I’ve been busy the last couple of months working away at my first crack at a SharePoint App as some of my recent posts here probably show. (Next up; a desperately needed refresh for this site!) So for anyone thinking about doing the same I thought it worth sharing some of my experiences in a quick write up.
However firstly: Go download Bulk Edit from the SharePoint App store right now! (And write a review!)
JSOM / CSOM
The first thing to say is when compared to the PSI API of the past even despite the near complete lack of documentation on JSOM / CSOM I’m loving it! To be able to write code that actually doesn’t fail half the time, who would of thought it possible?! :)
SharePoint Market Place
It’s early days yet, but what I can comment on so far is actually getting on to the Market place which in the end was in fact easier than I expected.
It took a couple of days to get my Seller account approved which was actually the longest wait. After that my app was approved within 48 hours of the second submission, that’s after the first submission was rejected within a few hours due to one of the automated-checks (make sure to read the links below).
To be honest the hardest thing was getting the App submission page to accept my Office365 subscription as “paid”, basically it requires a fully paid subscription linked to your seller account before you can submit a SharePoint app. The catch is that Partner accounts and trial accounts among others are not automatically accepted.
I’m now the proud owner of three O386 subscriptions; TechNet, MSPartner, and PAID MSDN Developer, yep I got there eventually!
If you have problems linking you account (steps here) make sure you give it some time, in my case it took overnight before the ‘verified’ subscription was accepted after following the verification steps.
Read the following if you want to know more on this process:
- Alex has a great write up covering the whole creation and submission process – http://epmsource.com/2013-apps/
- How to: Create or edit an account and add payout information in the Microsoft Seller Dashboard – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj220034.aspx
Thoughts on the SharePoint App Model
I’ve spoken to many people and read many other peoples thoughts on the whole new app model, seems to be a topic that divides opinions quite nicely.
I have to say in summary I do see some serious potential in the new model, sure SharePoint hosted apps are very constrained and Provider / Auto hosted are going to be an administrative nightmare in any typical highly locked down enterprise environment. But even still separating the solutions from SharePoint is a game changer in my opinion, that would be me coming squarely from the OPS site of DevOps!. That combined with solid client side APIs makes me actually happy to change from the old ways and old APIs.