SharePoint development space has changed drastically over 2017. For good! If you are a SharePoint developer but have not followed the announcements in 2017 covering all the new features that you can take advantage of, just keep on reading.
2 weeks ago I have done an internal session at CPS that covered the evolution of SharePoint development over 2017. You can find a copy of the slides here.
Most of the content and slides are from the SharePoint Patterns and Practices SIG calls and from Microsoft blogs. The reason for this was simply to reduce the time creating the presentation. I have tried to keep the content accurate by reviewing lots of videos and presentations, but if you find something wrong, feel free to add a comment below or send me a message so that I can add a note.
Let’s get it straight: Microsoft has released a “ton” of new features for SharePoint developers over 2017. Some are specific to “modern” sites, but others are version independent and you can still take advantage of those if your business requirements force you to use the “classic” sites experience.
The first slides describe the “state-of-the-art” of “modern” sites as of January 2017. As you can see, the options were minimal if you were aiming for a production site as the customization options were almost non-existent and the “out-of-the-box” functionality was also limited.
Although everything changed really fast, as new major features were released to empower developers with modern and powerful tools they can use to extend existing functionality:
- Webhooks
- SPFx web parts
- High quality documentation
- Office 365 public CDN
- Tenant-scoped package deployment
- SPFx extensions
- Site classification
- SharePoint Server 2016 Feature Pack 2
- Office 365 private CDN
- Custom themes
- Support for Office UI Fabric core
- ALM APIs
- Site collection App Catalog
- Assets included in deployment packages
The following features are also currently in preview and should be available very soon:
- Column formatting (update from the slides: already released)
- Tenant properties (update from the slides: already released)
- Site designs (update from the slides: already released)
- Additional support for MS Graph
- Hub Sites and APIs
- Groupify API
Looking back one year, it’s clear that Microsoft is investing a lot of resources to improve the SharePoint development experience. Not only for third-party developers, but also for their internal teams who are also building the new features of “modern” sites using the same technologies.
If you have been thinking about adopting the “modern” SharePoint development experience but are not sure if it’s mature enough for you, think twice! The more you wait, the more you will have to catch up!
Hope you found this post useful and that it helped you, not only to get up to speed with the latest features but also to motivate you in adopting the new way of creating SharePoint customizations if you haven’t done so.