Chapter 9
Understanding SharePoint Online Development

After you get the hang of SharePoint, you may want to dive deeper into the technology. SharePoint is a web-based product (meaning that you use it with your web browser). Being a user of SharePoint is just the beginning, however. You can develop real-world business apps by using nothing more than your web browser. You don’t need to be a programmer and you don’t even need to be very technical. You just need some time to find out how to drag and drop components and enter content.

In this chapter, you walk through SharePoint development by using your web browser. You find out about key SharePoint development concepts, such as sites, lists, libraries, pages, and apps.

Going Over SharePoint Development

SharePoint development doesn’t mean you need to be a programmer or have any understanding of programming. If you can tweak your Facebook page or update your LinkedIn profile, then you can be a SharePoint developer. SharePoint development begins with nothing more than your web browser.

When you use your web browser to develop new functionality or customize existing functionality, the result is called an app. For example, let’s say you create a blank SharePoint list, then add some columns and workflow behavior to it and name it an expense manager. You have just created your very own SharePoint app called Expense Manager. Of course, this is a very simple example. Apps can get incredibly complicated. But the idea is the same, regardless of how complex your apps become.

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When you customize a SharePoint list or library, you’re creating your very own SharePoint app. Apps are covered in detail later in the chapter.

Using a Web Browser as a Development Tool

To a user, browsing a SharePoint site looks like a regular website — with some fancy SharePoint capabilities. Those SharePoint capabilities enable easy collaboration, access to business information, and a boost to business intelligence, all through the Web. In SharePoint terms, a site is a container for SharePoint pages. This entire ball of functionality, also called a platform (because you can build on it), is the Microsoft product called SharePoint. One of the things that makes SharePoint so exciting is that you don’t even have to drop out of your web browser to tell SharePoint what to do. As long as you have access to SharePoint and a current browser, you’re ready to start developing a site.

When you’re first starting out with SharePoint development, you need a site that you can use to practice. When you create a new site you start by choosing a template site that already has some stuff built into it — such as lists, libraries, and web parts (also known as apps) developed and configured to do particular tasks. Those templates are available on the Create screen when you create a new site. For example, you may get a request to create a Document Center site in order to manage documents from a central location. Rather than try to configure a Team Site to be optimized for document management, you can use a template specifically designed for this task. In this scenario, the template site you would use is called the Document Center and is shown in Figure 9-1.

FIGURE 9-1: The Document Center site template.

Developing SharePoint sites

When you need to develop a SharePoint site to solve a problem, be sure that you start with a solid understanding of the available site templates. It’s often much easier to start with a site template that almost does what you want and then develop it from this starting point than to develop everything from scratch.

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Before you start building custom applications for SharePoint, having a solid working knowledge of its various components is a good idea. (After all, you wouldn’t try to design a house without having some knowledge of how the plumbing works, right?) The best way to get to know SharePoint is to start with a basic Team Site, then further develop it so you understand what the templates are doing. Then you can expand to explore other templates as you build your SharePoint knowledge.

Creating a new site is as simple as clicking Site Actions (gear icon) Site Contents from the parent site and then scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking New Subsite. On the New Subsite page, you provide a title and a URL, and select a template (in addition to some other configuration options). The template you choose determines how your new site will be preconfigured. A parent site is simply a site that holds another site.

Site templates are included in SharePoint Online:

Some templates are used only for creating a Site Collection (a container for subsites).

Some templates are used only for creating subsites.

Some templates can be used for both.

REMEMBER

A site collection is a special SharePoint site that allows you to separate key aspects of the sites contained within the site collection. For example, you turn on features at the site collection level, which makes those features available to all sites within the site collection. On a technical level, SharePoint separates site collections by using different databases. This allows for separation of security and users, because two different site collections use two different databases.

Templates for subsites only:

Publishing Site: A site used to publish content. The site template is used for subsites that need the publishing functionality provided by the Publishing Portal template.

Publishing Site with Workflow: A site for publishing web pages on a schedule by using approval workflows. It includes document and image libraries for storing web-publishing assets.

SAP Workflow Site: A site designed to work with SAP that aggregates all business tasks for users.

Templates for site collections only:

Community Portal: A site that can be used to contain community sites. In other words, an aggregation of communities.

Community Site: A site where members of the community can come together to discuss topics and interact with each other.

Compliance Policy Center: Contains policies that are used to manage when documents can be deleted after a certain period of time.

Developer Site: A site where developers can create, publish, and test apps designed for Microsoft Office.

eDiscovery Center: A site designed for legal matters and investigations where the preservation and search ability of content is critical. The site is also designed for exporting of content for legal compliance.

My Site Host: Used to host the personal sites functionality of SharePoint, also known as OneDrive for Business, as well as the personal profile pages of users.

Publishing Portal: This template offers a starter site hierarchy (grouping of SharePoint sites) for an Internet site or a large intranet portal. You can use distinctive branding to customize this site. It includes a home page, a sample press-releases site, a Search Center, and a logon page. Typically, this site has many more readers than contributors; it’s used to publish the Web pages by using a process for approving new content known as an approval workflow.

