Tracking Application Overview
Access 12 and Windows SharePoint Services v.3 will enable out of the box “tracking applications” that can span the client and server or can run standalone on the client. A “tracking app” is a small data application that adds database functionality to the simple lists of data that many users keep in Excel today. These out of the box apps will give customers the broad reach of SharePoint online, and the rich client of Access. SharePoint will provide a set of simple building blocks that are useful on their own (e.g. the Issues list) and that can be combined into richer tracking applications using Access and potentially incorporating rich server-side components authored in SharePoint Designer.
Elements of a Tracking Application
Although in some sense, everything that someone might do with a database is a “tracking app”, we mean something much more specific. An Office 12 Tracking App consists of the following:
- Simple components, assembled – the SharePoint team will provide a set of basic tracking lists that are useful on their own and may be combined into richer applications. The SharePoint building blocks all have similar schema at a high level, with something to be tracked (the “payload”) and several fields that track that payload (status, who it is assigned to, and when things are to happen to it). Access uses these basic lists as the building blocks of richer applications by combining them with one another and with new tables.
- Template based – Office 12 tracking applications are created from a set of end-to-end solutions we ship in the box and on the web. These templates are usable with no modification and the goal is that many users will simply use the template without modification. The templates contain no code and so will run under medium security without issues.
- Client / server data symmetry – both Access and SharePoint will ship similar templates with consistent schema for Assets, Contacts, Events, Issues, and Tasks. This allows the user to start from either place and create the same application.
- Offline – regardless of where the user starts, she can take the SharePoint list data offline with a single click and can easily resynchronize the data when she returns. Access provides conflict resolution UI where necessary and any server-side business logic runs when the records are synched back up to the server.
- Workflow provides business logic – the business logic for SharePoint tracking applications is driven by the WWF workflow engine in SharePoint. Tracking apps created in Access can use the Office DLC workflows, custom workflows from FrontPage, or even custom workflows authored in Visual Studio to drive their behavior.
- Fully extensible – although we expect most users to be successful simply using the tracking app templates, the apps are completely customizable. Through our ease of use work in Access 12, we expect users to significantly extend the applications without ever writing a line of code.
Tracking App Examples
We're still working on the full list of applications that will be in the box, but the following is a representative sample:
- Assets
- Contacts
- Events
- Issues
- Tasks
- Customer Service
- Projects
- Marketing Projects
- Sales Pipeline
- Students
- Faculty
- Gradebook
The next post will look at the Issues tracking application in detail and we'll see how Access's new features are used in the applications. After that, we'll look at how the applications can be extended.
