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard and select Yes when prompted to reset IIS, SharePoint Administration and SharePoint Timer services.

Depending on your environment, the process will take some minutes to execute the 10 steps of the process.

After a few minutes, the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard will finish executing, hopefully with success.

After clicking on Finish, the Central Administration will automatically be launched.

Post-Installation Steps

To ensure that the farm was successfully updated, it is important to check that the Databases Upgrade Status page.

If the page shows any database still needing upgrade (showing the “Database is in compatibility range and upgrade is recommended” status), some additional steps must be followed.

These steps must also be followed if you encounter the error below while running SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard, saying that there is a mismatch between SharePoint installed version (after updating the farm) and the database schema version.

To ensure all databases are properly upgraded, follow the following steps:

• Upgrade the content databases by executing the following PowerShell command (executed with “run as administrator”):

Get-SPContentDatabase | Upgrade-SPContentDatabase

• Upgrade the remaining content databases, executing the following command (in command prompt with “run as administrator”):

Psconfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force

• Run the SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard (PSCONFIGUI.EXE) again. After running SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard again, it should run without errors.

To confirm the databases upgrade was successful, go back to the Databases Upgrade Status page. After the previous steps, all SharePoint databases were successfully upgraded.

To ensure the upgrade process was successfully finished, go to the Patch Status page and the Upgrade Status page.

Finally, after the farm is updated, you can resume the Search Service Application, running the following PowerShell command:

Resume-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication –Identity “<Search Service Application Name>”

Important Notes

Some important notes on using SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard (PSCONFIGUI.EXE) and PSCONFIG.EXE (command line version):

• You should not run PSCONFIG.EXE as a replacement of SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard (PSCONFIGUI.EXE)
  • PSCONFIGUI.EXE is the UI based configuration wizard which performs several tasks one after the other after installing fixes. It is the preferred option to ensure that the SharePoint farm update is completed after installing updates in your SharePoint farm
  • PSCONFIG.EXE is the command line tool which gives users granular control over all tasks that are executed and which is therefore often quicker than PSCONFIGUI.EXE but if misused will not make all the necessary tasks required after installing updates in your SharePoint farm
  • If you want to run PSCONFIG.EXE, ensure you run it with the correct parameters: “PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures -cmd secureresources -cmd services -install”
    • Above, I used “Psconfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force” since I already had used
      SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard (PSCONFIGUI.EXE) and the only thing I wanted to ensure was that SharePoint databases schema were upgraded
• PSCONFIGUI.EXE should always be executed even when installing SharePoint security updates

For more details, check Stefan Goßner’s articles here and here.

Troubleshooting

During an update there are a few errors that can occur while the patch is being validated against your SharePoint environment before is starts being installed. The most common errors are the following:

• “The expected version of the product was not found on the system” – this article by Stefan Goßner explains the error in detail and what can cause it. Basically, SharePoint is typically composed of the following components:
  • SharePoint Server or SharePoint Foundation*
  • SharePoint Server or SharePoint Foundation English Language Pack*
  • Any additional SharePoint Server or SharePoint Foundation Language Packs*
    
    * – SharePoint Foundation existed from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2013 and in SharePoint 2016 and 2019, only SharePoint Server is available
    
    To solve this error, you must ensure that all components have the same patch level. If any of the installed components has a lower patch level or doesn’t meet the Cumulative Update Prerequisites, the error above will be shown and you won’t be able to install the Cumulative Update in your SharePoint farm.
    
    Example: Install the May 2019 Cumulative Update in a SharePoint 2013 farm that has Service Pack 1 (15.0.4571.1502 patch level). The installed components have the following patch levels:SharePoint Server 2013 – 15.0.4571.1502 (Service Pack 1)
    SharePoint Server 2013 English Language Pack – 15.0.4571.1502 (Service Pack 1)
    SharePoint Server 2013 Portuguese Language Pack – 15.0.4420.1017 (RTM)
    
    The “The expected version of the product was not found on the system” error will be shown since of one of the components (the Portuguese Language Pack) has a lower patch level. To solve this, you must install the SharePoint Server 2013 Portuguese Language Pack Service Pack 1 (you can get the download link here)
    
    To help you to identify the problem, you can use Roiscan which generates a detailed report of all installed Office components, including SharePoint, and verify the patch level of each components.
    
    You can also take a look at this article that can help you ensure that the information about all installed patches is correctly updated in the SharePoint configuration database.
• “No product installed for contained patch” – this can occur if you are installing a Cumulative Update for the wrong version of SharePoint. The most common case is when you are trying to install the SharePoint Foundation 2013 Cumulative Update in a SharePoint Server 2013 farm. In this case, you only need to install the SharePoint 2013 Server Cumulative Update

Other errors can occur while trying to run SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard after installing the patch:

• “Feature is referenced in database but isn’t installed on the current farm” – this is more common in an farm upgrade scenario (ex: upgrade from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019) but can also occur while installing a SharePoint Service Pack or Cumulative Update. To learn more details about this error and how to solve it, click here.
• “An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action.” when you run the following command “Psconfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force”. If you take a look at the ULS Logs, you may find messages like “PSCONFIG.EXE (0x1A8C) UpdatedConcurrencyException: The object SPUpgradeSession Name=Upgrade-20190531-122515-42 was updated by another user. Determine if these changes will conflict, resolve any differences, and reapply the second change. This error may also indicate a programming error caused by obtaining two copies of the same object in a single thread.”. To solve this problem, execute the following command:
  
  PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures -cmd secureresources
  
  NOTE: After solving these issues, to finish the process, run SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard again.

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you want to convert your tenant’s root classic site into a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2010 farm to SharePoint 2016, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

If your organization is still not ready to go all in to SharePoint Online and Office 365, a hybrid scenario may be the best choice. SharePoint 2019 RTM was recently announced and if you to learn all about SharePoint 2019 and all its features, click here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post How to install SharePoint Cumulative Updates in a SharePoint Farm Step by Step appeared first on Blog IT.

To read the first part, click here.

Introduction

The SharePoint world is rapidly moving into the Cloud with SharePoint Online and Office 365, but some organizations are still not ready to move completely to Office 365 and SharePoint Online.

Upgrading to SharePoint 2019 that has support for a hybrid scenario can be a valid solution to allow a gradual move to the cloud.

This post is based on upgrading a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019 using the database attach approach but should also be valid if you want to upgrade to SharePoint 2019. This post assumes that the we will only migrate the content database(s) from the source SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 and all other SharePoint databases are created in the target SharePoint 2019 farm during its installation process.

If you want to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

There is another valid migration approach to migrate from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 by using a content migration. In this approach, the upgrade is not based in a database upgrade process but on content migration and typically a 3rd party solution is necessary to do the content migration. A few 3rd party solutions that can do the job are ShareGate, AvePoint and Metalogix.

Upgrading a SharePoint farm using the database attach approach can be a complex task and the upgrade process is composed by a series of steps:

• Migrating Custom Developed Solutions from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019
  (details about the migration of custom solutions are outside of the scope of this post)
• Upgrade to a temporary SharePoint 2016 farm
• Upgrade to the target SharePoint 2019 farm

IMPORTANT NOTE: In a typical upgrade process, the below steps should be performed twice if there are custom developed solutions:

• The first time, to test the migration process and allow custom developed solutions to be properly migrated and tested by the end users
• The second time, to perform the final migration, after all custom developed solutions are migrated and tested by the end users

This post will cover:

• Upgrade to the target SharePoint 2019 farm

Upgrade to the target SharePoint 2019 farm

IMPORTANT NOTE: Migrating from SharePoint 2013 directly to SharePoint 2019 is not supported. To migrate from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 we must first migrate to a temporary SharePoint 2016 farm and then migrate to SharePoint 2019.

The migration is performed using the database attach upgrade method (the only supported method to upgrade from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 using a database upgrade approach).

In the upgrade process, for both the temporary SharePoint 2016 and the target SharePoint 2019 farms, you should create an empty web application so that a valid SharePoint content database is created. To learn more on how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm, click here and here.

