List of SharePoint development tools

Question

What tools do you consider essential in your SharePoint development toolkit?

One answer per tool please so the community can vote!

score 52 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 12:13

SharePoint Manager is a SharePoint object model explorer. It enables you to browse every site on the local farm and view every property. It also enables you to change the properties (at your own risk). This is a very powerfull tool for developers that like to know what the SharePoint holds of secrets.

Alex Angas · Answer 2 · 2009-10-08T16:20:08.800

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SPDisposeCheck - to check for any dispose mistakes that could result in a memory leak.

Good to have hooked up to a build target as a post-build step so that the build fails if any problems are found.

edited Oct 08 '09 at 16:20

answered Oct 08 '09 at 11:11

Alex Angas

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I would now recommend SPCop instead. It already includes SPDisposeCheck. This tool is free to use and contains a lot of rules that check your code for common mistakes – Denis Molodtsov Jan 28 '14 at 20:27

score 35 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 10:49

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U2U CAML Query Builder - who in the SharePoint world can live without this one! It helps you avoid commoin CAML mistakes.

answered Oct 08 '09 at 10:49

Wictor Wilen MCA MCM MVP

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score 31 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 10:46

31

WSPBuilder - for an easier, faster and more troublefree way to create new SharePoint solutions/features.

answered Oct 08 '09 at 10:46

Wictor Wilen MCA MCM MVP

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WSPBuilder is essential for building SP 2007 apps, but I very dislike the 2010 version, compared to Visual Studio native SharePoint projects. Also good to know, CKSDev provides a project template that import WSP Builder projects (very useful for migrating projects) – Steve B Dec 11 '12 at 09:09
Yep, CKSDev is the way to go now. I think this thread is already too old. It might give false impression to the novice SharePoint developers. Many tools mentioned here are not essential anymore because some better replacements appeared. – Denis Molodtsov Jan 28 '14 at 20:30

score 30 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 13:01

30

Can't do any serious development/debugging without Fiddler

It's a great tool for examining all HTTP(s) traffic of your apps.

answered Oct 08 '09 at 13:01

Mark Rackley

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score 26 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 21 '09 at 03:11

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My favorite ULS Viewer: http://ulsviewer.codeplex.com/

answered Nov 21 '09 at 03:11

Mike Oryszak

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score 23 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 15:17

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I've found .NET Reflector (now from RedGate) to be an indispensable tool when developing, and with SharePoint in particular. In some cases it has saved me from spinning wheels when it is clearly a "bug" or "feature" in the SP codebase, but it most cases it has just been invaluable from a learning perspective (oh, that's how that works!)

answered Oct 08 '09 at 15:17

Kevin Dostalek

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The Reflector is actually my SP documentation! – Wictor Wilen MCA MCM MVP Oct 08 '09 at 17:58
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If buting Reflector is an issue, ILSpy is a free alternative. Not as complete as reflector, but efficient to explore some obscure sharePoint components – Steve B Dec 11 '12 at 09:11
For completeness there's also DotPeek by JetBrains (of Resharper) and JustDecompiler by Telerik – Nick Devereaux Nov 11 '14 at 04:38

score 23 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 09:15

Firebug! Useful in so many ways:

Editing HTML and CSS in-browser and on the fly
Ability to see which CSS rules are active and work with the box model
JavaScript console and debugging support (excellent for jQuery)
Net tab for seeing server requests and download performance

score 16 · Answer 9 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 11:51

16

Maybe not SharePoint specific, but I don't write code without ReSharper. Countless ways it improves productivity.

answered Oct 08 '09 at 11:51

Bil Simser

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score 15 · Answer 10 · answered Oct 09 '09 at 21:07

15

I use IE8's Developer Tools whenever I work with JavaScript, CSS or HTML in SharePoint.

