The Future for SharePoint Developer

As a developer I wonder where I am heading in SharePoint and what are the areas that we need to focus on as SharePoint trend is changing rapidly and many more possibilities we need to jump in.

SharePoint development not just limited to on-premises and with rapid development and investment of Microsoft in Cloud technologies like Azure and Office 365 opens door for many more opportunities for us that we can grab.

Also as per Microsoft SharePoint 2016 is not the last on premise version, as they continuously improve customer experience and innovate on it.

SharePoint Hybrid

With Introduction of SharePoint 2016, Microsoft gave super flexibility and integration of data between your On-Premise data and Cloud data which is in Office 365.

(SharePoint Online + SharePoint on premise)

New SharePoint is already giving direct links which connects to Office 365 apps. With hybrid search, which provides search experience across Office 365 and on-premises farms running SharePoint different versions means it supports older SharePoint versions too. This is great feature when you have business customers who have hybrid infrastructure scenarios.

Microsoft is first delivering all those features to SharePoint online and then trying to incorporate to on premise version through Feature pack program.

SharePoint Framework

From blog SharePoint Framework — is a Page and Part model that enables fully supported client-side development, easy integration with the Microsoft Graph and support for open source tooling. SharePoint framework focuses on user experience and mobility point of view. As mentioned it also supports for outside Microsoft technology integration too.  Here are more details about Why SharePoint Framework

SharePoint Framework having GitHub site where we can get started. In fact, they already reached to some tutorials, so hurry! Microsoft is also giving pointers by which we can use those examples and develop mobile ready and responsive apps too. The SharePoint Framework will be available to existing SharePoint sites, and you will be able to host client-side web parts developed with the new SharePoint Framework on existing SharePoint pages.

SharePoint favours JavaScript based approach

While looking at SharePoint framework it talks about client side technologies those are widely used for it and with Microsoft’s view to use out of the box features and do least customizations that favours for JavaScript based approaches. Those who works on mainly Microsoft platform, SharePoint Framework focus on below technologies that we need to work, So Let’s get started 🙂

• Node.js
• Gulp
• Angular JS
• TypeScript

When I look at Office Developer Center, it shows menu items with highlighted as below. From menu it seems Microsoft is great way adopting for Angular and Node.js.

Along with this, one more hot topic is that Microsoft Graph – provides APIs that are extensively used for getting any O365 details about Users, Groups, Mail, Calendars, Contacts, Files, Tasks, People, Notes and more. All those APIs we can use in combination of client side development approach.

Image Source – http://graph.microsoft.io/en-us/

Office Dev PnP

As you might aware about Microsoft Office PnP community which also works best providing rapid development for SharePoint technology using standard patterns.

This community provides continuous improvement, samples and documentation to help you to implement typical customizations for Office 365 or for SharePoint (Online and on-premises) based on your functional requirements. Also they manage all updates using Nuget manager which is easy to use and maintain.

SharePoint Mobile App – Your Intranet in a Pocket

SharePoint mobile app is finally here and customer can use it on the go SharePoint content. This is the big USP for user experience point of view. As per Microsoft, The SharePoint mobile journey starts now. This is a first step, and excited to continue to build on what they’ve started. This app can be used for SharePoint 2013/2016 and SharePoint Online version.

SharePoint App for iOS is already released however for windows and Android devices are on the way.

Image source –  https://blogs.office.com/2016/05/04/the-future-of-sharepoint

In conclusion, there are bright scopes for new learning and growth for individual and wider range of technologies to cover while we scale on premise and cloud.

Please feel to express your view and comments about this topic. Thanks!