After having all custom developed solutions migrated to SharePoint 2019 (if there are any), you should follow the following steps:

• SharePoint 2016: Go to “Manage content databases” in Central Administration, select the web application and then the option “Remove content database”. This will make the web application unattached from any web application in the temporary SharePoint 2016 farm

• SharePoint 2016 Database Server (final migration only): Place the database in read-write mode so that users will be able to change content in the target SharePoint 2019 farm. This can be achieved by the following T-SQL command: ALTER DATABASE <CONTENT_DB_NAME> SET read_write
• SharePoint 2016 Database Server: Backup of the content database(s)

• SharePoint 2016 (final migration only): Go to “Manage content databases” in Central Administration, select the web application, then the option “Add content database” and finally select the name of the content database previously removed. This will make the web application available again in the temporary SharePoint 2016 farm

• SharePoint 2019 Database Server: Copy the database backup file from the temporary SharePoint 2016 database server to the database server that supports the target SharePoint 2019 farm
• SharePoint 2019: Go to “Manage content databases” in Central Administration, select the web application where you want to migrate to and then the option “Remove content database”. This will make the database unattached from any web application.

• SharePoint 2019 Database Server: Restore the content database backup from the temporary SharePoint 2016 database server. The restore must replace the content database that was created during the SharePoint 2019 installation.

• SharePoint 2019: If you have custom developed farm solutions, deploy all the migrated WSPs in the target SharePoint 2019 farm.
• SharePoint 2019: As a farm administrator, execute the first of a series of PowerShell commands to associate the restored content database to the SharePoint 2019 farm (in this example the web application URL is http://sp2019): Test-SPContentDatabase -Name <Content_DB_Name> -WebApplication http://sp2019
  
  • This PowerShell cmdlet will test the content database against the web application to verify if all customizations referenced within the content database are also installed in the farm
  • In my case, I got some missing features errors but none of them are upgrade blocking

• SharePoint 2019: As a farm administrator, execute the second of a series of PowerShell commands to associate the restored content database to the SharePoint 2019 farm: Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name “<Content_DB_Name>” -DatabaseServer “<DBAlias>” -WebApplication “http://sp2019”
  • This PowerShell cmdlet attaches an existing content database to a web application
  • In my case, no errors or warnings were shown

• SharePoint 2019: As a farm administrator, execute the third of a series of PowerShell commands to associate the restored content database to the SharePoint 2019 farm: Test-SPSite http://sp2019
  • This PowerShell cmdlet runs a series of health checks on the site collection and its contents
  • In my case, I got a warning but once again nothing that is upgrade blocking

• SharePoint 2019: As a farm administrator, execute the fourth of a series of PowerShell commands to associate the restored content database to the SharePoint 2019 farm: Repair-SPSite -identity http://sp2019
  • This PowerShell cmdlet is similar to the Test-SPSite cmdlet but fixes any issues that it finds
  • The result was identical to the Test-SPSite cmdlet: no upgrading blocking issues were found

• SharePoint 2019: As a farm administrator, execute the fifth of a series of PowerShell commands to associate the restored content database to the SharePoint 2019 farm: Upgrade-SPSite http://sp2019 -VersionUpgrade
  • This PowerShell cmdlet will upgrade the site collections associated to the web application to SharePoint 2019 mode. Before this cmdlet was executed, the site collections were still in SharePoint 2016 mode.

After the migration is complete, your SharePoint web application is successfully displayed in your brand new SharePoint 2019 environment! The site is presented using the classic site experience, but from now on, you will be able to take advantage of the new modern experiences in your SharePoint 2019 environment!

To download the SharePoint 2019 migration PowerShell files, click here.

To read the first part of this two part step by step tutorial, click here.

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated and be ready to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2010 farm to SharePoint 2016, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

If your organization is still not ready to go all in to SharePoint Online and Office 365, a hybrid scenario may be the best choice. SharePoint 2019 RTM was recently announced and if you to learn all about SharePoint 2019 and all its features, click here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post How to upgrade from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 Step by Step (Part 2) appeared first on Blog IT.

To read the second part, click here.

Introduction

The SharePoint world is rapidly moving into the Cloud with SharePoint Online and Office 365, but some organizations are still not ready to move completely to Office 365 and SharePoint Online.

Upgrading to SharePoint 2019 that has support for a hybrid scenario can be a valid solution to allow a gradual move to the cloud.

This post is based on upgrading a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019 using the database attach approach but is also valid if you want to upgrade to SharePoint 2016 (to learn more about upgrading to SharePoint 2016, click here and here). This post assumes that the we will only migrate the content database(s) from the source SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 and all other SharePoint databases are created in the target SharePoint 2019 farm during its installation process.

If you want to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

There is another valid migration approach to migrate from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 by using a content migration. In this approach, the upgrade is not based in a database upgrade process but on content migration and typically a 3rd party solution is necessary to do the content migration. A few 3rd party solutions that can do the job are ShareGate, AvePoint and Metalogix.

Upgrading a SharePoint farm using the database attach approach can be a complex task and the upgrade process is composed by a series of steps:

• Migrating Custom Developed Solutions from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 (outside of the scope of this post)
• Upgrade to a temporary SharePoint 2016 farm
• Upgrade to the target SharePoint 2019 farm

IMPORTANT NOTE: In a typical upgrade process, the below steps should be performed twice if there are custom developed solutions:

• The first time, to test the migration process and allow custom developed solutions to be properly migrated and tested by the end users
• The second time, to perform the final migration, after all custom developed solutions are migrated and tested by the end users

This post will cover:

• Migrating Custom Developed Solutions from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 (details about the migration of custom solutions are outside of the scope of this post)
• Upgrade to a temporary SharePoint 2016 farm

Migrating Custom Developed Solutions from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019

This step is outside the scope of this post but a few notes are important to mention if you have custom developed solutions that you want to migrate from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019:

• First, you should analyze the source SharePoint 2013 farm and look for custom developed solutions and in particular for farm solutions and/or sandboxed solutions
• If custom developed solutions are found and if you want to take the easiest migration path, you could simply upgrade your custom developed solutions to SharePoint 2019 without changing the solution architecture. This typically involves migrating server-side code from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019, possible migration of master pages and adjustments to CSS and JS files
• Despite more difficult, if possible, you should consider migrating the existing solutions to one of the following development models:
  • SharePoint Framework: the latest and the recommended development model for modern SharePoint solutions, enabling an easier migration path to SharePoint Online and Office 365
  • SharePoint Add-Ins: this development model is still supported and can be a valid solution depending on your scenario. However, when possible. you should consider migrating solutions to the SharePoint Framework development model

Upgrade into a temporary SharePoint 2016 farm

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• Migrating from SharePoint 2013 directly to SharePoint 2019 is not supported. To migrate from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 we must first migrate to a temporary SharePoint 2016 farm and then migrate to SharePoint 2019
• To to be able to migrate to SharePoint 2016 and then to SharePoint 2019, the SharePoint 2013 farm must at least have the March 2013 Public Update installed. For more details, click here

The migration is performed using the database attach upgrade method (the only supported method to upgrade from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 using a database upgrade approach).

In the upgrade process, for both the temporary SharePoint 2016 and the target SharePoint 2019 farms, you should create an empty web application so that a valid SharePoint content database is created. To learn more on how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm, click here and here.

After having all custom developed solutions migrated to SharePoint 2019 (if there are any), you should follow the following steps:

• SharePoint 2013 (test migration only): Export all WSPs from the SharePoint 2013 farm to file system. To export the WSP files, you can use this PowerShell script.
  SharePoint 2013 (final migration only): Go to “Manage content databases” in Central Administration, select the web application and then the option “Remove content database”. This will temporarily make the web application unavailable in the source SharePoint 2013 farm

• SharePoint 2013 Database Server (final migration only): Place the database in read-only mode to ensure the source web application is made available again and so that users cannot change content anymore during the upgrade process. This can be achieved by the following T-SQL command: ALTER DATABASE <CONTENT_DB_NAME> SET read_only
• SharePoint 2013 Database Server: Backup of the content database(s) (in read-only mode in the final migration)

• SharePoint 2013 (final migration only): Go to “Manage content databases” in Central Administration, select the web application, then the option “Add content database” and finally select the name of the content database previously removed. This will make the web application available again in the source SharePoint 2013 farm in read-only mode, preventing users from changing any content

• SharePoint 2016 Database Server: Copy the database backup file from the source SharePoint 2013 database server to the database server that supports the temporary SharePoint 2016 farm
• SharePoint 2016: Go to “Manage content databases” in Central Administration, select the web application where you want to migrate to and then the option “Remove content database”. This will make the database unattached from any web application.

