Using Sharepoint as a development platform

SharePoint is a versatile development platform for building add-ins and solutions with varying scopes that address a wide range of needs. Our development team has experience in creating applications with on-premise SharePoint 2016 and Office 365.

Large organizations like Microsoft have deployed SharePoint solutions that our development team created for their specific needs.

If you are tired of looking at a boring off-the-shelf deployment of SharePoint sites, we are here to help!

How we address typical SharePoint challenges

Out-of-the-box Sharepoint Forms are too basic

Default forms available out-of-the-box with SharePoint consist of a few basic fields for data entry which is enough for simple applications. However, if you need more functionality and better control, the best solution is custom forms.

We develop custom forms with modern HTML 5 controls that implement different behaviors depending on user roles and permissions.

For one of our customers, we created a set of branded template forms to create a budget planning application. Users can fill out a request for the budget form, and the person responsible for approval will see the data in another view with additional fields added for the budget process. That way, each specially designed form handles the functionality needed at certain budget approval steps. Form fields are added dynamically depending on the user’s role.

On-premises SharePoint Timer Jobs don't work in O365

Businesses often face tasks that should be executed in accordance with the defined schedule. SharePoint on-premises has Timer Jobs for scheduling these tasks, however, there are no timer jobs in Office 365.

Our customers often face challenges implementing scheduled jobs such as report generation, custom reminders, data archiving, and importing data from external sources. For security reasons, SharePoint Online does not allow the creation and deployment of any timer jobs.

In such cases, we use Azure Worker Role with logic specifically developed for scheduled tasks to run at defined times. When Microsoft Azure Worker Role cannot be used, we implement this solution as a Windows service which could be hosted on any Windows Server PC which has access to SharePoint Online.

Here is an architecture diagram depicting how we employ an Azure Worker Role service for handling Remote Timer Jobs.

remote_timer_jobs

One example we can provide revolves around a case where our customer needed to accumulate tasks assigned to certain employees (per week) and then generate reports for the top management. We implemented this task as scheduled jobs using Azure Worker Role which collects input data, generates reports and then sends these reports to recipients in accordance with the defined schedule. We have created Flow-based solutions using PowerApps as well.

You can only access up to 5,000 items in any view. What if you need more?

According to Microsoft, a list or library can store up to 30 million items, however, users can only access up to 5,000 items in any view. In such cases, SharePoint locks the library to reduce the load on the server.

One of our customers, a leading consumer electronics company, faced SharePoint’s 5000 item limit while developing a media project, which required to work with the large library of audio tracks metadata. The audio tracks were stored in three different sources with more than 150 thousand tracks in total. In order to access all the audio track information from one place, the customer decided to aggregate tracks from all sources into one SharePoint library.

To overcome the 5000 item limit, as the first step we enabled column indexing for general columns in audio files library. Therefore, when a user opens a view that relies on indexing, the server’s load decreases as the background work has already been done.

In addition to solving the SharePoint items limit problem, we proposed to use SharePoint Search Service APIs for custom forms that require data from the large lists in some fields. This APIs provides a fast way to retrieve data from the large lists without getting items limit error.

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Custom solutions for a variety of industries

At DB Best, we go beyond the out-of-the-box SharePoint functionalities while improving usability and enabling mobile accessibility. Our solutions transform time-consuming and inefficient processes into dramatically improved experiences which allow users to manage information more easily. We have the ability to develop a completely new customized solution from scratch to highlight your website, or extend the capabilities of existing solutions and address compliance requirements.

SharePoint

Display mode

We have successful experience developing strict page templates with sets of configured widgets. Our SharePoint team is capable of delivering the complete solution with complex logic using Javascript, HTML 5, C#, and XSLT transformations. Here is an example of a page layout with overridden edit mode developed for one of our customer’s internal websites.

In edit mode, users can see the list of icons, each of them corresponding to certain widgets on the page. By clicking on the widget icon, the main content block of the page switches to display settings for the selected widget.

Sharepoint edit mode

Edit mode

Such layouts facilitate consistent user interaction with pages by utilizing a set of preconfigured widgets along with custom UI that we develop for edit mode.

We can redesign your current website and expand it with responsive design to encourage users to access the site on mobile platforms, therefore allowing new growth opportunities for your business.

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How we improve the SharePoint appearance and extend the functionalities

Our services can provide an opportunity to address many of your business process challenges such as tracking projects, managing documents, onboarding employees, expense approvals, and other business tasks. We deliver visually attractive solutions with rich capabilities to boost the user experience of your websites and applications to a new level.

SharePoint provides multiple design options and we will help you choose the most appropriate one for your organization.

We follow best practices for user experience design, enabling users to complete scenarios which you intend for them to accomplish.

Let’s say you have a great idea for an add-in, but you struggle to create a good-looking and easy-to-use user interface, or you are unsure on how to host your add-in, or how your add-in will efficiently and securely access data. We invite you to take advantage of our expertise and allow our team to take care of these tasks and provide you with the flawless operation of our SharePoint solution.

Facilitating SharePoint Online deployments

SharePoint Migration Tool

Deploying to SharePoint Online repeatedly can be a daunting task, especially when you support a large number of websites that should be updated regularly. In accordance with our automatic approach, each new SharePoint template that we deliver provides the customer with corresponding deployment tools. That way, we can apply new customization in a consistent and repeatable manner.

By using tools like the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool and the SharePoint Migration Tool, we can accelerate the migration of your sites to Office 365.

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