Migrating to SP 2016

[Dean Gross]

I have a client that has been using DFFS in SP 2013. They want to upgrade to SP2016, how will this impact the use of DFFS? what should we look for to ensure that no problems occur?

[Keith Hudson]

I’m sure you’ll hear something on this question from Alex, but for what its worth, I had clients a few years ago who migrated from SharePoint 2007 where they were using a very early version of DFFS and we had zero problems. Of course, you need to make sure that you migrate the SPJS library and the configuration list.

More recently, I used Sharegate to copy a site using a more recent version of DFFS from one farm to another (both SharePoint 2013). We found that our (very complex) DFFS forms did not work correctly, until we exported the form config from the form on the old site to the form on the new site. We never figured out exactly why, but the fix was so easy it wasn’t worth figuring out the root cause.

Bottom line, after migration, check all the forms using DFFS in the new location. Even if they don’t work right after migration, I’m sure you will find it easy to fix them.

NOTE that as at present, based on my current understanding (which could be out of date) DFFS does not work on the forms associated with “modern” lists and libraries in SharePoint Online, but you can still change the settings on those lists and libraries to return them to classic view, and DFFS will work just fine.

I don’t know whether SharePoint 2016 contains “modern” lists and libraries. Maybe someone who knows could enlighten me on that point.

[Ivan Wilson]

I’ve only used DFFS in SharePoint Online, but one potential issue is if your SharePoint 2013 environment is using classic instead of claims and you have code that reads the username from user fields, you’ll now have to handle the claims portion.

Chances are your SharePoint 2013 environment is already using claims.

[Alexander Bautz]

Keith and Ivan: thanks for your input. The current version (from v4.4.0 – September 2016) works in lists where the Modern look is used because how the solution is loaded in the forms, these are automatically loaded with the Classic look. This means you can still use modern look for lists, but you can not use vLookup in these list views because you cannot inject code here (vLookup works in forms).

To have a gradual upgrade of your DFFS forms, you can look at loading a newer version of DFFS in parallel as described here: https://spjsblog.com/dffs/dffs-installation-manual/#Upgrading_from_a_previous_version

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,
Alexander

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