Development for Office and SharePoint Moves Forward

Over the next couple of months, you’re going to start hearing more and more about the new App for Office model. In a nutshell, this is a new model for developing and deploying applications to Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013. The main idea is to remove the installation requirement for applications onto a server while still providing the full range of functionality to the applications. Is this case, the servers I’m talking about are the Exchange Server and the SharePoint farm.

At the heart of the Apps for Office/SharePoint model is Web technologies. And while it’s a major simplification, the general approach is as follows: the application (i.e. Word, Excel, SharePoint) hosts a control that displays a Web page. That Web page is the ‘app’. The site behind that Web page is hosted wherever it wants to be, but most importantly it does *not* have to be hosted in the SharePoint or Exchange environment. The Web page has the ability to interact with the application through a number of techniques, including client-side JavaScript and/or server-side code (ASP.NET, PHP, etc.). From the perspective of the user, it does *not* appear that the app is a Web page, but it feels like it is directly integrated with the application.

As you might guess, this is not a complete or thorough description of the process. But if you want to learn more, you can join me on Dec 12 in Charlotte (register here) or Dec 14 in Toronto (register here). And if those dates/places don’t work for you, keep your eyes open for new dates across North America starting in February.

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