Forum Discussion
Modern Page Experience availability in SharePoint 2016 On-Prem Server
21 Replies
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I can only say this failed promotion has led SharePoint On-Premise until today outdated.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.
Modern team sites will come to SharePoint Server 2019 only - at least that's the plan.
See https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/55098 from 01:02:00 on...That link is dead. Did you overstep by suggesting what might be in SharePoint 2019?
- Link works fine! It's from last years Ignite
thomasvochten wrote:
Modern team sites will come to SharePoint Server 2019 only - at least that's the plan.
See https://myignite.microsoft.com/videos/55098 from 01:02:00 on...Does this mean the modern experience of SharePoint 2016, Feature Pack 2 will only extend to modern the look in list and libraries, and creating your own SPfx web parts to deploy in classic pages (?). I think only exception to this is OneDrive for business will bet the modern UI but this could be academic if this is redirected to the cloud...
- More or less it means WYSIWYG as of SharePoint 2016 w/ FP1 (FP2 doesn't change the UI). No further changes will be made to the UI.
Microsoft has no plans to bring additional modern experiences to SharePoint 2016.
Modern pages are indeed not part of Feature Pack 2. The only new functionality is support for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) webparts.
Thank you for the responses. Any idea on if and when these features will be available for on-prem?
There hasn't been any communication on this unfortunately...
- AFAIK, modern pages are not part of FP 2
No Modern Pages but how about Modern Libraries and Lists? They should be available?
No modern lists or libraries on SharePoint 2016 on-premises. The only 'modern' thing you get is that you can use SPFx to build custom web parts. You can add your custom SPFx web parts to classic pages in SharePoint 2016. I am actually doing exactly that right now for one of my clients. SharePoint 2016 on-premises does not have modern team sites, does not have modern communication sites, and does not have any of the modern web parts (modern web parts cannot be installed on classic pages anyway). At the SharePoint Conference NA in Las Vegas last week (May 21) we learned that SharePoint 2019 on-premises will support modern team sites, modern communication sites and modern web parts (yay!) but not hub sites (doh!).
