Announcing SharePoint Framework 1.18 with updates for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva and SharePoint

Vesa Juvonen

September 12th, 20230 1

We are really excited to announce general availability of the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 1.18 – with updates for Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Microsoft 365 app and SharePoint Online experiences. 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.

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

  • More flexibility for the Viva Connections card layout options for building more engaging dashboard
  • Other improvements and adjustments for the Viva Connection experiences
  • Fluent UI React v8 support for the Microsoft 365 solutions
  • Updates for the Microsoft Teams solution templates to align with design guidance
  • TypeScript v4.7 support
  • Default Node.js version updated to version 18
  • Numerous other improvements and adjustments based on the reported issues by customers and partners.
    • If you ran into any issues, please use Premier Support if that’s an option or report your issues at https://aka.ms/spfx-issues.

Related documentation updates for the 1.18 release on the Viva Connections updates

New samples showcasing the new Viva Connections layout features:

Here are some example layouts you can now build with the new Viva Connections layout options.

Image spfx acecard types 118 new

You can find full list of release details from the following documentation:

Notice. We have also publicly already talked about a new opportunity called Bot Framework powered Microsoft Viva cards. This feature is currently in public preview and focuses on using Bot Framework with Microsoft Viva. It does not have direct dependency on the SharePoint Framework client-side libraries. Bot Framework powered Microsoft Viva cards will introduce a new option for ISV to extend their Bot Framework specific implementations also to power Microsoft Viva Connections dashboard. This will be an additional option for building extensibility for the dashboard. You can also use SharePoint Framework by taking advantage of the Adaptive Card Extensions (ACEs) which will keep on getting also improvements in future.

 

Live demo of new features

We did recently demonstrated new features in the SharePoint Framework 1.18 release within our weekly Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community call, which is open for all customers and partners to join.

You are more than welcome to join on the future community calls which are a great way to keep up to date on the new features and capabilities which are available within the Microsoft 365 and in Power Platform. Download recurrent invite to the calls from https://aka.ms/community/calls. Everyone is welcome 🧡

 

Installing SharePoint Framework 1.18 👩‍💻

You can install general availability of the SharePoint Framework 1.18 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.

Image showing SharePoint Framework across Microsoft 365 host features

Additional resources and support 🤝

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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