The session slides at aOS event of 06/12/2018

1. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
SharePoint – the new Era of provisioning
Yannick Plenevaux
@yp_code

2. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Yannick Plenevaux
SharePoint & Office 365 Architect
MCSD App Builder
@ yannick.plenevaux@pvx-solutions.com
@yp_code
https://ypcode.wordpress.com
Founder of PVX Solutions
www.pvx-solutions.com

3. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Agenda
• What is provisioning ?
• Provisioning approaches
• Provisioning through ages
• Feature Framework
• Remote provisioning
• Site Designs
• Q&A

4. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
What is provisioning ?
“Put stuff into SharePoint”
Assets
 Images
 JS
 …
IA Artifacts
 Site Columns
 Content Types
 Lists
 Libraries
 Taxonomy
 …
Customizations
 Pages
 Custom Actions
 WebParts
 Settings
 …

5. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Provisioning approaches
Manually Automated
Ease Scalability
• Get quickly expected result
• No deep technical skills
BUT
• Need to redo all the steps
for each new deployment
• Adapted only for single environment
• Need automation tools (Code, scripts, …)
• Quite deep technical skills
BUT
• Ready to repeat many times
• Adapted for targeted environments
• Adapted for continuous integration/delivery

6. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Provisioning through ages
2007 2010 2014 2018
Site Definitions
Onet.xml & .STP
Microsoft
Web Templates
List Templates
WSP
Microsoft
Feature Framework
PnP Provisioning Engine
PnP Community /
Open Source project
Site Designs
Microsoft
Remote
Provisioning
Remote
Provisioning
principles

7. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Feature Framework
Provisioning
 Artifacts declarations
 Definition XML files
 Artifacts might be based on provisioned
custom templates (List Templates,…)
 Highly bound to features
 Supported on SP Online & SP On-prem
only if the WSP doesn’t contain code
Fundamentals of Farm
Solutions
 Custom server-side code
 Event Receivers
 …
 Only supported on SP On-Prem

8. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Feature Framework
Inconvenients
 If the package content is unavailable
 the feature gets broken !
 Farm solutions with code deployed on
the farm servers
 possible downtimes on deployment
 Very limited upgrade capabilities
 Even the supposed existing one don’t work
well (Content Types upgrade)
Advantages
 The provisioning is packaged
with a custom code solution
(Only for on-premises)

9. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Feature Framework - Tooling
Visual Studio
 Visual Studio offers UI tools to define artifacts
 Content Types
 Fields
 Lists schema
 …
 When provisioning customized lists/libraries
 Visual Studio generates a custom list template

10. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Remote provisioning
In other terms
 Achieve programmatically same
as manual provisioning
 Not bound to Feature
Framework
 Configure/Customize the
standard artifacts
“Remote”
it mainly relies on using
remote API (CSOM,
REST API) to provision
SharePoint
“Remote”
is not the principle
 could be achieved with
Server-side code as
opposition to “Feature
Framework provisioning”

11. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Remote provisioning
Inconvenients
 Remote APIs are obviously slower than
server-side code
 Remote API calls are subjects to
throttling
 If done exclusively by code or scripts, will
take longer than the declarative way
used by Feature Framework provisioning
Advantages
 Can be done from any host
 No need to access the
physical server
 No down-time due to
provisioning
 The provisioned elements are
not bound to any feature

12. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Remote provisioning - Tooling
Office 365
CLI
PnP
Core Library
PnP Provisioning
Engine
PnP PowerShell
PnP JS

13. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Remote provisioning - Tooling
DEMO

14. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Site Designs
Remote provisioning
principles
 Applies to sites after they are
created
 The sites always created based
on generic templates
 Modern Team Site
 Communication Site
 Customized after the creation
The latest provisioning
method
 Only on SPO (currently)
 Only for Modern UI

15. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Site Designs
DEMO

16. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
HR Design R&D Design
Site Designs & Site Scripts
• Site Script
• a declarative set of customization
actions to apply to a site
• Is described in JSON Apply HR Branding
Provision corporate
libraries
Apply Corporate
Branding
Apply R&D
Branding
• Site Design
• the logical container for Site Scripts
Provision
corporate libraries
Apply Corporate
Branding
Provision
corporate libraries
Apply Corporate
Branding
Apply HR Branding Apply R&D
Branding

17. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Site Designs & Site Scripts
• The Site Designs mechanism is continuously evolving…
• Available Site Scripts actions (dec. 2018)
 Create (or update) lists
 Set title
 Add/Remove field
 Add/Remove view
 Add/Remove content type
 Set custom field formatter
 Associate field customizer
 Associate list view
command set
 Create a Site column
 Create a Site Content Type
 Add/Remove Site column
 Add/Remove a navigation
link
 Apply a theme
 Set a site logo
 Join a Hub Site
 Install SPFx or Add-in
solution
 Register an SPFx extension
 Trigger a Flow
 Configure regional settings
 Add users to groups
 Manage Guest access

18. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Site Designs & Site Scripts
 The Microsoft supported way to create and manage Site Scripts
and Site Designs is through PowerShell or REST API
 No official UI available yet
 The official documentation is available here:
 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/declarative-
customization/site-design-overview
 Many Site Scripts samples can be found here:
 https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-site-scripts
 Might be complex for power users to deal with PowerShell and
JSON

19. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Site Designs
DEMO

20. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Site Designs Studio
 A SharePoint Framework solution allowing to
 Create and Edit Site Scripts
 Manage Site Designs in the current tenant
 Associate Site Scripts to Site Designs
 Without editing JSON or using PowerShell or REST !

21. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Site Designs
DEMO

22. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
SharePoint –
the new Era of provisioning
Questions ?

23. aOS Luxembourg
6 décembre 2018
Merci à nos sponsors !