SharePoint Dev Ecosystem / SharePoint Patterns and Practices (PnP) January 2018 update is out with a summary of the latest guidance, samples, and solutions from SharePoint engineering or from the community for the community. This article is a summary of all the different areas and topics around SharePoint Dev ecosystem during the past month.
What is SharePoint Patterns & Practices (PnP)?
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 to 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 (see team details in end of the article) 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 the SharePoint Developer group in the Microsoft Tech Community for providing input and to ask any questions about the existing materials.
Some key statistics around SharePoint Developer topics from December 2018
- GitHub repository forks at most popular repositories in SharePoint GitHub organization
- SP Dev Docs – 437
- SP Dev FX Web Parts – 946
- SP Dev Fx Extensions – 244
- PnP – 3007
- PnP Sites Core (CSOM) – 528
- PnP PowerShell – 499
- Unique visitors during the past 2 weeks in SharePoint organization repositories – 37,001
- Merged pull requests across SharePoint repositories (cumulative) – 5,913
- Closed issues and enhancements ideas cross SharePoint repositories (cumulative) – 5,430
- SharePoint Online CSOM NuGet package downloads (cumulative) – 829,347
- Page views in SharePoint Dev pages at docs.microsoft.com – 1,501,046
- Unique tenants using open-source PnP components – 17,471
- Http requests towards SharePoint Online from PnP components (CSOM Core, PowerShell, PnP JS Core) – 10,333,419,137
- SharePoint Dev YouTube channel had 22,544 views with 143,547 minutes of watch time
Most viewed articles in the SharePoint Dev documentation during December 2018.
- Use column formatting to customize SharePoint
- Build your first SharePoint client-side web part (Hello World part 1)
- SharePoint Development
- Overview of the SharePoint Framework (SPFx)
- Set up your SharePoint Framework development environment
- Complete basic operations using SharePoint REST endpoints
- Get to know the SharePoint REST service
- Working with lists and list items with REST
- Complete basic operations using SharePoint client library code
- Set up your Office 365 tenant
Main resources around SharePoint PnP and SharePoint development
- SharePoint development blog – http://aka.ms/spdev-blog
- SharePoint Dev Documentation – http://aka.ms/spdev-docs
- SharePoint Dev Community – http://aka.ms/sppnp – One location for all the resources and news around PnP
- PnP Community Discussions – http://aka.ms/spdev-community
- SharePoint Dev Videos on YouTube – http://aka.ms/spdev-videos
January 2019 monthly community call
Agenda for the Tuesday 8th of January 2019 SharePoint Dev Ecosystem / Patterns and Practices community call at 8 AM PST / 5 PM CEST:
- Monthly summary of SharePoint Development topics – Latest SharePoint roadmap and community news – Chris Kent (DMI) ~15 min
- Topic – Updates on the SharePoint Online branding, extensibility, and provisioning – Sean Squires (Microsoft), Melissa Torres (Microsoft), John Sanders (Microsoft) ~30-40 min
- Q&A
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.
SharePoint Dev Blog posts
Here are the latest blog posts and announcements around SharePoint development topics from developer.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/blogs
- 4th of January – Updated versions of the SharePoint on-premises CSOM NuGet packages
- 4th of January – SharePoint Framework Community Call Recording – 3rd of Jan 2018
- 2nd of January – SharePoint Dev Weekly – Episode 20
- 28th of December – New SharePoint CSOM version released for SharePoint Online – December 2018
- 28th of December – SharePoint Dev Community (PnP) – General SP Dev SIG recording – 27th of December 2018
- 27th of December – SharePoint Dev Weekly – Episode 19
- 21st of December – SharePoint Framework Community Call Recording – 20th of Dec 2018
- 18th of December – SharePoint Dev Weekly – Episode 18
- 14th of December – Site Scripts & Site Designs – Fall 2018 Update
- 14th of December – SharePoint Dev Community (PnP) – General SP Dev SIG recording – 13th of December 2018
- 12th of December – SharePoint Dev Community (PnP) – December 2018 monthly community call recording
- 11th of December – SharePoint Dev Weekly – Episode 17
- 10th of December – Modernize your SharePoint pages
- 10th of December – SharePoint Development Community (PnP) – December 2018 update
- 7th of December – SharePoint Framework Community Call Recording – 6th of Dec 2018
- 5th of December – SharePoint Dev Weekly – Episode 16
- 3rd of December – PnP Webcast – Introduction to PnP Tenant Templates
PnP Community Calls
SharePoint Dev community has 3 different recurrent community calls, which you can choose to participate based on your interest and availability. All calls are recorded and published in the SharePoint Dev YouTube channel typically within the following 24 hours after the call. You can find a detailed agenda and links to specific covered topics on blog post articles at the SharePoint developer blog when the videos are published.
