SharePoint Provider Hosted Add-in Trust Types

Introduction

This blog is about SharePoint Provider Hosted Add-in Trust Types. It provides the details for kind of trust types to be used while deploying the SharePoint Provider Hosted Add-in on different hosting environment.

About SharePoint Provider Hosted Add-in

Microsoft has officially renamed the SharePoint provider hosted App as SharePoint Provided Hosted Add-in. The provider hosted add-in can be installed on SharePoint on premises server or in SharePoint online platform but the key business logic component is deployed outside the SharePoint environment which provide us the flexibility to go with any programming language. The SharePoint hosted app has to be designed with client side programming framework and in any ways server side coding is not allowed in SharePoint hosted app.

In SharePoint provider hosted Add-in you have option to host it with your required hardware choice. You can ask your IT department to host the add-in on dedicated server         or any third party hosting service. Azure is one of the good suggestion for hosting the add-in. The provider hosted app can also use the SharePoint standard stuffs for any business requirement but the SharePoint standard stuff will run on SharePoint environment.

Courtesy: Microsoft Docs

The provider hosted add-in will use OAuth or JSOM to communicate with standard SharePoint components. The Microsoft Azure Access Control Service (ACS) is playing trust broker role when this SharePoint provided hosted add-in is hosted on Azure and installed on O365. If the add-in is installed in SharePoint on premises server then it needs server certificate along with ACS to enable high trust between add-in and SharePoint.

Trust Types Details

Below table illustrates the kind of trust required in SharePoint Provider Hosted Add-in and SharePoint according to its various deployment and installation places.  

Trust Type	SharePoint Add-in Location	SharePoint Platform	Comments
ACS	Azure or Any Cloud Service	SPO	ACS trust will be used when add-in is deployed on Azure
ACS	On Premises	SPO	“”
ACS + Certificate	On Premises	On Premises	ACS + certificate will be required in case of SharePoint on premises and add-in deployed on premises
ACS + Certificate	On Cloud	On Premises	“”

SPO - SharePoint Online

ACS - Azure Access Control Service

Conclusion

My objective here is to update the tech community about latest changes done my Microsoft about the naming convention of the SharePoint Provider Hosted Add-in. This blog also educate the techies for various kinds of trust type for SharePoint Provider Hosted Add-in and which needs to be used in what deployment scenario. This knowledge is important to the peoples before taking the work in hand.

Creating PowerApps on SPO with 5 easy Steps

Microsoft has introduced new technology for creating quick PowerApps for data analysis on desktop or mobile devices. PowerApps lets you connect, create and share business apps with your team in minutes and using any device. You can create quick PowerApps using SPO list and below article provides the easy steps to create it.

Step1- Create SPO list and add some test data in to it.

Step2: Creating PowerApps – Once you are ready with SharePoint list now it’s time to create PowerApps from it. Just navigate to the SP list top bar and click on “PowerApps” button to create new PowerApps.

 Clicking on “Create App” will show below pop up. Add new app name and click on Create button.

Select country and click on get started.

Step 3: Configure your app – The app creation screen contains various sections and each one of them have specific set of features which can be used to design layouts, add additional actions and features etc.

Step 4 : Publish your App- After doing necessary edit you can publish the app and then share it with all.

Step 5: View your app:

Now go to Apps left navigation link from app browser screen and click on it. The right pane will get populated with list of PowerApps published on local gallery.

Click on it and you will pass through process window to load your first power app.

SharePoint Platform for Migration

Abstract

After carrying out number of SharePoint migration projects, collecting the real time experience and new learnings, now we are in very good shape to execute any migration (on premises SharePoint old versions  to SharePoint new versions, SharePoint on premises to SP online and other technology domain to SharePoint technology) kind of  projects in SharePoint.

 During this journey we have learned lot of new things and that is now helping us to move confidently to crack any challenging migration project. We have various plan and sub plans as per the migration types and all those plans are tested on real time scenarios with years of continuous practice.  My main objective here is to explain organization decision makers and tell them that how SharePoint can help them to grow vertical as well as horizontal in very short time. I tried to educate them by asking key questions related to SharePoint with the most appropriate answers like a story concept and I am sure this will help them take the right decision on migrating to SharePoint.

