What are customers doing with VSTO and Microsoft technologies generally? We have recently published case studies that show how and what companies are doing with our tools Below are two prominent studies with the list of products and technologies used. I have also included links to the case studies. Here is the link to the overall customer evidence for VS: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/search.aspx?ProTaxID=3197

CME Group Link to Case Study

• Microsoft Visual Studio
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server
• Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
• Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
• Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Office Excel 2007
• Microsoft Office Word 2007
• Solutions
• Office Business Applications
• Technologies
• ClickOnce application deployment technology
• Language Integrated Query
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Replication Services
• Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office system
• Windows Forms
• Windows SharePoint Services

Dell   Link to Case Study

• Microsoft Visual Studio
• Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server
• Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Office Word 2007
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
• Windows Server 2008
• Services
• Microsoft Technology Center
• Solutions
• Office Business Applications
• Technologies
• C# 3.0
• Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
• Visual Studio Tools for Office
• Windows Presentation Foundation

Second Rock Thought for the Day: I recall when I first heard the song MIssissippi Queen by Mountain as a kid. The guitar riff and weathered vocals really stuck with me. It's been covered by Zakk Wylde and others. This  is a sure-fire hit from about 1970. I just gotta rock!

Rock On!

Here were are nearly on the eve of our Visual Studio 2008 Launch event and we are already releasing more goodness!! We are announcing the release of some Office Power Tools for Visual Studio 2008. These are extra little projects, often done on the side requiring extra hours and effort from our team. They are also things that we were eager to get into the hands of our customers. I am really excited to see these hit the Web, and I look forward to hearing what your think!

Here’s the download page: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=46B6BF86-E35D-4870-B214-4D7B72B02BF9&displaylang=en

There are 9 tools are packaged in 3 exe's (3 different EULAs), plus an overview doc:

• VSTO_PTRibbonIDs.exe installs the Ribbon IDs Tool Window
• VSTO_PTExtLibs.exe installs the Office Interop API Extensions and Custom UI Manager
• VSTO_PT.exe installs all other power tools
• VSTOA Power Tools.docx – overview document

Office Custom UI Manager

A set of classes for coordinating multiple instances of Ribbon, custom task pane and custom form region.

Office Interop API Extensions

A set of C# classes for handling parameterized properties, optional/named parameters, and for LINQ-enabling Office collection objects.

Open XML Package Editor

A graphical treeview-based editor for examining and editing Open XML Package files (including Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents).

Ribbon IDs ToolWindow

A custom tool window that displays all re-usable built-in Office Ribbon IDs.

SharePoint Feature Sweeper

A GUI tool that cleans up unwanted SharePoint workflow features from the target server.

SharePoint Workflow Package Generator

A build tool to package a SharePoint workflow project so that the developer can hand the workflow to the admin for deployment.

VSTO/VSTA Pipeline Verifier

A GUI tool that reflects over custom pipeline assemblies to validate the complete VSTA pipeline.

VSTO Developer Cleaner

A GUI tool that cleans up the developer's machine from leftover build artifacts in the registry and certificate store.

VSTO Troubleshooter

A diagnostic tool that examines a machine for the necessary pre-requisites for running VSTO solutions.

Rock Thought for the Day:

Chad Z. Hower, aka "Kudzu",

A Microsoft colleague has created a VSTO application that lets you analyze Wiimote motions for the Nintendo Wii:

http://www.kudzuworld.com/blogs/tech/20070819.aspx

Yeah, I know it's not for the XBox, but as Steve Ballmer said yesterday in a meeting with the Oracle CEO, customers want their products and software from different vendors to work together!

Three cheers for Kudzu and his innovative VSTO solution!

 Rock Thought for the Day: Get the new White Stripes album, "Icky Thump". Part of what makes Jack & Meg's sound so distinctive is their ability to very deliberately produce music that appears so whimsical. Like all of their albums, I usually cannot listen to an entire LP from start to finish. My head needs a break after about five songs. Rock and roll can be loud, and it can be sometimes noisy. The White Stripes, as truly excellent as their songs are, trend toward noisy. But, what great noise!

