SharePoint 2010 Beta Features

I have been waiting for so long to write this post and here I am…..So let’s get started and see what new features are available in SharePoint 2010 Beta.
Overall the basic idea of SharePoint(in general) is Content Management, Portal and Search integrated on a single platform. Few of the benefits of SharePoint are: Tight Office + SharePoint integration, Rich applications, Consistent User Experience, Navigation and architecture.
The main features of SharePoint 2010 are (this should be familiar to MOSS 2007 developers – like 6 pillars of MOSS 2007 ) :
Composites

• Sandboxed Solutions
• InfoPath Form Services
• Enhanced Workflows

Sites

• Single Infrastructure for Intranets, Extranets and Internet Sites.
• Enhanced UI with Ribbon, Dialogs, Edit in Place and Ajax (Less page refreshes).
• Office Client and Web App support (basic editing, high fidelity rendering)
• SharePoint Workspace and Mobile (groove enhancements)
• Support for XHTML, Multilingual

Communities

• Collaborate using Wikis, Blogs and Co-Authoring
• Organize using Tags, Ratings and Bookmarks
• MySites Smart Profiles and Feeds
• Browse Colleagues, Experts and Org

Content Management

• Taxonomy, Workflow, Document Sets
• Digital Asset Management
• Handle Larger lists, Document Libraries
• Content Types and Taxonomy across all the farms
• Policy and Records Management

SharePoint Search

• Standard and FAST Search
• Experience, Relevance and Navigation
• People Search
• Scale and Flexible Platform
• Search Results preview

Insights

• Excel Services, SQL Server Support
• PerformancePoint Services
• Visio Services and Chart Web Part
• Business Connectivity Services
• PowerPivot (previously called Gemini)…100 M rows in excel and publish it to SharePoint – Two forms (SQL Server Power Pivot for Excel and SQL Server Power Pivot for SharePoint)

Coming to the End User, Social Networking and BI Enhancements, we have

• Ribbon changes depending on context (different for a page and a library)
• Edit in Place (with live preview)
• Add Pictures directly without loading them into a library
• Less page refreshes and more fluid
• Checkout multiple documents
• Document Sets – > Handles multiple documents as a single entity (flexible in handling sets)
• Social Computing – > Activity Feed, Tag Cloud, Recent Blog feeds, Ratings,
• All desktop applications open in Web now…
• Find the right expertise people in your organization using People search and other social networking features
• Subscribe to excel updates (rest based feeds) and directly link to live data.

Infrastructure Changes

• On-Premises and/or Cloud
• Web user interface revamp
• Power Shell scripts (500+ cmdlets)
• Resource Governors, Health Monitoring using Rules, Analytics, Logging
• Upgrade is easier
• Manage Farm remotely using Windows 7
• Power shell – What if command is powerful
• Central Admin – Web Apps, Service apps, Content DB, Health Monitor
• OOB lot of rules for health monitoring (security, performance, configuration)
• WSS 4.0 – > Microsoft SharePoint Foundation
• Again Ribbon changes depending on the context here
• 64 Bit only
• Run upgrade checker from SP2 before doing the upgrade

I will be posting more about MOSS 2010, as I keep finding out more interesting features about it…..