SharePoint Online Integrated Workflow Apps support in Visual Studio 2015

Integrated workflow apps for SharePoint Online allows the creation workflows that can be attached to list or library in Host Web. Though this feature has been available in SharePoint Online for some time there is no tooling support for this Visual Studio 2013. To create an integrated workflow app in Visual Studio 2013 we will have to perform a workaround by editing the workflowmanifest.xml manually and setting the Integrated App value to true. This process is explained clearly in Andrew Connell’s article

With the release of Visual Studio 2015 Integrated Workflow Apps can be created from the IDE without requiring manual edit of XML files. Below are the steps to create an integrated workflow app in Visual Studio 2015

1. Create SharePoint Hosted App and target it to SharePoint Online.
2. Add a workflow item to the SharePoint App project. The app can become an integrated workflow app only after a workflow has been added to it.
3. Open the project properties window and set the Integrated App property available under the Workflow section to true
   

   
4. That’s all you need to do. Now after the app is deployed to a SharePoint online site you will be able to add a workflow to a list or library in the host web.
   
   
   
   

Visual Studio 2015 Office Developer Tools automatically adds correct version of SharePoint client DLLs based on target SharePoint version

I recently installed Visual Studio 2015 and selected the Office developer tools feature as part of the install. Then I went about creating a sample SharePoint App project. The project creation wizard started with asking for SharePoint site and type of App

Next step required to specify the target SharePoint version. This step is newly added in Visual Studio 2015 and the target SharePoint version is auto selected based on the URL of the SharePoint site mentioned in previous step

As described  in the step Visual Studio 2015 Office Developer Tools adds correct reference to version SharePoint client DLL based on target SharePoint version.

If SharePoint 2013 was selected for target version then visual studio adds reference to version 15.0.0.0 of SharePoint.Client DLL

If SharePoint online was selected for target version then visual studio adds reference to version 16.1.3912.1204 of SharePoint.Client DLL