News scavenger a SharePoint and Apps Story
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This document summarizes a presentation about developing cross-platform apps that integrate with SharePoint. It discusses using PowerShell for automated scraping, developing a Windows Phone app, challenges with app stores, choosing JavaScript and REST for cross-platform development, and using Visual Studio Cordova to build Android and iOS apps. It also describes creating a reporting dashboard using SharePoint lists and charts to analyze app usage data collected through the apps.
News scavenger a SharePoint and Apps Story
- 1. A SHAREPOINT AND APPS STORY
- 2. CONTENTS Section 1 - News Scavenger The concepts Section 2 - Advanced Powershell Scripting Invoke-WebRequest Section 3 – Windows Phone 8.0 – Authenticator Store Fail 8.1 was it 9.0? Windows Phone 8.1 and Desktop Store Success Section 4 – The cross platform story Decision time Language Usage C# & XML vs HTML 5 & JS SP Integration Mechanism CSOM VS REST Creation Platform Native? XAMARin? Cordova? VS Cordova? Section 5 – Development Operations Reporting Dashboard Trivia Module
- 3. PRESENTATION SCOPE • To show the journey from It Pro to IT Dev • To outline the idea and concept of News Scavenger and where SharePoint fits in • To show the roadmap and decision points that were taken during the process and explain them in detail • To show the process and turmoil of publishing live applications that work with SharePoint on all the different platforms • To discuss the outline for our cross platform story • To introduce a meaningful usage scenario for VS Cordova with regards to SharePoint integration with Android and IOS apps • To SHOW HOW TO USE POWERSHELL FOR REAL TIME DEV OPS • To show a new take on accessability
- 4. WHOAMI • Heath Groves Mbcs. MCM (r12)/MCSM/12 year MCT etc. • Father of 2 (Jericho and Eden) • Focused primarily on SharePoint since 2006 • Worked all of that time as a Vendor/Contractor • Worked as a Contractor for Microsoft From June 2011 Supporting D and MT up until April 2015 (4 YEARS) • MS Gold Partner since 2008 • Ex- Military (REME – Instrument Tech 8 Years) • Full contact kickboXER • Strong desire to move towards dev from being a total IT Pro
- 5. EVERYTHING WE ARE ABOUT TO DEMONSTRATE AND DISCUSS DID NOT EXIST IN SEPT 2014 THIS PRESENTATION, ALL DEMO CONTENT AND DEMO SCRIPTS CAN BE ACCESSED HERE: HTTP://WWW.NEWSSCAVENGER.COM/SITES/RESTTEST
- 6. NEWS SCAVENGER • The apps we are discussing ARE in all THE app STORES RIGHT NOW • To download and follow along go Your store and search News Scavenger (Boxing, Rally and Microsoft) • Alternatively visit https://www.newsscavenger.com • click on the icon for your device
- 7. FROM ACORNS DO GROW… A bit of general Discussion Our future will consist of looking at a pane of glass … …certainly for this generation at least… Understanding, and merging these experiences Will be key to the future of the tech industry This is why everyone is hitting the space Hard, trying to conquer the cross platform story – SharePoint is no different And can have a unique place in this world
- 8. FROM ACORNS DO GROW… Large Social Housing survey (40k people) 68% said they went online 82% of them said they used Apps 91% of tenants said they used Facebook Who’s elderly family members are on facebook? What factors made it get so big? Accessibility for the masses is everything… Creating the best app in world is only relevant For those smart enough to use it
- 9. NEWS SCAVENGER: THE CONCEPT • Huge boxing fan • Sick and tired of going to multiple sites for all my information • Don’t want to spend time setting up RSS readers across all my devices • Don’t want to log on to twitter every 5 minutes • Don’t want to log on to Facebook every 5 minutes • Don’t‘ want to log on to Instagram every 5 minutes • Don’t want to wait for search engines to crawl content • Don’t want my content ordered by any form of algorithm or promotion • Don’t want to see promoted content • want to look at the world of boxing across every medium in real time … When I want to look at Boxing News I want ALL my content in 1 place… at a glance… to help me keep one step ahead
- 12. IF ONLY… If only a powerful, web based tool existed that could be used to store centralised information …if only it had its own secure, authentication mechanism …That could be used to service multiple light weight calls… …that could potentially scale at a collection levels into the millions …A bit like a central POINT for SHAREING…
- 13. HOW IT WORKS
