SharePoint 2013 - Discontinued features and modified functionalities

The following URL contains an overview of SharePoint functionalities that are discontinued or modified in SharePoint 2013:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607742(v=office.15).aspx

I would like to share my view on a couple of discontinued features.

Document workspace

Reason for change
"This scenario of collaborating on a document is already covered by the Team Site template."

To be honest, I have never used this template and never seen a customer using it. One site for working on one document? That seems a bit too much. The team site is a perfect replacement. Just create a new document library and assign unique permissions.

Meeting workspace

Reason for change
"Other collaboration features exist in SharePoint 2013 Preview and Office 2013 Preview: Lync to conduct live meetings, OneNote to take notes during meetings, and SharePoint team site or My Site to store shared meeting notes."

I think this is a big change! These templates have been around for a while and used by customers. We actually use these in Office 365 scenario's. They are far from perfect and have known issues. Just check out the following article:

http://www.jasperoosterveld.com/2011/08/sharepoint-meeting-workspaces-part-2.html

I like the suggestion from Microsoft. Lync is a great tool for live meetings. You can share a presentation or your desktop. The new SharePoint 2013 team and project site have an OneNote integration. This enables employees to store meeting notes and is integrated with the local OneNote application. Meeting documents can be stored in a document library and the site can be customized with other lists or libraries.

Group work site template

Reason for change
"Similar features can be used with the Team site template."

Again, I have never used this template or seen any customers using it. The team site is more then sufficient as a replacement. I always use Outlook to check the availability of my colleagues.

Business Intelligence: Chart Web Part
Reason for change
"Similar features can be used with other applications, such as Excel Services."

This is kind of a shame because this was a web part with a lot of functionalities. Click here to see a lot of video's about this web part. Maybe the downside of this web part was the overload of options. There were a lot!

I don't think these discontinued features will shock most people.

Posted in: SharePoint 2013