What's Rockin' in Singapore

Just got wind from folks in the Microsoft Office System product team about the launch of the new OBA Central portal site at http://www.obacentral.com.

Quick glance at the page source reveals that the site is hosted on Office SharePoint Server too.

Good job, guys! Book-marked...

Certain days, mana just seem to drop from the heavens -- and the release of the new OBA RAP for E-Forms processing a week back was one such timely moment.

We are working with a number of customers (both public sector and commercial) to explore automating forms handling. These forms are accessed from the customers' respective public portal web-sites, and is typically processed wither manually or with difficult-to-maintain custom code. Suffice to say, agility, faster turnarounds, and better accuracy are often cited as basic automation goals. Customers also look forward to end-user maintained forms business logic, better business insights, better integration with existing or external systems.

The E-Forms Processing RAP (or Reference Application Pack) describes just such a system enabled by Microsoft Office Systems (hence the OBA or Office Business Application moniker) -- specifically with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (providing the Portal front-end, Forms, Workflow and Business Data Catalog service features), Microsoft Office InfoPath (for forms design), Microsoft SQL Server (for records management, content, document, metadata storage) and Microsoft Windows Server (leveraging on the .NET Framework, and core infrastructure services.)

Although this reference application illustrates an application for hunting and fishing license (not exactly applicable in Singapore's context,) the underlying architecture framework can be adapted to many of the common forms scenarios we see.

Go download the PowerPoint slides from http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb643796.aspx. Keep a watch out as the accompanying source code will be made available soon.

More OBA RAPs for various vertical industries such as (Banking, Healthcare) and scenarios (Supply Chain Management, Price Management) are available at the 2007 Microsoft Office System for Architects site.

The most effective way I found when sharing with Customers and Partners the concept of Office Business Applications (OBAs) is to show screen captures of possible application scenarios. Unfortunately, not many examples showcasing Office 2007 that can be publicized yet exist ... until now.

In the Convergence conference event that just recently concluded, the Microsoft Dynamics team showcased working examples and prototypes of Office clients interacting with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics GP ("Great Plains") products. (More information can be found at Mary Jo Foley's All About Microsoft blog entry: Microsoft shows off its future business-app user interfaces.)

We can glean a couple of scenarios revolving around Office clients (Outlook, Word, Excel) and SharePoint Server.

For example, Microsoft Dynamics CRM uses Outlook as its built-in interface -- which makes perfect sense since a mail client is the most common entry point for managing customer and contact oriented information and activities.

I am particularly partial to the the following screen which shows Microsoft Word leveraged as a report with embedded business data pulled from Dynamics ERP application. Microsoft Word's content controls, OpenXML file format, and custom Task Panes enable richer interactions with the Line-of-Business backends while preserving clean data / view separation.

Finally, Microsoft SharePoint provides a rich role-based user interface for composing different information. In the example below, we see a Sales Center page in SharePoint with an Excel services web part serving as an effective intranet dashboard. 

Go to ZDNet.com gallery for more screen shots of how Dynamics can and will work with Office: screen shot gallery.

One of the most fulfilling and interesting aspects about my role in Microsoft is meeting interesting people - Customers, Partners, Microsoft colleagues from other parts of the world. A special group of folks I particularly respect is our MVPs (or Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals.) These are the guys who are driven by pure passion for technology and generosity in helping the Microsoft technical community.

In my two short months in Microsoft, I've had the pleasure of working with a couple of our MVPs and most of them have very interesting backgrounds. Following is a short "virtual interview" I did with my friend - Mr. Alan Diaz...

Who are you, where do you live, where were you raised?

I am an IT enthusiast currently living in Singapore and identify myself as a Global citizen. I started my life in Tanzania (East Africa) where I had my formative schooling until I moved along with my parents to Portugal and later on to Goa – India where I completed my studies and finally settled down in Singapore.

