SharePoint 2010 New Features

Business Value
The SharePoint pie from MOSS 2007 has been changed for 2010. Instead of focusing on generic portal topics, the focus is more on the business value of SharePoint. Here is the new pie
Sites
Sites are all about sharing info with employees/partners/customers – empowering customers across all mediums
Team Sites, Internet Facing sites, extranets for customers and partners
Communities
Ad-Hoc Communities
Communities in terms of hierarchy (comes from AD)
Communities now include Business Partners. You could search for users who are non-employees Content
Collaboration Content
Line of Business Content
People Centric Content
Search
FAST Search is integrated into SharePoint
Highly scalable Search engine
Emphasis on getting the right results on the first page
Enhanced People Search
Enhanced Business Data Search
Insights
Combination of all the above
Microsoft’s vision is a decision engine that brings other tools into unison
Composites
Help rapidly create dynamic business solutions
End user applications
Business Processes
Tools and integration with SharePoint Designer, Visual Studio
New Features
Ribbon inside SharePoint
Customizable Ribbon
Contextual
Removable and users have the option to go back to the MOSS 2007 interface
Asynchronous user interface – minimal postbacks
Dialogs employ DHTML effects to gray the background and provide user dialogs
Functionality previously available under the Content and Structure pages are now available in the main library
Multi select documents to checkout /check -in/delete etc.
Customization Capabilities
Page edits are called Web-Edits – This replaces the Site Text and font etc.
Live Preview of fonts/colors etc, similar to Office 2007
Upload and modify Images directly instead of uploading first to a image library
Picture Tools provide Resizing of pictures directly using the picture
Changing styles like having borders etc. for images
SilverLight
Add SilverLight web parts without additional configuration
Just point the web part to a XAP file in a document library
Interactive zoom is available on SilverLight web parts
Theming
You can theme SharePoint using the same theme as PowerPoint
e.g Upload a Powerpoint theme
Choose the theme and apply it to the site
Now the site looks like the Powerpoint slide
You can preview a theme on the site before applying it
Firefox is fully supported and can do the same things as IE
Completely redesigned Sharepoint Designer with Ribbon
Visio Services
Visio can connect to backend and visualize the data
Can publish visio into SharePoint and can render them without the need for visio on the client (similar to Excel Services)
This functionality is called Visio Services
Can zoom in and zoom out of diagrams
Needs a good Visio design first for Business processes
BDC is now Business Connectivity Services
Can take LOB data offline using SharePoint workspace Manager(previously Groove)
Tools in SPD and VS for modeling LOB entities
External data are called Entities – they live in BCS and you can work with them in SPD
External Content types based on these LOB entities can be created within SPD
There is a browser within SPD which can browse SQL Databases and provide views/stored procs etc.
You can right click on an entity and create CRUD operations on it using a simple wizard and publish from SPD
External data gets converted to a list like view
Users can filter and sort BCS data and work with it like they would with a SharePoint list
Users can seamlessly update data in 2010, which will automatically update the LOB system
You can create a Word template with BDC elements and publish to a library. When the user creates a new document they can pick those BCS entities within Office
To take items offline use Groove – SharePoint workspace manager – Click on Sync to Computer
Lists/Libraries are all synced
LOB data flows offline in Groove
Can edit LOB data when offline and sync back when connected
Whats New for Developers
1)Visual Studio 2010 has Visual Web part Designer. No more building tables for layout. You can drag and drop and create controls within web parts, similar to ASP.NET forms
Developer Dashboard – can allow any page to provide debug info
LINQ for SharePoint has been released and allows developers to use LINQ objects to query SharePoint lists
Client Object Model – can run code on the client using JS/.NET. This is especially useful when building Silverlight applications
Supports TFS , automated builds
New Project Templates are available in Visual Studio 2010
Comes with a SharePoint Server Explorer within VS
Can lookup Sites/Lists etc. as just like SQL Explorer in visual studio
Can automate post deployment tasks – no more post deploy batch files required, UI to specify deployment steps
There is a BDC explorer within VS to explore LOB data from within VS
Visual Web part project comes with Features and Packages automatically. Complete drag and drop functionality to visually build a web part
SilverLight can use Client Object Model to access list data using Microsoft.SharePoint.Client namespace
Runs CAML queries asynch and provides a rich client side object model to access data
Whats New for Administrators
New SharePoint best practices analyzer – Comes with a set of pre-built rules , You can build your own rule if you need. It can automatically correct issues provided you set it up to do so
New Central Admin Console look and feel. Items are grouped differently compared to the 2007 version
New Backup and Restore Tools in the UI
Visual Upgrade option – Can upgrade 2007 to 2010 and keep the old layout and customizations
New SQL Logging Database – Developers can write code to log to this SQL database , Can write your own events into the logging database, Whole bunch of out of the box reports for logging
Scalable List infrastructure - Can control how many items get returned from a list , Can set happy hour deadlines to filter the number of items in a list based on time of day
Unattached Content DB recovery – If you need to recover sites/lists from a DB backup you can do so without restoring it onto a temporary site. You can also – Browse content, Backup the site , Export site and all of this without restoring it onto a site
Upgrade looks and feels like 2007 – Can preview the new look and feel and revert back to the old version