• SharePoint 2016 Database Server: Restore the content database backup from the source SharePoint 2013 database server. The restore must replace the content database that was created during the SharePoint 2016 installation.

• SharePoint 2016: If you have custom developed farm solutions, add all the exported WSPs (without deploying them) in the temporary SharePoint 2016 farm. For each WSP, run the following command:
  • Add-SPSolution -LiteralPath $location\solution.wsp where $location is the file system location of the WSP files
• SharePoint 2016: Execute the first of a series of PowerShell commands to associate the restored content database to the temporary SharePoint 2016 farm (in this example the web application URL is http://sp2016): Test-SPContentDatabase -Name <Content_DB_Name> -WebApplication http://sp2016
  
  • This PowerShell cmdlet will test the content database against the web application to verify if all customizations referenced within the content database are also installed in the farm
  • In my case, I got some warnings but none of them are upgrade blocking

• SharePoint 2016: Execute the second of a series of PowerShell commands to associate the restored content database to the temporary SharePoint 2016 farm: Mount-SPContentDatabase -Name “<Content_DB_Name>” -DatabaseServer “<DBAlias>” -WebApplication “http://sp2016”
  • This PowerShell cmdlet attaches an existing content database to a web application
  • In my case, no errors or warnings were shown

• SharePoint 2016: Execute the third of a series of PowerShell commands to associate the restored content database to the temporary SharePoint 2016 farm: Test-SPSite http://sp2016
  • This PowerShell cmdlet runs a series of health checks on the site collection and its contents
  • In my case, I got a warning but once again nothing that is upgrade blocking

• SharePoint 2016: Execute the fourth of a series of PowerShell commands to associate the restored content database to the temporary SharePoint 2016 farm: Repair-SPSite -identity http://sp2016
  • This PowerShell cmdlet is similar to the Test-SPSite cmdlet but fixes any issues that it finds
  • The result was identical to the Test-SPSite cmdlet: no upgrading blocking issues were found

• SharePoint 2016: Execute the fifth of a series of PowerShell commands to associate the restored content database to the temporary SharePoint 2016 farm: Upgrade-SPSite http://sp2016 -VersionUpgrade
  • This PowerShell cmdlet will upgrade the site collections associated to the web application to SharePoint 2016 mode. Before this cmdlet was executed, the site collections were still in SharePoint 2013 mode.

To download the SharePoint 2016 migration PowerShell files, click here.

To read the second part of this two part step by step tutorial, click here.

Related Articles

If you want to convert your tenant’s root classic site into a modern SharePoint site, click here.

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated and be ready to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2010 farm to SharePoint 2016, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

If your organization is still not ready to go all in to SharePoint Online and Office 365, a hybrid scenario may be the best choice. SharePoint 2019 RTM was recently announced and if you to learn all about SharePoint 2019 and all its features, click here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post How to upgrade from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019 Step by Step (Part 1) appeared first on Blog IT.

To read the first part, click here.

Introduction

The SharePoint world is rapidly moving into the Cloud with SharePoint Online and Office 365, but a new SharePoint Server release was recently announced by Microsoft with improved hybrid support. To learn more about all the new features in SharePoint 2019, click here.

Before installing a SharePoint 2019 farm, it is important to be familiar with its requirements. To learn more about SharePoint 2019 hardware and software requirements, click here.

Installing a SharePoint farm can be a complex task and the installation process is composed by a series of steps:

• Downloading and installing SharePoint prerequisites
• Downloading and installing the SharePoint binaries
• Downloading and installing the lastest SharePoint updates
• Downloading and installing the required language packs (optional, necessary if you want the SharePoint interface to be presented in a language other than English)
• Configuring the SharePoint farm using SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard

All the above steps are time consuming and can be error prone if, for example, you miss to download any of the prerequisites.

Fortunately, it is possible to fully automate a SharePoint farm installation using PowerShell by using a script called AutoSPInstaller. The installation process can be divided in two major steps:

• Downloading the SharePoint installation package, click here for more details
• Installing SharePoint and configuring the SharePoint farm

In this post, I will talk about the second part of the process: installing SharePoint and configuring the SharePoint farm.

AutoSPInstaller can be used to install a SharePoint farm in the following versions of SharePoint:

• SharePoint 2010
• SharePoint 2013
• SharePoint 2016
• SharePoint 2019 (to learn more about all the new features in SharePoint 2019, click here)

The example in this post is based on SharePoint 2019 with the following farm topology:

• 1 SharePoint 2019 Server
• 1 Database Server

Managed Accounts and Pre-Installation Requisites

This is a critical step to ensure a successful SharePoint installation. Before the AutoSPInstaller script is executed, all the necessary managed accounts must be created and the appropriate permissions must be properly granted to each account. If any of these permissions is not granted, you will probably encounter problems during the installation. From my experience doing SharePoint installations, creating these accounts with all the required permissions ensures a fast and successful SharePoint installation. Here is the list of accounts and required permissions before installation:

Important Notes: 

• To avoid problems executing the AutoSPInstaller script, ensure that the passwords of the above accounts do not contain any special characters (ex: $,%,&,/. etc)
• The above table contains a proposal to name the accounts for the SharePoint installation. If you choose to use different names, ensure that the account names do not exceed 20 characters since NETBIOS names have a limit of 20 characters
• After installation, the permissions for the SharePoint installation will have to be verified again and will be different from the above table. SharePoint configuration, service application and content databases will be created and some of the managed accounts listed in the above table will have to have permissions on some of those databases. For more details, please click here.

Download AutoSPInstaller PowerShell script

To download the latest version of AutoSPInstaller, click here.

The files should be extracted to C:\SP\Automation, assuming that the SharePoint 2019 installation files downloaded with AutoSPSourceBuilder were saved to C:\SP\2019.

This is the folder structure that AutoSPInstaler uses:

\SP\Automation\AutoSPInstallerLaunch.bat
\SP\Automation\AutoSPInstallerInput.xml
\SP\Automation\AutoSPInstallerMain.ps1\SP\AutoSPInstallerMain.ps1
\SP\Automation\AutoSPInstallerModule.psm1
\SP\Automation\AutoSPInstallerConfigureRemoteTarget.ps1
\SP\201x\SharePoint\<installation files & folders>
\SP\201x\SharePoint\PreRequisiteInstallerFiles\
\SP\201x\SharePoint\Updates\
\SP\201x\LanguagePacks\xx-xx\
\SP\201x\LanguagePacks\xx-xx\Updates\
\SP\201x\Updates\

In this example, the root folder of the installation is C:\SP.

Creating the AutoSPInstaller configuration file

The next step, is to configure the AutoSPInstaller input configuration file that can be done in the AutoSPInstaller web site.  The end result of the configurations set in the AutoSPInstaller web site is the download of an XML file (AutoSPInstallerInput.xml) that contains all the settings required to configure the SharePoint farm. The AutoSPInstallerInput.xml file contains among other configurations:

• SharePoint version to install
• The SharePoint product key
• The Farm Account and all Managed Accounts and their credentials
• The database instance that will support the SharePoint environment
• The web applications we want to create (ex: Intranet. My Site, etc)
• The service applications we want to enable and their configurations
• Outgoing email settings for the farm
• Database names: this is extremely useful since it allows us to have complete control over the names of all the databases that will be created during the SharePoint farm configuration and avoid having databases with unclear names containing GUIDs which is the default behavior if we configure the farm using SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard (PSConfig)

The AutoSPInstallerInput.xml file should be placed in C:\SP\Automation.

Installing SharePoint

After the AutoSPInstallerInput.xml file is configured, it’s time to install SharePoint!

IMPORTANT: the following steps should be executed using the sp_admin account.

Follow the following steps:

1. Run AutoSPInstallerLaunch.bat from the command line (run as administrator).

AutoSPInstallerLaunch.bat will launch a PowerShell window that will install SharePoint and configure the farm using as an input the AutoSPInstaller XML configuration file (AutoSPInstallerInput.xml) previously configured using the AutoSPInstaller web site.

