What’s New in SharePoint 2013 for Developers

By | September 13, 2014

SharePoint 2013 introduced many interesting features for developers including new development tools as well as enhancements, platform level enhancements, Cloud App Model and off course mobile apps etc. As a developer, one must always be interested especially in new development tools that simplify things, reduces effort and enhances productivity. Previously, we discussed about new and exciting features of SharePoint 2013 for End User.SharePoint 2013 Developer Overview

Here you can find the list of key enhancements for SharePoint 2013 developers:

  • Support for common Web Standards – Programming Model of SharePoint 2013 is based on common web standards including HTML, CSS and JavaScript that makes SharePoint development easy for web developer’s without Microsoft background. Standard web protocols like OData, REST and OAuth are also supported.
  • Platform Enhancements
    • Microsoft introduced RER (Remote Event Receiver) as core platform enhancement in SharePoint 2013 that is easy and straightforward to use.
    • New Client as well as Server APIs.
    • Support for REST (Representational State Transfer) endpoint for web services. So, if we need to access SharePoint data remotely, we can make REST based web requests for all CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) Operations. Please follow for understanding about RESTful services.
    • Client Side Rendering is a new cool feature that allows to render SharePoint elements using JavaScript instead of using server side XSLT.
  • New Development Tools / Development Tools Enhancements
    • Visual Studio 2013
      • ASP.NET MVC Project template for SharePoint Apps.
      • Publishing Manager Tool.
      • Visual Studio Provides RER (Remote Event Receiver) Service by default.
      • Workflow Debugging support for SharePoint online.
      • New SharePoint Phone Application Wizard Template
      • and more..
    • Visual Designer 2013 – Enhanced support for customizing and publishing workflows in SharePoint Designer 2013.
    • “Napa” – a new web based tool for Office 365 development.
    • Updates 2014 – Office development tools for Visual Studio 2013, please follow here for details.
  • SharePoint 2013 Cloud App Model is a model for developing and installing apps having added advantages as:
    • apps are isolated so easier to deploy and maintain.
    • apps are stored on an apps server instead of SharePoint server resulting reduced load on SharePoint Server.
    • apps are ready for cloud.
  • Business Connectivity Services
    • SharePoint 2013 supports OData that provides a way to access data source using a simple URL.
    • Support to subscribe to events from external system.
    • SharePoint 2013 now support to consume external data by creating an App-scoped external Content type.
  • Enterprise Content ManagementSharePoint being primarily an Enterprise Content Management product enhanced many core features in this area as:
    • Managed Metadata
    • e-Discovery
    • Team Folders
  • Search
    • Consolidated Search platform that includes the capabilities of SharePoint 2010 and further enhances it.
    • Rich results framework.
    • Support for KQL (Keyword Query Language) and FQL (Fast Query Language) to build search queries.
  • Social and Collaboration – Social support is key to any application these days. Web 2.0 is considered to be “The Social Web” and SharePoint 2013 has added a lot to social and collaboration features including Communities, Micro-blogging and Interactive feed etc.
  • Mobility Features – Mobile devices get much more support than ever before.
    • In order to target different devices, SharePoint site can be rendered in multiple designs.
    • New Geo-location field type can also be used for mobile application development.
    • We can easily enable push notification service for sending updates to mobile devices.
    • Visual Studio app template.
  • Workflows
    • Just like the new “app” model, Workflow also run in a separate service to SharePoint.
    • Workflow Engine – SharePoint 2013 uses WF 4.0 as compared to SharePoint 2010 that uses WF 3.5 for workflows.
    • Enhanced Workflow Manager Capabilities.
    • Designer and Project Template

Hopefully this SharePoint for dummies post provides developers a good overview of exciting features available for them in this new version and SharePoint developers will enjoy playing around them.

Other SharePoint and Related Articles:

Category: SharePoint 2013

About imghani

Imran Abdul Ghani is working as Software Developer(Senior) with extensive knowledge in Web development technologies especially C#, ASP.NET, MVC, WCF, Web API, ADO.NET Entity Framework, jQuery etc. He has several years of experience in designing/developing enterprise level applications. He is Microsoft Certified Solution Developer for .NET (MCSD.NET) since 2005. You can reach his blogging at www.webdevelopmenthelp.net, www.topwcftutorials.net, and www.sharepointfordummies.net.