SharePoint 2013 has several new and improved features that enrich user experience, improve content management and reinforce content security. These features and how they benefit SharePoint 2013 users are listed below.
Content authoring:
Content authors can now copy content from Word documents and paste them directly in various content editors in SharePoint 2013. The pasted content gets auto adjusted to the styles defined under the Site Designer. Authoring and content management capability is also extended to media files like videos and images.
New features improve Social Computing experience:
The SharePoint 2013 user and administrative experience has been enhanced with the introduction of Community Site and Community Portal templates apart from the additions to My Site. Community Sites offer a forum to discuss, share views and ideas on a variety of topics. Apart from this, the improvements in My Site allow users to manage their personal interests better.
New enterprise wide search architecture:
There is a new search architecture to carry out enterprise wide search. The new search feature is programmed to learn from the user’s search query inputs and provide matching results. The user can also get a preview of all the search results which helps him select the most suited. The enhanced crawling facility also allows the users to search through unstructured content. Administrators can enable continuous crawling which can be configured as necessary. Site Collection administrators can also create multiple search schema for their Site Collections.
Optimized viewing experience on multiple mobile platforms:
There are a host of additions to provide optimized viewing experience when using SharePoint 2013 through different mobile platforms. These are – the new Contemporary view (for better rendering on mobiles), Site rendering options (for rendering on different devices), Geolocation field type (for supporting mobile application development), Office Web apps (for viewing MS Office documents in mobiles), Push notifications (for sending device updates to Windows Phone device) and Business Intelligence content (for displaying Business Intelligence (BI) content).
Connect to external data through Business Connectivity Services:
New capabilities in SharePoint 2013 allow you to connect to and use external data through SharePoint 2013 clients or through Office 365 clients. Features that make this possible are OData Business Data Connectivity support, apps for SharePoint, etc.
Search, export and store content through eDiscovery:
The new feature that makes this possible is the eDiscovery Center Site template which creates a portal allowing the user to search, extract, store and export content.
New BI tools to help you analyze data:
The new BI tools that help users analyze and explore data to derive meaningful and intelligent solutions are – Excel Services in SharePoint 2013, the MS Excel 2013, SharePoint 2013 Visio and SharePoint 2013 Server PerformancePoint Services.
New retention policies for Sites:
The new Site-based retention policy makes it possible to create and manage retention policies that will now apply to any SharePoint 2013 Site.
