Cloud SharePoint and End User Solutions

When I did the End User Solutions webcast recently the focus was for on-premises Corporate SharePoint installs. A lot of the nice possibilities such as Access Services or online InfoPath Forms are Enterprise features.

Well, I got some perfectly reasonable questions after the webcast such as 'what can I do on SharePoint Online?' and 'which features are available on Office 365?'. These questions were not easy to answer because of course it depends what package you have for the Online Services, and there are many packages to consider!

There is a matrix available on Technet now that has details of which service sits with what Cloud offering. So to answer the question of what features are included with which Office 365 subscription I can now refer you here.

Unlike the 'SharePoint Wheel' we had in earlier versions, SharePoint 2013 is now categorized by Developer, IT Professional, Content, Insights, Search, Sites, Social, Add-ons. The category of Composites in SharePoint 2010 which broadly covered end user solutions possibilities now largely resides in Developer (which I find very interesting!).

As an aside; There's been rumblings for a while (I define rumblings as hints and impressions rather than official statements!) that customizations are considered Developer Solutions rather than End User Solutions tasks in SharePoint these days. That doesn't mean you can't roll your own solutions, but the goalposts are definitely shifting. [btw I'm going to be talking on that very topic at SharePoint Evolution Conference, London in just over a month, so if you want more detail on this that's the place to go! Details Here].

I will also mention, since I'm on the topic of End User Solutions that despite forum rumblings about InfoPath and its future demise it does have a supportive comment from the SharePoint team here "InfoPath is our integrated forms solution for the foreseeable future". (If you haven't heard the forum rumblings then this is probably just confusing!!)

So, in an attempt to stick to the point of the article the features matrix looks like this though actually it's A LOT BIGGER;

So for example I can now tell you that at time of writing Access Services is available generally in Office 365 but you're going to need E3 and above for InfoPath Forms Services! Any questions during the conference session at SEC asking about Cloud features will be referred to this article! ;)

Happy SharePointing