 My name is Amit Wasu. I'm a senior consultant, officer 65 at SharePoint. I'm an independent consultant from Toronto, Canada and I've been specializing in custom development using SharePoint and officer 65. My background as a SharePoint dev goes all the way back to SharePoint 2003. I must thank program manager Dan Winter back in the days used to log about a lot of APIs and web services on SharePoint 2003. That's when I started getting into SharePoint. I probably would have left few web and site objects open and tanks you form but after 2007 onwards all the custom development that Microsoft SharePoint started offering spent a lot of time on server-side coding up to SharePoint 2010 and 2013 onwards I jumped on to on client-side so fairly confident on the server-side but a lot of experience on the client-side as well using CSOM REST. Didn't spend too much time on add-in model or app model but started spending time with SharePoint framework as well. I've spent time on my dev tenant so I've created dev tenant and I've been playing with SharePoint framework on and off. When initial SharePoint framework web part came I created few web parts deployed into the dev tenant. Nothing in the prod yet but I've been trying and understanding how all the dependencies work, what's the templating look like and stuff like that. So and then after that there was some gap and then again started picking up on this with the framework extensions that are coming out so being spending time on learning what can and cannot be done using those extensions so my experience on SharePoint framework is mostly on a dev side but I would say I'm fairly confident in understanding what's the framework architecture is and how things work. I think SharePoint framework with the introduction of custom extension is in pretty good state if you would be building something against or you're doing certain things on SharePoint on-prem and you wanted to start doing certain things in the SharePoint online I think SharePoint framework does allow you to to customize various part of your SharePoint implementation so I think it's a good start. They still need to I still think that they need to earn a few things in terms of ALM and Visio studio part where citizen devs would probably would have some issues but other than that I think it's a good start and looking at the roadmap I think it looks pretty good too. I think looking at the roadmap they are definitely going in the right direction especially with bringing framework on-prem giving the parity for SharePoint devs to start building framework components on-prem as well as SharePoint online so that consistent dev experience when they move from on-prem to SharePoint online that's a huge thing. Also looking at the roadmap the whole ALM story I think it's definitely must have and looking that into the roadmap definitely helps a lot of devs and in terms of when you're building your devs a lot of companies move into that cycle of your building continuous deployment continuous testing and approval and stuff like that and having that story ironed out it's definitely a nice to have. So I looked at the roadmap there are a few things that I also liked about there's like graph API access to from the SharePoint framework so overall I think the roadmap looks pretty good and as I said if they can continue working what they're promising and then delivering and especially with the framework I'm a little more bullish and sticking my neck out that in the future framework definitely would be replacing a lot of server-side things that we used to do so I'm pretty happy to see where we are Microsoft going with the framework roadmap. It has to be workbench and and for me the workbench is definitely one of the thing that gives you that flexibility to build against local environment as well as running that same workbench against the context of SharePoint online and that helps with a lot of development that you're doing it as a dev and you're building something you don't need to be installing entire SharePoint on your dev machine so having something that you can just run and execute your code and see how it will look is definitely a nice to have and and for me that's one of the best thing that SharePoint framework gives you when you're building any custom reports and wanted to try it out in running locally and in running in context of SharePoint online. I've already said that in the roadmap I think one of the thing that they must have is a solid ALM story from deployment to approval and even having some support for automated testing because that's the way most enterprise developments happening and not having that story around SharePoint framework is going to affect the use of the SharePoint framework. There's adoption that enterprise devs companies going to bring back that framework and to start building against it is going to be all the challenging because their their ALM process is pretty ironed out for the most part and adding something new where the ALM story is not that great is something we're going to be challenging with the adoption so I think they should definitely put that in a hard on the backlog and and that was something I would think that they should add it. That actually so if I would go back and if I would have to change something I think having SharePoint framework available that as a Visual Studio template probably would have been a better option in terms of adoption because Microsoft would have to understand that there are a lot of citizen devs and SharePoint and server product is I would consider as a commodity so a lot of devs working in-house are quite used to Visual Studio and getting to learn something totally new in terms of Visual Studio code and stuff like that it doesn't help that adoption that Microsoft probably would like to see because the whole adoption piece is going to bring that SharePoint framework live so I think that is something if I can change I would definitely change yes there is extension that Vesa and and Eric Shub has worked on that's definitely good as an independent consultant I mean that's not so bad for me because that then I can help a lot of companies with building custom devs but if Microsoft looking for more adoption I think Visual Studio's templating would have been a better approach going with the SharePoint framework. So continuation to my previous answer I think the biggest challenge with SharePoint framework is a learning curve because when Microsoft introduced the SharePoint framework they're there like definitely would be batting on adoption of SharePoint framework across the enterprise dev people that are currently yet running SharePoint 2016 on-prem and that whole learning curve that as a dev that they have to go through not having a Visual Studio template or spending time learning node manager or node package manager or Yoma and trying to understand the getting their heads around it what are the dependencies that they have to worry about and things like that it's a huge learning curve and that's where one of the biggest challenge because as a dev who has not gone out outside of Visual Studio and learning something new and with the learning is not just another part that they are building there are other things that they have to be aware of so I think Microsoft's doing a great job on providing a lot of how-to's and articles but I think more clarity around all the other dependency outside of the SharePoint framework probably would help a lot of devs as well so I think the biggest challenge for for devs is learning curve around building something use using SharePoint framework I think in next six months or 12 months I think SharePoint framework is a definitely a good start the way I see it is Microsoft started trying to fill out all the existing gaps and Microsoft looking forward to looking at what's coming in the future so I'm not other than an add-in model I think framework is here to stay and that's how I predict that the SharePoint framework is continued to have more and more features more components that we can use similar to extension so my prediction in terms of SharePoint framework for next six months or even two years from now is it's going to stay it's mostly going to try and replace most of the stuff that we used to do with the server-side model on-prem and allowing similar functionalities and features for all the devs to the SharePoint online and on the on-prem as well one thing that I would definitely advise is on the training so anyone that wanted to get get started on SharePoint framework definitely go check all the Microsoft how-tos it's for very very beginners that want to just get started on it how to set up your dev environment and stuff like that but one thing not just because Andrew's interviewing me but I have gone through back in 2007 Andrew's training course on WCM and it's still in my head how WCM works in SharePoint so if you're definitely looking for some professional training I would recommend Andrew Connell's White Donuts I hope I pronounced it right to be considered as as your training material because as I said I can I can swear to the training course that I've taken and I hope Andrew has not lost his charm with the SharePoint framework as well so that's my my recommendation and one other thing that I would recommend is don't be afraid the change is always going to be there and Visual Studio probably and and I think once they started using Visual Studio code they're probably not after six months or so they probably would not want to go back to Visual Studio so trying new things out is definitely what I would advise and for the training there as I say starting Microsoft's all the how-tos and any professional training that I would recommend at Andrew's training so