Application Lifecycle Management in SharePoint 2013 & Office 365

There are several methods to customize SharePoint. Developers have the option of creating new cloud applications for SharePoint or maintaining legacy full trust code. Coupled with the complexity many organizations have in terms of managing SharePoint customization across Office 365 and on-premises implementations, developers and solution architects will need to understand how to adjust application lifecycle management (ALM) techniques to support and deploy quality solutions.

This series of blog posts will focus on the establishment of development, testing and deployment best practices for on-premise and cloud applications and solutions. This will also include concepts such as continuous integration, release management and automated testing.


Date: April 12​th at 10:00 AM (GMT +4).

Speaker - Ayman El-Hattab (MVP):

Ayman El-Hattab is a recognized industry expert and an enterprise collaboration strategist focusing on helping organizations, IT professionals and software developers plan, design, develop, build, govern and operate large-scale enterprise collaboration solutions using SharePoint & Office 365. 

Ayman is a passionate evangelist who has presented at many conferences all over the Middle East & Africa (including SharePoint Saturdays, TechEd events & others) about SharePoint, Office 365, Application Lifecycle Management, Business Intelligence technologies and other business-focused topics. Ayman is also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional [SharePoint MVP] for 4 years in a row , ALM Ranger, published author (SharePoint 2010/13 Unleashed) and an enthusiastic speaker who enjoys working with the online and offline communities all over the world.

Ayman is the founder of SharePoint4MEA, O365ForAll, MEA ALM Community & SharePoint4Arabs, community lead at Egypt SharePoint User Group, an organizer of several SharePoint Saturday events and a member of The World Association of SharePoint Business Strategists. Outside of work, Ayman can be found watching soccer games, playing XBOX or watching documentary movies.

Registration link: ​http://www.spsevents.org/city/Virtual/Gulf2014​

1st Live Online SharePoint Saturday Gulf event on April 12​th at 10:00 AM (GMT +4).

SharePoint administrators, end users, architects, developers, and other professionals that work with Microsoft SharePoint Technologies are invited to attend the 1st Live Online SharePoint Saturday Gulf event on April 12​th at 10:00 AM (GMT +4).

 

SharePoint Saturday Gulf is a free, educational, informative, & lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals, MCMs, MCTs & MVPs who are willing to share their great experience.

 

In order to hear the presenters, you will need headphones or computer speakers. There will be no conference call dial-in phone numbers; everything will be done over your computer.

We are all about bringing great SharePoint content to the Arab Gulf area​. Follow us on Twitter at #SPSGulf.​
 

Registration link: ​http://www.spsevents.org/city/Virtual/Gulf2014​

Getting Started with Office 365 Webinar

You are invited to attend a free session on JavaScript Object Model for SharePoint 2013 provided by UAE SharePoint User Group, This session will build up your skills to a point what is Office 365 and how can it help your small business.

Registration URL: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4100862067621118466 ​

Time: 7:30 to 9:30 PM, Wednesday, 8 January 2014 

​About the session:

Office 365 brings familiar applications, including Office desktop software and Office Web Apps, together with SharePoint, Exchange and Lync in the cloud for the first time. In this webinar hear some of the stories behind the scenes and learn about the core foundations and architecture of Office 365

​

Agenda:

• Overview
• Plans & Subscriptions 
• Exchange, outlook and Lync
• SharePoint Online
• SkyDrive Pro & Web Apps​

Who this book is for

• Managers: If you manage a department or business unit, you need to understand how to get the most out of Office 365. If your company has made significant investments in cloud deployment,
• Developers: This isn’t a development session, but the best Office 365 (office & SharePoint) developers are those who understand the product. 
• IT professionals: This session helps you understand what features your end users may want to see in an office 365 that you architect or support.

Speaker​

Muawiyah Shannak has been working extensively with SharePoint since its 2007 version across many different technical areas of SharePoint projects including defining infrastructure, application architecture, and solution development. Muawiyah is currently employed at Exceed IT Services as a Software Architect where his focus is on delivering high quality SharePoint solutions that satisfy customer requirements in a manner that is consistent with Microsoft best practices. He is also a Microsoft Community Contributor and on the committee for the UAE SharePoint User Group.​

Building Your First App for SharePoint 2013

In this webinar I'll demonstrates how you can create the first SharePoint 2013 APP using Visual Studio 2012/2013. The demo includes how to register for Office 365 trial, managing SharePoint Online Site collections, describing the new App model , Choosing the right API, Packaging & Publishing the Apps.

Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8506534789830229250

Don't miss this great learning and networking opportunity!  ,  for more info https://spuae-public.sharepoint.com/Blog/Post/30/Building-Your-First-App-for-SharePoint-2013

Bright Banner App (SharePoint Slider/Carousel)

My first App for SharePoint 2013.

This SharePoint App featuring easy to use Carousel with a 16 transitions, thumbnails and buttons provide easy navigation of banners slides. This HTML banner built to be responsive.



Bright Banner App (SharePoint Slider/Carousel)

Features:

• Touch-friendly navigation for slider and thumbnails.
• 16 Beautiful Transition Effects.
• Able to load puffed up number of images, each with customizable description and hyperlink.
• Show or hide slides by use active/inactive feature.
• Responsive Size of slides and thumbnails can be dynamically changed.
• Works with all SharePoint sites types, including office 365 public websites.

