If, like me, you used to be a SharePoint developer working with C# and .NET who didn’t like to do things using JavaScript that much and who had headaches when Microsoft changed the development mode for Apps, the new modern SharePoint experience is an even bigger change and I’m here to talk a little bit about it.
But … now what? Give up on SharePoint? Definitely NO!
The new modern SharePoint experience gives us the chance to update ourselves and start to work with the latest web development technologies available.
The SharePoint framework forces us to learn how to work with Typescript, React, Angular, Node and lots of other open source platforms that will turn us into Fullstack developers instead of only SharePoint Developers.
Speaking about the SharePoint world we are even better situated than the guys who already work with those open source platforms because we already understand the SharePoint structure, the API, data model, tricks to get better performance and so on.
So… JavaScript, open source tools and PowerShell?
Yes, exactly! The new modern experience on SharePoint combines those platforms and tools to give us a way to deliver greater solutions for our customers.
Using Powershell scripts, you are able to perform actions against the tenant, site collections, sites, lists, items and so on. Everything that you want to do using automated scripts you can do by using Powershell scripts and the PnP created by the Microsoft SharePoint team.
This is awesome!!!! You can, for example, create a Powershell script to automatically provision an entire environment with all of your customizations and integrate it with a pipeline on VSTS to automate that provisioning by your builds and releases of your product. Isn’t it great!?
Apps, Web Part, SharePoint Framework?
Talking about the way to develop things for the new modern experience, things have been changed a lot. On SharePoint 2013 we were introduced to the app model, where Microsoft enabled the developers from other languages (not only C# as before) to develop components to SharePoint using the provided hosted app model and JavaScript components using the SharePoint hosted app.
That model was disruptive because the SharePoint developers were used to being C# developers with knowledge and experience on SharePoint and with this new model, people from other languages were able to be SharePoint developers.
For the new SharePoint modern experience, Microsoft introduced a brand new development model, called SharePoint framework, that consists of a framework where you can develop webpages and extensions for SharePoint using Typescript as the main language together with the most used (at least for now) JavaScript frameworks. (You can use ReactJS, AngularJS, KnockoutJS, VueJS and so on)
With all the “full-stack developer” things that we are facing today, where the developers need to be frontend, backend, and DevOps all in one, this framework makes total sense.
I don’t want to get too deep on this subject in this post, but I want to share with you some links so you can be this new SharePoint Developer :)
The SharePoint team has been working a lot to deliver thousands of samples and tutorials for us, so you can keep up to date following this link:
SharePoint PnP
Channel for SharePoint Patterns and Practices (PnP) videos. More details around PnP initiative are available on www.youtube.com
SharePoint/sp-dev-fx-web parts
sp-dev-fx-web parts - Code samples and developer content targeted towards SharePoint Framework client-side web parts.github.com
A lot of samples use different types of technologies.
I hope it can encourage you to get into this new SharePoint development model. If you want, you can share your experience with the migration, just let me know in the comment section below.