Announcing SharePoint Framework 1.13 – Extending Microsoft Viva Connections

SharePoint team

October 21st, 20210 0

We are excited to announce general availability of the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 1.13 with the general availability for building engaging experiences for Microsoft Viva Connections. We have also included a number of improvements and fixes for Microsoft Teams and SharePoint.

Important. This includes general availability of the Viva Connections platform capabilities with SharePoint Framework, but the actual Viva Connections experiences will be generally available in the next several weeks.

Here are the key capabilities included in the SharePoint Framework 1.13:

General availability of Adaptive Card Extensions for extending Viva Connections Desktop and Mobile experiences
Support version 1.10 of Teams JS client SDK
Support version 3.9 of TypeScript
Support version 2.9 of Adaptive Card SDK
Release of image rendering APIs
Removal of local workbench
Numerous additional fixes based on the reported GitHub issues

Documentation assets to get started with SharePoint Framework 1.13 version and the related updates:

Extend Microsoft Viva Connections Learning Path

As part of this release, we are also excited to announce a new Learning Path called Extend Microsoft Viva Connections designed for learning the different extensibility opportunities in Viva Connections for partners and customers.

Overview videos on Viva Connections extensibility

We have two great assets in video format on getting started with building Viva Connections extensibility with SharePoint Framework.

Ed Averett did a great overview on the Viva Connections extensibility options in recent Microsoft 365 platform call. This video focuses on the introduction, overview and positioning.

Patrick Rodgers showed typical Patterns and Practices for the Viva Connections Adaptive Card development in a recent SharePoint Framework community call.

Future plans for SharePoint Framework

We will keep actively investing in SharePoint Framework with the updated quality assurance model with preview releases. You can expect the first preview version of the v1.14 to be publicly available within upcoming weeks.

Most notable plans for upcoming features with SharePoint Framework include:

Performance improvements across apps (dev and runtime)
Updated default templates with modernized initial experiences to speed up the development (in 1.14)
Evolve the Viva Connections scenarios and extensibility options based on customer and partner feedback
Improved Microsoft Teams desktop and mobile client experiences
Improved Microsoft Teams Meeting apps support with SharePoint Framework
Improvements on building building extensibility for the SharePoint portals and lists using existing extensibility option
Fully modernized SharePoint store and app catalog in SharePoint Online
Publish and acquire SharePoint Framework solutions directly from the Microsoft Teams store

Notice that these plans are subject to change and we cannot provide exact timelines for mentioned features at the moment of time.

What is SharePoint Framework?

SharePoint Framework is one of the most widely used frameworks for extending Microsoft 365 experiences in Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. There are tens of millions of end users using custom components build with SPFx each month. Usage is growing across all the areas of Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. It’s the easiest way to build extensibility for Microsoft 365 and it’s taken advantage by thousands of partners and customers on building custom experiences for end users.

Key capabilities of SharePoint Framework for Microsoft 365 include:

Automatic Single Sign On – SharePoint Framework components have automatic and seamless SSO included for all platforms they are hosted. No specific consents needed from Microsoft 365 end users.
Automatic hosting – SharePoint Framework components are automatically hosted in Microsoft 365 without additional maintenance or operational costs.
Consistent developer experience – Use the same code and development patterns for Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Teams and in SharePoint.
Industry standard tooling – SharePoint Framework is using standard web stack tooling with node, npm, TypeScript and any JavaScript framework of your preference. Just standard web skills needed. Anyone can do this.

SharePoint Framework provides multiple shapes and component types across Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint.

Feedback, support and issues

We are building SharePoint Framework for you, so please keep on providing us with feedback and input on the needed capabilities.

Please report any issues on SharePoint Framework using following GitHub issues list – https://aka.ms/spfx-issues
- We have engineering people monitoring any incoming issues
Introduction to Microsoft Viva Connections extensibility – Ed Averett (Microsoft)
Getting started on building Microsoft Viva Connection adaptive card components using SPFx – Patrick Rodgers (Microsoft)
How to implement Microsoft Viva Connections with Microsoft Mechanics – Adam Harmetz (Microsoft)
Build solutions that span across Microsoft Teams, Viva Connections and SharePoint – Build 2021 session – Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft)
SharePoint Framework documentation – Includes guidance for Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint extensibility
CLI for Microsoft 365 – SharePoint Framework Upgrade tooling from previous versions to latest
SharePoint Framework tutorial for getting started
SharePoint Framework web part samples
SharePoint Framework reference solutions for specific scenarios
Adaptive Card Extension (ACE) samples

If you are looking into building experiences for Microsoft 365, we strongly recommend on joining our community calls and other Microsoft 365 community activities. More details from https://aka.ms/m365pnp.

Happy coding! Sharing is caring!