Announcing SharePoint Framework 1.18.1 with updates for Microsoft Viva Connections

Vesa Juvonen

We are excited to announce general availability of the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 1.18.1 – with updates for Microsoft Viva Connections. SharePoint Framework is the easiest way to build your enterprise solutions for Microsoft 365 with automatic single sign-on, automatic hosting and with industry standard web stack tooling. You can use the same solution and code across the Microsoft 365 solutions, which simplifies your development process.

Your input and feedback has been invaluable to define the key features for our releases, both current and future. Thank you 👏

Key capabilities in SharePoint Framework 1.18.1

This time the release focuses on an improvements around the mobile theming support for the Viva Connections, when dark theme is used within the Microsoft Teams. Starting with the 1.18.1, you can easily adjust the rendering of your Adaptive Card Extension based on the theme setting.

See more details on the use cases with code samples from the following updated documentation

• Making Quick View compatible with dark mode in mobile devices
• Quick view design guidance

You can find other release details from the following documentation:

• SharePoint Framework 1.18.1 release notes

Installing SharePoint Framework 1.18.1 👩‍💻

You can install general availability of the SharePoint Framework 1.18.1 by using the following command which will always install the latest production ready packages.

npm install @microsoft/generator-sharepoint@latest --global

What’s SharePoint Framework? 🚀

SharePoint Framework is a widely used extensibility option in Microsoft 365 with tens of millions of end users each month for the custom components built by developers for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva and SharePoint. It’s the easiest way to build developer extensibility for Microsoft 365 and it’s taken advantage by thousands of partners and customers on building custom experiences for end users.

You can build SharePoint Framework powered solutions by using Microsoft Teams Toolkit, SharePoint Framework Yeoman Generator or with the Microsoft Viva Toolkit. Key advantage is the flexibility of automatic hosting with the option to use the exact same component across the different hosts without any code level changes. This is designed to maximize the value of your development investments regardless of which primary host you are targeting.

Key capabilities of the SharePoint Framework for Microsoft 365 are following:

• Content Driven Applications – SharePoint Framework can be used to build content driven applications on surfacing information easily from Microsoft 365 with Microsoft Graph or to integrate with externally hosted content.
• 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 SharePoint without additional maintenance or operational costs.
• 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 skill to succeed without any proprietary tooling.

SharePoint Framework has also made the permission and token management for accessing the data in Microsoft 365 easy. You will be using the awesome Microsoft Graph APIs for accessing business data and you can further simplify the development of SharePoint Framework components by taking advantage of the Microsoft Graph Toolkit, which provides reusable controls with data connectivity to Microsoft Graph.

Additional resources and support 🤝

• • Please report any issues or feedback using following issue list – https://aka.ms/spfx-issues
    • We have engineering people monitoring any incoming issues and helping you to get unblocked or getting your questions answered
  • Overview documentation
  • Getting started documentation
  • Build for Microsoft Teams using SharePoint Framework
  • Extend Outlook and Office with the SharePoint Framework
  • Overview of Viva Connections Extensibility
  • Microsoft Learn – Extend Microsoft Viva Connections
  • Microsoft Learn – Extend Microsoft SharePoint – Associate
  • Microsoft Viva Connections Toolkit – Simplify your development experience for Viva Connections
  • CLI for Microsoft 365 – SharePoint Framework Upgrade tooling from previous versions to latest
  • SharePoint Framework web part samples

If you are looking to build experiences for Microsoft 365, we strongly recommend joining our community calls and other Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community activities covering Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, Microsoft Viva, OneDrive, SharePoint and more… More details here https://aka.ms/community/home 🚀

And, follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on Microsoft 365 Platform announcements.

Happy coding! Sharing is caring! 

Vesa Juvonen Principal Program Manager, Microsoft 365 Platform

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