Exhausted,
drained-out... But it feels like added pounds of lean muscle to churn calories
in my WORK-outs for a long time. This was surely a satisfying and fun exercise.
The conference
featured many first-time things like second screen experience, dedicated Yammer
network to collaborate, NASCAR real race track experience. Like most of the people out here, I felt like they could have done better
management with shuttles taking people from hotel to race track... but hey which system
is perfect. ;-)
I am going to provide a few details on important sessions held today and will wrap up this post with major take.a.way.
Project Portfolio Management (Project Online) and
SharePoint: MSPS (Microsoft Project Server) next version has been "cloudized" (do you think we should suggest
this word to be added to the dictionary :-)). Project Online stores portfolio
specific information in SQL server and Project specific information like Risks,
Issues in SharePoint lists. Experts there could not provide a concrete answer
on how it has been internally architect-ed to store in SQL or SharePoint. I am
going to do some research and let you know about my findings in future blogs.
REST vs CSOM: Use REST when you are doing
simple read-write operations in Lists, Libraries or when you need to integrate
your application with non-Microsoft platform. Use CSOM if you are dealing with
object creation, permissions etc and when you are within SharePoint context.
Although, I would like to put a disclaimer here that it depends on various other factors and
you sometimes need to do a POC to check and evaluate performance with both
approaches. (will provide more details later).
SAP and SharePoint: Microsoft and SAP
are working together to bring more tools
and integration features to access and manage SAP data native to SharePoint. Visual Studio has new templates to create SAP projects.
Major takeaways
during conference -
- Development direction has
changed to Client side APIs as against traditional Server side modelling
- Cloud is hovering and has
occupied our space. Design your system to work on the Cloud. During this
process you will optimize and in-fact make it better for on-premises
- In the same line design you
application for mobile and tablets and during this process you will
optimize experience and performance for desktop users
- Although it has always been a
good approach (at least my approach) to do a 'no-code' solution unless you
are really compelled to do some custom implementation. If so, then go with
Client APIs first
- There is no RSS Feed in
SharePoint 2013
- Content Query Web Part has
been deprecated. User Search Content Web Part instead. For visualization
you can change HTML of display template. And no XSLT :-(
- Invest time to learn
JavaScript, XML, HTTP protocols, HTML5, Client side APIs, Responsive Web
Design etc. Old school way to custom development using Server Object
Modelling are things of past now
- It has now become difficult
to save your code intellectual properly from being exposed as most of the
approached are now geared towards Client side. If you can't lock it down
completely - try to make it harder by crunching, obfuscating and
encrypting your logic.
- Invest time to learn new
authorization, authentication and data access techniques which are more
adaptable for integrating multiple technologies. OData, OAuth, REST, CSOM, SAML, JavaScript
libraries, Power Query, DAX are in.
- With increasing number of
users using mobile technologies - build your design keeping these
customers in mind. Apply Responsive Web Design, Device Channels, Image
Renditions in your design and implementation.
And here is NASCAR real race track experience video. Enjoy!