Microsoft 365

When I’m teaching React to developers, one thing that comes up often is dealing with a common error. But here’s the interesting thing: it’s not running into the error that comes up all the time, its how to deal with it that surprises them. I’ve always wanted to have something to point to that the scenario & why one option is better than others, even though there are plenty of ways to address the issue. That’s what this post is!

I originally intended to write this post mid-summer, but just never happened. Thankfully my wish list hasn’t changed for the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) since the spring of this year… wait, maybe that isn’t a good thing?

In this series, I showed you how to build custom elements, a native web technology supported natively by most browsers (except you Edge & IE…) and presented two options for how you can go about it. One option involves using one big project with the SharePoint Framework & Angular in it while the other utilizes two projects to mitigate the downsides of the one-project approach. So, you can now use Angular in SharePoint Framework projects and this is made possible by Angular Elements which was introduced in Angular v6 back in May 2017. Sweet! We’ve got the “can you do it” question answered! But, should you do it? There are always tradeoffs when picking a web framework for your next project and using one with the SharePoint Framework is no different. Let’s take a step back and look at the whole picture. Only then can you decide if it makes sense for you.

This has been a long time coming and many of you Angular developers who also work with the SharePoint Framework may have given up by now and switched to React, but for those of you who have been holding out, Angular is finally a viable option for SPFx development even with a few drawbacks.

Earlier this week, on Tuesday, May 7, 2019, Microsoft released v1.8.2 of the SharePoint Framework (SPFx). A little over a month ago, I wrote about the v1.8.0 release. Since then we had another minor release (v1.8.1) released on April 16, 2019. In this post, I’ll summarize what you can find, and share some additional details I found after spending some time picking apart the last two minor releases. » SharePoint Framework v1.8.2 official Release Notes

I’m excited to share this latest update to my course, Mastering the SharePoint Framework for developers. This update, packaged as sprint 16, includes one new chapter and a LOT of updates. When I originally planned out sprint 16, I intended to record a lot of new content. However when the SPFx v1.8.0 release came out there were enough changes to SPFx that I decided to go back and update the course, including adding some new lessons, completely re-recording existing lessons and updating quite a few lessons (both video & notes).

In this post, I’ll summarize what you can find, and share some additional details I found after spending some time picking apart this latest release of SPFx.

In my last post, Securing an Azure Function App with Entra ID - Works with SharePoint Framework!, I showed how you can secure a REST API deployed as an Azure Function App using Microsoft Entra ID. This comes in quite handy when you want to secure some custom server-side business logic that’’s called from a SharePoint Framework (SPFx) client-side solution. The SPFx docs show how to use APIs with permissions to the Microsoft Graph. This post will explain how to add custom permissions to the AzureAD application that is used to secure your Azure Function.

Developers can declare permissions in SharePoint Framework projects, but it isn’t a good idea. In this article I explain why and suggest a better approach.

I’m excited to share this latest update to my course, Mastering the SharePoint Framework for developers. Today’s update, packaged as sprint 13, includes two new chapters and a few updates… and it’s a huge release… the biggest yet adding over 3 hours of new content! Sprint 13 also marks a milestone: the Fundamentals Bundle of the course is now content complete! This means all planned chapters are now published. I will continue to make edits to existing chapters updating content when circumstances warrant, but at this time no new chapters or lessons are planned.

Setting up projects to use Jest, especially to test the rendering of your ReactJS SharePoint Framework projects & use the popular tool Enzyme for testing rendering, isn’t a trivial task, until now!

In this post, I’ll summarize what you can find, and share some additional details I found after spending some time picking apart this latest release of SPFx.

In my last post, I talked about using Angular Elements in SharePoint Framework projects. That post showed how to do this using a single SharePoint Framework Project. In this post, I show you a much better option that uses two projects.

In my last post, I talked about using Angular Elements in SharePoint Framework projects. When doing this, you have two options on how you will implement this and in this post, I will talk about doing it in one big project that includes everything. In tomorrow’s post, I’ll show you a much better option that uses two projects.

Citing issues with the Office UI Fabric JavaScript project, I advise against its use and recommend exploring alternative options.

A few months ago, we partnered up with Rencore on their third annual State of SharePoint and Office 365 customizations survey. The point of this survey was to learn and share how customers were customizing SharePoint & Office 365. Today, continuing our partnership, I’m launching the first annual comprehensive State of SharePoint Development survey. This survey is for developers with the goal of obtaining and sharing the technical state of SharePoint developers around the world. The findings of this survey will then be summarized into a report that provides valuable insights.