- Monthly community call – Second Tuesday of each month at 8 AM Pacific Time. Consists of the latest news, providing credits for all community contributors and live demos.
- Bi-weekly special interest group for SharePoint Framework – Bi-weekly Thursdays at 7 AM Pacific time. Consists from topics around SharePoint Framework and JavaScript-based development in the SharePoint platform.
- Bi-weekly special interest group for SharePoint General Dev – SharePoint dev platform topics which are not around JavaScript development. Site Designs, PnP Provisioning, CSOM, Column formatting, hub sites, branding, architectural designs etc.
If you are interested in doing a live demo of your solution or sample in these calls, please do reach out to the PnP Core Team members (contacts later in this post). These are great opportunities to gain visibility for example for existing MVPs, for community members who would like to be MVPs in the future or any community member who’d like to share some of their learnings.
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 to you. We do also combine multiple solutions to one repository so that you can more easily sync and get the latest changes to our released guidance and samples.
- sp-dev-docs – Source for new SharePoint dev center documentation exposed from http://dev.office.com/sharepoint
- sp-dev-fx-webparts – Client-side web part samples from community and engineering
- sp-dev-samples – Samples for add-ins, webhooks, and other API
- sp-dev-fx-extensions – Samples and tutorial code around SharePoint Framework Extensions
- sp-dev-fx-vs-extension – Open source Visual Studio IDE extension for creating SharePoint Framework solutions in the Visual Studio 2015 or 2017
- sp-dev-build-extensions – Different build extensions like gulp tasks and gulp plugins from the community and engineering around SharePoint development
- sp-dev-gdpr-activity-hub – Reference solution on the GDPR business case showing SPFx implementation with PowerBI and modern site customization
- sp-dev-solutions – Repository for more polished and fine-tuned reusable solutions build with SharePoint Framework
- sp-dev-fx-controls-react – Reusable content controls for SharePoint Framework solutions build with React
- sp-dev-fx-property-controls – Reusable property pane controls to be used in web parts
- sp-dev-list-formatting – Open-source community driven repository for the column and view formatting JSON definitions
- sp-dev-site-scripts – Open-source community driven repository for community Site Designs and Site Scripts
- sp-dev-modernization – Tooling and guidance around modernizing SharePoint from classic to modern
- sp-starter-kit – Starter kit solution for SharePoint modern experiences
PnP specific repositories – solution designs and tooling
- PnP – Main repository for SP add-in, Microsoft Graph etc. samples
- PnP-Sites-Core – Office Dev PnP Core component
- PnP-PowerShell – Office Dev PnP PowerShell Cmdlets
- PnP-Tools – Tools and scripts targeted more for IT Pro’s and for on-premises for SP2013 and SP2016
- 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-Schema – PnP Provisioning engine schema repository
- PnP-IdentityModel – Open source replacement of Microsoft.IdentityModel.Extensions.dll
Repositories in the GitHub PnP organization
- PnPjs – PnPjs Framework repository
- o365 CLI – Cross-OS command line interface to manage Office 365 tenant settings
- generator-spfx – Open-source Yeoman generator which extends the out-of-the-box Yeoman generator for SharePoint with additional capabilities
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 SharePoint Starter Kit.
- 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 an 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 by 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
Area-specific updates
SharePoint Starter Kit
SharePoint Starter Kit demonstrates how to extend out of the box modern experiences in the SharePoint. It demonstrates multiple different techniques and uses different patterns and practices to build end-to-end demonstration solution which can be provisioned to any Office 365 tenant. It contains for example following capabilities, which you can learn from or use them as your reference:
- How to provision site collections using PowerShell
- How to apply content and layouts to site collections
- How to create and use Site Designs and Site Scripts
- How to build custom web parts and extensions for your deployment
- 15 different ready to use web parts
- 7 different extensions
- Hub site configuration
- 3 site collections
- Automated provisioning of the whole solution with PnP Provisioning engine
- etc. etc. etc.
Following are the key changes in the Starter Kit since the previous monthly summary
- Updated to use SharePoint Framework 1.7
- Documentation updates
- Additional language translations
We do welcome contributions on this open-source community project.
Modernization tooling
SharePoint Online is continuously evolving and improving, which is a great thing for you as a consumer of the service. One of the key improvements is the availability of modern sites, which are modern Office 365 group-connected team sites or communication sites, combined with improved functionality that can be consumed from a beautiful modern user interface. There are however plenty of customers who have already existing content in the classic sites and in classic pages, which would be great to get moved on the modern experience. This is where the open-source modernization tooling will help you.
