January 9th, 2017

SharePoint / Office Dev Patterns & Practices – January 2017 release

Vesa Juvonen
Vesa Juvonen
Principal Program Manager

SharePoint / Office 365 Dev Patterns and Practices (PnP) January 2017 release is out with new contributions from community for the community. This post contains all the details related on what was included with the release and what else has been happening in the PnP world during the past month.

 

What is SharePoint / Office Dev Patterns & Practices (PnP)?

SharePoint / Office Dev Patterns and Practices PnP is community driven open source initiative where Microsoft and external community members are sharing their learning’s around implementation practices for SharePoint and Office 365. Active development and contributions happen our GitHub projects under ‘dev’ branch and each month there will be a master merge (monthly release) with more comprehensive testing and communications.

PnP is owned and coordinated by SharePoint engineering, but this is work done by the community for the community. It’s been great to find both internal and external people who are willing to assist and share their learning’s for the benefit of others. This way we can build on the common knowledge of us all. Currently program is facilitated by Microsoft, but already at this point we have multiple community members as part of the PnP Core team and we are looking to extend the Core team with more community members.

Notice that since this is open source community program, there’s no SLAs for the support what we provide from program. You can use SharePoint Developer group in the Microsoft Tech Community for providing input and to ask any questions around the existing materials. If you are interested on getting more closely involved, please check the following guidance from our GitHub wiki or a referenced PnP Webcast.

Some key statistics around PnP program from January 2017

  • GitHub repository forks at different repositories 
  • Unique visitors during past 2 weeks’ cross PnP repositories – 12714
  • Unique visitors during past 2 weeks in SharePoint organization repositories – 3195
  • Merged pull requests cross PnP repositories (cumulative) – 2671
  • Closed issues and enhancements ideas cross PnP repositories (cumulative) – 1220
  • PnP Core component NuGet package downloads – 63299
  • Unique visitors in PnP MSDN pages during December 2016 – 28646
  • Unique tenants using PnP CSOM Core component during December 2016 – 2787
  • Http requests towards SharePoint Online from PnP CSOM Core Component during December 2016 – 939036010

Main resources around PnP program

January 2017 monthly community call

Agenda for the Tuesday 10th of January community call at 8 AM PST / 5 PM CET:

Monthly community call will get recorded and release to PnP YouTube channel typically within 24 hours after the recording is ended. If you have any questions, comments or feedback, please participate in our discussions in the Microsoft Tech Community under SharePoint developer group.

PnP Sites Core, PnP PowerShell and provisioning engine Special Interest Group (SIG)

PnP Sites Core, PowerShell and Provisioning Special Interest Group (SIG) has bi-weekly meetings to cover latest development in the PnP CSOM core component, PnP PowerShell and in the PnP remote provisioning engine. We do touch also generic SharePoint development practices around remote APIs in these calls. These calls have also free Q&A section, if you have any questions around SharePoint development in on-premises or in cloud. Need to get recommendation to your design or having hard time with some APIs? – Drop by, ask a question and we’ll help you.

You can download invite for the bi-weekly meeting from following location.

All SIG meetings are being recorded and are available for view from PnP YouTube Channel. Here’s the latest recordings from the SIG calls.

  • 14th of December – Modern experiences customization story for sites, lists and pages. Upcoming provisioning engine changes.

Notice. Next SIG for PnP Component / PowerShell will be on Wednesday 11th of January – If you have questions around these topics, please join this call and use the opportunity to ask questions from SP engineering and PnP Core team.

SharePoint Framework (SPFX) and JavaScript Special Interest Group (SIG)

SharePoint Framework and JavaScript Special Interest Group (SIG) has bi-weekly meetings to cover latest changes in the SharePoint Framework side, from engineering perspective and to cover also latest development related on the PnP JS Core library. These calls are designed to have 50%/50% of content and demos and there has been already great community demos on the new SharePoint Framework Client-side web parts. If you’re interested on showing your code, just let us know.

All SPFx and JS SIG meetings are recorded, so that you can check the demos and discussions, if you can’t make the actual call. You can find the latest recordings from the PnP YouTube Channel. Here’s the latest recordings.

  • 5th of January – Latest on SPFx and status of PnP JS Core 2.0 release
  • 22nd of December – Latest on SPFx, looking back 2016 and future of PnP JS Core
  • 8th of December – Latest on SPFx, PnP JS Core 2.0 release and other changes

Notice. Next SIG for SharePoint Framework and JavaScript development will be on Thursday 19th of January – If you have questions around these topics, please join this call and use the opportunity to ask questions from SP engineering and PnP Core team.

PnP Weekly Webcasts

We started new PnP Weekly Webcast series on October 2015 and have continued releasing new videos since that. All new webcasts are released in PnP YouTube Channel. Old webcasts and other demo videos are also found from the PnP Channel 9 section. Here’s the new web casts released after the last monthly release.

