Environment setting & development tools for my SharePoint 2013 project - sharepoint

I want to start my first SharePoint project to build internal and external systems:-
So I am preparing to get the following to set the development environment and to publish live SharePoint applications:-
SharePoint Server 2013 Standard edition. As for now we do no need
the enterprise features such as e-discover, BI, branding, etc.
Windows server 2012 & IIS as the operating system and hosting server respectively.
SQL server 2012 or 2008 for the database
Visual studio professional 2012 to develop web parts and use SharePoint templates.
Team foundation server 2012 to provides versioning control, bug tracing, etc.
So can anyone advice if I am missing any tools or software that are needed to develop and implement live internet & intranet SharePoint applications.
Second question should I use office 365 in my case?
Best Regards

It seems like it's sufficient enough to start developing SharePoint applications. You may need SharePoint Designer 2013. You can also find the best-to-have hardware requirements for SharePoint development environment in my blog post (http://keremozen.com/2012/12/28/hardware-requirements-for-sharepoint-2013-development/).
Office 365 or on-prem installation choice totally depends on your needs.
Office 365 installation provides easy set-up, maintainability, scalebility and security. Your sites will be accessible 24x7. If you want full control on your sites you can prefer on-prem installation.
Regards

Related

Visual Studio: Development Environment for Sharepoint 2013 Enterprise vs. Foundation

I am trying to determine if I can configure a development machine for Sharepoint 2013 Enterprise using Visual Studio Pro 2013 and Sharepoint Foundation 2013.
I do not wish to install VS on the production server and run it from there - that is just asking for trouble.
However the budget will not withstand another SP2013 Enterprise license.
I have searched this site and others, but have not found any instance that specifically addresses my question:
can I install SP2013 Foundation (which is free) on my development machine with VS2013 Pro, and use that to build solutions for deployment to my production SP2013 Enterprise server?
The short answer is yes you could do this, but it may not let you do what you need...
So my first addendum to 'yes,' is that the dev machine needs to be running Windows Server 2008 R2 or later and meet all the other hardware and software requirements.
My second is probably a bit more important -- if you develop on SP foundation instead of enterprise you'll be unable to develop and test many of the features that your organization (or your customer, whichever is appropriate) probably purchased the enterprise edition for in the first place.
Something that's also important to note, you wouldn't need to purchase another full enterprise license; you can get an MSDN subscription (platforms or premium for access to SharePoint) that will give you access to software to use specifically for development and testing purposes.

when i install TFS 2013, do I get a full blown sharepoint?

I've been looking around TFS 2013 screenshots and I notice how it look like it's implemented over Sharepoint 2013...
So, when i install TFS 2013, do I get a full blown sharepoint (with central admin and everything), just a site collection (a "light" version of it) or none (meaning if, i want a web interface, i have point to my sharepoint and say "use that one")???
PS: Since i'm in a corporate environment i don't have a spare machine to just install it and check it for myself, and other documentation don't make this clear...
TFS has its own web-based interface (TFS Web Access) that isn't based on SharePoint. It also has the ability to integrate with SharePoint which will cause SP-based Project Portals to be created with every Team Project (this is in addition to TFS Web Access).
When you install TFS you can choose to have the TFS Install install/configure SharePoint Foundation, or you can point it to a pre-existing SP Foundation or Enterprise environment.
SharePoint Foundation 2013 can be installed with TFS, if you specify that in the installation.
Reference
SharePoint Products requirements for Team Foundation Server

SharePoint Web Parts Development Environment

I know there are so many questions and articles on this topic and I have searched hours and hours on the Internet so far, but I still couldn’t find the right answer for my question. I was assigned the task to investigate the development environment for SharePoint web parts by my company. The money is not an issue but it must be the proper way to do it.
Here is my ideal plan: at developer desktop, install VS2005/2008 (it is already installed), VS2005/2008 Extension for SharePoint and WSPBuilder. It is also installed a Virtual Machine and the VM runs windows server 2003/2008. WSS3.0 and SQL Express 2005/2008 will be also installed on VM.
Developer’s desktop is a web parts development environment. Developers use VS to develop the SharePoint web parts and then run the WSPBuilder, it will deploy the web parts into the SharePoint testing environment on VM. So the VM is just a SharePoint testing environment.
It looks like a good idea, however, it doesn’t work. Why? Because VS extension can't be installed on developer’s desktop as it doesn’t have WSS3.0 installed!
I definitely don’t want to install the VS on the VM, because our developer desktop has installed VS and we don’t need to have 2 VS licences for 1 developer.
Any idea what is the best way to set up the development environment for SharePoint web parts?
Thank you in advance.
You won't be able to develop for SharePoint (WSS 3.0) unless your development environment includes an installation of at least WSS. In general, development is done on a Windows Server 2003 Virtual Machine (Visual Studio is installed directly on this machine). However, SharePoint can be installed on Windows Vista and Windows 7 machines, so your development machine may be able to host SharePoint itself, but it is far easier to do this on a VM.
My SharePoint development VM has the following installed:
Windows Server 2003 R2
SharePoint 2007 (Including SQL 2005)
Visual Studio 2008
Visual Studio Tools for Office
Office Server SDK
Visual Studio Extensions for WSS 1.3
Obviously you can use WSPBuilder instead, but I much prefer VSSWSS 1.3, but that is developer preference.
I believe (should be verified with Microsoft) that the licensing for Visual Studio can be extended to Virtual Machines when used by the same developer (depending on your agreement).
An alternative for you which may or may not work depending on your priorities.
Install Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Foundation to your development server.
Grab a copy of Microsoft.SharePoint.dll from a SharePoint 2007 server.
Use VS2010's tools to develop a web part but manually change the reference to the 2007 dll's (+ also see "Build a SharePoint 2007 Web Part with a Visual Studio 2010 Visual Web Part Project") so you are outputing a 2007 compatible web part.
When you delploy your 2007 web part to your local 2010 server it will just work (as its backwardly compatible)
When you deploy your 2007 web part to your test/qa/production servers it will work too.
Advantages
You're working with latest greatest
version of VS and the sharepoint
tooling so you get one click deploy,
automatic creation of WSP packages
etc. Nothing against WSP Builder etc (they are great) but my moneys on vs2010 sharepoint extensions for the future.
You're ready if/when your
company moves to 2010.
You're developing on a Windows 7 machine, not a 2003/2008 server and or a VM so this has advantages for licensing, speed and ease of use (dual monitor support from VS running on a VM?)
Edit - to deploy web parts to other servers you create a .wsp package and then deploy via STSSADM or another tool (SharePoint solution installer or other admin tools).
I haven't used VSSWSS or WSPBuilder. I've always used STSDEV for SharePoint 2007. And I've always used Windows XP to do it. I don't know if VSSWSS and WSPBuilder act the same, but, as Ryan was saying, I copy whatever SharePoint DLLs I need from a SharePoint 2007 server into a Solution Folder in my Visual Studio solution. I then select Add Reference in my project and browse to the DLL.
In four years, I've never had any problems with this method. The solution packages build just fine and work on any SharePoint server. I lose the option to debug, but I'd rather stay on my machine than go into a VM or Remote Desktop.

