New and improved features in SharePoint Server 2019
APPLIES TO: 
2013 2016 
2019 Subscription Edition SharePoint in Microsoft 365
Learn about the new features and updates to existing features in SharePoint Server 2019.
To read more about the updated modern experience in SharePoint Server 2019, see Differences between SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019.
Detailed description of new features
This section provides detailed descriptions of the new updated features in SharePoint Server 2019.
Access Services 2013 now supports Send Email
The Access Services 2013 service application now supports the SendEmail action for sending email messages from apps. See Introducing Send Email in Access 2013 web apps for more details.
Additional documentation links for Central Administration site
We've made it easier for farm administrators to reach the latest SharePoint administration documentation and find the latest Public Updates by adding links in the SharePoint Central Administration homepage.
Communication sites
Communication sites are a place to share news, showcase a story, or broadcast a message to other people. The new Hero web part can display up to five items with compelling images, text, and links to draw attention to your most important content. Users can easily create communication sites for themselves from SharePoint Home without needing to contact IT.
Create fast sites
Fast site creation in SharePoint Server 2019 allows users to create new sites in a few seconds. Fast site creation is only supported with the following site templates:
OneDrive personal site [SPSPERS#10]
Team site (modern only) [STS#3]
Communication site [SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0]
Fast site creation is used when creating sites in the following entry points:
OneDrive personal site auto-provisioning
The Create Site button in SharePoint Home
The New-SPSite PowerShell cmdlet with the -CreateFromSiteMaster switch parameter#
Increased storage file size in SharePoint document libraries
We now support storing files up to 15 GB in SharePoint document libraries. This is up from 10 GB in SharePoint Server 2016.
Modern lists and libraries
SharePoint Server 2019 contains the modern experiences for lists and libraries in Team sites. This brings the experience up to date with that found in SharePoint in Microsoft 365.
Modern sharing experiences
SharePoint Server 2019 now supports modern sharing experiences with a simplified sharing UI. You can now easily share links to content with others in your organization. You can also be warned if you're sharing to a large group or sharing a large number of items.
Modern Site Pages, modern web parts and authoring
SharePoint Server 2019 users can now add modern site pages and modern web parts on team sites. Do this in the Add a Page in Site Actions or in the pages library by selecting New > Site Page.
Modern search experience
SharePoint Server 2019 offers a modern search experience in addition to the classic one.
In the modern search experience, the most visible difference for users is that they see results before they start typing in the search box, and the results update as they type. Learn about the modern search experience.
There are some differences between the search experiences from a search administrator's perspective, learn about these differences.
Modern Team sites
Modern team sites bring a fresh and responsive user experience to team collaboration. The redesigned homepage improves the discoverability of the most common collaboration tasks while putting your team's news front and center. Users can easily create modern team sites for themselves from SharePoint Home without needing to contact IT.
SharePoint Server 2019 will continue to support creating classic team sites.
Integration with Power Apps, Power BI and Power Automate
SharePoint Server 2019 brings cloud closer to the Customers and Customers closer to the cloud. The cloud features Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Automate are now available. SharePoint Server 2019 includes process automation and forms technologies like Power Apps and Power Automate to connect with your on-premises data. These features need to be configured via gateway.
SharePoint using modern Internet Information Services (IIS) APIs
SharePoint has modernized its integration with IIS by removing all of our dependencies on the legacy IIS6 APIs. SharePoint now uses the IIS7+ APIs to manage IIS, which are the latest and best supported APIs from the IIS team. This allows us to more easily adopt new IIS features and stay compatible with future Windows Server releases.
As a result of this change, the following Windows Server features will no longer be installed by the SharePoint prerequisite installer:
IIS 6 Management Compatibility (Web-Mgmt-Compat)
IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility (Web-Metabase)
IIS 6 Scripting Tools (Web-Lgcy-Scripting)
SharePoint home page
The SharePoint home page is a modern UI experience that gives users unified access to all of their sites—online and on-premises. It allows users to navigate seamlessly through their intranet, catch up with activity across their sites with just a glance, and provides a personalized view of all team news.
The SharePoint home page is also the launching point for users to create new, modern sites on a self-service basis.
You can reach the SharePoint home page by clicking on the "SharePoint" icon in the SharePoint app launcher. The SharePoint home page replaces the old sites.aspx experience. For more information, see Enable SharePoint home page in SharePoint Server 2019 farms.
