Added Features

2019 features can be clubbed under the below segments

1. Modern Experience
2. File / Folder feature enhancements
3. Cloud tools integration – Power Tools

SharePoint 2019 brings communication sites to on-premises users. This much-awaited modern feature offers teams a responsive, intelligent way to share news, documents and important information with each other. Users can quickly and autonomously create new communication sites from the SharePoint home page using ready to use templates

In SharePoint Server 2019, new team sites are now modern by default (classic is still supported). Noteworthy features of modern team sites include:

• A redesigned homepage that keeps the most relevant team news front and center
• Modern lists and libraries
• A modern search experience that suggests relevant content before users even start typing
• Just like with communication sites, users can now quickly create new team sites from the new SharePoint home page without having to go through IT.

Site pages in SharePoint 2019 can be customized with a selection of new, modern web parts that don’t require any code to use (plus, developers can use the SharePoint Framework to build custom ones).

Modern lists and libraries

Finally, on-premises users can easily add columns and rows to SharePoint lists. Another new addition is the ability to format columns using JSON markup (similar to conditional formatting in Excel), which provides a simple-yet-powerful filtering experience.

SharePoint Server 2019 removes several annoying restrictions when it comes to file and folder names and sizes:

• File and folder names now support all special characters (including # and %, which were missing in previous versions)
• The file path length limit has been increased to 400 characters and now supports # and %
•  SharePoint document libraries now support files up to 15GB (up from 10GB in SharePoint 2016), which is on par (finally!) with SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business

Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Automate can be used to connect with on-premises SharePoint and Application data. To use these applications a gateway needs to be configured to access the on-premise data.

Apart from the newly added features, below is listed the set of deprecated and discontinued features

The basic premise to use the modern site features - is that if Customers want their users to be self-enabled and be able to create, share and freely use the environment, in a way as is provided, then, the modern experience is the way to go.

However, if the intent is to Customize, centralize the Administration and distribution of apps and features, the preferred mode is still the Classic experience.

The Classic SharePoint publishing site is typically used to create intranet and communication portals. These sites are typically more structured and built using a master page and site publishing template. Because a publishing portal is a site collection, it may also include sub sites. A complete solution for a publishing site may involve deeper design and development work to create custom master pages and design page layouts.

A communication site doesn't rely on activation of publishing features; doesn't use a master page; and is generally less structured. It is designed to be used without sub-sites. It uses modern pages and web parts. While there is less structure and enforcement on a communication site, it is easy to create a beautiful, mobile-ready page without code. 

Using the Power Apps tools

The future of Sharepoint is centered around the Power Platform – PowerApps, Power BI and Power Automate. Since these are cloud-based tools, and may never be released on premise, adopting the technology is the recommended way to go