Develop Sharepoint 2013 365 Workflow in Visual Studio - visual-studio

My clients have bought an Office 365 SharePoint 2013 site and I'm in the process of configuring it.
Their business rules require a very complicated Workflow which can just about be developed in SharePoint Designer. However, as I'm an experienced Visual Studio .NET developer I'd rather do it programmatically and hopefully save some time.
At present I can't figure out how to connect my desktop version of Visual Studio to the Cloud-based SharePoint site. I've downloaded the Workflow Manager tool but I'm struggling to figure out how to configure the Farm Databases etc. Available documentation seems patchy.
Has anyone out there found a way of doing this? This link suggests that it might not be possible.
Thanks
Edward

According to this article it's possible, though probably not really nice.
You will have to deploy your Workflow as a SharePoint App. Which means you will only be able to call the webservices.
Another option which might be worth looking at is Nintex, which has a module for office 365 as well.
Nintex has alot of useful functions, though I don't know how good the office 365 version is.
You would have to check whether it suits your requirements.

Related

Mac Office Spell Checker API

I have all the documentation for how to develop and deploy proofing tools for MS Office on Windows using CSAPI, but how does one deploy them on Mac?
In 2010, Eric Paquin said Office 2011 for Mac would have the same API: "3rd party proofing tools companies that are relying on Windows API can now port their tools to work on the Mac"
But, I can't find any information regarding this. Anyone know where the docs for Mac development and deployment? Or if this never actually materialized?
And what about Mac Office 2016? I can find the Office Add-ins stuff, which unfortunately can't create integrated proofing tools.
(asked on Technet ages ago, but nobody there knows)
Official Microsoft documentation does exist for deploying to MS Office for Mac. If you run into this problem, keep asking your MS contact about it.
Unfortunately I can't actually share the how, 'cause NDA. But, if you have tried reverse engineering this problem, it basically is as much of a mess as you discovered.

Sharepoint 2013 Farm Visual Studio cannot connect

I have Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 and SharePoint Designer installed on my local machine. I have a SharePoint installed on a server farm that i have full read and write permissions on. My problem is when i try to create the project the wizard to connect to the SharePoint will not show up and it says i need it installed on my local machine. I have read many forums posts such as
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/5853a07e-e033-43ab-929b-f5766354fea9/cannot-connect-to-sharepoint-2013-farm-with-office-tools-for-visual-studio-2012?forum=sharepointdevelopment
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj220047(v=office.15).aspx
along with others these are just the ones still open in my browser. I would love some help or a proper tutorial because the ones i am finding are no help and im not seeing anything besides a error message saying i cannot create a project until i install foundation or server for sharepoint
This is a case where the error message means exactly what it says. You must install SharePoint on your development machine in order to use Visual Studio for local SharePoint development. You can develop on Windows Server 2008/2013 (most common solution I've seen), install SharePoint on your Windows 7/8 machine (which is painful to do but possible), or set up a remote environment for development after signing up for an Office 365 Developer Site.
After hours of searching I found a work around for anyone who is running into this problem... You need to make a web reference to the SharePoint site then you can access the XML and do it that way. Microsoft hides the option its under service reference then you click web reference add the URL and a easily called name add it and your good to go.

How to get Microsoft CRM for Development Purposes?

I am a recent graduate, who has done some work experience at a company developing/designing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Solutions. I have moved on from there and have no official ties anymore. However, I do see the future in this product and I would like to keep developing solutions and increasing my development knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Taking into account the above and that I have a job in a different IT area. As well as the fact that I am determined to start this from scratch... What are my options?
My intentions for the future(1-3 yrs) is to develop Microsoft CRM 2013 Solutions and hopefully sell to local small businesses.
MSDN subscription or using trial subscription on CRM Online instance or using trial key:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40341
Or if you want to be a startup, you might be eligible for BizSpark subscription:
http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/
I think your best bet would be to get an online subscription. Your solution's code should be 100% compatible with the new CRM APIs in the SDK. Running everything from an online CRM solution would ensure it will work. This will also ensure that when the next version is released, you will be ready for it.
Unless Microsoft changes their licensing, this might be your only reasonably priced choice.
Try the Demo Builder:
http://demobuilder.cloudapp.net/unauthenticated-home/#
It's a Wizard base tool that will guide you through the process of setting up an online demo environment.
There are a bunch of templates that you can select from that will give you a good idea of the different scenarios where CRM can be deployed.

