Steve Fox's OBA Ramblings : Office platform

OBA Sample Application Kit for SAP & Siebel Released to Web

Steve Fox — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:57:09 GMT

Over the past few months, we’ve received some very positive feedback on the OBA Sample Application Kits that we’ve released. Well, today we release to web the latest in the family of kits, the OBA Sample Application Kit for SAP & Siebel. Included in this kit are:

Overview whitepaper
Source code
Installation guide
Developer guide

As per the diagram below, this latest OBA kit provides guidance on how developers can integrate Outlook and MOSS 2007 with Siebel and SAP. It integrates a variety of key MS technologies (e.g. BizTalk LOB adapters, WCF, VSTO, and so on) to help you understand how you can integrate LOB systems such as Siebel and SAP into your Office and SharePoint solutions.

The actual developer kit can be found here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/sapsiebel. And for more information on other OBA developer kits, you can go here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/cc442491.aspx.

Enjoy!

Steve

Another Office Customization with Beta 1 – Excel Add-in with Custom Task Pane

Steve Fox — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:07:45 GMT

I recently downloaded the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and have been playing around with the different features for Office Business Application development. For the public Beta 1, you’ll be limited to the 2007-centric templates (e.g. Excel 2007 Add-in, Word 2007 Document, etc.), but the nice thing is that if you’re familiar with these templates when future Betas are released you’ll already have had a chance to get experience with the Beta 1. That said, I presented at a customer conference this week and one of the demos I showed was an Excel Add-in that used a sales cube. This was a 2007-centric HOL that we built for developers, which I’ve posted here: http://cid-40a717fc7fcd7e40.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/VSTO%7C_HOLs.

To test out the new bits, I upgraded one of the samples from the HOL. One of the requests that I had was to post the updated code (the Beta 1) for folks. So here it is for you: http://cid-40a717fc7fcd7e40.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Beta1%7C_OBA.

The code is zipped and some details on the code are as follows:

Unzip into a folder on your c: drive (e.g. c:\OBA).
Ensure that you have added the resources in the Settings tab of your Properties – see figure below. To see the properties, click Project, Properties and then click the Settings tab. Make sure you also add the other two settings as per the below.
Also, ensure that the resource files (that are in the Settings tab) are also copied from the Resources folder into the folder you add as a string setting.

Once you’ve configured the above four settings, you should be able to F5 and run the application. When you invoke the application, you can filter on the cube (from the custom task pane) and then click the Generate Forecast button to load the data in the Excel template. The figure below shows the finished product.

In the coming weeks, I’ll post some additional samples for Office with the Beta 1 bits.

Happy coding!

Steve

Technorati Tags: MSDN,OBA,Office Business Application,Office Development

SharePoint Connections Deck

Steve Fox — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:39:00 GMT

I'm just wrapping up my week here in Las Vegas for SharePoint Connections, and one of the requests I had was to post my decks for those who attended my sessions. I've posted my decks to a public skydrive folder here:

http://cid-40a717fc7fcd7e40.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/SharePointConnections/Final%7C_Presentations.zip

If you have any issues connecting and retrieving the decks, let me know.

I'll also upload the code samples and some videos that go along with these, but wanted to get these uploaded first. As for the questions we discussed in the sessions, I'll be posting answers to those as well.

Thanks to all of you who attended the sessions and made SharePoint Connections another successful event.

Steve

End-to-End Sales Forecast OBA Released To Web!

Steve Fox — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 05:28:00 GMT

It's been a while, but I wanted to let all you OBA developers out there know of something cool that we recently released, which is the End-to-End (E2E) Sales Forecast OBA. As you know from reading this blog, you know that OBA is an Office Business Application and involves mutltiple technologies within the Office platform. The E2E Sales Forecast OBA is a solution that walks you through a scenario where a salesperson creates and submits a quarterly sales forecast. Using a customized Excel template (built using VS 2008/VSTO), our salesperson has the ability to navigate to the team Sales Forecast portal (SharePoint portal), invoke a custom Excel sales forecast template from the New button (content type mapping to a custom template), load line-of-business sales data into the document (via WPF custom actions pane), generate executive reports for the forecast (via Open XML), and submit the document for approval (through SharePoint workflow). It essentially uses all of the concepts and technologies that I've discussed thus far in this blog--plus a few that I haven't.

