OBA Ramblings

Announcing SharePoint for the Web Development Series

For those that are looking for more SharePoint development resources, we'll be launching a series of webcasts starting next week. More information below. 

Announcing the SharePoint Products and Technologies for Internet Site Development webcast series.  This series shows how to use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for your internet site.  We will leverage a fictitious site, Adventure Works, to demonstrate how to customize SharePoint to create your internet presence.  The series is presented by our Microsoft Most Valued Professionals, experts in the technologies they are presenting on.  This material follows up on the labs and webcasts that were introduced on the http://mssharepointdeveloper.com site. 

SharePoint Connections Deck

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!

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)

-        ++

Use Silverlight to Enhance your SharePoint-Based OBAs with the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint

Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint Released to CodePlex!

Today we released the source code for the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint—based on the Silverlight Beta 2 release. The Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint provide a way for developers to better understand how to integrate Silverlight applications with SharePoint. Silverlight is an incredibly popular technology and with the increase in SharePoint adoption we’re finding an increased call for integrating technologies like Silverlight with SharePoint.

In this release, you’ll find five blueprint samples:

1.       Hello World

2.       Media Player

3.       Slider Control

4.       Custom Navigation

5.       Colleague Viewer

Included in the release are documentation for each of the samples and the source code (go to the Releases tab of the CodePlex site). Also posted to the site is an FAQ document. In the coming days and week, we’ll publish additional screen-casts and any other supporting documentation we create or that is provided to us through the developer community.

The links to get to the Silverlight Blueprints for SharePoint are:

1.       http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint/   --or direct at the CodePlex site

2.       http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP

Enjoy!

Steve

A couple of interesting vids done by my colleagues...

Here are a couple of vids done by my colleagues (technical evangelists for Dynamics). They call themselves the Dynamics Duo:

http://blogs.msdn.com/benriga/archive/2008/08/13/the-dynamics-duo-talk-about-crm-and-office-business-applications-oba.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/benriga/archive/2008/08/12/the-dynamics-duo-talk-about-dynamics-crm-and-sharepoint.aspx

Enjoy!

Steve

Create Your First OBA: Part 5

Hey gang,

It's been a while since I've posted, but I've been on the road. I attended TechEd 2008 (USA), our internal field conference TechReady 7, and then travelled to South Africa to TechEd 2008 (S. Africa). Now, I'm back in Seattle--albeit a little jet-lagged. Over the past few weeks, I've continued to give talks on OBA, but have been doing a lot more SharePoint lately--especially Silverlight and SharePoint (I'll put some blog posts up about this in the near future).

In the past, I've been doing a lot of writing in my blogs, so for this blog I put together a short screen-cast to go along with the blog. Essentially, in this blog I'm going to show you how you can create a Business Data Catalog (BDC) web part in SharePoint using the Business Data Catalog Definition Editor. Specifically, the web part will actually implement a couple of web methods from a Web service. I get this question a lot, so I really wanted to make this a part of the OBA series. (Plus, the BDC is one of the more common objects that SharePoint developers use.) This is part 5 of the Create Your First OBA series (Customizing SharePoint (BDC)):

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).

Before you get started, a couple of notes on your environment. You can download the MOSS 2007 SDK from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6D94E307-67D9-41AC-B2D6-0074D6286FA9&displaylang=en. The SDK contains the BDC Definition Editor, which you will use to create the application definition file (ADF)--a metadata representation of the data source that you're connecting to with the BDC web part. I also used VS 2008 to create my Web service, which I deployed to my local Win 2003 Server which was also running MOSS (Enterprise edition). The BDC is available in the MOSS Enterprise Edition, so if you're looking to use the BDC you'll need to make sure you have this MOSS SKU installed.

Okay, so below I've added a Silverlight video player with the WMV screencast embedded in it:

If you have any problems with this, you can also get the WMV directly here: http://silverlight.services.live.com/75885/How%20to%20Create%20a%20BDC%20Web%20Part%20that%20Consumes%20a%20Web%20Method/video.wmv.

Have a great day!

Steve

Recording of Recent OBA MSDN Webcasts...

Hey gang,

Over the past couple of weeks, I've presented a couple of OBA webcasts. I thought you might be interested in taking a look at them.

1. MSDN WEBCAST: DEMYSTIFYING OFFICE BUSINESS APPLICATIONS FOR THE DEVELOPER (LEVEL 200)

2. MSDN WEBCAST: DEMYSTIFYING OFFICE BUSINESS APPLICATIONS FOR THE BUSINESS ANALYST (LEVEL 100)

Enjoy,

Steve

Create Your First OBA: Part 4

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...

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 Webcast Series

There's also a number of webcasts you all might be interested in seeing as well. For more information, check out:

http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/archive/2008/05/12/sharepoint-developer-msdn-web-cast-series.aspx

Each MSDN Web Cast is an introduction for .NET Developers to SharePoint and the Topic. You need to register for the web cast by clicking the link and entering some details. Then you get emailed a link to sign on and participate in the web cast on its date and time.

Each MSDN Web Cast is recorded for later viewing which should be through the same registration URL.

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

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:

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

When: June 11^th 2008 - Wednesday