Advantages
of using SharePoint App
- Keep custom code off of the SharePoint servers! Administrators spend a lot of their time setting up and maintaining the SharePoint servers in your organization. Apps for SharePoint either run 100% client-side within SharePoint, or separate web application server (hosted or on premise). Either way, apps are isolated from SharePoint so a poorly performing app will not affect your entire SharePoint environment. This also allows Apps to be installed without downtime in SharePoint.
- Give control to site owners to allow them to install the apps they want on their site either from the Microsoft store or your organizations internal App Catalog.
- Keep control by disabling the public Microsoft store or require approval for the apps that site owners want to add to their site.
- Apps are first-class citizens in SharePoint! Apps are given their own permissions to specific SharePoint resources such as lists, documents, sites, search, etc… User security still applies as well. An advantage is that when content is created or modified it shows Modified By <
> on behalf of < > allowing administrators and users to see what app is making changes to the content. Separate permissions also allows for the App to be revoked access, without changing the permissions of the users. - Since Apps are isolated, the SharePoint environment is much easier, and therefore cheaper, to migrate or upgrade when the next version of SharePoint is released.
- Apps are supported in the cloud. SharePoint Online fully supports the new app model, making it a much more viable option for organizations who are considering moving to the cloud.
- Apps can be written in several different ways. This allows developers to use their core strengths to develop their apps. This may be HTML5, JQuery, CSOM, C#, PHP, Java, etc…
- Already have a custom web application and now you need to integrate it into SharePoint? No problem. Create an App Package that points to your existing web application and you’re good to go. Of course, if you want your application to read from or make updates to SharePoint, you’ll need to make some additions to your application. But this doesn’t necessarily mean a complete rewrite.
- Sell your apps! If you or your organization has developed a great reusable app, you can publish it to the Microsoft Office Store and sell it to others. Microsoft handles the billing and delivery of the app, so all you need to do is build it, publish it, and support it.
- The Office Store makes it easy to find and purchase apps that you know have been vetted by Microsoft.