Building webparts with Visual Studio 2010 Express

I'm trying to get started with building my own webparts, planning to follow this MSDN article.
I've downloaded Visual C# 2010 Express - I'm not quite at the point where I feel comfortable dropping 1000 big ones yet, and I installed Visual Web Developer 2010 Express via the WPInstaller.
Following through the tutorial, aside from the fact that I don't get the option to create a "Web Control Library", a gap I filled with this article, I can't seem to find the sn.exe tool (or the "Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt"!).
I know it's not quite a direct programming related question, but I can't even get the thing going yet!
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
EDIT:-
I think I may be jumping the gun quite considerably, I wrote a simple hello world example and tried to build it but it doesn't have any references to the Microsoft.SharePoint packages and they don't appear in my lists.
Am I understanding some more research I've done (namely this) correctly, in that I have to actually have a full installation of actual SharePoint on the machine I'm developing on?
sn.exe is part of the .Net Framework SDK tools - not actually part of Visual Studio.
If you've got the SDK installed (which I think you must have if you're using VS) then it will be in a directory such as (depending on which version of .NET SDK you've got installed)
c:\program files\microsoft.net\SDK\v2.0\Bin
You can develop SharePoint web parts with VS express but you won't be able to use extensions like VSeWSS which can make your life a little easier.
You don't have develop on a machine with SharePoint installed upon - you can just copy the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll assembly from a machine with it installed on and reference it in your project.
There are pros and cons to developing on a SharePoint machine.
Its easier to get started -
especially debugging locally rather
than remote debugging.
Harder to be
sure that you're code will work a
'real server' - are you sure you
don't have any dependencies that may
not be installed.
Harder to work with
multiple versions of SharePoint (2007
WSS and MOSS and 2010 foundation,
server etc).
If you do want to work with a locally installed SharePoint then
You can install windows server OS with SharePoint and Visual Studio.
there is a hack for installing SharePoint 2007 on vista (referenced in the SO article you link to)
you can install SharePoint Foundation 2010 on Windows 7 (but I am not sure what the licensing restrictions are - is this maybe something thats given through MSDN?)
If you decide to go with the remote server installation then save yourself some grief and use virtualization such as VMWare Server, Virtual PC or Hyper-V.
If you are doing SharePoint development trying to reference the Microsoft.SharePoint namespaces you need to have SharePoint installed on the machine if you want to do things like debugging, etc. For SP 2010 you CAN install SharePoint on a Win 7 machine. For previous versions of SharePoint, you will need to setup a Server that is Server 2003 or Server 2008 (you can't install SP 2007 and earlier on client machines). Generally this is a Virtual Machine for developers.
Having said all of that, there are relatively few reasons you need SharePoint to develop a WebPart. The vast majority of the WebPart functionality is part of the System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts namespace. Even if I am accessing SharePoint data, I generally use the ASP.NET web part.
If you are trying to use the new SharePoint VS 2010 functionality to create Visual Web Parts, etc, then you will need to install SP 2010, since that functionality is not supported in earlier version of SharePoint.
John

Web Access in Visual Studio 2010

I try to upgrade a plug-in that was on webaccess 2008. Whe were using WebAccessSession to get the user name of the current user logged (WebAccessSession.Current.Connection.UserName ). I Imagine now that it is in tfsConnection but I'm not sure.
Is there any documentation that tells what really changes between Team Foundation Server 2008 and Team Foundation Server 2010?
No documentaion that details things at the level that you are looking for I'm afraid. As far as I know, plugging in to Web Access is not supported via any specified API so any integration you have done yourself would be classed as unsupported so you'd be on your own when it comes to figuring those sorts of changes out. Sorry.
As far as your question about Web Access, this blog post from Hajan Eskci details what's happening with Web Access:
Team System Web Access in TFS 2010 Beta1
Until now, Team System Web Access was published as an out of band power tool. In this release and beyond, Web Access is now an integrated part of TFS, and it is installed by default when you install TFS.

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