SharePoint App Dev Archives - Applied Information Sciences

In a recent blog post, I walked through setting up a SharePoint 2013 development environment in the cloud. After doing that, the next most logical step was to start building apps. But that meant that I would have to understand what a SharePoint app really was and how it differed from SharePoint 2010 development. I mean sure, I could bang out the typical “Hello World” app, but to do anything meaningful, I needed to dig a little deeper.

Apps vs. Solutions

An app for SharePoint is a stand-alone, self-contained piece of functionality that extends the features and capabilities of a SharePoint site. Apps can bring together the best of both worlds; modern web technologies and all the familiar pieces of SharePoint. On top of that, users can discover and download apps on their own from the public Office Store or from their organization’s private App Catalog. In contrast, a solution is used to customize or enhance SharePoint sites and needs a farm administrator to deploy, manage and remove.

Why Apps?

The first question that I asked myself was why would you use an app? I would assume that the answer to this question might depend on who you polled, but as a developer, I am extremely excited that I can now leverage all of the exciting things that my “non-SharePoint” counterparts have been doing for quite some time. In my opinion, this paradigm shift is a smart move by Microsoft, and will go a long way in attracting more developers to the platform.

Read More…

Vinita Agrawal

@agrawal7vinita

SharePoint 2013 introduced a ton of new features for the end user. It also brought about a lot of changes for SharePoint developers, particularly in terms of the new SharePoint App Model. I’ve been a core SharePoint developer for seven years now, through both the 2007 and 2010 releases, and so I thought it might be beneficial to share some lessons learned from my own transition from core SharePoint developer to a SharePoint 2013 app programmer.

My previous experiences with SharePoint development focused heavily on MOSS code with workflows, InfoPath, Lists, Content Types and developing front end applications using these features. I had almost no JavaScript experience, especially Async programming, and no clue what SharePoint apps are or what they look like.

My two immediate realizations when faced with SharePoint 2013 were that:

I had to learn lot of new terms: SharePoint Hosted, Provider Hosted, Auto Hosted, On Prem, O365, Host web, App web and many more.
Your working hand is tied behind your back and your head hurts more than ever before, because in the realm of client-side coding you have to think differently, about a 180 degree twist. It gets better after a week or two of JavaScript immersion.

For my current SharePoint 2013 project, we are using Durandal and RequireJs for creating user interface screens and the SharePoint Javascript object model (JSOM) for backend service code. You don’t need Durandal and RequireJs to do SharePoint 2013 programming, but we chose them for creating user screens as single page application. Read More…

Tom O'Connell

@tomoconnellais

It was more than 10 years ago when AIS first began to explore and envision the idea of using SharePoint as an application development platform. Although Office was a great product to author content, it did not provide a means to manage that content. From the moment we heard that Microsoft was going to provide a centralized, managed repository for Office and other forms, documents and records we immediately started to envision solutions for our clients, along with a laundry list of new features.

Automated workflow and integration of development tools were immediate needs. It wasn’t until 2007 that we felt we had enough features to address our client’s needs to automate paper-based workflows. You can view the whitepaper we published on January 30, 2007 (the very day SharePoint 2007 was released) on our YouTube channel. We published an updated version on the day of the 2010 release, which was a major release in terms of features and performance that also marked the expansion of Search features.

Over the years we have built countless large-scale, human-to-human (and human-to-system) workflow solutions. Some support tens of thousands of users, hundreds of thousands of workflows, and hundreds of millions of documents and records. We’ve built task, event, investigation, legal matter, and assessment management systems (just to name a few) across DoD and the military, many Intel agencies and some civilian agencies in the public sector. In the commercial sector our clients range from the largest law firms, international NGOs with far-flung offices, health plans, wealth and financial management, among many others.

Today, SharePoint 2013 has fully matured. It finally contains all the features we need for a fully-featured application development platform. We now have enumerable building blocks which allow us to write less code and deliver solutions for a fraction of the cost of other solutions. Read More…

Darrin Brandon

How many times have you been tasked with building a UI at runtime? I know I’ve had to do it plenty of times. This can often be a time consuming and tedious process. Check the data type, decide what kind of control to use, add that control to some placeholder, rinse and repeat.

I was recently given a task that would take selected search results, compare the items selected, and then present the user with a UI of all fields common across the selected items. Pretty straightforward…and potentially lots of code.

Being new to SharePoint development, little did I know that there was a hidden gem (they tell me there are more) that would aid me in my endeavor.

AISblog

@aisteam

Have you taken a look at the new SharePoint yet?

If you’ve spent any time reading our blog, you know by now that SharePoint 2013 introduces extraordinary new features to change the way you work, share, discover, organize and build sites. And now we’ve put together a quick guide highlighting the top features that may inpact your business.

Download The Top Reasons Why Your Business Will Love the New SharePoint now! (No form required,)

The Top Reasons Why Your Business Will Love the New SharePoint guide provides you with an overview of the latest and greatest that comes with SharePoint 2013, including:

Smarter Search
Simpler and Mobile-Ready UI
SharePoint App Store Model
Better Workflow
Social SharePoint…and more, including easy migration tools and lower costs.

Download your copy today!

And if you’re in the DC area, AIS is hosting an “Introduction to SharePoint 2013” event at the Microsoft office in Chevy Chase, MD on March 20th. Click here to learn more and register.

Vishwas Lele

@vlele

With the SharePoint Conference 2012 behind us, I have been reflecting on our SharePoint journey so far…and on the road ahead. And what an incredible journey it has been! SharePoint has allowed AIS to build mission-critical applications for various large federal government agencies and commercial organizations. And not just ECM or document management systems (which are great workloads enabled by SharePoint) but enterprise-class applications for tens of thousands users (such as the FBI’s Delta Project), built using SharePoint platform elements such as workflows, lists, libraries, search, etc.

This blog entry is comprised of two parts. The first part will focus on the SharePoint journey so far. Through a series of short video clips, I will present some of the key insights we have derived over the many years of building custom applications on SharePoint. We will end this the first part with a short demonstration of SharePoint-based Case Management application that brings together many of the key concepts. The second part will focus on the road ahead and the most important enhancements made in SharePoint 2013. Read More…

BlogPosts tagged with “SharePoint App Dev”