The future of full trust solutions

Are FTC solutions dead?How, when and why should I consider FTC

solutions?

KWizCom Corporation

• Founded in 2005

• Headquartered in Toronto

• Global vendor of SharePoint Add-Ons

• 5000+ customers worldwide

Shai Petel

Director of Research and Development at KWizCom

MCPD, MVP: SharePoint

shai@kwizcom.com | @shaibs | http://kwizcom.blogspot.com

Are FTC solutions dead?

NO!The short answer?

“develop an app whenever you can”

Title quote from MSDN https://goo.gl/FTDb9Q FTC are available only on premise or via 3rd party

hosting, like RackSpace FTC are not deprecated, and still recommended in

some scenarios Don’t adopt a strict “No FTC” policy, leave an open

mind

When should I use FTC solutions?

Rule of thumb

Upgrading existing solutions Reliable, mission critical, event handlers Ribbon menu that interact with content (*NCSS) Part that interact with other content on the page (filter) Delegate controls (*NCSS) Broad scope of usage (# of sites) Branding (*NCSS) Code elevation (run as admin)

* NCSS – no code sandbox solution

App disadvantages

Requires to spin up more servers, web applications etc.

Security & performance: transmit content to a remote server (consider “print” or “preview”)

Adds more failure points Reliability (no “mission critical” event handlers) Complex deployment/clean up of artifacts

App “surprise!” list

CSR custom columns? Thing again. Not in calendar, and other places.

REST API – incomplete, missing support for list folders, discussions, content approval. Also: results may vary

CSOM API – requires host site URL, which is only available through a long query string.

Mission critical event handlers

Consider these scenarios: Validate values on item created / modified and reject

invalid values Notify another system of changes

Using remote event handlers, are not guaranteed. Once your service doesn’t respond (or if its authentication token expired) invalid data can now be entered to your system.

Convert and manipulate content

Consider these scenarios: You wish to send a bunch of files and list items to

prepare a print preview Support preview for large documents

Data must be transmitted to the app server before it can be manipulated. Network usage, speed and reliability in question.

Widely used app

Consider these scenarios: Your app enhances rich text editing and should be supported

on thousand of sites App requires advanced configuration and provisioning of

artifacts (Create sub folder per user with unique permissions)

Deploy and upgrade is a challenge, either by PowerShell or centrally by the app catalog.Still: the app cannot elevate permissions to configure itself on first use, requires a visit from a site admin to configure.

App communication with page

Consider these scenarios: Your app has logic that identifies the user and wishes to

filter content on other lists based on “project id” for this user

You want to develop a generic “share” app that will shorten a url to view selected items in a list view

Your app can only add an isolated app part to pages, which is blocked from any interaction with other parts on the page.

App + NCSS

Consider these scenarios: Your app designs a new theme to the site, NCSS adds the

JS/CSS files to all pages of your site NCSS adds a ribbon button that has advanced formatting of

rich text, opens a popup to a page in your app that formats it

Your solution is now comprised of 2 or more separate elements, very hard to deploy and manage. Your solution can no longer be served as a clean app from app catalog, since it is useless without the NCSS which needs to be deployed separately.

Why should I use FTC solutions?

Other advantages of FTC solutions: Server side OM is very reliable, tested and complete IF handled with care, produces good performance on

much smaller footprint. While I have FTC code running the same way since

SP2003, REST/CSOM seem to differ greatly with each update and release, and completely different in on premise.

QUESTION?

Shai Petel

Director of Research and Development at KWizCom

MCPD, MVP: SharePoint

shai@kwizcom.com | @shaibs | http://kwizcom.blogspot.com