Your Questions Answered by Edin Kapic

The following questions and answers are from Edin Kapic latest webinar with the European SharePoint Communty. You can view Edin’s webinar here: Sharepoint Apps with Lightswitch in No Time

Q: This might be very silly question – but in SharePoint 2013 can we use apps created by others for my SharePoint 2013 solution?

If you are referring to whether you can install and use apps published by others (in the Store) in your SharePoint environment, the answer is yes. If you don’t have the source code, you can’t include them as a part of your solution in Visual Studio.

Q: So will all the Apps be present in Azure for usage?

If you publish them as autohosted apps, yes. If you publish them as provider-hosted apps, you choose the hosting: Azure subscription, your own datacenter or any other cloud/hosting provider.

Q: Can you use custom javascipt and css on the screens?

Yes, of course. You can add your custom CSS in the client solution and you can write custom JS to be invoked on the screen events. From there you can refer to any JS library you would like to use.

Q: Can we use Lightswitch with Sharepoint hosted App, (no code) but only client side REST and javascript?. I have clients who ask for it.

I think that it could be possible, but the LigthSwitch tooling won’t help you here. You could alter the generated Javascript to remove the parts you don’t need, together with any server code, and you should also have to alter the app manifest to SharePoint-hosted. However, you would lose the server-side validation and security checks. Also, altering the LightSwitch app would be a one-time process, with no support for changes with the LightSwitch tooling.

Q: Do we have the ability to customise the various screens or are they resticted to keep them mobile/app friendly?

You can customize the screens as far as adding Javascript code that alters the DOM of the screens, together with any CSS you’d need. You can’t change the screen generation template, as far as I know.

If you have any questions or feedback on Jasper’s article please leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you.

See Edin’s session Social Business Value Demystified: Real-World Experiences at ESPC14 for only €1150.

Edin Kapic has spoken on several international SharePoint conferences such as European SharePoint Conference 2011 in Berlin, SharePoint Evolutions Conference 2013 in London, SharePoint Saturday Belgium 2012 and Microsoft NetWork Conference 2012 in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Edin will deliver this presentation in SharePoint Summit 2013 in Vancouver, Canada in October.