The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a mass exodus of companies from on-premises systems to cloud assets such as Microsoft 365. Being an integral part of the Microsoft 365 suite, SharePoint helps in creating online collaboration solutions, content management frameworks, and scalable intranets. That is why companies want to embrace innovative SharePoint solutions that improve outcomes. But as a SharePoint development company, we understand the priority businesses put on developing secure, scalable, and user-friendly solutions. Designing such SharePoint solutions is challenging because they help businesses reduce costs, increase productivity, improve reporting, and break operational siloes. The question is, How can you design scalable, secure SharePoint solutions? Here is where this handy guide comes in. In this explainer, we will share three SharePoint online application development best practices.

SharePoint Online Application Development Best Practices Explained

Best Practice #1: Review On-Premises SharePoint Solutions First

Businesses face different app development possibilities, especially when they host on their platforms. Not only this, but businesses can build applications that can interact with the SharePoint framework at any level. Moreover, businesses can also develop their integrations with other applications, services, and databases. In simple words, a business may face limitless app development possibilities when they are hosting themselves. But when it comes to SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365, firms do not get too much control over the platform’s code – like the one they are used to getting on an on-prem environment. What does that mean? Well, most of the applications – sandboxed solutions, for instance – would not work in the cloud ecosystem. Likewise, some applications with specific code types, including .EXEs, .DLLs, .WSPs, and SharePoint Object Model, would not work on the cloud too. On top of that, the functionalities of the few apps that would work well on the cloud may get affected whenever a new update is released. Because of this reason, companies should be prepared to rebuild their apps swiftly in case there are some functionality issues. For starters, your business can rely on different SharePoint’s no-code solutions – QuickApps, for instance.

Best Practice #2: Develop Strong Governance Policies And Optimize Data

The fact is, SharePoint Online applications are powered by massive sensitive and mission-critical business information. So, it is important to control the employees’ engagement with the framework’s backend framework. To that end, Microsoft 365 offers a huge array of governance and security features to companies. Using these features helps companies create strict access rights for different user profiles. To avoid risks, admins can develop a strong process where notifications are automatically sent whenever an employee tries to modify any part of a SharePoint environment. Data cleansing, too, is an integral aspect of governance; toward this, Microsoft 365 enables admins to define strong retention policies. By implementing the right policies, a business can ensure its SharePoint Online ecosystem is free of clutter.

Best Practice #3: Augment A SharePoint Solution’s Potential With Power Platform

SharePoint app development outcomes can be improved if businesses use SharePoint alongside Microsoft Power Platform. Power Platform helps businesses analyze data, automate processes, and build robust solutions. Thanks to Power BI, firms can gain insights into mission-critical data that lives on different SharePoint libraries, sites, lists, site collections, and other external sources. With the help of Power Platform, a business can create low-code or no-code solutions that will turn an employee into a citizen developer. These developers, in turn, can create business apps – intelligent workflows, for instance – using different drag-and-drop features. Moreover, these developers can build apps easily and integrate them with SharePoint applications online seamlessly.

Associating With A Dependable SharePoint Development Company

Introducing these SharePoint development best practices is a whole new ball game. That is why your business would require the assistance of an expert. When it comes to finding expert SharePoint developers, we are the go-to partner for most businesses. We are a reliable SharePoint development company that helps businesses create easy-to-use dashboards and data visualization frameworks using this platform. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we offer end-to-end SharePoint services to help your business manage content, raise productivity, and improve collaboration outcomes. Our array of services includes SharePoint consulting, SharePoint workflow development, SharePoint implementation, SharePoint branding and design, SharePoint integration, SharePoint BI, Power Apps development, and SharePoint migration. In fact, just recently, we helped a global fiberglass pipe system manufacturer create its recruitment and onboarding management system on SharePoint. Once deployed, this solution helped our customer improve the onboarding experience and optimize the existing recruitment cycle. You can read more about this case study here. Connect with our certified SharePoint developers today and see how we can build and deploy a solution to help increase your business’s collaboration ROI.