2. After the PowerShell window is launched, the following will happen:

• Managed accounts credentials will be validated. If any of the credentials is incorrect, the script will stop
• SharePoint prerequisites will be installed
• SharePoint will be installed
• SharePoint language packs will be installed
• SharePoint updates will be installed

The PowerShell script will start by validating all managed managed accounts configuration and if everything is OK, the SharePoint installation is started, beginning with the installation of all required prerequisites.

After prerequisites are installed, the script will install SharePoint.

The SharePoint installation assumes that all prerequisites were successfully installed. If any of the prerequisites was not successfully installed, an error similar to the following may occur.

To solve this error, there are two valid approaches:

• Run AutoSPInstaller from the beginning so that the missing prerequisite(s) are installed
• If the error remains, install the missing prerequisite(s) manually

If no errors occur or after the prerequisites errors are solved, the PowerShell script will continue to do its magic until all SharePoint binaries are installed.

After SharePoint binaries are installed, it’s time to configure the farm!

Configuring the SharePoint Farm

After SharePoint is installed, the script will ask if we want to proceed with farm configuration. To proceed, select “y” and click ENTER. The script will, among others, perform the following actions:

• Create all managed accounts
• Configure IIS and SharePoint ULS log file paths
• Create the configured web applications (ex: Intranet, My Site)
• Configure the service applications
• Configure outgoing email settings for the farm

The PowerShell script will continue until the SharePoint farm is configured.

After the farm configuration is completed, the Central Administration will be opened and SharePoint is installed!

If you configured a web application to be created, the image below shows how a modern Team Site will look like in your SharePoint 2019 environment.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It is recommended that you don’t delete the Default Web Site. If you do, the “SharePoint Web Services” IIS site created during the SharePoint installation will be created with ID 1 and the SharePoint configuration will stop this site because it is trying to stop the Default Web Site that has ID 1. If you delete the Default Web Site, make sure you change the “SharePoint Web Services” web site ID to a unique value different from 1.

Multi-Server Installation (SharePoint servers)

If you want to install SharePoint 2019 in multiple servers there is a number of considerations that you have to take into account. Some of the most important decisions are:

• What is your farm topology and the number of servers you want to consider (WFEs, Application Servers and Database Servers)
• Which services and service applications will be provisioned for each server
• Will you be using MinRoles or will you use a custom installation where you will be manually selecting the services and service applications that will be provisioned for each server?

If you use MinRoles, these will supersede the individual service and service application selection for each server in the farm. These are the available MinRoles:

• Front-end
• Application
• Distributed cache
• Search
• Custom (allows for a more granular selection of what services are provisioned in each server)
• Single-server farm (the only configuration where SQL Server may be installed in the same server as SharePoint 2019, configuration not detailed here, reference the <Database> section in the AutoSPInstallerInput.xml file at the AutoSPInstaller web site)
• Front-end with Distributed Cache (merge of Front-end and Distributed cache MinRoles)
• Application with Search (merge of Application and Search MinRoles)

Each of the MinRoles automatically provisions a specific set of services and service applications. If you want to learn more about MinRoles, click here.

Once farm topology and service/service application distribution is decided, we are ready to install SharePoint 2019 in multiple servers. For the installation process, you basically have two options:

• Use Remote Installation
• Install SharePoint individually in each SharePoint server

AutoSPInstaller Input File Configuration for Multi-Server Installation Notes when not using MinRoles

If you decide not to use MinRoles and go for a Custom installation (which allows for a more granular selection of what services are provisioned in each server), you must ensure that the AutoSPInstaller XML input file in all servers is configured as Custom.

When configuring AutoSPInstaller in the AutoSPInstaller web site not to to use MinRoles, you will typically have a configuration similar to the one below.

This seems correct but the generated XML configuration will have the following configuration in the <ServerRoles> section:

• <Custom Provision=” false” />
• <SingleServerFarm Provision=”localhost ” />

With the configuration above, each server will be installed with a single server role and you will only be able to join the first server to the farm. When you try to add the remaining servers, the AutoSPInstaller PowerShell script instead of adding the servers to the farm, will try to recreate the farm, which will result in the error below.

If you try to add the server manually to the farm, you will get the error below.

To solve this, you must edit the XML configuration to configure the servers as “Custom” and not “SingleServerFarm”, using a configuration similar to the following example (specific configuration depends on the number of servers and roles for each server):

• <Custom Provision=”localhost” />
• <SingleServerFarm Provision=”false” />

<ServerRoles>
    <Custom Provision="localhost" />
    <WebFrontEnd Provision="false" />
    <WebFrontEndWithDistributedCache Provision="false" />
    <SingleServerFarm Provision="false" />
    <Search Provision="false" />
    <Application Provision="false" />
    <ApplicationWithSearch Provision="false" />
    <DistributedCache Provision="false" />
</ServerRoles>

Remote Installation

In this approach, SharePoint will be installed using AutoSPInstaller on all servers from one of the SharePoint servers. The script will first install SharePoint locally on the server where the script is being executed and will then install SharePoint remotely on the other servers (all at once or one by one depending on AutoSPInstaller configuration file). The installation on the remote servers is performed using PowerShell Remoting and Windows Remote Management (WinRM). WinRM must be enabled for each of the servers where SharePoint will be installed remotely. To learn more about Remote Install (example for SharePoint 2013 but valid for SharePoint 2019 in what regards to remote installation), click here.

Install SharePoint individually in each SharePoint server

This option doesn’t require WinRM to be enabled on any of the servers but requires instead that the AutoSPInstaller installation folder (C:\SP in this post) is copied to all servers. Additionally, there are some important notes to consider:

• SharePoint bits must be installed on all servers but farm configuration must only be done once all servers have the SharePoint bits installed. You may Install the SharePoint bits (all steps before the “Configuring the SharePoint Farm” in this post) in all servers at the same time but you must stop the installation process once you are asked to continue with farm configuration
• After the SharePoint bits are installed on all servers, you may proceed to the “Configuring the SharePoint Farm” section of this post BUT this must be done server by server, one at a time, sequentially. The AutoSPInstaller configuration file will determine what services and service applications are going to be provisioned on each server:
  • When you run the farm configuration in the first server, the farm will be created and the services and service applications that are configured to run on that server will be provisioned
  • When you run the farm configuration on the other servers, each server will be added to the farm and the services and service applications that are configured to run on that server will be provisioned

To read the first part of this two part step by step tutorial, click here.

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you want to convert your tenant’s root classic site into a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

To learn more about all the new features in SharePoint 2019, click here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If you want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated and be ready to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

If you are involved in a SharePoint upgrade and want to learn more about the upgrade process, click here and here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post How to install a SharePoint 2019 farm using PowerShell and AutoSPInstaller Step by Step (Part 2) appeared first on Blog IT.

To read the second part, click here.

Introduction

The SharePoint world is rapidly moving into the Cloud with SharePoint Online and Office 365, but a new SharePoint Server release was recently announced by Microsoft with improved hybrid support. To learn more about all the new features in SharePoint 2019, click here.

Before installing a SharePoint 2019 farm, it is important to be familiar with its requirements. To learn more about SharePoint 2019 hardware and software requirements, click here.

Installing a SharePoint farm can be a complex task and the installation process is composed by a series of steps:

• Downloading and installing SharePoint prerequisites
• Downloading and installing the SharePoint binaries
• Downloading and installing the lastest SharePoint updates
• Downloading and installing the required language packs (optional, necessary if you want the SharePoint interface to be presented in a language other than English)
• Configuring the SharePoint farm using SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard

All the above steps are time consuming and can be error prone if, for example, you miss to download any of the prerequisites.

Fortunately, it is possible to fully automate a SharePoint farm installation using PowerShell by using a script called AutoSPInstaller. The installation process can be divided in two major steps:

• Downloading the SharePoint installation package
• Installing SharePoint and configuring the SharePoint farm

This process can be used for the following versions of SharePoint:

• SharePoint 2010
• SharePoint 2013
• SharePoint 2016
• SharePoint 2019 (to learn more about all the new features in SharePoint 2019, click here)

In this post, I will talk about the first part of the process: downloading the SharePoint installation package and I will use SharePoint 2019 as an example.

