Chris's unofficial Office Live developer blog

Seinfeld+Gates ads... genius or waste of money?

cbeiter — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:45:07 GMT

When I first heard about the new Jerry Seinfeld ad campaign that Microsoft was producing to promote the Windows brand, I was very excited. Finally, Microsoft was going to respond to the unfair, elitist Mac vs. PC ads that have been drip drip dripping on the Windows brand for more than a year now. The Mac vs. PC ads are infuriating, dishonest, over-simplified and denigrating to people who use PCs, and we were long overdue to respond. Hey, that's not just my opinion. In fact, on a recent trip to San Francisco & Mountain View, I heard some of those turtleneck-wearing fashionistas saying they were kind of over Apple attitude as well. That was a real shock.

So, when I finally saw ad # 1 last week, my eyes were glued to the set for all 90 seconds. But guess what? I didn't get it. At all. The commercial was moderately funny, but didn't say a thing about Windows. It didn't respond in any way at all to the Mac vs. PC advertisements. It really didn't say much of anything... fitting for the guy famous for the show about nothing. They went to an imaginary shoe store. Bill adjusts his underwear with a weird tail wiggle in a mall parking lot. I figured... well, this ad campaign is either true genius or a complete waste of a reported 300 million. Maybe I'm too dumb to know why it was so genius. And after the Windows Live brand debacle (just put a fork in it, it's done), I was leaning towards the campaign being a complete waste of money.

Over the days after seeing the ad, the topic came up in conversation a few times with friends. I talked about it with coworkers at the water cooler and also with friends at a party. We all agreed on the confusion. What's the point?

And then... I saw the second ad the other night. Bill & Jerry move into the home of a Seattle family and do more of the same... nothing. It's cuter than the first. It's funny, kind of endearing, and I watched the whole thing. And I laughed. And I want to see the next ad in the series. Hmmm. Maybe there is something to this after all.

As a former student of advertising and public relations, I think there's a few problems that Microsoft needs to address... 2 of those problems are about Microsoft itself... the image of Microsoft as the big bad evil empire that has a stranglehold on your computer and wants to force you to work inside their box and second... the growing perception of Windows as clunky,yesterday, low quality operating system. Another problem is that Apple/Mac has all the coolness factor of the hip kid on the block, while Microsoft is for geeky losers.

After seeing the second ad, I realize they are not trying (yet at least) to address all of these problems. First and foremost, it seems like they are trying to humanize Microsoft, something that has never really happened since the anti-trust settlement, despite the nauseating Your Potential, Our Passion campaign. The ads seem to be showing Microsoft is not such a big baddie as everyone makes us out to be. We're just normal people, doing normal, mundane things. We're not the conniving, money-grubbing, stuck in the 90's idiots that the Mac vs. PC ads want to portray us as. Hey, maybe people can actually start to relate to the folks at Microsoft again? No one wants to relate to the PC guy in the PC ad.

So... recapping... so far I see the Seinfeld campaign as trying to give our customers a face that they can feel good about relating to, and maybe even laugh about it. It doesn't change Windows brand or Vista's technical & UX problems. But maybe, just maybe, they're on to something here. After over a year of feeling crappy about having Vista get trashed, I now feel more like a normal, boring person just like all the other normal boring people, and I care a little bit less about the snide, snarky attitude ads that Apple is running.

Full disclosure... I worked on Windows Mail and Windows Contacts in Vista Beta 1 before moving to Office Live. However, for anyone on the fence about Vista, my response is always the same... a very excited endorsement for the most important time saving, conversion-worthy feature: the Start Menu search box. Hit start... type "Calculator", and voila.. Calculator shows up right there in the menu. Hit enter or click it. Run it. No more surfing through Program files->Accessories...whatever whatever whatever to find the Calculator. This one single feature is proof enough to me that Vista has some positive things too. Let's hope the Seinfeld ads continue and eventually start addressing the other PR/perception issues the Windows brand and Vista still have.

Advanced List Publishing

cbeiter — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:23:32 GMT

In the previous release of Office Live, we had a deeply hidden and difficult to use feature known as Data Sharing. This feature was designed to allow you to take the data from one of the lists in your password-secured 'business applications' and publish it out to your public-facing web site as a dynamic list or table of items. So when you update an item in the private list it was automatically updated on your public web site. Data Sharing also provided the inverse... forms on your public web site that collect data into a business application list.

