In the past there has been a lot of confusion around sandboxed solutions within SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online. A statement in MSDN uses the deprecated word that throws the usage of them into question. Thankfully last night we got some confirmation from Microsoft that clears it up.
The part that is deprecated is the user code part of sandboxed solutions. This is the managed code that you can include in your sandboxed solutions that runs in the sandboxed user code service. However, sandboxed solutions that contain only declarative things is fully supported and not deprecated.
Now THAT is a huge clarification. This means you can have supported declarative solutions deployed to the host web in SharePoint 2013. Customizations to the host web using the SharePoint App Model simply aren’t possible in most scenarios so this is a welcomed clarification. It’s too bad this took over a year for Microsoft to clarify this.
Looking for something to point to? Here’s an official Microsoft source. I also confirmed this with a second source at Microsoft.
Now… if they’d only get their Office 365 updating process cleaned up and don’t break working deployments out of the blue, we could get closer to a reliable platform in the cloud.
Microsoft MVP, Full-Stack Developer & Chief Course Artisan - Voitanos LLC.
Andrew Connell is a full stack developer who focuses on Microsoft Azure & Microsoft 365. He’s a 20+ year recipient of Microsoft’s MVP award and has helped thousands of developers through the various courses he’s authored & taught. Whether it’s an introduction to the entire ecosystem, or a deep dive into a specific software, his resources, tools, and support help web developers become experts in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, so they can become irreplaceable in their organization.
