Customisation, flexibility and productivity are the focus on the June new releases

Microsoft recently announced two new features for SharePoint, mainly covering new tools and more option for those who are thinking of adopting SharePoint. The first of them is the SharePoint Starter Kit, which aims to demonstrate the customisation possibilities of SharePoint. The second one is the Framework version 1.5, which brings new tools and preview features. We will explain both in the article below.

SharePoint Starter Kit

Even though Communication sites and group associate team sites in Office 365 already came with a great range of capabilities, sometimes according to the type of business you are involved in you might need some levels of customisation or functional requirements. In this situation SharePoint Starter Kit can help you to build up your project. Additionally, the assets can be used and reused in any way you want in your own work.

What’s included?

SharePoint Starter Kit addresses common scenarios and tasks that you might face during your own customisations and provides examples and guidance on how to solve it, including:

• Tenant level provisioning logic using PnP Provisioning Engine - Automatic provisioning using PowerShell
• 3 site collections. One assigned to be a hub site and two associates to the hub site automatically by the provisioning script
• Contoso Site Designs for group associated team site and communication site
• 17 client-side web parts demonstrating different capabilities
• 7 SharePoint Framework extensions
• Sample LOB service to be hosted in Azure
• Sample content on the portal to demonstrate news and article capabilities
• Note that you need to be a tenant administrator to be able to deploy this solution.

What’s coming up to the SharePoint Starter Kit

This is just the beginning. The main goal is to extend the package during the next months, bringing more capabilities. Below you can see a high-level of planned activities and improvements coming down the line.

• Improve documentation and guidance on how to set up things for any Office 365 tenant
• Improve documentation on the provided components
• Provide details architecture design guidance for the existing implementation
• Improve existing demo content to include more real-life content and additional pages for more polished end-user experience
• Self-service website to provide automated provisioning of the solution to any Office 365 tenant to remove the requirement of using PowerShell scripts

As part of an open-source project everybody interested can contribute back to this solution. So, if you are using SharePoint Smarter Kit and wish to report your input to the community, they will be pleased to get it through the GitHub issue list.

This article is based on the information provided by Microsoft in this link.

Click below to watch a video from Microsoft introducing SharePoint Starter Kit

 

SharePoint Framework Version 1.5

The main feature in the new framework is the new tools to make the development more efficient and the possibility to try new previous features. One of the new capabilities introduced in this framework is the option to customise new project experiences. Using a customisable Yeoman generator, it’s possible to extend the default new SharePoint experience to include option for development, such as new project templates and framework integrations.

New channel for beta capabilities

In the Framework 1.5 you will be able to access a new channel or getting preview-level features you can work with. A specific yeoman label – ‘plusbeta’ – creates projects that contain both versions, 1.5 release components as well as optional new beta components. Microsoft expects that future SharePoint Framework release to have similar “plusbeta” capabilities available at release.

Click here to see the full article with instructions from the Microsoft Dev Centre website.

Dynamic Data

Keeping the focus on flexibility and productivity for SharePoint developers, now they can take advantage of the Dynamic Data capability, which provides an event subscription and publishing model. It’s possible to design and raise various types of events that other components can read and respond to, enabling a flexibility that comes from loosely coupling components together. As you can see in the image below:

To access the full article explaining how to use it click here.

SharePoint Business Apps - Spring 2018 Updates

Over the past months, Microsoft released a couple of SharePoint Business updates. Some of them are already completed and some will be rolling out soon. Find out below a full list with the updated according to the Microsoft Tech Community.

Completed updates

• PowerApps/Flow buttons out of preview. The buttons for creating and launching PowerApps and Flow directly from libraries and lists are out of preview, and available in all commercial tenants.
• PowerApps now supports multivalued and taxonomy fields.
• PowerApps support for read/write attachments has been released.
• Flow launch panel is generally available.
• Flow for OneDrive. Building and launching custom Flows is now available from the OneDrive web interface, as it is for SharePoint libraries.
• Set content approval status action is now available in Flow. Using this action, you can build a custom approval process and invoke this action directly on lists or libraries requiring publishing approval.
• Custom forms on SharePoint lists, built with PowerApps is also generally available.
• Microsoft Forms is now out of preview for commercial tenants.

Rolling out updates

As part of Microsoft mission to enable standard patterns for collaboration, they are releasing the request sign-off action for all document libraries. This allows any user to start a simple review process from the Flow button on a document library.  Users can approve the request from email, Web or the Flow mobile app, and results are tracked in SharePoint as well. 

Custom column content widths can be saved for each user. Each user will be able to set a custom width for each column in a view, and have those settings persist for multiple sessions. Columns widths are now also stored as part of the view property – users can persist their column widths permanently by saving a view with the column customizations.

Configure settings for date/time columns from list/library view. If you need to adjust default date formats or related settings, you’ll be able to act directly from the native list or library view, with having to use the list/library properties page.

Item deleted trigger – now you can start flows when a file or an item is deleted.

SharePoint HTTP actions inside Flow: Development-oriented users can now use the rich REST API surface of SharePoint using this new Flow action, and this action will handle authentication.

PowerApps web part (preview). With this new web part, you’ll be able to add a complete PowerApp to any SharePoint page, regardless of data source.  Even if your app is built using data in Dynamics, SQL, or any other supported data source, you can extend the interface to the web page without moving the underlying data. 

*This blog is based on the information provided by this article.

SharePoint Training

Microsoft SharePoint is full of features and possibilities. The best way to make the most of it is invested in getting your team qualified. At New Horizons Ireland we run a wide range of SharePoint courses in our monthly schedule. You can attend them online, instructor led or in our most convenient option: Mentored Learning, which is a blend between online and instructor led at your own pace and in the way that best suits your schedule. You will be guided from our certified instructors the whole time through the labs and content.

Click here to check out our SharePoint Mentored Learning course options.

Access our full list of SharePoint courses here. 

• Planning and Administering SharePoint 2016
• Advanced Technologies of SharePoint 2016
• Developing Microsoft® SharePoint® 2013 Core Solutions
• Developing Microsoft® SharePoint® 2013 Advanced Solutions