Despite the efforts of our intern (hi Chester!), the feature was a dud. When publishing a list (aka Display Data), there were only 3 options for how to layout the data, and the approval process was onerous at best. The form builder (aka Collect Data) also had some major hurdles, such as numerous unsupported column types and lack of ability to directly set what columns you were collecting data into. Despite its shortcomings, we did get a good amount of customer and developer feedback that they liked the concept, just not the implementation.

In our recent release, we set out to address the major usability problems, add more UI flexibility and also address some of the major underlying technical limitations. We especially wanted to give developers more power so they could unlock scenarios that they know best. We set a goal that a 'normal' small business user could set this up... you don't have to be a developer.

I won't give you a full blow-by-blow account of all the changes we implemented, let's just say that instead of having to take a bunch of shortcuts to squeeze this feature into our Nov 06 release, we were able to get a full development milestone to build it the way we thought was best. OK, OK, we did take a few shortcuts, and big chunks of what we hoped to do were cut (you gotta dream big!), but by and large the end result is a much more flexible, powerful and usable solution.

Advanced Mode

Hopefully you have seen my blog post about the new Web Site Designer 'advanced mode'. If you haven't, go check it out to learn how to configure that for your Office Live Small Business web site. This post will focus on the advanced mode capabilities and other developer-centric features for the List Publisher specifically, so that will be an important piece of homework for you to start with.

List Publisher Module

To recap, the List Publisher is a module that you can drop onto a web page using the Office Live page designer tool. To add a module, just click on the zone where you want to add it on the page, select the Modules dropdown, and select the List Publisher module. The property sheet for the module will pop up to guide you through the rest of the process. Modules can be moved around into any zone on a page, resized, copy & pasted and packaged up into a solution file.

The List Publisher property sheet gives you the ability to select lists from any of the business applications or Business Contact Manager in the password-protected area of your Office Live subscription. Once you pick an app and a list from that app, the controls on the property sheet are populated and enabled.

NOTE: You may not have the Business Applications provisioned on your Office Live Small Business account. If you don't, you will be notified. They're free, so check 'em out. If you already have them added to your account, you might not see a list you want to publish. From the Business Applications, you can add a variety of interesting apps to perform common tasks for small businesses such as Contact Management, Project Management, Team Workspaces and more. Just click + Add Application in the left nav once you go to the Business Apps and you will see a gallery. Don't see the one you want to use? You can also create a custom app or add a custom list to one of the Business Apps you already have to suit your needs.

Defining your data details

On the data details tab, you can define the exact data you want to publish by selecting the 'Create custom information view' radio button. That allows you to select the columns you want, reorder them, and rename the labels for each column.

Instead of picking and choosing from the full set of columns, you may decide to base your data details on a SharePoint view by selecting 'Use columns from an existing view' and then selecting the view you want from the dropdown. These "views" are kind of like mini-reports that are part of the Business App that are generally used to format the list data in a way that is more useful. For example, you might have a task list with an "overdue" view, "assigned to me" view, etc.

Selecting one of these views on the module property sheet is kind of like a big shortcut for you, plus it has some added power. We automatically select only those columns that are present on the view for inclusion on the published list. You cannot add or remove columns from the data details unless you switch back to the custom information view mode.

Why would you want to limit yourself by using an existing view? Because SharePoint views also give you the ability to add a sort order and create filters on the list. Using the task list example again, you may want to only publish the active tasks, and the SharePoint view makes that possible by filtering only those tasks where status = active. You need to go to the Business Application itself to create or modify a SharePoint view, but depending on what you are trying to do, it may well be worth the effort.

Creating a layout template

Once you have selected the data, now you need to decide how it should appear. The layout tab gives you 3 options: a dropdown to select one of 3 predefined layouts, an option to link to a XSLT file and finally, a text area where you can edit/paste XSLT code directly.

The layout dropdown is pretty self-explanatory... grid, repeating form or repeating form centered are standard layouts for basic publishing. But this blog post is about 'advanced' publishing, so let's talk about the other controls instead.

So far we have ignored the 'View XML source' button that hovers above the 2 tabs on the right of the property sheet. By clicking it, you get an XML document that describes the schema you have configured on the data details tab. As you make more changes, that XML will be updated. Once you have the data details ironed out and are viewing the XML, you can write your own XSLT code to generate HTML/Script output exactly like you want it. Here's where things get very interesting.

The Grid Layout example

The Edit XSLT control contains a default XSLT that you may use as a sample. By writing a couple simple loops, it first iterates over the fields in the schema, and writes out the DisplayName attribute of each Field node. This lets you write the column headers out in the grid example.

