September 12th, 2017

SharePoint Patterns & Practices – September 2017 release

Vesa Juvonen
Vesa Juvonen
Principal Program Manager

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

What is SharePoint Patterns & Practices (PnP)?

SharePoint / Office Dev Patterns and Practices

SharePoint PnP is a nick-name for SharePoint Dev Ecosystem activities coordinated by SharePoint engineering. SharePoint 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 in GitHub by providing contributions on the samples, reusable components, and documentation.

PnP is owned and coordinated by SharePoint engineering, but this is work done by the community for the community. The initiative is currently 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 initiative, there’s no SLAs for the support for the samples provided through GitHub. Obviously, all officially released components and libraries are under official support from Microsoft. You can use SharePoint Developer group in the Microsoft Tech Community for providing input and to ask any questions around the existing materials.

Some key statistics around PnP program from August 2017

  • GitHub repository forks at most popular repositories in SharePoint GitHub organization 
  • Unique visitors during past 2 weeks in SharePoint organization repositories – 27477
  • Merged pull requests across SharePoint repositories (cumulative) – 3732
  • Closed issues and enhancements ideas cross SharePoint repositories (cumulative) – 2228
  • SharePoint Online CSOM NuGet package downloads (cumulative) – 233038
  • PnP Core component NuGet package downloads (cumulative) – 140077
  • Page views in SharePoint Dev pages at dev.office.com during August 2017 – 455469
  • Page views in PnP MSDN pages during August 2017 – 58018
  • Unique tenants using PnP components during August 2017 – 8363
  • Http requests towards SharePoint Online from PnP components during August 2017 – 4299901672
  • PnP YouTube channel had 20534 views with 131253 minutes watch time during August 2017

Main resources around SharePoint PnP and SharePoint development

September 2017 monthly community call

Agenda for the Tuesday 12th of September 2017 SharePoint Dev Ecosystem / Patterns and Practices 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 Webcasts

We started new PnP Webcast series in 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 on the PnP Channel 9 section. Here are the new webcasts released after the last monthly release. We are looking into continuing the releases of the webcast in the future using weekly or bi-weekly schedule depending on the topics to be covered.

General Dev, CSOM, PnP Core, PnP PowerShell SIG Bi-Weekly Call Special Interest Group (SIG)

General SP Dev, CSOM PnP Sites Core, PowerShell and Provisioning Special Interest Group (SIG) have bi-weekly meetings to cover the general SharePoint topics, CSOM and latest in the PnP CSOM core component, PnP PowerShell and in the PnP remote provisioning engine. These calls have also free Q&A section if you have any questions around SharePoint development in on-premises or in the cloud. Need to get a recommendation for your design or having a 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 the following location. Notice that invite has been updated August 2017 with updated connection information and meeting has been rescheduled for Thursday.

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

  • 7th of September – General updates from engineering, demo on remote provisioning techniques for pushing SPFx solution cross tenant, demo on site classification capability with modern team sites
  • 24th of August – General updates on SharePoint dev. Demo on modern page manipulation programmatically. Preview of new capabilities in the PnP Provisioning engine in September 2017 release.

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 the engineering perspective and to cover also latest development related to 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 in showing your code, just let us know.

All SharePoint Framework 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 are the latest recordings.

  • 31st of August – Latest on SharePoint Framework and PnP JS Core. Demos on SharePoint Framework Extensions and web parts Preview on pnp-js-core 3.0 capabilities and Graph support.
  • 17th of August – Latest on SPFx and PnP JS Core. Demos on cache handling in sp-pnp-js. Demo on building custom Yeoman generators.

SharePoint Dev Ecosystem in GitHub

There are quite a few different GitHub repositories under the SharePoint 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.

On top of the specific PnP repositories, PnP initiative also controls the new repositories under the SharePoint organization. 

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

  • PnP – Main repository for SP add-in, Microsoft Graph etc. samples
  • PnP-Guidance – Guidance, presentations, and articles which are partly synced to MSDN
  • PnP-Sites-Core – Office Dev PnP Core component
  • PnP-JS-Core – Office Dev PnP Core component for JavaScript
  • PnP-PowerShell – Office Dev PnP PowerShell Cmdlets
  • PnP-Tools – New repository for tools and scripts targeted more for IT Pro’s and for on-premises for SP2013 and SP2016
  • PnP-Partner-Pack – Packaged guidance with detailed instructions on setting things up in Office 365 and in Azure.
  • PnP-Transformation – Material specifically for the transformation process. Currently, includes samples around InfoPath replacement and transformation tooling from farm solutions to add-in model.
  • PnP-Provisioning-Templates – Source for templates available from PnP Template Gallery at http://templates-gallery.sharepointpnp.com
  • PnP-Provisioning-Schema – PnP Provisioning engine schema repository
  • PnP-IdentityModel – Open source replacement of Microsoft.IdentityModel.Extensions.dll

What’s supportability story around PnP material?

Following statements apply across 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 initiative 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 being 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 or from the SharePoint Framework Extensions repository at https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-fx-extensions.  

  • New web part sample react-rxjs-event-emitter showing how we can use the ReactiveX (RxJs) library with the SharePoint Framework to communicate between web parts through broadcasting events utilizing the Publish–subscribe pattern. 
  • New web part sample react-events-aggregator showing how we can use the SPFx Event Aggregator to communicate between web parts through broadcasting events utilizing the Publish–subscribe pattern. 
  • New web part sample angular-media-recorder illustrating Video Recording using MediaRecorder Web API.
  • New web part sample js-solution-editions shows the possible approach of handling multiple editions (e.g. trial, lite, full) of SharePoint Framework solution.
  • Update web part sample react-content-query-webpart is a modern version of the good old Content by Query WebPart that was introduced in SharePoint 2007

  • New Application Customizer sample react-application-breadcrumb which illustrates how to create breadcrumb element and append it to your site via the SharePoint Framework Application Customizer extension.
  • New Field Customizer sample js-field-taskpriority shows how to apply conditional color formatting to the values in a Priority field based on their value.
  • New List View Command set sample js-command-clone showing how to build an extension that allows users to clone one or more list items. 
     
