What SharePoint 2013 CU you should target if you plan to move to 2013 this year?

If you plan to upgrade to SharePoint 2013 this year, you might wonder which version or CU you would target. At this time July 2013, there are three CUs available and there are two more CUs could be released by end the year. Let’s review what have been released in each CU and you might get the answer yourself which CU you will target to go-live. 

Due to a change in the package configuration introduced after SharePoint 2013 RTM the March Public update is a mandatory requirement. As a result, all Update for SharePoint 2013 require March 2013 PU for SharePoint 2013 to be installed first.

1. March CU major fixes

• Picture libraries are not updated from 2010 bug
• Feed for the discussion post is not displayed in the My Newsfeed section
• Error run a complex query or import a large amount of data in Microsoft Access 2013
• Search performance on 2013
• Search results is greater than the expected number on sites with Cross-Site Publishing feature
• Search an item on the site error when site that is not in your trusted sites list
• Search crawl error  on a list that contains many columns in SharePoint Server 2013
• And more …
   

2. April CU major fixes - Need March CU installed first

• Attachment on discussion on a SharePoint Server 2010 site not displayed after you upgrade the site to a SharePoint Server 2013 site
• Managed properties are not displayed in the correct Search Service application if install multiple Search Service applications in SharePoint Server 2013

 

3. June CU major fixes- Need March CU installed first

• The individual term on the term profile page on a SharePoint Server 2013 farm cannot be opened as expected
• When you have a list in SharePoint Server 2013, the SharePoint List Filter Web Part shows filter options for only the first 200 items
• When you open a document that is located in the local folder of a SharePoint Server 2013 document library, the document takes a roundtrip route to the SharePoint Server 2013 server. Therefore, it takes longer than expected to open the document.
• Assume that you configure a workflow to start when a new item is created in an email message-enabled SharePoint Server 2013 document library. When you create a new item to start the workflow, the initiator of the workflow is a system account.
• Excel Web App hotfix
• And much more …

The June CU includes fixes to issues related to rendering content after being upgraded from SP 2010, so something important. It also includes the following fixes on the search side:

“Increases crawling capacity up to 200M docs and increase Admin component robustness. This will also allow multiple SSAs in the same farm to work properly and enable switching between FQL/KQL in the same SSA successfully which is important for apps using the same SSA.”

If you plan to upgrade SharePoint 2013 now, you should use at least March 2013 CU instead of RTM version. This way, you could avoid one CU upgrade down the road.

Microsoft informed us that they are planning on more enhancements for search in the next CU in August that will allow larger servers perform better with indexing (12+ core). If this isn’t so important for you, we would plan for June2013 CU to be your production patching level for SP 2013.