What are the restrictions on Office 365 (SharePoint Online) in SharePoint 2013 Environment

Question

As there is a drastic change in architecture from SharePoint 2010 to 2013, I would like to know what are the restrictions for a developer while developing Solutions/Apps for Office 365.

In SharePoint 2010, only sandbox solutions were allowed on Office 365, but in SharePoint 2013 the sandbox solutions are depreciated and App model is introduced. Would be glad if someone can throw some light on what is allowed and what is restricted on Office 365 in the new 2013 environment.

Answer 1

Sharepoint 2013 is a game changer, starting with the fact now is possible to use framework 4.5 and, since the new release of visual studio 2013, it's possible to use MVC. From a developing point of view you have to know there are two flavors:

1. Sharepoint hosted. In this case, your whole application is installed within the Microsoft servers. Because of this, you MUST use client object model and javascript. No server code at all. So you will configure your sites, libraries, lists, etc with 365 and then access this information using the Sharepoint javascripts libraries. If you are familiar with js ans sp js the you won't have any problem.
2. Autohosted. In this case you can choose between azure or your hosting (provider hosted) in both cases you can use a more traditional aproach, with your server code, classes, aspx and so on. The difference is when you deploy your application, in this case the app is installed just as a reference in 365 and all the code in your hosting provider. In fact all your application will be displayed in 365 within an iframe. Keep in mind you will be dealing with lots of cross domain scripting.

Last but not least, you have one final flavor, but it's not 365, Sharepoin onpremise, in this case this is your own sharepoint, you create, manager, develop or deploy whatever you want. This is very similar to the current sp2010 model, so, I guess you already now what you can do.

For more information:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/apps/fp179930.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/amigan/archive/2012/12/10/part-2-introduction-to-sharepoint-2013-app-model.aspx