SharePoint 2010, 2013, And 2016 Project Templates In Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition

Background:

Last year, Visual Studio 2015 launched and I have installed Visual Studio 2015 community edition on my dev box. But for a long time I was working on SharePoint Online so didn't require Visual Studio recently. Suddenly one request came for POC of SharePoint 2013 on premises. So, I started Visual Studio to create new SharePoint 2013 project but found that there is no template available for either SharePoint 2010 or SharePoint 2013 as shown in below figure:


Figure 1 : No SharePoint Template while creating New project in Visual Studio 2015 community edition

Solution:

I was really wondering why in the Visual Studio 2015 community edition there is no template available for SharePoint 2013/2010 projects like Empty Project, Visual Web Part etc.

After Googling a bit I found that in November 2015 Microsoft has announced the Update 1 for Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2015. This update incorporated the Apps for Office and SharePoint Add-Ins and bug fixes.

We can download update 1 from http://aka.ms/officedevtoolsforvs2015. I have downloaded and installed the same and I could see the Office/SharePoint option and SharePoint Solution options underneath it as in the following screenshot:


Figure 2 : SharePoint templates available after installing update1 for Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2015

Project Template for SharePoint 2016 Beta 2:

Also now there is next round of improvements preview available for Microsoft Office Developers Tools for Visual Studio 2015 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49972, which includes the templates for developing SharePoint farm and sandboxed solutions for SharePoint 2016 Beta 2 as in the following figure:


Figure 3 : Visual studio 2015 improvement preview - SharePoint 2016 Beta 2 project templates available

This preview must be installed on the latest version of the Microsoft Office Developers Tools for Visual Studio 2015.

References : Visual Studio 2015 community edition - aka.ms/VSCommunity2015.