In the mid sixties African schools enforced Swahili as a medium of instruction and so I started my schooling in Swahili. I simultaneously learned Portuguese from my Portuguese speaking parents of Indian descent. Both my parents strongly believed that English would be the right ingredient to arm me in the corporate world and decided to move me to study English in Goa … the land of my ancestors. The rosy picture painted thoughtfully by my parents was far from reality as I had to struggle with 3 new languages Hindi, Marathi and English. Now, I can speak Swahili, Portuguese, and English with passable grammar and diction and get by with a sprinkling of Malay, Mandarin, Hindi and Konkani (a Goan language) enough to order at the food court.

A global citizen... So what brought you to Singapore and what do you do for a living?

Wanderlust had got the better of me and I eventually landed up in Singapore where I work as Director of Training and Technology for an educational training provider which runs Microsoft courses. In fact, we are a Microsoft Certified Partners for Learning Solutions (CPLS). Additionally, we provide IBM training.

I dabble with technologies from both IBM and Microsoft and have done well. I received the Global Best Instructor Award in Lotus Notes for Asia-Pacific for 3 years and have been a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for the last 2 years in Mobile Application Development.

So you are a MVP – what do we mean by that?

The MVP title, I understand is conferred by Microsoft to people who contribute to the community using Microsoft technology. My relationship with Microsoft started a decade ago when I first volunteered to present Tips and Tricks in using Windows XP to a group of Computer professionals at a Tech-Net event. The presentation was well received which led to more presentations at a wide variety of Microsoft events such MSDN day, MSDN Connections, Polytechnics and Universities in Singapore as well as at Microsoft Job Street event, Microsoft Non Profit Organization day and at SGDONET (a local .NET user group).

I founded the Singapore Small Business Server User Group (http://sbsug.sg) due to request from IT companies and the Microsoft Product Manager. The group grew from 10 users to 150 and now has a council formed by volunteers and was responsible to spawn two SBS MVPs.

So what sort of technologies have you had the chance to play with these past few years?

I have lost count of the technologies I have handled since the last 26 years but I frequently use Visual Studio.NET, SQL Server 2005 and occasionally Java and allied technologies around these products. Going forward I see a potential in 3 basic areas which include Network Readiness Index (E-Business and e-Governance), Mobility and Broadband services (WiFi, WiMax).

Going forward, which application technology areas excite you?  Or what do you see as potential?

I am excited with technologies that help improve real-world businesses (revenue growth and cost reduction) and am drawn towards innovations such as virtualization and consolidation technologies.

These days, I see opportunities opened with the release Office System 2007 and VSTO 2005 SE. A company can maximize the value from existing Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and SharePoint investments even more with Office Business Applications (OBA).

I have been working with the OBA concept for more than a year in Singapore and this year I was invited by Microsoft to speak at Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) on “Using Microsoft Office 2007 as a Powerful Development Platform with Visual Studio Tools for Office.” There were more than 300 developers who attended the seminar and over many of them were so impressed by OBA that they have expressed interest in developing a new breed of application by extending Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word. I was not surprised, as I have been having similar responses when I showcased OBA at other events.

With OBA you can extend your Microsoft Office to fit into three main areas which are Unified Messaging Communication and Collaboration (which simplifies a team working together), Business Intelligence (which enables business insights with capabilities such as server-based Excel and so on) and Enterprise Content Management (which allows people to find and use role-based information.)

Any closing comments?

I'm thankful to embark on the journey of learning with many hardworking students and hope I have contributed enough to the society to make a small difference.

Thank you, Alan.

You can learn more about Alan at his MSDN MVP profile page.

We have been talking, and will continue to talk about Office Business Applications (OBAs) to enterprise customers and ISV partners for the past few weeks.

As a follow-up, we will be organizing a Hands-On Lab session targeting technical developers which will cover enterprise business application development with Microsoft Office client and server products.  This is an excellent opportunity to get actual hands on coding experience with developing solutions with Word, Excel, InfoPath and SharePoint Server.

The first 3-day session is slated to take place between 12^th – 14^th March 2007.   Please help forward this to your colleagues as well as you see fit. Due to expected response, we will like to limit the training to two persons per customer.

Oh yeah - most importantly, the training is provided FOC.  

