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SharePoint Framework v1.6 release notes

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This release contains two main features:

  • The final release of the WebAPI feature first previewed in v1.4.1
  • Support for extensions to be configured tenant wide without a need for activating or configuring every site.

Released: September 5, 2018

Important

This page addresses details related to a specific SPFx release version. This page doesn't include additional SPFx prerequisites that must be installed in order to develop SPFx solutions, including Node.js, Yeoman, and other tools.

To learn more about these prerequisites, see Set up your SharePoint Framework development environment.

Upgrading projects from v1.5.1 to v1.6

In the project's package.json file, identify all SPFx v1.5.1 packages. For each SPFx package:

  1. Uninstall the existing v1.5.1 package:

    npm uninstall @microsoft/{spfx-package-name}@1.5.1

  2. Install the refreshed v1.6 package:

    npm install @microsoft/{spfx-package-name}@1.6.0 --save --save-exact

Tip

The CLI for Microsoft 365 provides an easy step-by-step guidance to upgrade your solutions to latest SharePoint Framework version.

New features and capabilities

Web API (general availability)

For the WebAPI feature, there are a few changes introduced in the GA (general availability) work. All of the access to AAD protected resources is handled by a third-party AAD application and service principal. The application is created the first time a tenant admin approves a permission scope, and it's created with zero permissions. So any connection you make to data (either through the Microsoft Graph or a call to an endpoint that uses AAD for its permissions) needs to be explicitly allowed.

Important

Any permissions that were granted previous to the v1.6.0 release will need to be re-granted, as we have changed which AAD application is used.

  • Use the MSGraphClient. It exists on the context of your component (web part or extension). For performance reasons, the full code is loaded on demand, so it's accessed via a promise.
  • Stop using GraphHttpClient (if you haven't already stopped). Sometime in the next month or so we'll remove it completely from our code. Any solutions that you have that use it will stop working.
  • Similar to MSGraphClient, there's a general AadHttpClient off the context for making calls to AAD secured endpoints, and an AadTokenProvider that you can use to get auth tokens manually.

Tenant-Wide Deployment of extensions

You can now make tenant-wide configurations for extensions. The easiest way (as a developer) to deploy across the tenancy is to modify the \SharePoint\ClientInstance.xml file (created with a new v1.6.0 solution). This creates an entry in a new list in the app catalog (Tenant-Wide Extensions). You can also modify that list directly as an app catalog owner.

Changes in this release

Build and tooling changes

We're trying to move away from some of the wrappers around common build tools. The first two are the tslint and ts compiler steps. Because of these changes, your previous code won't compile without a few of changes.

  • First, you need to have a *.ts file at the root of the source directory (by default, we now create one under \src called index.ts that is empty).
  • Second, the tslint.json file has changed location (from \config to the root of the project) and format. it's now just a standard tslint.json file. The easiest thing to do is created a new project and copy the tslint.json file from it.
  • Third, grab the tsconfig.json file from the root of the new project in step 2, and copy it to the root of the original project. If you have made change to the tsconfig.json file, you'll want to merge them.

Promotion of CSS classes to general availability

We found some classes in the @microsoft/sp-dialog package that were marked as Beta. We've moved them to the public.

Note

This is the last release where the build tools will support Node.js v6.