SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is an extensibility model for Microsoft 365 that allows developers to extend Microsoft 365 services by incorporating JavaScript-driven components and experiences into the user interface.

So What is SharePoint?

“SharePoint is a web-based collaboration platform that integrates natively with Microsoft Office” – Wikipedia’s introduction to SharePoint. SharePoint was originally launched in 2001 as a server-side product for document management and storage system, but was then further expanded with subsequent versions to include features for intranet and even internet-centric content management.

SharePoint was a very successful on-premises product with almost limitless extensibility options for customers to take advantage of. Starting with the SharePoint 2007 version, it became one of the most successful content management products in the world. However, one of the main challenges we had in the on-premises environment was that the customer-specific extensibility was version-specific, so whenever a new on-premises version was released, there was an additional cost because of the extensibility that was built for the deployment.

SharePoint, with a capital P

The capitalization of “SharePoint” with a capital “P” is a branding choice by Microsoft. It helps to distinguish the product name and make it more recognizable. This style is consistent across Microsoft’s documentation and marketing materials to maintain a uniform brand identity.

And what is SPFx?

SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is a client-side extensibility model for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva, Outlook, Microsoft 365 app (Office), and SharePoint. It was originally introduced for SharePoint as part of the “modern” SharePoint experiences introduced in Microsoft 365 (called Office 365 at the time).

Microsoft needed to provide a future-proof extensibility model that aligns with its goal of rolling out new features to customers even weekly. The classic on-premises SharePoint extensibility didn’t work for the cloud, as it would have blocked customers from receiving the new capabilities as part of our Microsoft 365 subscription. Therefore, the SPFx model was introduced to initially support the creation of user interface extensibility in SharePoint Online (part of Microsoft 365).

All SPFx solutions are created with TypeScript during development and then transformed to native JavaScript when deployed to be used in the browser. This aligns with the industry-standard web stack development model , and SPFx development tools provide a great streamlined experience for creating these web components.

SPFx gives you the ability to build your JavaScript components once and reuse the same component for the different services in Microsoft 365 – so that the exact same JavaScript-based app can be used in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva, Outlook, Microsoft 365 app (Office), and in SharePoint. Once built, visible in Microsoft 365.

SPFx is also used by Microsoft engineers to build the native out-of-the-box features available in SharePoint Online, such as the out-of-the-box Web Parts.

SPFx has the following objectives:

• Provide customers and partners with a reliable and predictable extensibility model for Microsoft 365
• Supports the use of industry standards without any requirement of proprietary programming options – with standard web stack development using Node, Gulp, Yeoman, React, and more
• Simplify the hosting and running of custom solutions by providing automatically hosted solutions for customers and partners – no need for externally hosted websites, for example in Microsoft Azure
• Automatic single sign-on with Azure Active Directory with a secure way to use Microsoft Graph APIs and Azure-hosted services – no need to worry about tokens
• Solutions built with SPFx run in the context of the customer tenant – without the need for externally hosted code to access the customer tenant using APIs

Of course, you can also integrate SPFx solutions with code that runs in Microsoft Azure, for example with Azure Functions or with Web APIs. SPFx supports securely calling these cloud components based on the administrative approval in the customer tenant.

Given the SPFx’s global success with customers and partners, Microsoft decided to invest in its use outside of SharePoint Online. Starting in 2018, you can use the SPFx solutions directly in Microsoft Teams. In 2021, we announced that the extensibility of Microsoft Viva Connections will be based on the SPFx, and in 2022, we announced support for building Outlook and Microsoft 365 app (Office) extensibility with SPFx – with all the benefits mentioned earlier.

With the introduction of Office 365 (known today as Microsoft 365), SharePoint features and capabilities were also incorporated into Microsoft’s cloud offerings as cloud-based collaboration and content management services. As part of this transition, starting in 2017, an entirely new version of the SharePoint experiences was released with so-called modern experiences. These modern experiences are designed to be more future-proof, and to provide more evergreen options to enable new features for customers in the cloud without ongoing maintenance or operational requirements due to the deployed extensibility. This also meant that a new extensibility option would be needed to support this cloud-first model, resulting in the introduction of SharePoint Framework (SPFx).

SharePoint will continue to be available on-premises, and the latest version is called the SharePoint Subscription Edition (released in 2021), but the latest and greatest features are available as part of the Microsoft 365 offering with even weekly updates and new features.

SharePoint provides the content and platform services for Microsoft 365 features and capabilities for Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Syntex, and Microsoft Stream, for example. SharePoint Online has more than 200 million monthly active users in the cloud with continuous investment in the different feature sets across its capabilities.

SPFx versions

SPFx was released in February 2017 to SharePoint Online. Every version that has been released since then had SharePoint Online as its target. This means that whatever you develop in SharePoint FrameWork, it will also work in SharePoint Online.

SPFx & SharePoint 2016

Initially, SharePoint Framework was not available outside of SharePoint Online, but at the end of 2017, Microsoft released feature pack 2 for SharePoint Server 2016. This feature pack was included in SharePoint Framework version 1.1. Since the main concern of SharePoint Framework is the Cloud, this feature pack has not had any updates after version 1.1, nor is Microsoft planning to release an update for it at some point. This means that for SharePoint Server 2016 it is not possible to use a higher SPFx version than SPFx 1.1

SPFx & SharePoint 2019

In September 2018, Microsoft released SPFx version 1.4.1 with the support included for SharePoint Server 2019. Just like SharePoint Server 2016, Microsoft has not released any updates within SPFx for SharePoint Server 2019, nor do they have plans to do so. This means that for SharePoint Server 2019 it is not possible to use a higher SPFx version than SPFx 1.4.1

More information about the versions can be found at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/spfx/compatibility#spfx-development-environment-compatibility

Compatibility Summary – SharePoint Online can handle all SPFx versions – SharePoint Server 2019 with Feature Pack 2 can handle SPFx version up to and including 1.4.1 – SharePoint Server 2016 with Feature Pack 2 can handle SPFx version up to and including 1.1