Venue: Microsoft Singapore Level 22, Microsoft Innovation Centre

RSVP: onghelen@singnet.com.sg

Building Business Applications with Microsoft Office Systems 2007 Platform
Meticulously designed over the years, Microsoft Office 2007 helps increase individual impact, simplify collaboration and streamline business processes.
To enrich your experience with the launch, we are pleased to invite you to a three-day comprehensive Hands-on-Lab session with Microsoft Office 2007 client and server technologies. Learn a new paradigm to unlock business value from the world’s leading productivity platform. Here, you can also learn to take advantage of Microsoft Office 2007 for sharing, analyzing, managing information and connecting to Line-of-Business (LOB) applications like never before.

In the coming months, you can also look forward to:
               - Architecture Guidance
               - Application Compatibility Labs
               - Technical Support during Development

Date: 12th - 14th March 07
Venue: Microsoft Innovation Centre, Level 22, One Marina Boulevard, Microsoft

Be prepared
Find the resources you need to make the most of partner opportunities with the 2007 Microsoft Office system.
Find information
Check out the information Worker Solutions Competency and learn how to unleash untapped revenues and business potential.
Start learning
Get the training you need to meet your customers* needs more efficiency, build new revenue streams around Microsoft Technologies, and stay ahead of the market in the Partner Learning center.

Day 1 - Office Client Theme (9am - 6pm)

Topics

• Developer Roadmap
  Office Client Enhancements
• Office Extensible File Format
• Building Template-based Solutions
  Developing Office 2007 Solutions

Day 2 – Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) Theme (9am - 6pm)

Topics 

• MOSS 2007 Core Architecture
• MOSS Storage
• Developing and Deploying MOSS Applications
  MOSS Core Development

Day 3 – Office Server Services Theme (9am - 6pm)

Topics

• Building Forms Solutions
• Working with Excel Services
• Creating Portal Applications (Workflow, Search, BDC)
  Security Integration

RSVP
To register E-mail:  onghelen@singnet.com.sg or call Helen Ong at 9764 1354

We held a Office Business Application (OBA) workshop at Microsoft Singapore last week. The session gave attendees (both our enterprise customers and ISV partners) an introduction of our OBA initiative. In the session, I covered an overview of the business drivers and rationale behind OBAs and our esteemed MVP, while Praveen Srivatsa dived into the technical bits, showcasing new client and server capabilities offered by Microsoft Office System 2007.

We want to thank all attendees for the support, and for staying with us till the evening - even as the workshop ran almost 1 hour behind time due to the sheer amount of information.

A number of questions were raised during the session, and I'd like to post our responses here:

• Reading Office 2007 Documents with Office 2003: Microsoft Office 2003 can open, edit, save to the new Office 2007 file formats with the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack download (for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.)
• Microsoft Office Open XML format: More information about Open XML can be found here. Some other points raised on OOXML:
  • The Ecma International standards body approved Office Open XML as an Ecma standard on 7th Dec 2006. Read more in this press release.
  • In the workshop, we showed how an Open XML file can be manipulated by renaming it to a .zip file and then manually changing its content. In the real world, this can be done programmatically with .NET 3.0's System.IO.Packaging namespace -- demonstrating the extensibility and malleability of the format. Go to the Open XML Developer web site for loads of samples.
  • For those interested, check out the Open XML Translator project at SourceForge that will help translate between Open XML and OpenDocument formats.
• A number of attendees wanted to learn more about backend Line-of-Business (LOB) systems integration (e.g., SAP). Depending on specific scenarios, integration can be done by consuming web services directly from the client, or with Microsoft SharePoint Server's Business Data Catalog (BDC). 
• There were additional discussions on security, and Lotus Notes integration.

The post-workshop survey also yielded some interesting insights:

• About 85% of the attendees felt more aware and positive about OBA after the session
• A majority of the folks felt that knowledge management (business intelligence, management reporting) OBAs bring the greatest benefit to their organizations.

The slide decks from the session are attached. Do check out this web site again in a week's time when I'll post some sample codes.

Office Business Application - Introduction.zip

Office Systems Technology Session 1.zip

Office Systems Technology Session 2.zip

Meanwhile, if you are from Singapore, I'd love to hear your thoughts or feedback on how OBAs can help you and your business. Write to me through this contact form.