You can then write a second loop to create a new row in the HTML grid/table for each Row node of the XML, grabbing each of the attributes of the Row and outputting them as the value for one of the columns of the grid. The attributes on the Row nodes correspond to the order of the Field nodes in the Schema subsection of the XML.

Now you have a simple HTML grid of all the items in your list.

Instead of just outputting the values as raw text into a grid-like table, you can manipulate the values in any way you see fit such as passing them to a javascript function, building them into part of a URL or querystring, applying different fonts & styles conditionally based on a test of the value, and so on. In the grid example, we look at the position of the Row node using the XSLT mod function. This allows us to change the style class name for each row, and build alternating colors into our grid.

In XSLT, you can pretty much output any HTML you would normally create for a web page, including styles and javascript. So, the sky and your imagination are really the limit.

To Link or Not to Link

The main difference between linking to an XSLT file vs. editing it directly on the module is that linking will give you the ability to share an XSLT across multiple modules, and manage the code all in one place for easy maintenance. The text area is a better option while you are still developing and debugging the XSLT you are working on.

Syndicating your list with RSS 2.0 and Simple List Extensions

You've probably noticed by now the recognizable orange RSS icon at the bottom of the page. This checkbox is selected by default, and by doing so, publishes your list also as an RSS 2.0 feed at a separate URL. We also adhere to the Simple List Extensions proposal, which provides both an enhanced experience in Internet Explorer 7.0 and formats the data from your list in a way that is more usable by developers who are consuming your list feed on a 3rd party server/service/application. I'll dig more into the syndication features in a future blog post.

You can read more about advanced list publisher features in our dev guide.

Packaging your business apps and web site into a cohesive Office Live Solution

cbeiter — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:08:00 GMT

Another great advance in the Winter 08 release of Office Live Small Business is the new Solution Packaging technology. This service allows you to take components off of your public-facing web site & entire business applications, package them together, creating a comprehensive solution to a Small Business problem. See this article in our dev guide for a great overview of the packager.

As an example, you might create a Business Application for a restaurant to manage a rotating menu. The Business Application will be pretty simple, probably just a SharePoint list of names, prices, descriptions, etc. Then let us say that you have pages on your public-facing web site where you have used the List Publisher to publish the menu. By doing this, the changes that the chef makes to the list on the business app can be dynamically published up to the daily rotating menu on your public web site.

This is great, but how do you wrap this up and allow your friend who also has a restaurant site reuse what you built? Before the new version of Office Live, you would be able to package up the Business App as an .stp file and send it to your friend. That would only recreate the Bizapp. But the public-facing pages and the List Publisher module would all need to be created from scratch.

Not anymore... now you can package up both the Business Applications and components of your web site into an Office Live Package (.olp) file. From a granularity perspective, you can choose any Business App to include, optionally including the data in the lists as seed data. For the Web Site, you can package web pages, images, documents, and (also new in the Winter release) page templates you have created. Everything is stitched up together into a single .olp file.

So, you send the restaurant .olp file to your friend. She deploys the solution on her subscription. Office Live will read the contents of the file, putting all of the individual components into the correct places. We will even patch up connections made through the List Publisher and Form Designer modules between a public web page and the newly created restaurant business app. Note... we do require your friend to make one final step of visiting the pages and confirming the module settings before we start publishing data for the restaurant menu... this is to prevent people from accidentally publishing business-sensitive data.

The really big innovation here is the packaging up of your public site, something you could not previously do with anything made on your Office Live site using our Web Site Designer. Now, with the packager, you can package those pages, templates, images etc. and share them to your hearts content!

Another scenario we are very excited about is supporting the sharing of web page templates. You now have the ability, in advanced mode, of creating web page templates. Maybe you create a great web site for a real estate office. You may not want to share your entire site, but maybe you create templates for a few of the pages such as publishing the home listings. Now you can package that template up in an .olp file and share it to anyone else on Office Live Small Business.

Before you ask, let me get out in front of the question and say NO, we do not enforce any sort of intellectual property rights on the .olp files you create. So, if you are thinking of building a business around these solutions, you do have to think about the fact that someone else can package up what you give them and give it away for free. Our goal was to get this out ASAP, and this is one of the features that didn't make the cut. Also, we wanted these solutions to be as viral as possible, so everyone can cross-pollinate ideas in a more (gasp) open source kind of way. As we get feedback on the packager, we hope to also learn more about the IP scenarios so we can work them into a future release.

