SharePoint Saturday Brussels 2016 presentation slides available
At the recent SharePoint Saturday Brussels I had the pleasure of presenting a session about building solutions on the SharePoint Framework. Here are the presentation slides that I used.
Deep Dive building solutions on the SharePoint Framework
The must-see session for every SharePoint developer. Learn how to get the most out of the SharePoint Framework and build powerful solutions for SharePoint and Office 365 using the latest developer opportunities.
Recently Microsoft released the developer preview of the SharePoint Framework - a new development model for building SharePoint customizations. Unlike other development models available to date, SharePoint Framework uses build toolchain based on open source tools such as gulp and Webpack. Using the SharePoint Framework developers on any platform can now extend SharePoint with additional capabilities.
Following up on the introduction of the SharePoint Framework done earlier in the morning by Karine Bosch, I focused on how developers can effectively use the SharePoint Framework to build client-side web parts. 85% of the audience worked with Angular in the past and nearly everyone in the room also had experience with jQuery.
We started the presentation discussing the different ways of referencing JavaScript frameworks, how they impact the generated web part bundles and how they are loaded on the page. In the context of loading frameworks from URLs we talked about the difference between the different script formats (ie. AMD, UMD, non-AMD) and how developers have to know the type of script they are referencing in their web part for it to be loaded correctly.
Users can easily configure SharePoint Framework client-side web parts to suit their needs. Each change in the configuration is directly reflected by the web part. If the web part however, loads its data from an API, it could result in a poor user experience, when the web part would try to load its data while not being fully configured. During the presentation we discussed the different modes in which web part property pane can operate and which one is the best for which kind of scenarios.
SharePoint Framework allows developers to guide users when configuring web parts. Using a simple mechanism developers can implement validation rules which help users to configure the web part correctly. In the session we talked about how validation rules for web part properties can be implemented, both when the validation rules are implemented directly inside the web part as well as when the web part would reach out to an API to validate the specified value.
We spent the majority of the time discussing the different topics while looking at how they work in practice. For reference I included the different takeaways in the presentation deck.
The event
SharePoint Saturday Brussels 2016 was an extremely well-organized event and I would like to thank the organization for the opportunity to speak and the sponsors for making the event possible. I enjoyed presenting my session a lot and would like to thank everyone who attended it. I hope you found the session useful and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.