There’s a lot of buzz nowadays about moving to Office 365 and using the App Model to extend and customize the platform. However, I know a lot of folks aren’t even considering Office 365 just yet, so I was wondering how are you developing “Apps” internally?
Are you using Full Trust Farm solutions? Or, are you starting to create Apps internally? I am guessing the decision points will be based on the fact that Farm Solutions are far quicker to develop, but harder to migrate in the future. Whereas “Apps” are slow to develop but set you up for a potential move to Office 365…
Love to hear your thoughts…
Colin – fantastic response. At Collaboris, we have been struggling to put together a few “simple” templates using declarative mark-up only. Workflow has been the biggest barrier and pain point. It’s taken way too long and has cost a fortune. In the time the devs have been on that, I have managed to create and publish 3 new Workdpress sites!Â
However, I do feel the future will be better and I know Microsoft are definitely listening to us! Jeremy Thake was a great hire for them. He’s continuing to act like an MVP but now working for MS. It’s great to see that he’s happy to educate and also take in feedback.Â
Having said that, I think we are in for quite a few months of frustration until we finally get something that’s on par with the server OM.
Will they phase out the App Model? I think this is doubtful, Silverlight had a great alternative (HTML 5, WPF) and Sandbox Solutions had Full Trust Solutions to use. If you take the App Model away then what else is there for building on top of Office 365?
We are currently re-architecting DocRead for Office 365 and it’s going to be tough, but we are taking the approach to use as little SP functionality as we can. This way it’ll be cheaper for us to develop and maintain and also less fragile to the torrent of Office 365 changes. We are going to place most of our UI in Azure and pull in what we need via CSOM / JSOM.Â
