SharePoint

**SharePoint** is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates natively with Microsoft Office. Launched in 2001, SharePoint is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, but the product is highly configurable and its usage varies substantially among organizations.

According to Microsoft,  SharePoint had 200 million users.

## History 
### Origins 
SharePoint evolved from projects codenamed "Office Server" and "Tahoe" during the Office XP development cycle.

"Office Server" evolved out of the FrontPage and Office Server Extensions and "Team Pages". It targeted simple, bottom-up collaboration.

"Tahoe", built on shared technology with Exchange and the "Digital Dashboard", targeted top-down portals, search and document management. The searching and indexing capabilities of SharePoint came from the "Tahoe" feature set. The search and indexing features were a combination of the index and crawling features from the Microsoft Site Server family of products and from the query language of Microsoft Index Server.

GAC-(Global Assembly Cache) is used to accommodate the shared assemblies that are specifically designated to be shared by applications executed on a system.

### Versions 
Successive versions (in chronological order):
* Office Server Extensions
* SharePoint Portal Server 2001
* SharePoint Team Services
* Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (free license)
* SharePoint Portal Server 2003
* Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (free license)
* Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007
* SharePoint Foundation 2010 (free), SharePoint Server 2010 (commercial extension for Foundation), and SharePoint Enterprise 2010 (commercial extension for Server)
* SharePoint Foundation 2013 (free), SharePoint Server 2013 (extension on top of Foundation), and SharePoint Enterprise 2013.
* SharePoint Online (Plan 1 & 2).
* SharePoint Server 2016 and SharePoint Enterprise 2016.
* SharePoint Server 2019 and SharePoint Enterprise 2019.

### Notable changes in SharePoint 2010 
Changes in end-user functionality added in the 2010 version of SharePoint include:
* New UI with Fluent Ribbon, using wiki-pages rather than 'web-part pages' and offering multi-browser support.
* New social profiles, and early social networking features
* Central Administration rebuilt.
* Restructure of "Shared Service Providers" - Introduction of "Service Applications" SOA model.
* Sandboxed Solutions and a client-side object-model APIs for JavaScript, Silverlight, and .NET applications
* Business Connectivity Services, Claims-based Authentication, and Windows PowerShell support

### Notable changes in SharePoint 2013 
* Cross-browser drag & drop support for file uploads/changes, and Follow/Share buttons
* OneDrive for Business (initially SkyDrive Pro) replaces MySites and Workspaces.
* Updates to social network feature & new task aggregation tool.
* Database caching, called *Distributed Cache Service*
* Content-aware switching, called *Management*
* Audit center (service called eDiscovery)
* Rebuilt and improved search capabilities
* Removal of some analytics capabilities
* UI: JSLink, MDS, theme packs. No WYSIWYG in SP Designer.

### Notable changes in SharePoint 2016 
Sources:
* Hybrid Improvements
** Single Sites View
** Unified Search
** Search Sensitive Information in Hybrid Search
** Unified UI (O365)
* Performance, Scaling & Deployment Improvements
** Search Scaling Capabilities
** Site Collection Enhancement
** Deterministic View Threshold – Removing 5000 Limit
** Durable Links and Large Files Support
* Deployment Improvements
** MinRole
** Zero Downtime Patching

### Notable changes in SharePoint 2019 
Sources:
* Modern sites and page layouts
* Communication sites
* Large File Support, Character Restrictions, and File/Folder Names

### Notable changes in SharePoint Subscription Edition (SE) 
Sources:
* Authentication and Identity Management
** Support for OpenID Connect (OIDC) 1.0
** Enhanced People Picker for modern authentication
** Improved Integrated Windows authentication over TLS
* Deployment and Upgrade
** Support for Windows Server 2022
** Support for Windows Server Core
** Support for "N - 2" upgrade from SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019 (and Project Server 2016 and 2019)
** AppFabric Cache integration
* Farm Administration
** Support for host header bindings on Central Administration web application
** Support for Server Name Indication (SNI) for host header bindings
** Support for changing web application bindings
** Easier AAM configuration for Central Administration
** Federated service applications support "N - 2" consuming farms (SharePoint 2016, 2019, and Subscription Edition)
** Support for client certificate authentication to SMTP servers
* Health and Monitoring (new Health Analyzer rules)
** Certificate notification contacts haven't been configured
** Upcoming SSL certificate expirations
** SSL certificates are about to expire
** SSL certificates have expired
* Hybrid
** Better integration with Power Apps and Power Automate
** Improved hybrid search troubleshooting
* Search
** Search result page modernization
** Support for returning list content in the modern results page
** Thumbnails in the modern search result page
* Security
** SSL certificate management
** Support for TLS 1.3
** Strong TLS encryption by default
** Improved ASP.NET view state security and key management
* Sites, Lists, and Libraries
** Accessibility improvements
** Brick layout for document library thumbnails and image gallery web part
** Bulk check-in and check-out
** Bulk file download from document libraries and OneDrive personal sites
** Image and document thumbnails in document libraries and picture libraries
** Modern list and library web parts support adding, editing, and deleting content
** Modern document sets
* Storage
** New BLOB storage provider: Remote Share Provider
** Remote Share Provider diagnostic tool

## References 
## Other websites 
* SharePoint