SPFx enables rapid and versatile development. It is the most widely used development technology when it comes to Microsoft 365 and particularly SharePoint Online extensibility. I will share my thoughts, setup, and how we succeeded.

Table of Contents

Key Areas of Recommendation

I will focus on four important areas:

  1. Frameworks & technologies: I will share my setup which has enabled me to move fast and achieve the best results.
  2. The Microsoft 365 Community: what it is, why it matters, and why you should definitely leverage & get into it.
  3. Best Practices for upgrades.
  4. Booster.

Framework & Technologies

When starting with SPFx development, you have plenty of choices regarding what technologies and frameworks to choose from.

These are some key decisions that were made years ago and are still in effect in our projects:

You can see there is a lot of PnP here. It’s not a new explosive but the so-called Patterns and Practices initiative from Microsoft, which groups together all the community initiatives. You may think that all these technologies are a lot to understand before starting. Let me put it differently :

With these technologies, you can achieve very quickly impressive results

The Motivation Behind It

What people have already adopted is also good for me
Whether it is frameworks or samples you can find, you can boost your SPFx development when you follow the decisions a lot of other people have already thought about and decided before.

Don’t reinvent the wheel
A lot of people have put a lot of work into creating controls, CLIs, and so on, so you can quickly bootstrap your SPFx development. Understanding and leveraging the SPFx and Microsoft 365 Ecosystem is key to succeeding with SPFx.

Productivity
As a developer, you should always care about your productivity and efficiency. The technologies above help you bootstrap your SPFx development quickly.

The Microsoft 365 Community

Many consider it one of the best communities in tech. I will just give you an overview of what the Microsoft 365 Community offers and can do for you—and believe me, it’s a lot.

Community Page

You will find all the information you need on this page 🔗 .

Community Frameworks & Technologies

A lot of the frameworks I mentioned are supported by passionate people on GitHub and are open-source. Microsoft is mostly directly involved in the development of these community initiatives, but open-source contributors are heavily involved. Microsoft does not directly support these frameworks, but as they are involved, you can feel confident using them.
You can get help and support directly from the makers, and they may also implement your ideas if it could benefit the community.

Personal experience
I was personally stuck in one area of my intranet development project, and Patrick Rodgers, one of the maintainers of the PnP Js repository, implemented the getAllChildrenAsOrderedTree 🔗 method to help me out. It was a great addition, and we still rely heavily on this implementation today.

Community Calls

Microsoft organizes various recurring community calls 🔗 where you can attend demos and also ask questions directly in the chat.
This is a great place to become accustomed to the Microsoft 365 community and get some overview. The calls are free to attend, and you don’t even need to register—just spin up your Microsoft Teams.

Community Samples

Code is our bread, and there is enough bread for everyone. I will not make any analogy with Jesus, but there are so many samples available. Whether it is inspiration or a starting point, grab your preferred bread here:

For me personally, the availability of open-source samples has been a major time-saver, as I have been able to learn a lot directly from others through them.

Best Practices for upgrades

Leveraging frameworks and technologies helps boost your productivity and enables you to implement beautiful solutions. SPFx, like the frameworks mentioned above, is regularly upgraded. This means that you will get various releases every year, which is a very good thing.

You should plan for regular upgrades of your components to the latest framework versions so that you can:

  • Benefit from community support in case you encounter issues.
  • Get the latest software with security updates included.
  • Get the latest functionalities and optimized performance.

A very good starting point for SPFx upgrades is the Microsoft 365 Project Upgrade 🔗 It is also full integrated in the SharePoint Framework Toolkit for Visual Studio Code 🔗

Booster

If you’re looking for a quick start in SPFx and Microsoft 365 development, there’s a one-stop shop with some excellent course offerings from Andrew Connell here:
Voitanos Courses SPFx and Microsoft 365 🔗 .

I’ve personally bought and attended several courses and can warmly recommend them.
Andrew Connell not only delivers unique value in his courses but also offers:

  • Monthly office hours, where you can ask any questions
  • A well-managed Discord community for ongoing support

Azure

SPFx is a verstatile and open framwork, you can easily leverage Azure’s powerful features that you can integrate into your Microsoft 365 tenant. I will list my favorites here:

Conclusion

In our fast-evolving world, the business value you can provide is key to your customers’ satisfaction. With the setup above, you’ll exceed customer expectations.