We are pleased to announce the release of SharePoint Framework v1.6 – bringing the availability of new tools to help you build engaging team and communication sites.  APIs for calling into Microsoft Graph and Web APIs are now generally available, we’ve improved our Dialog user experience framework, and you can now deploy SharePoint Framework tenant extensions across your entire tenancy.  With these connections to new data sources, and easier deployment of extensions – it has never been easier to broadly tailor SharePoint sites. 

General Availability of Web and Graph APIs in SharePoint Framework 

A key role of web parts and extensions is to pull together data from a number of sources into one page. Microsoft Graph contains key information about users, groups, and their activities. Organizations host line-of-of-business applications with web services authenticated through Azure Active Directory.  For both of these key service types, script objects in SharePoint Framework (MSGraphClient and AadHttpClient respectively) make it easy to work with these data sources, and these APIs are now generally available. 

With these APIs now ready for use, you can build and deploy parts that show a list of events from a group calendar, via Microsoft Graph; or you can connect to a contact management system exposed through custom APIs, amongst many possibilities.  

One great source of ideas is the SharePoint Starter Kit, which provides several examples of Microsoft Graph web parts.

The SharePoint Starter Kit contains several examples of web parts that connect to Microsoft Graph. 

A full management experience for granting API permissions puts administrators in control.  These permissions are connected to your SPFx packages, providing a streamlined experience for administrators to understand and permit the right levels of access to scriptable components in their sites. 

To get started, review the MSGraphClient and AadHttpClient updated API documentation.

Deploy SharePoint Framework Extensions across your Tenancy 

As announced at Microsoft Build, we’re also looking to roll out tenant-wide deployment of SharePoint Framework Extensions.   

Commonly, we see SharePoint Framework used to both deeply customize a specific site (for example, a communication site for your marketing team), as well as provide common functionality across sites. This functionality can include capabilities such as a common header (for example, for compliance tracking) or a common footer (for example, common links to policies, branding, and other tools).    

For the latter scenario, tenant administrators can now opt to deploy extensions within a SharePoint Framework package across your tenancy.  Now every SharePoint site in a tenancy can be easily customized and extended with the power of script.  You can get started by reading updated documentation on tenant-wide deployment. 

Dialog Framework Updates 

Finally, we’ve also made an improved dialog framework generally available.  New updates to the dialog framework – contained in the @microsoft/sp-dialog package – address issues the community has identified through your Github feedback, including better interoperability with React-based controls, like Office UI Fabric React. 

Taken together, it is now even easier to deliver comprehensive, enriching customizations to every SharePoint site in your tenancy. This includes connections to an ever-growing list of APIs in Microsoft Graph or exposed through Azure Active Directory.  Please read the release notes for SharePoint Framework version 1.6 to get started with these updates.  If you haven’t gotten started yet, now is a great time – you can build your first web part in 30 minutes.