Serverless Azure WebJobs - Triggers to Push Data from Azure Storage into Office 365 SharePoint

Let us look how we can leverage the power of azure cloud storage, and integrate data into Office 365 SharePoint. In this article, we will use serverless WebJobs to push the data into Office 365 SharePoint online, whenever new content is added to storage systems like queues and blobs.

Scenario: Azure cloud storage system is used as centralized platform for storing/publishing the content. Office 365 SharePoint to get the content, whenever the data is available on the cloud storage.

Azure webjobs can be used for pushing the data to SharePoint systems/applications. We will be using Azure Webjob SDK framework, which has necessary triggers for queues and blobs, to trigger the content whenever it is available. We will be using OfficeDevPnp core libraries on Azure webjobs to integrate the data into Office 365 SharePoint.

This article explains trigger events for both queue and blob, present on Azure storage. But based on your requirement, you can select any of the storage.

The prerequisites required are,

• Office 365 SharePoint
• Azure Storage Account –  
• Queues 
• Blobs 
• Azure App Service which has WebJobs 
• Microsoft Visual Studio – This is optional, and you can use any other alternative approach. But in this case, I have used visual studio to build the solution and to deploy the solution directly to cloud. 

Azure Functions with Office 365 SharePoint Calls - Creating, Debugging & Deploying NodeJS Functions using Visual Code - Part II

Here let us look at the debugging the azure function locally and deploying the function to the portal.

In the previous article, we have seen creating the Azure function and accessing the SharePoint data using NodeJS.

• Azure Functions with Office 365 SharePoint Calls - Creating, Debugging & Deploying NodeJS Functions using Visual Code - Part I

Since we are calling SharePoint authentication methods and SharePoint list APIs, we need to make sure that the function is not returning the response to client, before executing the authentication and rest API calls. This can be done using async and await keywords. By default, outer module function has the async function. In the azure function code, we need to append the await keyword for the calling code and async to the function present in the code.

async and await on the azure function code

Note: The code available in the previous article doesnt have these keywords, i have left it to you for embedding for hands-on.

Azure Functions with Office 365 SharePoint Calls - Creating, Debugging & Deploying NodeJS Functions using Visual Code - Part I

Let us have a detailed look at creating azure functions using visual code, creating sharepoint context for getting site data, debugging locally using visual code, and deploying the code to Azure function app from visual code.

Creating Azure Function using Visual Code:

Setup and install the prerequisites for developing azure functions using visual code.

• Install the visual code on your machine and install all prerequisites required for developing azure functions.
• Install the latest of NodeJS.
• Then install the core tools package required for working with Azure functions. 

npm install -g azure-functions-core-tools

The extensions being enabled on the visual studio can be found in the following snapshot.