answered Oct 09 '09 at 21:07

Bjørn Furuknap

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the DOM inspector is no where near as accurate as Firebug so I tend to avoid it as it's misleading. – Oct 12 '09 at 05:18

score 15 · Answer 11 · answered Oct 14 '09 at 09:16

15

PowerShell! I use PowerShell more and more for small POC's where I would normally use console apps. Also for automation PowerShell is a great tool!

answered Oct 14 '09 at 09:16

Anders Rask

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score 14 · Answer 12 · edited Jul 20 '11 at 15:43

14

@glapointe's STSADM custom extensions. The tools rock, and also looking at his code and seeing how he writes the functions helps you understand the API too!

edited Jul 20 '11 at 15:43

Kit Menke

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answered Oct 09 '09 at 13:40

score 12 · Answer 13 · answered Oct 09 '09 at 10:38

It asked for only one product per answer but I will group a couple as they work together.

NUnit - for your unit testing. I also use MSTest but find NUnit has less clutter (VS2010 removes this for MSTest)

TestDriven.Net - great tool for running the tests and include the open source version of NCover for your coverage needs.

score 12 · Answer 14 · edited Dec 11 '12 at 09:12

12

Another one that's not really a tool but nevertheless very handy; in my quick launch bar I always add a Shortcut and a Toolbar to the 12 hive:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\12

edited Dec 11 '12 at 09:12

Steve B

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answered Oct 12 '09 at 03:30

Brian Meinertz

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score 11 · Answer 15 · edited Jul 09 '12 at 14:57

11

Development

Main

Visual Studio
- Visual Studio 2012 (SharePoint 2010), currently in Release candidate version
- Visual Studio 2010 (SharePoint 2010) with service pack 1
- Visual Studio 2008 (SharePoint 2007)
SharePoint Designer
- SharePoint Designer 2010 (SharePoint 2010)
- SharePoint Designer 2007 (SharePoint 2007)

Visual Studio extensions

CKSDev
WSPBuilder, for Sharepoint 2007 (not reliable and quite useless with SharePoint 2010)

SDK

SharePoint 2010 Reference: Software Development Kit

Companion tools

Administration

TODO

edited Jul 09 '12 at 14:57

Kit Menke

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answered Jul 06 '12 at 14:49

Steve B

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Hey Steve, I've merged the questions, unlocked this question, and edited so it isn't version specific. I think you should be good to go! :) – Kit Menke Jul 09 '12 at 14:58

score 10 · Answer 16 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 13:43

10

TypeMock http://typemock.com

it's the only way to write unit tests for sharepoint. Somthing we all should be doing.

http://www.qualitysharepoint.com/2009/03/options-for-unit-testing-sharepoint.html

answered Oct 08 '09 at 13:43

score 8 · Answer 17 · answered Dec 15 '09 at 13:03

8

For SharePoint 2010 Development:

SharePoint 2010 Developer Dashboard Visualizer

answered Dec 15 '09 at 13:03

Jaap Vossers

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score 7 · Answer 18 · edited Sep 30 '16 at 13:26

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The content deployment wizard: The SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard is a tool for SharePoint 2007 which provides the means to deploy the following content:

site collections
webs
lists
folders
list items (including files)

edited Sep 30 '16 at 13:26

Ronak Patel

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answered Jan 11 '10 at 10:32

Emad Gabriel

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score 7 · Answer 19 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 19:07

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I'm suprised no one has brought up STSDev from codeplex. I like the way it sets up the project and set ups all the files and build tasks. Worth a look.

answered Oct 08 '09 at 19:07

score 7 · Answer 20 · answered Oct 09 '09 at 08:50

SPTraceView is awesome for seeing errors that occur on SharePoint server, especially if it's your dev box as they happen via the System Tray! Also when you double click on tray it shows the exceptions...rather than you opening whole ugly ULS log ;-)

score 7 · Answer 21 · answered Oct 09 '09 at 19:42

7

Sure fiddler is good, but Visual RoundTrip Analyzer (VRTA) gives you a nice graphical illustration and can also help you with advice in solving the problems. It has issues regarding virtual environments though, but a great tool never the less (thanx Spence for introducing it to me:-) download VRTA

answered Oct 09 '09 at 19:42

Anders Rask

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VRTA is awesome, great for finding and analyzing your bottlenecks – Wictor Wilen MCA MCM MVP Oct 12 '09 at 10:08

score 6 · Answer 22 · answered Oct 09 '09 at 18:54

6

DebugView from Sysinternals/now Technet combined with System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine, System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert etc is very good especially in events or workflows where you cannot do trace.