Downloading the SharePoint installation package

The download process will be managed by a script called AutoSPSourceBuilder that will download the SharePoint installation package and all its dependencies and will create a folder structure ready to be used in AutoSPInstaller. The AutoSPSourceBuilder script will download:

• All SharePoint prerequisites
• The latest SharePoint updates
• If specified. the desired language pack

To download the SharePoint 2019 installation package, follow the steps below:

1. Download SharePoint 2019.

2. Download AutoSPSourceBuilder. After download, the folder should contain the following structure.

3. Mount the SharePoint 2019 .iso image.

After mount, the mounted drive will have SharePoint installation files.

4. Run the following script in a PowerShell window (run as administrator).

.\AutoSPSourceBuilder.ps1 -GetPrerequisites $true -SharePointVersion “2019” -Languages “pt-pt” -LocationForUpdates C:\SP\2019\Updates

This script will download SharePoint 2019 with all prerequisites and (if available) the Portuguese language pack. Change the “Languages” parameter to the Language Pack you want to include in your installation and the LocationForUpdates parameter to the desired location where AutoSPSourceBuilder will download the SharePoint updates that will be included in the SharePoint installation.

The script will start by detecting the SharePoint image that was previously downloaded. If successfully detected, it will extract the SharePoint installation files from the mounted image to the C:\SP\2019 folder.

5. Once the SharePoint installation files extraction is completed, you will be asked to select the SharePoint update that you want to include on your installation package. Select the latest available package (all SharePoint 2019 updates are cumulative and include all updates contained in the previous updates). At this time, only one update is available.

6. After selecting the update, the script will resume and start downloading the SharePoint prerequisites. the selected language pack and the selected SharePoint update.

7. After completion, the PowerShell window should look like the image below. At this time, the Portuguese language pack is still not available.

The end result will be a structure of folders and files that will contain all the necessary files to install SharePoint with AutoSPInstaller.

Root folder:

SharePoint bits folder (slipstreamed installation structure):

Updates folder:

To read the second part of this two part step by step tutorial, click here.

Related Articles

If you want to convert your tenant’s root classic site into a modern SharePoint site, click here.

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

To learn more about all the new features in SharePoint 2019, click here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If you want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated and be ready to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

If you are involved in a SharePoint upgrade and want to learn more about the upgrade process, click here and here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post How to install a SharePoint 2019 farm using PowerShell and AutoSPInstaller Step by Step (Part 1) appeared first on Blog IT.

From September 24th to 28th, Microsoft has once again hosted Microsoft Ignite one of its biggest tech events, revealing many exciting new features in the Microsoft world, including SharePoint and Office 365.

Introduction

There are lot of new announcements being released at a very fast pace and it is challenging to stay up to date with everything that is being released!

This post will try to resume the latest announcements in the SharePoint and Office 365 world and what it means for end users, IT Pros and developers.

Hope you are ready for a ride, fasten your seat belt, because there are many new features coming (some of them may be already rolled out at the time of this writing). While it is impossible to talk about everything that has been announced, I will try to resume some of the biggest announcements. These are the main topics I will discuss in this post:

• Microsoft Search
• What’s New to Build a Modern Intranet with SharePoint in Office 365
• Deeper Integration between Microsoft Teams and SharePoint
• Microsoft Content Services
• What’s New for Security and Compliance
• What’s New for Administrators
• SharePoint Framework 1.7 (Preview)

Microsoft Search

This is probably one of the biggest announcements from Ignite 2018: Microsoft Search! Some of the features are already rolled out or about to be and a few will be made available in 2019.

Microsoft Search will bring a consistent and intelligent search experience to the most common ways we can interact with information throughout the Microsoft ecosystem (inside and outside of Microsoft 365):

• Bing.com
• Office.com
• SharePoint Mobile App
• Windows (to be released in the first half of 2019)
• Office Applications (to be released in the first half of 2019)

With Microsoft Search, an intelligent search experience (using AI) will be delivered to users across all of the Office 365 applications as well as Windows and Bing.

Microsoft Search in Bing

The new experience in Bing will bring together web results and organization results (from SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Yammer, etc).

Microsoft Search in Office.com

It will be possible to search the same search scope from the Office.com portal and quickly find the most relevant documents to you, including the documents you most recently worked on (all of this delivered by the Graph API).

Microsoft Search in Office Apps (release in 2019)

To be released in first half of 2019, is a consistent search experience from within Office applications (includes Desktop, Web and Mobile applications).

For more details about Microsoft Search, click here.

What’s New to Build a Modern Intranet with SharePoint in Office 365

A LOT of new features have been announced in the Modern Intranet scope and some of them were lacking to complete the vision of building a modern Intranet with SharePoint in Office 365. Here is the list of the most important announcements:

• New Mega Menu Layout for Site and Hub Site Navigation
• New Web Parts
• Audience Targeting for News and Highlighted Content Web Parts
• Header Layouts and Footer Enhancements
• Central Asset Library
• Communication Site Experience at the root of a Office 365 Tenant
• Hub Site Improvements for End Users and Administrators
• New Page Capabilities

New Mega Menu Layout for Site and Hub Site Navigation

Probably the most important and exciting announcement to build a modern Intranet with SharePoint in Office 365! Now that a flat information architecture based on modern Team Sites and Communication sites is the new recommendation and despite the existence of Hub Sites, there was still missing a piece that glues all the sites and hub sites together to build the Intranet navigation for an organization as a whole. With the mega menu, it will be possible to go beyond menus with simple drop downs and build a menu that displays multiple hierarchies all at once. This is how a mega menu will look like:

New Web Parts

A series of new web parts were announced and it will now be easier (once again with the help of Microsoft Graph) to display personalized web parts that allow users to easily find relevant content. The following web parts will be available:

• Personalized View of Recent Sites (My Recent Sites)
• Personalized View of Recent Documents (My Recent Documents)
• Personalized View of News (My News)

Other web parts and web part features that were announced:

• Countdown timer web part: it will now be able to display a countdown timer to show important launch dates, key meetings, campaign dates, etc
• Web Part Connections: it will now be possible to connect modern web parts and now web parts will be able to interact with each other and change the displayed information  based on the content selection of other web parts

Audience Targeting for News and Highlighted Content Web Parts

Audience Targeting has been present in SharePoint for many years and now it will be possible to apply audiences to News and Highlighted Content Web Parts so that it will be possible to show different information in the same page, depending on who is visiting the page.

Header Layouts and Footer Configuration

Two important announcements that will improve the user navigation experience in a modern Intranet:

• Header Layouts: it will be possible to reclaim some of the vertical space at the top of the site. There will be three new choices for the header: Standard, Minimal and Compact
• Footer Configuration: it will be possible to change the footer contents to place for example standard links and information that organizations wants to highlight at the bottom of all pages without the need for custom Master Pages

Central Asset Library

Organizations and teams will now be able to provide users an easy access to the organization’s approved images. For example, the Marketing department can share all the Marketing approved images that can be used by everyone in a centralized location.

Communication Site Experience at the root of a Office 365 Tenant

A modern Intranet home page is a fundamental place to display the most relevant information for an organization. Currently, the root site of an Office 365 tenant is created as a classic site, not taking advantage of all that modern experience has to offer and making it difficult for organizations to communicate with their employees. With this update, it will be possible to extend the Communication Site experience to the root site of the Office 365 tenant and it will be possible to transform a classic root site into a Communication Site for existing tenants. To learn more, click here.

Hub Site Improvements for End Users and Administrators

Two major improvements were announced for hub sites:

• For Developers: it will be possible for all site collections joined to a Hub Site to inherit and use the content types published in the Hub Site
• For End Users: it will be possible to create a Team Site or Communication Site directly from a hub site. If a site is created from the hub site, the user will get new site experience and it will be automatically associated to the hub site

• For Administrators: it will be possible from the SharePoint Admin Center in Office 365 to create hub sites, associate existing Modern Team Sites or Communication Sites to a hub site and see the hub site associated sites

New Page Capabilities

News and other pages are also getting some great new capabilities:

• Page Designs: somehow similar to old page layouts, it will be possible to create page design layouts to make it easier for users to build pages using a consistent layout
• Page Metadata: it will be possible to add metadata in modern pages and expose metadata as Page properties
• Page background sections: it will be possible to add background colors to sections to better divide content in a page

For more details on the announcements to build modern Intranets with SharePoint in Office 365, click here.

