Recently I participated in a Microsoft developer discussion on the Yammer Network where some great ideas were shared. I am re posting a summary of the session posted in that group here for everyone’s benefit
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Overview: Microsoft responses to questions are provided by Chris Johnson, Sonya Koptyev, Jeremy Thake, Dorrene Brown, Mauricio Ordonez, Brian Jones, Ricky Kirkham, Christophe Fiessinger, Jeremy Chapman, Alister Spiers, and 365 IT Pro Team as well as MVP Juan Carlos Gonzalez Martin.
FUTURE PLANS
Q: When will we see the O365 APIs move out of preview? When will we see the O365 APIs move out of preview?
A: We’re aiming for end of this calendar year. We’re getting a bunch of great feedback and have a few partners building solutions that have helped us identify some additional work we’d like to get in. We will have a public roadmap soon that we will be keeping up to date to help give people a heads up on when developer related features will be coming.
Q: Are there any plans in the SharePoint roadmap for an analytics API about user actions (like Usage or Audit data for SharePoint On-Prem)?
A: It is something that our Information Management team are working on. This is obviously challenging from a multi-tenant perspective due to the nature of where we have come from historically with the SharePoint platform
Q: Is there is any plans for Lync online API so we can schedule and add people to meetings from our custom application?
A: We are working to expand our APIs across the suite, but we don’t have any announcements around the Lync Online APIs at this time.
Q: Can you please provide a little more insight around the plans for auto versus provider hosted apps and what is going to happen to Cloud Business Apps (light switch / html)? I understand provider hoist is the current guidance but I’d like to understand what the path will be so we can make some good architectural and strategic decisions for our apps in the near future – 3-6 months timeframe. We currently create, and have a need for small, dedicated task oriented apps that interact between Office 365 and SQL Azure.
A: The Auto-hosted apps preview program is closed (http://blogs.office.com/2014/05/16/update-on-autohosted-apps-preview-program and we will be allowing the apps to run until close to the end of the year. The guidance is to convert your auto-hosted apps (if you have any) to provider-hosted. That is the preferred app deployment model today. We cannot comment on the CBAs but can pull in the right folks to answer your questions around CBAs.
Q2: Are you working on a replacement for Autohosted Apps? Autohosted Apps were a really powerful App Type for creating and deploying small Apps without having to worry about deploying them in Azure.
A2: We heard from developers that they wanted to have full access to Azure, and so as we announced in the blog post we will continue to work with the Visual Studio team to continue to simplify and streamline the deploy process into Azure.
Q: Is there a plan to enhance the APIs available for administrative activies such as managing domains/DNS entries or modify Exchange/Lync/Sharepoint settings via APIs?
A: Our approach is to have management APIs via PowerShell + the remote APIs via REST/CSOM. We don’t currently have anything to share about new APIs coming to PowerShell about those specific things. We’re always looking to improve what can be automated! The big focus has been to make it easier through poweshell cmdlets… check them out on TechNet – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn194107.aspx
Q: Are there any plans to be more transparent about updates to the UI? Given that our development is focused on a client side API, any changes to the standard HTML can immediately render our solutions broken. For example — the top navigation bar’s text color recently changed. If my branding had used that color for the background color, the text would have been invisible. Even “non-disruptive” changes can be disruptive.
A: There is work in progress to be more transparent with our roadmap where we will share changes such as the user experience changes along with new and changed APIs.
The nature of us running a service now is that we are continually improving the user experience. With SharePoint On-Premises the user experience has changed between Cumulative Updates, Service Packs and major releases. As a SharePoint developer we have always had to manage this balance, taking a dependency from your code on the UI is a fragile one due to the frequency of change and we would recommend you avoid it at all costs.
With regards to the scenario you provided around the top navigation bar text color recently changing…the Theme approach is fully supported. I do agree that it is unfortunate that the text became invisible. We are working on some new features to improve this experience, but are not quite ready to disclose them
Q: Are there plans to make it easier for public facing and publishing sites to be Responsive ready? What can we look forward to?
