Site collection app catalog available in SharePoint Online

The site collection app catalog is now generally available for all tenants in SharePoint Online.

 It allows you to make SharePoint Add-Ins and SPFx solutions available only in certain site collections. This is a great improvements because it allows more flexible deployment options, you can test a solutions only on site collection level before pushing it to the entire tenant and it can decentralize the management of add-ins and SPFx packages.

You can create Site Collection App catalog by using SharePoint Online Management Shell.

Note that you will still need to configure tenant app catalog. If you try to provision site collection app catalog without tenant app catalog you will get below exception.

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Add-SPOSiteCollectionAppCatalog : Cannot invoke method or retrieve property from null object. Object returned by the
following call stack is null. "TenantAppCatalog
RootWeb
GetSiteByUrl
new Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.TenantAdministration.Tenant()

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For more information on site collection app catalog check out below PnP Webcast:

Fantastic 40 is back in SPFx form

Well, actually not, but I hope that the title of this post will make you want to check it out.

I would like to share a great project called "SPFx Fantastic 40 Web Parts". Except the name, this project has almost nothing to do with the old "Fantastic 40 Application Templates for SharePoint (WSS & MOSS)" because it is a collection of 40 SPFx Client Side Web Parts. It is open source project so you can use it as you find for useful. It was created by Olivier Carpentier, but the code is provided "as is" without support from Microsoft.

I am so excited because the web parts look great and they might be a solution to common needs that the out of the box modern webparts don't fulfill.

It is also a great learning resource and demonstration of what can be done with SPFx.

If it is not an issue for you to consume the web parts assets from CDNs you do not control you can download and deploy the *.sppkg as it is and it will work. I also tried most of the web parts on SharePoint Server 2016 with classic pages and they work and look great.

The web parts are grouped in seven categories and below you can find some samples.

Menu & Carousels & News Management: News Slider

The News Slider Web Part renders a simple news slider carousel to your page. You can manage your active news, manage the layout and easily render a cool slider to enhance your pages.

Social Tools: Tweets Feed

The Tweets Feed Web Part is a SharePoint client side web part built with the SharePoint Framework (SPFx). This web part generates a Twitter Feed on the page, based on the specified account. This Web Part uses the Twitter API to integrate the timeline.

Maps, Charts & Graphs: Bar Chart

The Bar Chart Web Part is a SharePoint client side web part built with the SharePoint Framework (SPFx). This web part insert a Bar Chart in your pages, and you can manage the bar chart settings as items, color, title, legends, etc. This web part uses chart.js lib.

Images Galleries & Tools: Grid Gallery

The grid gallery Web Part renders a pictures slideshow with grid of thumbnails. This web part implements unitegallery.js (a popular jquery script) as a client side web part for SharePoint.

Video & Audio: Media Player

The Media Player Web Part is a SharePoint client side web part built with the SharePoint Framework (SPFx). With it, you can insert a video in your pages that is a HTML 5 compatible video or audio files, a YouTube video or a Vimeo video. This web part uses Plyr.js lib.

Text Tools: Tabs

The Tabs Web Part is a SharePoint client side web part built with the SharePoint Framework (SPFx). This web part helps to create a tab (you manage, add, delete, edit or move a tab dynamically) and the web part editor can easily modify the tabs content thanks a HTML editor (WYSIWYG). This tab control is responsive, so the layout will adapt the render with the screen size.

Tools: Stock Info

The Stock Info Web Part is a SharePoint client side web part built with the SharePoint Framework (SPFx). This web part generates a stock graph picture for a specified stock. This web part uses the Yahoo Financial service.