From the SharePoint home page, you can create sites in different web applications
The self-service site creation experience in the SharePoint home page now supports creating new sites in a different web application, regardless of whether the web application is hosted on the local farm or a remote farm. This is controlled by the When users select the Create site command, create setting on the Self-service Site Collection Management page in Central Administration.
To create sites in the same web application, select This web application.
To create sites in a different web application on the local farm, select The following web application and then select the web application from the drop-down field. Ensure self-service site creation is enabled in the target web application.
To create sites in a different web application on a remote farm, follow these steps:
In the local farm hosting the SharePoint home page, use the Map to External Resource feature in Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) to provide the URL of the web application you want to create sites in.
In the local farm hosting the SharePoint home page, on the Self-service Site Collection Management page for the web application hosting the SharePoint home page, select The following web application, and then select the remote web application from the drop-down field.
In the remote farm, use the Map to External Resource feature in Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) to provide the URL of the web application hosting the SharePoint home page.
In the remote farm, on the Self-service Site Collection Management page for the web application you want to create the sites in, ensure self-service site creation is enabled.
Self-service site creation on the SharePoint home page now supports AAM zones
The self-service site creation experience on the SharePoint home page now fully supports non-Default Alternate Access Mapping (AAM) zones. When creating sites in a different web application on a remote farm, make sure that an external resource has been created in AAM on both the local farm and the remote farm. This applies to sites created in the same web application, sites created in a different web application on the local farm, and sites created in a different web application on a remote farm.
SharePoint will treat the external resource as an external web application. The external resource on the local farm should be fully populated with the URLs and zones of the web application on the remote farm. And conversely, the external resource on the remote farm should be fully populated with the URLs and zones of the web application on the local farm. Be sure that the zones of the local web application and the remote web application are synchronized. For more information, see Configure self-service site creation in SharePoint Server 2019.
SMTP authentication when sending emails
SharePoint Server 2019 now supports authenticating to SMTP servers when sending email messages. Authentication can be configured through the Central Administration website and through PowerShell. SharePoint Server 2019 will still support anonymous connections to SMTP servers that don't require authentication. This makes it easier for customers to integrate SharePoint into highly secure environments where authentication is required to send emails. Customers no longer need to configure smart host relays for SharePoint in these environments. For more information, see Plan outgoing email for a SharePoint Server farm and Configure outgoing email for a SharePoint Server farm.
Sync files with the new OneDrive sync app (OneDrive.exe)
Users can use the new OneDrive sync app (OneDrive.exe) instead of the previous OneDrive sync app (Groove.exe) to sync files in your SharePoint Server 2019 team sites and personal sites with your devices. The new OneDrive sync app supports advanced features such as Files On-Demand, push notification, and IRM protection, while still being easy to use. For more information, see configure-syncing-with-the-onedrive-sync-app.
Use of # and % characters in file and folder names
SharePoint Server 2019 now supports # and % characters in file and folder names, completing our support for all valid Windows file and folder name characters. This makes it easier to sync to content from personal storage devices to SharePoint.
Detailed description of new Microsoft PowerShell SharePoint Server cmdlets
This section lists the new PowerShell cmdlets for SharePoint Server 2019.
New User Profile Synchronization PowerShell cmdlets
The "stsadm.exe -o sync" command has been converted into several PowerShell cmdlets:
Get-SPContentDatabase - You can now use the Get-SPContentDatabase cmdlet with the optional parameter -DaysSinceLastProfileSync to return content databases that haven't been synchronized with User Profile for the past n days.
Clear-SPContentDatabaseSyncData - The new Clear-SPContentDatabaseSyncData cmdlet clears User Profile synchronization information from the content databases in the farm that haven't been synchronized for the past n days.
Update-SPProfileSync - The new Update-SPProfileSync cmdlet updates the User Profile synchronization settings to specify the main synchronization schedule, the sweep schedule to identify new users, and which web applications should be excluded from synchronization.
The "stsadm.exe -o sync" command will still be supported for backward compatibility.
New Get-SPContentDatabaseOrphanedData PowerShell cmdlet
The "stsadm.exe -o enumallwebs" command has been converted into a PowerShell cmdlet. You can now use the new Get-SPContentDatabaseOrphanedData cmdlet to find orphaned objects within a content database. The "stsadm.exe -o enumallwebs" command will still be supported for backward compatibility.
New Set-SPApplicationCredentialKey PowerShell cmdlet
The "stsadm.exe -o setapppassword" command has been converted into a PowerShell cmdlet. You can now use the new Set-SPApplicationCredentialKey cmdlet to set the application credential key on the local server for the SharePoint People Picker and SMTP authentication. The "stsadm.exe -o setapppassword" command will still be supported for backward compatibility.
