Developing for
SharePoint Online
Ari Bakker
@aribakker

Goals
• Learn how to develop applications for
SharePoint Online deployments
– Gain a basic understanding of the SharePoint
Online offering
– Understand the limitations of developing in
SharePoint Online
– Understand techniques for overcoming some of
these limitations

SharePoint Online Flavours
• Office 365 Public Cloud
– Professionals and small businesses (P plans)
• Limited to 50 users
• Single site collection
• Can deploy sandboxed solutions
– Medium businesses and enterprises (E plans)
• Can deploy sandboxed solutions
• Office 365 Dedicated
– Dedicated farm, aimed at 30,000+ seat deployments
• Farm solutions allowed (requires Microsoft approval)

Why SharePoint Online?
• Handles variable load
• Flexible cost of ownership
• Business agility/time to market
• Stability

What’s In
• My Sites
• Office Integration (2007/2010) • Excel Services
• SharePoint Workspace 2010 for • Access Services
Offline Working • Visio Services
• External Sharing
• SharePoint Web Services
• Simple Public-Facing Website
• Document Libraries • Forms Services
• Slide & Media Libraries • Custom Web Parts
• Business Taxonomies & Tagging • Silverlight controls
• Document Sets & ID’s • Sandboxed Solutions
• Office Web Apps
• Blogs
• Cross-site Collection Search
• Search Refiners • Wikis
• Indexing Controls • Business Connectivity Services
• People Search
• Phonetic Search

What’s Out
• Records Center
• Information Rights Management (IRM)
• SharePoint for Internet Sites and WCM workflow
and approval
• Site Variations
• PerformancePoint Services
• Power Pivot
• Full-Trust Code Solutions
• FAST Search

Development Options
• Browser based customisations
• SharePoint designer/InfoPath Forms
• Sandboxed solutions
• Windows Azure

Key sandbox limitations
• No access to the file system
• Code restrictions:
– GAC deployment prohibited
– Restricted set of allowed assemblies
• No server side external calls
• No Web Application or Farm scoped
functionality
• No full-trust proxy allowed in SP-O standard

Getting started
• Install Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power
Tools
– Sandboxed visual web part
– Compile against allowed assemblies
• Debug using SPUCWorkerProcess locally
• Use FXCop rules to validate solution against
SPO
– SPO contains custom solution validator
• Create a test site collection in SPO

Limitation #1 - File system access
• Limited access to the file system
– Site definitions
– User controls
– Application pages
– Branding resources
– Web.config
– ULS logs

Limitation #1 - File system access
• Limited access to the file system
– Site definitions – Use WebTemplates
– User controls – Install Visual Studio Power Tools
– Application pages – Use web parts
– Branding resources – Use style library
– Web.config – Use SPWeb property bag or lists
– ULS logs – Log to lists. Consider resource usage
e.g. #if DEBUG or a property

Limitation #2 - Accessing external data
• Server side external calls
– Web service calls
– Cross site-collection calls

Limitation #2 - Accessing external data
• Server side external calls
– Web service calls
– Cross site-collection calls
• Solutions
– Client side script – Silverlight, JavaScript, Managed
client OM
– Business connectivity services
– Data view web part

Limitation #3 - Code restrictions
• GAC deployment prohibited
– Custom workflow solution
– Timer jobs
• Restricted set of allowed assemblies
– SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPriviledges
• Execution context in sandbox process
– Only partial access to the Page and HttpRequest
objects

Sandboxed Code Architecture

Limitation #3 - Code restrictions
• Consider moving application logic into Azure
– Supports complex business logic
– Cheap data storage
– Pay for what you use

Limitation #4 - Deployment scope
• Web Application or Farm scoped functionality
– Search managed properties
– Service applications
– Authentication providers (uses Windows Live or
ADFS)

How do I get started?
• Office 365 free 30 day trial
http://www.office365.com
• Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools:
http://tinyurl.com/spo-vspt
• FxCop Rules for SharePoint Online
http://o365fxcoprules.codeplex.com
• Microsoft Cloud Essentials Pack
http://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com

Thanks for listening
• Get in touch
– ari.bakker@gmail.com
– @aribakker
– http://www.sharepointconfig.com