Versioning is another thing we did not tackle in this release. If pages already exist on your web site, the deployment of a package with files of the same name will fail. There is an "overwrite" checkbox to make this work though. Also, if you package a new version of a business application, and it already exists, we will deploy a second copy of it side-by-side. There really is no good way to do a delta update to a business application yet, so that's what we went with. Again, this is another area we hope to get more feedback and scenarios on.

I think the most exciting thing about the new packager is that we don't really know how it might be used. I can imagine many things, but ultimately it's up to the creativity of our developer audience to take advantage and help guide us in the right direction for the next round of improvements.

Advanced Design Mode in the new Office Live Small Business

cbeiter — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:29:33 GMT

Office Live Small Business is designed in large part for the do-it-yourself entrepreneur who needs a web site and collaboration features. In previous releases, we have been very focused on making it as easy as possible to use, especially around our WYSIWYG Web Site Designer. And the feedback has been positive, from that audience of low-to-medium skill do-it-yourselfers.

However, if you were a web designer or web developer, the only option you were given to get out of the controlled confines of the Web Site Designer experience was to completely turn off the designer and work using a 3rd party design tool of your choice like Expressions or Dreamweaver. This sounds great in theory, except we (admittedly) did not invest a lot in making this scenario work. Again, our core customers were the do it yourself small business folk, not web designers, so they got the priority. Among the issues, the 3rd party design "Web Folder" was not as reliable as we'd like, nor were you able to take advantage of any of the built-in modules that integrate with other parts of the Office Live service such as the Data Sharing modules. Worst of all, the Web Folder was only available to users on one of our pay-for subscriptions, which was a fraction of the total base. So, overall, it just wasn't a very satisfying solution to our growing web designer audience.

In the winter release that was just announced, we *did* have time to focus on web designer & developer scenarios! First and foremost, we eliminated the pay-for subscriptions and now have only 1 free subscription, where you can add pay-for services a la carte. This puts not only the Web Folder but more importantly the SharePoint-based Business Applications into the hands of all Office Live subscribers. Maybe there really is a Santa Claus?

Beyond the subscription changes, there was a significant effort put in by our partner teams in Office and Windows to deliver patches to the Web Folder and improve it's reliability. Hopefully you have downloaded them by now and they are helping you if you choose to use the Web Folder.

Finally, the OLSB team invested specifically in a new "Advanced Mode" as we call it here in house. This mode is supposed to be a sort of middle ground between the simple do-it-yourself designer and the all-or-nothing 3rd Party Design tools option. Advanced mode provides a designer or developer much greater flexibility and opportunity to add their own custom code, look and feel, styles and behaviors to their website. (See our Dev Guide for a full rundown on what is included.) Having this mode triggered by a flag also helps keep the complexity of the enhancements from confusing our core audience of Small Business users.

First and foremost, you probably need to go turn it on. It's easy, just hit site actions from the Web Site page manager. Complete steps are here.

Once you have activated the advanced features, you'll be given access to:

Several advanced modules in the Modules dropdown... Custom Header, Custom Nav, Custom Footer, Site Information
Enhanced functionality on the List Publisher and Form Designer modules.
CSS override control
Save page as template functionality
3rd party design tools flag

I'll be going into greater depth on some of these topics later, but wanted to get this topic out first to get you moving. Hope you like it!

New York Times positive review of Office Live Small Business

cbeiter — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:55:00 GMT

Finally, the floodgates have opened, the embargo has been lifted and I'm free to start blabbing about the latest release of Office Live Small Business. My apologies for the long silence.

I'll be working on a few topics in coming days, so stay tuned. In the meantime, start out with this juicy review done by the New York Times today. Wow is about all I can say.

[late breaking addition] - Additionally, the review author David Pogue (of the NY Times) also posted this video on CNBC. It's pretty funny, and also pretty favorable.

Office Live at Office Developer Conference in February

cbeiter — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:12:00 GMT

Hey folks, just a quick post to let you know to save the dates and register for the upcoming Office Developer Conference… February 10 - 13, 2008 in San Jose. Previously, our tech evangelist Rob Barker blogged that there will be a track at the ODC that specifically discusses Office Live. So there is definitely some relevant content for you at the conference.

Also, I have been told that the Office Live product team is planning to make some interesting announcements as part of one or more of the keynote speeches at the ODC. Bill Gates has been confirmed as one of the keynotes, so perhaps he’ll be the one making the announcement? Or maybe Rajesh Jha, our VP, who is also scheduled to speak. I’m not in the loop on that kind of stuff, but that would certainly be exciting.

