Getting started with building apps for SharePoint 2013

In SharePoint 2013 everything is an app now … but in strict sense apps are a new way to build and deliver self-contained pieces of functionality that extend the capabilities of a SharePoint site. Apps will be installable by site owners from either the SharePoint Store or from a private App catalog which is setup within your SharePoint 2013 environment.

The SharePoint Store (or marketplace) will be a public App Store which will allow you to publish your Apps world-wide and sell them through this new channel.

So how do you get started:

• Sign up for an Office 365 Preview developer site – this is fastest way to get started without the hassle of setting up your own development environment. You will only need to install Visual Studio 2012 together with the Microsoft Office Dev Tools which are distributed with the Web Platform Installer 4.0  (Just search for Office within Web PI) and the and you are good to go.
• … but you don’t even have to install Visual Studio 2012 – you can now also build your apps within the browser and the Napa – Office 365 development tools to build your apps without Visual Studio.
• Take a look at the Apps for Office and SharePoint Code Samples
• .. but first look at the Introduction to SharePoint 2013 Training videos 

Other links which might be of interest:

• How to Deploy Apps Remotely to the Office 365 Preview
• Introducing the SharePoint 2013 Application Model
• Apps for Office and SharePoint Developer Contest (only for US, Canada, UK and India)
• What’s new for developers in SharePoint 2013
• How to: build a SharePoint-hosted Client Web Part in SharePoint 2013
• SharePoint 2013 apps – architecture, capability and UX considerations

Tags van Technorati: apps,sharepoint+2013,sharepoint,sps2013,office365,vs2012,Napa,sharepoint2013,development,microsoft

Presenting MSDN Webcast –SharePoint 2013: to app or not to app? on September 4th

I will be presenting a MSDN Belux Webcast on Tuesday , September 04, 2012 around the new App model in SharePoint Server 2013.

SharePoint 2013: to app or not to app?

SharePoint 2013 introduces a new mechanism for custom code solutions with the new App model. In this session, we'll examine why SharePoint Apps have been introduced and how it compares with the standard solution deployment model, the different architecture models and which technologies are used in the App model. We will also look in to the enhancements in the Client Side Object Model and the new REST API which will help you build SharePoint Apps. During this session the different scenarios are outlined using demos and after this session attendees will be ready to build Apps in SharePoint 2013.

Don’t forget to register for the MSDN Webcast – SharePoint 2013: to app or not to app? It is free.

Tags van Technorati: SharePoint+2013,apps,MSDN,webcast,development,visual+studio,vs2012,Napa,sps2013,officepreview

Building a Windows Phone 7 client application for Office 365 and SharePoint Online

If you want to build a client application for SharePoint Online such as a Windows 8 Metro App or a Windows Phone 7 app you will need to understand how active authentication works in Office 365 – a great background article on this is How to do active authentication to Office 365 and SharePoint Online which has a code sample listed below the blog post. This code sample uses the Microsoft.IdentityModel.dll which is part of Windows Identity Foundation and which you can normally find underneath - <drive>:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Windows Identity Foundation\v3.5\Microsoft.IdentityModel.dll

But since there is no version of Windows Identify Foundation available for the Windows Phone platform so you will need to  create the SAML sign-in request programmatically if you want to build a Windows Phone 7 client for SharePoint Online. You can start by taking a look at the code sample Claims-SPOnline from Edin Kapic which does exactly that in a scenario with Windows 8. Unfortunately the code will become quite a lot more complex once you try to port it over to Windows Phone 7 since you can’t use the new async/await keywords which were introduced with .NET 4.5.

So if anyone has written a generic framework for authenticating against SharePoint Online from a Windows Phone 7.x – please leave a comment.

Technorati Tags: windowsphone7,sharepoint+online,office365,development,visual+studio

Quick workaround for Excel and PowerPoint 2010 startup problem after installing Visual Studio 2012

I recently installed Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate on my machine and now every time that I open Excel 2010 - I get a message "Please wait while Windows configures Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2012..." and then I have to wait for 20 seconds…

The same thing happens with PowerPoint 2010. One of the workarounds seems to be to disable some of the COM add-ins which are added by Visual Studio 2012.

For Excel 2010:

• Go to File > Options > Add-Ins.  Select COM Add-ins in the drop down on the bottom of the View and manage Microsoft Office Add-ins screen and click Go… Next you can uncheck the COM add-ins which seem to be causing problems
• Team Foundation Add-in
• Visual Studio Tools for Office Design-Time Adaptor for Excel
• Load Test Report Add-in

For PowerPoint 2010:

• Go to File > Options > Add-Ins. Select COM Add-ins in the drop down on the bottom of the View and manage Microsoft Office Add-ins screen and click Go… Next you can uncheck the COM add-ins which seem to be causing problems
• Team Foundation Add-in

This seems to work for the moment – although the definite solution might be something else.

Tags van Technorati: Visual+studio,office2010,troubleshooting,microsoft

Building a Windows Phone 7 application integrated with SharePoint 2010 in authenticated scenarios

One of the hurdles you will be facing when building a Windows Phone 7 application which needs to integrate with SharePoint Server 2010 is the fact that WP7 does not support NTLM windows authentication. There are currently two different options:

• Integrate using Form Based Authentication
• Integrate using Microsoft ForeFront Unified Access Gateway (UAG)

For more information check out Security with SharePoint and Windows Phone Applications which is part of the SharePoint 2010 and Windows Phone 7 Training kit.

These are the two official ways of doing it  but I recently found a third option where you can access your SharePoint site from Windows Phone 7 using basic authentication as outlined on Darrin Bishop’s blog.

Tags van Technorati: wp7,windows+phone,sharepoint,sps2010,development,visual+studio

Login for Visual Studio 2010 Team Explorer on tfs.codeplex.com

If you need to login to tfs.codeplex.com from Visual Studio you will need to use the following user name  - SND\myusername_cp as login. The domain is SND and you need to add extra _cp to the end of the user name that you use to normally login to www.codeplex.com

Tags van Technorati: codeplex,login,tfs