There are several development tools and Microsoft Office applications that can be used to create Office Business Applications. The focus of this book is how to leverage the latest capabilities built into Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, but it is important to mention the other array of tools that can be used for development of OBAs.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 provides developers with the ability to build applications targeting the 2007 and 2003 Office system. This release of Visual Studio contains the most advanced feature set for developing Office solutions.
Visual Studio 2008 includes the following functionality:
Visual designers for UI extensibility.
SharePoint workflow support.
Data binding in Word content controls.
VBA → VSTO interoperability.
Application-level add-ins for most client programs (both 2003 and 2007).
Document-level add-ins for Excel and Word 2007.
Improved deployment and security using ClickOnce. (Yes, ClickOnce is finally here for Office solutions!)
The following illustrations, Figure 1-10 and Figure 1-11, provide views to the different project templates that can be developed using Visual Studio 2008.
One of the greatest features added to Visual Studio 2008 for Office solutions is the support for developing Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Forms regions. Form regions add custom functionality to standard Outlook 2007 forms. Form regions provide a range of options for presenting a UI, including:
A customized default page of any standard form
Up to 30 additional pages to any standard form
Replacement or enhancement of any standard form
Custom UI displayed in the reading pane in addition to the Document Inspector
You can design the layout of a form region by using the Outlook 2007 Form Region Designer, as shown in Figure 1-12. You can then import the form region into an application-level add-in project and use managed code to handle events in the form region. Before you test the form region, you define the region’s properties and associate the form region with an Outlook message class.
To learn more about an integrated SharePoint development experience, read the next section, which discusses Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0. Unfortunately Visual Studio 2008 at the time of release does not support integrated SharePoint development, so you will need to run Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 side by side to accomplish a seamless development experience across Office clients and servers.
Although this book’s focus is Visual Studio 2008, it is important to mention Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Second Edition (VSTO 2005 SE). A fully supported free add-on to Visual Studio 2005, VSTO 2005 SE gives developers the ability to build applications targeting the 2007 Office system. VSTO 2005 SE includes the following functionality:
Application-level customizations and add-ins for the most popular Office applications, including the 2003 and 2007 versions of Word, Excel, Outlook, Visio, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint, and the 2007 version of InfoPath. The safe loading, unloading, and management of managed add-ins are some of the most important features of VSTO 2005 SE.
A programming model and run-time support for the Ribbon, custom task panes, and Outlook forms regions.
Design-time support for InfoPath 2007 forms so you can build your forms from the Visual Studio IDE.
Support for Visual Studio 2005 Professional.
In addition, there is also an additional free add-on, Microsoft Visual Studio extensions for Windows SharePoint Services, that provides the following tools to aid developers in building SharePoint applications:
Visual Studio 2005 project templates
Web part
Team site definition
Blank site definition
List definition
Visual Studio 2005 item templates
These items can be added into an existing project:
Web part
Custom field
List definition (with optional event receiver)
Content type (with optional event receiver)
Module
SharePoint Solution Generator
This stand-alone program generates a site definition project from an existing SharePoint site. The program enables developers to use the browser and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer to customize the content of their sites before creating code by using Visual Studio.
Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is specifically designed to help you create and customize Web sites and workflows built with Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server 2007. It provides tools that IT professionals and solution developers need to develop SharePoint-based applications and workflow solutions that address organizational agility and business process automation.
With Office SharePoint Designer 2007, you can design SharePoint workflows and applications without having to use traditional procedural coding languages or techniques. Instead, SharePoint Designer provides tools that you can use to:
Build conditional views and forms with validation
Read, write, and present data from a variety of data sources, including XML files, SQL databases such as Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and Web services
Compile data from multiple sources to create flexible, customized views and reports
Build Web part pages and connect Web parts to create business applications