Presented at SharePoint TechFest 2016. All rights reserved.

1. Using REST to create
Responsive HTML 5
SharePoint intranets

2. About Sundown Solutions
 High end SharePoint Consultancy based in the North West
 Microsoft Gold Partner
 Customers covering the whole of the UK, Isle of Man, USA
 Operate a streamlined “core” business with a wide network of
Associates, Consultants and developers across the UK
 Interested in working with forward-thinking, inspirational,
businesses keen to move into Next Generation information
management and productivity solutions based around the best
Cloud Platform the industry has to offer
 Strong network of “associates” bringing complementary skills to
the team

3. Key People / Associates
Heath Groves – MCM
 A current Microsoft
Certified Master and
Microsoft Certified
Solutions Master based in
the North West, UK
 Spent four years on the
Office 365 Escalations
team for both dedicated
and multitenant working
exclusively at Tier 3.
 Now works free-lance for
large organisations that
require in-depth, high-end
SharePoint assistance.
Chris Webb – MCM
 SharePoint 2010, MCSM
SharePoint, & MCT
 SharePoint architect
currently working as a
freelance consultant out of
the Dallas/Ft Worth area.
 Originally from the small
town of Syracuse, Indiana,
he started his career as a
consultant primarily working
with Exchange.
 He then went on to do
VMware, Active Directory,
and SharePoint work.
 In 2011, he moved to Texas
and took a position as a Tier
III SharePoint Escalation
Engineer with the SharePoint
Online Dedicated Escalation
team at Microsoft.

4. Key People / Associates
Keith McKnight
Developer
Pathik Rawal
Consultant
Karl Diggle
Developer
Adam Brown
Power User
Giles Court
Power User
Alan Richards
MVP - Consultant
Steve Dixon
Senior SQL Consultant
Sam Dolan
Graphics Designer

5. Our Clients

6. Content
 Defining the Problem
 What is REST and why use it?
 Getting ready to use REST
 Demo 1 – The Basics
 Demo 2 – From file
 Demo 3 – Implementing the HTML5 Template
 Demo 4 – Add REST to the template
 Demo 5 – The template showcase
 Summary
 End

7. Content
 All content from this presentation can be found at:
http://www.sundownsolutions.co.uk
 All related articles are listed on the blog:
http://www.sundownsolutions.co.uk/blog
Please contact me on
Heath.groves@sundownsolutions.co.uk

8. The Problem

9. The Problem
 Vast amounts of time and effort spent on the cloud
infrastructure
 O365, SP2016, Hybrid & Azure
 Not much time spent and effort spent on latest web trends
 Responsiveness - office Fabric UI – released in Q4 2015… really?
 On-Prem responsiveness released via PNP… really?
 SharePoint uses Master Pages
 Upgrade blockers

10. The Consequences
 SharePoint is “Heavy”
 Long load times
 SharePoint is “Ugly”
 Although the O365 and SP2016 are perfectly functional
 When compared to other “web” products SharePoint looks old
 Web isn’t just Public – its also intranets
 Intranets deserve our love to…

11. Agree or disagree
 SharePoint usually has two tracks
 Infrastructure
 Development
“When we move to the cloud we won’t need our Infrastructure
team anymore”
“SharePoint is not as relevant now as it once was…”

12. Infrastructure Team
 How much time was spent on fixing servers?
 How much time was spent on:
 Permissions
 User Training
 Break Fixing Apps
 Does this work load disappear with the move to the cloud?
 No – but the way its actioned changes:
 CSOM (PowerShell/JSOM)

13. Environmental Factors
 Company data stored in SharePoint for nearly 2 decades
 The richest data repository in the company
 Data – obviously
 Logs
 Auditing
 Search
 People

14. The Gartner Scale of Influence
 The use of APIs to interact seamlessly is one of the most
used aspects on the current scale of influence
 Any system that houses your company data that can be used
in such a way is vital to the companies future.
 API access to SharePoint is more relevant now than ever
before..
“SharePoint has been away for a while… but on the May the
4th – your going to see that SharePoint is back – big time!”

15. What is REST and
why use it?

16. What is REST?
 REST stands for Representational State Transfer. (It is sometimes spelled
"ReST".) It relies on a stateless, client-server, cacheable communications
protocol -- and in virtually all cases, the HTTP protocol is used.
 REST is an architecture style for designing networked applications. The
idea is that, rather than using complex mechanisms such as CORBA, RPC
or SOAP to connect between machines, simple HTTP is used to make calls
between machines.
 In many ways, the World Wide Web itself, based on HTTP, can be viewed
as a REST-based architecture.
 RESTful applications use HTTP requests to post data (create and/or
update), read data (e.g., make queries), and delete data. Thus, REST
uses HTTP for all four CRUD (Create/Read/Update/Delete) operations.
 For SharePoint purposes we will be using REST with Javascript/jQuery

17. Why use REST with Sharepoint?
 Simple to use
 In comparison to caml
 Language agnostic
 Can be used in JavaScript, C#, pearl, PHP, Ruby…
 Fast!
 Lightweight
 Can be used anonymously
 Works seamlessly between O365 and on premise

18. Getting ready to
use REST

19. Questions
 Everything is easy when you know how…
 How many people have used REST?
 How many articles or videos have you found that show
you how to implement a REST pull for SharePoint from
start to end?
 If this material is thin on the ground, yet its so easy…
why is their a knowledge gap?

20. Link to jQuery
 Not necessary required for REST
 Used for the AJAX query portion
 Use CDN:
https://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.12.2.min.js
 Or download and place in library for local use

21. Require Use remote Interface
 Auth provider settings
 Site Level

22. Demo 1 – The Basics

23. Code Base
 Scripts Web Part:
 Content Web Part:

24. Code Base
 REST Web Part

25. Demo 2 – From file

26. Code Base

27. Demo 3 –Implementing
the HTML 5 Template

28. Process
 Select your HTML 5 Template
 Upload to document library
 If friendly URLs required then upload to pages
 Rename pages to ASPX using SP Designer 2013
 Set home page
 Use section replacer to maintain tags (optional)

29. Demo 4 – Add REST
to the template

30. Process
 Create your content lists (News, Blogs etc.)
 Link to your JS files
 Build your REST queries

31. Demo 5 – The
template showcase

32. Sundown Solutions

33. Fircroft

34. Symphony Housing

35. ARAG Insurance

36. Summary