Setting up a development environment for Office 365 and SharePoint Online
As we more and more evolve from working exclusively with SharePoint on-premises with our complex local SharePoint farm rigged with several virtual machines eating up our highly spec'd laptop, the new way of working with SharePoint in-cloud offers a more attractive setup for us developers.
My background before starting with SharePoint, as for most others, was as a general programmer used to pretty simple and lightweight development environments. I must say I almost had forgotten what a lightweight and clean development environment feels like. It feel like coming home after a long and tough journey ;-)
Setting up a development environment for doing Office 365 and SharePoint Online development is really easy, I that's the reason I chose to create this post it just to keep a note to myself what the essentials are.
Where to run it
I recommend to set up a dedicated virtual machine for this setup. I prefer using Hyper-V as it is included in Windows 8, and for many other reasons.
Specification:
- 4 cores (minimum 2)
- 8 GB RAM or more (dynamic)
- 80 GB disk (expanding)
Getting the necessary software
Operative system
- Windows 8.1 x64 with Update
Software
- Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 x86
- Office 2013 SP1 x86
- SharePoint Designer 2013 x86
- Google Chrome (set as default)
SDKs
These SDKs are pre-requirements to getting started with development against Office 365. It is important to install them in the listed order to avoid errors.
Title | Description | URL |
Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013 - July 2014 update | This can also be installed from Web Platfrom installer. | http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905340.aspx |
Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant for IT Professionals BETA | The Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant provides end user sign-in capabilities to Microsoft Online Services, such as Office 365. | http://www.microsoft.com/en-my/download/details.aspx?id=39267 |
Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell | Use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to manage your Windows Azure tenant. | http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/jj151815.aspx#bkmk_installmodule |
SharePoint Online Management Shell | The SharePoint Online Management Shell is a tool that contains a Windows PowerShell Module to manage your SharePoint Online subscription in the Office 365. | http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35588 |
| Azure SDK for .NET (OPTIONAL) | Install this if you plan to develop provider hosted ASP.NET apps in Azure. | http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/ (VS 2013 install) |
Development tools
Going from on-premises development to cloud, first of all reduces the available tools. Luckily a few of those contributing with their excellent tools have also made them compatible with SharePoint Online. These tools I recommend to increase your productivity working with developing solutions for SharePoint Online. Spend some time to learn what you can gain from using them.
Title | Description | URL |
CAML Designer 2013 | ||
Fiddler | ||
SharePoint Client Browser | ||
SharePoint Search Query Tool |
Utilities
There as some basic utilities I always find handy to have available on every computer I work on. So this is only a recommendation, and not necessary to get the environment working.
Title | Description | URL |
Notepad++ | ||
Paint.NET | ||
7zip | ||
Foxit PDF reader | ||
CutePDF printer |
Setting it up
This is pretty a straight forward top-down installation. Only be careful to click away some of the ad-ware stuff on the utilities to avoid getting crazy toolbars in your not-default browser IE.
One important factor is to install the SDKs in the right order as listed. I had some trouble getting this to work, and it turned out installing SharePoint Online Management shell too early gave some bad consequences.
Troubleshooting
When I tried to install Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell it got an error:
"In order to install Windows Azure Active Directory Module for PowerShell, you must have Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant version 7.0 or greater installed on this computer.".
For the time being I had version 7.250.4303.0 installed, I this error message made no sense. It turns out there is a newer BETA version (7.250.4551.0) that is required. I have linked to the correct version above, so just make sure you are using it.
Summary
Getting started with developing for SharePoint Online in Office 365 is a much more pleasant journey than the traditional on-premises story. We are now able to be productive using a very lightweight machine with a small set of tool available to do our work.
I wrote this guide primarily for my own use I as tend to forget all those small details between each time I set up a new environment, but I also hope it can help others getting started as quick and hassle-free as possible with developing for SharePoint Online.
NOTE: This topic is always subject to change as new versions roll out all the time.