In the demo solution (which is available on CodePlex--see link below), the approving manager can interact directly with SharePoint or choose to approve the workflow via a custom Outlook Form Region (built using VS 2008/VSTO). Messaging of the workflow is marshaled by SharePoint, and Open XML enables the solution to parse out the necessary data and attach to workflow and to the custom Outlook from region. This is a great starter solution if you're looking to get your hands on some code, and includes the technologies below:

- SharePoint

- Office Client Ribbon and Action Pane Customizations (VS 2008/VSTO)

- Outlook Custom Form Regions

- Open XML

- Unified Communications (UC)

- SharePoint Workflow

- Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

- ++

For the community source-code download and accompanying book, you can check out the following resources:

Sales Forecast Codeplex Source Code Site

http://www.codeplex.com/obasales

Sales Forecast Wrox Book Accompaniment

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470377313.html

The goal of the book is to walk you through all of the code and you would set up and deploy the sales forecast OBA.

Enjoy!!

Steve

Create Your First OBA: Part 4

Steve Fox — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:17:00 GMT

Wow, it's been a while since I blogged on this...time flies. If you've been following along with my previous posts, you'll have seen some of the other Create Your First OBA posts. Here they are if you haven’t seen them:

1.       Creating the VSTO document-level solution (i.e. the custom document);
2.       Deploying the VSTO document-level solution;
3.       Integrating the VSTO with SharePoint content type;
4.       Associating SharePoint workflow with VSTO document-level solution;
5.       Customizing SharePoint (BDC);
6.       Customizing SharePoint (Excel Services).

This post describes how you can add workflow to your OBA.

First, let me say that I can’t believe the amount of people who are asking me about this. I’ve presented at a number of conferences over the last few months and I’ve been getting more questions around this particular subject. That said, a specific walkthrough on exactly how to do this is quite long so I’ll walk through at a high level what you need to do, and then I’ve added a few references for you and also attached a hands-on lab that you can use as well to walk through—complete with code samples.

You’ll also note that the code samples cover other areas of OBA development—mainly covering client-side development using VS 2008 (specifically VSTO 3.0). Some great code samples and walkthroughs, so enjoy.

Okay, back to workflow. To create a SharePoint (SP) workflow you first need to make sure you have an ‘object’ within SP against which you’ll build the workflow. A Word document might be an example or an InfoPath can be another example. You then need to figure out what type of workflow you’re going to build and what the workflow will do. The SP workflow derives from the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) workflow types in the .NET Framework 3.0, so the two main types are Sequential and State Machine. Sequential being as it sounds: a workflow that follows a particular sequence. And State Machine being a workflow that moves along to the next ‘activity’ depending on the state of the workflow. An activity are the individual actions that make up a workflow. If you’d like more details on SP WF, you can check out these links here:

1. Book excerpt from Programming Office Business Applications: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc534997.aspx.

2. You can also find some articles here in the VSTO 3.0 documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386211.aspx.

So, once you’ve figured out what your workflow will do (and let’s assume for simplicity sake that you’re going to build a Sequential workflow), you then open Visual Studio 2008, click File, New, Project, select the Office node under the language node of your choice (i.e. either VB or C#) and then select SharePoint 2007 Sequential Workflow, give it a name and click OK. This will invoke a wizard that will enable you to give the workflow a name and map the workflow template (each workflow is built and deployed as a template) to your specific SP site. Once this is done, click Next and then you can select the library or list you want to associate your SP workflow with, the History list and then the Tasks. In mine, I had a document library for the custom Word document I built earlier in the blog series (called Annual Reviews) so I built a small approval workflow (that updated a status note that corresponds to that particular document library. At this point, VS creates a project shell with a number of items in it. You can drag and drop activities onto the designer, add code behind for the activities and then map the properties of the workflow to the activities to make sure everything works. You can then press F5 to test out your workflow and it will invoke SP and run your workflow.

Now, keep in mind I just encapsulated in one paragraph what will take you an hour to walk through in the attached hands-on lab—which is why I chose the really condensed version—and even longer when you’re planning out your own SP workflow. I did this to not only save some time in writing the blog, but also because the resources I’ll provide below will help you just as much if not better.

So, here’s what I would recommend as next steps for you to get really get stuck into learning SP workflow:

1. Take a look at the attached hands-on lab and walk through lab #4. It’s an awesome and simple example of how to quickly create a simple workflow. (The lab uses VS 2008 (VSTO 3.0), and you'll need to have Office 2007 installed and a MOSS 2007 server available to build your workflow against.)

2. Take a look at the following web cast. It’s a great intro to SP workflow and provides you with some deeper-level information: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032378840&CountryCode=US.

3. Take a look at following new site for SP developers; it’s got some awesome content: http://mssharepointdeveloper.com.

Okay, hopefully that will get you started.

Steve

Interesting OBA Blog on DITA...