PnP repositories in GitHub

There are quite a few different GitHub repositories under the PnP brand since we wanted to ensure that you can easily find and reuse what’s relevant for you. We do also combine multiple solutions to one repository, so that you can more easily sync and get latest changes of our released guidance and samples. In general we do recommend you to use the PnP sample search tool at dev.office.com for locating relevant material for you. This should be easier and faster than trying to locate relevant material from GitHub.

During November, majority of the PnP repositories were moved to SharePoint GitHub organization. 

Here’s the current repository structure, including short description for each of them.

On top of the specific PnP repositories, PnP initiative also controls the new repositories under the SharePoint organization. PnP is owned nowadays by SharePoint engineering and we will be using PnP as the channel and forum to facilitate community work.

What’s supportability story around PnP material?

Following statements apply cross all of the PnP samples and solutions, including samples, core component(s) and solutions, like PnP Partner Pack.

  • PnP guidance and samples are created by Microsoft & by the Community
  • PnP guidance and samples are maintained by Microsoft & community
  • PnP uses supported and recommended techniques
  • PnP implementations are reviewed and approved by Microsoft engineering
  • PnP is open source initiative by the community – people who work on the initiate for the benefit of others, have their normal day job as well
  • PnP is NOT a product and therefore it’s not supported through Premier Support or other official support channels
  • PnP is supported in similar ways as other open source projects done by Microsoft with support from the community by the community
  • There are numerous partners that utilize PnP within their solutions for customers. Support for this is provided by the Partner. When PnP material is used in deployments, we recommend to be clear with your customer / deployment owner on the support model

Latest changes

SharePoint Framework samples

These are samples which are available from the SharePoint client-side web part sample repository at https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-fx-webparts. We will be working on getting all of these samples to RC0 level, when the release candidate goes live, so that tutorials and samples are working properly in any environment.

  • New sample angular-aad-webapi showing how to call custom web API secured with AAD from SPFx web part
  • New sample js-bot-framework showing how to implement bot framework chat in SPFx web part, which can be used to create sites in SharePoint Online

PnP CSOM Core and Provisioning Engine

PnP CSOM Core component is a wrapper on top of native CSOM and REST, which simplifies complex scenarios with remote APIs, one of the example is the PnP Provisioning Engine for remote templates. The first version of the PnP remote provisioning engine was released with the May 2015 release. For the January 2017 release we have continued to add new supported capabilities and made significant improvements from stability perspective for both SharePoint Online and SharePoint on-premises (2013 and 2016). This list contains the main updates that have been added in the January 2017 release:

  • General overall quality and performance improvements for on-premises and online
  • Added support for a new token {ListViewId:<list title>,<view title>} to retrieve the ID of a view based on the title of the list and of the view
  • Added support for extracting structural navigation from non-publishing sites
  • Added support for MobileView and MobileDefaultView
  • Tenant extension methods now support an optional function as a parameter which allows long running wait loops to be cancelled. Notice: it’s not cancelling the request to create or a delete a site
  • Fixed an issue where exporting the navigation structure of a site which is using Managed Navigation would not be importable to another site. For this reason we introduced the {sitecollectiontermsetid:<termsetname>} token
  • Fixed an issue where when specifying -PersistBrandingFiles the files would be exported to the filesystem in a folder representing the foldername of the source location of the file, whereas the file reference in the template would not reflect that location
  • Fixed an issue where ~sitecollection and ~site tokens would be parsed by the engine when used in webpart xml. These tokens are now send on as is to the SharePoint Serve
  • Unit/integration test improvements
  • Updated base templates for the SPO, 2013 and 2016 – used in delta handling

See also https://testautomation.sharepointpnp.com for day-to-day results and executed tests.

PnP JavaScript Core library v2.0.0

PnP JavaScript Core Library will be moving to version 2.0.0 during January. v2.0 release was originally planned to happen during December but has been delayed due miscellaneous reasons. This is JavaScript library which will increase productivity of developers when you are developing JavaScript based customizations on top of SharePoint. Library has been released as a npm package and you can find the source code from GitHub. PnP JS Core library is being developed and coordinated by the PnP Special Interest Group for SPFx and JavaScript, which has weekly meetings around this development effort and general topics on upcoming SharePoint Framework. PnP JS Core library is developed using typical open source web stack tooling, so that it’s fully aligned on the development models with SP Framework. 

This is similar effort as what PnP initiative previously has done with the PnP CSOM Core Component together with community. 

v2.0.0 is released as part of the January release with following capabilities.

  • npm package /lib will be es6
  • BUild pipeline fully updated
  • jsdoc replaces typedoc
  • Folder structure changes in library for easier implementation
  • Better debugging support
  • Provisioning capabilities removed, but will be introduced in new JS library released later
  • pnp.js and pnp.min.js bundled with webpart, transpiled to es5 using babel

PnP PowerShell 

PnP PowerShell providers close to two hundred additional PowerShell cmdlets, which can be used to manipulate content in SharePoint Online and in on-premises (SP2013, SP2016). These cmdlet’s are addative for SharePoint Online management shell, which concentrate more on the administrative tasks with SharePoint Online. 

