How SharePoint’s Add-In Retirement in Microsoft 365 Impacts NITRO Studio

In the ever-changing landscape of working with Microsoft products, Crow Canyon has needed to adapt and change along with that landscape. From the various iterations of SharePoint on-premises to moving to M365 we have adapted and developed our webparts in accordance with Microsoft’s best practices. Sometimes, though, the changes are less expected.

As an example, several years ago Microsoft deprecated sandboxed solutions in SharePoint Online. We had relied on the sandbox-solution model, but quickly realized we’d need to adapt to continue to offer our excellent products to our loyal and growing customer base. We were able to provide updated and new solutions to our customers on the newest available technology well ahead of the planned deprecation.

Once again, Microsoft has shifted their priorities, and we’ll need to adapt. For years, the add-in model was supported and encouraged by Microsoft. But as with all technologies, eventually the framework for add-ins became outdated. Microsoft is encouraging add-in providers to move to the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) model, along with a few other changes.

In November 2023, Microsoft announced retirement of the Add-In model for custom applications: SharePoint Add-In retirement in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn

This will impact NITRO Studio. However, NITRO Studio already uses SPFx for most of the functionality. Work on replacing Add-Ins with SPFx web parts is in the advanced stages, and beta testing is ongoing for the new SPFx model for NITRO Studio.

Known Impacts

This will impact how NITRO Studio is installed and updated and how NITRO components authenticate with SharePoint. It will also impact how Workflows are triggered. We will add more info as it becomes available.

Main areas of change in NITRO Studio for this update are:

1. SharePoint Add-Ins like NITRO Studio home page and site page, will be replaced with SPFx-based solutions.
2. Provider hosted Add-Ins like NITRO Workflows and Approval App will start using new Webhook framework instead of Remote Event Receivers.
3. NITRO components will use Azure AD registered app credentials instead of using add-in credentials.

Target Dates