Adventures In SoftwareLand : Office

Silverlight Blueprint for Sharepoint (Beta 2) available

Michael Lehman — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:51:00 GMT

The Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint is now online on Codeplex: http://www.codeplex.com/sl4sp

This latest update works with Silverlight 2 Beta 2.

Office Developers Conference 2008 here we come...

Michael Lehman — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 08:16:00 GMT

If you're attending the the Office DevCon (http://www.odc2008.com) in San Jose, California on February 11th, be sure to check out the VS2008 version of the Outlook + Services Blueprint

As part of the on-going Software-plus-Services Blueprints Program, we will be releasing the VS2008 version of the S+S Blueprints Manager.

The Outlook + Services Blueprint is an open source framework, workflow-based guidance and tooling enabling the building of complex Outlook 2007 add-ins in a very short period of time.

To get an idea of what the O+S Blueprint can do, check out the screencast and watch an Outlook add-in being created in under 10 minutes!

See you in San Jose.

Office Interactive Developer Map: A Very Cool WPF Application

Michael Lehman — Wed, 30 May 2007 21:21:00 GMT

You've got to check out the Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map and it's write up on the Sharepoint Products and Technologies Team Blog.

This Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application allows you to drill down to each product and technology and learn about new features, objects, Web services, namespaces, and schemas required to extend Microsoft Office and build custom Office Business Applications (OBAs).

If you've ever thought a building an application that involves Office integration you need this tool!

Free Event: Office Live Review for MicroISVs - Redmond-May21, Boston-June 5, Sillicon Valley-June 11

Michael Lehman — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:41:00 GMT

CORRECTION: Office is the "Professional" SKU and Vista is the "Business" SKU.

UPDATE: We are also going to offer this event in two additional locations and dates: June 5th (Boston) and June 11th (Silicon Valley/Mountain View)

UPDATE: Office and Vista are "Ultimate" SKUs.

UPDATE: Office Live Developer Center on MSDN

UPDATE: Office Live Marketplace

Do you build software solutions and/or provide services to small business?

Do you want to create an additional stream of income with a low technical barrier of entry?

Are you interested in knowing how to take advantage of the shifting software plus services paradigm?

Then the Office Live Review for Micro ISVs is the event you should attend!

Come hear details about the Office Live platform, how you can easily integrate with your applications, create solutions and offer services to small businesses, and… receive a free copy of Office 2007 Ultimate and Windows Vista Ultimate! The first 20 people to create an Office Live solution and post it to the Office Live Marketplace will also receive a Zune!

Office Live provides you with an opportunity to access the 6 million US based small business market in a saleable and profitable manner through extending the Office Live platform by:

· Extend and integrate your existing products via the Office Live web services and the Windows Live SDK to interact with the Office Live environment accessing contact information, presence management, document management, shared calendaring and more.

· Creating customized, verticalized, and niche solutions offered to a single customer or created for a broad audience

· Providing design and other consulting services to Office Live customers

· Extending the capability of a customer’s existing server deployment with extranet based solutions that may integrate with other applications

Office Live is a set of web-based services for small businesses to manage their business online. It consists of a public facing web site for their customers and private web site that employees can use to collaborate and manage the business. The private site comes with business applications for managing contacts, e-mail, calendars, projects, documents, sales and more.

To the developer Office Live represents a compelling software-as-a-service platform for rapidly building custom solutions available to thousands of small businesses.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When:

May 21^st ^th, 2007 9AM-5PM

Where:

Redmond, Washington in the Platform Adoption Center @ Building 20.

What:

This one-day workshop will focus on delivering the following goals for the attendees:

Understand Microsoft’s Office Live strategy and how to build solutions that extend it.
Understand Microsoft Office Live offerings – Office Live Basic, Office Live Collaboration, and Office Live Essentials, and what types of scenarios each of these apply to.
Learn about Office Live Business Applications and Shared Workspaces.
Learn how to customize the Office Live environment, including templates, look and feel, web parts, and navigation. Understand when to use Site Designer and when to use SharePoint Designer to customize the environment.
Learn how to extend the Office Live environment, to create verticalized applications. This includes defining workflow rules, data sharing, web parts and mash-ups.

The workshop will provide developers with the necessary experience to exploit Office Live functionality in the following technologies:

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) v3 (Web Parts, Workflows, Lists, Content types, Web services)
Office 2007 (SharePoint Designer, InfoPath 2007, Access 2007, Excel 2007)
Office Live Specific (Business Applications, Shared Sites, Site Designer, SBA Sharing Workspace)
Windows Live ID
Web Technologies (HTML, XHTML, Web Design, CSS)

Attendees are encouraged to consider the following pre-requisites to ensure a positive experience in the workshop:

Active development experience with C# and/or VB.NET or JavaScript
Active development experience with Windows SharePoint Services v3 and Office SharePoint Server.
Basic understanding of Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, RSS, client-side scripting
Ideally development experience with Office client applications
Basic understanding of SharePoint portal technology

Workshop Format:

The course will be comprised of module covering an Office Live concept. The agenda for the one-day event is as follows:

Start	Stop	Description
08:30	09:00	Arrival and registration
09:00	09:15	Welcome and logistics
09:15	10:00	Understanding the Office Live Architecture
10:00	11:00	Understanding the Office Live Data and Storage Architecture
11:00	12:00	Using Workflows to Define Business Rules in Office Live Apps
12:00	13:00	Lunch
13:00	14:00	Programming with the Office Live Web Service API
14:00	15:00	Integrating with Office Live Authentication using Windows Live ID
15:00	15:15	Break
15:15	16:15	Build Office Live Integration using VS with Project GlidePath
16:15	17:15	Creating Mash-Ups in Office Live
17:15		Dinner

How to Register:

1. Click on the registration link: https://microsoft.crgevents.com/officelive/

2. Select New Registration

3. Supply the Registration Code: GENATT

Microsoft Partner Programs for MicroISVs

Michael Lehman — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 20:31:00 GMT

If you are a MicroISV, or want to become one, there are two offerings from the Microsoft Partner Program you should know about:

Microsoft Partner Program (https://partner.microsoft.com/global/program)

There is a no-fee, no-points signup for MSPP (https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40032508)
Action Pack (https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40009848)

This gives you licenses for Microsoft software to run your business including Dynamics ($350 per year)

EMPOWER (https://empower-isv.one.microsoft.com/isv/programguide/Default.aspx)

Microsoft Empower for ISV members are provided with limited Microsoft software licenses (valid for the term of the agreement) for the following purposes ($375):
- Internal Use
- Development and Testing, and
- Technical Support.
Microsoft Empower for ISV members also receive an MSDN subscription. The MSDN Universal DVD set is the primary source for Microsoft program members to receive Microsoft software for development and testing. This includes DVDs for both server and desktop software, development kits (SDKs), device driver kits (DDKs), operating systems, and programming information.