Office Business Applications (OBA) Team Blog : Office

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

ODC2008 content published!

khawara — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:01:00 GMT

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

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

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

khawara — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 20:48:00 GMT

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

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