How To

Creating Reusable React Components for SharePoint Framework Solutions

~ Bob German ~ 6 Comments

Lessons Learned from the #SPShire Project

This is the one of my lessons learned from the Shire Hub Intranet project, based on the forthcoming SharePoint Communication Sites.

The lessons in this blog series are:

  1. Previewing and Opening Office Documents from the SharePoint Framework
  2. Using the OneDrive File Picker in SharePoint Framework Solutions
  3. Creating Reusable React Components for SharePoint Framework Solutions
    (this article)

This project on github contains the sample solution for all three articles.

Continue reading →

Using the OneDrive File Picker in SharePoint Framework Solutions

~ Bob German ~ 6 Comments

Lessons Learned from the #SPShire Project

This is the one of my lessons learned from the Shire Hub Intranet project, based on the forthcoming SharePoint Communication Sites.

The lessons in this blog series are:

  1. Previewing and Opening Office Documents from the SharePoint Framework
  2. Using the OneDrive File Picker in SharePoint Framework Solutions
    (this article)
  3. Creating Reusable React Components for SharePoint Framework Solutions

This project on github contains the sample solution for all three articles.

Continue reading →

Previewing and Opening Office Files from the SharePoint Framework

~ Bob German ~ 3 Comments

Lessons Learned from the #SPShire Project

SPShire

I’m thrilled to be part of an early adopter project building a new intranet for Shire Pharmaceuticals based on the forthcoming SharePoint Communication Sites. Shire is an exciting and innovative company, and the team includes a number of my fellow Microsoft MVP’s as well as teammates from BlueMetal. Last week Microsoft broadcast a webinar from the Boston MTC featuring a cross-section of the development team. Microsoft’s Mark Kashman promised we’d post some of the lessons learned in the project, and this is one of those postings.

The lessons in this blog series are:

  1. Previewing and Opening Office Documents from the SharePoint Framework
    (this article)
  2. Using the OneDrive File Picker in SharePoint Framework Solutions
  3. Creating Reusable React Components for SharePoint Framework Solutions

This project on github contains the sample solution for all three articles.

Continue reading →

Porting REST calls to SharePoint Framework

~ Bob German ~ 4 Comments

The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is a powerful technology for developing web parts that run on both classic and modern SharePoint pages. SPFx is 100% client-side, and it’s often possible to reuse client-side JavaScript (from Script Editor or Content Editor Web Parts) in SPFx. This is usually straight forward if the original JavaScript targeted a single HTML element, since SPFx does the same thing: it hands you an HTML element and you inject your web part in there.

I was recently porting a JavaScript widget to SPFx and it all came over more or less as expected, except that the REST calls to SharePoint failed. All of them. Failed. Miserably. This article will show you the fix.

Continue reading →

Calling SharePoint CSOM from Azure Functions (Part 1)

~ Bob German ~ 4 Comments

In old-school SharePoint, if you wanted to run some custom code in a web part, workflow, form, or event handler, you wrote either a sandboxed or a farm solution. Neither of these are supported in SharePoint Online. So what are developers supposed to do when they need to run some code somewhere other than the web browser? How can they run code in the background, elevate permissions, or fill gaps in the “out of the box” configuration options?

The modern answer is Azure Functions. It’s a much better sandbox than SharePoint used to have, yet, like a sandboxed solution, you don’t have to worry about where to put it. Just choose what will trigger your function, such as a web service request, web hook, Service Bus message, or a time schedule. Then pop in your code and you’re good to go. They call it “serverless” computing, but there are servers somewhere! You just don’t need to worry about it.

Continue reading →