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.

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.
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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

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...