A: Have you checked out this post about responsive web design in SharePoint? http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepointdev/archive/2013/04/01/implementing-your-responsive-designs-on-sharepoint-2013.aspx
Also, you can find additional information about designing public facing sites here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-sharepoint-online-enterprise-help/public-website-faq-HA104135026.aspx#_Toc383417646
Q: CRM now supports multiple instances within a single Office 365 tenant. Will SharePoint receive this same capability in the future so that we can better manage Development and QA instances?
A: Currently SharePoint has the capability of creating different Site Collections in the same tenancy which is how some handle dev/QA areas to keep things separate. However, others choose to create an entirely separate tenancy to keep things separate.
In your case what are you looking for isolation of? Sites, User profiles? Mailboxes? All of the above? Keen to hear more about what you are looking for. Please log it on UserVoice: http://officespdev.uservoice.com/
Q: A request that we get from Office365 customers is hiding specific content from the suite bar. Are there any plans to implement customizing and hiding content? This would need to be consistent across all Office365 Services.
A: We’ve also heard several times that customizing the suite bar is something that users want as well. While we aren’t quite ready to share our thinking just yet, this is something we are thinking about at this time.
APIs
Q: How much change should we expect moving from the Preview APIs to the Production APIs?
How much notice will we get when this happens to make sure we can make adjustments in our code?
A: We don’t anticipate huge changes in the O365 APIs moving from preview to production. There will be changes to the APIs while they are still in preview, but we’ll make sure to let everyone know in advance. We are currently working on a 30-60-90 day roadmap for the public that will show people what will be changing in the near future.
Q: In the preview Office 365 Files Rest API what is the reasoning behind limiting file copy and move operations to only within the same document library? This really limits the usefulness of those operations and is less functionality than what is in the existing SharePoint web endpoints.
A: No reason other than we haven’t implemented the feature yet 🙂 The Files APIs are still in preview mode, and while we can’t share the exact improvements we will be making this is definitely a good idea. Can you add this feature request to our UserVoice (aka.ms/officedevfeedback) so we can get it on our backlog?
Q: What is the relationship between the O365 APIs (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/office/dn605893) and SharePoint apps intended for SharePoint Online? Are SP apps going to be replaced (eventually) by the O365 APIs? If not, what scenarios are appropriate for SP Apps, but not for O365 APIs, and vice versa?
A: No, they are not replacing Apps for SharePoint. The way we see is that the Apps are the contextual experience of surfacing your customization into SharePoint and Office. Such as App Parts, Ribbon Custom Actions, List Item Block Actions in SharePoint or Read/Write Compose in Outlook and Content App in PowerPoint.
The Office 365 APIs are your way of reaching into the services (Calendar, Mail, Contacts, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint All Sites) from your standalone web applications or mobile applications.We see these two complementing each other to deliver your business solutions. We will be sharing more soon on this direction and strategy.
Q: From my SharePoint site can I call my custom for example WebAPI endpoint and use OAuth to authorize this call on the backend? I want to call external backend from JavaScript in my SharePoint site and just know the caller from my backend I don’t want to call back to SharePoint I will just get data from my backend and send it to the caller.
A: We don’t think you can use the context token in that way. There’s no way to obtain a context token programmatically. What we would suggest for these JavaScript scenarios is that your WebAPI use an Auth cookie that gets sent in response to the initial context token.
GENERAL QUESTIONS AND FUNCTIONALITY
Q: When will we get to know more about the Discovery Service? We work in integration, and knowing what’s out there instead of having to search for it would be extraordinarily helpful.
A:The Discovery Service allows applications to find the specific endpoint location for resources. For example, when a user signs into an application it can call the discovery service to determine URL of the user’s OneDrive. This saves the user from having to manually type in the URL. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn605898(v=office.15).aspx
Q: I’ve been having a lot of trouble figuring out leverage Office Web Apps as a provider hosted app. What’s the best path for third party companies wanting to give users the best web experience possible?
Is it possible to use Office Web Apps with a client dropbox account? Feed them a byte[] or some such action?
A: If the files are stored in O365, then you should be able to use the Web Apps to render the files. If the files are in dropbox, you’d need to first get them into the user’s OneDrive for business folder, and the Web Apps would then render them.
Q: What is the relationship of the O365 Common Consent Framework (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn605895(v=of…) to SharePoint apps? Assuming the app is targeted only for SharePoint Online, is the ComCon Framework and alternative to the existing ACS/OAuth system for SP app developers? Is it meant to replace the existing system?
