Managing and Configuring Apps

Managing and Configuring Apps

SharePoint 2013 introduces the Cloud App Model, a new development model for adding and extending SharePoint capability. Developers are encouraged to build their solutions using this new model for a few key reasons. First, more companies are utilizing cloud functionality, creating the need for a robust model designed to handle the challenges of both on-premises SharePoint deployments and those in SharePoint online.

Developing and deploying custom solutions to SharePoint enhances the functionality and adoption of the collaboration platform, but it can affect overall performance and the ease of upgrading to a new version. SharePoint has matured as an application development platform with each new release.

·         SharePoint 2003 application development platform was somewhat limited: Developers could build and install Web parts to the web part gallery, and deploy web applications in to SharePoint’s layouts folder.

·         SharePoint 2007 was significantly more robust with the introduction of solution packages, features, control delegates, and a strongly supported developer infrastructure

·         SharePoint 2010 built upon these capabilities but also added capabilities for less pervasive solutions through client technologies such as REST APIs and client side object models. SharePoint 2010 also introduced sandbox solutions, a new development model designed for a multi-tenant hosted infrastructure such as the one used in Office 365 and SharePoint online.

With each new release, the SharePoint platform has made it easier and more developer-friendly to create and deliver custom solutions. Unfortunately, each solution adds complexity and requires testing when upgrading to the next version is considered. Clearly, we need a model that doesn’t impact performance and upgradability.

·         The new SharePoint 2013 App Model provides an architecture that enables customizations to run in isolation so that they don’t affect other apps or applications.

·         SharePoint apps effectively have a zero-deployment footprint on a SharePoint farm.

·         Developer code is not deployed to the SharePoint server.

·         Apps can leverage SharePoint application components such as lists, libraries, and workflows.

·         The apps themselves can be hosted within the SharePoint farm, or they can be cloud hosted in Windows Azure or privately hosted elsewhere in the cloud. Because apps don’t physically deploy any assets to the SharePoint servers, they eliminate a significant challenge to adding new customizations to multi- tenant cloud environments such as Office 365.

·         Apps can be written using the standards of the Web, HTML, and JavaScript, or developers can choose PHP, Java, or .NET. For the first time, this new model unifies the development process for on premise or cloud-hosted applications.

Understanding the SharePoint 2013 App

A brief review of the three different development models illustrates the significant differences of the new App Model. Application code built using the new App Model runs predominantly on the client’s browser, on application servers, or in a company’s data center. This is very different from the full trust solution and sandbox solution.

With the SharePoint apps, the logic is not deployed to the SharePoint server, and instead lives predominantly on hosted application server or on the client devices connecting to SharePoint.

Architecture

SharePoint Apps are available from two locations:

·         Microsoft hosts and governs a public Office Store, where any developer can publish and sell his or her app for general use by any SharePoint user. Publishing an app is as simple as uploading a file to a SharePoint library.

·         A private corporate app catalog can be hosted on SharePoint 2013 on-premises or online, and owned by the company hosting on-premises SharePoint 2013 or the online tenant. Company Personnel or licensed tenants will be able to acquire and install these apps for personal or corporate use.

SharePoint 2013 App Marketplaces

SharePoint apps can be obtained from the public Office Store or from the private corporate app catalog.

-          Publishing an app to the Office Store makes the app publically available; therefore, it can be obtained by any SharePoint user. To publish an app to the Office Store, the developer must first register with the Microsoft Seller Dashboard.

-          Apps published to an Organization’s private app catalog are available for company-only use, and accessible to corporate users with appropriate permissions.

SharePoint 2013 provides a full licensing platform for apps. The licensing model enables administrators to govern how and where apps are installed on their platform.

SharePoint 2013 App Hosting Options

The App Model utilizes two broad approaches to hosting apps: SharePoint-hosted and cloud-hosted.

-          SharePoint-hosted apps include only SharePoint components, and they are installed in the corporate-owned SharePoint Online tenant or the on-premises SharePoint farm.

-          Cloud-hosted apps include at least one remote component and may also include SharePoint-hosted components. The cloud-hosted model is further divide in to two-categories, ultimately resulting in three different approaches and three different types of apps that can be deployed to a SharePoint site:

a)       SharePoint-hosted apps

b)      Provider-hosted apps

c)       Auto-hosted apps

App Model Security

App permissions are broken down into permission requests and request scopes. Additionally, SharePoint 2013 has a set of app authorization policies that determine whether the app should be authorized to act on behalf of the user, the app and the user, or just the app. 

High-Trust Apps

High-trust apps simply refer to apps that are responsible for creating the user portion of the access token. This effectively means that a high-trust app can assert any user identity it chooses, and instead of using OAuth the app authenticates to SharePoint just like any user.

This is a useful scenario for organizations that want to position the app model as the primary solution for SharePoint customizations.

High-trust on-premises apps provide a framework for flexible extensions to the SharePoint platform while maintaining farm and process isolation between the customizations and the core SharePoint environment.

Setting up an App-Enabled SharePoint environment

Step-by-step walk-through demonstrating how to set up a SharePoint 2013 farm to support apps, if SharePoint 2013 is already installed and configured.

The steps require the following:

·         The user account performing the configuration must be a member of the Farm administrators group

·         The SharePoint Timer Service and SharePoint Administrator Services must be running

·         The web application must be configured for claims-based authentication.

