Microsoft Is Removing Code-Based Sandbox Solutions in SharePoint Online – Be Prepared!

Though Microsoft announced that sandbox solutions with “code” (this is becoming a more confusing distinction than ever with JavaScript becoming a first class coding citizen!) were deprecated back in 2014, last week’s announcement that sandbox code was being shut off caught many people by surprise.

There was a post that went up last Friday, July 29th, 2016, on the Office Dev Center blog that let us know that they were Removing Code-Based Sandbox Solutions in SharePoint Online. Unfortunately, there’s no date on the post, so quite a few people I shared it with doubted its relevance. But if you go up a level, you can see it was posted on the 29th.

Removing Code-Based Sandbox Solutions in SharePoint Online
SharePoint team – Published 07/29/2016

Here at Sympraxis, we’ve never used Sandbox solutions (client side rulez!), but this quick shutdown seems to be hitting many people hard. I would have though there would have been  series of reminders, maybe a countdown clock, and some targeted emails to people who are still running this type of solution to help them prepare for the eventuality.

There’s been an active discussion on reddit, confusion in the SharePoint group on Facebook, complaints in the SPYam Yammer network, etc. In other words, the communication either didn’t hit or it hit too late.

Even worse, it seems as though the support people had no idea this was going to happen. As late as last Friday afternoon, this was considered a service issue, with updates coming into the Office 365 Admin Center to explain why it was happening.

Custom Solutions and Workflows – Service degradation

I really try not to be publicly critical of my friends at Microsoft (I know some of you may find that hard to believe!), but this one could have been handled far better. Microsoft is learning how to be more open, and this is one place where I think they are going to learn some things. There may be good reasons why this shutdown is happening ex post haste, and letting us know what those reasons are would be helpful. With SaaS, whether we like it or not, we’re all riding in the same ship. When it springs a leak, not just the women and children need to know it’s time to head to the lifeboats. And it’s August, when not that many people are running at full steam.

There are clear ways to solve this for your own organization, and good articles explaining how to go about it. But you don’t have a lot of time (we’re hearing as little as 30 days, at least in the rumor mill), so you’d better get cracking!

by Marc D Anderson via Marc D Anderson's Blog