Over a year ago, Microsoft first announced the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) at the Future of SharePoint event. Accompanying the introduction was this blog post describing the SharePoint Framework as “an open and connected platform” that represents the next step in a natural evolution toward client-side development and customization on top of SharePoint. The SharePoint Framework allows developers to use modern web paradigms and JavaScript frameworks and moves away from the more Microsoft-specific legacy server-side customizations of the past.

The SharePoint Framework finally reached GA in February 2017 and is currently available in SharePoint Online. SharePoint Framework support will be available to SharePoint 2016 on-premises users with the release of Feature Pack 2 later this year.

Getting started with the new developer toolchain

Perhaps the largest barrier to entry when it comes to getting started with development using the SharePoint Framework is the new developer toolchain, which bears very little resemblance to any SharePoint development tools you may have used in the past. Gone are the days of just cracking open Visual Studio to build a SharePoint solution (although Eric Shupps has just announced the SharePoint Framework Extension for Visual Studio, so definitely check that out if you want to continue leveraging Visual Studio as part of your development workflow).

In exchange for the added complexity introduced by this new toolchain we get a set of modern, open-source, cross-platform tools and technologies that finally levels the playing field between SharePoint development and modern web development (try leveraging React or Angular in a Script Editor Web Part!) and opens the door for developers on Linux and Mac OS to build SharePoint customizations. It also eliminates the need for a local SharePoint farm on the developer workstation for on-premises development. Moving forward, the SharePoint Framework is your only option for building custom web parts that can be added to the new modern page experiences.

Even if you decide to leverage the SharePoint Framework Extension for Visual Studio, you will still need to install–and have a basic understanding of–all of the prerequisite tools and technologies that comprise this developer toolchain, which include:

Tool	Purpose
Node.js (LTS version)	JavaScript runtime; most of the other tools in the toolchain are built on Node.js
npm	Package and dependency management
Yeoman	Scaffolding engine for new projects
TypeScript	Typed superset of JavaScript; transpiles to plain JavaScript
Gulp	Extensible build task runner

 
My Pluralsight course

Feeling overwhelmed? I recently published a Pluralsight course that contains short, easy-to-digest modules and demos, each introducing a different item in the toolchain: Tooling up for SharePoint Framework. The course is geared toward “newbies” with little to no prior experience using any of these new tools and technologies. If you follow along with the course, within about an hour you will be able to stand up a new, fully-configured SharePoint Framework development workstation and create, build, and test your first client-side web part. The clip below is a demo from the course showing how to use the Workbench that is included with the SharePoint Framework to test customizations locally without having to deploy anything to SharePoint (another advantage over “legacy” SharePoint development).

What the future holds

Client-side web parts are the first of what will ultimately be many types of JavaScript customizations supported by the SharePoint Framework. According to this blog post from the Office Team, we can expect to see support for the following customizations coming to the SharePoint Framework soon:

• Web Part Connections that allow client-side web parts to communicate and exchange information with each other
• ApplicationCustomizers to embed JavaScript on pages within SharePoint sites
• FieldCustomizers to update the way data is displayed in a list view, similar to JSLink
• CommandSets to add custom ECB actions, toolbar buttons, etc.

Finally: SPFx vs. the Add-in Model

As the SharePoint Framework continues to evolve and mature, you may encounter scenarios where you cannot use it to achieve a particular objective. In these cases (and many other cases, such as those where server-side code is still necessary), the Add-in model is still viable and fully supported. Microsoft intends for the SharePoint Framework to be complementary to the Add-in model, not a replacement for it. If you’re interested in learning more about updating your legacy SharePoint customizations to take advantage of the Add-in model, please check out my blog post and Pluralsight course.