answered Oct 09 '09 at 18:54

Anders Rask

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score 6 · Answer 23 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 11:42

6

Slight bias here. But I can't build SharePoint Lists, Content Types, Site Columns and Module files without SPSource written by myself (@jthake) and @richfinn!

answered Oct 08 '09 at 11:42

score 5 · Answer 24 · 2009-10-08T19:55:57.097

5

I recommend using VSeWSS 1.3 March 2009 CTP and hopefully RTW soon.

edited Oct 08 '09 at 19:55

answered Oct 08 '09 at 17:14

The question asks for one answer per tool so we can vote and see which ones are popular. Please add any tools that don't already exist as separate answers and when you have enough rep vote for the ones you value! – Alex Angas Oct 08 '09 at 19:44
My bad... I will correct it. – Oct 08 '09 at 19:54
Thanks! Downvote removed. BTW think I read somewhere that there won't be an RTM of VSeWSS 1.3. Pretty sure the SP dev team are entirely focussed on the SP2010/VS2010 integration. – Alex Angas Oct 08 '09 at 20:58
Thats good to know... I possed this question on the SharePoint forums and Paul Andrew commented that it was not going to be available until October 2009. You might just be right. Below is a link to the post.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointdevelopment/thread/b0987b13-a8c5-47d7-a242-61deef134f6b
– Oct 08 '09 at 23:50

score 5 · Answer 25 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 18:01

Microsoft Live Mesh is a great tool to handle all your other tools. I've set up a folder that I have all my tools in and then use Live Mesh to have these tools synchronized into my VM's and other machines. As soon as I add or update a tool, they are all "copied" to my other machines.

score 5 · Answer 26 · answered Oct 09 '09 at 10:35

5

TypeMock Isolator - essential if you are doing unit testing and need to fake out the calls to SharePoint

answered Oct 09 '09 at 10:35

AndrewWoody

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Thanks Woody. We already have TypeMock here: http://www.sharepointoverflow.com/questions/81/what-tools-are-essential-for-every-sharepoint-developer/102#102 It's turning into a longer list than I expected... – Alex Angas Oct 09 '09 at 11:07

score 5 · Answer 27 · answered Oct 09 '09 at 19:11

Ehm, noone said MetaMan yet? Doint BDC by hand is such a pain... MetaMan is the best tool out there. And now also web based. (ok Nick you can cough up a with a dev license now ;-) Nah seriously, its an expensive tool, and the licensing model sux (for devs at consultancy companies that has lots of different customers) but the tool is top notch and saved me more times than i care to remember from doing tedious XML

score 5 · Answer 28 · answered Oct 09 '09 at 19:32

What? Noone said SQL Server Profiler yet? How the heck do you guys find out what goes on behind the scenes without it? :-)

Especially good when you are after better performance. A quick profiler run will find those pesky SharePoint "specialities" in .NET like using foreach instead of for loops, or the difference in performance of doing SPContext.Current.List.ItemCount and SPContext.Current.List.Items.Count, finding deadlocks, timeouts etc

score 5 · Answer 29 · answered Apr 05 '10 at 21:36

I use sharegate to deploy sites from DEV to QA to Prod and Prod to QA to Dev.

http://www.share-gate.com

From their website :

sharegate is a light yet powerful tool to compare and synchronize your SharePoint environments in only three steps. It quickly detects the differences between your sites and allows you to send your chosen selections to your desired destination from anywhere in your organization. Our tool accelerates your SharePoint deployments by significantly reducing the time consuming manual process. The power of sharegate resides in its simplicity and its cost. We all agree that we need a simple tool for SharePoint synchronization.

