We are thrilled to announce the launch of our completely redesigned SharePoint app for AgilePoint.
https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-in/product/office/WA200007669?tab=Overview
We understand how essential SharePoint is to our vast customer base. That’s why we stay closely attuned to Microsoft’s product announcements.
On November 27th 2023, Microsoft made an important announcement regarding the retirement plan for both Azure Access Control Services and the SharePoint Add-in model. Earlier in the year, Microsoft made another important announcement regarding the retirement of SharePoint 2013 Workflow (also referred to as Workflow Manager) in Microsoft 365. All three Microsoft 365 service retirements, are all related with circular dependencies. As mentioned in the Microsoft’s announcement, existing Microsoft and AgilePoint customers can continue to use SharePoint Add-In and workflows till April 1st 2026 before which you need to move to the new SharePoint architecture. But don’t worry—we’ve got your back! Check out our earlier summary and impact analysis to stay informed.
Our Commitment to Future-Proofing Your Investments
We are dedicated to safeguarding your applications and platforms against future changes. Our innovative architectural approach ensures that your processes and forms remain unaffected when SharePoint undergoes upgrades, protecting your application development investment. And of course, that goes for all AgilePoint upgrades as well. In fact, as you probably already know, this is one of the main reasons why Enterprises choose AgilePoint, to avoid costly app restructuring that robs you of your valuable time and resources.
Who does this post applies to?
All users who are using AgilePoint’s SharePoint Online app and who are on AgilePoint NX v6.0 – v9.0. While post may not apply to users of SharePoint on-premise, if you are planning to migrate to SharePoint online do continue reading.
What is the impact on existing AgilePoint workflows for SharePoint Online?
By design, our dependency on the SharePoint app was very limited. For AgilePoint’s own product modules such as Work Center, Process Viewer or eForms which are rendered in SharePoint Online, there is no impact. This is because the SharePoint app does the base user interface rendering of the page which loads these modules dynamically from AgilePoint. This is why you can see same form or Work Center experience whether you access it from AgilePoint NX Portal, SharePoint, Salesforce, or any other system for that matter.
All that investment we have done in the product remains intact and all we had to change was the base rendering page in SharePoint app to follow SharePoint Framework Solution using a JavaScript-based loading mechanism.
AgilePoint’s use of SharePoint’s native workflow is only limited to one single step which acts as an event listener. We use it to listen to events such as item added or document uploaded to call our REST endpoint to kick off a business process in AgilePoint. That’s it! SharePoint’s native workflow plays no further role after this point.
To their credit, Microsoft has already provided alternatives such as SharePoint Webhooks which is used for calling external endpoints based on events. We are using that to replace the single step SharePoint workflow ensuring no impact to customers.
Which features from the older SharePoint app have been deprecated?
No major feature has been deprecated – and you can still kickoff workflow based on item added or item changed events, as well as override the out of the box SharePoint Listforms experience, which covers the vast majority of your SharePoint forms and workflow customization. That being said, there are two rarely used features that were part of the workflow trigger options in traditional SharePoint 2013-styled processes that are not available in the new SharePoint Webhook architecture:
– Manual trigger of workflows on SharePoint list item.
– Trigger of workflow on publishing a major version of an item.
The reason for deprecating these options is that SharePoint has not added Webhooks for SharePoint Online to support these two functionalities. You can work around the manual trigger limitation by creating a new eForms app which will load SharePoint data and kickoff a workflow on submit of the form. Based on our observation, these two options were rarely used and as a result, most customers do not get impacted due to this feature deprecation from Microsoft.
Which version of AgilePoint do I need to be on to use the new SharePoint app?
The new SharePoint app now uses the new SharePoint Webhook and queuing architecture which needed changes in the base engine codebase to listen to these events. Hence it requires our upcoming release AgilePoint NX v9 Software Update 1 which is going to be generally available in our production cloud environments by end of November 2024 and available for on-premise customers by mid-December 2024. Those who currently are on AgilePoint NX v9 or below versions and are users of SharePoint online, we urge you to consider planning to upgrade to this version as soon as it is available. This feature is already available in AgilePoint hosted trial cloud environments in case you want to try the new SharePoint app in a sandbox.
What are the changes in the new app?
For end users, the user interface has undergone a minor refresh. From a backend perspective, we’re rearchitected things.
The changes are related to how AgilePoint associates workflows and forms with the SharePoint list. You will see a few UI changes on Workflow Association popup dialog to meet the SharePoint Framework Solution guidelines but majority of UI i.e. Work Center and eForms remain the same.
What is AgilePoint’s plan to migrate existing customers from older app to the new app?
If you are an existing AgilePoint’s customer who uses AgilePoint for creating workflows or List Forms in SharePoint Online, as I mentioned in my last blog post on this topic, the good news is that there is very minimal impact. AgilePoint Professional Services team will gladly work with you to migrate your SharePoint environment to the new SharePoint app.
Your current environment is configured to use the older app which used the SharePoint Add-in using the provider-hosted app model and had components such as Webparts, workflow status, and workflow association and workflow launcher. These need to be cleaned up and replaced with the new mechanism which is based on the SharePoint Framework Extension and Webhooks. So, a simple, one-time migration is required to port your running process instance status, workflow associations, and form associations.
Even better, AgilePoint Professional Services team will be using a migration utility to make this transition smooth on a per site collection basis. This migration utility will be available in December 2024 so please stay tuned for more updates on this.
What do you need to know if you are starting fresh on AgilePoint SharePoint app?
Welcome to AgilePoint! We’re excited to have you on board. Rest assured, you’re in safe hands with our robust and future-ready SharePoint app. If your AgilePoint license includes SharePoint app, please feel free to head to SharePoint Online store to download it and connect your SharePoint environment to AgilePoint hosted trial tenant. These features will be generally available in our production cloud environments by end of November 2024 and available for on-premise customers by mid-December 2024.
Get Started Today!
Ready to experience the new app? Let us guide you through the setup process. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the video we’ve prepared just for you.
What’s Next?
In December 2024, both AgilePoint NX v9 SU1 and the new SharePoint app will be globally available. You can reach out to your account manager who will guide you. Alternatively, you can login to Helpdesk and raise a support ticket. If you want phone-based support, please call us. You will be guided.
I will get back soon on how to use the migration utility in a separate blog post.
Thank you for being part of the AgilePoint family. We’re confident that the redesigned SharePoint app will elevate your productivity.