On-Premises Developer Sessions at Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2014

If you haven’t heard yet, Microsoft SharePoint Conference is taking place in Las Vegas in March 2014.  Dan Holme blogged about the initial messaging related to sessions at the conference last week.  In this blog post I’d like to build a little bit on what Dan mentioned and also point out some interesting session titles that help illustrate Microsoft’s message to SharePoint developers.

To get started, if you take a look at the Top 14 Developer sessions Microsoft has revealed for SPC 14, you will notice that five out of the 14 developer sessions make a reference to on-premises SharePoint environments in one capacity or another. 

More specifically, that’s 36 percent of the top 14 Developer sessions.  As Dan mentions in his blog post, that’s a radical change from the last SPC and an encouraging one for customers who have on-premises environments.

SPC 2014 Session on Developing On-Premises Solutions

In my opinion, Microsoft is making it very clear that on-premises SharePoint is around for at least another major rev of SharePoint. The very first session in the Developer list, which is also the first session you see on the page of all the Top 14 Session Per Audience list, is called Developing on-premises solutions with an eye on the future. 

The sessions on the page are not listed in alphabetical order, nor are they sorted by session level.  Perhaps it’s a coincidence on-premises appears in the very first session listed on the page, but I doubt it. 

There’s not really much pre-reading you can do to prepare for this session, but make sure you don’t miss it if you are doing on-premises development.

On a related note, the recent blog post by my friend and Principal MCS Consultant Vesa Juvonen points out that some of the ways we used to develop with SharePoint are not the best fit to ensure you can upgrade your SharePoint environment in the future. 

Vesa makes some recommendations in this blog post that help illustrate how core pieces of the SharePoint framework are changing and how you should adjust your code accordingly.  Vesa taught many of the developer portions in the SharePoint MCM and MCSM curriculum, so you know he’s dialed into the future of SharePoint and knows what he’s talking about.

SPC 2014 Session on Authentication Patterns for SharePoint/Office 365

The next session that I believe will include on-premises content is Authentication patterns for SharePoint 2013 and Office 365.  Notice SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 are called out individually, indicating there probably will be content related to both on-premises and cloud environments.

Good pre-reading content related to this session might include the MSDN articles Choose patterns for developing and hosting your app for SharePoint, Claims-based identity in SharePoint 2013, and Authentication, authorization, and security in SharePoint 2013.

Another great resource to check out related to the patterns for authentication with SharePoint and Office 365 is the Building end-to-end apps for SharePoint with Windows Azure session I co-presented with Donovan Follette at SPC 12 last year.  You can watch the entire session here, on Channel 9.

In this session Donovan and I illustrate how to authenticate to Office 365 from Windows 8 apps and components deployed to Windows Azure via Provider-hosted SharePoint Apps.  These patterns will undoubtedly change over time as Office 365 matures, but understanding where they started is a very helpful primer.

SPC 2014 Session on SharePoint and Office App Security Model

Another session that targets on-premises environments is ​Deep dive: SharePoint and Office app security model (OAuth & S2S).  Notice the S2S acronym, which indicates this session contains content related to on-premises SharePoint environments as well.  S2S stands for server-to-server protocol.  A high-trust app is a Provider-hosted app for use on-premises that uses the server-to-server protocol. 

Whether you are doing on-premises or cloud development, the concepts in this session are ones that you should master to successfully architect and develop SharePoint in today’s world. 

This session is a 400-level session!  That being said, go read up on these concepts ahead of time so you’ve got the background you need before attending this session.  You can learn more about these concepts here on MSDN; I suggest reading all the articles in this section to prepare yourself.

SPC 2014 Session on SharePoint Web Templates

The next developer session that specifically mentions on-premises is SharePoint web templates for on-premises and the Cloud.  Here we can see that web templates are not going away, and you are going to learn how to make them for both on-premises and cloud environments. 

This is a 300-level session, so arm yourself appropriately with the information you need to hit the ground running in this session, and check out the following articles on web templates. 

This article, again by Vesa, is a staple for SharePoint developers.  It dates back to SharePoint 2010 but it still provides an excellent overview of what a Web Template is and how to construct one.

The next article to check out is the Upgrade web templates for SharePoint 2013 article on MSDN.  This article helps you understand what changed between SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 with regard to web templates and walks you through how to upgrade them.

Additionally, the WebTemplate XML Element MSDN page shows you the specific details related to the WebTemplate element.  These details include the element’s attributes, child elements, and parent elements.

SPC 2014 Session on Interaction Models and User Experience

Finally, the Interaction models and user experience using apps in SharePoint intranets, session calls out Intranets.  Microsoft is aware that many companies currently host their intranets in on-premises SharePoint environments, and I would be surprised if this session didn’t cover that scenario.

Some good pre-reads for this session probably include How to: Set up an app catalog on SharePoint, and all the articles linked to in the Install and manage apps for SharePoint 2013 section in TechNet.

As the conference gets closer, I’ll continue to monitor the Microsoft SPC 14 website and provide some more details and pre-reads that will help you prepare for the conference.