Over past few months I’ve traveled the world talking to developers about building applications with Office 365. One of my favorite topics is building apps with Bootstrap and AngularJS. I like this topic because it illustrates the “new” Microsoft and our commitment to open source technologies. Bootstrap and AngularJS are wildly popular frameworks and we…
Tag: Apps for SharePoint
Displaying Cross-Domain/Secure Images from SharePoint Apps
One of my biggest frustrations in developing apps are the cross-domain challenges that inherently exist when we decouple apps from the platform(s) they needs to consume. There are a number of approaches for dealing with cross-domain data such as cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) and JSONP. However, images are trickier…especially when they require authentication. Internet Explorer…
Autohosted Apps are Dead…Big Deal!
When Microsoft introduced SharePoint’s Application Model, they released a preview hosting option called “autohosting”. Autohosted apps were exclusive to SharePoint Online and allowed developers automatically provision websites and (optional) databases in Windows Azure on-demand. Developers didn’t even need a Windows Azure account…everything is provisioned automatically in a Microsoft-owned Azure tenant. In my early app work,…
Connected SharePoint App Parts
Last year I authored a post on using SharePoint 2013’s embed code web part as an alternative to custom app parts. The embed code approach has the advantage of not using IFRAMEs, but isn’t repeatable, relies on the client for all application logic, and eliminates the use of server-side technologies like ASP.NET and MVC. But…
SharePoint Timer Jobs running as Windows Azure Web Jobs
The Office App Model Samples (Office AMS) contain some great examples of writing console applications using CSOM. A console application is the foundation for building timer jobs against SharePoint Online and offers a safer alternative to full-trust timer jobs written for on-premises SharePoint. In this post, I will show you how incredibly easy it is…
Taxonomy Picker in SharePoint Provider-Hosted App
One of the exciting announcements at the 2014 SharePoint Conference, was the general availability the Office App Model Samples (OfficeAMS) on Codeplex. OfficeAMS is grass-roots effort by volunteer Microsoft developers to provide code samples using the Office/SharePoint app model that address common customization scenarios. The samples in OfficeAMS include many scenarios that the SharePoint community…
Apps for SharePoint and Yammer
I have found that almost every app for SharePoint can benefit from leveraging a social platform. It might be as simple as using a social platform for basic profile information/pictures. The most obvious choice for many app developers is to leverage SharePoint as the social platform. After all, the app manifest allows developers to request…
SharePoint Sandbox isn’t Dead…UserCode is
With the introduction of apps for SharePoint, many have speculated that sandbox solutions are dead/deprecated. This is accurate for solutions containing assemblies running on the Sandboxed Code Service (aka – SPUCHostService.exe). However, declarative solutions are very much still in play and widely used internally by SharePoint (ex: Web Templates and Design Manager). A declarative .wsp…
App Approaches to Common SharePoint Customizations
NOTE: This post takes an aggressive bias towards the new apps model for SharePoint customizations. Well written farm solutions are a solid and time-tested approach to customizations in on-premise deployments. Regardless of the sentiment in this post, Apps for SharePoint DO have gaps compared to farm solutions (hopefully the Harvey Balls below illustrate that). The…
Self-Service Site Provisioning using Apps for SharePoint 2013
NOTE: Site Provisioning using apps has been better addressed by myself and others in the community on the Office AMS project published on codeplex. You are highly encouraged to reference that material over this. I would also discourage the use of Autohosted apps for this type of customization. Thanks! I’ve always been a big…