Rock On

Whew! We're working hard on Visual Studio Codename "Orcas", and that has kept me extraordinarily busy. One of the things I have been working a lot on has been our cool SharePoint workflow tools in VSTO Orcas.

Using these tools makes it a lot easier to start developing and debugging a workflow solution. Once you get going with workflow, a lot of new avenues will beckon. For example, you can call a SharePoint Web service to get information about items that are currently part of a workflow process. SharePoint handles the security and heavy lifting for you- all you need to do is call a Web service and parse the response.

Admittedly-- the responses are not always very clear. And, we do not really document the schema for the message that are returned. It would be great if someone would do this work! For example, here's part of the response for a request I have sent to a SharePoint server to give me the workflow information for a text file on the server:

<Web Title="Document Center" Url=http://myserver/Docs />
<List Title="Documents" Url=http://myserver/Docs/Documents />
<WorkflowTemplates>
<WorkflowTemplate Name="TestComponents" Description="My SharePoint Workflow">
<WorkflowTemplateIdSet TemplateId="de9cfbef-f2c9-4b49-9ee1-663e6aadd4ed" BaseId="88574245-d020-4c19-b5dc-413ced63202f" /><Metadata />
</WorkflowTemplate>
<WorkflowTemplate Name="SharePointWorkflow43" Description="My SharePoint Workflow">
<WorkflowTemplateIdSet TemplateId="11f108ff-7c98-4729-a660-afe6a6e3b59e" BaseId="782d7bae-0e18-4e0b-8c96-88f92d41bdf2" /><Metadata />
</WorkflowTemplate>
<WorkflowTemplate Name="Approval" Description="Routes a document for approval. Approvers can approve or reject the document, reassign the approval task, or request changes to the document." InstantiationUrl=http://myserver/Docs/_layouts/IniWrkflIP.aspx?List=c2b22c60-2bc6-4e5b-ab83-d7b36dd8ffb2&amp;ID=33&amp;TemplateID={c08cae4d-0f1f-41f5-b40e-1099b1429e35}>
<WorkflowTemplateIdSet TemplateId="c08cae4d-0f1f-41f5-b40e-1099b1429e35" BaseId="c6964bff-bf8d-41ac-ad5e-b61ec111731c" />
<AssociationData>

. . .
</AssociationData>
. . .

</WorkflowTemplates>
</TemplateData>

For the most part it appears that the schema is the one used for initiation data in SharePoint, but it still is largley undocumented. In an ideal world we would document it.

We just hit an important internal milestone for our product, and we had a timer sitting in the hallway that count down how far to go before the end of the milestone we were working on.

Well, I changed the clock to count down to my birthday for everyone (it's on June 30th!). Here's what it looks like now:

 Rock Thought for the Day:

I have been trying out so many new bands (aMute, Brand New, Explosions in the Sky, etc.) that I just do not have time to blog about them all. Besides, the new SMASHING PUMPINS songs are starting to trickle out. I have heard "Tarantula" and "God & Country" from the new album Zeitgeist. Both songs are fantastic, and I hope to hear Tarantula a lot more on the radio. It is distinctively Smashing Pumpkins yet it is fresh and new-- very exciting Rock and Roll!

Also- my own band (my sons and me)-- Atlas Falling-- is playing this Saturday at 7pm at Moonray Espresso in Duvall (14606 Main St. Duvall, 98019)- just behind the Subway. Come support the band and see my sons play!

Rock On

My colleague, Darryn Lavery, just finished the update to his very popular VSTO 2005 deployment paper. This update includes information specific to our VSTO 2005 Second Edition update we released last year. Here's the paper:

Deploying Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition Solutions Using Windows Installer

Also, there are a couple more about using VSTO 2005 SE with Outlook and the Ribbon:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb226712.aspx

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb226710.aspx

(I'm having trouble with our proxy server, so I can't nav to them to give you the exact titles. Sorry)

 Rock Thought for the Day:

Well, I'm now so tired of any track (after just two listens) on "The Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance about whom I blogged last time. Too much yelling and screaming around like an endless recording of Save By the Bell's "Screech" screaming at the top of his pubescent lungs.