Steve Fox — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:14:00 GMT

A colleague sent this to me today...thought it was interesting, so I thought I'd pass along to you all.

http://blogs.msdn.com/johnmullinax/archive/2008/06/17/democratizing-dita-dita-exchange-and-danish-beer-20-questions-with-steffen-frederiksen-of-content-technologies.aspx

Steve

SharePoint Development Conference (FireStarter) at Microsoft on June 11th

Steve Fox — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:04:00 GMT

OBA is a broad area and we're seeing an increase in the number of developers who are building SharePoint solutions--both internally to an enterprise and externally on the web. Microsoft is hosting a 1-day event for those of you interested in learning more about SharePoint development. More information on this event, how to register and who to contact for more information is below:

SharePoint Web 2.0 Fire Starter!

In typical FireStarter event style, we aim at delivering a first class experience to all attendees and make them experts on developing on SharePoint technologies before the end of the event. We have great speakers from the Microsoft rooster presenting some awesome topics that will help you build and customize websites with SharePoint and Web 2.0 technologies. You cannot miss this action packed day!

Here’s what the agenda looks like:

AGENDA
*8:00 am – 8:30 am*	*Breakfast*
8:30 am – 9:00 am	Introduction to day	Mithun Dhar
9:00 am – 10:00 am	Whirlwind SharePoint on Visual Studio - VSeWSS	Paul Andrew
*10:00* am – 10:15 am	*Break*
10:15 am – 11:15 am	Silverlight on SharePoint	Steve Fox
11:15 am – 12:15 pm	Web Parts on SharePoint	John Durant
*12:15* pm – 1:00 pm	*Lunch*
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm	Web Services on SharePoint	Paul Stubbs
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm	Workflow on SharePoint	Eilene Hao
3:00 pm – 3:15 pm	*Break*
3:15 pm – 4:15 pm	Event Handlers on SharePoint	Chris Johnson
4:15 pm – 5:00 pm	Page Branding on SharePoint	Paul Andrew
*Post Event*	*Pizza and Networking*

Where: Microsoft Conference Center (Building 33) – Kodiak Room

When: June 11^th 2008 - Wednesday

Register NOW!

If you have any questions, please contact Mithun Dhar at mithund@microsoft.com.

Create Your First OBA: Part 3

Steve Fox — Sat, 03 May 2008 00:14:00 GMT

Hey gang,

If you've been following along with the Create Your First OBA series, I've published the first two of the six parts - see below.

I was actually hedging on posting for the third item because I wrote an article for MSDN Magazine that covers it. So, I'll provide you with a link to the article which lives here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc507632.aspx.

I'm on the road again at Sapphire for the next few days, so if you're in Orlando at the conference look me up...I'll be dutifully hanging out at our booth. When I get back, I'll post on SharePoint workflow. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there's been a lot of requests for this so hang tight and I'll get to it soon.

Have a great weekend!

Steve

The OBA Sample Application Kits

Steve Fox — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:07:00 GMT

Just a quick post to check out the OBA Sample Application for Kits MSDN page. The kits provide comprehensive guidance on how to integrate Office with SAP and PeopleSoft (and we'll have others in the future). The kits include whitepaper, install guide, technical walkthrough doc, and source code. We announced the latest of the kits (the OBA Sample Application Kit for PeopleSoft) last week at Kurt DelBene's keynote at Collaborate 08.

You can get to the page here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/cc442491.aspx

From this page, you can get to the individual kits.

Check it out! This is awesome stuff, and it is a rarity to find kits that provide guidance against these two very popular LOB Systems (that is PeopleSoft and SAP).

Cheers,

Steve

Conference Follow-Up Post

Steve Fox — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:41:00 GMT

Over the past few weeks, I've attended and presented at a number of conferences (specifically VSLive, MS CSAF, Collaborate, and DevConnections) and had some great conversations with attendees who were seeking more information or had questions in the sessions on additional OBA resources. During some of these conversations, I promised to follow up in my blog on some specific issues/questions. In this blog post, I've added some additional information on:

Deployment
SharePoint Workflow
Outlook add-in development

I'll also be following up on this post in the future with additional information, so I encourage you to check back or RSS the blog (as I'm not exactly to a schedule when posting).

Deployment

In a couple of my sessions, we had some detailed conversations around deployment. Here is a question that I was going to check on. I've also added some additional information that you can check out.

1. Can you point to the root folder assembly and have it point to the latest version of the bits? (This was in relation to mapping a content type from SharePoint and then invoking the assembly from the doc library.) The answer to the question, as I suspected, was yes--and that the deployment manifest should point you to the right location. However, the thing I forgot to mention was that you have to make sure that in your deployment properties you have "Check every time the customization runs." Also, this is not the default setting; the default setting is "Check Every 7 Days." So, once you publish a solution with that configuration, each time the custom document is opened you will get the latest version of the assembly associated with that document.