- All guidance and tooling details are available from http://aka.ms/sppnp-modernize
Following are the key changes in modernization tooling and guidance since the last monthly summary
- Updated documentation
- Updates on the modernization framework
SharePoint development 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.
Web parts
- New sample react-birthdays which show the upcoming birthdays in the company with a nice rendering style
- Updated react-search-refiners to support even more classic style extensibility scenarios with the custom search experience
- Numerous other updates on updating solutions to the latest version and other adjustments
SharePoint Framework Extensions
- New sample react-search-refiners-render solution showing how to build a custom renderer for the react-search-refiners web part
- Updated sample react-mega-menu which can be used to include a custom mega menu to modern SharePoint sites
- Numerous other updates on updating solutions to the latest version and other adjustments
Other samples
- New sample MicrosoftGraph.SPOConsumer as a simplistic ASP.net MVC application to consume SharePoint Online using the Microsoft Graph
- Update sample azure-devops-ci-cd-spfx showing how you can automate and enable continuous integration, unit testing and continuous deployment with Azure DevOps
Other open-source projects and assets
- Reusable SharePoint Framework controls – Reusable controls for SharePoint Framework web part and extension development. Separate projects for React content controls and Property Pane controls for web parts. These controls are using Office UI Fabric React controls under the covers and they are SharePoint aware to increase the productivity of developers.
- Office 365 CLI – Using the Office 365 CLI, you can manage your Microsoft Office 365 tenant and SharePoint Framework projects on any platform. See release notes for the latest updates.
- PnPJs – PnPJs encapsulates SharePoint REST APIs and provides a fluent and easily usable interface for querying data from SharePoint sites. It’s a replacement of already deprecated pnp-js-core library. See changelog for the latest updates.
- PnP Provisioning Engine and PnP CSOM Core – PnP provisioning engine is part of the PnP CSOM extension. They encapsulate complex business driven operations behind easily usable API surface, which extends out-of-the-box CSOM NuGet packages. See changelog for the latest updates. Notice that the January 2019 release will be slightly delayed due holiday season from the normal schedule.
- PnP PowerShell – PnP PowerShell cmdlets are open-source complement for the SharePointOnlinee cmdlets. There are more than 300 different cmdlets to use and you can use them to manage tenant settings or to manipulate actual SharePoint sites. They See changelog for the latest updates. Notice that the January 2019 release will be slightly delayed due holiday season from the normal schedule.
- List formatting definitions – Community contributed samples around the column and view formatting in GitHub.
- Site Designs and Site Scripts – Community contributed samples around SharePoint Site Designs and Site Scripts in GitHub.
SharePoint Dev articles
SharePoint Dev articles are surfaced at docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev. Since the last release, also classic SharePoint server side API reference documentation has been moved to the docs.microsoft.com platform. You can provide contributions to these documents by submitting documentation improvements using GitHub tooling. All of the SharePoint Dev docs are stored and surfaced from the sp-dev-docs repository.
Here are new/updated articles on the SharePoint Development.
- New article on designing for section backgrounds using semantic slots in the client-side web part design guidance
- New article on opting out of the modern list and library experience
- Updates on the modernization guidance for transforming from classic to modern experiences
- Updates on the Site Designs and Site Script guidance
- And the countless other adjustments and updates on the documentation
SharePoint Dev YouTube video channel
You can find all SharePoint Dev videos on our YouTube Channel at http://aka.ms/spdev-videos. This location contains already a significant amount of detailed training material, demo videos, and community call recordings. Here are the new demo or guidance videos released since the last monthly summary.
- Community Demo – SharePoint column and view formatting tips (multiple) – Chris Kent (DMI)
- Community Demo – Setting up Azure DevOps Pipelines for SharePoint Framework solutions – Velin Georgiev (Pramerica)
- Community Demo – Building Data dashboard web part using React and Chart.js – Kyle Schaeffer (Spiritous)
- Community Demo – Save and export files as PDF using SharePoint Framework Extension – Mikael Svenson (Puzzlepart)
Key contributors to the January 2019 update
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 behalf of the community. You are making a difference!
