Currently (Feb 26, 2015), the Client Side Object Model (CSOM) for SharePoint does not provide the same functionality as the Server Side Object Model (SSOM, also knows as the SharePoint API). Some of the gaps are glaring, and particularly frustrating for IT Professionals (ITPros) that are responsible for administrating an Office 365 tenant. For example, at my current client, I have 40 site collections containing, in aggregate, 244 sites. Each site (SPWeb in SSOM parlance) has a property called RequestAccessEmail which is the email address to which access requests are sent. Since most of the site owners still need training before being made responsible for managing permissions, I am the person that these emails should go to. However, I recently took over this role from my coworker at PSC, so this web property has his email address in most cases. Manually having to go visit 244 sites to change this is just dumb. Even though this will be a one time change because I will be setting it to the email address of a distribution list for SharePoint Admins, I still would much rather be able to script it. I’d much rather run the script to touch each site rather than having to go visit each site myself. I’m sure every other O365 administrator of a large site has the same frustration.
The thing is, dear reader, that you and I can do something about this hole in the Client Side Object Model! You and I can provide feedback to Microsoft via the User Voice forum to tell them that this property is an important one and they should add it to the Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Web client side object model AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!
Here’s how:
1. Follow this link to User Voice: http://bit.ly/RAECSOM. There you will see that this issue was reported twice.
Vote them both up! First, click on the first one. You will see the idea details along with a Vote count and a Vote button.
Click on the Vote Button.
Enter your email and click “3 votes”.
Ta-da! That’s it. That’s all you have to do to cast your votes. Now tell all your SharePoint Admin and Developer friends to do the same. Everyone benefits from a more complete CSOM.
This issue was first reported by Stefan Born on July 30, 2014. It was reported again by Krishnakant Pokhare on September 30, 2014. It’s now Februrary 26, 2015. If we vote up this idea enough in User Voice, Microsoft may include this change in SharePoint 2016! Tell every SharePoint Admin and Developer you know to vote for this! If we are successful, by the time we all get to Ignite, Microsoft will commit to make the change.
If you know of any other gap in the CSOM that is not listed on User Voice, you should add it!
–Michael
On December 11th, 2015, Vesa Juvonen posted in the O365 Yammer network, a link to this blog post, http://dev.office.com/blogs/new-sharepoint-csom-version-released-for-Office-365, which announces the availability of the RequestAccessEmail setting in the CSOM. Yay!