Pro SharePoint 2010 Solution Development Combining .NET, SharePoint, and Office 2010

When we first proposed this book, we set a goal of writing a different kind of SharePoint book. We did not want a reference that repeated the software development kit, nor did we want a how-to book that explained how to configure the out-of-the-box functionality. Instead, we envisioned a book that helped developers apply the Microsoft Office platform to customer problems. Since Chad and I work at the Microsoft Technology Center in Virginia, we have a unique opportunity to work with a wide variety of customers, in both the commercial and public sectors, who are trying to realize a benefit from incorporating Office technologies into their enterprises. Many of these customers are not just seeking installation or configuration advice. Instead, the focus is on how the Microsoft Office platform will make their workers more efficient, their processes more repeatable, and their businesses more profitable. For these customers, the technology must be applied to their specific challenges. With the release of Office 2010, Microsoft gives the developer a complete platform (both client and server) for generating documents, automating processes, enhancing collaboration, and integrating li- of-business data. This platform includes not only the latest releases of SharePoint products and technologies, but also a new set of desktop applications. More importantly, these applications are extendable by . NET developers. This book walks through solutions to common customer challenges and utilizes both the client and server technologies of the Office 2010 platform, including Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and Visual Studio 2010.

This book takes a practical problem-solution approach to common business challenges. You’ll not only encounter interesting code samples, but also see how to combine these examples with the Microsoft collaboration platform’s services. The book’s solutions focus on using Visual Studio 2008 and its built-in Office development tools to construct the user interface layer. And solutions can interact with SharePoint as a service provider, taking advantage of SharePoint’s many collaboration features like document repositories, collaboration sites, and search functions. This book is unique because it starts with challenges that end users deal with every day when using the Microsoft collaboration platform to support business processes. The solutions are presented as hypothetical business challenges of a fictional company. By presenting the examples in this context, author Ed Hild makes it easier to relate to the challenges and solution value. The goal of these examples is to build applications that apply the benefits of the Office desktop interface to the richness of SharePoint collaboration features. This book will help you develop real-world solutions to complex business problems and challenges.

1. Office Business Applications  
2. SharePoint 2010: Overview and New Features  
3. SharePoint Development with Visual Studio 2010  
4. Microsoft Office Overview for Developers  
5. Beyond the Spreadsheet  
6. Merging SharePoint List Data into Word Documents  
7. Automating Document Assembly  
8. Extending PowerPoint to Build a Presentation 8: Based on Site Content  
9. Building a Presentation Server-Side within a Web Part  
10. Surfacing Line-of-Business Data in Outlook  
11. Site Provisioning Workflows  
12. Rapid SharePoint Application Development Using Access  
13. Using Visio Services to Visualize Data  
14. Building Mashups  
15. Realizing the Vision

Ed Hild's first job after college was as a math and computer science teacher at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. After upgrading the curriculum, he decided to practice what he was teaching and moved into consulting. Ed soon felt the teaching itch again, and took a position teaching MCSD and MCSE courses for a technical education center as well as developing the software that would run the franchise. Ed gained most of his development experience at his next position as director of technology at e.magination, a Microsoft partner in Baltimore. There, he worked for several years building web applications for a wide variety of customers using Microsoft technologies. He was then lured to Microsoft and now works as the collaboration technology architect in the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, Virginia.