SharePoint Starter Kit v2 – an overview

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What is SharePoint starter kit V2?

A comprehensive solution showcasing packaging, solution deployment, provisioning and SPFx web parts to inspire and guide developers, business users and SharePoint Admins to create solutions on similar lines.

Why you should have a look at this?

This has been created by best people in this field (SharePoint, Microsoft 365) which means that code, design and relevance of the web parts are extremely good, all the web parts can be used in your tenant as is. You can learn and create your own ways to

1. Package solutions
2. Provisioning mechanism
3. Coding guidelines, standards
4. Build modern portals

How to get started?

If you want to install everything at one shot the steps are simple. I suggest to have a look first install it on development tenant and not the Production tenant, as it will upload lot of SPFx solutions and make changes so best is that you review it in a developer tenant. Based on your understanding you can plan to deploy it in Production.

1. Prerequisites: There are some preparation steps which you need to before you install it as follows
   • Account used to deploy this solution should be a tenant administrator
   • Works with English tenants, all solutions are in English
   • Tenant should have been set as “Targeted release for everyone”, how to set it? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/manage/release-options-in-office-365?view=o365-worldwide#set-up-the-release-option-in-the-admin-center
   • An App Catalog is present in SharePoint with Apps option
   • Account used to deploy this that is tenant admin should also be termstore admin, in general it is but please verify
   • if you have created a new tenant just now or set targeted relase now or just now created App Catalog then it is advised to wait for 1 day before you install this.
   • PnP PowerShell will be used to install Starter Kit v2 so make sure you have installed latest version https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/sharepoint/sharepoint-pnp/sharepoint-pnp-cmdlets?view=sharepoint-ps , although while I am publishing blog there exists an issue which I faced which you can check further below in the blog
   • Create a custom property in user profile service, this cannot be automated hence needs to be done manually, follow the steps here https://github.com/pnp/sp-starter-kit/blob/master/documentation/tenant-settings.md
   • If you want to use StockInformation webpart then another settings needs to be done manually which you can do by following steps in above link.
2. How to install?
   • Download the source code, you can download using Github desktop download as zip file from here https://github.com/pnp/sp-starter-kit

Open PowerShell and excute this command

Connect-PnPOnline https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com

This will ask your User Id and Password, please use tenant administrator for this as it will be used to install the Starter Kit.

Then go to Provisioning folder in the source code you have downloaded from GitHub.

cd <<location>>

Then execute following command in PowerShell

Apply-PnPTenantTemplate -Path .\starterkit.pnp

The command might take 10-15 mins to execute and if all goes well three sites will be created.

You can watch a video to view complete process

Issues you might face

• Exception while invoking endpoint: I encounter this issue while installing almost half way through the installation. Error message you might get is this Apply-PnPTenantTemplate : Exception while invoking endpoint https://login.microsoftonline.com/fffff-4121-ae51-71e06b5edc04/oauth2/token.
  • If you get this it follow below steps rather than the normal steps
  • Remove earlier version of SharePointPnpPowerShellOnline
  • Install-Module -Name “SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline” -RequiredVersion 3.20.2004.0
  • Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://tenant-admin.sharepoint.com/ -PnPO365ManagementShell , this will open a window in browser for device login in which you should enter a code specified, make it is succcessful.
  • Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://tenant.sharepoint.com, renter tenant admin credentials
  • Then go to provisioning folder and execute Apply-PnPTenantTemplate -Path .\starterkit.pnp

• There is a list of other probable issues which you can review here https://github.com/pnp/sp-starter-kit/blob/master/documentation/common-provision-results.md

Use provisioning parameters:

You can also provide parameters to achieve some customizations such as below

Apply-PnPTenantTemplate -Path .\starterkit.pnp -Parameters @{"Company"="Your Company Name";"SiteUrlPrefix"="YourCompany";"WeatherCity"="Stockholm"}

More information here https://github.com/pnp/sp-starter-kit/blob/master/provisioning/readme.md#provisioning-parameters

How it looks like after installation?

Three site collections are created

A communication site

A Private Group Team site

An another teams site as department site

Below web parts and SPFX web parts are installed, for detail explaination please check on this link https://github.com/pnp/sp-starter-kit#custom-web-parts

How to make it work in SharePoint 2019?

As of 23rd July 2020 the ApplyPnPTemplate command for SharePoint 2019 is not available, you can keep an eye on this URL https://github.com/pnp/sp-starter-kit/blob/master/provisioning/readme-sp2019.md to check if it is available as community members have promised to update it soon.

Till then you can deploy individual apps in SharePoint 2019 farm and use the apps. Following apps will work in SharePoint 2019 as well

• Banner
• Followed sites
• Links
• People directory
• Site information
• Tiles
• Weather
• World clock

To deploy the apps you can copy the package from source code you downloaded before from this location “sp-starter-kit-master\source\<<solution-name>>\sharepoint\solution” and upload it to App Catalog of your farm.

There is no need to build the solution and can be directly deployed but in case you face issues you can build it using

gulp bundle --ship
gulp package-solution --ship

Once deployed you can add it on a page, in this case I am showing Tiles app.

More information can be found here: https://github.com/pnp/sp-starter-kit/blob/master/documentation/components/wp-tiles.md

So that is all I have for SharePoint Starter Kit V2 , I will write more about this topic as there is lot to explore.

Connect with me on Twitter or Linked In if you need more information.

Special thanks to all community members who work on these and provide great solutions https://github.com/pnp/sp-starter-kit/graphs/contributors

I also did a demo of SharePoint Starter Kit V2 on PnP Community SharePoint Framework and JavaScript Special Interest Group (SIG) – Bi-weekly sync call recorded on September 10, 2020.

Here is a link to the video:

References:

https://github.com/pnp/sp-starter-kit

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/announcing-sharepoint-starter-kit-v2/