Recently I have switched from VMWare to VirtualBox for my SharePoint Development. So far it really works good. I have prepared this guide for configuring VirtualBox for SharePoint-hosted apps. That means we need a new adapter with a static ip address. All the steps done inside the virtual machine are applicable for VMWare and Hyper-V, too. This guide does not cover the full configuration of the app environment, it covers only the network and dns settings needed for SharePoint-hosted apps on Premises in a Development machine.

Yesterday I had a little presentation about PowerShell basics in the SharePoint context. Here you can see the presentation I’ve published on slideshare. The text is in Swedish.

[slideshare id=37316916&doc=sharepoint-140724063012-phpapp01&w=600]

In our project we still have to support Internet Explorer 8. The CSS issues in IE8 are most difficult to debug and solve. You can not add a new rule in Developer Tools or toggle the state of an element to hover as in moder web browser dev tools. One solution that I’ve come up to today, is to add a style with javascript or jQuery, open the script pane in IE8 Dev Tools and add this line:

Recently an issue was reported about count mismatches in SharePoint 2013 Communities. The number of replies in category tiles sometimes is different compared to the community stats in the web part called “What’s happening”. The actual number of replies is 1 in the figure below. The user who has reported has tried to add, update and delete discussions and replies.

I have invested some time debugging this issue. It would be pity to not share my findings. Well the first thing to do was to determine the type name for the “What’s happening” web part. To do so just edit the  page and export the web part. In the exported .webpart file I saw that the type was Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.DashboardWebPart. With that knowledge it is time to open ILSpy, an awesome and free(!) assembly browser and decompiler. Load the “Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal” assembly from GAC into ILSpy. Then use F3 to search for DashboardWebPart:

I am reading Mobile HTML5 written by Estelle Weyle. It is an awesome recap and new knowledge about html, css and javascript. I want to highlight one of tips I got: Use the weakest CSS selectors (can be found on page 204). We all know, that inline CSS and !important are evil. They have a higher level of specifity and override the standard cascade of the CSS rules. If you use !important, then it will be hard to override CSS rules when you really need it. After these two classic “evils” the evil number three is overqualifying of CSS selectors. You should really never add more classes or ids or elements than needed. Consider this:

Do you prefer REST over CSOM as I do? I’ll skip the whys. Andrew Connell put it already in wrtiting so nicely. Well, if you do prefer REST, then you must have discovered some shortcomings of REST, or its incompleteness compared to CSOM. I think of:

1. Inability to filter items based on multivalued taxonomy fields
2. Inability to filter items based on user fields where user is added through a group, rather than directly, e.g. AssignedTo=[Me] combined with a SharePoint group.
3. …

In such situations I was forced to use CSOM. Until yesterday. Yesterday I learned that we can actually use CAML queries in REST requests.   This enables using REST in all situations. The REST API is still developed and many features are added. Maybe a particular operation that needs a CAML query today, can be supported in the core REST API and can be easily refactored then. But until then, we can use CAML queries in REST requests. Here are the important things about it:

This is an open question about the domains for SharePoint apps. On Technet: Configure an environment for apps for SharePoint (SharePoint 2013) we can read the following:

You must configure a new name in Domain Name Services (DNS) to host the apps. To help improve security, the domain name should not be a subdomain of the domain that hosts the SharePoint sites. For example, if the SharePoint sites are at Contoso.com, consider ContosoApps.com instead of App.Contoso.com as the domain name.

I have installed SharePoint SP1 on my development machine. Yammer and OneDrive links have appeared in the Central Administration: If you go ahead and click “Configure Yammer”, you can activate it: Because:

Yammer is Microsoft’s recommended tool for social collaboration.

When you activate Yammer, you’ll get this dialog, and the Yammer link in the SuiteBar: What happens when you click on Yammer, is that you are redirected to Yammer.com and you are prompted a login page. Then you have a usual yammer site with all your networks and stuff (in my case, SPC14 network): Then, if you go to your newsfeed, the following message is shown:

My colleagues and friends keep asking me what sessions I went to and what I would recommend to see on channel9 where all of them are publicly available. Here is my prioritized list of sessions:

1. #spc325 Real-world examples of FTC to CAM transformations. This was the most exciting developer session. Vesa Juvonen takes the Cloud App Model to its maximum. Wanna know more about the future. See this session.
2. #spc404 Build your own REST service with WebAPI 2. You know REST? You like $filter, $top and $select? Good, why not create an own api? You have all the tools in Visual Studio 2013. Just get inspired by Scott Hillier.
3. #spc269 Developer audience keynote | What’s new for the Office & SharePoint developer. Get all the developer news presented at #spc14.
4. #spc3999 SharePoint Power Hour - New developer APIs and features for Apps for SharePoint.
5. #spc371 Developing socially connected apps with Yammer, SharePoint and OpenGraph. Chris Johnson talks about how to use Yammer API to post updates, like and comment from code. What if you wanted to send an update to Yammer from your Line-of-Business application? Very easy.
6. #spc303 Advanced Performance Analysis for SharePoint. A real-world case study how performance of a SharePoint site is measured, captured and analyzed. Really interesting.
7. #spc391 Deep dive into Mail Compose Apps APIs. Main compose apps are similar to SharePoint apps, they are run as iframes and can be used to update an email while writing it or start a workflow. Good stuff.
8. #spc334 Real-world SharePoint architecture decisions. Wictor Wilén talked about his best topic: architecture decisions. He is probably the best in this area in the world, and his presentation becomes better and better every time he presents it.
9. #spc3000 Changing the look of Search using Display Templates and CSR. You can do a lot of stuff using the Display Templates and Cliend-Side Rendering. See this session to get inspired and gather a deeper understanding how it works.
10. #spc382 Managing Search Relevance in SharePoint 2013 and O365. How does XRANK work? Well it is complicated. This session is a must-see.
11. #spc224 The SharePointConference.com Site: From Sketch to Launch to Live! Did you know that SharePointConference.com was built upon SharePoint? See this session to find out what was good in SharePoint for this site, and what workarounds and hacks were necessary to get it to work.
12. #spc302 Advanced development patterns for SharePoint Apps. Provider-Hosted Apps are the best type of apps. Let’s see what examples and tips are provided in this session.
13. #spc322 SharePoint 2013 Search display templates and query rules. An introduction to Search Display Templates.
14. #spc301 Access is back! High-value, ’no code’, functional & flexible business apps with the new Access services. There were a lot of jokes in this session. Access apps are new “no-code” solutions and will replace the InfoPath solutions.
15. #spc407 Deep dive into the SharePoint 2013 CSOM API’s. The name is not correct. It is a dive into the CSOM, but it is not deep. See it if you want an introduction, but please keep in mind, the examples don’t follow the javascript coding conventions.
16. #spc381 Load testing SharePoint 2013 using Visual Studio 2013. Never used load-testing with Visual Studio? Got a 1.15 hr to kill? Well, see it to learn how to start the Visual Studio and what difference is between a web test and load test.

  The sessions I wish I had attended:

The SharePoint Conference 2014 was an astounding event. Over 10 000 like-minded SharePointers that met, learned a lot and shared new ideas, couldn’t be better. It was also the first time I was to the U.S. and Las Vegas. What a country, what a city! This place must burn people’s lives faster than anywhere else in the world :) I want to share my five takeaways from this conference. I’ll keep it short: