More than 250,000 organizations use SharePoint, including over 85% of Fortune 500 companies who use SharePoint Online as part of Microsoft (Office) 365.

– Microsoft

Since its inception in 2001, SharePoint has been the most widely adopted and popular information management and Intranet platform. For the past two decades, SharePoint has maintained its supremacy by enabling organizations to keep their business-critical information safe and well organized while catalyzing collaboration across departments. However, a lot has changed in the technology sphere over time and today’s users expect more from SharePoint. They expect to have robust SharePoint applications that offer the simplest and smoothest user experience (UX) while streamlining their daily tasks.

Traditional SharePoint app development involving add-ins, cannot completely meet such expectations. The Redmond-based giants identified this gap in SharePoint and swiftly came up with the SPFx model as a solution. Now, the immediate question on your mind is:

What is SPFx?

SharePoint framework (aka SPFx) is a model for building user-friendly and powerful customizations on the SharePoint platform. This framework helps SharePoint developers to create awesome client-side web parts and extensions. SPFx provides complete development support for client-side development, easy integration with data residing in SharePoint, and access to various open-source tools. This development model works in SharePoint Online, as well as SharePoint 2016 and 2019 on-premises versions. It can work for both modern as well as classic pages. With the utilization of SPFx web parts and extensions, the SharePoint developers and business users can create powerful applications that can deliver a great UX!

Couple SPFx with No-Code Application Development

As you can see, SPFx has simplified and enhanced SharePoint application development significantly. However, it has still not addressed one major concern. Traditionally, SharePoint application development or customization has been a siloed process handled by the SharePoint developers or IT professionals. Such dependencies have created various bottlenecks for business users and resulted in low user adoptions. The solution to this problem lies in: democratizing SharePoint development and allowing business (power) users to not only participate but build the apps themselves. A capable No-code application development platform facilitates such a development approach. It allows business users to build apps they need without any coding.

An SPFx enabled No-code platform allows users to build powerful SharePoint business applications that not only meet UX and UI expectations of users but can be built within a rapid time and without any IT dependencies. Let us explore how the combination of SPFx and No-code application development can help organizations build, customize, and automate their SharePoint at scale.

Benefits of using SPFx enabled No-Code application development Platform

#1: Build Mobile Friendly SharePoint Applications

One of the common complaints for most SharePoint users over the years has been the platform’s lack of mobile-friendliness. While most Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint can be easily installed and used on mobile devices. For many years, users could only access SharePoint using their desktops and laptops, while other applications would open seamlessly on tablets and smartphones. SPFx has changed this aspect of SharePoint. The applications that are built with an SPFx enabled No-code solution can not only be built 80% faster but they can be accessed from any device. Just like the Office apps, users can access and customize their SharePoint sites on the go and from any device. It helps users stay better connected to the data, content, and apps that they use every day.

#2: Easy integration with other Microsoft (Office) 365 workloads

In recent years, there has been an exodus from SharePoint on-premises to Microsoft 365 (SharePoint Online). One of the primary reasons for this shift has been the powerful stack of apps available as a part of Microsoft (Office) 365 suite of solutions. While users still love SharePoint for its collaboration and information management features, but they desire more. Modern users want to integrate tools such as Power BI, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive for Business, etc. to enhance SharePoint’s out-of-the-box capabilities. SPFx allows easy integration with other Microsoft (Office) 365 workloads and brings all the capabilities together. An SPFx enabled No-code platform allows business users to bring together data and conversations from other Microsoft (Office) 365 applications and build an end-to-end application themselves.     

#3: Delivers flexibility to host applications wherever needed

Since SPFx can be hosted wherever you wish, it presents organizations with several hosting options. The SPFx solution can be hosted on your server, SharePoint, or in the cloud. SPFx solution features a URL reference feature that points to the code location. Such functionality allows easy loading of the script in the browser whenever customization starts. A No-code platform, with SPFx support, enables business users to develop applications that are not just robust but also easy to use and fast loading too.   

#4: Solutions can be based completely on JavaScript

SPFx allows SharePoint developers to build applications that are 100% JavaScript based. JavaScript and its wealth of libraries enable developers to shape the UX and UI of an application as beautifully as any modern website. JavaScript is embedded directly to the page, and the controls are rendered in the normal page Document Object Model (DOM). SPFx development is JavaScript framework-agnostic and its toolchain supports common open-source client development tools. While SPFx at its core was meant to simplify SharePoint application development, it still needs some level of coding. A No-code and SPFX supported platform helps users to build applications with zero coding while enjoying all the highlights of SPFx.

#5: Supports lightweight development tools

The traditional method for the development of applications and web parts required the SharePoint developers to utilize heavyweight software, such as Microsoft Visual Studio, to build and customize their solutions. However, as the SPFx is entirely based on JavaScript, it enables developers to deploy lightweight tools such as Typescript, GitHub, Gulp, Yeoman Generator, NPMJS packages, and Node.JS. Each of these tools has different uses in SPFx. While such tools simplify application development significantly, the convenience is taken to the next-level by No-code platforms.

Undeniably, SPFx has revolutionized the development of SharePoint and other Microsoft (Office) 365 applications. However, there is still a significant learning curve and expertise involved in SPFx based development. Both these limiting factors can be addressed by selecting an SPFx enabled No-code application development platform.

Amit Gupta

Associate Director – Product Development

Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com

Digital transformation is a buzzword that you keep hearing in the business circles. However, it is more than just a word to throw around during a business meeting. In today’s fast-paced and digital business world every organization has to revise its goals and processes to achieve digital transformation, to remain a viable business.

However, the painful reality is that most transformations fail. Recent McKinsey research shows that 70 percent of complex, large-scale change programs don’t reach their stated goals! For most organizations, the complexity of the technology environment and the inability to swiftly implement necessary changes are the major roadblocks.

No-Code solutions allow organizations to stay agile and accelerate their strategy execution. It empowers the power users and developers to rapidly develop applications. It also improves the ability of IT to respond to business demands, shortens time-to-value, and accelerates digital transformation.

What is a No-Code Solution?

A No-Code solution mitigates the need for manual programming in application development. Instead of writing lines of codes, such a solution allows users to develop applications through simple point-and-click on specific components. Such components can be arranged into logical sequences to create functional and feature-rich applications.

How does a No-Code solution accelerate digital transformation?

The inherent value of a No-Code solution is that it accelerates and democratizes the application development process. With such a solution, your power users can build applications to solve critical business problems and automate tasks to increase productivity.  

5 Benefits of No-Code Solution towards Digital Transformation

• Reduces the load on IT: As mentioned before, No-Code solutions allow power users to build applications without any coding knowledge. By enabling such a change, the solution reduces the burden on the understaffed IT department. Applications to solve business challenges and increase productivity can now be built at accelerated speed without relying on IT. This in turn allows the IT department to dedicate more time to business-critical apps and projects.
• Accelerates development time: A No-Code solution enables power users to take application development into their own hands. They do not have to wait for their requests to be answered by the overburdened IT department. This means: a task that used to take months (even years) of waiting can now be completed within a few hours or days (depending upon its complexity). That is the level of acceleration a No-Code solution can provide to the application development lifecycle.  

• Ensures more targeted outcomes: The point-and-click configuration of No-Code solutions empowers the power users and developers to quickly build solutions to meet their exact requirements and specifications. Such applications can be updated on the fly. All these aspects are important to keep the business competitive and agile. While a No-Code solution allows the development of applications for immediate impact, it can also provide cost-efficient in the long run.
• Fights Shadow IT: When the IT department is unable to act on the requests of business users, they start seeking solutions on their own. With the rapid rise of SaaS, users can quickly find an application to meet their needs. The adoption of such applications can lead to security vulnerabilities. A No-Code solution enables businesses to eliminate such a problem by allowing the power users to develop their solutions to meet specific business needs while enabling IT to centrally control the data and user accesses.
• Enables Experimentation without Risks: Experimentation is an essential part of digital transformation. No-Code solutions allow organizations to test their ideas on a small scale to eliminate the setbacks. It empowers employees to experiment with their ideas, iterate projects efficiently, and create solutions that can transform organizations keeping them adaptable to the changes in the industry.

To meet the challenges of digital transformation and remain competitive in the marketplace, organizations have to create an environment that enables agility and flexibility of the internal workflows and customer-facing operations. When powered by a comprehensive No-Code solution, organizations can create an infrastructure that allows them to transform and innovate faster which generates new growth opportunities and provides a competitive advantage.

Amit Gupta

Associate Director – Product Development

Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com

SharePoint was launched in the year 2001 as an on-premises product. Over a period of time, developers have extended and fashioned it in many ways. In the past, web parts were created as full trust C# assemblies that were installed on the cloud servers. Though, recent development models mostly involve running JavaScript in a browser making REST API calls to the SharePoint and Office 365 back-end workloads. C# assemblies do not work in this environment.

Hence, there was a need for a new development model, which is the SharePoint Framework. In this article, we will get into the details of SPFx, its features, benefits, and a lot more. Further, we will also talk about the impact of SPFx on QuickApps in this article.

QuickApps is AgreeYa’s No-code SharePoint customization solution. With QuickApps, SharePoint users can build applications, automate business processes, create complex dashboards, reports & charts, using a suite of 20+ powerful web apps. QuickApps empowers the business users thereby reducing their dependency on IT and accelerating the time to market.

What is SharePoint Framework (SPFx)?              

The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is the next progression in SharePoint development. SPFx is a page and extension model that enables client-side development for building SharePoint experiences. SPFx enables easy integration with the SharePoint data and aids with open source tooling development.

In layman’s language, SharePoint Framework is a model for building customizations on the SharePoint platform. The Framework is based on the concept of building client-side solutions that integrate with the modern SharePoint UX. Professional users can use modern web technologies and tools in their chosen development environment to build productive experiences and apps that are responsive and mobile-ready. Have a look at the benefits of SharePoint Framework-

Top Benefits of SharePoint Framework 

• Reliable performance 
• Mobile responsive (when developing from scratch)
• SPFx helps with open-source client-side development tools like Node js, Yeoman, NPM, Gulp, and Webpack.
• SPFx supports JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, and Knockout JS.
• SharePoint Framework runs in the context of the current user and it does not require iframe to load an app.
• SPFx web part supports both SharePoint On-premise and SharePoint Online versions.

Why SharePoint Framework (SPFx)?

Over the past few years, we have seen a few development models for SharePoint. SharePoint customization models have been evolving with one drive: separate customizations from SharePoint to enforce platform hygiene and stability.

The SharePoint Add-in model was the primary footstep in the course of running customizations externally to SharePoint. However, this model has some limitations, one of them is the use of iframes for integrating add-ins on pages which has its own limitations related to cross apps access and performance.

Business users demand new capabilities from their collaboration platforms. New SharePoint UX has been designed as an answer to that demand. SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is a model for building customizations that integrates with the new SharePoint UX.

Functionalities of the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) are:

• SPFx permits the developer to access the lifecycle in addition to render, load, configuration changes, serialize and deserialize, and much more.
• SPFx runs in the setting of the current user and connection in the browser. JavaScript is embedded directly to the page and there are no iFrames available for the customization.
• SPFx controls are rendered in the normal page DOM and are responsive and accessible by nature.
• SPFx is framework-agnostic. Business users can use any JavaScript framework that you like including, but not limited to, Handlebars, React, Angular, Knockout, and Vue.js.
• SharePoint Framework end-users can use client-side solutions that are approved by the tenant administrators (or their delegates) on all sites, including self-service team, group, or personal sites.
• The developer toolchain is built on popular open-source client development tools such as Yeoman, NPM, webpack, TypeScript, and gulp.
• SPFx solutions can be utilized to extend Microsoft Teams.

SPFx web parts can be added to both classic and modern pages.

Will SharePoint Framework replace other models?

SharePoint is a rich platform and there are numerous scenarios for extending its standard capabilities. SPFx would not likely be supporting all of them and combining SharePoint Framework customizations with SharePoint Add-in might result in particularly powerful solutions. For better understanding, let’s get a little deeper into understanding the difference between SharePoint Add-in and SharePoint SPFx

SharePoint Add-in V/s SharePoint SPFx

SharePoint Framework can be defined as a compromise between efficient but unmanaged and non-secure JavaScript injection technique whereas SharePoint Add-in is a highly controllable but browser/network inefficient.

Efficiency differences

SPFx code is not embedded in an iFrame and it runs in the context of the current user and connection in the browser. There are no iFrames for the customization

Add-ins run in an iFrame. Additionally, iFrames are slower than the Script Editor web part, as it requires a new request to another page. 

Integration differences

SPFx provides some “hooks” for getting info from SharePoint, since it is designed explicitly for the context of a SharePoint page.

However, Add-ins are a little more agnostic, with a lot of shared infrastructure and design between Office Add-Ins and SharePoint Add-Ins.

Is using the SharePoint Framework a best practice?

The launch of the SharePoint Framework is not disapproving of anything. All that users were able to do in the past can still do after the SharePoint Framework is released. However, SPFx is yet another tool in the toolbox and it is entirely up to the user to choose the best tool as per their requirement.

An important point to keep in mind is that while customizations built using the SharePoint Framework work on both modern and classic sites, SharePoint Add-ins work only with old sites and you need to do more tweaks to make it work on Modern sites. Hence, if you want to extend the new SharePoint UX, you will have to use the SharePoint Framework. Additionally, SharePoint Framework based apps are lighter as compared to Add-In model-based apps so provide you with better performance experience.

When should you start using SharePoint Framework

Businesses can still work with the user experience that they are familiar with and using modern team sites is currently not required. This is a very central aspect as many organizations have made huge investments in SharePoint solutions and have trained many users for working with particular UX.

Modern team sites look amazing and offer improved user experience in the mobile-first world. If you are planning to extend the capabilities of the modern team sites, solutions based on the SharePoint Framework is the best route.

Another thing worth noting is that SharePoint Framework solutions work both in the modern and the classic experience. Even if your organization is not using modern team sites just yet, it might be worth it, to build your solutions using the new SharePoint Framework so that they can be used in the future.

QuickApps is SPFx Enabled

AgreeYa’s No-code SharePoint customization solution QuickApps is now SPFx enabled. Subsequent to this development the performance of QuickApps will be enhanced as per the benefits of the SharePoint Framework. It will have the following impact on QuickApps –

• Apps built with QuickApps will perform better and offer more reliability
• Apps built would appear evenly across all devices
• QuickApps users can now support open-source client-side development tools like NPM, Node.js, Yeoman, Gulp, Webpack.
• QuickApps web app will support SharePoint Online post SPFx enablement
• QuickApps will support JavaScript frameworks like Angular, React, Knockout JS.

QuickApps is now more power-packed with SharePoint Framework capabilities which are required by modern enterprise SharePoint users. Using QuickApps for Office 365 which is SPFx enabled will help businesses adopt the latest in the technology world and help them stay ahead of their competition.

With QuickApps, SharePoint users can unleash SharePoint’s full potential without coding. Using QuickApps, users can custom code applications, automate business processes by developing desired reports, and dashboards up to 80% faster without coding. For more QuickApps information and free trial visit http://quickapps.agreeya.com or write to us at quickapps@agreeya.com

Amit Gupta

Associate Director – Product Development

Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com

Does your organization have SharePoint, but feel like you’re not fully capitalizing on it? Then, build a dashboard!

Importance of Impactful SharePoint Dashboards

The ability to create dashboards in SharePoint, which contain reports for executive management, is often more important than its core functionality. In SharePoint, you can build hyper-responsive, attractively designed, remarkably convincing dashboards that demonstrate all of your key performance indicators (KPIs), report updates, big data analytics, and business intelligence (BI). Additionally, dashboards are a useful way to communicate important information regarding complex projects and status updates in a quick, easy way. If designed right, they are easy to comprehend, and save a lot of time by representing massive amounts of data in one full swoop.

Think of your business as the engine under the hood and your business dashboard as a car dashboard that shows you all the important metrics of your engine’s performance instantly. Dashboards offer a visual representation of your organization’s real-time performance that allow organizations to automate information-sharing procedures.

SharePoint dashboards are also comprised of scorecards and reports to help businesses make better decisions and track performance across an enterprise. Depending on the structure of your company, one person or multiple people can be responsible for creating BI content. Hence, it is important for businesses to have a BI center site like SharePoint, because it enables them to share, consume, and manage information that is of use. These systems provide a quick outlook of your business’s most valuable data—allowing business leaders to perform accurate business analysis and garner actionable business intelligence.

The main reason why dashboards are one of the most popular business intelligence software solutions is not because they are easier to implement or more economical, but rather for their usability, efficiency, and the fact that they aid in truly actionable decision-making.

Benefits of SharePoint Dashboards

• Informed Decision-Making

One of the main benefits of using SharePoint dashboards is that they enable you to make informed decisions by presenting all the information that you require within a central location. Less time will be spent looking for the information ultimately better positioning organizations to make fast decisions.

• Actionable Reports

SharePoint dashboards combine different sources of information to provide actionable reports. You will receive reports that present visualizations of the data and summarize simply to make it easy for you to analyze and identify trends.

• Business Objectives and Goals

Dashboards help you to meet your business objectives and goals, and by identify specific business functions that can be improved upon. SharePoint dashboards can be effectively used in specific departments that handle a lot of data.

• Measure Individual Performance

Dashboards help you measure every individual’s performance via status indicators that permit you to determine if there are certain patterns that need to be addressed immediately. Employees are more likely to ‘get the job done’ if their work is quantifiable.

• Eliminates Manual Errors and Saves Time

Organizations waste a lot of time when they handle processes manually. Also, manual processes can lead to errors especially with repetitive tasks or when there are multiple entries. Dashboards allow you to automate processes, thereby helping you save significant amounts of time.

• Track Competitor Performance

Most businesses understand the importance of tracking and monitoring competitors. Dashboards can also enable you to track the progress and performance of competitors within your industry. Use the competitive market benchmark analysis template to compare your financials and total headcount with those of your competition. Enter data for up to four competitors, and the template will automatically calculate market averages. Additionally, you can do a SWOT analysis of competitors to find out where you stand in comparison.

• Customized Templates

A very substantial advantage of SharePoint is the ability to create custom dashboards using a variety of tools. There are various templates that you can use to come up with the unique pages your organization requires.

Five Ways to Create Impactful Dashboards

A dashboard can be defined as a related group of interactive scorecards and report views that are organized together in a SharePoint or Web-hosted site.

SharePoint allows you to create and use dashboards that provide up-to-date information in a centrally managed and easily accessible location. SharePoint Server tools help you create and use dashboards that are appropriate for an individual, team, group, or an entire organization. From PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer that creates dashboards, to SharePoint Server that creates a web page, SharePoint has tools for every user’s needs.

Refer to the below table to select the dashboard creation tool that suits your specific business needs:

Though dashboards differ in design and complexity, most are highly interactive and allow you to explore data in individual reports and scorecards.

Challenges of Creating Dashboards

A tool is deemed useful only if its users can derive value from it. Users will only feel the positive impact of dashboards when they have the right tools in place to use them. Most fail because they don’t measure and present meaningful information.

Another important point that is often overlooked, is that dashboards are often set up without the end-user in mind. As a result, they are either extremely complicated to set up and use or require assistance from a developer or some other member of the IT team to truly engage with.

Compatibility and interfacing are some of the other common challenges of business dashboards. If a dashboard is unable to interface with other important business systems, the information it provides will be either incorrect, outdated, or otherwise limited in its usefulness. To bridge this gap users must often manually input data, thereby defeating the purpose of the dashboard all together.

Some dashboards refresh daily, while others refresh weekly. An ideal business dashboard should securely and automatically connect users to the information they need in real-time. Additionally, business dashboards should be available to a user whether they are sitting at their desk or working remotely. A well-designed, intuitive and user-friendly dashboard tool allows users to not only access critical information but to act quickly on that information.

Business Intelligence Impact

Among the many impactful benefits of BI dashboards is easy and quick access to information. This directly impacts your employees’ efficiency and saves them from having to track down key information and data. BI dashboards supply performance metrics whenever, wherever. As a result, decision-making time goes down and productivity goes up.

In today’s highly competitive business environment, decisions must be based on data, and can impact everything from sales forecasts to budget planning and customer experience. Dashboards function as a platform to build intelligent reports—presenting KPIs to keep managers and the team up-to-date and able to make intelligent, actionable decisions. Dashboards provide the BI for organizations to become more agile and competitive. They compel employees to focus their efforts and attention on finding innovative solutions, rather than sitting idle on problems. Agile and self-organizing teams make mindful decisions and gain a wider perspective to increase efficiency and workflow. Having a system that displays KPIs and employee goals enables a data-driven environment, where everyone values numbers over harder-to-quantify, subjective feelings.

Amit Gupta

Associate Director – Product Development

Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com

SharePoint never ceases to surprise its users, for good or evil. While it is the favorite plaything for its experts, SharePoint related obstacles tend to frustrate its users by prolonging deliveries, which has made it a dreary thing. Every customization is as painful for an IT expert, as it is for the project owner who has a dependency on the expert and has to wait for long to get a small customization done.

However, instead of avoiding the use of this extremely powerful tool, users need to focus on avoiding situation that can lead to mishaps. Here are the top SharePoint customization lapses which can save a user from blunder, making the whole process of SharePoint customization easy:

Perils of Editing:

We all know that Master Pages are editable. You can change the entire look and feel of a page by editing these master pages. While this sounds fascinating, it can also spell death for your SharePoint environment. Editing Master Pages needs excessive attention, with even a minor error resulting debacle of the whole SharePoint environment. Secondly, it is impossible to spot the point where you went wrong while coding, which makes the whole work even more annoying. Lastly, there are situations where Microsoft also launches updates, arresting the Master Page functionality. So take ahead the work of Master Page editing slow, to achieve best results.

Ignoring the Value that Pre-Built Templates and Apps Can Bring:

When the idea of pre-built templates (a form of SharePoint customization software) showed on the horizon, Microsoft supported the idea and it was adopted by many. Those who embraced this concept at that time were able to derive big profits, staying ahead in the competition. Those who haven’t explored the concept of pre-built templates (known as web apps or web parts) yet, this is the time to do it. What makes this idea unique is the fact that these pre-built templates empower even the non-technical staff to build solutions, bringing an end to their helpless dependencies on the IT team. Through these pre-built templates or SharePoint customization software, site owners and project managers can customize a web application to create what they need. Using web parts is a good idea to get the desired results fast, without chasing the experts. Re-invent the wheel, explore the web apps to find the real extent of possibilities with SharePoint.

SharePoint is among the most loved and yet most difficult to get through playthings for technical experts across the world. To deal with all the SharePoint development related problems, you can introduce web apps or building blocks to your organization, empowering people with easier methods of creating or customizing SharePoint to derive the results that they need.

Amit Gupta

Associate Director – Product Development

Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com

In the past, organizations wanting to develop a custom SharePoint application to enhance their business process, would either hire a SharePoint development specialist or approach a third-party agency to build the app for them. Both of these approaches were very expensive. Today, the organizations can save these costs by adopting a No-Code SharePoint application development platform. Such platforms enable rapid application development and deployment at a fraction of the cost.

No-Code application development helps modern-day enterprises to gain more from their SharePoint investment. Such a platform reduces the waiting period and IT dependencies involved with the typical SharePoint application development approach while offering several other benefits. But, like all technologies, there is also a certain amount of skepticism around the No-Code platforms. So, let’s take up some of the common myths about this platform and start debunking them.

1: Complex applications cannot be built with a No-Code platform

There is a perception among many SharePoint experts that No-Code platforms can only be used to create simple apps and it does not support the development of enterprise-grade applications. This conception could not be further from the truth. Powerful No-Code platforms (such as QuickApps and the Power Platform) are data source agnostic and work with various data formats. It can be utilized by the citizen developers, in collaboration with the IT, to build complex enterprise-grade applications that add great business value.

2: Can be used by trained SharePoint developers only

Low-Code platforms can be utilized by only trained SharePoint development specialists. But this criterion does not apply for the No-Code platforms. Thanks to the No-Code platforms, application development has entered into a new phase where any team member can become a citizen developer. Such a platform can be utilized by employees with minimal training and IT dependency to build custom SharePoint applications needed.

3: Lacks adequate security features

Security is a top concern for organizations that utilize SharePoint as their hub for storing and managing business-critical data. Many of you might be concerned about the security vulnerabilities that might be an outcome of allowing any employee (with SharePoint knowledge) to build an application with the No-Code platform. There is no need to worry as long as the No-Code platform you choose includes built-in security features and extensive compliance certification. Additionally, most of the platforms are designed to be governed centrally by IT. With a proper governance strategy in place, organizations can allow their citizen developers to develop their applications at will.

4: Will lead to “Shadow IT”

Many IT leaders believe that apps built on No-Code platforms would compound upon the governance challenges faced by the department. It would lead to “Shadow IT”, where SharePoint data can be used without IT’s permission or knowledge. To address this concern, organizations should search for No-Code platforms that allow central governance by IT. Such platforms allow the best of both worlds by empowering the citizen developers to build custom SharePoint apps while the IT manages and governs each release of these apps. The IT has the same level of control over these No-Code apps as they would have over any other SharePoint software solution.

5: SharePoint developers will lose their relevance

Someday the process of writing codes to develop a SharePoint application might become obsolete. But until then, SharePoint power users will have to rely on the skilled programmers to complete their work properly. They will have to collaborate with the IT department to create powerful and secure custom SharePoint apps.

Reimagine SharePoint application development with QuickApps

QuickApps is an innovative No-Code SharePoint customization and development platform containing a set of SharePoint web app and pre-built templates. Its point and click configuration allow users to build secure and complex apps without any coding or training. It is available for SharePoint On-premise and SharePoint Online versions.   

Keywords: custom SharePoint, SharePoint software solution, SharePoint development

Amit Gupta

Associate Director – Product Development

Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com

For many years now, healthcare organizations have been transitioning from paper-based healthcare records to digital systems. The digitalization of records has remained a top priority whether it is a government health agency, a local nursing center or a small outpatient center. For modern-day healthcare organizations, proper maintenance of electronic patient records has become a business-critical objective. Microsoft SharePoint, renowned for its document storage and management ability, provides an ideal platform to store and organize all patient records in a way that the information is readily available and stays protected from internal or external security breaches. 

However, the volume of data collected in healthcare systems quickly grows out of control. Without the proper control and insight into this critical data, the healthcare processes suffer, storage costs rise and the chances of compliance failures increase. In short, the lack of proper information management processes puts the organization’s long-term success at risk! To counter such scenarios, information governance is a must for healthcare organizations. In this blog, we would explore the various facets of information governance in healthcare.

What is Information Governance for Healthcare?

American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), defines Information Governance (IG) as: “An organization-wide framework for managing information throughout its lifecycle and for supporting the organization’s strategy, operations, regulatory, legal, risk, and environmental requirements.”

IG in healthcare allows organizations to address their data-related challenges, such as ensuring full confidentiality and security of their patient’s data. It also allows ready access to such information for future references. Therefore, in a way, IG supports the interests of both the organization as well as the patients.

How does Information Governance help Healthcare Organizations?

• Helps meet compliance requirements: By implementing a health information governance program, organizations can keep themselves ahead of the compliance requirements. Healthcare organizations need to comply with increasingly strict regulations that mandate protection of patient’s data and ensure that it is reliable and accurate. The main regulation in place is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which pertains to the treatment, payment, and operations of healthcare service providers and all their business associates who can access the patient information. To ensure HIPAA compliance, healthcare organizations need to put into motion advanced IG practices for all their critical healthcare information stored in the SharePoint environment.
• Ensures integrity of data: Having an IG program in place helps healthcare organizations ensure the quality and consistency of data. The accurate and tangible information is essential for being able to maintain confidentiality and privacy of patient’s personal information, reduce risks of compliance failures and regulatory penalties, improve the quality of clinical services and patient experiences, increase operational efficiency and control data storage costs.
• Protects Privacy & Security of Data: A Black Book Market Research study found that 93 percent of U.S. Healthcare organizations surveyed were breached in the past couple of years and this cost the industry $4 billion. As a result, healthcare organizations must stay prepared to manage and protect their patient and business information. Healthcare patient records are at maximum risk due to their value on the black market. By adopting a well-crafted IG program, organizations instill good information management habits. They not only protect the critical information but also form a basis for the purge of unnecessary, duplicative or little-used data away from the SharePoint systems without providing scopes for any breaches.
• Accuracy while dealing with external partners: The lifecycle of information often takes it beyond the four walls where it was first created. Some patient records and business information might be shared with the external partners. IG provides the basis for preserving the integrity and accuracy of the information that is being shared and exchanged with external partners.  

How to Create a Successful IG Program?

According to AHIMA research, more than 85 percent of healthcare professionals recognized the need for IG practices at their workplace. As a first step towards safeguarding healthcare information, organizations need to adopt a powerful solution that allows them to govern, monitor and control all the intricate information lying across the SharePoint farms, servers and business applications.

AgreeYa’s Site Administrator enables the SharePoint administrators to discover and understand their SharePoint environment better. By implementing Site Administrator for SharePoint, healthcare organizations can get an in-depth view of all data across their servers, farms and business applications. It provides a simple dashboard that can be accessed to ensure that the confidential and important healthcare information including patient’s data and business-critical data remains secured.

Contact us to learn more about Site Administrator and its features.