Deeper Integration between Microsoft Teams and SharePoint

Microsoft Teams is the fastest growing product in Office 365 and with a huge level of adoption. A lot of new existing features were announced for Teams and one of the most important announcements is without a doubt a deeper integration with SharePoint. These were the most important announcements related to Teams and SharePoint integration:

• New File Experience: finally Teams will have the same experience as in SharePoint. Users will be able to: create new custom views, modify existing views, pin files to the top, add and format custom columns and get file activities insights directly from Teams. Finally, the SharePoint command bar will also be available in Teams which allows users, for example, to sync files from Microsoft Teams to your Windows or Mac computer without having to go to SharePoint

• Web Parts as Tabs in Teams: it will be possible to show SharePoint web parts directly in Microsoft Teams tabs. With this release, it will be possible to run SharePoint Framework web parts directly in Teams
• Display Teams tabs in SharePoint pages: with the release of SharePoint Framework 1.7, it will be possible to expose Teams tabs as full page apps in SharePoint

For more details on these and other Microsoft Teams announcements, click here.

Microsoft Content Services

At Ignite, a series of new content management capabilities inside Microsoft Content Services have been announced:

• File card: intelligent contextual file cards with information about files in Office 365, which enables the user to view important information about files without the need to open them
• Mobile capture: ability to capture file and its metadata and deliver it to SharePoint using mobile devices
• Document templates: a simplified way to add document templates using the New menu in document libraries
• Predictive indexing: it will be possible to automatically generate indexes for lists and libraries with up to 30 million items
• Modern document sets: work with document sets using the new modern experience
• PowerApps integration with SharePoint libraries: in addition to Lists, it is now possible to build a PowerApp that uses SharePoint libraries as a data source
• Flow for document management: ability to use Microsoft Flow to move and copy files in Office 365 and generate shareable links
• Attention Views: new views that allow users to easily find information in a SharePoint List that is not compliant and needs user’s attention (ex: missing information in required fields). This feature will also be available for SharePoint Server 2019
• File plans: ability to import, manage, and classify multiple retention rules using Excel and then import and apply the rules to the organization

To know more details about recent announcements on Content Services, click here.

What’s New for Security and Compliance

If it is nothing but impressive to see the way SharePoint and Office 365 introduces new collaboration features, it is not less impressive the investments made on security in the Office 365 platform. Last year, Microsoft has launched a licensing model that includes an impressive security feature set called Microsoft 365. This is a bundle that includes:

• Windows 10
• Office 365
• Enterprise Mobility + Security

This bundle comes in three different flavors:

• Microsoft 365 Business
• Microsoft 365 Enterprise
• Microsoft 365 Education

If you want to know more about all the security features included Microsoft 365, click here.

The major announcements announcements in what regards to security and compliance in the Office 365 platform are:

• SharePoint Site Classification Labels
• Automatic Application of Retention Labels
• Label Analytics
• Unified Labeling Management in the Security & Compliance Center
• Microsoft Threat Protection

SharePoint Site Classification Labels

Across almost any organization, there are different types of content that require different security requirements to comply with industry regulations and internal policies to ensure information is properly secured.

Microsoft Information Protection labels allows organizations to apply consistent security and access policies to SharePoint Sites based on the sensitivity of the site. In addition to Retention Labels, it is now possible to create Sensitivity Labels and associate them with policies in the Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance Center. Sensitivity Labels can then be applied to files, emails, groups, Sites and Teams to automatically enforce consistent policies across content in an organization.

Automatic Application of Retention Labels

Retention labels can now be created and automatically applied to content with rules based on content types and metadata. This way, it gets even easier to automate the application of retention policies across all content in SharePoint.

Label Analytics

As information grows in an organization, it is important to stay informed on how retention and sensitivity labels are being used to classify, retain, and protect an organization’s content.

Using Label Analytics, it is now possible to get insights into how content is being labeled, including which labels are used most, and what emails and files they’re being applied to. It is also possible to explore user activity to identify who applies labels and investigate unusual trends.

Unified Labeling Management in the Security & Compliance Center

Organizations have a need to manage the lifecycle of their information and to keep sensitive data secure, also ensuring that their data and records are governed in accordance with compliance requirements. Now that users can share and move their data across multiple devices, apps, and services, it is critical to protect important data.

From now on, a new unified labeling experience is available in the Security & Compliance Center that allows managing labels across Azure Information Protection and Office 365.  With this update, interoperability between Azure Information Protection and Office 365 labels is ensured, meaning, for example, organizations won’t need to reclassify or relabel their content if they already have labels in Azure Information Protection. With unified labels, it is possible to assign multiple labels to a single file, helping ensure sensitive data is protected and controlled according to the organization’s governance needs.

Microsoft Threat Protection

Organizations are increasingly concerned about the growing volume and sophistication of the threat attack surface, and how difficult it is to make intelligent decisions quickly and cost-effectively to keep their data safe.

Attacks can come from anywhere.  As such, it is not possible for a single service to secure the entire modern workplace. This way, it is important to have groups of services working together to secure the different attack vectors to help ensure an organization is protected across the entire attack surface.  Microsoft Threat Protection is composed by different groups of solutions that help secure each of the attack vectors:

• Identities: Azure Active Directory Identity Protection, Azure Advanced Threat Protection, Microsoft Cloud App Security
• Endpoints: Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, Windows 10, Microsoft Intune
• User Data: Exchange Online Protection, Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection, Office 365 Threat Intelligence, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, Microsoft Cloud App Security
• Cloud Apps: Exchange Online Protection, Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection, Microsoft Cloud App Security
• Infrastructure: Azure Security Center, SQL Server, Linux

To learn more about the latest security and compliance announcements, I invite you to read:

• What’s new in security, compliance & administration for SharePoint & OneDrive from Microsoft Ignite
• Announcing the availability of unified labeling management in the Security & Compliance Center
• Announcing Microsoft Threat Protection

What’s New for Administrators

The major updates for administrators are:

• Files Restore for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams
• Updates to SharePoint Admin Center
• Multi-Geo Capabilities for SharePoint (Selective Preview)
• SharePoint Migration Tool Improvements

Files Restore for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams

Files Restore is now available for SharePoint document libraries, protecting shared files in SharePoint, Teams, Outlook Groups, and Yammer Groups connected to Office 365 Groups in a similar way that is already possible for personal files in OneDrive for Business.

With this release, site administrators are able to restore document libraries from any point in time during the last 30 days and can use activity data to find the exact moment to restore to.

Updates to SharePoint Admin Center

SharePoint Admin Center has a new modern experience (although not all the features are still migrated to the new modern experience). The latest capabilities in the new SharePoint Admin center include:

• The ability to manage all sites, including group connected team sites, communication sites, and hub sites
• Controls such as Device Access and Sharing Policies through a richer menu to manage and control how information is accessed and shared
• A new command surface that provides an actionable command bar, hub site and classification management control
• Several enhancements to the site creation experience, allowing admins to have more control on site settings, storage and classification
• A new simple way to track and manage tenant level storage and site level storage limits

Multi-Geo Capabilities for SharePoint (Selective Preview)

Large organizations that are present around the globe can now take advantage of Multi-Geo capabilities for SharePoint. With this update, organizations, and in particular those with strict data residency policies, can have a single Office 365 tenant that can span across multiple geographies and enable a unified communication and collaboration experience across the whole organization.

SharePoint Migration Tool Improvements

With this update, SharePoint Migration Tool now supports migrating complete SharePoint 2013 sites.

To learn more about the latest announcements for administrators, click here.

SharePoint Framework 1.7 (Preview)

There were quite a few announcements after Ignite but the most important is without a doubt in the developer world with the release of SharePoint Framework 1.7 (still in Preview) that brings:

• Web Parts in Microsoft Teams
• Application Pages (finally!!!)
• Host Microsoft Teams Tabs as Application Pages and Web Parts in SharePoint
• List Subscriptions
• Web Part Connections, Dynamic Data and SharePoint 2019 Support

Web Parts in Microsoft Teams

With the release of SharePoint Framework 1.7, it will be possible to take the web parts built with SharePoint Framework and make them available as applications in Microsoft Teams. With just a few adjustments to the package metadata, it is even possible for every custom developed SPFx web part to become a Tab in Microsoft Teams.

