Forum Discussion
Modern Page Experience availability in SharePoint 2016 On-Prem Server
This is a really big disappointment for customers with On-Premise investments and environments.
Microsoft's logic with the launch of SharePoint 2016, which was said to have similar infrastructure to the cloud's infrastructure, was that new features in SharePoint Online would be relatively quickly in SharePoint 2016 integrated.
I can only say this failed promotion has led SharePoint On-Premise until today outdated. Microsoft has just left SharePoint On-Premise to rot. Web Parts and interfaces of Team Sites at very best from 2013 if not worse.
We all knew that Microsoft will focus on the cloud, but the picture here is clear. Microsoft has just abandoned SharePoint On-Premise. I don't have a problem with this, but I do have a problem because it was not clear right from the beginning. We just bought something else.
Without own developments and solutions, I have to say that I as SharePoint Administrator I find it more and more difficult to convince my users that they are collaborating in a modern environment.
I do share your frustration as I am in a similar position in trying to make a new intranet portal visually appealing as possible whilst planning to push most workloads into the cloud. You do have a few choices tho.
- You can an install https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/wbaer/2017/09/12/announcing-availability-of-feature-pack-2-for-sharepoint-server-2016// and build your own client side web parts albeit in classic pages ... Yes I know not ideal!
- The modern look, SPFx Web Parts >1.4.1 , SPFx Extensions et al. will be available in SharePoint 2019 if you plan to migrate to this platform - I believe more details on the level of modern look etc, support is being announced at Build this week.
- Go Hybrid and just redirect on-premise sites/ODFB/Taxonomy/Search to the Office 365/ SharePoint Online- note you can still prevent cloud only, and or external users from seeing on-premises content by not deploying a WAP server
- Migrate fully to the cloud as ultimately this is where all roads lead.