Misha Schneerson, one of the devs on VSTO, has a great multi-part post on Deployment. While we've made it easier in VS 2008 (by virtue of ClickOnce), there are still some things to keep in mind. You can check out his blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/mshneer/archive/2008/04/24/deploying-your-vsto-add-in-to-all-users-part-iii.aspx.

SharePoint Workflow

Many of you asked me about some additional workflow guidance. I've pinged a couple of different people, and we're going to put together a blog-post with some additional information. I've also requested some web-casts to address some of the basics. I'll post pointers as these become available. Until then, here are a few things to get you started:

1. http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=358685

2. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA101005911033.aspx

3. http://blogs.msdn.com/nikhil/archive/2007/09/11/vsto-and-sharepoint-workflow.aspx

4. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386168.aspx

I'm also working on a couple of other things (whitepaper and webcast) that I'll try and get out to you soon.

Outlook Add-in Development

I'm noticing more and more developers extending Outlook. In one of my sessions, we talked a little about deployment across 2003 and 2007 instances of Outlook and we also discussed migration of OFS form regions to managed code OFRs. Here is some additional information for you guys on this:

Outlook 2007 should host an Outlook 2003 add-in. Mary Lee recently wrote a blog post about developing and testing an Outlook 2003 add-in on a computer running Outlook 2007. You can read more at this post - http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto/archive/2008/03/20/developing-an-add-in-for-multiple-versions-of-office.aspx.

Note that the deployment method isn't Office version specific; it's VSTO runtime specific. A VSTO solution that works for both O11 and O12 must be designed with the VSTO 2.0 runtime and .NET FX 2.0, so the same setup project with CASPOL deployment would apply.

There is also an interesting topic named "Creating Solutions for Multiple Versions of Office" at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb772080.aspx.

We do have topics that discuss how to import an OFS into an Outlook 2007 project. We also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of importing a form region vs. creating one fresh by using our designer. I will admit that the discussion of using an OFS file is not overly extensive. However, I don't think we missed any discussion critical to who are considering the idea of moving their OFS files to VSTO. Here are the topics that discuss using an OFS file:

· Creating Outlook Form Regions - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386301.aspx.

· Walkthrough: Importing a Form Region that was Designed in Outlook - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb608611.aspx.

· Accessing a Form Region at Run Time - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb772084.aspx.

Note: Thanks to the VSTO dev team and UE team for providing responses to my field notes and queries.

To those of you who attended my sessions and had questions, I hope the above at least gets you started. If not, I'll be sure to post more in the coming days and weeks.

Steve

Create Your First OBA: Part 1

Steve Fox — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:07:00 GMT

Last week I attended VSLive and promised to post some of the sample code (I emphasize demo code J) I discussed at the conference. Specifically, in the couple of sessions that I did I discussed SharePoint integration with Word (showing a lightweight OBA) and the creation of Outlook add-ins using Visual Studio 2008 (VSTO 3.0). In an earlier post, I showed you how to create an Outlook add-in and integrate with external data using a custom task pane. I also showed you how to create an Outlook Form Region. I also published an article on this in the most recent MSDN magazine http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc164242.aspx.

So, I’m going to focus on the OBA side of things through six posts, which I’ll break out as follows:

The Lightweight OBA scenario is essentially an annual review process that uses a custom task pane to load employee data and then map it to a set of Word content controls in the document. The data comes from a SQL server and can be updated from the custom task pane as well. Further, the document is tied to a SharePoint content type and has some workflow associated with it. (I currently have some oob workflow associated with it, but I’ll create some custom workflow in the next couple of weeks and associate that with the document-level solution). To make things a little easier to get started, I’ve posted my VSLive deck to this post so you can walk through the deck…I’ve included screenshots with the deck so you can get a sense for what my demo looked like. Note that it is a work in progress!

So, since this is the first of these five posts I’ll cover the creation of the VSTO document-level customization. Alright, here goes:

The first thing you’ll want to do is to make sure you have an employee database (keep it simple with a table) with some records in it. In my solution, I have a few records each with an employee name, ID, title, and review scores for three years. I’ve also got some fields for the comments and ratings that you’ll use when uploading the comments. Take a look at the screenshots in the attached deck to get a sense for what fields I’ve created in the SQL Server table.

After you’ve got your table created, you’ll want to now go ahead and create your VSTO project. Note that when creating a document-level solution you can either create a document and then use that as the document in your development project or you can create and edit a blank document in the VS IDE. Depending on how complex you want your template to be, you can do either…but if you’re looking to build a complex template/document, I’d consider building it first and then using it in the project. Okay, open Visual Studio 2008, click File, New, Project, and then select either Visual C# or Visual Basic, Office, and Word 2007 Document. When prompted, select whether you want to use an existing document (if you created one here’s where you would browse to it) or not (in which case you would create/edit the document in VS).