- Albert-Jan Schot (Mavention) – @appieschot
- Alex Terentiev (SharePointalist) – @alexaterentiev
- Andrew Connell (Voitanos) – @andrewconnell
- Andrew Koltyakov (ARVO Systems) – @andrewkoltyakov
- Antons Mislevics – antonsmislevics
- Balamurugan Kailasam – kshsbala
- Chris Kent (DMI) – @theChrisKent
- Christian Zuellig (MondayCoffee AG) – czullu
- Daniel Laskewith (Sogeti) – @laskewitz
- David – davidcfk
- David Warner II (Catapult) – @DavidWarnerII
- Elio Struyf – @eliostruyf
- Erwin van Hunen (Rencore) – @erwinvanhunen
- Eric Shupps – @eshupps
- Eric Skaggs (Catapult Systems) – @skaggej
- Eric Overfield (Pixelmill) – @EricOverfield
- Frank Cornu (aequos) – @FranckCornu
- Gautam Sheth (Rapid Circle) – @gautamdsheth
- Hugo Bernier – bernierh
- Jake Stanger – JakeStanger
- Jakob Nøtseth (CrediCare) – @net_freak
- Jens Otto Hatlevold (Bouvet AS) – jensotto
- João Mendes – @joaojmendes
- Joel Rodrigues (CPS) – @JoelFMRodrigues
- Kyle Schaeffer (Spiritous) – @kyleschaeffer
- Laurent Sittler (Saegus) – @laul0_68
- Luis Mañez (ClearPeople) – @luismanez
- Marc D Anderson (Sympraxis Consulting) – @sympmarc
- Mikael Svenson (Puzzlepart) – @mikaelsvenson
- Oleksandr Yatsenko – Oleksandr-Yatsenko
- Paolo Pialorsi (PiaSys.com) – @PaoloPia
- Paul Schaeflein – @paulschaeflein
- Pieter Veenstra (Triad Group Plc) – @PieterVeenstra
- Piotr Siatka (Valo Intranet) – @PiotrSiatka
- Radi Atanassov (OneBit Software) – @RadiAtanassov
- Russel Gove – @russgove
- Sebastien Levert (Valo Intranet) – @sebastienlevert
- Simon Ågren (Sogeti) – @agrenpoint
- Spencer Harbar (ClearPeople) – @harbars
- Stefan Bauer (n8d) – @StfBauer
- taraldga alias – taraldga
- Thomas Berman (Cadenza Software) – @thomas_berman_
- Tahir Naveed – @NooriNath
- Tomi Tavela (Valo Intranet) – @tavikukko
- Vardhaman Deshpande (Content and Code) – vrdmn
- Waldek Mastykarz (Rencore) – @waldekm
- Velin Georgiev – @velingeorgiev
- Vincent Biret (2toLead) – @baywet
- ytterstrom alias – ytterstrom
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 in 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.
Microsoft people: Here’s the list of Microsoft people who have been closely involved with the PnP work during last month.
- Adam Ford – ajford76
- Andrew Clear – clearab
- Bert Jansen – @O365Bert
- Chris Hackman
- John Nguyen – johnguy0
- Junle Li – lijunle
- Luca Bandinelli – lucaband
- Mike Ammerlaan – @mikeamm
- Pat Miller – @PatMill_MSFT
- Patrick Rodgers – @mediocrebowler
- Sean Squires – @iamseansquires
- Vesa Juvonen – @vesajuvonen
SharePoint PnP Core Team
SharePoint PnP Core team manages SharePoint PnP community work in the GitHub and also coordinates different open-source projects around SharePoint development topics. PnP Core Team members have a significant impact on driving adoption of the Office 365 and SharePoint development topics. They have shown their commitment to the open-source and community driven work by constantly contributing for the benefit of the others in the community. Thank you for all that you do!
- Erwin van Hunen (Rencore) – @erwinvanhunen
- Paolo Pialorsi (Piasys.com) – @PaoloPia
- Radi Atanassov (OneBit Software) – @RadiAtanassov
- Elio Struyf (Valo Intranet) – @eliostruyf
- Andrew Connell (Voitanos) – @andrewconnell
- Mikael Svenson (Puzzlepart) – @mikaelsvenson
- Andrew Koltyakov (ARVO Systems) – @andrewkoltyakov
- Chris Kent (DMI) – @theChrisKent
- Stefan Bauer (n8d) – @StfBauer
- Velin Georgiev – @velingeorgiev
- Waldek Mastykarz – @waldekm
Here are the Microsoft Internal PnP Core team members:
- Bert Jansen – @O365Bert
- Patrick Rodgers – @mediocrebowler
- Vesa Juvonen – @vesajuvonen
Next steps
- January 2019 monthly community call is on Tuesday 8th of January at 8 AM PST / 5 PM CEST / 4 PM GMT 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.
“Sharing is caring”
SharePoint Team, Microsoft – 7th of January 2019