SharePoint Framework

SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is a fantastic development model on top of (modern) SharePoint, for user interface extensibility, and it have evolved tremendously over the last year since it became general available. The framework is based on JavaScript extensibility in a controlled manner, compared to the older JavaScript injection mechanisms we used to extend (classic) SharePoint, that comes with a lot of power. Using SharePoint Framework our JavaScript has access to the whole DOM in the browser, meaning that we can do essentially what we want with the user interface – however, of course, we shouldn’t, only certain parts of the DOM are allowed/supported for modification. These areas are the custom client-side Web Parts we build (that squared box) or specific place holders (currently only two of them; top and bottom). For me that’s fine (although there’s a need for some more placeholders), but if you want to destroy the UX it is all up to you.

If you are an ISV or SI with multiple clients and are interested in building SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solutions that you would like to re-use you will face a huge issue when it comes to reference SharePoint JavaScript files and reference your SharePoint Framework bundles. All these URL’s are hardcoded into your solution configuration files and requires you to update these files and rebuild for each and every client environment. And not only that even in your own development team this will cause issues if you don’t have a shared development environment.

Let me start with congratulating the SharePoint Framework team on an amazing job and an amazing journey reaching this GA milestone. A Big Thanks from the team here in Redmond to everyone who helped us to get to GA! #SPFx #SharePoint #SharePointFramework pic.twitter.com/czo2Duon7z — Chakkaradeep (@chakkaradeep) February 24, 2017 The SharePoint Framework plays a significant part of the SharePoint future, yes - this is only the first version with a lot of new features on the way, and it is a part of the new SharePoint wave. I’ve haven’t seen this interest in SharePoint for many years and I’m glad I’m still in this business. Delivering top notch collaboration solutions for our clients at Avanade. The SharePoint Framework will make it easier for us to customize SharePoint and it will also bring a lot more value for our clients in the end allowing them to stay evergreen and not being tied into “workarounds” and pesky SharePoint Designer hacks or arbitrary JavaScript snippets.

One of the key parts of SharePoint Web Parts is the ability to have them configurable using the Web Part properties. This story is still true with client-side Web Parts in the new SharePoint Framework. In this post I will show you one of the more common scenarios; how to populate drop downs (and other fields) in the property pane dynamically. But also show you how what’s wrong with the current implementation.

SharePoint developers - we do like GUIDs, don’t we. We all read RFC4122 both once and twice. And now with SharePoint Framework and the goal to embrace all them Macintosh and open source people - they gotta have their fair share of GUIDs. And to aid with that the SharePoint Framework got some really nice GUID features, although a bit unpolished as you might notice - but this is all preview bits at the time of writing.

I guess that almost every application or solution you ever built has contained some portions of a logging mechanism. And how many of you have written your own - yup, all of you! But what about the SharePoint Framework - yes, it has built-in logging! How to log in the SharePoint Framework Logging is a very convenient and easy way to keep track of events happening, instead of having breakpoints, or in JavaScript even worse - alerts. The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) has as all decent frameworks a built-in logging mechanism, albeit very simple, but still yet valuable. It’s contained in the @microsoft/sp-client-base module and the class is called Log. To use it in your SharePoint Framework solutions you need to import it as follows:

Do you write code that potentially can throw an error or an exception? Oh, you don’t - but sure you use a web service or external service or something that can throw an error. Well, it is you responsibility to handle the error and make sure to inform the user in a good way that something bad happened. With that I mean, do not show just a Guid. With the SharePoint Framework being all client side I think it is important to have control of your client side Web Parts and make sure that you properly handle and display error messages in a consistent way. In this short post I will not go in to the JavaScript error handling details, but rather show you another nugget in the SharePoint Framework that helps you render error messages in a standardized and consistent way.

SharePoint Framework is all about rendering stuff on the client side, avoiding the long overdue ASP.NET Web Forms technology that SharePoint (Online) is still fundamentally based on. When rendering things client side everything is done asynchronously, to avoid locking down the UI threads and having a user experience that is fluent. In order to give the user good feedback that things are happening in the background, you need to have some kind of visual cue that tells the user - hey I’m doing stuff now, gimme a minute. There are thousands of different ways to do this and everyone does it differently; ranging from animated gifs to “loading” texts. And everyone using different methods does not always help with the user experience - so why don’t we have a common way to do this?

Summer is over, slacking time is over, it’s time to get up to speed and learn some new stuff. There’s very much to talk about this fall if you’re interested in SharePoint. And this fall I will do a couple of conferences as a speaker, which I very much looking forward to. TechDays 2016, Amsterdam For the first time I will attend and present at the TechDays 2016 in Amsterdam, the 4th and 5th of October. A local conference hosted by Microsoft. I will present three sessions:

At the Future of SharePoint event in San Francisco on May the 4th Microsoft announced the new and improved customization option and/or development model called the SharePoint Framework. This is a development model that solely focused on client-side development. There’s been some confusion going on on Twitter and other social medias and podcasts and I thought I should put together an Q&A post for this.