Application Pages

The most long awaited announcement for all SharePoint developers! Finally, it is possible to develop full application pages using the SharePoint Framework technology stack. With SharePoint Framework version 1.7, developers can now choose to create these full application experiences with the SharePoint Framework in much the same way as they would create web parts or extensions.

Host Microsoft Teams Tabs as Application Pages and Web Parts in SharePoint

In addition to creating new application page experiences using SharePoint Framework, with SharePoint Framework 1.7, it will be possible to also take Teams Tab experiences and host them in SharePoint (both as full application pages and as web parts).

List Subscriptions

Users are now able to subscribe to list events from custom developed web parts or extensions. This means that every time there is a change on a list, the custom component is notified through an event and developers are able to build a custom experience based on the event (for example refresh the content to keep it updated).

Web Part Connections, Dynamic Data and SharePoint 2019 Support

Already generally available, Dynamic Data provides a calling pattern and infrastructure for web parts and extensions to bind and share data and consume live information from the page context. This way, web parts can, for example, become more efficient by making a single call to retrieve data from a web service, and then share that data with any other similar web parts on the page. Dynamic Data also provides the foundation for web part connections, allowing page authors to connect data and user experience state across web parts.

Last but not least, SharePoint Framework version 1.7 includes new developer tools, that are generally available, that let developers target SharePoint Server 2019 by creating projects designed for the level of compatibility that SharePoint Server 2019 supports (SharePoint Framework version 1.4.1). Although not taking advantage of the latest SPFx capabilities, these web parts and extensions will also work seamlessly with SharePoint Online in Office 365.

For more information on SharePoint Framework 1.7 in Preview, click here.

Conclusion

If you want to know more about what recent updates in the SharePoint and Office 365 world, I invite you to read all about the latest Ignite 2018 announcements:

• What’s new Microsoft Teams features
• Build your modern intranet with SharePoint in Office 365
• SharePoint powers teamwork in Office 365
• What’s new in security, compliance, & administration for SharePoint & OneDrive from Microsoft Ignite
• New innovations in SharePoint & Microsoft 365 deliver power and simplicity for content collaboration
• Do more with new upcoming SharePoint development capabilities announced at Ignite 2018
• The Microsoft Ignite YouTube Channel

To get a broader vision of SharePoint evolution over the years, don’t miss Jeff Teper “Hitting Refresh on SharePoint” articles:

• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 1
• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 2
• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 3
• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 4

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you want to convert your tenant’s root classic site into a modern SharePoint site, click here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If your organization is still not ready to go all in to SharePoint Online and Office 365, a hybrid scenario may be the best choice. SharePoint 2019 RTM was recently announced and if you to learn all about SharePoint 2019 and all its features, click here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If you want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated and be ready to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If SharePoint 2019 is still not an option, you can learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2016 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, click here and here.

If you are involved in a SharePoint upgrade and want to learn more about the upgrade process, click here and here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post What’s New for SharePoint and Office 365 after Microsoft Ignite 2018 appeared first on Blog IT.

Finally the the SharePoint Server 2019 RTM version has been announced, and we can now take a look of what the new version brings to the On-Premises world of SharePoint. Not much has changed since the announcement of SharePoint 2019 Preview but still there is a lot of good stuff brought to this new SharePoint Server release.

Introduction

SharePoint has come a long way and it is nothing but amazing to see the constant innovation that Microsoft has been introducing to the platform over the years!

With this release, SharePoint Server finally gets modern and includes a major set of the features that are already available in SharePoint Online. After the release of SharePoint Online back in 2013 and with the release of SharePoint 2016, Microsoft has adopted the “Cloud-first, mobile first” vision where all new features are first released to SharePoint Online and then gradually released to SharePoint On-Premises through new major versions that occur approximately every 3 years and through Feature Packs that were introduced in SharePoint 2016 and allow the latest Cloud innovations to be brought to the On-Premises world. SharePoint 2016 was the first major SharePoint On-Premises release that took advantage of the extensive Microsoft experience managing SharePoint Online and the second major version was just recently announced: SharePoint 2019.

The previous release, SharePoint 2016, has brought us several major improvements over its predecessor (SharePoint 2013). Here are some of its main features:

• New Hybrid Experiences like Cloud Hybrid Search, Hybrid Team Sites and the ability to use Delve as the User Profile Experience
• Major limit increases (ex: Search Index Size, Number of Site Collections, List View Threshold Increase with Automatic Index Column Creation)
• MinRoles
• Feature Packs
• Durable Links
• Zero Downtime Patching
• Integration of the new SharePoint Framework development model (available with SharePoint 2016 Feature Pack 2)

Three years have passed with lots of new features released to SharePoint Online and it is time to take a look at what Microsoft is bringing us with the new SharePoint 2019 Preview release.

What’s New In SharePoint 2019

Lets’ take a look at the major features that the new version will bring!

The main focus of the new release is no doubt the inclusion of major parts of the Modern Experiences already available in SharePoint Online, bringing a responsive user experience and allowing access to SharePoint 2019 from any device (PC and mobile devices). Here are the major new features that were announced and that will be included in SharePoint 2019:

• Modern Team Sites
• Modern Communication Sites
• Modern Lists
• Modern Libraries
• Modern Pages
• Modern Web Parts
• SharePoint Home Page
• SharePoint Mobile App
• Modern SharePoint Development Platform
• Support to the latest OneDrive Sync Client
• Improved Hybrid Support
• Improved support for PowerApps and Flow
• Improvements on Large File Support, Character Restrictions and File/Folder Names
• Administration / Infrastructure Improvements

The following features are not going to be available, possibly in future Feature Packs:

• Hub Sites
• Site Designs and Site Scripts
• Site collection app catalog
• Power BI web part
• Most of the modern web parts available in SharePoint Online

As expected, some of major features in Office 365 will not be available and will remain as cloud only offerings:

• Office 365 Groups
• Planner
• Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Forms
• Delve (possible to integrate with SharePoint 2019 in a hybrid scenario)
• PowerBI (possible to integrate with SharePoint 2019 in a hybrid scenario)

Modern Team Sites

The major difference between SharePoint 2019 and its predecessor is that it will include some of the major UI improvements already available in SharePoint Online. One of its core components are the Modern Team Sites. Team Sites have always been the major collaboration tool in SharePoint and will continue to be so but now with a modern and responsive user experience, allowing users to easily collaborate and share information within Teams and the whole organization. This is how a new Modern Team site will look like:

One major difference between Team Sites in SharePoint 2019 and their counterparts in SharePoint Online is that they will not be supported in Office 365 Groups and thus not taking advantage of some of the coolest collaboration features in Office 365 such as:

• Planner
• Office 365 Group features including a shared calendar and integration with Outlook
• Ability to connect a Team Site with a Team in Microsoft Teams

Modern Communication Sites

Another major piece of the modern experience that will be included in SharePoint 2019 are the Modern Communication Sites. While Team Sites are all about collaboration and mainly people working on SharePoint Lists and Libraries and sharing information between them, Communication Sites are all about user engagement and having a way to easily share relevant information in an engaging way with a whole department or the entire organization. While in Team Sites, most users are active contributors, in Communication Sites most users will be consumers and there will be a restricted set of users that will publish information for a department or the entire organization to consume. This is how a new Modern Communication site will look like:

Modern Lists

Lists are one of the core collaboration features in SharePoint, allowing users to work on and share information in a structured way, also allowing information from external systems to be presented in SharePoint. Modern Lists will bring the SharePoint Online experience to the On-Premises world, allowing users to interact with the information with a richer user experience, available across multiple devices and browsers. This is how a Modern List will look like:

One of the major advantages is the possibility to easily format column data using the conditional formatting features already available in SharePoint Online. Other major improvements that will be available later this year or in 2019:

• Row Formatting: Ability to create new formatting experiences for any List or Library with scripting
• Realtime List updates: Ability to see updates to Lists and Libraries instantly without having to refresh the page
• New Ways to create Lists: Ability to create Lists based on Excel, templates or other Lists

Modern Libraries

Libraries are the other main collaboration feature in SharePoint, allowing users to work on files (and add metadata) and easily share them with other colleagues in the organization. Modern Libraries will bring the same modern experience already available in SharePoint Online and will allow users to easily sync their files with their computers using the latest version of OneDrive for Business, thus allowing users to work offline and sync files to SharePoint once they get back online. This is how a Modern Library will look like:

Modern Pages

In Classic SharePoint experience, pages are typically rendered server side and are composed by a set of web parts (native SharePoint web parts or custom developed web parts implemented using server side code in the language of your preference, typically C# or VB.NET).  Modern pages are rendered client side and bring the power of client side web parts to give users a responsive user experience, available across multiple devices and browsers. Publishing modern pages is also greatly simplified and users can now create new pages with rich content quickly and easily, This is how a Modern Page will look like:

One of the best parts of Modern pages is the possibility to extend SharePoint using the new SharePoint Framework development model, allowing developers to build modern client side web parts and extensions.