With your VSTO document-level solution created, you’ll want first add the data source (the employee table you created) to your project. To do this, click Data, Add New Data Source, select your SQL server instance, and the database within which the employee table resides.

After you’ve got your data added, you’ll now want to add a user control that will host a data view. Right click your project, click Add, User Control, and give it a name. The designer view will open by default, and you can drag over the fields that you want to load from the SQL server table (mine was called employee) onto the designer, which will automatically create a data view for you. In my custom task pane, I also created a bottom part to the custom task pane (see slide 13 for the entire custom task pane) which I mapped to the data that the manager would enter in as rating data for the annual review process. For each of the custom task pane sections I had a button which had a load event (took the currently selected data and added it to the document) and a Sync button (which mapped the completed fields in the document to the fields in the custom task pane). You could then subsequently save the data using the data view back into SQL server.

Okay, you should now have the data source added to your project and the user control created. The next thing you’ll want to do is customize the Word document. In my document, I opened the Word document in the designer view and then dragged a few content controls from the Word Controls part of the Toolbox and create a document that could then house some external data (see slide 21).

After you’ve done all of this, we now need to do a couple of things to finish Part One: 1) add some code to load an instance of the user control into a custom task pane when the assembly is loaded by the host application and 2) add some mapping code between the data from the custom task pane to and from the document.

1) The code for adding the user control to the custom task pane will be added to the core ThisDocument.cs file:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Data;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using System.Windows.Forms;

using System.Xml.Linq;

using Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Applications.Runtime;

using Office = Microsoft.Office.Core;

using Word = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word;

namespace _2008AnnualReview

{

public partial class ThisDocument

{

private AnnualReviewTaskPane ctrl = new AnnualReviewTaskPane();

private void ThisDocument_Startup(object sender, System.EventArgs e)

{

this.ActionsPane.Controls.Add(ctrl);

}

private void ThisDocument_Shutdown(object sender, System.EventArgs e)

{

}

…

}

2) Mapping code between custom task pane and Word document.

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.ComponentModel;

using System.Drawing;

using System.Data;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace _2008AnnualReview

{

public partial class AnnualReviewTaskPane : UserControl

{

string empName;

string empNumber;

string empTitle;

string empReviewScore06;

string empReviewScore07;

string strWorkEthic;

string strLeadership;

string strProdKnowledge;

string strSkillsDev;

string strPromotion;

string str2008ReviewScore;

string strAdditionalComments;

string strDate;

string strSignature;

public AnnualReviewTaskPane()

{

InitializeComponent();

}

private void employeeReviewBindingNavigatorSaveItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

this.Validate();

this.employeeReviewBindingSource.EndEdit();

//You’ll want to add some more sophisticated error-handling code here.

try

{

this.tableAdapterManager.UpdateAll(this.annualReviewDataSet);

MessageBox.Show("Records Updated.");

}

catch (Exception exceptError)

{

MessageBox.Show(exceptError.ToString());

}

private void AnnualReviewTaskPane_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

employeeReviewTableAdapter.Fill(this.annualReviewDataSet.EmployeeReview);

}

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

mapTextboxData();

mapContentControls();

}

private void mapTextboxData()

{

empName = employee_NameTextBox.Text;

empNumber = employee_NumTextBox.Text;

empTitle = employee_TitleTextBox.Text;

empReviewScore06 = review_Score_06TextBox.Text;

empReviewScore07 = review_Score_07TextBox.Text;

}

private void mapContentControls()

{

Globals.ThisDocument.wccName.Text = empName;

Globals.ThisDocument.wccEmpNumber.Text = empNumber;

Globals.ThisDocument.wccTitle.Text = empTitle;

Globals.ThisDocument.wcc2006ReviewScore.Text = empReviewScore06;

Globals.ThisDocument.wcc2007ReviewScore.Text = empReviewScore07;

}

private void button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

//You can definitely optimize this for one string mapping as opposed to a //two step process.

strWorkEthic = Globals.ThisDocument.ddlistWorkEthic.Text;

strLeadership = Globals.ThisDocument.ddlistLeadership.Text;

strProdKnowledge = Globals.ThisDocument.ddlistProdknowledge.Text;

strSkillsDev = Globals.ThisDocument.ddlistSkillsDev.Text;

strPromotion = Globals.ThisDocument.ddlistPromotion.Text;

str2008ReviewScore = Globals.ThisDocument.ddlist2008ReviewScore.Text;

strAdditionalComments = Globals.ThisDocument.wccAdditionalComments.Text;

strDate = Globals.ThisDocument.wccSignatureDate.Text;

strSignature = Globals.ThisDocument.wccManagerSignature.Text;

work_EthicTextBox.Text = strWorkEthic;

leadershipTextBox.Text = strLeadership;

prod_KnowledgeTextBox.Text = strProdKnowledge;

tech_SkillsTextBox.Text = strSkillsDev;

promotionTextBox.Text = strPromotion;

review_CommentsTextBox.Text = strAdditionalComments;

review_Score_08TextBox.Text = str2008ReviewScore;

}

…

}

Note: Where you see “…” I’ve not included this as this is auto-generated code.

