I wrapped up day three of the SPC with Microsoft SharePoint Technical Product Manager Dave Pae's Better Together session. Dave began his session with a brief review of SharePoint 2007 investments to lay the foundation before he moved on to 2010 investments. Dave stated that his goal was to provide a tour of SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 integration, and he delivered on that promise in spades.
The key integration points Dave demonstrated were as follows:
- Office 2010 Backstage, which allows users to interact with SharePoint commands and features
- SharePoint Ribbon improves the Office experience with shortcuts to SharePoint libraries, email links, and more
- SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services (BSC), which extends Line of Business (LOB) data to SharePoint
- InfoPath Forms Web Part, which allows users to add forms to a SharePoint Web page
- Sync to SharePoint Workspace 2010, with Workspace positioned as the rich client for SharePoint 2010
- Extending your ideas with PowerPoint broadcasts, which allow users to broadcast PowerPoint presentations to the Internet
Dave dedicated the majority of his demo time to the integration of Word and BCS, which allows users to interact with LOB information directly within a Word 2010 document in four easy steps. First, using SharePoint Designer 2010, Dave set up an External Content Type using BCS. Dave noted that the second step is an optional one: setting up an External List in SharePoint 2010. The third step is to set up a document library and add the external data as a new column property and, finally, after modifying the Word 2010 template using Quick Parts, Dave's integration demo was complete and his LOB data was surfaced directly within a Word doc.
Once complete, Dave showed the Office Backstage interaction wherein Word essentially looks at the SharePoint Server and exposes its functionality as related to the doc in question through an Info button available to end users. While looking at the options available to interact with the Word doc, Dave also showed that there is now a Share button which allows end users to, among other things, Share to SharePoint. What this amounts to is the ability to save a Word doc directly to, say, a SharePoint document library with no manual uploading necessary.
Moving on to his InfoPath demo, Dave began by stating that, "you can set up your own rules or add custom rules" to forms. With a demo of how he put together a submit form, Dave showed the dragging and dropping of common XML fields in SharePoint Designer and the functionality (through the Ribbon, naturally) that allows users to add a Submit button to a form with one click. Just as with Word docs, the completed InfoPath form can then be shared to SharePoint. Dave then went on to say that "the real magic is when you want to add that form to your home page," and proceeded to demonstrate exactly how to do so via the addition and configuration of an InfoPath Web Part on the page.
Running out of time, Dave briefly demonstrated the synchronization of docs in SharePoint Workspace. In response to a question from the audience, Dave confirmed that "yes, you can have InfoPath forms in Workspace."
With his Internet connectivity having proved to be spotty, Dave concluded by discussing the PowerPoint broadcast functionality. With the click of a Broadcast Slideshow button, users of SharePoint 2010 and PowerPoint 2010 may broadcast their slideshow directly to the Internet. Once broadcast, invited guests can simply connect to the presentation via their browser, with no requirement for attendees to have either SharePoint or PowerPoint 2010 installed.
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Posted
Oct 21 2009, 08:48 PM
by
John Anderson
Filed under: SPC09, SharePoint Conference 2009, External Content Types, Word Integration, Dave Pae, Office Inegration, BCS, PowerPoint Broadcast, Backstage, InfoPath Forms Web Part, SPC09 Session
John Anderson joined Bamboo Solutions as Manager of Content & Syndication in May 2008 after a 12-year career at AOL. New to SharePoint at the time of his hiring, John was tasked with creating a new blog for the just-launched Bamboo Nation community in which he would document his daily SharePoint learning process. Thus was born the end user-centric SharePoint Blank, for which John authored 200 posts within a year, and which he continues to write today. Today, John writes SharePoint Blank in addition to his responsibilities as Managing Editor at Bamboo and, while he learned much about SharePoint in his first two years, he gleefully celebrates the release of SharePoint 2010 and the reset button that the new platform represents for SharePoint Blank.