SharePoint Server Subscription Edition is the next step in the SharePoint Server journey, focusing on the needs of the on-premises customers. It introduces new features to help simplify management, enhance your security posture, and expedite your upgrade from previous versions of SharePoint Server.
In December 2021, Microsoft announced the general availability of the latest SharePoint Server Subscription Edition; in June 2022, they added new and improved features in that edition. In September 2022, one more feature update was released, named ‘Version 22H2.’
As Microsoft has announced, it has been confirmed that from now on, there will be two feature updates per year, and they will be named based on the calendar year. So, for instance, a feature update released in the autumn of 2022 is named 22H2. Similarly, if the feature update comes in the spring of 2023, it will be named 23H1.
Let’s briefly overview all the significant updates in SharePoint Server Subscription Edition from the start.
SharePoint Server Subscription Edition
Modern enterprises need flexible, dynamic, and cost-effective communication, collaboration, and productivity solutions. SharePoint Server Subscription Edition can help you achieve new levels of reliability and performance, delivering features and capabilities that simplify administration, protect communications and information, and empower people in your organization to achieve more.
“SharePoint Server Subscription Edition represents the next step in the SharePoint Server journey emphasizing the specific needs of our on-premises customers.”– Microsoft.
Microsoft designed SharePoint Server SE around the core principles,
1-Always up to date
2-Secure and reliable
3-Designed for you
Always Up To Date
The power to enhance your IT infrastructure for ever-changing business conditions requires agility, which means investing in solutions that deliver reliability and opportunity. SharePoint Server Subscription Edition allows you to tailor deployment to your specific enterprise needs.
Constant Updates
With SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, you’ll be able to break the cycle of lengthy and costly major version upgrades to gain new features and remain supported. Microsoft will provide customers with the most recent innovations through new features that can be implemented on your SharePoint Server Subscription Edition farms.
Secure and Reliable
Compliance with regulatory standards and the prevention of security breaches to business-critical and personal data is a constant priority for organizations and corporate IT. SharePoint Server SE offers scalability, dependability, and security while allowing you to take advantage of the most recent hardware innovations and computing technologies, allowing it to handle massive amounts of data faster, more efficiently, and at a lower cost.Safe Communication
With Windows Server 2022 support, you get the most updated security and native support for features like TLS 1.3. TLS 1.3 is the latest version of the internet’s most widely used security protocol, which encrypts data to establish a highly secured channel between two endpoints. TLS 1.3 replaces outdated cryptographic algorithms, improves security over previous versions, and aims to be more secure.Designed For You
The security, dependability, and administrative enhancements provided by SharePoint Server Subscription Edition are tailored to the special requirements of on-premises settings. Improvements to People Picker, support for OpenID Connect, and other new features are among them.OpenID Connect
The OpenID Connect (OIDC) 1.0 authentication mechanism is now supported by the SharePoint Server Subscription Edition. OIDC is a current authentication protocol that makes it simple to link applications and devices with identity and authentication management solutions better to meet your organization’s changing security and compliance needs. For instance, conditional access controls can be enforced depending on device compliance, multifactor authentication (MFA), and other authentication policies.Better People Picker For Innovative Authenticity
The People Picker has been improved in SharePoint Server Subscription Edition to support resolving users and groups from contemporary authentication (trusted identity providers), such as SAML 1.1 and OIDC 1.0. This eliminates the need for a custom claims source and enables the People Picker only to resolve authentic users and groups.New And Improved Features In SharePoint Server Subscription Edition
Further, in June 2022, Microsoft announced and released new and improved features in the SharePoint Subscription edition. The main feature groups include,
- Authentication and Identity Management
- Deployment and Upgrade
- Farm Administration
- Health and Monitoring
- Hybrid
- PowerShell
- Search
- Security
- Sites, Lists, and Libraries
- Storage
- Authentication and Identity Management
New and improved features in SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 22H2
Earlier this year, in September 2022, Microsoft released a new version, ‘22H2’ of new and improved features in ‘New and improved features in SharePoint Server Subscription’ with the following feature updates,Feature | Release rings |
Feature release rings | Standard release |
AMSI integration | Standard release |
Copy and move improvement in a modern document library | Early release |
Bulk editing in modern lists | Early release |
Column formatting enhancement | Early release |
Button web part | Early release |
Choose the default site language in the modern self-service site creation pane. | Early release |
New SharePoint RESTful ListData.svc implementation | Early release |
Source: Microsoft
All these new features and versions can easily be installed with the full installer and language packs available online on SharePoint.