So, at this point you should have a VSTO document-level solution that does the following:

1.       Loads data into a custom task pane.
2.       Enables the user to browse the data.
3.       Load the employee data into the Word document.
4.       The Word document enables you to add ratings.
5.      Sync the ratings with the custom task pane.
6.       Save the employee’s annual review data to the SQL server.

In the next post, I’ll discuss deployment.

Have fun coding!

Steve

Integrate Office with SAP...

Steve Fox — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:17:00 GMT

You may have heard of Duet, an out of the box OBA that supports a number of different scenarios for the enterprise (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/duet/FX101686211033.aspx?ofcresset=1). Duet is a great solution and covers a wide variety of scenarios. If you're looking to hook the Office system into SAP programmatically on a smaller scale, though, what do you do? You have a couple of options depending on what you're trying to integrate with. Assuming you've got your Web services created, you can either hook into the Office client using Visual Studio and you can integrate with MOSS using either the iView Web part, the Business Data Catalog (BDC), or through PerformancePoint Server. If you're looking to integrate with the client or through the BDC, I've posted some guidance that may be able to help you. I developed this in partnership with Softagon, an IT firm based out of San Francisco, and have delivered this guidance in the form of a 'kit' -- more precisely an OBA Sample Application Kit for SAP (v. 2.0). The kit includes a whitepaper, install guide, technical overview, and some source code to get you started. The only bummer is that you'll need to recreate the SAP environment. But once you do that, you can recreate the solution around which the kit was built (a specialty travel package application).

You can find the kit here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/obasapsak. The kit shows you how to integrate SAP Web services with Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 and MOSS 2007 using Visual Studio 2008 (specifically Visual Studio Tools for Office 3.0).

If you're looking for guidance for earlier versions of Visual Studio, I've also released the OBA Sample Application Kit for SAP, v. 1.0. You can find that here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb498189.aspx. This shows you how to integrate SAP Web services with Excel and PowerPoint 2007 using VSTO 2005 SE.

More kits will come in the future, so check back for more information or go to the OBA Developer Portal: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905528.aspx.

Steve

Your First Outlook Add-in...

Steve Fox — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:47:00 GMT

I just finished a private technical briefing and during the session showed a few demos. Many of the attendees asked me to share the code, so I thought I'd post to my blog to get my butt in gear and actually post some useful stuff and get the code up here so the attendees could read up on it.

When thinking about OBAs, one of the key integration points in Office is Outlook. It makes sense; a ton of people use this tool every day, so why wouldn't you leverage the Outlook OM and VSTO to create some killer OBAs? To get you started, I put together a small demo that shows how you integrate Outlook with AdventureWorks using VSTO. The demo shows i) how to add a custom task pane that's bound to data and enables you to create a new contact (or more widely access the Outlook OM).

First, the environment. My dev environment is Windows Server 2003, MOSS 2007 (which I won't use in this demo), VS 2008 (which includes VSTO 3.0), Expression Blend, SQL Server 2005, and Office Enterprise 2007. I've also downloaded the Adventureworks 2005 sample db off of Codeplex.

To begin, open Visual Studio and create a new project (File, New, Project, click Visual C# (or Visual Basic), Office, and then select Outlook Add-in). Name the project what you want and click OK. This creates the VSTO Outlook project shell for you.

In my project, I first added the Adventureworks database (Data, Add New Data Source, and walk through the wizard to add the database). The only table you'll want to add to the project is the vSalesPerson table. Once the database is added, click Data, Show Data Sources to make sure it's there.

I then added a new user control (right click project, click Add, New Item, and then select User Control in the New Item dialog). Resize the control to be about 300 x 760. I then dragged a few of the fields from the Data view onto the user control--specifically, I added FirstName, Lastname, Phone, Email, AddressLine1, and City. You can select the ones you want; just remember you'll need to account for them in your code-behind. Once you've done this, add a button to the user control (see attached image).