Today is the day many of us have been waiting for since the big SharePoint event at May the 4th. The highly anticipated SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is here and announced in at the SharePointFest, in this blog post, as well as in the new Github repo for SharePoint. Personally I’ve been waiting for this even longer after being involved by the product team to give early feedback and also attending the first top secret DevKitchen “hackathons” where we could try out very early bits.

The Office Roadmap updates with the new announcements from the Future of SharePoint event has arrived (they arrived May the 4th to be precise). I’m back from the event and San Francisco and I’m full of the energy that the SharePoint team transmitted. You should specifically take a look at the In Development part here. That’s where we got the new and fresh stuff from the Future of SharePoint event. Changes 2016-06-06 Now Launched Delve Analytics: Do you want all the details on how and when you work Delve Details and an E5 subscription is all you need (from in development) Drive Shipping and Network Based Data Import for Office 365: Fast Track is getting more and more mature with import options (from in development) FastTrack | Box to OneDrive for Business Migration: Still using Box? Get your files over to OneDrive with Fast Track (from in development) FastTrack | Expanded language support: More languages available in the FastTrack (new) FastTrack | Power BI onboarding support: And Fast Track Power BI is now live (from in development) Multiple timeline bars in Project Online: This must be one of the features that’s been jumping back and forth the most on the roadmap (from rolling out) Office 365 Groups: multi-domain support: This is one of the most important feature releases of Groups. Read this article for full details and configuration options. (from in development) Office 365 Reporting Dashboard: Better reporting in the admin center (from rolling gout) OneDrive for Business Recent Files to Sway: Easier access to your OneDrive docs in Sway (from in development) Skype for Business App SDK: Get your coding skills on and build some Skype Apps (from in development) Skype for Business Mac Preview 1: The long awaited Skype Mac client is not out. Feedback on it has been moderate at best though (from in development) Updated people profile experience in Office 365: The Delve profile page is now fully rolled out. I wonder if Delve will stay as the document discovery feature or if it just will be renamed to “My Profile” or “People” or something, which would make total sense(new) Yammer user profile update from Azure AD: The one-time sync from Azure AD is now launched. Wonder if we ever will see a proper sync? (from in development) Rolling out Basic Chat: Basic Skype chat from the Skype icon in mail - it doesn’t say that it’s web based, but I guess it is(new) Office 365 Groups: usage guidelines: A very important update, this allows you to modify the usage guidelines for Groups (another feature copied from Yammer) (from in development) SharePoint Online - modern document library experience: The new doc lib experience, mayhaps rolled out a bit early and without any guidance (new) In Development eDiscovery Case Management, Hold & Permissions: more permissions control for eDiscovery and compliance stuff (from rolling out) New AutoCAD file format support in Visio: AutoCAD file support in Visio… (from rolling out) Office 365 Groups: search Groups files using Office Delve: Searching should now show documents from Groups (new) SharePoint home in Office 365: Finally Office 365 and SharePoint will get a proper home page. The Sites tile will be renamed and now point to this page. You can read more about this feature here. (New) SharePoint Online – Client-side Web Part for Existing SharePoint Pages: The new customization features announced at the Future of SharePoint Event. Client-side Web Parts created using the new SharePoint Framework on existing SharePoint pages. Read my post about it here (new) SharePoint Online - modern lists experience: A new lists experience, very similar to the new doc lib experience. A great and modern looking UX. (new) SharePoint Online - SharePoint Framework: The new client-side framework that will be used to make the future customizations and development of SharePoint. This is the Framework that Microsoft will build the new “NextGen” portals and the one we will use. There’s much more to read about this here. (new) SharePoint Online - Site activity and insights on the Site Contents page: Each site will get its own set of statistics that shows you how the site is used and what activities are going on (new) SharePoint Online – Webhooks on SharePoint Document Libraries: One of the first new extensions to the SharePoint APIs. I’m glad they are using standardized Webhooks, instead of some weird remote event receivers. Hopefully we’ll get the same for lists (new) The new SharePoint mobile app for iOS: Announced as the “Intranet in your Pocket”. The new SharePoint App will first come for iOS (actually I’m already using it) and then later for Android, and if Windows Phone is still alive by the end of this year those two users might get it as well (new) Cancelled Class Notebook: limit sharing and deletion of section groups: This is just weird, this was rolled out the other week and is now all of a sudden cancelled (from rolling out)