@Guillaume Roy: Please edit your answer to clearly disclose that this is your company's product. Spam is not tolerated on SharePoint Overflow. Thanks :-) — Alex Angas, Apr 05 '10 at 23:27

score 5 · Answer 30 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 11:29

5

SharePoint Skinner for creating CSS styles and themes for your site visually

answered Oct 08 '09 at 11:29

Bil Simser

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score 4 · Answer 31 · answered Oct 14 '13 at 20:08

SP|CAF : SharePoint Code Analysis Framework

Essential tool to ensure SharePoint code quality. SPCAF analyses SharePoint code from .wsp and .app files and checks all contained code incl. XML, ASPX, JS, CSS for correctness, best practices etc.

It creates dependency Graphs, calculates code metrics and creates an inventory.

enter image description here

score 4 · Answer 32 · answered Jan 23 '14 at 08:02

http://smtp4dev.codeplex.com/ - "Sets up a dummy SMTP server. Sits in the system tray and does not deliver the received messages. The received messages can be quickly viewed, saved and the source/structure inspected. Useful for testing/debugging software that generates email."

Perfect for small develop environments.

score 3 · Answer 33 · answered Jan 11 '10 at 23:16

3

Gallio and MBUnit testing frameworks

answered Jan 11 '10 at 23:16

score 3 · Answer 34 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 23:56

3

I also found CAML.NET IntelliSense to be very valuable. This has saved me alot of time.

answered Oct 08 '09 at 23:56

score 3 · Answer 35 · answered Oct 09 '09 at 19:06

3

HyperV! I love doing dev work on my pumped up 2008 server where i can spawn as many virtual servers as i need with performance that leaves VMWare in the dust!

answered Oct 09 '09 at 19:06

Anders Rask

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Moreover, Windows 8 is now shipped with Hyper-V, which avoid users to work on server OS (for their daily job). – Steve B Dec 11 '12 at 09:07

score 3 · Answer 36 · answered Jul 21 '11 at 07:31

3

I would recommend the SharePoint Software Factory which not only allows you to develop for SharePoint 2007 and 2010 from either VS2008 or VS2010, but also supports you with wizards to create the usual SharePoint artefacts.

Have a look at the video on the codeplex page.

answered Jul 21 '11 at 07:31

Mattein

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Hello and welcome to SharePoint Stack Exchange! We require disclosure of any affiliation with products or websites. Please see May I promote products or websites I am affiliated with here? for guidelines. Thank you. – Alex Angas Jul 21 '11 at 23:17

score 3 · Answer 37 · answered Oct 12 '09 at 03:34

3

Spencer Harbar's Application Pool Manager, for speedy and specfic App Pool resets.

answered Oct 12 '09 at 03:34

Brian Meinertz

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score 3 · Answer 38 · answered Apr 05 '10 at 06:24

SysInternal's (now Microsoft) Process Monitor is essential for troubleshooting security and other problems related to access to the file system, registry etc. Not SharePoint specific, but I find myself using it in combination with SharePoint on a frequent basis.

score 3 · Answer 39 · answered Oct 21 '09 at 10:30

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I use SPVisualDev. Integrates with wspbuilder and now apparently allows remote development (did not try this yet).

answered Oct 21 '09 at 10:30

Stefan Egli

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Vadim Gremyachev · Answer 40 · 2012-12-10T22:50:09.383

Yet another great decompiler for investigation of inner working of SharePoint - dotPeek

Main features

Decompiling .NET 1.0-4.5 assemblies to C#
Support for .dll, .exe, .zip, .vsix, .nupkg, and .winmd files
Quick jump to a type, assembly, symbol, or type member
Effortless navigation to symbol declarations,implementations, derived and base symbols,and more
Accurate search for symbol usages with advanced presentation of search results
Overview of inheritance chains
Support for downloading code from source servers
Syntax highlighting
Complete keyboard support

and dotPeek is free!

