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.