Amit Gupta

Associate Director – Product Development

Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com

In this data-first business era, enterprises are hard-pressed to tap into the potential of abundant business data lying across their SharePoint Servers and Farms. When nurtured with care, the hidden insights within this data have the potential of transforming your business operations and driving business growth. However, there is so much data being produced every day to collect, process and analyze this data puts an immense burden on the enterprises. From financial data, staff surveys to new leads and customer contact details, it is a time and resource-intensive practice to monitor and understand all this information. As a result, the data that could be used to drive growth and deliver differentiation in the marketplace often sits idle under the information silos. 

For enterprises using SharePoint as their organization’s information hub, it is imperative to have a data aggregation plan in place. Without such a plan the volume of structured and unstructured data collected in the SharePoint environment can pile up fast, making it difficult to bring all that data together to derive any meaningful business insights.

What is Data Aggregation in SharePoint?

By now we know that enterprises have a lot of critical data lying within their SharePoint environment. However, SharePoint can be a complex mesh of sites, site collections and web applications where the data is stored across multiple servers and farms. All such data needs to be structured and presented in a way to help enterprises to achieve specific business objectives. Data aggregation solves this problem by presenting the gathered data in a report-based and summarized format helping enterprises to take critical decisions.

Challenges with SharePoint Data Aggregation

As you can see data aggregation brings all the pieces of the puzzle together, yet for most organizations, it is not prioritized. Businesses often realize the need for such a strategy when they encounter instances of crucial data missing from their reports. Enterprises that do not have a data aggregation strategy in place, risk developing bottlenecks that can disrupt data analysis while also slowing the productivity levels, wasting time and money while also causing frustrations for the top-level decision-makers. With a smart strategy in place, an enterprise can benefit from all the data it accumulates. This is why businesses need to adopt a No-code application development solution that helps users build applications to fetch and represent data in the most appealing manner.

How No-Code Solutions helps in Data Aggregation?

No-code application development solutions such as QuickApps and QuickApps for Office 365 allows businesses to create seamless applications that structure and represent information in a manner that fits the purpose. The applications can help you customize and represent data in compelling 3D charts, list views, graphs, etc. by leveraging data from multiple lists, calendars, discussion forums, and more such avenues. You can view the enterprise data without resorting to Excel spreadsheets or having to purchase a costly Business Intelligence (BI) product that might not be an ideal fit for your business purposes.

Using QuickApps for Data Aggregation

QuickApps, a set of SharePoint web app and pre-built templates, works for SharePoint on-premises and SharePoint Online and allows you to customize and build SharePoint solutions up to 80 percent faster. It’s a set of web apps that allows organizations to create visually appealing reports utilizing data from multiple sources within SharePoint. Users can build powerful reports in minutes, without the need for custom coding, based on SharePoint content, Microsoft SQL databases, business connectivity services, and external data sources. Some of its popular web apps include:

• qListView: Combines data from multiple lists, even across sites, site collections and web applications.
• qChartView: Creates compelling 3D Charts with data fetched from multiple lists across sites, site collections, and web applications.
• qCalendarView: Syndicates all calendars into one view, including data from non-calendar lists.
• qExcelView: Displays data in Microsoft Excel based on criteria passed from qListView, even when that data is not shown in the qListView.
• qDiscussionView: Shows the topic and responses of multiple discussion lists in a single tree view and preview selected items in a preview panel.

Take a QuickApps free trial to understand how it can solve your SharePoint data aggregation challenges.

Amit Gupta

Associate Director – Product Development

Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com

SharePoint is not a new technology, yet every adoption by an organization remains a challenge, with employees resisting its usage. While the biggest problem is to cope up with its frequent updates, there is more to these challenges, which related to – hard-to-break old habits, fear of new technology, lack of powerful SharePoint strategy, and poor communication.

All these SharePoint related challenges are rooted deep into one reason— lack of SharePoint related knowledge. This continues to be a threat to every SharePoint adoption, as organizations still struggle to understand it and identify its purpose entirely. Here are five unknown facts related to SharePoint, which will help you understand this platform better and make SharePoint adoption successful in the workplace:

Fact #1: SharePoint isn’t a Magical Thing

SharePoint is supposed to make work easy. That’s why it is adopted widely. But every adoption is followed by the same feedback: it doesn’t work as it is supposed to work. However, this doesn’t imply that it is a waste of effort or investment. It still holds tremendous value and remains un-replaceable, given its powers and capabilities. You need to tap its hidden potentials through an inescapable process of acquiring complete knowledge, staff training, constant work, re-work, and in-depth understanding of this tool. You need expertise and time investment to get through this platform.

Tip from the expert: don’t resist the SharePoint upgrades as these are making the whole work process easy on this platform.

Fact #2: You Will Face the Angst of Anti-SharePoint Staff

This isn’t their mistake specifically. SharePoint is complicated, and most of the organizations fail to provide proper training to their staff; consequently, their SharePoint ambitions fall apart. Besides, not everyone in the team will be well versed in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, which is needed to work on SharePoint, and most organizations fail to provide a solution to this. Lastly, it is essential to hammer in the strengths and potential of SharePoint in a user, to make the staff see value in its adoption.