What is SharePoint?

By reading big definitions from internet about SharePoint has confused all the readers about it. If you see on internet you will see lot of different definitions related to SharePoint, like given below.

·         Microsoft SharePoint is a browser-based collaboration and document management platform from Microsoft - Wikipedia

·         Microsoft's content management system. It allows groups to set up a centralized, password protected space for document sharing. Documents can be stored, downloaded and edited, then uploaded for continued sharing. - SAIT Polytechnic Teaching - Glossary

·         SharePoint is a web-based intranet that can help improve your organization's effectiveness by streamlining the management of and access to data. - Creative SharePoint

·         SharePoint is an enterprise information portal, from Microsoft, that can be configured to run Intranet, Extranet and Internet sites. - SharePoint HQ

·         {..} SharePoint is a sort of sharing/blogging/wiki-style server that mainly provides a back end to Microsoft Office - Jack Schofield, Technical Writer Guardian newspaper, UK.

In my words, SharePoint definition is very simple and straight forward, I define it in just two words. It’s Point (Place) to Share. In all above definitions you will observe some keyword words like collaboration, communication, information, content and security etc. when we relate all these words for achieving defined goal then SharePoint is the proper platform for it.

How Rich and Effective is the SharePoint?

Microsoft has developed the SharePoint by considering all the business scenarios and needs. Every industry and each vertical can use it to make their day to day work life simpler. By default SharePoint come up with big set of ready to use features and after getting some knowledge of it any business user can easily use it.

SharePoint 2016 is the latest version introduced by Microsoft and it comes with below listed main features. I am not going to explain each feature here because you can easily get the required information from internet for each one of them. My main intention is to walkthrough you with these story type questions and tell how SharePoint 2016 can be a better platform for all other cross domain as well as old SP versions.

Main Features introduced in SP 2016:

·         Delve - a data visualization and discovery tool 

·         Office Graph -- a back-end tool in the Office 365 Suite that facilitates search across integrated applications

·         Sway -- a presentation tool in the Office suite

·         Yammer -- a private microblogging and collaboration platform

·         Business Intelligence- SharePoint Server 2016 now supports SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.1 and the Power Pivot add-in and Power View

·         Project Server-New Project Server features are available in SharePoint Server 2016.

·         Mobile experience-SharePoint Server 2016 offers an improved mobile navigation experience

·         Hybrid in SharePoint 2016- Hybrid in SharePoint Server 2016 enables you to integrate your on-premises farm with Office 365 productivity experiences, allowing you to adopt the cloud at your own pace.

Apart from above there are some more services introduced in SP 2016 which made it one of the scalable and flexible collaborative platform.

Why organization should use SharePoint?

I am observing from very long days that all industry organizations has implemented  ERP, CRM, Accounting, HR  and other process using IT solutions to bring more automation in the work and  to make their day to day work simpler and quicker and  qualitative. These department wise induction of IT solutions have helped them to meet their specific department needs but there is no single platform available which can help them to share their information across the departments within the organization and I am very much sure that SharePoint fits in there.

As defined above SharePoint is a platform which supports for collaboration and communication very effectively. Any information has value when it is used to solve the problems and help in taking complex decisions. And it’s more important that this information has to be flown to related stakeholders on right time with secure and presentable way then only it makes more sense to its recipients. SharePoint is kind of platform which supports all these features and day by day its becoming face of the organization. The intranet solutions provided on SharePoint has become the starter place for employees and their day starts from taking the inputs from intranet.

Some of the surveys made by Gallup (gallup.com) has proved that only 15% employees are engaged of the total employees all over the world. Also only 5-10% of employees are connected and rest of them either work in silos or are in disengaged mode and this is very critical which is directly impacts on  organizations growth. 

Courtesy: http://www.gallup.com/topic/employee_engagement.aspx

So, in order to keep your employee engaged, easy to share the data across organization, communicate in secure way with your colleague and remaining connected by 24*7 time – SharePoint is the only platform.

Who can migrate to SharePoint?

