Notes on installing to Sharepoint 2016
Below are the prerequisites if you want to upgrade to Sharepoint 2016:
Upgrading from SharePoint 2010 or SharePoint 2013
If you are planning to upgrade from SharePoint 2010 or SharePoint 2013 with Aurea Social to SharePoint 2016 with Aurea Social, please inform your technical contact at Aurea.
In addition, Microsoft requires that SharePoint 2010 be migrated to SharePoint 2013, prior to upgrading to SharePoint 2016. Aurea has a tested set of steps for completing this process successfully, but given the wide variety of possible configurations on which this process could be done, we would like to work closely with the first organizations to go through this process to assure it goes well.
The instructions in this document are for “fresh” installs to SharePoint 2016, not for upgrades.
For more details about granting rights in Sharepoint 2010, see Setting up your account with the SharePoint permissions that are needed to install Aurea Social.
Aurea Social v5.3 or higher must be installed prior to upgrading to SharePoint 2016.
SharePoint 2016 and Aurea Social Version Compatibility
Aurea Social v5.3 or higher is supported for installation on SharePoint 2016.
SharePoint 2016 and Aurea Social Feature Support
All of the product features applicable to SharePoint 2013 are supported for SharePoint 2016. A suite navigation provider has been added to use the same SP2013 suite links configuration.
Microsoft has deprecated the “tags and notes” feature in SP2016. Based on testing, we haven’t seen any issues with Aurea Social features which rely on the “tags and notes” infrastructure, but we don’t recommend that you use these features in SP2016 based on Microsoft’s direction.
SharePoint 2016 Min Role and Aurea Social
SharePoint 2016 has some changes to the roles servers perform. If a farm level service is enabled (that is, “NewsGator Social Platform Services (Proxy Components, required on all farms)”), then each of the supporting server-level services are required to run on each of servers in the compatible role.
This basically means that when Aurea Social is installed, the services are required to run on all “Application” or “SingleServerFarm” servers in order to be compliant with the MinRole. The “NewsGator Social Platform Service” is not going to run on “WebFrontEnd”, “DistributedCache”, or “Search” servers.
When a required service is disabled, there will be a link to Fix or Start the service. You no longer have the option to “stop” services that are required.
SharePoint 2016 and Microsoft Identity Manager
SharePoint 2016 no longer relies on Forefront Identity Manager to sync user profile information. Instead, it uses the stand alone Microsoft Identity Manager. Although this does not impact Aurea Social functionality, it is important to note the change.
- For more information on installing Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM), see Install Microsoft Identity Manager for User Profiles in SharePoint Servers 2016 and 2019.
- For more information on deploying MIM for SharePoint 2016 User Profile sync, see Use a sample MIM solution in SharePoint Servers 2016 and 2019.
SSL Alternate Access Mapping required for 2016
Similar for SharePoint 2013, in order for Aurea Social to interact with SharePoint 2016 Social Features, an SSL (HTTPS) alternate access mapping must exist for each content web application (the web applications where you will have NewsGator integration, including where the main “Social” newsfeed runs).
For further details, see the SSL section under Notes for Installing to SharePoint 2013.