I added some code-behind to the button, which is listed below:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.ComponentModel;

using System.Drawing;

using System.Data;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using System.Windows.Forms;

using Outlook = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook;

namespace MyTestAddin

{

public partial class CustomerBrowser : UserControl

{

string strFirstName;

string strLastName;

string strPhone;

string strEmail;

string strAddress;

string strCity;

public CustomerBrowser()

{

InitializeComponent();

}

private void CustomerBrowser_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

vSalesPersonTableAdapter.Fill(this.adventureWorks_DataDataSet.vSalesPerson);

}

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

strFirstName = firstNameTextBox.Text;

strLastName = lastNameTextBox.Text;

strPhone = phoneTextBox.Text;

strEmail = emailAddressTextBox.Text;

strAddress = addressLine1TextBox.Text;

strCity = cityTextBox.Text;

createCustomerContact(

strFirstName,

strLastName,

strPhone,

strEmail,

strAddress,

strCity);

}

private void createCustomerContact(

string firstName,

string lastname,

string phone,

string email,

string address,

string city)

{

Outlook._Application myOutlookObject = new Outlook.Application();

Outlook.MAPIFolder custContacts = (Outlook.MAPIFolder)myOutlookObject.Session.GetDefaultFolder(Outlook.OlDefaultFolders.olFolderContacts);

Outlook.ContactItem newSalesContact = (Outlook.ContactItem)custContacts.Items.Add(Outlook.OlItemType.olContactItem);

newSalesContact.FirstName = firstName;

newSalesContact.LastName = lastname;

newSalesContact.Business2TelephoneNumber = phone;

newSalesContact.Email1Address = email;

newSalesContact.BusinessAddress = address;

newSalesContact.BusinessAddressCity = city;

newSalesContact.Save();

}

You'll note that you need to call the FIll method when the user controls loads to ensure the data from the Adventureworks database loads. But, most of the other data is pretty self-explanatory. You're essentially grabbing the string variables and then mapping them to the properties of the new contact item you've created. You need to note that there is no error handling in this code, though. So, for example I could add the same person from the data source over and over again. You may not want to do that.

Hit F6 to build, but don't run just yet. After you've successfully built the app, go to the ThisAddIn class and make sure you have the following code in it:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using System.Xml.Linq;

using Outlook = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook;

using Office = Microsoft.Office.Core;

namespace MyTestAddin

{

public partial class ThisAddIn

{

Microsoft.Office.Tools.CustomTaskPane ctp;

private CustomerBrowser ctrl = new CustomerBrowser();

string title = "Demo";

private void ThisAddIn_Startup(object sender, System.EventArgs e)

{

ctp = this.CustomTaskPanes.Add(ctrl, title);

ctp.Visible = true;

ctp.Width = 350;

ctp.DockPosition = Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoCTPDockPosition.msoCTPDockPositionRight;

}

private void ThisAddIn_Shutdown(object sender, System.EventArgs e)

{

}

#region VSTO generated code

/// <summary>

/// Required method for Designer support - do not modify

/// the contents of this method with the code editor.

/// </summary>

private void InternalStartup()

{

this.Startup += new System.EventHandler(ThisAddIn_Startup);

this.Shutdown += new System.EventHandler(ThisAddIn_Shutdown);

}

#endregion

}

The important code here is that you need to create a custom task pane object (CTP) and then add an instance of the newly created user control to the CTP object and then set some properties on the CTP object. What this will do (notice that we've added some of the code in the ThisAddinStartup method) is invoke the custom task pane.

You can now F5 to build. You should see the user control on the right-hand side of the screen. Open your Contacts folder, and then browse to a sales person from the Adventureworks db and click the button to add them to your Contacts. Voila! You've created your first Outlook add-in.

The extrapolation for an OBA is connecting to a LOB system via a service. You can try and wrap the Adventureworks db in a service and do the same thing we did above--just do it through a service call--and you'd have built a small OBA.

Well, happy coding!

Steve

PS I recently picked up the book Programming Applications for Office Outlook 2007, and this helped me with some questions I had about coding against the Outlook OM. Lots of code samples in it, and very well written.

The ramblings continue...starting out on OBA

Steve Fox — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:34:00 GMT

It's been a while since I've blogged last, and things have been very busy. Over the past three months, I've been to a number of conferences including the most recent Office Developer Conference and SharePoint Conference. It was great to see more OBA-centric content at these events. Coming up, I'll also be hitting VSLive, DevConnections, Collaborate, TechEd, SAP TechEd, Oracle OpenWorld, and PDC. And at these events, you're going to see some additional OBA content that will help you get on your way.

To start though, I'd like to offer those who are new to OBA some key resources...the things you might take a look at if you're a developer not necessarily new to .NET, but new to developing Office solutions.So, in this blog I'm going to list out a few places you might go to get more information.

