SharePoint Apps for the End User

SharePoint Apps for the End User
Colin Phillips :: itgroove

What are Apps?
“If your reading this, there’s an app for that.”
The lineage of Apps
 Back in the “old” days when flip phones
still ruled (SharePoint 2007), we had
“Farm solutions”
 Next (in SharePoint years - i.e. 2010)
came the need for a design which was
less taxing on the “Farm”
 This birthed “Sandbox solutions”
 Finally, in today’s smart phone ruled
society, everything needs to be an App
In SharePoint 2013, everything is an App…
sort of
 Lists are apps
 Libraries are apps
 Templates are apps
 Apps are apps
 Web parts are web parts
Nice and clear, right?

What are Apps – Breaking it down
Lists, libraries, and several other things have been “renamed” to Apps
 But really that’s not what we’re talking about when we refer to apps
What we really mean is the idea of some feature that is not built-in to the product, and
which is available via some 3rd party, and obtained via a browsing mechanism (like a store)
Example:
A tool used to load CSV data (comma separated values) into a SharePoint list
Apps add value to your SharePoint environment, without the need for you to build them
yourself

What are Apps – Analogy Time
 Think of SharePoint Apps a lot like you’d think of Apps for your Smart Phone (iPhone,
Android, etc.)
 Adding Apps to SharePoint is really no different (from the end-users perspective) than
adding Apps to your phone
Platform: Phone Platform: SharePoint
Find a need: Must know the weather in
Hong Kong!
Find a need: Hey, I need that too!
I bet there’s an App for that!
Go to the Apps Store
Find the App you want
Add it to your phone
Go to the Apps Store
Find the App you want
Add it to SharePoint

Where did (SharePoint) Apps come from?
 Apps as a concept are something
SharePoint has never been able to offer
(successfully) before
 Once upon a time, SharePoint 2010 had
the concept of “office.com” templates
 This concept was seemingly abandoned
long before it baked into a proper
solution

Where did (SharePoint) Apps come from?
 With the growing popularity of Office 365 and other online SharePoint providers, 3rd
party solution authors wanted a way to tap into that growth market
 Nintex Workflow (an awesome product) couldn’t fly in the “old” Office 365
 Sandboxed solutions were limited in the functionality they could offer, and therefore
were typically only good for smaller tasks
 The existing framework wasn’t sufficient, since it didn’t allow anyone to install larger
scale 3rd party solutions (like Nintex) into online environments
 Enter Apps – Trusted 3rd party solutions with the capacity to extend SharePoint (both
on-premises and online) in ways not previously possible

SharePoint 2010
Foundation
Isn’t SharePoint already awesome?

Why should you care about Apps?
 There are concepts in the Apps Store that MS wouldn’t be inclined to build themselves
 A million minds are better than
a thousand
 Apple, Google, other “platform”
creators aren’t responsible for the
vast majority of the most popular
apps in their stores
 Why should we think Microsoft
would have all the answers to
our SharePoint needs?

Some of the benefits of Apps
Developer
Money, Money, Money, Mooooo-neeeeey!
Business
Where the product falls short, a 3rd party solution can pick up the slack.
For instance, a tool used to load CSV records into SharePoint can be bought for $5, whereas
building that yourself may take days – or at least hours. How much is your employees time
worth?
End-User
Able to get a solution to their problem without ever having to involve IT (assuming IT have
set it up as such), or having to go through a long, drawn out acquisition process (user
requests)

The cost of (SharePoint) Apps dissected
 Paid vs. Free
 Trials
 X users for N # of days
 Licensing by user
 Up to a maximum # of users
 Office 365 vs. On-premises