This is one better question and it’s important to know who can migrate from their current old SharePoint versions, from on premises to SharePoint online and from other technology domain to SharePoint. Below section explains who can migrate with what SharePoint platform.

I have divided it in three main broad categories.

1.       Migrating from old SharePoint version to new SharePoint version:

We are living in the world where technology is changing very frequently to make our day to day life more easy and automated. It is us to decide when to upgrade our self to new technology by evaluating our current needs, new technology features for value creation and impact on commercials.  These are very important factors that every organization must think before starting on migration. It’s also important to migrate one day to new technology though your score is not critical for above factors because the platform support from Microsoft will not be there for many years and it’s always risk to run the business on non-supported platform. Also, new technology comes with advanced features and it’s definitely bring more value to the business. So it’s always better to move to new versions after doing the proper analysis of your business.

2.       Migrating from on premises SharePoint server to SharePoint online (Cloud Platform):

Microsoft has provided another flavor to SMB firms to start with SharePoint cloud platform which is very cost effective. Here you don’t have to invest in its hardware infrastructure or the support and maintenance cost as it’s taken care by Microsoft.

SharePoint Online platform have subscription based model so according to your business need you can choose your plan and utilize the SharePoint strength to boost your business. SharePoint online platform is implemented on Microsoft Azure platform and it is very secure, robust scalable and reliable platform.

Any new organization can start with fresh utilization of this platform and others who has cost issues with the infrastructure, support and maintenance can migrate them to this platform.

3.       Migrating from other technology platform to SharePoint platform

There are some organization who has started with other collaboration platforms in past and now finding it as limited, unsalable and rigid for their business can migrate them self to any of the SharePoint platforms (SharePoint online or SharePoint on premises) Generally there are Lotus notes, IBM Connect, Igloo, ASANA and other small and medium platforms which were in use by these organizations and now moving to SharePoint platform.

 Conclusion

My main intension with this blog is to push it to CXO level audience who are the key decision makers of their business and their decision has major impact on business. I think this can definably help them to get higher level SharePoint knowledge along with its capabilities. This blog will also help them in choosing the right platform for SharePoint technology migration.

SharePoint 2016 with Datazen for BI capbilites

I was looking for using  SharePoint 2016 capabilities for  business intelligence. Last year we check for it on 2013 but Datazen was about to integrate in it. Now with its integration with SharePoint 2016, the BI capabilities are increased in tremendous way.. please read below article from Liam Clarry to get more details.

http://sharepointpromag.com/sharepoint/sharepoint-2016-and-sql-2016-business-intelligence

SharePoint Intranet Generic Features

Section	Description
News	This feature shows 4-5 latest news items on dashboard page news section. Details page contains list of all the historical news list in descending order. The "New" tag get displayed on the item for 24 hours from its created time for indicating that its latest news in that section
Quick Links	Quick links to internal modules or external application is one more important section to users on dashboard. The links and its title can be configured in list to update the information.
Profiles	The profile is snap shot of the logged in user. The profile details page shows all the details of logged in user.
Discussion board	This feature is designed by configuring and customising the standard "Discussion" feature of SharePoint. The Dashboard page shows the latest 2-3 discussions in tiled view and details page shows all historical discussions in descending order in tabular format
Birthday	This feature shows list of the employee whose birthday is today.
Policies	The company policies can be seen from HR section of intranet. HR uploads the document and all other user can download it from polices library
Contact list	Contact list shows list of all the employee with user’s name, email and contact numbers.
My Tasks	My task shows the task allocated to me and the task allocated by me. This is SharePoint standard task list which gives list of task with CRUD operations to the task item.
Opinion Poll	The opinion poll is to get the peoples feedback for specific question.
Announcements	Announcement shows latest 4-5 announcement on dashboard page. The "New" tag will be shown with item for 24 hours from created date. The details page will show all the historical items in descending order.
Banners	Banner is rotating images in dashboard section. Clicking on the image user get redirected to the detail page for that business
Leader’s Speak/CEO Desk	CEO message shows latest 4-5 CEO messages on dashboard page. The detail list of all the messages will be displayed on descending order on details page.
Photo Gallery	Photo gallery is list of photo which can be seen in slider view format
Video Gallery	Video gallery is same line photo gallery. The videos will be displaced using browser video plugin on web
Organization Chart	Organization chart shows the hierarchical order of the employees as per their designation and reporting to managers
Awards and Recognition	Monthly and quarterly awards and recognition peoples name will be shown on this tile
Know your Leader	Know your leader is one meeting called by HR to introduce the newly joined senior level executive
Ask a question?	Ask question is initiative started by HR where employee can ask question on this forum.HR department answers most of it or redirects it to related department to answer
Suggestion Box	Suggestion is the one more feature of intranet portal where employee can add value to organizations growth. In intranet separate window is given for employee to add the suggestions and then it get listed on its page. HR will be informed for this information by system for necessary action
Search	Search is an important feature of any portal. User needs to find the information in the portal in quick and easy way. The basic search gives tabular result in result page while advanced search gives the result in tabular format with refinement panel
Event Calendar	Event calendar shows the calendar view of the events
Anniversary	The anniversary web part will show the list of the people whose anniversary is in the current month with date, name of the person and year value. This web part will be shown in tile view on the home page.
Virtual meetings	Lync can be configured to the intranet application for virtual meetings
Events	The event calendar can be shown on home page to list the current month events with short description
Employee Directory	Employee directory can be implemented by configuring SharePoint standard features like search result web part.

