Adding the SharePoint Starter Kit

If you have a look at all the web parts you have available to you in your current SharePoint environment,

versus what I have available,

You will see that I have quite a few more! The good news is that it is easy to add all these plus a range of additional features using the SharePoint Online provisioning service.

The easiest way to add all these features to simply visit the SharePoint Starter Kit option

and use the option in the top right of the page to Sign in as a Global Administrator for your tenant and then select the Add to your tenant button on the right as shown above.

However, before you do that you’ll need to ensure you have completed a few pre-requisites. Firstly, that your tenant is on Targeted Release.

You’ll find the setting for that in the Office 365 Admin Center, under Settings and Organizational profile as shown above.

You can use the Edit button to make changes to the setting.

If you do change the setting, it may take up to 24 hours for that change to be fully applied to the tenant. Making this change may also affect other areas of your tenant, so I suggest you review the following documentation:

Set up the Standard or Targeted release options in Office 365

Next, you need to ensure your tenant has an App Catalog. To see whether it does, locate the SharePoint Admin console.

If you are taken to a newer version of the SharePoint Admin console, as shown above, select the Classic SharePoint admin console option on the left.

At the “Classic” SharePoint Admin console select apps on the left.

Then select App catalog at the top, on the right as shown above.

If you don’t already have an App Catalog you need to select the option – Create a new app catalog site and then select OK.

It is recommended that you use the following settings here:

Title = Apps

URL suffix = apps

Administrator = Global or SharePoint administrator

Once you have completed these details select OK to create the site.

In a short while you should find that you have a new SharePoint Site Collection, as shown above, with the details you just entered.

If you already have an App Catalog or you just created one, when you visit that URL you should see a site like that seen above.

The final pre-requisite that you need to configure is some permissions on the SharePoint Term Store.

Once again, from the “Classic” SharePoint Admin center, select term store on the left. Then scroll down on the right and locate the Term Store Administrators option and enter you Global or SharePoint administrator in there again.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page on the right and Save the changes.

Now that all these pre-requisites have been configured, return to the SharePoint Starter Kit option:

and select the Add to your tenant button on the right.

You may see a message about providing permissions, which you should accept. You’ll also see a summary of what will be provisioned as shown above. You’ll basically get all the new features plus three new site collections.

Select Confirm to continue.

In a short while you’ll get a number of new SharePoint sites like that shown above that you can explore. Importantly, you also get additional features and web parts across your whole tenant.

If you return to the App Catalog site and select the Apps for SharePoint option on the left, you will that the SharePoint Starter Kit solution appears as shown. This is the item that delivers all the new features to your environment.

The above sequence is the easiest way to deploy these add on features but what happens if you wish to do this manually and not get the additional demo Site Collections the above deploys?

You’ll still need to ensure the pre-requisites from above are completed (enable Targeted Release, have an App Catalog and modify the permissions on your SharePoint Term Store). Once these are complete you need to visit the sp-starter-kit GitHub repo:

https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-starter-kit/tree/master/package

and download the file sharepoint.starter-kit.sppkg here:

https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-starter-kit/blob/master/package/sharepoint-starter-kit.sppkg

You then need to return to the Apps for SharePoint location in the App Catalog

and upload the file sharepoint.starter-kit.sppkg here.

The file is about 7MB so you’ll need to wait while the file uploads into the library. You’ll the progress as shown above.

Once the package has been uploaded, you’ll see the above dialog boxing asking you to Deploy it. Before you deploy, ensure the option to Make this solution available to all sites in the organization is selected.

You may need to wait a little while for the package to roll out to all areas in your tenant. In most cases, this won’t usually be more than a few minutes.

You should now see all these new web parts available to you in your modern pages within all sites in your tenant.

Remember that the SharePoint Starter Kit is available in GitHub and will continue to be updated over time. As it is, simply upload the new package into your App Catalog to gain access to the new features.

Using the SharePoint Starter Kit should give now you lots more options when working with SharePoint and all for free!