New Remove-SPApplicationCredentialKey PowerShell cmdlet
The new Remove-SPApplicationCredentialKey cmdlet allows you to remove the application credential key from the local server. The impact level of this cmdlet is set to high, as removing the application credential key from the local server may degrade or block the functionality of features if they're configured to use the application credential key. For example, the SharePoint People Picker or SMTP authentication.
Detailed description of new SharePoint Health Analyzer rules
This section lists the new Health Analyzer rules for SharePoint Server 2019.
People Picker health rule
SharePoint has added a new health analyzer rule for the People Picker. This health analyzer rule detects if servers in the farm are missing the encryption key needed to retrieve People Picker credentials, such as when the People Picker is configured to search for users in another forest or domain with a one-way trust to the SharePoint farm's domain. If so, it will notify the SharePoint farm administrator so that they can correct the problem. For more information, see One or more servers can't retrieve People Picker credentials.
SMTP authentication health rule
SharePoint has added a new health analyzer rule for SMTP authentication. This health analyzer rule detects if servers in the farm are missing the encryption key needed to retrieve the credentials for authentication. If so, it will notify the SharePoint farm administrator so that they can correct the problem. For more information, see One or more servers can't retrieve the outgoing email credentials.
Detailed description of improved features
This section provides detailed descriptions of the updated features in SharePoint Server 2019.
Distributed Cache now uses background garbage collection by default
Distributed Cache will now configure AppFabric Velocity Cache to use background garbage collection. This helps provide a more reliable experience for features that depend on Distributed Cache.
File path limit of 400 characters
SharePoint Server 2019 has increased the maximum file path length limit from 260 characters to 400 characters. The file path is everything after the server name and port number in the URL. File path includes the name of the site and subsites, document library, folders, and the file itself. This file path length limit increase makes it easier to sync deeply nested content from personal storage devices to SharePoint.
Hybrid experiences improvements
The "OneDrive by Default" experience for SharePoint Server 2013 is now available in SharePoint Server 2019. When enabled, any attempt to browse to the My Site Host welcome page will be redirected to Microsoft 365.
A SharePoint hybrid status bar was added to the top of Central Administration. The hybrid status bar will appear once the SharePoint Server 2019 farm meets the minimum system requirements needed to enable hybrid, and will give you direct access to launch the SharePoint Hybrid Configuration Wizard.
We've added and updated hybrid links throughout Central Administration to launch the SharePoint Hybrid Configuration Wizard. This lets you skip clicking through multiple pages in the SharePoint admin center just to get to the SharePoint Hybrid Configuration Wizard.
Recycle Bin restore improvements
SharePoint Server 2019 users can now restore items that they've deleted themselves, and also items that other users in the site have deleted. Users need edit permission on the deleted items so they're visible in their SharePoint recycle bin.
Sharing email template
Sharing email notifications have been refreshed to use a modern template design. Customers can set the SPWebApplication.SharingEmailUseSharePoint2016Templates property to true if they want to continue using the previous sharing email template.
Suite Navigation and App Launcher improvements
We've refreshed Suite Navigation and App Launcher in SharePoint Server 2019. The user interface now is closely aligned with what is seen in Microsoft 365 so that SharePoint hybrid customers will have a seamless experience as they move between SharePoint Server 2019 and SharePoint in Microsoft 365.
Telemetry privacy experience
SharePoint Server 2019 now has an updated telemetry management experience. When you first set up a farm or browse to the SharePoint privacy settings page in Central Administration, you can now provide an email address for the telemetry contact of your organization. This is in anticipation of future telemetry reporting capabilities that will allow customers to associate SharePoint Server and OneDrive sync app telemetry with their hybrid tenancy.
The email address provided is not sent outside of the SharePoint farm, not even to Microsoft. It is used in combination with other farm data to generate a unique hash value to represent your farm when uploading telemetry data to Microsoft. When customers want to associate telemetry with their hybrid tenancy, this email address will be part of the process to prove ownership of the telemetry data.
Customers can opt in and opt out of the telemetry experience at any time.
Visio Services accessibility
Visio Services is introducing several accessibility improvements for high contrast displays, keyboard navigation, and Narrator. Users can access different panes with the following shortcuts:
Move focus to Comment pane = Alt + R
Move focus to Shape data pane = Alt + S
Move focus to Canvas = Alt + C