A high-level summary of the steps is as follows:

·         Create and Configure a DNS name to host all apps

·         Add/install and SSL certificate for the DNS name

·         Configure the service applications

·         Configure app URLs.

Configuring a forward lookup zone in DNS

Configuring SSL for the App Domain (Optional)

Once the domain host name is set up and configured in DNS, SSL should also be set up. In this scenario, the app domain is a unique root domain separate from other SharePoint site domains. Therefore, a new wildcard SSL certificate should be created to support HTTPS.

Configuring the Service Applications

Prior to configuring the specific app settings, additional configuration is necessary on the service applications that the apps will utilize. The Subscription Settings service establishes subdomains for apps. The App Management service predominantly serves the role of providing app permissions. Both service applications need to be configured and started.

Configuring and starting the service applications

The following PowerShell command gets and starts the two necessary service instances:

Get-SPServiceInstance | where {$_. GetType().Name -eq “AppManagementServiceInstance” -or $_.GetType().Name -eq “SPSubscriptionSettingsServiceinstance”} | Start-SPServiceInstance

Creating application pools for the service applications

Once the services are started, the service applications need to be configured to use an application poo in IIS. For security reasons, these app pools need to run as the farm account. The following steps configure the application pool.

·         First, get and store the farm account in a variable

$account = Get-SPManagedAccount “domain\farm_account”

·         Next, create applications pools for each service app, and store them in appropriate variables

$apSub = New-SPServiceApplicationPool -Name SettingsServiceAppPool -Account $account

$apApp = New-SPServiceApplicationPool -Name AppServiceAppPool -Account $account

·         Now create the service applications and proxies; the database names are passed to the cmdlets by the administrator executing the commands.

$subSvc = New-SPSubscriptionSettingsServiceApplication -ApplicationPool $apSub -Name SettingsServiceApp -DatabaseName <SettingsServiceDB>

$subSvcProxy = New-SPSubscriptionSettingsServiceApplicationProxy -ServiceApplication $subSvc

$appSvc = New-SPAppManagementServiceApplication -ApplicationPool $apApp -Name AppServiceApp -DatabaseName <AppServiceDB>

$appSvcProxy = New-SPAppManagementServiceApplicationProxy -ServiceApplication $appSvc

Configuring App URLs

Via Central Administration

Via the SharePoint PowerShell Administrative Console

Execute the PowerShell cmdlets:

Set-SPAppDomain <isolated app domain>

Set-SPAppSiteSubscriptionName -Name “app prefix” -Confirm: $false

Where <isolated app domain> is the DNS host name configured for the isolated app domain, and “app prefix” for provisioned app URLs.

Setting up a high-trust app environment

The current process for setting up a High-Trust App environment is as follows:

·         Configuring dependent SharePoint 2013 services.

To ensure that at least one user profile has been created, select Application Management-> Manage Service Applications. Then select User Profile Service Application->People-> Manage User Profiles. Verify that Total Number of Profiles is greater than zero.

The dependent SharePoint service applications are now configured.

·         Configure SharePoint 2013 to trust the provider hosted app

Finally SharePoint 2013 needs to be configured to use and trust the app. This is accomplished by executing the following script.

$appCertPath = “c:\HighTrustCert.cer”

$issuerId = [System.Guid]::New Guid().ToString().ToLower()

$spurl = https://<host site URL>

$spweb = Get-SPWeb $spurl

$realm = Get-SPAuthenticationRealm -ServiceContext $spweb.Site

$certificate = Get-PfxCertificate $appCertPath

$fullAppIdentifier = $issuerId + ‘@’ + $realm

New-SPTrustedSecurityTokenIssuer -Name “<unique name>” -Certificate $certificate -RegisteredIssuerName $fullAppIdentifier

$appPrincipal = Register-SPAppPrincipal -NameIdentifier $fullAppIdentifier -Site $spweb -DisplayName “<uique display name>”

·         Ensure the provider hosted app is configured properly

The Provider-Hosted App must also be configured to be a part of the server-to-server trust, which requires changes to the app’s web.config and appmanifest files.

Managing SharePoint 2013 Apps

Configuring an App Catalogs

Managing Apps in the App Catalog

Adding an App to a SharePoint site

There are several ways to add apps to SharePoint sites

·         Using the list of SharePoint apps available to the current site

·         Using the App Catalog associated with the SharePoint farm

·         Downloading from the SharePoint store (App Marketplace)

·         Using Windows PowerShell

Adding an App from the site’s available app list

Adding an App from the App Catalog

Adding an App from the SharePoint store

Adding an App via Windows PowerShell

-Path provides the fully qualified path to the app file on the file system

-Site provides the URL of the site collection to which the app should be imported

-Source is one of the following (SharePoint store, App Catalog, or SharePoint service)

-web provides the URL of the SharePoint website where the app should be installed

-Identity is the variable in which the imported app was stored

Removing an App from a SharePoint site

Monitoring SharePoint Apps

Adding an App to the Monitor List

Removing an App from the Monitor List

Monitoring App Usage from Central Administration

Monitoring App Errors from Central Administration

Monitoring App Usage in a SharePoint Site

Apps are automatically monitored at the site level in SharePoint 2013. This mean that it is possible to view the App Monitoring Details of an individual app within an individual site.

Monitoring and Managing App Licenses

Viewing App License Details, Adding users to an App license, Purchasing More Licenses for an App & Adding a License Manager