Introducing our new tech evangelist

cbeiter — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 02:51:00 GMT

Hey folks, we've had a little bit of transition on the Office Live developer platform team. Our pals Rohit and Don both moved into new positions, but fortunately we have a new mega-star evangelist on Office Live now, Rob Barker. Check out his blog.

He is currently working on a services track for the Office Developer Conference in February, and it looks like they are going to have at least one topic regarding Office Live. He's even writing a book that will have some content on Office Live.

Anyway, just putting the word out there about Rob's blog so you can subscribe in your RSS readers.

Live ID goodies for Office Live developers

cbeiter — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:47:00 GMT

Our friends over in the Windows Live ID team have been hard at work lately and have snuck a couple innovations out there without me even noticing it. I know there are some Office Live folks who watch my blog for important developments and this definitely ranks up there. So without further ado... (and because I'm trying to post this quick before I get out of the office for today)...

The Windows Live ID Client SDK v1.0 "final" has been posted up on to the Microsoft download center. Last spring I blogged about the Alpha version of the SDK, and since then the Live ID team has posted a refresh of the Alpha and now the final. Hmm. Maybe I missed the beta. Or maybe the Alpha refresh was good enough to be a beta. It doesn't really matter. What does matter is that there are expected to be some significant changes in this final version of the tookit, so if you have already written an app using the Alpha SDK, please check this out and consider refactoring your app. If you were scared off by the Alpha tag, well, the wait is over. The other interesting bit that Sarah mentioned on the Live ID forum is that they are also planning a merge module so you can distribute the necessary pieces of the SDK with your application more easily. Good stuff!

The other Live ID development that escaped my attention until today (and is probably old news to you, my estute readers) is that they also released a Web Authentication SDK in August! I've just started to digest the information around this, so I'm not sure I can give you a good read on what the implications are for Office Live solution developers. It looks like it will allow you to use Live ID as your authentication system for your non-Microsoft web site or web service. They have created a variety of different toolkits & samples that will work on many different languages (ASP.NET, Perl, Java, Ruby, etc) and is supposed to be platform agnostic. Does this mean your web service will have single-sign in capabilities when your customers also go to Office Live? Well, their blog post doesn't go that far and doesn't make those promises, so I'm not entirely sure just yet. At a minimum, this looks like a step in that direction. Let's just say for now, it's very exciting.

Workspaces announced - get on the waitlist now!

cbeiter — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:21:00 GMT

Yesterday, Microsoft finally started talking about some of the things we've been hush about for most of the year. Number 1 on the list of announcements, from my perspective, is the disclosure of Office Live Workspaces and number 2 is rebranding of the current Microsoft Office Live as Office Live Small Business.

Workspaces - Get on the waiting list now! www.officelive.com The Workspaces service is going to be a well-integrated way to make your documents available from anywhere via your personal Workspace. Even if you don't have Microsoft Office on another machine, you'll still be able to view those documents on the web. There are also powerful sharing tools that allow you to bring others into your workspace to collaborate on those documents, trying to tackle the tough problem of document versioning. Seriously, get on the waitlist now. Very exciting stuff.

The other top announcement is the rebranding of the current Office Live service as Office Live Small Business. This is a logical task that falls out of announcing Office Live Workspaces. We of course had to differentiate them. Also, I think this is a great move since it helps clear up some of the confusion folks had over the Office Live name. Now Office Live becomes more of an uber-brand like Windows Live, and OL Small Business & Workspaces are sub-brands. In particular, a lot of developers were expecting a full-fledged web hosting experience on Office Live Small Business. Hopefully the name change will help clarify the audience we are attempting to cater to with the OLSB service... Small Businesses. So, although we have gotten lots of requests for this feature and that, it is always the Small Business needs that help us decide what makes the cut. Now, hopefully that will be more clear to folks when they try out the product. NOTE: I'm not on the marketing team and did not work on the rebranding effort, so this is just my opinion. I have no insider knowledge about exactly why one name was chosen over another.

Creating a "vertical" application on Office Live

cbeiter — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 02:48:00 GMT

We've mentioned before the idea of creating a custom application that sits on top of Office Live and is tailored to meet the needs of a specific "vertical" industry such as real estate, construction or retail. Our technical evangelist Rohit Puri has created a new sample called the Inn Manager, which is designed for a hypothetical Bed & Breakfast inn. Learn more and download the sample & instructions from the Office Live team blog.

The interesting thing about this sample is it really walks you through the different steps of configuring a custom application on Office Live, both the web hosting side of putting up pretty web pages, but also the collaboration side of using Business Applications to help manage your business. He also did a screencast if you want to catch the highlights.