You can also design your interface to use Microsoft Word content controls and bind those controls to data, or extend Outlook with a custom toolbar, form regions, or custom ribbons.
Both interface with a services layer that populates the Excel 2007 spreadsheet with event information from SAP, and both are built using VSTO 3.0-the latest release of VSTO included in Visual Studio 2008 Professional and above. For example, Figure 1 illustrates an interface with a custom ribbon and a custom task pane. More than likely, you'll use Visual Studio® Tools for Office (VSTO) to do this. Note that when building OBAs you can also leverage other Microsoft server products such as Exchange Server 2007, PerformancePointTM Server 2007, and so on.įrom an architectural perspective, you'll predominantly use a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to integrate with LOB systems, but with an OBA, you can customize the client in a number of ways as the interface to that services layer. To understand an OBA, you can think of it as a very simple model that includes three major parts: the LOB system, the customized Office client that integrates with the LOB system, and the server component (essentially MOSS) that also integrates with the LOB system. Office features allow you to perform tasks such as integrating customer relationship management (CRM) data into Microsoft Outlook® through custom form regions and folders, integrating business intelligence into Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server (MOSS) to provide views into Sales performance data, and even integrating Microsoft Excel® with finance data to provide forecast templates that use data directly from LOB systems, to name a few. Office Business Applications (OBAs) address this problem by using Microsoft® Office to bridge the divide between business data in LOB systems and the information worker. This often results in data being extracted out of the system for processing, creating a disconnect between the business data source and the information workers who consume that data. However, not everyone in an organization has access to these systems, so the business data in them is often available to only a select few.
Large-scale systems such as SAP and PeopleSoft, and other comprehensive line of business (LOB) systems, are critical for the successful management of all types of business data and processes.
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