SharePoint Testing – Phase wise Comprehensive Approach

SharePoint is one of the top Enterprise Content Management (ECM) tool for design and developing websites, portals and data analysis applications. It’s mostly used tool in the current market for public websites design and portal development.

Testing is one of the important phase in any kind of project which make the application more robust and error free for end users. Lot of projects fails due to poor testing approaches. With years of experience in SharePoint project execution I have come up with phase wise comprehensive approach for SharePoint project testing. There has to be a different technique for SharePoint project testing that must be used with proper phases compared to classical project testing.

The reasons for this is …

-          SharePoint  Out of box (OOB)/Standard Features

Microsoft designed SharePoint on top of the ASP.Net framework. ASP.Net frame work is used for developing the web application using Microsoft platform. SharePoint provides lot of OOB features (modules) for generis needs. E.g. the calendar list and calendar view are mostly required features in any application and SharePoint provides it as readymade tool. Developers can easily add it while configuring or customizing the SharePoint application for customers. This gives flexibility to build the required feature in quick time but it also come with some limitations for enhancements as per customer need.

-          SharePoint OOB feature User interface and Validations

Any OOB feature can be customized to only certain level for CSS and validations. There is very less options to change OOB features business logic and customize it for customer requirements. Here QA persons must need to know the main business logic of the OOB feature along with its threshold limitations. QA person must be well versed with OOB features and should know the pros and cons of it. After having the good knowledge of OOB feature then it’s time to understand how developer has customized it and what purpose. Here QA person can judge on his experience the scalability and performance of that feature after customization.

-          Authentication and Authorization in SharePoint

SharePoint do not create any users. It depend on third party tool for user’s creation and authentication process. QA person must be well known with what kind of authentication is used in SharePoint application. It’s also important to create new user in any third party authentication provider and then test the application by providing required various permissions to newly added tester user and validate each module as per the allocated permissions.

SharePoint provides default authorization module with some standard permissions. QA person must need to know the type of permission and its scope. SharePoint also gives the capability to create custom permissions. So QA person need to check for scope of the custom permissions.

-          SharePoint Settings

SharePoint sites have settings sections. Developers configure site from this section by applying the settings to various features. QA person must need to have some knowledge of site settings. Before starting the testing it’s better to list number settings applied on testing site, does site working as per the applied settings? etc.

 These are some SharePoint concepts that will create difference in SharePoint testing compared to classical .net or any other application testing.

Testing Phases

SharePoint works as platform for various domains. In recent days companies are getting lot for inquiries for connecting the SharePoint with organizations LOB applications like SAP, ERP or CRM to fetch the transactional data and show it on SharePoint portal with various dashboards. So, right from SharePoint installation stage to final UAT there are various stages that QA person has to go through to deliver error free application. These phases has to be carried out in sequence to get the effective test results. The phases and its internal test are explained briefly in below section

.