Weary with this- I went back to Silversun Pickups "Carnavas". This is original, smart, the kind of music that is unmistakably tied to one band. Guys from MCR- please listen and take note.

Rock On

On one of our internal Microsoft discussion lists someone asked for a feature comparison between Office 2003 and Office 2007. One of our great support engineers sent a tidy list of articles that while not doing the direct comparisons do give great overviews of what's new in each. I thought this would be useful to the community, so here they are:

What's new in Microsoft Office Access 2007

http://office.microsoft.com/client/helppreview.aspx?AssetID=HA100241851033&ns=MSACCESS&lcid=1033

What's new in Microsoft Office Excel 2007

http://office.microsoft.com/client/helppreview.aspx?AssetID=HA100738731033&ns=EXCEL&lcid=1033

What's new in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

http://office.microsoft.com/client/helppreview.aspx?AssetID=HA100743061033&ns=OUTLOOK&lcid=1033

What's new in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007

http://office.microsoft.com/client/helpcategory.aspx?CategoryID=CH101030561033&ns=POWERPNT&lcid=1033

What's new in Microsoft Office Publisher 2007

http://office.microsoft.com/client/helppreview.aspx?AssetID=HA100385691033&ns=MSPUB&lcid=1033

What's new in Microsoft Office Word 2007

http://office.microsoft.com/client/helppreview.aspx?AssetID=HA100742241033&ns=WINWORD&lcid=1033

You may also want to check out the info and links in the 2007 Microsoft Office system suites overview page at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/HA101757031033.aspx

 Rock Thought for the Day:

Pantera and Dimebag Darrell- I had just never gotten around to checking out this popular band. They have one of the most loyal fan bases any band has ever enjoyed. So, I finally purchased an album- Best Of Pantera: Far Beyond The Great Southern Cowboys' Vulgar Hits!.

As a guitar player I had heard a lot about Dime and how great he was. In response to his tragic murder in 2004 many guitar and music magazines did tributes to Dime, and I was struck by how revered he was-- a guitarist I had only listened to in passing. Now, two years later, I feel the impact and loss caused by his absence. He was a luminary among guitar players, one of the most innovative and technically masterful players that has ever held a six-string.

I regret that I took too long to discover the otherworldly energy, intensity, musicianship, and song-writing power of this band. Yes, the themes are heavy, but they are honest and real. The songs are well crafted, and I cannot help but listen to them over and over again. I will now go back and fill out my CD collection with the original releases of the band and then move to DamagePlan, Dime's last band.

If you are looking for a guitarists' guitarist- Dime is your man.

Rock On

Let's get honest: it routinely feels like a shot in the dark.

Here's the scenario:

Someone in management is legitimately trying to organize resources and push some projects forward. He or she may be pitching the project to an executive or at least someone who has the red-light/green-light control switch.

So, you are being asked, "How long will it take? How many people do you need?"

These are not bad questions, and it is reasonable for management to expect answers. The biggest problem is that estimates are hard to produce. Why?

Well, for one thing- it's sometimes hard to even determine how long a project took after the project is over! It is much, much harder to predict how long it will take for the project to get done before it begins.

Or, is that really what estimating is all about?

One thing is sure: under normal circumstances, the more real information known about the project scope, dependencies, resources, and risks - the better estimates become.

One of my colleagues here at work, Ade Miller, is good at calculating in my view: he climbs mountains. Miscalculating can be really costly when you are hanging off a chunk of ice thousands of feet up the skyline.

Here are a couple of books he recommended to me:

Agile Estimation and Planning – Mike Cohn

Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art - Steve McConnell

Enjoy!

 Rock Thought for the Day: Silversun Pickups:

• I'm still waiting, rather impatiently, to hear the new Smashing Pumpkins album.
• We need to end the euphoria about My Chemical Romance, the Killers, and bands like Fall Out Boy. They're not awful; they're just not great. Let's raise the bar a little higher.
• I like this blog entry about rock rivalries. Entertaining, and a sign that we have too much time on our hands.

