The great part about SharePoint is the flexibility the platform provides for team sites, document management, and collaboration. For developers, this means a lot of design variables, depending on the needs of the organization.
Developing a great SharePoint site takes vision and communication – it also helps to have some great tools in your arsenal to make the process as streamlined as possible. By using the following extensions for Google Chrome, it becomes much easier to create or revamp sites for SharePoint 2019 in addition to earlier versions.
Postman
This is an excellent tool for all your organization’s API development needs. It’s built to cater to the needs of multiple users with API schema support, a workspace that updates in real-time, and admin controls for user access to workspaces. The collections feature makes it simple to organize and document requests as well as examine responses of single or batches of requests.
It works well with solutions like Swagger for RESTful APIs. This makes it simple to create methods for Azure functions and Logical App calls, plus it’s helpful for building Microsoft Flow Connectors.
Get Postman here.
JSON Viewer
It can feel tedious to pick through JSON or JSONP code among other lines of code. This tool highlights JSON independently among other lines of code with color-coding, depending on syntax. There are several other filters and viewing options that can be used to enhance the visibility of JSON code, which reduces the time (and eye strain) staring at a screen.
This is helpful for SharePoint sites when you’re pulling data from other machines, such as Azure VMs or data from other machines.
Get JSON Viewer here.
Get JSON Viewer here.
SONAR
If your SharePoint site is running slow, it’s unlikely that it’s the system – it’s usually configuration issues with permissions and other coding related errors. This tool parses your site and identifies performance attributes that are causing elements to load slowly or to not function. It also works as a reporting tool that allows you to share information with others, such as infrastructure teams or supporters for other app platforms.
Of course, this works for any kind of webpage but it’s a great addition to the toolset of SharePoint developers.
Get SONAR here.
Check My Links
This is a simple tool that crawls a webpage – such as a SharePoint site – and identifies links that aren’t functioning. Once the analysis is complete, you can easily export (well, copy) the non-functional links to another location where you can examine the issues in further detail.
This is ideal for pages dense with links to other documentation. Especially in knowledge bases, this is helpful to ensure that all the links are working without manual review.
Get Check My Links here.
Angular JS Inspector
For those who use Angular JS for content delivery, this allows developers to easily debug endpoints built with Angular. This extension provides the ability to easily examine elements that aren’t typically visible in the dev tools console.
With this tool, you can easily verify services, factories, and constants from a simplified view.
Get ng-inspect for AngularJS here.
SPush SP editor
When testing out different formats for content delivery, you can use this tool to automatically save variations of script and CSS files to SharePoint. This simplifies the testing of different code for layout on a SharePoint site.
If you’re manually manipulating CSS to alter markup and other elements, this extension acts as a versioning system to quickly test different variants.
IE Tab
While the need to cater to Internet Explorer is becoming less and less common, some organizations still rely on this browser to view internal resources. SharePoint sites that direct to pages that use ActiveX (and other IE technologies) can be rendered exactly as seen on production machines with this tool.
Developers who serve organizations that still rely on IE for the delivery of content can use this tool to ensure display and functionality in such an environment.
Get IE Tab here.
Clear Cache
Items in your cache create problems for developers, just as they do end-users. To ensure that your system is loading the most current data, this tool will help quickly eliminate files that typically create problems.
Get Clear Cache here.
SharePoint Starter Kit
This great tool has yet to make it to the official Chrome Web Store, but a quick install from GitHub will get you on your way. This extension packages several useful tools to customize a SharePoint site without serious effort.
Please note that there are pre-requisites to make this solution usable for a SharePoint tenant. Once properly installed, several tools included in this suite allow developers or admins to quickly implement useful web features on a SharePoint site.
Get SharePoint Starter Kit here.
Google Chrome Profiles
While not an extension, this feature of Chrome makes it much easier for developers who are using multiple profiles to tackle tasks and test features. Check out this page and watch the included video to see how adding and using multiple Google profiles makes development more efficient.
Contact SharePoint experts at SoHo Dragon
If you’re a SharePoint developer then hopefully you’ll find these tool suggestions useful for your own endeavors. For those that are struggling, feel free to reach out to us as we can assist with everything from the architecture to troubleshooting of your digital workspace.
Reach out to us here and learn more about how our services can help improve your SharePoint solution!