After installing the new SharePoint 2010 beta I stared blankly at it wondering where to begin. So, after some consideration I’m going to begin at the beginning in an attempt to identify the new and the different, one feature at a time. Welcome to part one in a multi part series where I’m going to focus on the mapping of functionality from 2007 to 2010 rather than how it works or how to use it… consider this an inventory. In part one I’m going to cover the Central Administration Application Management page.

Roll over the SharePoint 2007 screenshots below to learn what’s new regarding that functionality in SharePoint 2010.

Application Management

SharePoint Web Application Management

• Create or extend web application
  Ability to select between claims based authentication and class mode authentication. Ability to select a failover database server to be used in conjunction with SQL mirroring. Ability to assign service applications individually to the newly created web application. It’s also worth mentioning that creating and extending web applications has been split into separate buttons which reduces click count but with no other notable changes.
  
  
• Remove SharePoint from IIS Web site
  UI has been moved to a sub menu under the delete button on the ribbon. No functional changes.
• Delete Web Application
  No changes.
• Define managed paths
  No changes.
• Web application outgoing e-mail settings
  UI moved to sub menu under the General Settings ribbon button. No functional changes.
• Web application general Settings
  Addition of Master Page Setting for Application _Layouts Pages. This excellent addition means that your layout pages can now reference your site master pages to provide a fully branded experience (in theory). You can turn this functionality off at the web application in case of a masterpage error that prevents system pages from loading. Changelog management has been removed. Backward-compatible event handler functionality has been removed… this was off by default and I personally never used it anyways. You now have some control over how headers are sent. You can either set it to strict which will force the download of certain file types or permissive which sends no headers but may improve user experience in some cases.
  
• Content databases
  This has been moved to Application Management > Manage Content Databases. You can now easily see the version numbers for the database schema, specify a fail over server for SQL mirroring and isolate timer jobs associated with the current database to a specific SharePoint server.
  
  
  
• Manage Web application features
  One new feature available: Document Sets metadata synchronization
  
• Web application list
  The link to this is now called Manage web applications and is located under Application management.

SharePoint Site Management

• Create site collection
  No changes.
• Delete site collection
  No changes.
• Site use confirmation and deletion
  No changes.
• Quota templates
  Limits pertaining to user solutions. Sends emails when the warning is reached. Disables all user solutions for the rest of the day when the maximum is reached and sends an email to the administrator.
  
• Site collection quotas and locks
  Configure resource quotas pertaining to user solutions.
• Site collection administrators
  No changes.
• Site collection list
  No changes.

External Service Connections

UI moved to General Application Settings > External Service Connections.

• Records center
  Removed. SharePoint now supports multiple records centers and records management functionality can be used globally to allow inplace records management. Configuring send to record center can now be done globally using “Configure send to connections” under General Application Settings > External Service Connections.
• HTML viewer
  Removed from what I can tell.
• Document conversions
  No changes.

InfoPath Forms Services

UI moved to General Application Settings > InfoPath Forms Services

• Manage form templates
  New form templates added. Haven’t yet identified what the new templates are for but some seem to be for document routing.
• Configure InfoPath Forms Services
  No longer have the ability to store session state in the form view. Probably unnecessary with InfoPath 2010 upgrades and SharePoint performance enhancements.
• Upload form template
  No changes.
• Manage data connections
  No changes.
• Manage the Web service proxy
  No changes.

Office SharePoint Server Shared Services

The concept of shared services has been completely revamped. I’ll cover this in a dedicated section for the Shared Service Provider.

Configure session state

I couldn’t find this anywhere so I assume its been removed from the UI.

Application Security

• Security for Web Part pages
  Renamed to “Manage web part security” under the General Security section. Includes the ability to manage scriptable web parts (either allow or prevent).
• Self-service site management
  No changes.
• User permissions for Web application
  I couldn’t find an equivalent in the UI… yet.
• Policy for Web application
  No changes.
• Authentication providers
  New ability to control access to the client object model. You can require that the user must have the Use Remote Interfaces permission in order to use the Client Object Model to access the server. The Client Object Model is used by some parts of the UI.