Links:

• Online Demo
• App in Office Store
• Bright Banner in codeplex.com 
• Documentation

If you find this App useful please add you review on SharePoint app store and submit your feedback and issues to issues section

Powershell script to Download SharePoint 2013 Pre-Requisites

When you need to install SharePoint offline (when you don’t have internet access in SharePoint server) ,  you should download all of the software prerequisites, All of these prerequisites needed for a successful installation are listed in this blog post: http://blogs.technet.com/b/meamcs/archive/2012/12/26/install-and-download-sharepoint-2013-prerequisites-offline-manually.aspx

Or you can download the following Powershell script and run it on your machine to download these software prerequisites.

Download "Script to Download SharePoint 2013 Pre-Requisites" powershell file: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/Script-to-SharePoint-2013-702e07df

Script:
# This commands script file creates a new BITS transfer job that downloads all Sharepoint 2013 Prerequisites files
# Author: Muawiyah Shannak (@MuShannak)
# Blog: http://mushannak.blogspot.com/
# Last Update : 2/11/2013
# Source: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Script-to-SharePoint-2013-702e07df

$DestinationFolder = Read-Host -Prompt "Please enter the destination path for Sharepoint 2013 Prerequisites files"

# Note: The Prerequisite Files URLs are subject to change at Microsoft's discretion - check http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(v=office.15).aspx and update the links.
$FilesUrlList = ("http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/0/F/D0F564A3-6734-470B-9772-AC38B3B6D8C2/dotNetFx45_Full_x86_x64.exe", # Microsoft .NET Framework version 4.5
             "http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/1/3/9138773A-505D-43E2-AC08-9A77E1E0490B/1033/x64/sqlncli.msi", # SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Native Client
             "http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/F/9/8F93DBBD-896B-4760-AC81-646F61363A6D/WcfDataServices.exe", # Microsoft WCF Data Services 5.0
             "http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/1/D/91DA8796-BE1D-46AF-8489-663AB7811517/setup_msipc_x64.msi", # Microsoft Information Protection and Control Client (MSIPC)
             "http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/0/0/E0060D8F-2354-4871-9596-DC78538799CC/Synchronization.msi", # Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 SP1 (x64) 
             "http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/2/B/52B59966-3009-4F39-A99E-3732717BBE2A/Windows6.1-KB2506143-x64.msu", # Windows Management Framework 3.0 which includes Windows PowerShell 3.0
             "http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/1/D/01D06854-CA0C-46F1-ADBA-EBF86010DCC6/r2/MicrosoftIdentityExtensions-64.msi", # Windows Identity Extensions
             "http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/7/2/D72FD747-69B6-40B7-875B-C2B40A6B2BDD/Windows6.1-KB974405-x64.msu", # Windows Identity Foundation (KB974405)
             "http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/6/7/A678AB47-496B-4907-B3D4-0A2D280A13C0/WindowsServerAppFabricSetup_x64.exe", #Windows Server AppFabric
             "http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/B/5/7B51D8D1-20FD-4BF0-87C7-4714F5A1C313/AppFabric1.1-RTM-KB2671763-x64-ENU.exe" # CU 1 for AppFabric 1.1 (KB2671763)
             )

function CreateDestinationFolder()
{
    Try
    {
        ## Return true if the Destination Folder exists, otherwise return false
        If (!(Test-Path "$DestinationFolder" -pathType container))
        {
            ##Creates the destination folder if it does not exist
            New-Item $DestinationFolder -ItemType Directory
        }
    }
    Catch
    {
        Write-Host "An error occurred creating destination folder (`'$DestinationFolder`'), Please check the path,and try again."
        Pause
        break
    }
}

function DownloadSP2013Files()
{
    Import-Module BitsTransfer
    Write-Host "BitsTransfer Module is loaded"
    Write-Host "Downloading..."

    ForEach ($FileUrl in $FilesUrlList)
    {
        ## Get the file name
        $DestinationFileName = $FileUrl.Split('/')[-1]
   
        Try
        {
           
            ## Return true if the file exists, otherwise return false
            If (!(Test-Path "$DestinationFolder\$DestinationFileName"))
            {
                Write-Host "`'$FileUrl`' ..."
                Start-BitsTransfer -Source $FileUrl -Destination $DestinationFolder\$DestinationFileName -Priority High -ErrorVariable err
                If ($err) {Throw ""}
            }
            Else
            {
                Write-Host "File $DestinationFileName already exists, skipping..."
            }
        }
        Catch
        {
            Write-Warning "An error occurred downloading `'$DestinationFileName`'"
            break
        }
    }
}

function Pause($Message="Press any key to continue...")
{
    Write-Host -NoNewLine $Message
    $null = $host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho,IncludeKeyDown")
    Write-Host ""
}

CreateDestinationFolder
DownloadSP2013Files
Pause

 ###################################

Error occurred in deployment step ‘Recycle IIS Application Pool’ – SharePoint 2013 and Visual studio 2012

If you working on a SharePoint 2013 Visual Studio 2012 project. And after you have created a Visual web part then you tried to deploy to SharePoint Site collection. May you got the following error:

Error occurred in deployment step 'Recycle IIS Application Pool': Cannot connect to the SharePoint site: http://servername/. Make sure that this is a valid URL and the SharePoint site is running on the local computer. If you moved this project to a new computer or if the URL of the SharePoint site has changed since you created the project, update the Site URL property of the project.

• First you should open the web site and check wither it is opening in the browser or not. If it’s not work then you should check the SharePoint servers are running.

• Second, If the web site is open successfully then you should Restart visual studio.

• Finally, if the site is open successfully and you had Restarted visual studio. then you should check if the  current user on the web content database is owner.  If not then add the current user to the web content database with owner role.