Announcing SharePoint Framework 1.20 release candidate

We are excited to announce the availability of the release candidate for SharePoint Framework (SPFx) 1.20 – with primarily updates for Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Online experiences. This is the release candidate for the upcoming 1.20 release focused primarily on the new features within the Microsoft Viva side.

We are looking into providing the general availability (GA) version in autumn 2024 (September). As with previous preview releases, our objective is to provide more insights into the upcoming features and to provide our worldwide ecosystem an option to directly influence on the released capabilities. Your feedback is welcome. 👋

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

SharePoint Framework 1.20 release candidate release notes

Key features in the SharePoint Framework 1.20 📝

Key changes and updates in this preview release are as follows:

Introduction of new data visualization layout options for Viva Connections card view – bar, pie and donut chart types are now available on top of the previously released chart style
- See below video and sample code for more details on the option
Support for the HTML powered Quick Views for the Viva Connections cards – enabling more complex layout options for desktop, table and mobile devices
- Previously Viva Connections Card View has only support adaptive card option – with this new feature, you can use html with combination of any JavaScript frameworks for your quick view experience

and more 🚀

Here’s the relevant documentation updates for the new features

Create a Data Visualization Adaptive Card Extension (tutorial)
Build an HTML Quick View SharePoint Framework Adaptive Card Extension (tutorial)

As part of the preview release, we also provide the following new code samples showcasing the new card experiences:

Usage and creation of card layout options and the HTML powered quick views are demonstrated in the below videos.

Installing SharePoint Framework 1.20 release candidate 👩‍💻

You can install preview of the SharePoint Framework 1.20 by using the following command which will install always the latest upcoming preview version.

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

What’s SharePoint Framework? 🚀

SharePoint Framework is the most 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 SharePoint Framework Yeoman Generator, Microsoft Teams Toolkit, or with the SharePoint Framework 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 the 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.

“Wait – why is Copilot included in the above picture?” – We are working actively on the SharePoint Framework powered story with the Copilot with the initial preview already shown in the Build 2024. You can expect a first public preview for these Copilot related features to be availably in the last quarter of 2024.

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
- Viva Connections 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 or in LinkedIn to stay up to date on Microsoft 365 Platform announcements.

Happy coding! Sharing is caring!