Microsoft gives us a few options for managing our SharePoint Online environments. We can use the SharePoint Admin center, REST APIs, the CSOM and the SharePoint Online PowerShell. To fill the gaps, the SharePoint PnP group has created PowerShell cmdlets that cover additional tasks not covered by the Microsoft provided PowerShell. While these are good options, they aren’t very friendly to those who aren’t on the Windows platform. These two PowerShell options don’t leverage the cross-platform PowerShell, rather they are only available for the Windows platform.

Ever wonder how your organization compares with other organizations in the same space? Have you sat at your desk and thought “I wonder if the challenges we are facing are the same as what others in the industry are facing?” Now is your chance to find out! I’m teaming up with Rencore this year to co-host two surveys. State of SharePoint & Office 365 Customizations 2018 Survey In this first survey by Rencore, you can share some information about your organization (anonymously of course) and learn how your organization compares to others in the industry on topics such as:

Learn what’s new in the January 2018 update of our flagship course, Mastering the SharePoint Framework, including two new chapters!

I’m sitting here with a smile on my face as I sit back in these last few days of 2017, reflecting on the previous year and looking forward to next year. It’s been quite a ride, finally getting Voitanos off the ground and working up production. While the stakes are not comparable, I cannot help but see similarities with my experience this past year and what Tesla has been doing with their Model 3 sedan. From delays in the ramp up, to launch and now working through issues to increase production and output, I’m working through similar things at Voitanos on a much smaller scale.

Many developers picking up the SharePoint Framework are coming from a traditional SharePoint development background. Some of these people server-side developers primarily who may have some client-side development experience while others may have been customizing SharePoint using client-side development techniques for a while.

Last week at the European SharePoint Conference 2017 (ESPC) in Dublin, Ireland, Rob Wormald presented on a new tech being added to the core of Angular that I think will make Angular much more approachable and useful to so many developers. Unfortunately, this session wasn’t recorded nor did I have the opportunity to attend due to co-chairing another conference in Orlando at the same time. I am familiar with the topic though as I’ve been assisting the Angular team in understanding SharePoint & the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) over the last few months. Over that time, I’ve become sold on this approach, not just for SPFx, but for Angular as a whole! In this post, I want to explain how this works.

This post is long, LONG overdue. I’ve explained this multiple times over email & in person to SharePoint Framework developers. It’s about time I have something to point to… so here’s my take on the SharePoint Framework + Angular [v2.0 / v4.0 / v+] state of things. Have you tried to build a client-side web part using the SharePoint Framework using something other than ReactJS? Maybe you prefer using Angular over React… I know I do! While using AngularJS to create SPFx solutions is fairly straightforward, using Angular is a bit more complicated.

In this post, I’ll summarize what you can find, and share some additional details I found after spending some time picking apart this latest release of SPFx.

In the most recent SharePoint Patterns & Practices - JavaScript Special Interest Group meeting, Microsoft shared some news on the SharePoint Framework. The news fell into three buckets: Recent Updates Update on SPFx Modern UI Extensions SharePoint Framework Engineering Backlog Recent Updates The big news that in the last few weeks Microsoft introduced a new, and often requested, feature for SPFx: **tenant-scoped deployment for SPFx client-side web parts and extensions. This means addins or extensions can be deployed to all sites within your tenant just a single time!

As a SharePoint enthusiast, I highly recommend subscribing to Chris O’Brien’s blog. Get insights into his work challenges and his SharePoint wish list today.

As a SharePoint enthusiast, I highly recommend subscribing to Chris O’Brien’s blog. Get insights into his work challenges and his SharePoint wish list today.

In the recent SharePoint Framework (SPFx) generator updates in v1.1.1, are we starting to see hints of on-prem SPFx support coming soon?

Today Microsoft announced new updates coming to the SharePoint Framework ahead of their sessions at the Build Conference. In a blog post, Build integrated user experiences with new capabilities of SharePoint and OneDrive, they talked about four big additions that engineering is working on and will make it into a new developer preview of the SharePoint Framework by the end of May 2017. This week in the Microsoft Cloud Show podcast episode’s special coverage for the Build conference, CJ & AC sat down with Microsoft’s Vesa Juvonen about these new features and more. Check it out in Episode 193 | Vesa Juvonen on New SharePoint Framework Capabilities Announced at Build!

