Deploy SPFx web parts to a Site Collection only – Site Collection App catalog

One of the few hidden gems of SharePoint Online hosting model is Site Collection App Catalog. Yes, you read it right, Site Collection App catalog !!!, not Tenant App catalog. Don’t confuse this with delegating app catalog rights to Site Collection Administrators. This is different and the requirement is to have the app deployed and scoped to a Site Collection only.  For more details about deployment options, please check here

So what does it mean by Site Collection App catalog ?… [Keep reading] “Deploy SPFx web parts to a Site Collection only – Site Collection App catalog”

Pump up your investments in Modern Intranet and Team Sites with latest cool advancements (Ignite 2018)

At Ignite 2018, Microsoft provided a great perspective about how Modern Intranets (using SharePoint Communication Sites) and Collaboration features are becoming a major collaboration platform for many companies and investments Microsoft is doing to make them better. Some of these cool features were mentioned during the event. We will take a look at many of them in this blog and how we could use it to make Modern Intranets, Modern Team Sites and Microsoft Teams work even better and seamlessly together.… [Keep reading] “Pump up your investments in Modern Intranet and Team Sites with latest cool advancements (Ignite 2018)”

Bring in Strategy for building Next-gen Modern Intranet using Communication Sites

With the modern responsive design and full-page layouts, Communication sites are an ideal candidate for Intranet sites. During last few projects, we have implemented Modern Intranet portals using Communication Sites and found that user adoption was exceptionally high. We also gained a lot of experience from these implementations, which I will be sharing here.

Note: Most of the below features and advancements are of during Oct 2018, there are few major releases from Ignite 2018 which be released later.
[Keep reading] “Bring in Strategy for building Next-gen Modern Intranet using Communication Sites”

Options to consider for SharePoint Framework solutions deployment

There are various options to package and deploy a SharePoint Framework solution and as part of packaging and deployment process, the developers have to identify a best approach for their team. Sometimes it becomes a nightmare to plan the right approach for your solution, if you haven’t weighed the options properly.

Working at multiple implementations of SPFx solution for sometime now, I have been able to get an idea of various options and approach for them.… [Keep reading] “Options to consider for SharePoint Framework solutions deployment”

User Psychology and Experience

Often times when designing a product or solution for a customer, in planning and concept development, we might consider the user experience to be one of two (or both) things:

  1. User feedback regarding their interaction with their technological environment/platforms
  2. The experience the user is likely to have with given technology based on various factors that contribute to delivering that technology to them; presentation, training, accessibility, necessity, intuitiveness, just to name a few.

These factors are not solely focused on the user and their role in the human – technology interaction process, but also their experience of dealing with us as solution providers.… [Keep reading] “User Psychology and Experience”

Set up Accounts and secure passwords to run automation workloads in Azure Functions

In some of my previous blogs here, we have seen how we could use Azure Functions to to automate processes and SharePoint workloads.

Most of these jobs run using elevated or stored privileged accounts as the Azure Function is in a different context than the user context. There are various ways we could setup these accounts. Some of these approaches are below:

  1. Azure AD Service Accounts
    • Suitable for all operations
    • Need access to resource
    • Reusable across multiple workloads
  2. Azure AD Apps
    • Suitable for Graph Access
    • Need exact permissions set up
    • Might need Tenant Admin authentication
  3. SharePoint App Accounts
    • Suitable for SharePoint workloads.
[Keep reading] “Set up Accounts and secure passwords to run automation workloads in Azure Functions”

Provisioning complex Modern Sites with Azure Functions and Flow – Part 3 – Post Provisioning Site Configuration

In the previous two blogs part 1 and part 2, we looked at steps to create a Modern team site and apply a custom provisioning template to it. In this blog, we will have a look at the steps for the post provisioning process to implement site specific requirements. Some of them could be:

1. Apply default values to list fields
2. Create a bunch of default folders
3. Manage Security groups (SP level) and permission level.… [Keep reading] “Provisioning complex Modern Sites with Azure Functions and Flow – Part 3 – Post Provisioning Site Configuration”

Deploy and Add SPFx webparts to Modern Pages using OfficeDevPnP CSOM library

In the previous blog here, we looked at how to install apps on a SharePoint site. With SharePoint and Office Dev PnP CSOM, we could also add web parts to Modern Pages, both out of the box (OOB) web parts and custom web parts. For out of box web parts, refer to Chris O’Brien article here , where he has provided steps and also the web part IDs for the OOB webparts which is really helpful.… [Keep reading] “Deploy and Add SPFx webparts to Modern Pages using OfficeDevPnP CSOM library”

Programmatically deploy and add SharePoint Framework Extensions using SharePoint CSOM and PowerShell

In the previous blog here, we looked at how to deploy and install SharePoint Apps. Now let’s look at installing SharePoint Framework extensions – Listview command sets programmatically.

SharePoint CSOM

SharePoint Framework has three type of extensions that could be created – Application customiser, Listview command sets and Field customisers. In this blog, we will look at adding list view command sets programmatically.

Listview command extensions are actually custom actions installed in a library or list.… [Keep reading] “Programmatically deploy and add SharePoint Framework Extensions using SharePoint CSOM and PowerShell”

Deploy and Install SharePoint Apps using SharePoint CSOM and PnP PowerShell

In this blog, we will look at steps to install and deploy SharePoint apps to Modern Sites using SharePoint ALM CSOM and PnP PowerShell. Using the below steps, it is possible to programmatically deploy and install custom SharePoint Framework apps using an Azure Function or a Local PowerShell script.

Installing SharePoint Apps

SharePoint Apps can be deployed on a site using ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) APIs. After the app is installed in the App catalog, we could add it to a SharePoint site.… [Keep reading] “Deploy and Install SharePoint Apps using SharePoint CSOM and PnP PowerShell”