Converting a file from DOCX to another format (such as PDF) had long been a pain in SharePoint and usually led to resorting to using Word Automation Services (WAS). Fortunately, modern SharePoint (Online) and the Microsoft Graph API mean you can do it with a few Web API calls.
When working on multi-developer projects, if each developer machine isn’t configured the same way developers can waste a lot of time editing connection strings, local machine name, and other settings when pulling code projects from source code control. On ASP.NET code projects, you can configure per-machine configuration overrides to overcome this.
If you work with SharePoint custom site templates regularly, and your organisation has separated development, test, and production environments, then you’ll probably have come across the issue where a custom site template you’ve saved in one environment as a solution package (WSP) uploads and activates fine in another environment but then fails with the familiar obscure message and correlation ID when you attempt to create a new site.
Here’s a summary of some of the hints and tricks I’ve picked up while working with SharePoint Designer 2013 (SPD). Some are to fix issues that SPD introduces itself, and others are just things to make using the tool a little less painful.
Recent versions of SharePoint have exposed a rich tapestry of options for interacting with it without needing to resort to server-side code-based solutions. The main ones that I’m going to talk about here are the JavaScript Object Model (JSOM), SharePoint Web Services, and the RESTful API.
Everyone knows how to create lists via the web browser, but for developers it can often be easier and more controlled to use automation to create lists on target SharePoint sites, for custom solutions they are developing, and the easiest way to do that is often using PowerShell.
Generating an in-code representation of an XML schema is pretty straight-forward, using native classes in the .NET Framework. This article covers how to read the XML, and generate the appropriate class files to support that.