Whats new in Exchange Server 2016

1. Architecture

With Exchange 2016, Microsoft reduced the number of server roles to two: the Mailbox and Edge Transport server roles. 

Mailbox services include all the traditional server components found in the Exchange 2013 Mailbox server role: the Client Access protocols, Transport service, Mailbox databases, and Unified Messaging. The Mailbox server handles all activity for the active mailboxes on that server.

Along with the new Mailbox role, Exchange 2016 now allows you to proxy traffic from Exchange 2013 to Exchange 2016 in addition to Exchange 2016 to Exchange 2013. This new flexibility gives you more control in how you move to Exchange 2016 without having to worry about deploying enough front-end capacity to service new Exchange 2016 servers.

2. Outlook on the web (formerly Outlook Web App)

Outlook Web App is now known as Outlook on the web, which continues to let users access their Exchange mailbox from almost any Web browser.

Supported Web browsers for Outlook on the web in Exchange 2016 are Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer 11, and the most recent versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari.

3. Support for modern authentication for Outlook

Exchange 2016 brings support the Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL) authentication model in Outlook clients on Windows, Android, and other platforms. ADAL enables functionality like two-factor authentication to help improve security of your data.

4. MAPI over HTTP 

MAPI over HTTP is now the default protocol that Outlook uses to communicate with Exchange. MAPI over HTTP improves the reliability and stability of the Outlook and Exchange connections by moving the transport layer to the industry-standard HTTP model. clients that don't support it will fall back to Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP).

MAPI over HTTP isn't enable in organizations where the following are true:

• You're installing Exchange 2016 in an organization that already has Exchange 2013 servers installed.
• MAPI over HTTP wasn't enabled in Exchange 2013.

5. Document Collaboration

Exchange 2016 will enable Outlook on the web users to link to and share documents stored in OneDrive for Business in an on-premises SharePoint server instead of attaching a file to the message.

If a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file stored in OneDrive for Business or on-premises SharePoint is included in an email received by a user on Exchange 2016, the user will now have the option of viewing and editing that file in Outlook on the web alongside the message. To do this, you'll need a separate computer running the next version of "Office Web Apps vNext" server in your on-premises organization.

6. Auto-expanding archives

Exchange 2016 offers truly unlimited archiving with auto-expanding archives. In Exchange 2016, you enable an archive mailbox by using one of the same methods you used in Exchange 2013. By default, the initial storage quota for the archive mailbox is 100 GB. When the size of the archive mailbox reaches the 100 GB quota, Exchange 2016 will automatically increase the size of the archive in 50 GB increments.

Note : Users can access the additional storage in the archive mailbox with Outlook 2016 or Outlook on the web. However, Outlook 2013 will only see the initial 100GB of storage.

7. Improved Data Loss Prevention and Transport rules

With a DLP policy in Exchange 2016, you can now identify, monitor, and protect 80 different types of sensitive information

These features are new to transport rules in Exchange 2016:

• Exchange transport rules can now identify 80 different types of sensitive information. For more information on these sensitive information types, see Sensitive information types inventory.
• With the new condition Any attachment has these properties, including any of these words, a transport rule can match messages where the specified property of the attached Office document contains specified words. This condition makes it easy to integrate your Exchange transport rules and DLP policies with SharePoint Server, Windows Server 2012 R2 File Classification Infrastructure (FCI), or a third-party classification system.
• With the new action Notify the recipient with a message, a transport rule can send a notification to the recipient with the text you specify -- for example, you can inform the recipient that the message was rejected by a transport rule, or that it was marked as spam and will be delivered to their Junk Email folder.
• The action Generate incident report and send it to has been updated so that the incident report can now be sent to multiple distribution lists.