The Office system has evolved incredibly over the last twenty years. When we look back at our first version of Microsoft Word (Word for Windows 1.0), it’s amazing to see the difference in the design of the then and the design of the now. We notice a core difference when we look at our applications of yesterday: their purpose was specific and discrete. There was little interoperability with other applications beyond copy and paste. Today, the experience of word processing is not just about creating documents; it’s about content management, team collaboration, smart and structured documents, extended search, workflow management, and much more.

The Office system as a whole was designed to enable organizations to communicate and collaborate, manage content, search and index information, create and manage workflow, build business intelligence views, and do this in a secure and efficient way. And when we say the Office system, we not only include products from the productivity suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc.), but we also include our newer technologies such as Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office Communications Server, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. For the organization, this means more choices and more extensive functionality for the information worker.

At the same time that Office has evolved the experience for our information workers, it’s also providing a rich development platform for our professional developer community. As you’ll see in this book, the Office system provides many tools, services, and servers that together enable developers to build Office Business Applications (OBAs)—a new breed of applications that bridges the discrepancy between information workers and the necessary business data that allows them to make informed business decisions. In this sense, the Office system operates within a new development paradigm—one that includes Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Visual Studio 2008 as part of the key development backbone. And it is with this marriage, perhaps even extended family, that you’ll see a new dynamic in Office development surface—one that will take Office solutions to the next level in many different ways.

I’m glad to have the opportunity to introduce you to one of the few technical books on the market that specifically addresses the development of OBAs. Given the breadth and power of the Microsoft Office system, developing OBAs might require knowledge in a number of areas, so having the right guidance is critical. I believe this book provides that for you. The authors show you how to use SharePoint and Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) as key tools for OBA development, provide guidance in the area of service-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions development, provide insight on how to deploy and integrate client and server OBA components, and explain and demonstrate how you can build and deploy workflow to manage your solutions, among a myriad of other abilities.

My hope is that by the end of this book, you will begin to see the true power of the Office platform and will be excited to get started developing your first OBA.

Chris Capossela

Corporate Vice President

Microsoft Office