By default, this site enables content-approval workflows to provide more control over the publishing process. It also restricts the rights of anonymous users: They can see content pages but not application pages.

Team Site – SharePoint Online configuration: A Team Site that is preconfigured to allow users to share content with external users.

Templates for both subsites and site collections:

Basic Search Center: This site provides SharePoint search functionality, including pages for search results and advanced searches.

Blog: This site works like an Internet blog; a person or team can post ideas, observations, and expertise that site visitors can comment on.

Business Intelligence Center: A site that can be used to present content focused on business intelligence.

Community Site: A site where members of the community can come together to discuss topics and interact with each other.

Document Center: You can manage documents centrally for your entire enterprise from this site.

Enterprise Search Center: This site provides the SharePoint search capability. The Welcome Page includes a search box that has two tabs: one for general searches and another for searches for information about people. You can add tabs, delete them, or customize them with different search scopes or specified result types.

Enterprise Wiki: You can use this site for publishing knowledge that you capture and want to share across the enterprise. Use this site to edit, coauthor, and discuss content, as well as to manage projects.

Project Site: A site used for managing, discussing, and collaborating on a project.

Records Center: A site for managing digital records. The site is optimized to handle the routing of documents and determine whether documents can be deleted or modified or must be retained with their original content.

Team Site: A site on which a team can organize, generate, and share information. It provides a document library as well as lists for managing announcements, calendar items, tasks, and discussions.

Visio Process Repository: A collaborative site on which teams can view, share, and store Visio process diagrams. It provides a document library (with version control) for storing process diagrams as well as lists for managing announcements, tasks, and review discussions.

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Microsoft is constantly updating SharePoint Online with new features and removing old features. If you see a template not listed here, then Microsoft might have recently added it. Similarly, if you see a template here that you can’t find then Microsoft might have removed it.

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When you create a new Site Collection, you can also choose the Custom grouping that allows you to choose a template for the new site collection later after you have already created it.

Adding apps (lists and libraries) and pages

In order to develop a SharePoint site (using your browser no less!), you need to understand some of the key components. In particular, these include list apps, library apps, and pages.

When you have an idea of the type of app you want to add, you can add it by clicking Site Actions (gear icon) Add an app, as shown in Figure 9-2. You will then see all of the list and library app templates described shortly.

FIGURE 9-2: Opening the Your Apps page to add a new app to a SharePoint site.

Knowing your list app options

SharePoint Online comes with a collection of standard lists and libraries. Microsoft has already taken the time to develop these in order to make your life as a developer easier, so you may as well use them. The following list introduces the standard SharePoint list apps and provides brief descriptions:

Access App: This app is used to create browser based Access database applications. If you’re familiar with Microsoft Access then you will feel right at home using this web-based SharePoint app.

Announcements: This app is for brief news items, quick status checks, and other quick, informative stuff.

Calendar: This calendar is strictly business — deadlines, meetings, scheduled events, and the like. You can synchronize the information on this calendar with Microsoft Outlook or other Microsoft-friendly programs.

Contacts: If you’re a regular Outlook user, you may have developed a list of contacts. If you haven’t, here’s your chance to list the people relevant to your team (such as partners, customers, or public officials). You can synchronize the SharePoint Contacts app with Microsoft Outlook or other programs that play nice with Microsoft products.

Custom List: If you’re trying to develop a list app but none of the standard list app types does what you have in mind, you can start from scratch with a blank list and drop in the views and columns you want.

Custom List in Data Sheet View: Here’s a familiar twist on the blank list app: SharePoint shows it as a spreadsheet, so you can set up a custom list app as easily as you would in Excel, specifying views and columns as needed. Note that this list type requires an ActiveX control for list datasheets; fortunately, Microsoft Office provides such a control. (Coincidence? I think not.)

Discussion Board: If you’re a seasoned netizen from the heyday of the newsgroup, this list app will be a familiar place for online discussions. Naturally, you want to keep the discussion businesslike, so this list app type helps you manage those discussions (for example, you can require posts to be approved before everybody can see them).

External List: Use this list app type to create a list of data identified as an External Content Type. An External Content Type is a term used to describe groupings of data that live outside of SharePoint. An example might be data that lives in a backend system, such as SAP.

Import Spreadsheet: If you have data contained in an existing spreadsheet (created in Excel or another Microsoft-compatible program) that you want to use in SharePoint, you can import it into a list app of this type. You get the same columns and data as the original spreadsheet.

Issue Tracking: If you want to organize your project team’s responses to a problem associated with (say) an important project, this is the type of list app you use to set priorities, assign tasks, and keep track of progress toward resolving the issue.

Links: This list app type helps you organize links. The user can consult a list of web pages and similar online resources — and simply click to go to any of them.

Promoted Links: You can use this list app type to create a list of items using visual buttons instead of boring old text.

Survey: This list app type is for gathering information, specifically by crowd-sourcing. Here’s where you put a list of questions you want people to answer. A survey list app helps you formulate your questions and can summarize the responses you get back. The responses to the survey are stored in the list and can then be analyzed, charted, or exported.

