Microsoft SharePoint Best Practices

Enterprises around the world need to ensure that organizational resources are utilized at the best level. For making decisions regarding resource allocation or utilization, information across the company needs to flow freely, effectively and collaboratively. SharePoint is one of the most widely used Enterprise Content Management Systems that can facilitate collaboration and improve business processes. But how well does a SharePoint platform help your business depends on how it has been implemented.

A number of factors can influence the quality of your SharePoint applications.They are:

• Performance – Poor coding can slow down the speed of your application
• Security – Security flaws are often caused by bad code
• Stability – The stability of your SharePoint application can be affected by bad code which makes it difficult to find bugs and leads to more errors

Organizations who want to make the best of SharePoint platform need to follow certain guidelines that can enable them to leverage all the benefits of this robust platform. Read them below:

1. 1. Select the most efficient SharePoint Development pattern

Choosing the right development pattern is critical to the success of your application.

1. • Full trust solutions: These solutions are provided by Microsoft and are the most popular of the lot. Microsoft delivers on premise solutions in a shortest possible time, helping the organizations for faster go-to-market. The SharePoint development pattern used in full trust solutions is the most flexible and robust way to customize SharePoint.
   • Sandboxed solutions: This was an initial attempt by Microsoft to address the drawbacks of full trust solutions. They run in a secure process and don’t have complete access to your SharePoint farm. What this means is, you will face limitations when working with sandbox solutions.
   • Apps: SharePoint apps take two forms. They are either ‘SharePoint hosted’ or ‘provider hosted’. SharePoint hosted apps are simple but you can only use JavaScript to customize them. On the other hand, provider hosted apps are typically more complex as an external system is involved. However, they do offer a broader range of coding and hosting options.
2. Understand Methodologies and DesignOne of the important best practice in SharePoint development is to understand and implement the right methodology and design pattern. A number of design patterns are available that can be used to build a quality SharePoint app. For instance, the Model-View-View-Model (MVVM) is a classic and great example of how logic code is separated from the user interface.

   Microsoft and the SharePoint community at large also provide an Open Source project that collects and refines the best practices/patterns associated with SharePoint development. Choosing the design pattern or methodologies does also depend on developer expertise. But always remember that proper software design is the foundation that impacts SharePoint performance.

3. Conduct Regular Code ReviewsSharePoint App development isn’t an easy job as multiple developers are working on many projects and follow their own style of coding which may result in code irregularity. Independent code reviews are essential and should be a part of the development schedule. Reviewing code on a regular basis will ensure timely detection and mitigation of any errors that may have crept up in your SharePoint application. Code checks can be done in a few ways. For instance, through tools, over-the-shoulder or via pair programming. They can help you improve your SharePoint application not just from a technical viewpoint but also a functional one.

   The performance and success of any software application also depends on the quality of the code used to write it. Badly written code may let your SharePoint application work but can create problems in the future. Bugs aren’t always apparent upfront in a poorly developed application. Similarly, ‘good’ code can always been improved further. In short, it is always a good idea to invest more effort in the design, development and review of your SharePoint application. Following this and the SharePoint application development best practices listed above will surely lead to the creation of a robust SharePoint solution – which is what an enterprise ultimately needs.

Are you planning to develop a SharePoint app for your enterprise? Rishabh Software is a Microsoft Gold Partner, and has helped many small & medium organizations leverage the power of SharePoint platform.

Know more about the features and benefits of SharePoint.