Before getting into details about OBA, Office Development and VSTO, let me first explain the relationship between them.

OBAs (Office Business Applications) are new types of application/solutions which are built on Office System 2007 as a platform and so deployed on top of Office System 2007 apps. The development stream to develop OBAs is called Office Development and the tools used to develop OBAs are called VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office).

Microsoft Office System 2007 as a development platform

The new Microsoft® Office is no more a suite of client applications meant for office use. It has transformed into a complete collaboration and productivity platform for information workers. The main theme of new Microsoft Office System is to facilitate collaboration and thus increase productivity.

It is composed of Programs/Applications, Tools, Services, Servers, Technology.

 

Client Applications

Word 2007                          :               Document authoring program

Excel 2007                           :               Spreadsheet Program

PowerPoint 2007              :               Presentation Program

Outlook 2007                     :               Email & Time management client

InfoPath 2007                    :               Forms based information management

Access 2007                        :               Desktop database program

Visio 2007                            :               Assist in creating diagrams

Project 2007                       :               People and Work management application for project managers

Groove 2007                      :               Collaborative workspaces for teams

Communicator 2007        :               Enterprise real time messaging system

 

Application Servers

Office SharePoint Server 2007    :               Enterprise content management, Search, Business Process

                Integration, Business Intelligence, Personalization, etc.

Project Server 2007                         :               Enterprise Project Management Solution with web access and

Project 2007 as client

Exchange Server 2007                    :               Enterprise Mail server with web access and Outlook 2007 as

client.

Groove Server 2007                        :               Managing Groove 2007 workspaces

Communications Server 2007     :               Facilitates real time messaging and web conferencing

 

Developer Tools

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007          :               SharePoint web sites development and

management program

Visual Studio 2005/2008                                                :               Complete development environment targeting

.NET technologies

Visual Studio Tools for Office                            :           Add-on to Visual Studio for developing apps

targeting Office

 

Services

Office Live           :               Centrally hosted Web based Microsoft Office for small businesses.

Live Meeting      :               Internet hosted collaboration infrastructure

 

Technology

Windows SharePoint Services V 3             :               Base framework on which SharePoint Server is built.

The services it provide are: Provisioning, Administration,

Content Management, workflow, emails & alerts,

search, web parts etc.

 

Office Business Applications (OBA)

A typical Information worker in any industry today uses various tools and communication channels to complete an atomic business process. The list may comprise of following:

·         Line of Business Solution for Transactions etc.

·         Content Management solution or Knowledge Portal for reference knowledge.

·         Mails to communicate & share documents with peers

·         Telephone calls for knowledge gathering/sharing

While middleware technologies have considerably improved the automation and workflow enablement of system based business processes, the business process which involve humans are still quite disjointed. There is a lot of opportunity to improve productivity and efficiency in human based workflows.

OBAs are newer kind of application which try to fill the gaps in human workflow by providing a simplified and yet powerful platform to collaborate and execute business processes. OBAs can be exposed to users via a popular and familiar Office client interface or web based interface.

OBAs leverages the following Office System capabilities:

·         SharePoint workflow and Windows Workflow foundation.

·         Extensible User Interface of Office Clients

·         ECMA Office Open XML File formats

·         Business Data Catalog for connecting to LOB applications.

·         Search portal

·         Business Intelligence and Reporting Services.

A typical solution architecture involving OBAs will look like following:

(Source : Microsoft)

 

 

Office Development

Office Development refers to leveraging various customization and extensibility opportunities which various Office System products provide to develop OBAs, Application Add-ins or other custom solutions.

Some of the important development opportunities provided by various Office System Products are following:

Office Clients

·         Application Level Add-Ins

·         Document Level Customizations

·         Custom Task Panes

·         Office Fluent UI Extensibility

·         Open XML

·         Visual Basic for Applications

SharePoint Products & Technologies

·         Excel Services

·         InfoPath forms services

·         Business Data Catalog

·         Search

·         Personalization

·         Workflows

·         Content Management

·         Web Part Development

Office Communications Server 2007

·         SIP clients like Office Communicator

·         Office Communicator Automation

·         SIP Server side apps

·         OCS plugins

Tools for Office Development

·         Visual Studio 2008 Tools for Office : Gets installed with Visual Studio 2008

·         Visual Studio 2008 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2008 Extensions, Version 1.2 : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7BF65B28-06E2-4E87-9BAD-086E32185E68&displaylang=en

·         SharePoint Designer 2007 : Need to purchase

·         Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Software Development Kit (SDK) : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=05E0DD12-8394-402B-8936-A07FE8AFAFFD&displaylang=en

·         SharePoint Server 2007 SDK: Software Development Kit : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D94E307-67D9-41AC-B2D6-0074D6286FA9&displaylang=en

·          Open XML software development kit : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C6E744E5-36E9-45F5-8D8C-331DF206E0D0&displaylang=en

 

Visual Studio Tools for Office

Visual Studio Tools for Office enables developers to leverage Visual Studio and Microsoft Office Platform to build scalable line-of-business solutions based on Microsoft Office.

The various Office development scenarios which VSTO can cover are following:

·         Creating application level add-ins for Office clients

·         Creating Document Level Customizations for Office clients

·         Creating Office Custom Task Panes

·         Office Fluent UI / Office Ribbon Extensibility

·         Creating Outlook Form Regions

·         Manipulate Office documents without automating Office

·         Generate structured Word documents using Word 2007 content controls

·         Workflow solutions for SharePoint

·         Support for ClickOnce Technology