Main Window enter image description here

score 3 · Answer 41 · answered Oct 08 '09 at 12:21

3

I would say a Virtual PC/Environment is essential

answered Oct 08 '09 at 12:21

Phill Duffy

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score 2 · Answer 42 · answered Mar 15 '11 at 13:10

2

Imtech Fields Explorer

Great tool for exporting content types, site columns and lists definition in XML; available on Codeplex.

answered Mar 15 '11 at 13:10

Mihai Brustur

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Anders Rask · Answer 43 · 2009-10-12T20:41:44.377

On the nerdy side, but when Reflector gives up due to obfuscation, and you just need to know what happens behind the scene, enter ildasm.exe True you need to be able to read IM language, but its pretty self explanatory, and have helped me many times. For example when i wanted to know what exactly happend behind the scenes when you use -force (bad bad practice!) in stsadm.exe operations (bonus info: -force basicly swallows all exceptions, so you never will see those other code issues your callouts or similar had)

score 2 · Answer 44 · answered Oct 11 '09 at 15:44

One app, that allows me to navigate the SharePoint folders and having shortcuts to them, walk in and out of WSP's, quickly view the content of the files etc is Total Commander.

Using Windows Explorer and walking down into the 12-hive, right-click, select open with really takes to much precious time. Using Total Commander I have shortcuts to the different folders in the 12-hive and then uses the builtin quick search to find the file and the builtin viewer program.

This is one tool I can't live without, and is the first thing I install on all machines (if I don't use Live Mesh, which contains my Total Commander installation folder).

score 2 · Answer 45 · answered Oct 14 '09 at 15:21

I like Crimson Editor as an alternative to notepad. Lightweight (no waiting time to start like visual studio), tabbed interface, macros, "column mode".

Great for quickly creating xml files, csv files, or transforming an xml file into a set of c# lines (using macros)

score 2 · Answer 46 · answered Oct 17 '09 at 05:52

2

Cruise Control .NET to allow nightly builds of your SharePoint solutions.

answered Oct 17 '09 at 05:52

score 2 · Answer 47 · answered Oct 20 '09 at 15:26

Web Development Helper or some similar tool, to track the communication between the browser and the SharePoint Server. Especially usefull when developing with Ajax, jQuery, Silverlight, or any other RIA technology.

score 2 · Answer 48 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:41

2

Here is a very relevant thread from a few years ago before 2010 was released: List of SharePoint development tools

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:41

Community

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answered Jul 06 '12 at 15:14

Mike Oryszak

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score 2 · Answer 49 · answered Jul 06 '12 at 15:50

User Profile Service application Debugging:

if you couldn't set up User Profiles service application in the correct way, you might not get to the actual error straightaway during the sync. The right way to get the actual error message is to use the Synchronization service manager (MIIS Client) and debug User Profile service application.

Path to MIIS Client can be found at:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Synchronization Service\UIShell\miisclient.exe

Vadim Gremyachev · Answer 50 · 2012-12-11T09:02:57.373

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LinqPad - free development tool for learning and testing Language Integrated Query (LINQ) against SQL, ODATA, or an Entity Framework solution

Purpose

Great way to learn to Query the SharePoint List Data Service with LinqPad

Main Window enter image description here

References

SharePoint 2010 REST interface on MSDN
Learn to Query the SharePoint List Data Service with LinqPad article
Using LINQ to SharePoint on MSDN

edited Dec 11 '12 at 09:02

answered Dec 11 '12 at 08:17

Vadim Gremyachev

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score 2 · Answer 51 · edited Nov 19 '09 at 10:01

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MOSS BDC Design Studio. Cheaper than Metaman but I found to have all the tools I need to create ADFs for the Business Data Catalogue.