A Real-Life CRM Deployment Annecdote

One of the companies which I used to consult with prior to joining Microsoft had a very interesting conundrum a number of years back. This company just implemented a pricey enterprise-class CRM system, and mandated that all field sales staffs to input customer information (contacts, activities, etc.) into the system.

In reaction, the field teams objected loudly:

• Most of them are already maintaining this sort of information locally on their notebook computers - in Outlook contacts, or in Excel spreadsheets. Obviously, they loathed to do what is seen as additional administrative work;
• They found the new system's user-interface difficult to use, and did not want to invest time to learn it;
• The new system was unable to support offline usage. 

After weeks of coaxing which yielded little improvements, the sales department had a creative solution to the impasse. The sales persons agreed to submit the required information monthly (in a Excel spreadsheet with a agreed-upon format) to a temporary staff who would then key in the data into the CRM system.

The Results Gap

The scenario above described what Microsoft calls the "Results Gap" - the disconnect that exists between people and enterprise Line-of-Business (LOB) systems such as ERPs and CRMs. Talking to customers here in Singapore, it is apparent that effectively integrating or surfacing data into and from ERP systems remains as one of the key challenges facing IT.

Enterprise LOB systems are great with structured business processes (typically represented as flow-charts), but ignore the fact that these only tell part of the story. The reality is most of these structured flows do not capture the "out-of-band" work done by people to support the business -- activities such as emailing, exchanging documents, phone conversations, workflow with other team-mates and customers, and so on. The complete business process is therefore an amalgamation of structured business processes with many ad-hoc, people-to-people collaborations. 

The Results Gap impacts businesses negatively:

• Important data remains on end-user local systems, and are not synchronized back to LOB systems (where they should belong);
• Unmanaged ad-hoc collaboration gives rise to data chaos (e.g., multiple versions);
• There is reliance on a few power users for critical enterprise information

Enter the OBAs

OBAs (or Office Business Applications) are a new class of enterprise composite applications that aim to close the Results Gap by connecting people (with their messy collaboration) to structured business processes. 

The concept of an OBA is certainly not new -- custom solutions that integrate Office client applications with backend systems through web services, and commercial applications such as SAP/Microsoft Duet are all good concrete examples of OBA implementations.

However, the Microsoft Office 2007 System that was recently released will enable even more interesting OBAs while simplifying development.  Going far beyond Office 2007 Ribbon customization, the Office System provides many client and server platform services: 

• Customizable user experiences on the Office client applications (Ribbons, TaskPanes, etc.),
• Flexible OpenXML document format,
• Role-based, personalize-able web portal (SharePoint Server)
• Improved workflow, search, content and document management services,
• New powerful server capabilities such as Forms Server, Excel Server
• Built on .NET platform...

OBA Scenarios

With all these firepower, it's not hard to imagine the following OBA scenario for an Excel-based Expense Claims application where end-users fill in espense claims in an Excel "form". The form is routed according to defined Workflow rules for approval. Managers view the claims requests from within Outlook and take appropriate action. Final data is pumped into the backend ERP or Finance system, and the Expense Claims form is archived on a document server.  The Manager can generate an Expense report from within his own Excel application which pulls down the necessary data from the backend system, and then generates charts or pivot-table for analysis.

Other scenarios include Contract Management (integrate Finance & Document Management LOB systems with Word, Excel), Sales Automation (integrate CRM LOB system with Excel, Outlook).

OBAs In Singapore

I personally feel OBAs represent a very neat approach to solving many real-world challenges faced by enterprises. This translates to opportunities to many of our Customers and Partners (ISV and SIs alike.)

Meanwhile, check out the following resources for more information about OBA:

• Office Business Applications Developer portal: Recommended starting point site for all things OBA
• Office Business Applications (OBA) Team Blog: Newly minted OBA Team Blog
• VerticalWare: Javed Sikander's blog for Office and OBA-related information
• MSDN Solution Architecture center site for Microsoft Office: For technical information revolving around Microsoft Office (and hence OBA)

Up next, some follow-up on the first OBA Workshop held in Singapore, and more on OBA and SOA...