Office Business Applications (OBA) Team Blog

Pardon our construction…

2008-08-08T01:45:00Z

The OBA blog has been quiet for a little while. We're taking an opportunity to expand the OBA team, and with that change new people are being brought into the OBA program to expand our efforts here. I'll be working with various folks to keep the blog posts rolling, and to keep providing information in the future. You can also find me here: http://blogs.technet.com/gray_knowlton, I've been working Open XML for nearly 4 years now.

We're still driving http://www.microsoft.com/office/oba, and we're still working with partner OBA solutions that you can find at http://www.obacentral.com.

OBA is alive and well!

Gray Knowlton,
Group Product Manager, Microsoft Office

OBA Sample Application Kits available now!

2008-04-28T19:46:00Z

If you’re looking for guidance on how to integrate SAP and/or PeopleSoft into your Office applications, then the OBA Sample Application Kits are a great place to start. These kits provide good documentation and source code to help you get up and running quickly. The kits include:

1. Source code for an end-to-end OBA;

2. Installation guide;

3. Solution walkthrough; and

4. Technical overview document.

The kits are a free download and can be found at:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/cc442491.aspx

- Khawar

New Excel 2007/Excel Services article published!

2008-04-26T02:13:00Z

Scot Hillier (Microsoft MVP) and Bhushan Nene just published an article titled “Building Excel 2007 and Excel Services Dashboards by Consuming Two-Dimensional Data from Web Services”. The article shows how to develop a solution to consume web services in Excel and Excel Services to build dynamic dashboards. The highlight of this solution is its ability to maintain the mapping between Excel objects and web services so that Excel and Excel Services workbooks can be refreshed on demand to show latest data. Excel and Excel Services support such functionality for SQL Server and SQL Analysis Services but there is no out-of-box support for web services.

- Khawar

ODC2008 content published!

2008-04-03T00:01:00Z

ODC2008 presentations, keynotes and news are now published externally!

You can access these by going to www.obacentral.com and clicking on the ODC2008 tab, or directly via the link below:

https://www.obacentral.com/ODC/Default.aspx

- Khawar

OBA success stories at microsoft.com/success

2008-03-27T22:44:00Z

Interested in learning about how others are building and using solutions built on MS technology but don’t want to read a long case study? Check out Microsoft.com Success Stories site-- a rich, interactive (Silverlight-powered) environment where you can experience stories about Microsoft-based solutions.

You can get a guided experience or explore on your own, search for specific solutions, or browse and create a playlist.

BTW, the initial release of the site highlights Office Business Application (OBA) success stories!

Open XML SDK Roadmap

2008-03-17T22:56:00Z

Open XML SDK roadmap was announced last week. For those who aren't familiar with this SDK, it is an API for .NET developers and designed to make it easier to build Open XML solutions.

Full details at Doug Mahugh's blog below:

http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2008/03/13/open-xml-sdk-roadmap.aspx

- Khawar

Winners of OBA Solution of the Year announced at ODC 2008!

2008-02-15T20:16:00Z

Winners of the OBA Solution of the Year Award Contest

1st place: SmartAsset ODC

2nd place: Intrasphere PharmaCM

3rd place: IntelliSafe Vault Desktop for Microsoft Office 2007

Congratulations!!

Congratulations to Round 2 Finalists

Bluespring BPM Suite 4.5
Epicor Information Worker
FirstPoint Enterprise Content Management
IntelliSafe Vault Desktop for Microsoft Office 2007
K2 blackpearl
Knowledge Driven Solution Accelerator
ObjectRisk Enterprise Risk Management and Compliance Modular System
Intrasphere PharmaCM
SmartAsset ODC
Xpertdoc Studio 2007

- Khawar

Soma's blog post on Office development and Visual Studio

2008-02-05T20:50:00Z

Soma Somasegar (VP, dev div) posted an interesting post on Office development recently. Here's the link:

http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2008/01/30/integrating-business-systems-with-office-and-sharepoint.aspx

- Khawar

Congratulations - Round 1 finalists of the OBA Solution of the Year Contest!

2008-02-01T18:38:00Z

On behalf of the OBA team, congratulations to the 20 Round 1 finalists for the OBA Solution of the Year Award! An alphabetical list of round 1 finalists is produced below.

Round 2 finalists will be announced on Feb 10 at the start of ODC 2008 in San Jose, CA, and awards will be presented to the Top 3 solutions during ODC!

Details of the contest can be found at: https://www.obacentral.com/Pages/SolutionContest.aspx

Alphabetical list of Round 1 Finalists - OBA Solution of the Year Award Contest.