TFS 2010 with Project Server 2010

I've just tried out TFS 2010 today, along with Project 2010 and VS 2010. Only Later realized that without Sharepoint, TFS is only configured as Basic. This reduces it's functionality as oppose to what I've seen during VS2010 product launch. Sadly I can't find any alternative but to get a trial copy of Sharepoint to see if it serve my purpose. Well, apparently Sharepoint only comes with x64 edition. I'm not formatting any machine to x64 just to give this a try. So, after some reading up, I found that Project Server is actually based on Sharepoint. Now I wonder is whether TFS can be configure to connect to Project Server?
If it's possible, would the setting be much different that Sharepoint's?
And what am I missing from this setup as oppose to Sharepoint's?
Based on Sharepoint != Sharepoint. I think that Project Server is just a subset of Sharepoint functionality. Also, basing Project on Sharepoint allows for some really tight integration into your portal. To answer your question, I don't think you still will get your fully featured TFS without Sharepoint Proper.
FYI - Sharepoint 2007 (or 3.0 or whatever it is) is not x64 only, but will run on x86. TFS 2010 will go full feature on 2007
Sharepoint 2007 Trial
To answer what you are missing:
Reports
Project Portal
TFS Web Access
That's about it. You still get 90% of the features with your current deployment without SharePoint. Tommy is right about MOSS 2007, it comes in 32-bit and will give you all features. Project Server runs on top of SharePoint as a shared service provider. Traditionally MS releases a power toy to integrate TFS with Project Server. They said they would go over this at TechEd, which just happened about a week ago.
Also, I suspect the integration with Project Server 2010 will be better, but then you will have to run SharePoint 2010 :(
In my opinion, TFS has enough to run most projects by itself and you can use the client version of MS Project for critical path anaylsis, etc.
Use Windows Sharepoint Services for Windows 2003 & Windows 2008:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb400747.aspx
For Windows Server 2008 sp2 and Windows Server R2, use SharePoint Foundation 2010:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=49c79a8a-4612-4e7d-a0b4-3bb429b46595&displaylang=en
Both are free.
I'm not formatting any machine to x64
just to give this a try.
Why not use VMWare Server, Hyper-V, Virtual Box or some other virtualization software to run the pre-made demo/trial/lab VHD's - no formatting, no installation, no setup, more hair.
Link

Creating a development environment for SharePoint

I haven't touched sharepoint in years. If I want to setup a development environment to get up to speed, what options do I have? I don't have an MSDN license, is there anyway I can get up and running for free? (for development only)
You need a Windows 2003 Server (or 2008 Server, but I have no experience with that), no way around that. You can then of course use Visual C# 2005 Express and the SHarepoint Services 3.0 if that's your target.
If you want to do development on Sharepoint 2007, you have to buy a Sharepoint 2007 license, which has a pretty hefty fee attached to it.
As a SQL, SQL 2005 Express works fine for development.
There is a good Article how to set up Sharepoint on a Single Server:
http://blogs.msdn.com/martinkearn/archive/2007/03/28/how-to-install-sharepoint-server-2007-on-a-single-machine.aspx
You CAN use a Trial Version of Windows 2003 and Sharepoint 2007 though if it's only needed for a limited time (i believe the Trials run 180 days).
There is no way you can have a MOSS 2007/WSS 3.0 development for free but a Microsoft Action Pact is so cheap to get. :)
There is a nice blog to read to get the requirements and the steps to get a full MOSS 2007 image up and running here : How to Create a MOSS 2007 VPC Image: The Whole 9 Yards.
The action pack is fantastic value, you can use the Windows Server from that, as well as SharePoint Enterprise / Standard.
If you're just (re-)starting out in SharePoint development, there's a lot of value in just using WSS 3.0 and not (yet) using MOSS 2007. The basic vocabulary is going to be exactly the same at the development level, and you can accomplish a huge amount without ever feeling like you need MOSS to learn.
You could always download the Sharepoint trial VM here and then install the express version of visual studio.
You can download an Office SharePoint Server VHD from Microsoft. This allows you to run a virtual Windows Server & SharePoint Server on your personal machine using Virtual Server.
I recently went through this process and wrote a blog article describing how to setup a virtual Office SharePoint Server.

Resources