What can we expect in SharePoint 15 – first official documents released

Microsoft has made available the first official documents for the next version of SharePoint (v15) to the public. They are:

SharePoint 15 Technical Preview Managed Object Model Software Development Kit
Which contains a limited overview of some new classes. Interesting in here is the mention of “Apps” (for example in the new SPApp class).

Also quite interesting is Office 15 Technical Preview – Open Specification Update, which contains also details about SharePoint 15. I recommend to look at the overview document (Summary of changes) first to see which files have been updated. While these documents are quite specific (protocols), they still give a good insight into what we can expect.

Just by looking at the documents marked as new, I discovered the following:

• Improvements to Access Services to come
• PowerPoint Automation Services to come (similar to Word Automation Services, so in this case a conversion from PPT to (e.g.) PDF)
• The Education sector will get several new features (there’s a new namespace Microsoft.Office.Education), e.g. there’ll be Quizzes that can be used in an academic context
• eDiscovery will get improved (Microsoft.Office.Server.Discovery)
• there’s something about video in there (Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Video)
• and another new namespace, not sure what it does after looking at it very briefly only: Microsoft.SharePoint.WorkManagement

Of course there is lots more information, as I said I only had a brief look at new documents and not at updated ones.