What's New in Windows Server Essentials

 

The following topic describes the new features for the current release of the Windows Server Essentials documentation.

What’s New for Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials and Windows Server 2012 R2

General Update

• The features of Windows Server Essentials are available in three SKU’s: in the standalone Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials, and as a role in Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard and Datacenter.

Development

• The Windows Server Essentials templates are now available through the Visual Studio Gallery. Previously, the templates were located in a .zip file in the SDK. However, you still need to download the SDK in order to develop applications for Windows Server Essentials.

Homepage

• The Quick Status tasks, which were available (but undocumented) in the previous release, have been documented. For more information, see Extend Setup, Quick Status, and Help.

• Common Tasks have been renamed to Startup Tasks, but are programmatically identical. Similarly, Community Links have been moved to the Help tab, but are accessed using the same XML and API’s.

Remote Web Access

• Added the Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Web.Storage and Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.WebApi.Management namespaces, which expose remote access to storage and management API’s.

Management Features

• The Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Groups now grants access to management features for groups, while the Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.AzureADIntegration namespace exposes Azure Active Directory functionality.

REST Interfaces

• New interfaces for storage (files, hard drives, and folders), management features, and file operations. The following list describes the new or updated members:

  • Retrieve Server Information– now requires authorization.

  • Retrieve Customized Information

  • Search for a List of Files or Folders

  • Copy an Item

  • Move an Item

  • Retrieve User Connection Information

  • Create a Share Folder

  • Rename a Shared Folder

  • Retrieve a Server that can Host a Shared Folder

  • Retrieve a Storage Drive that can Host a Shared Folder

Deprecated Features

• The Monitoring Health By Using Multiple Providers, the Dashboard, and Remote Web Access topic and subtopics was removed. The code sample these topics were based on was out of date, and the features displayed are covered by other topics.

• A number of namespaces and objects have been removed from the object model. However, most of the objects removed were designed for internal operations only, and were either undocumented or else given the “Internal only; do not use” boilerplate text.

• Because the current version of the product is a role in Windows Server 2012, the SupportedSKUs Element and Sku Element topics were removed from the Metadata XML Schema Reference. Previous versions of the product may still use those elements in the metadata files for their add-in packages.