Rock On

I feel empathy for the person who is tackling Outlook development for the first time. Thanks to a number of things, including the advent of a solid Outlook managed developer tools story in VSTO 2005, that number is growing. Nevertheless, the overall corpus of material for Outlook development is pretty big. Kind of reminds me of when I was working on one of my M.A. degrees and I used to read the Patrologia Latina (this link is the index of authors). Yeah, I would read for many hours in Latin- anything I could get my hands on. The Patrologia is a great source. But, I digress.

Getting in on the Outlook dev game can be about as daunting as reading Tertullian in Latin (I recommend reading his treatise on Patience for starters) for the uninitiated. OK- so where do you start? One approach I recommend is to look at what was added in the latest release. From there, you can follow lines of inquiry deeper and deeper.

So, take a look at the Navigation pane:

A lot of people want to work with this programmatically. I'm one of them. Until Outlook 2007, there was no OM for this. Now, you use some new objects for this. Here's an example:

Private Sub AddShortcut()

        Dim objPane As Outlook.NavigationPane

        Dim i As Integer

        objPane = Application.ActiveExplorer.NavigationPane

        Dim navMod As Outlook.NavigationModule

        navMod = objPane.Modules.GetNavigationModule( _

        Outlook.OlNavigationModuleType.olModuleShortcuts)

        Dim objSCuts As Outlook.OutlookBarShortcuts

        Dim objBar As Outlook.OutlookBarPane

        objBar = Application.ActiveExplorer.Panes.Item("OutlookBar")

        For i = 1 To objBar.Contents.Groups.Count

            If objBar.Contents.Groups.Item(i).Name = "Links" Then

                objSCuts = objBar.Contents.Groups.Item(i).Shortcuts

                objSCuts.Add("C:\RemoteLinks\mybacklogserver.lnk", "Backlog")

                Exit For

            End If

        Next

    End Sub

Read more about new Outlook programmability here by Randy Byrne no less:

What's New for Developers in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (Part 1 of 2)

What's New for Developers in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (Part 2 of 2)

A lot of people want to work with this programmatically. I'm one of them. Until Outlook 2007, there was no OM for this. Now, you use the NavigationPane to get the whole thing started. As you see here, I am grabbing the NavigationPane instance from the ActiveExplorer. Then, I get a NavigationModule, in this case, the Shortcuts module. From there, it's pretty simple: I just look through the groups in the OutlookBar pane until I find a custom one where I put custom links. Here, I put the link to a shortcut file I use when I log into a remote server in a TS session. Because we are doing agile/xp programming here in our product unit, I have a machine I use to update our product backlog. Why do I have a separate machine for this you ask? Good observation. Well, it all has to do with having multiple versions of betas, alphas, RCs, and a slew of non-staged builds on my machines. So, to make sure I can always add to the backlog, I have a machine untainted by the confusion I gleefully inflict on my other machines.

 Rock Thought for the Day: I bought Bob Dylan's newest record, "Modern Times":

Now, people who are perpetually stuck in the 1966 Bob Dylan era are missing out on a lot of things and, I don't just mean the music! What is obvious to me is that Bob is making the best music of his career right now. Often, as artists age, they just re-tread the tires of their old music. I really do not like "reunion" or "revisited" tours for bands. Look, we've already been there. Take us somewhere new. That's not to say I do not look forward to artists playing some of the most beloved tunes live, but this is only enjoyable for me if the band has already led me to a new dimension of the music. This is why I refuse to pay money to see the Rolling Stones. From all accounts, they are entertaining shows, but the music hasn't progressed much. Bob Dylan refuses to be a caricature. This albums is strongly inventive while staying true to the blues and folk roots that have fed his creative enterprise for many decades. The guitar work is meaningful and very present. His melodic composition and timing left me feeling so at ease and yet ready to move. Kudos for Bob, from my home state of Minnesota, for this great offering. I could not recommend it more highly.

Rock On