Cost / License Relationship
 Total cost of a single license (Cost per
License)
$1.49 $999.99
 Number of licenses before reaching the
maximum, whereupon all additional
licenses are included (# of Licenses)
1 1000
 Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
TCO = # of Licenses * Cost per License
Developer’s Responsibilities
 Developer decides the cost per license
 Developer decides the maximum number
of licenses (before all additional are
essentially “free”)
Purchaser’s Responsibilities
 Purchaser decides how many licenses
(each one at the cost decided by the
developer) they wish to acquire at the time
of purchase
 Additional licences can always be
acquired later on

A few unrelated things about apps…
1. SharePoint License Management
http://mmman.itgroove.net/2013/04/sharepoint-app-
license-management/
Everything you need to know to manage your licenses
2. Also note the white background of apps (frame) on
themed sites
3. Types of Apps include:
 Immersive (full page app)
 Webpart (app parts – iframe on a page)
 UI custom actions / Extension app (little or no User
Experience)
4. Apps Require Permissions –
anything from
to…
to even…

Demo
Colin’s Sandbox
I am a Site Collection Admin
I’m going to show you:
• What Apps looks like in SharePoint
• The SharePoint App store
• How to add an App to SharePoint
• How to manage Apps (though this is
beyond the scope of an end user)

A few Apps to dip your toe into
Free
 lots of geo-location apps (Bing Office Locator, Location Finder, etc.)
 Picture Rotator / Slider apps (Collage App, CarouselSlider, Gallerific, etc.)
 AvePoint Task & Calendar Sync – Best App in Show (Feb 2013 @ European SharePoint
Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark) - Two-way synchronization for tasks and calendar
items
Paid
 CSV Uploader (Import CSV files to a SharePoint list) $4.99
 vSlider Video Carousel (Supports Sharepoint, Youtube and Vimeo – Really Cool) $5.99
 Print List (Adds a “Print button” to a list and shows it in a print preview frame) $1.99

SharePoint Apps “Price is Right”
How it works:
Take the cost of a single licence for an App, and add up what you think the total cost of the
5 most expensive apps would be.
Winner: Closest to the total without going over will win a prize
Cost of 1
license
for App 1
Cost of 1
license
for App 2
Same
for App
3
Same
for App
4
Same
for App
5
Tell me Your
Name and Your
Guess
Ex. 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 = 35

App #5 Most Expensive
This App:
$249.99
Running Total:
$249.99

This App:
$299.99
Running Total:
$249.99 + $299.99
= $549.98

This App:
$349.99
Running Total:
$249.99 + $299.99 + $349.99
= $899.97

This App:
$399.99
Running Total:
$249.99 + $299.99 + $349.99 +
$399.99
= $1299.96

Bonus Question!
Given that you’ve now seen the 2nd – 5th most
expensive apps, what will the most expensive app
cost?
Maybe it will simply follow the trend (essentially $50
more expensive than the last) -- Maybe not 

This App:
$699.99
Running Total:
$249.99 + $299.99 + $349.99 +
$399.99 + $699.99
for a grand total of
= $1999.95

Most Popular Free Apps
Free apps are surprisingly popular
Some are both amongst the most
popular and highest downloaded
Samples of the most downloaded
include the following

Most Popular Paid Apps
There are many paid apps out
there which are doing quite well
Both expensive and inexpensive in
the running for most popular
Some examples include the
following
Corporate news has a separate
free app, which likely (for the most
part) explains its popularity, while
layer 2 has a trial (also valuable)

The App we’re most proud of 
We learned a lot from making this
app – both the coding side, and the
deployment side
Originally developed when the
store was still in “beta”, so many
hiccups along the way
The easier Microsoft can make it
for developers, the more and better
the apps will ultimately be

In Summary
Microsoft still has some challenges left to overcome
(there’s presently no “killer” app(s) out there).
Apps are a useful addition to both online and on-
premises installations and should (ideally) be made
available to end-users to explore
Apps are growing in popularity, and Microsoft is
encouraging new growth in the app space going
forward
Price is Right is fun!
Contact Info
itgroove
groovin@itgroove.net
blog: conversations.itgroove.net

SharePoint Apps for the End User

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