Side Loading of apps is not enabled on this site error while installing app

If you are trying to install an app to SharePoint 2013 RTM environment or to Office 365 then you might see the below error if you are trying to deploy the app to the site which is not developer site.

Error occurred in deployment step 'Install App for SharePoint': Side Loading of apps is not enabled on this site.

Solution: 
Always the app should be published/deployed to the developer site (A site collection with the Developer Site Template). And from this developer site you can add the App to your SharePoint site. 

SharePoint 2013 Cloud or no Cloud - What is your choice?

SharePoint 2013 come up with fantastic features with new UI, new architectures like App Model, Search Crawling and Shredded Storage etc. This new release is impressive and it's support very large and multi-server FARM support. Below are my views on whether to go for Cloud environment or to no go for it.

Why to go for Cloud (SharePoint Online)?

• Platform: As we already know SharePoint online for 2013 Preview build is available. RTM will be available soon.
• UI: The new UI is very easy to use, customize and add more functionality through CMS improvements compared to earlier versions.
• Tools: The Napa tools help us to quickly write the code (Client Side code) and publish them from browser in no time. Very quick development tools. 
• App Model: The new app model will give us the opportunity to extend our SharePoint system with custom coding. Earlier models supports Sandbox solutions and in 2013 we have both Sandbox and App models. 
• Design & Customization: It's as easy as uploading a background image and change colors to design a new theme for SharePoint site in 2013, until unless you want to change the master page for full extent. You can customize the master pages with tools like SharePoint Designer and deploy them to SharePoint Online. Themes are very easy to apply and customization is very simple. 
• Cost: If you like to maintain a FARM on-premises it will be more expensive to maintain the hardware and software. SharePoint online is too cheap compared to on-premises and will save thousands of $. 

Why to not go for Cloud (SharePoint Online)?

• There are no big new reasons why we need on-premises environment. :) If yours is big organization where many services are running like finance services, corporation intranet, file share and search crawling then we must need on-premises environment. SharePoint Online will not give control to run all these as there is  no authorization to Central Administration. 
• If an organization has big repository for the documents on file share and you like to crawl them to show results in Search then we must need on-premises.
• Multi-server FARM is only possible in On-premises and Farm level solutions are possible only in On-premises.

It's completely based on our requirements to decide whether to go for Cloud or not. Above mentioned are the possible reasons according to my view. SharePoint online (build in 2013) is a great product for CMS, small scale intranets. With new templates available in SharePoint 2013, you can build product catalog web sites etc. I believe SharePoint Online will grow fast in near future. 

Download SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 RTM

Just last week we discussed about 2013 versions are reaching RTM and thought they will be released in mid-November. But, you know what the RTM are available to download in MSDN. Mine is in progress why are you waiting? Download yours too!

Download SharePoint Server 2013

Geolocation field in SharePoint 2013

Today I have played with this field and really fantastic to have this feature in SharePoint. It's going to be very useful in our applications.

I have wasted around 30 minutes of time to find where is the Geolocation field to manually add from browser. I searched in the Site Columns list and didn't find it. Thought I have to activate any features and searched Site collection features and site features.... But no luck.

After did some research and found that we have to add the Geolocation field through programming. Is it? really? Why? So many questions and started doing research more time and everyone given the examples in C# (Server side coding) to add Geolocation field to a list. OK. now what? Below is what I have did to check the Geolocation functionality.

Sorry there was something wrong with the download. Try adding it again error in SharePoint 2013 Apps

**Update: The issues is resolved in RTM release. The issues was coming only in the preview version.

I know everyone should get this error when they try to add an app from the SharePoint Store. Yes, it is a bug and whatever App you want to add to the SharePoint 2013 site you will see the below error.

Sorry, there was something wrong with the download. Try adding it again

SharePoint and Office 2013 RTM announced

Wow. It's too early than expected. Great! The Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 RTM are announced and it will available from mid-November.
Office team says they provide Business customer with early access for testing, piloting and adopting office within their organizations and give feedback to improve their products.

• We will begin rolling out new capabilities to Office 365 Enterprise customers in our next service update, starting in November through general availability.
• Volume Licensing customers with Software Assurance will be able to download the Office 2013 applications as well as other Office products including SharePoint 2013, Lync 2013 and Exchange 2013 through the Volume Licensing Service Center by mid-November. These products will be available on the Volume Licensing price list on December 1.
• IT professionals and developers will be able to download the final version via their TechNet or MSDN subscriptions by mid-November.

You can stay tuned my blog for more information and news about the new products related to SharePoint and Office. Awaiting for RTM versions.

Limits and Boundaries of SharePoint 2013

As we all know boundaries are absolute limits that cannot be exceeded by design. When we are planning to design a farm we should keep all these limits to avoid future issues. Perfect example of boundary is document size limit: 2GB. It’s by design and the absolute limit and cannot be exceeded by design.
Thresholds are those have a default value that can be change in certain circumstances. Default the document size is 50MB and you can increase up to 2GB.

Main limitations:

How to create tiles for SharePoint

Syncfusion tool is excellent to create the tiles. They have plenty of icons to create our custom tiles to use them in the new windows platform. I am using this software to create tiles for my SharePoint 2013 site. Really cool and strongly suggest you to use it.

Download it here.

SharePoint Designer 2013 design view?

I know the designer fans are not happy when they hear the news about it. The design view is completely removed by Microsoft with no reason. The only mode available is Code view. For each change you are doing, you have to preview it by running the Preview in Browser option. Not good right?

But, the good news is that SharePoint 2013 sites can be opened through SharePoint Designer 2010. I know it's not recommended by Microsoft, but we can use it for now to get the design and code view for our implementations. If you need to implement pages, web parts requires design view then go for SharePoint designer 2010. Otherwise you can use improved designer 2013 for workflows, styles etc..