Here’s the latest changes in the PnP PowerShell

  • Added Get-PnPRecycleBinItem – Returns the items in the recycle bin from the context
  • Added Clear-PnPRecycleBinItem – Permanently deletes all or a specific recycle bin item
  • Added Move-PnPRecycleBinItem – Moves all items or a specific item in the first stage recycle bin of the current site collection to the second stage recycle bin
  • Added Restore-PnPRecycleBinItem – Restores the provided recycle bin item to its original location
  • Added Get-PnPTenantRecycleBinItem – Returns the items in the tenant scoped recycle bin
  • Added Clear-PnPTenantRecycleBinItem – Permanently deletes a site collection from the tenant scoped recycle bin
  • Added Restore-PnPTenantRecycleBinItem – Restores a site collection from the tenant scoped recycle bin
  • Added Move-PnPFolder – Move a folder to another location in the current web
  • Added Rename-PnPFolder – Renames a folder
  • Added Add-PnPPublishiningImageRendition – Adds an Image Rendition if the Name of the Image Rendition does not already exist. This prevents creating two Image Renditions that share the same name.
  • Added Get-PnPPublishingImageRendition – Returns all image renditions or if Identity is specified a specific one
  • Added Remove-PnPPublishingImageRendition – Removes an existing image rendition
  • Added -Wait and -LockState properties to Set-PnPTenantSite
  • Overall quality improvements and bug fixes
  • Updated documentation for Cmdlets

PnP sample library

Here’s updates cross the PnP code sample library by the community on the code and documentation, which is great way to contribute as well.

  • New sample react-generic-app showing how to use modern web stack development practices without SharePoint Framework for example in SharePoint on-premises deployments
  • Updated Business.O365StarterIntranet with updates on deployment scripts
  • Updates to the PnP Partner Pack
    • Fine tuning and polishing based on community input
    • Updated to use latest version of PnP NuGet
    • Documentation improvements

PnP Guidance articles

The PnP Guidance repository contains guidance articles which are published at MSDN. Starting from end of May 2016 this process was changed to be fully automated and there’s automatic contributors list in the MSDN side showing who have been providing updates to these documents. We are looking forward on your contributions around real life learnings in different areas. Read more details around this open publishing model from following blog post

Here’s the new guidance released since past monthly communications.

See MSDN articles from the PnP MSDN section at http://aka.ms/sppnp-msdn.

PnP initiative also controls the articlesi in the dev.office.com aroung SharePoint development. Here’s new articles around the SharePoint Framework client-side web parts.

PnP Guidance videos

You can find all PnP videos from our YouTube Channel at http://aka.ms/sppnp-vidoes. This location contains already significant amount of detailed training material, demo videos and community call recordings. Since last release communications, we did not release nay new demo or guidance videos.

Notice that ome of the old PnP videos are also in the PnP Channel 9 video blog, which was previously used.

Key contributors for the January 2017 release

Here’s the list of active contributors (in alphabetical order) during past month in PnP repositories. PnP is really about building tooling together with the community for the community, so your contributions are highly valued cross the Office 365 customers, partners and obviously also at Microsoft.

Thank you for your assistance and contributions from the behalf of the community. You are making a difference!

Companies: Here’s the companies, which provided support for PnP initiative for this month by allowing their employees working for the benefit of others in the PnP initiative. There were also people who contributed from other companies during last month, but we did not get their logos and approval to show them on time for these communications. If you still want your logo for this month’s release, please let us know and share the logo with us. Thx.

 
 Affecto
 Blue Meteorite
 CA
 
Canviz
 piasys
 Puzzlepart
 onebit software
 Rapid Circle
 rencore
 Slalom
 Triad


Microsoft people: Here’s the list of Microsoft people who have been closely involved on the PnP work during last month.

Latest traffic statistics

Here’s traffic statistics from the PnP, PnP PowerShell, PnP Sites Core (.NET) and JavaScript Core component repositories.

Traffic at PnP repository

Traffic from PnP CSOM Core repository

   

Traffic from PnP PowerShell repository

Traffic from PnP JavaScript Core Component repository

Traffic from SharePoint Framework Web Parts repository

See About Repository Graphs for more details on above statistics.

Next steps

  • January 2016 monthly community call is on 10th of January at 8 AM PST / 5 PM CET for latest release details with demos – Download invite with detailed schedule for your time zone from http://aka.ms/sppnp-call.

PnP resources

“Sharing is caring”

Vesa Juvonen, Senior Program Manager, SharePoint, Microsoft – 9th of January 2017

Category
SharePoint Framework

Author

Vesa Juvonen
Vesa Juvonen
Principal Program Manager

Vesa Juvonen works as a Principal Product Manager focusing on the community and ecosystem across Microsoft 365. He leads the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices initiative which is providing tooling, guidance and assistance on adopting recommended patterns for using Microsoft 365. He has worked in different roles at Microsoft engineering helping on building capabilities in Microsoft 365 and to help customers and partners to use the different capabilities across the platform. Prior moving to ...

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