Recently, Microsoft announced the general availability of the SharePoint Framework. With this, developers and SharePoint development services companies could use modern web tools and technologies in the development environment they prefer to create applications and experiences on the framework, which are mobile-ready and responsive. When it comes to developing SharePoint solutions, programmers and developers could start creating client-side web parts with the use of modern script development tools as well as the SharePoint Workbench. Furthermore, they could deploy client-side web parts to class web part pages in Office 365 Developer tenants. It works beside common scripting frameworks, which include AngularJS, together with JavaScript. For instance, React, together with Office UI components, it could rapidly build experiences that’s based on the same components used in Office 365.
The general availability is arguably the upgrade that any SharePoint development company and the developer community has been most eager to their hands on. Practically, this means the utilization of web technologies for building apps on SharePoint, which are responsive, agile and again mobile friendly. SharePoint has been used as an app and development platform for quite some time now. It provides multiple sets of customization and SharePoint development options. The release of the framework is a huge step in boosting the developer experience, that’s often been characterized as difficult and clumsy. The framework provides developers access to libraries and tools, enabling development at a pace that reflects the fast changing enterprise technology scenario as well as worker expectations. The move was unveiled during a San Francisco Future of SharePoint event in San Francisco, where Jeff Teper, the corporate VP for the OneDrive and SP teams outlined the mobile-first, cloud-first vision and the SharePoint roadmap. Teper pointed to some pending new upgrades and releases, which were designed to allow organizations and teams to discover, share and collaborate content intelligently anywhere and on any device.
Developers required a more efficient model and tool chain, which enables them to scale beyond the latest constraints. The client-side development framework would deliver capabilities, which will help Microsoft partners, engineers, customers and developers all over the community to build rich, powerful apps. Agile development capabilities are a major element in creating and boosting the platform. Microsoft has demonstrated the company commitment over the past year through enhancing Team Sites, making pages easier, updating document libraries and in general making SP more accessible to enterprise workers. At the Microsoft Ignite, the SharePoint Framework was one of the top discussed things on Twitter among the technologies of Microsoft during the event. The contributions of the community to the evolving framework has been strong, with dozens and dozens of blog posts on techniques and tools from the community, exploring different techniques and facets of building parts. Now, more than 30 code samples are live in the GitHub repository for code samples, a lot of which were created by the community. Beside a rich set of web parts with the platform, developers could also build completely new web parts.
The announcement of the new SP framework does not deprecate any of the existing development models. On the contrary, when the framework gets released, it would yet be another asset in the developer toolbox and a huge plus in the SharePoint development training. Although it has not been released yet, it is good to begin thinking about various scenarios in which one could benefit or not benefit from it. The best way to explain which scenarios are the best for using the new SharePoint Frameworks is illustrating them with examples. Using it, one could build solutions consisting 100 percent JavaScript. Similar to SP solutions built in past with the use of jQuery, Knockout, Angular and JSOM, such solutions will be fully executed in the browser. Using TypeScript to create the solutions is an intelligent choice because it adds an extra validation layer, but not required. Either way, eventually, what is executed in the browser is plain JavaScript. Nonetheless, with the same framework one could build more complex solutions, which combine the modern SP UX as well as the power of the add-in model for code security and isolation. Thus, while the SharePoint Framework solutions could be 100 percent JavaScript, they do not necessarily have to. Most probably, the most powerful customizations would be combining various services and models that are available in Microsoft cloud.
The SharePoint Framework solutions, just like any other client-side solution, run in the current user context. There’s no permission elevation, like one could do with farm solutions or specific permission grants. Whatever the present users, interacting with specific customization could do, the customization could do as well. The code of the solutions of the framework could be hosted anywhere. It could be hosted in SharePoint, hosted in one’s own servers or host it in the cloud. The solution has a URL reference in which code is located and when customization begins, it loads the particular script in the browser.
The general availability is arguably the upgrade that any SharePoint development company and the developer community has been most eager to their hands on. Practically, this means the utilization of web technologies for building apps on SharePoint, which are responsive, agile and again mobile friendly. SharePoint has been used as an app and development platform for quite some time now. It provides multiple sets of customization and SharePoint development options. The release of the framework is a huge step in boosting the developer experience, that’s often been characterized as difficult and clumsy. The framework provides developers access to libraries and tools, enabling development at a pace that reflects the fast changing enterprise technology scenario as well as worker expectations. The move was unveiled during a San Francisco Future of SharePoint event in San Francisco, where Jeff Teper, the corporate VP for the OneDrive and SP teams outlined the mobile-first, cloud-first vision and the SharePoint roadmap. Teper pointed to some pending new upgrades and releases, which were designed to allow organizations and teams to discover, share and collaborate content intelligently anywhere and on any device.
Developers required a more efficient model and tool chain, which enables them to scale beyond the latest constraints. The client-side development framework would deliver capabilities, which will help Microsoft partners, engineers, customers and developers all over the community to build rich, powerful apps. Agile development capabilities are a major element in creating and boosting the platform. Microsoft has demonstrated the company commitment over the past year through enhancing Team Sites, making pages easier, updating document libraries and in general making SP more accessible to enterprise workers. At the Microsoft Ignite, the SharePoint Framework was one of the top discussed things on Twitter among the technologies of Microsoft during the event. The contributions of the community to the evolving framework has been strong, with dozens and dozens of blog posts on techniques and tools from the community, exploring different techniques and facets of building parts. Now, more than 30 code samples are live in the GitHub repository for code samples, a lot of which were created by the community. Beside a rich set of web parts with the platform, developers could also build completely new web parts.
The announcement of the new SP framework does not deprecate any of the existing development models. On the contrary, when the framework gets released, it would yet be another asset in the developer toolbox and a huge plus in the SharePoint development training. Although it has not been released yet, it is good to begin thinking about various scenarios in which one could benefit or not benefit from it. The best way to explain which scenarios are the best for using the new SharePoint Frameworks is illustrating them with examples. Using it, one could build solutions consisting 100 percent JavaScript. Similar to SP solutions built in past with the use of jQuery, Knockout, Angular and JSOM, such solutions will be fully executed in the browser. Using TypeScript to create the solutions is an intelligent choice because it adds an extra validation layer, but not required. Either way, eventually, what is executed in the browser is plain JavaScript. Nonetheless, with the same framework one could build more complex solutions, which combine the modern SP UX as well as the power of the add-in model for code security and isolation. Thus, while the SharePoint Framework solutions could be 100 percent JavaScript, they do not necessarily have to. Most probably, the most powerful customizations would be combining various services and models that are available in Microsoft cloud.
The SharePoint Framework solutions, just like any other client-side solution, run in the current user context. There’s no permission elevation, like one could do with farm solutions or specific permission grants. Whatever the present users, interacting with specific customization could do, the customization could do as well. The code of the solutions of the framework could be hosted anywhere. It could be hosted in SharePoint, hosted in one’s own servers or host it in the cloud. The solution has a URL reference in which code is located and when customization begins, it loads the particular script in the browser.