  • Updates to numerous other samples to polish the code and documentation

PnP CSOM Core and Provisioning Engine

PnP CSOM Core component is a wrapper on top of native SharePoint CSOM and REST API, 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 September 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 September 2017 release:

  • Redesigned support for sections and columns in client-side pages. Previously we used zones/sections as terminology which now has been aligned on the user interface experience using sections/columns 
  • Extension methods for retrieving tenant app catalog and uploading spfx client-side app packages to the catalog
  • Added Microsoft.Graph and Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory as dependencies for the SharePointPnPCoreOnline NuGet package
  • Native support for new 201705 remote provisioning schema with new serialization engine
  • New capabilities in 201705 schema 
    • Support for provisioning client-side pages
    • Support for extracting the home page from modern team site with client-side web part details
    • Added KeyColumn and Update support for DataRow items
    • Added capability to remove RoleAssignements 
    • Support for adding ClientComponentId and ClientComponentProperties on user custom actions and in fields
    • New settings in ListInstance
    • New settings in Template – TemplateCultureInfo, Scope
    • New options in Security / roles assignments – Remove
    • New attributes in File level and property bag support for folder
    • KeyColumn and Update Behavior for DataRows elements
    • Image Rendition support
    • IRM settings support
    • List WebHooks – In schema, but not yet implemented in provisioning engine – coming in next release
    • Client-side pages – In schema, but not yet implemented in provisioning engine
  • Updated to use latest SPO CSOM NuGet package
  • 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

New version release will be soon available for the Patterns and Practices JavaScript Core Library with following capabilities.

sp-pnp-js@3.0.0 – ETA September 14

  • Adding Graph Support [link]
  • Updates to the configuration interface [link]
  • Refactor how we export internal classes [link]
  • Will include bug fixes from issues list as needed
  • Will have full release notes published for the release

@pnp/pnp – ETA September 20 for beta 0

  • Upcoming beta, more info on upcoming SIG call on Thursday 14th of September
  • Major refactor
  • Migration guide will be provided
  • Goals: more modular, smaller file sizes, easier to use pieces as building blocks, support greater range of packaging features

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

PnP PowerShell 

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

Here are the latest changes in the PnP PowerShell

  • Updated to use 201705 schema with provisioning operations
  • New Set-PnPField for setting field properties
  • New Set-PnPView for setting view properties
  • New Add-PnPClientSidepage command for modern page manipulation
  • New Add-PnPClientSidePageSection for page section manipulation
  • New Add-PnPClientSideText for adding text to modern page
  • New Add-PnPClientSideWebPart for adding web parts to modern pages
  • New Get-PnPAvailableClientSideComponents for getting list of available web parts for modern pages
  • New Get-PnPClientSidePage command
  • New Remove-ClientSidePage command
  • New Set-ClientSidePage command
  • Updated Add-PnPCustomAction to support SPFx scenarios for associating extensions to sites
  • Numerous other updates cross existing commands
  • Overall quality improvements and bug fixes
  • Updated automatically generated PnP PowerShell cmdlet documentation at MSDN

PnP sample library

Here are updates across the PnP code sample library by the community on the code and documentation, which is a great way to contribute as well.

  • Updated Business.StarterIntranet solution which is is a generic, enterprise intranet publishing solution, compatible with SharePoint 2013, 2016 and SharePoint Online.
    • Ready to use starter kit for Intranet deployment which is using all the modern technologies
    • TypeScript, Webpack, PnP JS Core, PnP Remote Provisioning, KnockoutJS, Bootstrap, Node JS, etc.

screenshot of the intranet solution

SharePoint Dev articles

SharePoint Dev articles are surfaced currently either in dev.office.com/sharepoint or in the PnP MSDN location. You can provide contributions for both of these locations by submitting documentation improvements using GitHub tooling. Majority of the SharePoint Dev docs are stored and surfaced from the sp-dev-docs repository and PnP MSDN articles are surfaced from the PnP-Guidance repository. 

PnP initiative also controls the articles in the dev.office.com around SharePoint development. Here are new/updated articles around the SharePoint Framework. All documentation from MSDN will be gradually moving to dev.office.com/sharepoint.

Here’s the new guidance released since past monthly communications in the PnP MSDN section at http://aka.ms/sppnp-msdn.

PnP Guidance videos

You can find all PnP videos from our YouTube Channel at http://aka.ms/sppnp-videos. This location contains already a significant amount of detailed training material, demo videos, and community call recordings. 

Key contributors for the September 2017 release

Here’s the list of active contributors (in alphabetical order) since last release details in SharePoint Dev repositories or community channels. PnP is really about building tooling and knowledge together with the community for the community, so your contributions are highly valued across the Office 365 customers, partners and obviously also at Microsoft.

Thank you for your assistance and contributions on 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.

aequos
Canviz
ClearPeople
ContentAndCode
CPS
Digia
DMI
piasys
 Puzzlepart
 onebit software
 rencore
 SharePointalist
Triad
WorkPoint
Wortell


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

Next steps

  • September 2017 monthly community call is on Tuesday 12th of September at 8 AM PT / 5 PM CET for latest release details with demos – Download recurrent invite to monthly community call with a detailed schedule for your time zone from http://aka.ms/sppnp-call.

PnP Resources in one picture - numerous links mentioned in this blog post

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Vesa Juvonen, Senior Program Manager, SharePoint, Microsoft – 12th of September 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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