Microsoft SharePoint Online introduces a new application which will streamline the custom solution review process: the Microsoft SharePoint Online Code Analysis Framework (MSOCAF). This application can be leveraged by customers, ISVs, and vendors to validate and submit custom solutions.

By using MSOCAF, the engineering review process should be expedited as the customers will be able to detect and fix the code issues themselves before submitting the custom solutions to Microsoft. Optionally, MSOCAF can also be used to deploy custom solutions to the customer’s test environment or to rollback or remove components of a deployed solution. Previously the submission process was manual and thus time consuming. MSOCAF can communicate with a web service hosted on the customer’s SharePoint environment to submit the deployment package, and submit the custom solution automatically.

MSOCAF analysis is required and mandatory for all custom solutions developed for deployment to SharePoint Online. MSOCAF analysis executes a set of rules against the custom solutions, prior to submission for deployment approval into the pre-production and production environments. The MSOCAF application is built using an extensible framework so that the SharePoint Online engineering team can add new rules and/or plug-ins in the future. Code analysis within MSOCAF focuses on areas like memory management, security vulnerabilities, exception management, object model usage, quality gates for unsupported features and reporting. The framework leverages existing tools like FxCop, CAT.Net, and SPDisposeCheck to analyze custom solutions.

To install MSOCAF,

For 2010 version, go to the MSOCAF Download Site on MicrosoftOnline.com.
For 2013 version, go to the MSOCAF 2013 Download Site on MicrosoftOnline.com.
The installation should be done using a local administrator account on the machine.