Category: SharePoint 2013 Dev

Collab365 MicroJobs: I will build you a Dev Farm in Azure

1200x600_c365_microjobs_featuredimg

If you’re struggling to find help or keep up to date with Microsoft SharePoint then I will build you a basic SharePoint 2013/2016/2019 Dev farm in Azure.

I am now a registered Freelancer on Collab365 MicroJobs – the brand new marketplace dedicated to Microsoft professionals.

Here are 4 reasons that the Collab365 Team have spent months building the site:

  1. You often need expert Microsoft help just for a couple of hours.
  2. You can’t keep up with everything Microsoft is releasing.
  3. You find it hard to find Microsoft experts on other non-dedicated sites. There are just too many other subjects covered.
  4. You don’t have time to go through a lengthy interview process.

I personally love the concept and have actually just posted a MicroJob. Here are the details…

How I can help you …


Building out a SharePoint farm to use as a Dev/Test environment can be a long tedious process.  It also usually requires hardware resources that aren\’t always available.  Using Azure you can spin up new VMs relatively quickly, but installing and configuring SharePoint can still take a significant amount of time.  There are pre-built Azure templates, but these often don\’t provide the flexibility needed to configure a specific environment.
Using a combination of PowerShell and Desired State Configuration (DSC) we will design and build a basic  server farm consisting of three (3) virtual machines (AD, SQL, and SharePoint) to your specifications.  The farm will include the following:

  • One (1) Active Directory domain controller configured to the domain name of your choice containing ten (10) Service accounts to support installation of SQL and SharePoint
  • One (1) SQL server configured using a domain service account to support SharePoint
  • One (1) SharePoint 2013, 2016 or 2019 server
  • Up to three (3) Web Applications
  • Up to ten (10) Site Collections
  • Core Service Applications (Application Management, Managed Metadata, Search, Secure Store, State, Subscription Settings,  Usage, & User Profile)

Not included:

  • Configuration of Office 365 hybrid
  • Configuration of SQL reporting services
  • Configuration of Office Online Server

How does it work and what about payment?
Paying for online services with people that you don’t know can be worrying for both parties. The buyer often doesn’t want to pay until they’re happy that the Freelancer has completed the work. Likewise the Freelancer wants to be sure they will be recompensed for their time and commitment. Collab365 MicroJobs helps both the buyer and the Freelancer in these ways:

  1. The buyer pays up front and the money is securely held in the MicroJobs Stripe Connect platform account.
  2. The Freelancer can then begin the work in the knowledge that the payment has been made.
  3. Once the buyer is happy that the work is complete and to their satisfaction, the funds become available to the Freelancer.
  4. There’s even a dispute management function in case of a disagreement. But it won’t on my MicroJob! As long as we agree what’s needed up front and keep talking the entire way through, you won’t be disappointed.

Note: Once I’ve completed the work, I’d love it if you could write a review for me. This will allow others to see what a fantastic job I did for you.
What if we need to add extra’s to the job after I’ve started?
It’s really easy for us to discuss your extra requirement (using the chat feature on the site) and for us to agree a price and add it to the order.
If you’d like me to help you, here are the steps to hire me …

  1. View my MicroJob.
  2. On that page click the “Buy” button.
  3. You’ll need to register as a buyer on the MicroJobs site, but this only takes a minute and will also allow you to purchase MicroJobs from other awesome Freelancers.

If you need to contact me then please use the “contact” button and ask me any questions before purchasing.

MCSD: SharePoint Certification Officially Announced

MCSD SharePoint Applications

There have been rumors running around for months about what exams would be required to earn the Microsoft Certified Solution Developer certification for SharePoint 2013.  MS Learning officially added MCSD: SharePoint to their site today.  You can see all the SharePoint certifications, including MCSD, here.

The Two SharePoint specific Development exams haven’t been released yet, but should be available later this summer.  In the meantime you can get started on the two non-SharePoint specific certification exams.

Another point that should be noted.  This announcement continues the trend started with the SharePoint Microsoft Certified Masters certification.  Certifications will now be time constrained.  You must recertify every two years to maintain the MCSD: SharePoint certification.  This is also true for MCSM: SharePoint (three years) and MCSE: SharePoint (two years).  This recertification requirement reflects Microsoft’s move away from doing major specific releases, like 2007, 2010, and 2013, to a more continuous release cycle with quarterly service releases for Office 365.  You can expect to see On-premise SharePoint going to a more continuous evolution over the next several years also.  These new certs anticipate that development in both the Online and On-Premise environments.

Make App Icons that Change with a Composed Look

Animated

Recently a developer friend was wondering why all the built-in App Icons changed colors on his SharePoint 2013 site when he applied a different color scheme using the “Composed Looks” functionality,but Icons for custom apps he had deployed remained their original color.  The screenshot below shows the Site Contents page both before (Left Side) and after a Theme has been applied using a Composed Look (Right Side).  You can see that all the Icons on the page changed except the last one on the right.  This is the App that I installed using the Visual Studio 2012 SharePoint Hosted App project.  So the question is Why do all the other Icons change?

Appssidebyside

The first theory was that the App Icons were being recolored using the Theme CSS support that has been available since SharePoint 2010.  But the ability to recolor an image using CSS has always been limited to background images loaded through CSS.  These Icons are loaded using an <IMG> element so there is no way to specify the image in CSS and no way to recolor it.

After using IE’s Developer toolbar to examine the HTML and CSS on the pages above I found that the image itself doesn’t get recolored. But the <a> (anchor tag) that surrounds the Icon is a square rectangle occupying the space behind each image that has its background set to one of the theme colors.  You can see in the screenshot below that the <a> tag has its background set to a class of “ms-storefront-appiconspan’ which is set to an rgb color from a themable css file.  But why does changing the background behind the Icon change the color of the Icon?

appIconBackground

The trick is that the Icon file itself is a transparent PNG that is the same size, 90 X 90 pixels, as the anchor tag with the background color behind it.  That way the background color shows through the Icon and appears to recolor the icon itself.  So let’s see what happens to my Visual Studio project if I replace the blue in my App Icon with a Transparent background.  the image below shows the original Icon on the left and the new transparent Icon on the right after I cut the background out using Paint.Net.

appIcons

After uploading the new Icon image into my visual Studio project and redeploying the custom app you can see that the custom app Icon changes colors along with the Theme in the screenshot below.  If you restrict your Icon to white images and text on a transparent background then your Icon should look like it fits no matter what Composed Look is applied to your site.

AppAfter

Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 ships full RTM

visual_studio_logo-new-300x225

If you who have been learning to develop the new SharePoint 2013 Apps then you know that the toolset for doing that in Visual Studio 2012 didn’t ship a finished RTM version when SharePoint 2013 shipped its RTM version in November.  Instead we’ve all still been working on a Preview 2 version.  Well no longer! The final version of Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio shipped today.  You can read more about the announcement here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2013/03/04/now-available-office-developer-tools-for-visual-studio-2012.aspx 

And more importantly you can download the new tools via web platform Installer from the following URL:

http://aka.ms/OfficeDevToolsForVS2012