Tip from the expert: SharePoint resistance can only be dealt with a little training and strong support to this technology. Tools such as QuickApps: eliminate the need for coding from the process, by letting you work through Templates that are reusable and easily manageable and let you build custom solutions.

Fact #3: SharePoint on Cloud

SharePoint is available on Cloud and not restricted to on-premise anymore. It gives an expansion to its usage, allowing people to work on it from anywhere in the world. If you want to make most of your SharePoint investment, empowering your employees to deliver work from anywhere is the best of achieving it.

Tip from the Experts: SharePoint support tools are not just for on-premise, these can also be upgraded to on cloud version.

Fact #4: SharePoint is Another Name for Re-Work

Given the complex nature of SharePoint and the constant updates that it goes through, there will be an endless need of re-work on SharePoint. Besides, it time and again seeks adjustments, revisions, which should be done to keep it productive.

Tip from Experts: Rework your SharePoint configurations and adapt to the changes that it introduces for good.

Fact #5: Only Road to SharePoint Success Goes Through Defining Goals:

SharePoint isn’t just a good to have tool. It is adopted with a purpose, and it is critical to define goals and allot responsibilities and convey the purpose point blankly, to achieve it. Without going through this grind, any aim remains unachievable with barely any value addition to business. Success on SharePoint is measurable.

Tip from the Experts: Implementing SharePoint and expecting that the employees will figure out what to do with it, shall never work. Identify what you aim to achieve through it, communicate it to the members and support your team with essential training.

Most of the people have a love and hate relationship with SharePoint, where they struggle with it, yet unable to give it up entirely. SharePoint can’t be forsaken due to the extreme capabilities that it offers. Best thing is to understand this platform and make work easy on it.

Amit Gupta

Associate Director – Product Development

Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com

During the Ignite 2019 conference, Microsoft announced that “SharePoint Online now has over 100 million active users”. One of the reasons behind the overwhelming popularity of SharePoint Online (as a part of Office 365) has been its potential to be expanded upon, enhancing the functionalities of the platform significantly. Moreover, SharePoint Online offers enterprises access to thousands of customizations, extensions, and applications created by Microsoft partners around the globe which improves SharePoint as a platform and empowers users. Such user interface enhancements range from essential web parts to workflows and many things in between. Logically then most enterprises have either migrated or preparing themselves for the cloud.

SharePoint applications and customizations have existed as long as the SharePoint itself. However, most of the existing ones were built to support the on-premise versions. To continue benefiting from the existing applications and customizations organizations need to migrate them to the cloud. But the task is not as simple as that and there are many challenges in the process.

Hurdles in the Migrating Applications

Post-migration most organizations focus their attention on content migrations. However, the migration of applications and customizations needs to be given careful consideration as well. Without careful consideration, the on-premise applications and customizations aren’t going to function in the way they should in the new environment. This can be a big area of concern for the employees who have so long relied upon these for their day-to-day work.

Office 365 (and SharePoint Online within it) is managed centrally by Microsoft, so organizations do not get as much control over the code as they do with SharePoint on-premises. This means most pre-existing SharePoint customizations cannot be migrated to the cloud as they are. For enterprises, this means only one thing – wasted investment.

What’s more, your employees who are already skeptical about this change (from on-premises to online) will now have one more reason to complain. The applications and customizations that helped them get complex jobs done quickly are now not supported in the new environment. This will frustrate them and add to the adoption challenges.

Which customizations will cease to work?

Since SharePoint Online is centrally governed and continuously improved by Microsoft themselves so most of your on-premise customizations and applications would not work on the cloud. The functionalities of the few that make it might be affected when new updates are rolled out. However, some of the customizations would most definitely not work on the new environment. These include:

• Full trust farm Solutions: Such customizations make important changes to the underlying code in SharePoint. Microsoft cannot allow enterprises to make code changes in SharePoint Online that would affect the overall experience of the platform and all the businesses using it.
• Sandboxed Solutions: As mentioned by Microsoft, sandboxed solutions migrated to the cloud would continue to work for a limited period only; however, it is recommended to replace them with alternative functionality. It should also be mentioned in this respect that sandboxed solutions with code artifacts containing web parts, event receivers, etc. will not work upon migration.

Overcome Your Challenges with QuickApps for Office 365

For enterprises that have invested significant sums of money and time to build customizations that the employees depend upon, it can be frustrating to leave them behind. Does this mean there is no way to salvage the situation? Let us introduce you to AgreeYa’s QuickApps for Office 365 which allows cloud users to customize SharePoint and build applications without coding. This innovative product offers the following benefits:

• Faster recreation of favorite apps: With its point-and-click configuration approach, you can slash your application development time by 80%.
• Slash development costs: Mitigates the need for hiring costly SharePoint resources to recreate applications. Users with some knowledge of SharePoint can build applications quickly.
• Future-proofing applications: Built specifically for the cloud, functionalities of applications built with QuickApps for Office 365 would remain intact when there are upgrades to Office 365.

Want to know more? Contact us for a free demo of QuickApps for Office 365.

Amit Gupta

Associate Director – Product Development

Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com