In today’s world, it’s always about speed, efficiency and accuracy.
SharePoint tools used precisely for SharePoint development are no different in this aspect. To aid the developer community, a number of SharePoint tools and utilities have come up and evolved into what we call “must-have tools” for a developer. We did internal research among our own development team and a number of such powerful tools were listed out. After a careful evaluation and weighing on the advantages, here are our Top 5.
- CAML Query Builder
- SharePoint Search Query tool
- SharePoint Manager
- ULS Viewer
- Fiddler
A Quick Glance at these SharePoint Tools
CAML Query Builder
There is almost no custom development project in SharePoint that does not involve pulling data from SharePoint lists and libraries. And CAML queries are among such essential SharePoint tools needed to accomplish this. It is only fair to say that 10-15% of development effort goes into writing CAML queries and optimizing them.
An efficient CAML query builder tool can not only boost your development saving time but also allow you to validate your results as you are writing the queries. There are some free SharePoint online tools available and one of the most popular among them is the one from U2U.
But if you are looking for a full-fledged developer tool, do check out this tool from Saketa – CAML Query Builder. This one has a lot of advanced features and the one we liked the best was a list or library explorer.
SharePoint Search Query Tool
Searching for relevant information is required for every project. SharePoint, being no different, is built to share information in humongous volume. To build an efficient search, for that information, it is always a challenge to write queries for developers. It is time-consuming and even at times may lead to undesirable results.
SharePoint Search Query tools come with a predefined set of Query options. Developer can build queries as well as visualize the result in required format among JSON and XML, on the go while working on huge SharePoint farm. This reduces development and testing time.
If you looking for SharePoint tools that simplify your search requirements then you should use SharePoint Search Query Tool
SharePoint Manager 2013
Exploring the SharePoint Object Model of projects, an obvious task, while working on any solution. We utilize this tool to see the SharePoint farm structure. It helps in visualizing the schema stored in the database, however, it doesn’t have direct access to SQL Server, so editing is not possible. The users with server access can only use this tool. We can use this tool to see the complete object (e.g.: Site, List/Library) structure and underline properties and their values.
If you are looking for SharePoint tools to help with rapid assessing of various SharePoint Object model details and bypass the Hassel of connecting to site/project to see the underline lists/libraries and their schema/settings, then SharePoint Manager 2013 (previous version 2010 available) is among the perfect SharePoint developer tools for you. All details are directly available to the local farm, save your time and assess the object model information.
ULS Viewer
While working on projects, SharePoint log files have a huge number of logs for every request. It becomes hard to identify and debug the problem manually. So, the ULS viewer tool helps us to do this job in a very short time. It gives us multiple filters to refine the logs and get the needed lines of statements based on correlation id and levels (e.g.: Info, Debug, Error, Critical, and Verbose). It saves time by assisting in finding the errors easily with color codes using smart highlights.
Thus, when we are configuring or deploying or debugging the SharePoint Project, the ULS Log Viewer is among the best SharePoint online development tools that help in searching logs instantly and saving time in resolving errors.
Fiddler
Debugging the client-side interface for all requests and responses is a time-consuming process for a developer. Identifying various web sessions, traffic and their response becomes very tedious. We use Fiddler to easily analyze the statistics of requests and downloaded data which helps us in improving the performance of the site. And can also record the requests traffic for further use.
Are you looking for rapid debugging and testing client-side tools? Use Fiddler Fiddler.
Over and above, five must-have SharePoint tools, we would like to share and mention the Browser Debugging Extensions:
- F12 browser debugging tool for all browsers
- Postman Client extension for Chrome
- Advanced REST Client extension for Chrome
- JSON View extension for Chrome
- XML Tree extension for Chrome
- XV-XML Viewer extension for Chrome
- Firebug for Firefox
We are happy to share our experience in terms of the SharePoint tools list that can help us in increasing our efficiency. Though there are many tools available in the market, we prefer these tools extensively. They are part of our projects and success stories.
Do share more tools you guys are using and let us know where these SharePoint development tools are contributing. Let’s share and get maximum advantage to build our SharePoint teams more efficient and productive.
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