Transcript Office Business Applications

2.25.08
Todd Kitta
[email protected]
 Covenant
Technology Partners
 Professional Windows Workflow Foundation
 History
of Office Development
 Explanation of OBAs
 Architecture of the Office System
 Development Experience
 OBA Patterns
 Demos
 VBA!
 Office
Add-ins
 Automation
A
Composite Application
 Use Office to bring everything together
 Use existing LOB investments to handle the
business
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Integrating functionality into the Microsoft Office Outlook
calendar that links an appointment with a customer to an
LOB billing system.
Integration with Outlook that associates a scheduled
meeting with a sales opportunity recorded in a customer
relationship management (CRM) application.
Employees reporting vacation time to an LOB human
resources system through time reserved in the Outlook
calendar.
Feedback on an interview with a prospective employee
entered in Outlook that is automatically inserted in a
human resources system.
Hosting a centralized budgeting spreadsheet using Excel
Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Exposing customer data from a customer relationship
management (CRM) system in a SharePoint site using the
Business Data Catalog.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb614538.aspx
 Familiar
& ubiquitous UI
 Bringing LOB functionality to more people
 Making processes less ad-hoc outside LOBs
 Providing context to IWs
 Promoting collaboration around business
processes
Presentation
Tier
• Business Documents
• Analysis Tools
Productivity
Tier
• Document Management
• Collaboration
Application
Tier
• Business Rules
• Workflow
Data Tier
• Transactions
• Reporting & Analysis of Data
• Identity
 Workflow
 Business
Data Catalog
 Search
 Fluent
UI
 Open XML
 Website & Security Framework
Presentation
Tier
• Client – Word, Excel
• Server – SharePoint w/ Sites, Web Parts,
etc.
Productivity
Tier
• Lists
• Document Libraries
• Form Libraries
Application
Tier
• LOB Systems
• Workflow
• Excel Services
Data Tier
• Web Services
• BDC
• SQL & SSAS
 Open
XML
 Fluent UI (i.e. the Ribbon)
 Outlook Custom Form Regions
 Custom Document Information Panels
 InfoPath
 Develop

Document templates as well
 …or
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at the document level…
target the entire Office application
Add-in (creates a DLL which must be installed on
the client)
Ribbon customizations
Form Region
Documentlevel Actions
Pane
Ribbon UI
Customization
App-level
Custom Task
Pane
Excel
X
X
X
Word
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Outlook
PowerPoint
InfoPath
X
X
 2008
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Rocks!
Multi-targeting
Project templates (Office, WPF, WF,
WCF)
New language features
A ton more…
 Office
client project templates
 SharePoint Workflow project
templates
 Excel
Services
 InfoPath Forms Server
 Workflow
 Web Parts
 Enterprise Search
 Content Management
 Business Data Catalog
 Business Intelligence

Learn how to do it the right way…
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Features
Solutions
Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint 1.1
Released just a couple weeks ago
 Only for VS2005 at the moment!
 Project Templates
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Item Templates
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Web Part, Team Site Definition, Blank Site Definition, List
Definition, Empty SharePoint Project
Web Part, Custom Field, List Definition (with optional
Event Receiver), Content Type (with optional Event
Receiver), Module, List Instance, List Event Handler,
Template
SharePoint SDK
 Develop
on the server!
 Seriously, just develop on the server…
 No, really… do it.
OBA Apps as
a Reach
Channel
Application
Generated
Tasks and
Notifications
Document
Integration
2007
Microsoft
Office
System
Collaborative
Site
Discovery
Navigation
Composite
User Interface
Complementary
Document
Workflow
 Extending
LOB functionality to more people
 Reducing duplication of effort
 Direct Integration Pattern

Supplementing LOB functionality w/ code
 Mediated

Integration Pattern
Exposing functionality w/o code (e.g. BDC)
 Only
30% of data lives in LOBs
 Can be done by…
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Batch creating documents
Creating “intelligent” documents (using Add-ins)
Merging of business data into documents (could
use a custom task pane)
 Handling
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document workflow outside the LOB
The stuff that usually happens via email
 LOB
could publish documents to SharePoint
library
 Workflow may act as a variant on the
“intelligent” document pattern
 Users
search for entities and take action
 Enabled by Business Data Catalog (BDC)
 Unstructured
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collaboration in SharePoint
Document libraries
Discussions
Task lists
Calendars
Project management tools
More…
 Brings
together multiple LOB processes into
one “shell”
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Composite Client UI (Task Panes, Ribbon
Customization)
Composite Web UI (Web Parts)
Analytics (BDC, Excel Services,
PerformancePoint)
 Tasks
are generated in many systems – this is
cumbersome
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Push vs. Pull model
Synchronization is an issue
 Intelligent

Tasks & Notifications
Emails requesting vacation time – context is
identified and user is able to act in Outlook
 Forms-based

Tasks & Notification
Utilizes InfoPath in email or via Forms Server
 .NET
 BDC
 InfoPath
 Open
XML
 SharePoint
 Workflow
 WCF & web services
 OBAs
 Office
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Development
Client
Server
 Patterns
 Call
to action: an opportunity to specialize!

Office Business Applications Developer Portal
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OBA Central
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http://msdn2.microsoft.com/enus/office/aa905528.aspx
https://www.obacentral.com/default.aspx
Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint v1.1
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?F
amilyID=3e1dcccd-1cca-433a-bb4d97b96bf7ab63&displaylang=en
 No VS2008 support until ~June ‘08!
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
SharePoint 2007 SDK

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?F
amilyId=6D94E307-67D9-41AC-B2D60074D6286FA9&displaylang=en