- 14. ADVANCED POWERSHELL SCRIPTING • Powershell V3 introduced invoke-webrequest • Possibly the single biggest advancement towards automation this decade • Can retrieve all elements of all webpages and manipulate as you see fit • Combine this with the object model and you can create extremely powerful outputs • Cookies? -usebasicparsing
- 15. ADVANCED POWERSHELL SCRIPTING • We use the concept of a ‘BOT’ for the scavenging process Used to perform automated tasks in the farm We call the scripts to scavenge Patterns It is not a fire and forget process We check consistently to make sure the content is being parsed correctly Profanity filterer – Never Realised Shiitake was a mushroom!!! Bots run the timer service only – no other Sharepoint services Reboot every 24 hours Clears out an nasty memory leaks Confirms cache is refreshed Ensured all services are up unclean way of doing things – but does get rid of potential heartache
- 16. WINDOWS PHONE 8.0 The current IT Pro Conundrum : the market is steadily being pushed towards apps • Sharepoint, phone, tablet… towards the universal APP message • Sooner or later your going to have to start developing • As an IT PRO – where do you start? Windows phone with integration to SharePoint is the perfect starting point for any SharePoint IT Pro • c# and xaml
- 17. RECOMMENDED READING • Recommended reading
- 18. AUTHENTICATOR The single hardest portion of phone > SharePoint integration is Authentication clientauthenticationmode FBA = .FormsAuthetication claims = .default O365 = .Microsoftonline
- 19. THOUGHTS AND IMPRESSIONS Some thoughts impressions and observations when developing on windows phone with SharePoint • Mvvm,vvm,mm,mmmsmmmmfmm,d,mms <<<<<< errrrr… • Choose what is right for your application – not because this weeks sweetheart thinks it’s the way forward • Best practice is just that – its not perfect practice, mistakes will always be made – as long as you take the safest possible route you should be fine
- 20. STORE FAIL!!! • After 8 weeks of hard slog we were ready for submission • All the guides alluded to project > store > build… • This was greyed out…. ???
- 21. STORE FAIL!!! • The reality of development right now in the Microsoft space is that you are in a state of flux between multiple platforms, policies and procedures: • VS 2012, lots of image work, wrong package - 8.0 only • Store only accepts windows 8.1 packages for both desktop and phone • To create the required package for upload the best and easiest way is to create a universal app project… • Universal APPs also work on Windows 10 • Once windows 10 is main stream all these issues will go away
- 22. UNIVERSAL APP PROJECT – THE BAD • When converting from 8.0 to 8.1 we noticed that approximately 40% of the code base had changed • Massive amounts of rework • The DLLs for key things (windows phone toolkit by telerik) where not compatible with 8.1 • The only dlls that would work were SharePoint mobile OOTB dlls • This destroyed our authentication mechanism! • Had to Change from FBA to network • Created our own encryption mechanism to retrieve creds for use in the app
- 23. UNIVERSAL APP PROJECT – THE GOOD • The code we wrote for phone, now worked on desktops as well ! • Although this was a major upheaval – in the end it ensured that we re-wrote the whole application with out reliance on DLLS from third parties • This also helped us embrace the universal app mantra
- 24. STORE SUCCESS!!! • Once the packages were built we could upload really quickly • Image work and descriptions completed at this point • Phone and desktop are done separately (2 different apps) • Validation took less than 1 hour for each • Appeared in search results in 24 hours • Totally searchable across the globe within 48 hours
- 25. STORE SUBMISSION At present both phone and desktop have different stores This has been promised to be unified in Windows 10 – but until then…
- 26. CROSS PLATFORM STORY App was live in windows store for phone and desktop SharePoint Backend infrastructure stable Scavenging process refined Next…. How do we get this working on other, non-ms devices? Dogs and cats!!!
- 27. CROSS PLATFORM DECISION FRAMEWORK There are three main areas that need to be addressed up front before your cross platform development can begin: Programming language SharePoint integration Mechanism Programming platform Making the right decision for all three of these questions is vital for your project and can have catastrophic consequences if the wrong decisions are made
- 30. SHAREPOINT INTEGRATION The biggest decision sway of the whole project: When you are providing rapid real time updates 1/3rd reduction in traffic size matters… …it really matters!
