I have a fairly simple requirement for some JavaScript (jQuery) to send an email. This is within the code for a SharePoint Online page (Office 365).
My initial thinking was to do a HTTP POST request to the Office 365 REST endpoint, but nothing could have prepared me for the next few hours of my day.
I had to jump through a few hoops, and perform backflips while juggling – and THEN changed tack entirely. I thought I’d share my observations – and some sample code/link.
This was my starting point (MSDN) : Send a new message on the fly (REST)
I wrangled with it for a few hours :
- SharePoint hosted code (JS), calling to https://outlook.office365.com was resulting in a 401 – due to a X-Domain call.
- HTTP POST with JSONP doesn’t work – only for GET
- CORS is what was messing it up – 401’ing the request
- Even trialling with the new http://graph.microsoft.com – same problem
- Suggestions via Twitter were to do an Azure AD app – TO SEND AN EMAIL !!
- I even found one ridiculous solution that was to create workflow from Visual Studio or SharePoint Designer – and then CALL it from CSOM. #WTF !!
A colleague mentioned “surely SharePoint has something to send an email” – it could then process the email traffic SERVER SIDE.
That was an unholy yee-haar gold nugget of joy.
Posting from my jQuery back to SharePoint Online is a simple REST call. And, it does NOT suffer from X-Domain or CORS.
http://tenant/_api/SP.Utilities.Utility.SendEmail
There’s a blog post that I found, with a great code sample – and it’s now working for me :
Sending email with SharePoint and jQuery
Just note that the recipient is limited to a valid SharePoint user for security reasons. (within the same tenant)
So – it’s the simply “KISS” principle – keep it simple, stupid.
😉