OBA Overview: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb614538.aspx. This is a good article (chapter excerpt actually) to get your hands dirty.
OBA Central: www.obacentral.com. A decent portal for partner and customer OBA information. I've worked with some of the companies on here, and it's always great to see companies highlighted and on OBA Central.
Office Developer Center: http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidOfficeDeveloperCenter?clid=th-TH. This is a good place to go for general Office development information. There are a ton of decent How-to videos you can find here (which I think are one of the quickest ways to get yourself up to speed on very specific areas of development).
VSTO Developer Center: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905533.aspx. VSTO is key to developing the client-side portion of OBAs (as well as doing some server-side stuff such as SharePoint workflow). It's come a long way, so I encourage you to check it out (VSTO 3.0 is the most current version).
SharePoint (WSS) Developer Center: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/default.aspx. This is Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), the underlying infrstructure and object model for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. WSS is great for those of you who want to get into understanding the object model and dynamic creation of sites, lists, etc.
SharePoint (MOSS) Developer Cetner: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905503.aspx. This is the MOSS portal, where you can find lots of great information. There are a number of key features you'll want to learn about when beginning to build OBAs. For example, you'll want to understand how to build Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Excel Services, Business Data Catalog (BDC) Web parts to build integration into your line-of-business systems and provide business intelligence into your MOSS-based solutions.
OBA Solution Patterns: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb614541.aspx. OBA solution patterns provide some guidance to architects and developers on design patterns. We have some ways to on these, but they're a great step towards guiding you on how to craft your solution after an existing pattern.
OBA RAPs: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb643797.aspx. This is the link to one OBA Reference Architecture Pack (RAP), which is a great way to learn about industry-specific OBAs. Mike has created a number of other ones, so make sure you check those out as well.
Six Office Business Applications for Office SharePoint Server (MS Press): http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9471.aspx. A book that provides an overview of six different OBAs and how developers could go about building them.
Programming Office Business Applications (MS Press): http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/12194.aspx. A book that looks at the different technologies that makie up an OBA--ranging from business intelligence, to social networking, to OpenXML, to SharePoint Workflow. Again, a developer-focused book.

In future blogs, I'm going to walk through some specifics about OBAs and try and cover them from top-to-bottom. I'll also try and find some additional things that you might find useful in your OBA ramp-up.

Until then (which I promise will not be too long), happy reading, coding.

Steve

The ramblings begin...

Steve Fox — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:07:00 GMT

Well it's December 13th, and I have not really started my Holiday shopping yet...how sad is that. But alas, I'm sure you're not tuning into this blog to hear about the lameness of my shopping habits, but you're probably looking for a little info on this mysterious thing called OBA. And if you have, then great...because I'll be using this blog to update you regularly on all things OBA. And while the title of the blog implies perambulation, fear not; I'll try and be somewhat structured in my delivery of information to you as I find it or create it.

In this blog entry, all I'm going to do is define OBA to keep things simple. As this blog grows, I'll add more information, sample code, and pointers to great content so you can fulfill your quest to learn, build and deploy OBAs in your organization. So, without further delay: What is OBA?

OBA, which stands for Office Business Application, is not a product SKU; moreover, it is the building of composite applications that leverage the Office development platform - or what some are also referring to as the OBA framework. I simplify my definition of OBA to the potential integration of three major components: i) a LOB system that manages your organization's business processes (e.g. SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel, MS Dynamics, etc.). ii) the customization of the Office client (using tools like VSTO), and iii) the development and/or customization of MOSS 2007. The server side, while predominantly MOSS-centric (MOSS being Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) is not necessarily restricted to SharePoint; however, it is a primary piece of the pie.). And I say potential because you can different flavors of OBAs. For example, I could build an OBA that is Office client customizations tied to a LOB system; another type of OBA is server-side customizations (think MOSS BDC web part) tied to a LOB system; and yet another that combines both client and server customizations and one or more LOB systems. More forward looking, we'll likely see more OBAs that leverage hosted services/mash-ups in the cloud

There are various levels of value from creating OBAs in the organization today. For example, large-scale LOB systems are often cumbersome to learn and use and often don't return the desired investments. This means training costs, change management costs, etc. Thus, OBAs (through leveraging the Office platform) enable developers to integrate LOB systems into the Office client and MOSS and accomplish two primary things: i) keep the information worker in the context of a familiar and comfortable environment, and ii) drive specific disciplinary and/or business data directly into the purview of the people who need and use it. This integration can mitigate some of the aforementioned costs thus decreasing total cost of ownership and driving productivity into the appropriate organizational disciplines.

There is a lot of OBA momentum underway, and you can check out www.obacentral.com to see some of what's happening out there. However, in future blogs I'll be posting lots of useful information, so look out for client customization information, integration techniques with MOSS, and more. Of course, I'll also provide some additional business value information (and pointers to other blogs, articles, etc.) that may also be useful to you.

Until then, I hope you'll find our chats useful and fun!

Steve