Modern Web Parts

As expected, most of the new modern web parts available in SharePoint Online will not be available On-Premises. Despite of that, there are quite a few modern web parts that will be available out of the box in this release:

Support for custom developed modern web parts will also be available using SharePoint Framework (SPFx) web parts.

SharePoint Home Page

Already available in SharePoint Online for quite some time, the SharePoint Home Page will also be available in SharePoint 2019 and will allow users to easily find and access SharePoint sites within their organization, find news from the sites they are following and from suggested sites. Additionally, users will be able to easily create sites directly from this page.

This is how the new SharePoint Home Page will look like:

SharePoint Mobile App

Also already available for SharePoint Online, SharePoint 2019 will also be accessible using the SharePoint Mobile App, allowing users to easily find the most relevant information within the organization from any location.

Modern SharePoint Development Platform

With the release of SharePoint 2019, support to SharePoint Framework web parts and extensions will be enhanced.  SharePoint 2019 will include SharePoint Framework version 1.4.1 and will also include support to Webhooks that are already available in SharePoint Online.  Here are the supported development options in SharePoint 2019 (this list may change until RTM version is released):

• SharePoint Framework client-side web parts
• SharePoint Framework extensions
• Webhooks
• Asset packaging and automatic JavaScript file hosting from app catalog
• Column formatting

For more details on the new development options, click here.

Support to the latest OneDrive Sync Client

Until now, OneDrive support was missing on the On-Premises world, while it is already present for OneDrive and SharePoint Online for quite some time. Fortunately,  this will change since SharePoint 2019 will add OneDrive Sync Client support for both Personal and Team Sites, which will also include files on demand!

Improved Hybrid Support

As part of Microsoft’s strategy to gradually move costumers to the Cloud and SharePoint Online, started with the first stages of hybrid support in SharePoint 2013 SP1 and further enhanced in SharePoint 2016, configuring an hybrid environment will get even easier in SharePoint 2019 with the new features below, allowing organizations to leverage existing investments on On-Premises solutions while also taking advantage of all cloud innovations of SharePoint Online and Office 365:

• Hybrid configured during deployment: It will be possible to configure a hybrid SharePoint environment during SharePoint deployment
• New SharePoint Hybrid status bar: A new hybrid status bar will be presented in Central Administration once the SharePoint farm meets the minimum system requirements necessary to enable a hybrid scenario. Also, it will give you direct access to launch the SharePoint Hybrid Configuration Wizard

• OneDrive in Office 365 by Default: Setting up OneDrive for Business Redirection to Office 365 was already possible in SharePoint 2013 with SP1 and SharePoint 2016.  With SharePoint 2019, when a hybrid environment is configured, users will be using OneDrive For Business in Office 365 by default
• Modern Search: Although in SharePoint 2016 we already had an integrated Search experience with Cloud Hybrid Search that allows SharePoint Online to store the search index for both Online and On-Premises results, the search experience was not totally consistent in a hybrid environment. SharePoint 2019 will take advantage of the improvements made in Office 365 search and will bring a better search experience for hybrid environments. Some of the major improvements in the search experience are:
  • Users see results as they start typing and the results update as they type (Search as you type)
  • The search results page shows an overview of search results, grouped by type and it will be easy to expand to see all the results of each type, for example people or sites
  • On a people result, users can click the email address to quickly get started on an email to that person

One of the main challenges on the move to cloud and Office 365, continues to be security related (Data Ownership and areas like Security, Compliance and Privacy). To learn more about the Intelligent Security features available in Office 365, click here.

Improved support for PowerApps and Flow

It isn’t quite clear all the improvements that will be included in SharePoint 2019 but there is going to be some deeper integrations with Flow and PowerApps to On-Premises data which will facilitate the creation of Apps and Flows that integrate with Line Of Business systems. The connection to On-Premises systems will be done through the On-Premises Data Gateway (that supports integration with several On-Premises data sources) and with the release of SharePoint 2019 several performance improvements will be included and there will be fewer restrictions than we had before.

Unfortunately, there is still not going to be native PowerApps and Flow buttons directly from On-Premises SharePoint Lists and Libraries.

Improvements on Large File Support, Character Restrictions and File/Folder Names

With SharePoint 2019, there will some important improvements on Large File Support, Character Restrictions and File/Folder Names:

• It will be possible to store files up to 15 GB in SharePoint 2019 document libraries. This is 5 GB up from the 10 GB supported in SharePoint 2016
• Support for # and % characters in file and folder names across document libraries in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business
• SharePoint 2019 will increase the URL path length limit from 260 to 400 characters

Administration / Infrastructure Improvements

The hardware requirements for SharePoint 2019 are not very different from SharePoint 2016 (for more details, click here)  but there are a few Administration/ Infrastructure improvements such as:

• Direct links in Central Administration to SharePoint documentation: Direct links to SharePoint documentation will be available from the Central Administration pages.
• Workflow Manager 2019: Despite improved support for Microsoft Flow, SharePoint workflows are not going to go away yet and Microsoft just released Workflow Manager 2019 that replaces Workflow Manager 1.0. For more details on Workflow Manager for SharePoint 2019, click here.
• SharePoint can now authenticate to SMTP email servers: No more anonymous relays just for SharePoint

• Recycle Bin recovery improvements: Users will be able to recover their content deleted by others from the recycle bin

Removed and Deprecated Features

There are a lot of new features in SharePoint 2019 that makes this the best SharePoint Server release so far but as usual there a number of features that will be removed or deprecated in the new release.

Removed Features

This is the list of removed features in SharePoint 2019:

• Automatic mode in incoming email
• Code-based sandboxed solution
• Digest authentication
• Multi-tenancy
• Silverlight rendering in PerformancePoint Services and Visio Services
• SQL Reporting Services integrated mode
• Power Pivot
• Power View

Deprecated Features

This is the list of deprecated features in SharePoint 2019:

• Access Services 2010 & 2013
• Aggregated Newsfeed
• Custom Help
• InfoPath Client / InfoPath Services (Microsoft has stopped investing in InfoPath and is putting all the eggs in PowerApps but it will be supported until 2026)
• Lists web service
• Machine Translation service
• PerformancePoint Services
• SharePoint Designer (Microsoft has stopped investing in SharePoint Designer but it will be supported until 2026)
• Site Mailbox
• Site Manager

Conclusion

While Microsoft continues to push customers to the Cloud and to Office 365, Microsoft is now releasing another major release of SharePoint Server that brings many of the major improvements made in the last three years in SharePoint Online to the On-Premises world. Meanwhile, the path in the Online world doesn’t stop and many exciting features are being announced, including the arrival of AI to SharePoint through SharePoint Spaces.

If you want to know more about what recent updates in the SharePoint world, I invite you to read all about the latest Ignite 2018 announcements including the brand new Microsoft Search:

• What’s new Microsoft Teams features
• Build your modern intranet with SharePoint in Office 365
• SharePoint powers teamwork in Office 365
• What’s new in security, compliance, & administration for SharePoint & OneDrive from Microsoft Ignite
• New innovations in SharePoint & Microsoft 365 deliver power and simplicity for content collaboration
• Do more with new upcoming SharePoint development capabilities announced at Ignite 2018
• The Microsoft Ignite YouTube Channel

To get a broader vision of SharePoint evolution over the years, don’t miss Jeff Teper “Hitting Refresh on SharePoint” articles:

• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 1
• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 2
• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 3
• Hitting Refresh on SharePoint and More – Part 4

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post Meet the new Modern SharePoint Server: SharePoint 2019 RTM is here! appeared first on Blog IT.