AgilePoint BPM Solution Suite

Bluespring BPM Suite 4.5

Cincom Acquire

Employee Performance Management

Epicor Information Worker

Excellent Estimating & Accounting

FirstPoint Enterprise Content Management

IntelliSafe Vault Desktop for Microsoft Office 2007

K2 blackpearl

Kayxo Insight 2.0

ObjectRisk Enterprise Risk Management and Compliance Modular System

PharmaCM

Skelta SharePoint Accelerator 2007

SmartAsset ODC

Teamcenter Express

TRACS 4 Life

Visual KPI for Office 2007

XpertDoc Studio

Xpertdoc Studio 2007

- Khawar

New OBA book now available!

2008-01-23T01:13:00Z

Several folks from the extended OBA team and MVPs have been diligently working on an OBA book and I'm pleased to let you know it has now been published! Written by Rob Barker, Joanna Bichsel, Adam Buenz, Steve Fox, John Holliday, Bhushan Nene, and Karthik Ravindran, it's a practical guide to using the Office system as a development platform.

Check it out at: 6 Microsoft Office Business Applications for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Available online via www.amazon.com and other online bookstores.

Incidentally, many of the authors are presenting at the upcoming ODC 2008 so a great opportunity to meet them in person, network with fellow techies, and do a deep dive on the technical aspects covered in the book.

- Khawar

Update: 2008 Office Developer Conference is only 18 work days away!

2008-01-17T02:35:00Z

First, we're now only 18 work days away from ODC 2008!!

There's some excellent OBA related content and world class speakers in each and every track so if you haven't checked out the details yet, I encourage you to do so now. You can find details of the various tracks and sessions via the links below:

By the way,Hugh MacLeod of "Blue Monster" fame just confirmed he'll be at the conference. More here.

- Khawar

New OBA eLearning Content on OBA Central

2008-01-08T05:28:00Z

We recently went live with some new content on OBA Central to make learning about OBAs easier.

You can check out the new Silverlight based OBA elearning modules on www.obacentral.com via the following link:

https://www.obacentral.com/eLearning/default.aspx

As well, OBA Central has licensed various chapters from Apress books that will be made available free to of charge via the elearning portal. Some are posted already and more to come every few weeks, so check back often.

BTW, if you are really interested in in-depth learning about OBAs and SharePoint, register now for the Office Developer Conference 2008! Only 5 weeks before the conference starts...

- Khawar

OBA Solution of the Year Award - at ODC 2008!

2007-12-17T23:10:00Z

We're proud to unveil the inaugural "OBA Solution of the Year" award contest sponsored by OBA Central and culminating at ODC 2008!

Details of the OBA Solution of the year contest are posted at OBA Central: https://www.obacentral.com/Pages/SolutionContest.aspx

If you have a great OBA solution or solutions and/or are a Systems Integrator/Consultant and are not listed it in OBA Central, this is a good time to join partners who are actively taking advantage of OBA Central + get a shot at winning OBA Solution of the Year.

Finalists will be announced at ODC 2008!

- Khawar

Office Developer "Sleepless" Contest - $100K in prizes!

2007-12-14T20:48:00Z

Several Microsoft groups have teamed up to bring a series of Sleepless events to you! The finals will take place in San Jose and winners will be announced at ODC 2008!

If you are wondering why Sleepless and what the event is like, check out this video to get an idea:

http://www.infusion.com/media/sleeplessmedia/SleeplessInNY.wmv

This time Sleepless is bringing the best of SharePoint, Office Development and Silverlight training to you AND a chance at $100,000 in prizes, including all-expense-paid trip to ODC 2008 in San Jose!

Events will take place in Atlanta, Dallas, LA, Silicon Valley, Chicago and Washington DC and SharePoint’s elite including Microsoft Product Team members and SharePoint MVPs will be there.

The weekend features:

· Training from Office and SharePoint development elites including Microsoft Product Team members and SharePoint MVPs

· A Mystery Game-show

· Overnight Developer competition

Think you’ve got what it takes??

Apply Now at www.infusion.com/sleepless and find out.

Good luck!

- Khawar

OBA Case studies

2007-12-11T23:30:00Z

We now have 45 OBA related case studies avaiable on www.microsoft.com . If you are starting an OBA project or just looking to see how others are leveraging OBAs and the kind of benefits they are seeing, a great place to start is by looking through the case studies posted at the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/search.aspx?ProTaxID=3132

- Khawar