In last week’s SharePoint Framework & JavaScript Special Interest Group meeting, Microsoft’s Vesa Juvonen shared what’s the engineering team at Microsoft is working on and more! Updated SharePoint Framework Yeoman Generator In early April, Microsoft quietly shipped two updates to the Yeoman generator for the SharePoint Framework, @microsoft/generator-sharepoint. The latest version is v1.0.2. The updates were fairly minor… I recently blogged about what you will find in the updates and how I figured out what the updates were as they aren’t well documented: SharePoint Framework Generator Updated to v1.0.2.

Did you know the SharePoint team at Microsoft updated the Yeoman generator, @microsoft/generator-sharepoint, twice in the last month? Yeah… I didn’t either until yesterday. The final version was released on February 23, 2017, as version 1.0.0. They then slipped two more updates in early April in quick succession as versions 1.0.1 & 1.0.2. Unfortunately, Microsoft still hasn’t published the repo for the generator or made the homepage for it in the NPMJS registry of any use… just some boilerplate copy… so it’s not easy to figure out what’s changed.

Today I’m thrilled to let you know that the starter bundle of my course, Mastering the SharePoint Framework, is now available!

This article is a follow-up to my recent webinar on “Building Client-Side Web Parts with the SharePoint Framework (SPFx)” with Rencore.

Earlier this week I presented a session at the Atlanta SharePoint User Group on Building Client Side Web Parts with the SharePoint Framework. I had my session planned well in advance, out but wanted to build the demos while they were fresh in my head. Last week I was out of work mode with my family relaxing on a beach in Mexico for Spring Break, so I planned to do build my demos yesterday morning, on Sunday. While we were supposed to return home Saturday night, we missed our international connection and got stuck overnight, not making it home until about 12pm EDT Sunday.

Yesterday Microsoft announced that the SharePoint Framework has reached the Generally Available milestone. That means we’re at v1! The development tools have been updated to v1 and the v1 bits are rolling out to Office 365 SharePoint Online tenants now. Microsoft said it will take about a week or so for it to reach all Office 365 tenancies. You can get the details of this update from their wiki page in the main sp-dev-docs repo. So what change from RC0 to GA?

Last week I was in New Orleans presenting at the Nintex InspireX conference on building apps using the microservice approach with containers and Docker. During that week I sat down with Jeremy Thake of Hyperfish to talk about the SharePoint Framework and what it means for end users of SharePoint. During this discussion we discussed: what is the new SharePoint Framework how the SharePoint Framework will effect the SharePoint user experience some tips on how to keep up with the SharePoint Framework You can listen to the whole discussion on the Hypefish podcast.

If you are a SharePoint developer doing any work in SharePoint Online and you have held out on taking a look at the SharePoint Framework, now is a good time to start taking a look. We are currently at the release candidate 0 (RC0) and in the coming weeks, we can expect to see the generally available (GA) release. This release will support client-side web parts as Microsoft wanted to make sure they got that capability perfected… but they won’t stop there!

This article is a follow-up to my recent webinar on “Introducing the SharePoint Framework (SPFx)” with LightningTools I delivered.

Reflections on a Career Journey Teaching SharePoint and Creating Training Content - Author shares their experiences and accomplishments.

I’m presenting at SPTechCon in Boston, demonstrating how to build an Office Add-in for Outlook with Angular 2, using a hands-on approach.

Listen to my interview on the Adventures in Angular podcast, where I discuss using Angular within Office Add-ins and the Office UI Fabric.

OfficeUIFabric.com, an open-source project for Office UI Fabric samples, is now at v1.0.0 with full release coverage. Pascal Berger contributed typo fixes.

Discover my request for Angular directives for Office UI Fabric and the similarities I’ve observed with other design languages’ directives.

Advancing Office UI Fabric integration with Angular through community-driven projects, providing demos and references akin to Bootstrap’s ease of use.

My post about SharePoint not being a Platform, instead it’s a service SharePoint is a Service sparked discussion. In this post is a rebuttal to feedback.

As a developer of Office 365 & SharePoint app, I stress the importance of having a design language. Learn why it is crucial for your Add-ins & web apps.

Office Add-in development is made easy with Visual Studio, but limited to Windows users. Developers can create add-ins and deploy them easily.

As a SharePoint developer for 12 years, I share my thoughts on the current state of SharePoint development, anticipating diverse reactions.

Everyone in tech wants to be a platform, but the appeal is not new. The idea of being a development platform has been around for a while.

At Microsoft Build and Ignite, a Node.js web app demo integrated TypeScript, AzureAD, ADAL, & Office 365 APIs to run on any platform.