Silber-Partner: Veranstalter:

Alternative Approaches to Solution Development in SharePoint and Office 365

Marc D AndersonSharePoint MVP

Co-Founder & PresidentSympraxis Consulting LLC

Co-Founder and President of Sympraxis Consulting LLC, located in the Boston suburb of Newton, MA, USA. Sympraxis focuses on enabling collaboration throughout the enterprise using the SharePoint application platform.

Over 30 years of experience in technology professional services and software development. Over a wide-ranging career in consulting as well as line manager positions, Marc has proven himself as a problem solver and leader who can solve difficult technology problems for organizations across a wide variety of industries and organization sizes.

Author of SPServicesAwarded Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Server 2011-2016

Who Is Marc?

We regularly hear about the importance of building Apps Add-Ins from the Microsoft folks. But in many cases, that approach is overkill. Even in enterprises, all solutions aren’t "enterprise scale".

It’s always been possible to build solid solutions or solution components using Data View Web Parts or the trusty Content Editor Web Part to hold some HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, and those are still viable approaches. With a few other more modern tricks, we can even build solutions that span many pages using a common code base.

Join me as I kick around the plusses and minuses of “sanctioned development” versus smaller, lighter-touch approaches. Feel free to bring along your own questions and challenges so that we can make it a discussion.

Based on a discussion with Scot Hillier on the ITUnity Dev Pulse

Session Overview

The Middle Tier Manifesto: An Alternative Approach to Development with Microsoft SharePoint

Flying in the Cloud: New Ways to Develop for SharePoint Create a Business Solution, Step by Step, with No

Managed Code SharePoint Solutions with SPServices SharePoint Solutions with KnockoutJS Single-Page Applications (SPAs) in SharePoint Using

SPServices

Are We Talking About Something New?

There have always been alternatives;they have just become more accepted

So how do we do this?

Use your favorite toolsChoose your favorite frameworksWrite your solutions with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Watch your users smile

SharePoint Development Is [Becoming] Web Development

High Level Structure of Building SharePoint Solutions

Data Access / Initial Manipulation

Document Ready

ViewModel / Application Logic

Templates

JavaScript HTML

Application Styling

CSS

•Has to coexist with SharePoint's CSS•Be very specific with your selectors

•Avoid hauling in SharePoint's baggage unless you need it

Many Data Sources

SharePoint Lists and Libraries Office Microsoft Graph External data sources

Many exposed via Odata-compliant REST endpoints

Important Tools

Development tools – you choose Visual Studio (any flavor) SharePoint Designer WebStorm Sublime Text Notepad++

Debugging tools – your browser Chrome Firefox with Firebug Internet Explorer

Testing tools, Build tools, …

Adding a User Custom Action allows you to load the first JavaScript file with a ScriptLink

RequireJS (or several alternatives – see system.js) allow you to bootstrap the rest of your code into the page

Because your script references are built in code, you can even do versioning

Bootstrapping

Code Isolation "Time to glass" Pushing processing from server to client

Isolation

Document Library(ies) Style Library In the master page gallery at

_catalogs/masterpage

Can be unique to a Site Collection or stored centrally for better reuse

FaaS approach

Solution Artifacts

Don't be caught up in the "shiny penny" syndrome Compare your known requirements with the

frameworks' capabilities Ask yourself:

What types of solutions do we need to build? What does our governance tell us about our

deployment model? How big is the development team? What are our current skills?

Choose a Framework

Works without activating the Publishing Infrastructure

No master page customization (current "guidance")

PnP Approaches CDN Manager – Scot Hillier Manage UserCustomAction using SharePoint Add-In -

André Lage The

easiest way to add Script and Brand your SharePoint and SharePoint Online - John Liu

User Custom Actions

Can be driven by: Page URL Page content Current user IP address Time of day Presence of data in a list

Load JavaScript Conditionally

Any characteristic of the current context

Store configuration variables in a Configuration list Use Title for the parameter name Second column for parameter value: Multiple lines of text Can store strings, XML, JSON, etc. – any text-based data

constructs Generalize wherever possible

Build a centralized set of FaaS Use consistent namespacing

Consider a build process Many places you would have built a workflow can be

handled in code

Some Better Practices

"Pure" JavaScript is better than jQuery or other libraries

Large JavaScript files clog up the network

You don't have to care about designMeeting the requirements is enough

Misconceptions

Frameworks can be hard to learn Change is going to be rapid Learning mindset is required

Opens up the talent pool Web developers may be easier to find and

hire

Truths

Demos

FRAGEN?

Ich freue mich auf Ihr Feedback!

Silber-Partner: Veranstalter:

Vielen Dank!Marc D Anderson

Contact InformationEmail marc.anderson@sympraxisconsulting.

comTwitter @sympmarcBlog http://sympmarc.com

SPServices http://spservices.codeplex.comSPXSLT http://spxslt.codeplex.comBooks http://sympmarc.com/books

The Middle Tier Manifesto

http://bit.ly/middletier