- 31. PROGRAMMING PLATFORM Developing cross platform you have MANY options – we looked at these most common options: • Native • Xamarin • Cordova • Visual Studio Cordova
- 32. NATIVE Android studio Reduce the layer of complexity Use native xaml No third party involvement Large ramp up per platform investment for android investment for apple investment for Samsung Need an apple mac!
- 33. XAMARIN 3rd party tool Runs dlls in its own runtime Maps to the native device api’s Licensed per platform Integrates with visual studio Adds a layer of complexity Can run c# on other platforms Good discount using MSDN Subscription If I had large amounts of custom c# this is the route I would choose
- 34. CORDOVA Cordova is a command line tool made by apache Creates projects for all the device platforms Found that we were spending time learning cordova… …not actually creating the app… I would use this option if I was a native android or ios programmer, then wanted to reduce re-work
- 35. VISUAL STUDIO CORDOVA Visual Studios implementation of cordova VERy, VERY similar to universal APPS Some online training resources - but they are poor Can use html 5, javascript and REST in a visual studio shell and run it on android Many android emulators Compiles for IOS – but need an apple mac to deploy and test (mac in cloud works fine $4 subscription)
- 36. AND THE WINNERS ARE… Programming Language Sharepoint integration Platform
- 37. THE REST 1 PAGER… Most interwebz articles start with “REST is simply…” or “REST is easily the..” Well… if you don’t know the principles rest is NOT easy! …in fact it can be downright obtuse at times… I’ve put together a 1 page guide to creating a rest page using our sample environment. This way you can create your own SharePoint asp.net page that pulls rest. Once you have it working you can tweak for your own needs as you see fit
- 38. REST 1 PAGER Full working demo can viewed here: http://www.newsscavenger.com/sites/RestTest
- 39. THE VS CORDOVA 1 PAGER… Setting up and implementing VS corodva from scratch can be time consuming The training materials on the interwebz are very basic, fragmented and quite frankly not very good… This 1 pager shows you how to install and configure visual studio for cordova Create a multiple platform Project Populate that project with the rest 1 pager Deploy that application to an android/ios/windows emulator or device
- 40. WELL DONE If you follow the two 1 pagers you will have just: • Installed your cross platform programming solution • Integrated it with SharePoint • Created an application that uses SharePoint across: • Windows phone 8.1 • Windows desktop 8.1 • Windows 10 • Android (phone and tablet) • IOS
- 41. REPORTING DASHBOARD We all love reporting right? Imagine the cross platform data we can get from this!!! Enter the fray Development Operations:
- 42. REPORTING DASHBOARD Each scavenger has its own site All articles are parsed into one list In the APP when ever a link is pressed we also do an inert “get” to a reporting page on the Scavenger site This allows us to not only track all the usual data, but also allows us to track the data by usage We store each report on total number of downloads individually
- 43. REPORTING DASHBOARD On a nightly basis we set a daily task (23:59) – this does the following Copies the log files from the web front ends to the BOT Uses Log parser to gain all relevant information Hits per day Total Hits per day by source Uploads that data to the reporting list on the scavenger site Use the SP2010 (yes it still works) chart part to connect to that list Display web parts however you wish on the page of your choice Benefits All heavy lifting done by the bot As its based on the logs can report on anything really As its in powershell can combine with other PS modules Hyper-v Local machine (think disk monitoring) Not reliant on timer jobs Very easy to get to grips with
- 44. REPORTING DASHBOARD PATTERN Ensure that you replace the site, statistics list and the local location to store the files You must have logparser.exe present in your local folder being used to compete the reporting Text version can be found here: http://www.newsscavenger.com/sites/RestTest/Shared%20Documen ts/ReportingDashboardDemo.txt
- 45. LAST BUT NOT LEAST A WORD ON ACCESSIBILITY… We are continually told that the future of the internet is visual this, visual that, visual the other…. (Delve, office graph, Datazen etc..) Maybe it is… But what if they are mistaken… What is the future of the web was audio… When you drive down the road on your normal commute – how many web sites can you read? … how many websites could you listen to? … the use of audio accessibility should be for everyone … if only a scavenger app existed on all devices, that made all content totally audio compliant… if only….
- 46. FINALLY… If I had to sum up the last 9 months the one word I would use is… CHAOS!
- 47. THANK YOU I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for listening to my dullest tones If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me +44 7506 578092 Heath.groves@sundownsolutions.co.uk