edited Nov 19 '09 at 10:01

Alex Angas

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answered Nov 19 '09 at 00:53

score 2 · Answer 52 · answered Nov 19 '09 at 10:28

a bit of shameless self-promotion, but SharePoint InlineSiteSettings is a small jQuery script I put on CodePlex that saves a developer (or admin) a significant amount time by shortening the navigation paths and limiting the amount of mouse clicks required to get to a particular admin page in SharePoint. It's all about keeping the momentum going :)

Daniel McPherson · Answer 53 · 2009-12-15T11:27:23.823

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I'm going to demonstrate a bias too, but then, I do lots with SharePoint search and I'm always using it:

SearchCoder

Helps you write and quickly test search queries.

edited Dec 15 '09 at 11:27

answered Nov 19 '09 at 16:02

Daniel McPherson

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score 2 · Answer 54 · answered Nov 20 '09 at 23:15

Moss Query Tool - Excellent tool to test search queries against the MOSS search database. The application helps you build queries as well.

I can't seem to find the download link anywhere but after a quick Google search, I found this tool SharePointSearchServ which apparently replaces MOSS Query Tool.

score 2 · Answer 55 · answered Nov 25 '09 at 06:53

2

Fxcop for static code analysis, in case you are using a VS prof edition

answered Nov 25 '09 at 06:53

score 2 · Answer 56 · answered Nov 22 '10 at 08:57

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If you want to create an on the go, Standalone SP virtual server, use 'VM Player'. It's free and easy to use :D!!

answered Nov 22 '10 at 08:57

score 2 · Answer 57 · answered Oct 14 '13 at 19:59

CAML Designer for SharePoint 2013

Build CAML queries for single lists
Build queries that can be executed with SPSiteDataQuery
Get code snippets for the server-side object model, the .NET client-side object model, the JavaScript client-side object model and last but not least code snippets when working with REST.

score 2 · Answer 58 · answered Feb 06 '14 at 18:39

2

VirtualBox - the poor man's virtual machine maker (an alternative to HyperV).

answered Feb 06 '14 at 18:39

Supriyo SB Chatterjee

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Ovidiu Becheş-Puia · Answer 59 · 2009-10-13T21:30:45.350

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A tool usefull for sites content migration: WssAnalyzeFeatures

This tool allows to verify if the feature definition files for all installed features are present on the file system. Also allows to verify if the features used in site collections an sites are installed on the server. In addition it can create a checklist file which can be used to verify if a server has all features installed required to act as destination for a content deployment job of an existing sitecollection.

Usage:

WssAnalyzeFeatures -url http://server:port

More about it here: WssAnalyzeFeatures

edited Oct 13 '09 at 21:30

answered Oct 08 '09 at 20:00

Ovidiu Becheş-Puia

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These tools already exist as answers. Please vote them up instead of adding another answer so we can see their popularity. – Alex Angas Oct 08 '09 at 20:56

Satyrical · Answer 60 · 2015-02-13T17:08:57.650

0

SharePoint Feature Admin Tool - for taming and nuking rogue features orphaned during caffeine fueled development sessions.

Along with the following handy powershell commands to force delete broken features.

Get-SPFeature | ? { $_.Scope -eq $null }
Get-SPFeature | ? { !$_.Scope } | % { $_.Delete() }

edited Feb 13 '15 at 17:08

answered Feb 13 '15 at 17:00

Satyrical

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score 0 · Answer 61 · answered Jul 07 '12 at 02:01

Here are a few helpful tools I use:

ULS Viewer (to view ULS Logs) -http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer/

SPCAMLEditor (to edit XLST) -http://spcamleditor.codeplex.com/

Here's a list of other useful tools:

https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/devwiki/articles/Pages/SharePoint-Dev-Toolbelt.aspx

score 0 · Answer 62 · answered Jul 10 '12 at 05:43

0

I use only SharePointDesigner2010 and InfoPath2010. These are good too.

answered Jul 10 '12 at 05:43

newbie

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List of SharePoint development tools

62 Answers62

Development

Main

Visual Studio extensions

SDK

Companion tools

Administration

TODO

Purpose

References

Linked

Related