Have you ever wanted to use a custom code solution on SharePoint and not been allowed because of restrictions by your IT department or hosting provider? Sandbox Solutions, a feature introduced across all versions of SharePoint 2010 and Office 365, might be an option for you. Sandbox Solutions allow some custom coded SharePoint solutions to be deployed at the site collection level, instead of at the farm level, as long as they don’t use restricted API namespaces.
The restrictions on deploying custom code at the farm level are in place to prevent poorly written code from hogging more than their fair portion of shared server hardware resources. Sandbox solutions allow your SharePoint administer to restrict the amount of hardware resources each site collection is allowed to use, therefore ensuring one site collection isn’t slowing down other sites on the SharePoint farm.
Sandbox Solutions mean you have more flexibility to extend the core functionality of SharePoint in your business solutions. These customizations could include site branding, workflows or adding new actions to the ribbon. While you won’t be able to deploy most third party SharePoint products as a Sandbox Solution you will be able to make UI teaks that can greatly improve the usability of your SharePoint solution.
Contact BluLink Solutions to discuss whether or not sandbox solutions might be a good option for your SharePoint environment.
