Beginning SharePoint 2013 Development

APPLICATION INTEGRATION OPTIONS IN SHAREPOINT 2013

The new application model in SharePoint 2013 offers a number of options for your application to deeply integrate with SharePoint, other systems, and data. These options fall into the following categories:

• User interface integration
• Events and logic integration
• Data integration

When you think about building a solution, you must evaluate your options for how you want to surface your application inside SharePoint (UI), how you want to call code and process actions when a user uses your application (events and logic), and how and where you store and work with your application’s data and data that resides in other systems (data). Understanding what options are available and how they work is critical when designing your application.

The following sections cover some of the most common options you have for each of the layers (UI, events, and data) in the new SharePoint application model.

User Interface Integration

Three main integration points are available to you in the SharePoint user interface as part of the SharePoint application model:

• App Parts and Pages
• Ribbon and Action menus
• Navigation

App Parts and Pages offer you the ability to surface your applications’ user interface to your users. For people familiar with SharePoint 2010, App Parts are similar to Web Parts. Navigation lets users find your application, and integrating with the Ribbon and Action menus lets your users take actions in the same familiar location that they ...