SharePoint Framework v1.6 release notes

Release notes for SharePoint Framework 1.6

Hello, and welcome to SharePoint Framework Release 1.6

In this release are two main features: The final release of the WebAPI feature first previewed in 1.4.1, and a new feature that allows for extensions to be configured tenant wide without a need for activating or configuring every site.

Moving from Beta to Public - WebAPI

For the WebAPI feature, there are a few changes introduced in the GA (general availability) work. All of the access to AAD protected resources is handled by a third party AAD application and service principal. The application is created the first time a tenant admin approves a permission scope, and it is created with zero permissions. So any connection you make to data (either through the Microsoft Graph or a call to an endpoint that uses AAD for its permissions) needs to be explicitly allowed. See this document for more information

• Connect to Azure AD-secured APIs in SharePoint Framework solutions.

IMPORTANT - any permissions that were granted previous to the 1.6.0 release will need to be re-granted, as we have changed which AAD application is used.

• Use the MSGraphClient. It exists on the context of your component (web part or extension). Note that for performance reasons, the full code is loaded on demand, so it is accessed via a promise.
• Stop using GraphHttpClient (if you haven't already stopped). Sometime in the next month or so we will remove it completely from our code. Any solutions that you have that use it will stop working.
• Similar to MSGraphClient, there is a general AadHttpClient off the context for making calls to AAD secured endpoints, as well as an AadTokenProvider that you can use to get auth tokens manually.

New for 1.6.0 - Tenant Wide Deployment of extensions.

You can now make tenant-wide configurations for extensions. The easiest way (as a developer) to deploy across the tenancy is to modify the \SharePoint\ClientInstance.xml file (created with a new 1.6.0 solution). This creates an entry in a new list in the app catalog (Tenant Wide Extensions). You can also modify that list directly as an app catalog owner.

• Tenant wide extensions documentation

Build and tooling changes in 1.6.0

We are trying to move away from some of the wrappers around common build tools. The first two are the tslint and ts compiler steps. Because of these changes, your previous code will not compile without a few of changes.

• First, you need to have a .ts file at the root of the source directory (by default, we now create one under \src called index.ts that is empty).
• Second, the tslint.json file has changed location (from \config to the root of the project) as well as format. It is now just a standard tslint.json file. The easiest thing to do is create a new project and copy the tslint.json file from it.
• Third, grab the tsconfig.json file from the root of the new project in step 2, and copy it to the root of the original project. If you have made change to the tsconfig.json file, you'll want to merge them.

Other smaller changes:

We found some classes in the sp-dialog package that were marked as Beta. We have moved them to the public.

How to migrate to 1.6.0

As usual, update your package.json files to point to the 1.6.0 version. You'll need to make the changes laid out in the Build and Tooling changes section.

What is going away in the future:

This is the last release where the build tools will support Node 6.