A: The Common Consent Framework allows applications to access multiple services. Today the set of services supported by common consent includes SharePoint, Exchange, and the directory. In contrast, SharePoint app authorization model allows access solely to SharePoint resources. At SharePoint Conference 2014 we announced our direction is to converge these two models.
Right now you can actually already call the CSOM and REST APIs if your app asks for at least READ permissions that the user consents to. You can pass the Auth Bearer token as you make calls to both those APIs.
Q2: How would you use CSOM in an O365 APP? Would you use a token to establish a ClientContext?
A2: Yes, you can use CSOM completely out of SharePoint…there is a post of Kirk Evans where he shows how to create a Timer Job where you can see this idea.http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kaevans/archive/2014/03/02/building-a-sharepoint-app-as-a-timer-job.aspx
The Microsoft team is also working on getting out some simple blogs posts dealing with this particular subject.
Q: When developing Apps for Office 365 and the App Catalog: we may want to update our app from time to time. What resources are there to learn the best way to do this and could this potentially translate to On-Prem app updates?
A: Ricky Kirkham did an amazing session on this at SharePoint Conference http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPC425. Due to the app model not sitting on the SharePoint Server, the good news is that IISRESETs are not required that would impact the operational uptime of the SharePoint server.
There are naturally strategies just like any web applications of releasing new versions of your web app into production still. But it does not impact your SharePoint SLA now, just your app. We have several topics on MSDN about updating SP apps. The top node is: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/fp179904%28v=office.15%29.aspx. It is not necessary to stop SharePoint to update an app. Only the app itself is inaccessible while the update is running.
Q: Why is the Recycle method not exposed on SP.Web in CSOM? In order to recycle a web rather than delete it. I only see DeleteObject exposed where other objects such as SP.List have a Recycle method.
A: That would be a great one to add to user voice, and we can take a look at it. http://officespdev.uservoice.com
Q: Tenancy scope app can’t install app part. How I can create the concept of app stabling to my site and run code in the host web without needing to install an app and add my app part to the host web?
A: If it is a scenario when a user launches the home page of the host web and you want to execute some code and render something on the page,right now you would need to add the App to every Site where you wanted the App Part.
Right now you can’t automatically add the App Part to a page, we have an engineer investigating this scenario right now. In the future we intend on improving this scenario of deploying apps at a tenant level. If you just want to execute code against multiple host webs, have you can build a Standalone Web Application or Mobile Application that calls the Office 365 APIs.
Q: How to deal with the announcement of discontinuation of InfoPath in SharePoint? Is there any guidance or migration path?
A: Customers can still use InfoPath until 2023. We plan to release a replacement (side by side for now) with the SharePoint form customization technology, currently codenamed “FoSL” later this summer. We are also working actively on vNext technologies for other scenarios, and we will provide more details later this year, closer to Q4. http://blogs.office.com/2014/01/31/update-on-infopath-and-sharepoint-forms
Q2: Regarding the 2023 date… will this include InfoPath Forms Services or just InfoPath Desktop Client? Dates this far in the future would certainly impact a client’s decision.
A2: InfoPath Desktop Client will continue to be supported through 2023. InfoPath Forms Services in on-prem deployments will also continue to be supported until 2023. InfoPath Forms Services in SharePoint Online (Office 365) will be maintained until the next on-premises release of SharePoint. We will provide a year’s notice (via blog post) before turning off IPFS in the service.
Q: Will it be possible (or is it already possible) to use Word Online, Excel Online, etc from SharePoint Online as a drop in replacement for textarea/ckeditor html-fields in .Net/Azure web applications?
A: We currently have the ability to drop a document on a page and use Word Online to view it. However, we don’t have the ability to just use it as a generic rich text editing control like you would with the radEditor for example.
Q2: When you say drop a document on a page, do you mean a web page that is not within SharePoint Online (like a regular MVC-web application pages (for example a cshtml-page))? And does this solution require the users to login to SharePoint online also?
A2: Yes, that’s right. Auth depends on where the document sits. If it’s in Office 365, then yes, they would need to authenticate. You can also do the same with documents in OneDrive.
Source: Yammer IT Pro
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