Phase 1

Infrastructure Validation:

Infrastructure plays vital role in SharePoint Platform. Infrastructure is the base of all SharePoint applications. Poor Infrastructure will impact on application performance. So it’s important to validate the infrastructure of SharePoint servers before installing SharePoint. The infrastructure may vary depending on total user count, concurrent user count and data transaction frequency in SharePoint applications. Here QA persons need to take help of SharePoint Architect and SharePoint Admin to validate the infrastructure. Proper infrastructure is very important as per customer requirement.

Installation Verification: After establishing the proper infrastructure SharePoint team will install the SharePoint servers according to the topology. QA team need to understand the topology and verify that the installation is done as per the plan or not.

Configuration Testing: Once installation is complete SharePoint team will continue with configuration of SharePoint WFE, Service applications and Database servers. QA team need to participate in this phase and need to validate the installed SharePoint servers for proper configuration settings.

Administrative Setup Testing: After SharePoint installation is complete, it’s controlled by Central Admin (CA) site. SharePoint super admin user can manage any site collection using this site. QA team’s role is to verify the CA site and check all the setting done in CA site for related site collection. E.g. Outgoing email settings.

Phase 2

Permission and Security Testing: Permission and Security testing is important phase of testing. It will help to protect the data from unauthorized access. SharePoint team will always have permission matrix plan implemented as per the user groups and permissions in site collection. Its QA team’s responsibility to check and verify the permission of each user group in the site collection as per the matrix.

Build Deployment Testing: After implementing proper infrastructure, now SharePoint team will start working on development modules. Each module will be developed on development server and tested on staging server. After doing all functional and integration testing of the module then it will be ready for UAT server deployment

Phase 3

Solution Testing: In development stage various kind of solutions get developed. Solutions is the module which contains web part, visual studio template workflows, site definitions etc. QA team will write the test script for each of the scenario and test the solution as per the test scripts. The testing will be carried out on the staging server and after successful testing the solution will be moved to UAT server

Web Part Testing: SharePoint team sometimes develop individual web part and it’s deployed to SharePoint site. Main difference between and solution and feature is that, solution work as vehicle for features in deployment process. When you deploy the feature using solution then all the DLLs automatically goes to GAC. The web.config changes takes place and you have option to deploy it as farm solution. The same is not possible with installing it as feature. QA team need to understand the functionality of the feature and then validate it in the site collection for its functionality.

Phase 4

§  Portal Usability Testing: Usability testing is the best way to understand how real users experience your website or application. It refers to evaluating a product or service by testing it with representative users. In usability testing basically the testers tests the ease with which the user interfaces can be used. It tests that whether the application or the product built is user-friendly or not.

§  Mobile Device Usability Testing:  Usability testing of mobile devices is an emerging area of research in the field of software testing and it faces a variety of challenges due to unique features of mobile devices. QA team’s challenge is to test the application on different devices with heterogynous platform and different resolutions of devices.

Phase 5

§  Performance Testing:  Performance of the SharePoint application can be measured in various ways. Following are some of the tests that always help to measure the performance of the application.

• Browse page
• Download document
• Run search query
• Upload document

QA team need to go through these tests then compare and analyze the result with standard result and need to come up with performance results.

§  Load Testing: Load testing is the process of placing a demand on a system and measuring its response. SharePoint has introduced one template in Visual studio 2012 for load testing. In visual studio 2012 ultimate there is one template for web performance and load test. QA people can use this template or go for any third party tool for verifying the load test.

Phase 6

§  User Acceptance Testing (UAT):  UAT is the delivering and making sure the customer what development team has promised to deliver in the project at the start of the project. It is one way to reduce the change requests and project cost. In SharePoint UAT must be planned properly. First thing is that there should be separate UAT server and all the test case script must be executed by UAT team. QA team has to play supportive role to carry out the UAT without any impediments. After successful UAT, project is ready to move to production.

These phases help test team to test any kind of SharePoint application in comprehensive way and will able to deliver successful error free and well performing SharePoint application.