Tasks: This list app type is essentially a to-do list for a team or individual.

Checking out the available library apps

When you need a way to organize files so that they’re accessible via a SharePoint site, you find a selection prebuilt for the most common types of library apps in SharePoint Online. Take a gander at these standard library apps and the brief descriptions of what they do:

Asset Library: Here’s where you store information assets other than documents — ready-to-use information in the form of images, audio files, video files — to make them available and regulate their usage.

Data Connection Library: This library app type is where you can put and share files that specify and describe external data connections. For example, you might want your users to be able to pull data from a data warehouse. Setting up a connection to the data warehouse and getting all the server names, usernames, and connection information just right can be tedious. Using a Data Connection Library app, an administrator could set up the connections and store them in the library. The users would then just use the connection to the data warehouse whenever they want to pull data and analyze it.

Document Library: You run across — and create — a lot of these in SharePoint. Such library apps are for storing documents, organizing them in folders, controlling their versions, and regulating their usage with a check-in/check-out system.

Form Library: Here’s where you store and manage electronic versions of blank business forms for everyday documentation, such as purchase orders and status reports. To create and maintain library apps of this type, you need a compatible XML editor. Keep in mind, however, that the form library app is just a place to store the data that has been entered into the form. To build the actual form, you need the XML compliant form editor.

Picture Library: This library app type is for storing and sharing digital images. The difference between the Assets Library and the Picture Library can be subtle because they both store images. The key distinction lies in the name. The Picture Library is designed specifically to store pictures, and the asset library is used to store images. If you think of a picture as a photo and an image as something like a logo or graphic, the differences start to emerge. For example, the pictures in a Picture Library app show a thumbnail image when they show up in searches, but the images in an image library do not.

Record Library: You store business records in this library app. When you create a Record Library app, you’re adding some functionality that allows SharePoint to create record management and retention schedules. This type of functionality is important when you want to make sure that you are doing your due diligence in keeping track of your business records by letting SharePoint do the heavy lifting.

Report Document Library: This library app type is used to store and manage report documents. This library app is similar to the Report Library; however, there are some differences. Explore the Report Document Library and the Report Library apps to see which one you like better and which one best fits your reporting needs.

Report Library: This library app type is dedicated to web pages and documents that keep track of performance (and other such metrics), progress toward business goals, and other information used in business intelligence.

Site Mailbox: This library app type is useful to keep email and your documents closely connected because this app connects your site to an Exchange mailbox. Once connected, you can view your email in SharePoint and view your documents in Outlook.

Wiki Page Library: Library apps of this type have interconnected web pages containing content, such as text or images and functionality in the form of Web Parts that multiple users can edit easily.

Paging through the available pages

You can create and develop three primary types of SharePoint pages (in your browser, no less!) — each with a distinct function:

Content page: Also known as a wiki page, this is the Swiss Army knife of SharePoint pages. A content page provides not only a place to put content but also a kind of workshop for collaboration, development, and customization — multiple users can wield a full-featured text editor built right into the browser. A content page is easy to develop and is an extremely powerful and intuitive tool for collaborative authoring, data capture, and documentation. For example, if you’re in the business of manufacturing consumer products, then you might have a content page that allows customer service reps to capture common questions that users have regarding your products. The page could be dynamically updated as the reps encounter new questions without the need to call in a programmer.

Web Part page: This type of SharePoint page provides Web Part zones where you can drag and drop various Web Parts (reusable pieces of functionality) right onto your pages from the SharePoint Web Part gallery. Although a set of Web Parts comes standard with SharePoint, you can also custom develop Web Parts to meet your specific business needs. Imagine developing a Web Part for your company that ventures forth to become an everyday tool for nearly all the users in your organization — on their own sites — and to get the tool, all they have to do is simply drag and drop the Web Part right onto their pages. For example, you may have Web Parts that you have developed for your call center reps. When new Web Part pages are developed, the Web Parts that are used by the call center can be added to the page. This lets a programmer package up web functionality into a reusable component (Web Part) that can be reused on multiple pages.

Publishing page: This type of SharePoint page is designed to serve two functions: managing content and managing the look and feel of the page. A publishing page lives in a document library that provides version control and the SharePoint workflow feature. It’s designed for the management and distribution of content — the essence of publishing content to SharePoint.

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For more information on developing in the SharePoint environment, check out the still relevant SharePoint 2010 Development For Dummies by Ken Withee. The book was written for SharePoint 2010, but the development concepts still are relevant.

Figuring Out SharePoint Apps

As you have explored throughout the chapter, there are many different types of SharePoint list apps and library apps. Developing a new app is as simple as choosing one of these app templates, giving it a name, and customizing it to meet your specific needs.

Don’t be confused by the term SharePoint app. In past versions of SharePoint, these were just called lists and libraries. In the future, they might be called add-ins. Microsoft is continually refining the terminology around SharePoint functionality, but the concept doesn’t change. A SharePoint list, library, app, or add-in is a self-contained component of SharePoint that you can customize to fit your specific business needs.