Office Business Applications (OBA) Team Blog : OBA

OBA Sample Application Kits available now!

khawara — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:46:00 GMT

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!

khawara — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:13:00 GMT

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

OBA success stories at microsoft.com/success

khawara — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:44:00 GMT

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

khawara — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:56:00 GMT

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

New OBA book now available!

khawara — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:13:00 GMT

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!

khawara — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:35:00 GMT

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

OBA Solution of the Year Award - at ODC 2008!

khawara — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:10:00 GMT

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

A brief chat with Ted Pattison

khawara — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:30:00 GMT

If you are into OBA/SharePoint development, Ted Pattison needs no intros. I had the pleasure of meeting him at last week's TechEd Developer Conference in Barcelona and he was kind enough to share his insights on what he's hearing and seeing as it related to Office development.

Check out the video for more on what Ted had to say! For more about Ted and his team, visit http://www.tedpattison.net/.

- Khawar

PS: Apologies in advance about the background noise. Fortunately, Ted's answers come through loud and clear.

Video: TedPattison Discussion

S+S BluePrints

khawara — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:54:00 GMT

One of the OBA related news at TechEd Developer Barcelona was about the availablity of S+S BluePrints. These are open source frameworks designed to make it easier to build S+S applications. These frameworks include source code, guidance, structured step-by-step workflow and tools delivered within Visual Studio and can serve as a starting point for building real products.

The first of these BluePrints, Outlook S+S is now available. You can check it out at: http://www.codeplex.com/ssblueprints/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=8173

- Khawar

OBA sessions at TechEd Developer (Barcelona)

khawara — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 18:27:00 GMT

Attending TechEd Developer in Barcelona (Nov 5-9 2007)? Be sure to check out some excellent Office/OBA development related sessions that are being offered. Here's a small sampling!

- OFF308 - Extend the Office User Interface with VSTO 3.0

- OFF303 - Build an OBA in an Hour

- OFF401 - .NET developers Advanced Introduction to SharePoint 2007

- OFF312 - Using Data in Excel Solutions Built with VSTO 3.0

- OFF201 - An introduction to Open XML

- OFF09-IS - Using VSTO 3.0 to utilize SQL Server data in Office solutions

- OFF 301 - Anatomy of an OBA

- OFF 305 - Building, Packaging, Deploying and Maintaining SharePoint solutions

- OFF402 - VSTO 3.0 Architecture

- OFF404 - Building Solutions with the BDC and MOSS 2007

And of course, do visit the OBA and SharePoint teams at the ATE Office development booth to say hello and pick up some cool giveaways!

- Khawar

Energizer and OBA

khawara — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:47:00 GMT

Energizer is using the 2007 Microsoft Office system to create Office Business Applications (OBAs). These applications take advantage of the power of the Office Business Platform—the client and server software, services, and tools that make up the 2007 Microsoft Office system—to give workers easy access to LOB-application data through familiar Office programs. Energizer will be using Open XML Formats and a number of OBA services in the 2007 Microsoft Office system, including workflow, search, the Business Data Catalog, an extensible user interface, and the Web Site and Security Framework.

“What we like about the 2007 Microsoft Office system products is the deep integration of desktop programs with back-end data,” Benz says. “For example, it’s easier than ever to connect the Excel program to the Microsoft business intelligence products, and to connect Microsoft Office Outlook calendars to SharePoint site calendars. To create these new integrated applications, we needed to deploy the latest and greatest version of Microsoft Office to maximize those efforts.”

Energizer has deployed Microsoft Office Professional 2007 on the desktop computers of nearly all 6,800 knowledge workers. At the same time, Energizer has deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and created multiple collaboration and workflow applications that take full advantage of the productivity efficiencies provided by the 2007 Microsoft Office system programs.

Full details at:

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000000706

- Daz

Channel 9 talks OBA with Epicor

khawara — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:59:00 GMT

Channel 9 discusses OBA with Epicor.

ARCast.TV - Office Business Applications at Epicor (Part 1)

ARCast.TV - Office Business Applications @ Epicor (Part 2)

ARCast.TV - Office Business Apps @ Epicor (Part 3)

- Khawar

Announcing Microsoft Office System Developer Conference 2008!

khawara — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 04:56:00 GMT

The Microsoft Office team is pleased to announce the dates and location for the 2008 Office Developer Conference!

When: February 10-13, 2008

Where: San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, CA

Who: 2000 developers and architects who build solutions on the Office platform (Office clients, servers, and services)

More info available at: http://www.odc2008.com.

Hope to see you all there!

- Khawar