Developing Custom Applications with SharePoint Server 2007
SharePoint Server 2007
as a Development Platform
WhitePaper
By Nicolas Leger and Zandy GarrardWith Scott Yokiel, Cesar Rodriguez, Brad Muza
Contact us: spdev@rbaconsulting.comRBA Consulting
Published: May 2008
Table of Contents
Last Edited: 5/31/08
? 2008 RBA Consulting
Developing Custom Applications with SharePoint Server 2007Page 3
1.Acknowledgements
RBA Consulting would like to thank Jerome Thiebaud, Product Manager for Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 at Microsoft. Our team sincerely enjoyed the many opportunities to present about our experience building a business critical custom application on Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. Sharing best practices on SharePoint development with customers, peer consultants, and experts from the Microsoft field has continually pushed us to evaluate the platform in thorough details from a developer perspective.
During this process, Jerome has shown a profound understanding of the specific needs of each audience. Over the past few months, his guidance was instrumental in creating material about our project that is information-rich, enjoyable, and easy to consume.Among the many others who provided valuable feedback as we wrote this whitepaper, Mitch Prince stands out for suggesting creative ways to make the most of Office SharePoint Server 2007. There are often many paths to satisfy a business requirement using SharePoint Server; Mitch has in several occasions challenged us to “think outside the box” and find the optimal solution.
Our consultants look forward to a future collaboration with Microsoft to further demonstrate the broad capabilities of SharePoint Server 2007. As just one example, we are especially thrilled currently by the integration scenarios between SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Silverlight.
Last Edited: 5/31/08
? 2008 RBA Consulting
2.Introduction - Business goal
2.1Our Audience - you
Late in 2007, executives at RBA Consulting identified the need to streamline the way we track consultant assignments to client projects. After a decision process we will discuss further in this document, our team of developers set out to build a business application on the SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) Enterprise platform.
With this whitepaper, Microsoft gave us a fantastic opportunity to tell about our experience. We are confident its content will be most useful to:
•IT decision makers who must select a development platform for their
organization. We tried to include as much high level information as possible on
how the SharePoint platform supported our business goals. As we examine each
aspect of the SharePoint platform – and there are many – we tie these
capabilities back to the needs of the business. There is a strong belief at RBA
Consulting that a development platform is only as good as the business needs it
addresses.
•ASP.NET Developers looking for a “deep-dive” into the SharePoint platform. We
include actual code, step-by-step walkthroughs and extensive screenshots to
help developers “get things done” using the platform. While developers in general
can leverage this material to evaluate the SharePoint development platform,
developers with ASP.NET experience will make the most of the in depth
discussions and code samples.
2.2Business scenario
Our firm, RBA Consulting, offers high-end consulting services on Microsoft technologies. To be successful in the consulting business, we need a mechanism to keep track of the client engagements of our consultants:
•Where is each consultant billing now and in the future?
•What is the skill set of each consultant?
•What client opportunities are becoming available in the pipeline? Who in the firm
has the skills to deliver successfully on these opportunities?
Last Edited: 5/31/08
? 2008 RBA Consulting
Developing Custom Applications with SharePoint Server 2007Page 5
RBA Consulting has an existing solution to keep track of that information. However by the end of 2007, management recognized that a new version was needed that would offer improved flexibility and scalability. For all the reasons that will be discussed in this paper, we settled on SharePoint Server 2007 to build the solution.
2.3RBA Consulting’s collaboration with Microsoft
Shortly after we initiated the requirements gathering phase, Microsoft’s marketing offered RBA to use our solution as a real-life SharePoint development story. From day one, we had the mandate to provide unbiased feedback and participate in several initiatives to discuss our experience:
•Microsoft Academy Live presentation (January ‘08): these recurring events
are organized by Microsoft marketing, and target Microsoft employees in the
field. The audience is a mix of sales and technical professionals who join the
presentation from numerous Microsoft offices throughout the U.S. and the world.
On this occasion, we demonstrated a working version of the application, and
discussed some of our design decisions as well as code samples.
•Microsoft Office SharePoint Conference 2008 (March ‘08): the yearly
conference attracts larger and larger crowds every time. In fact this year over
3,000 people attended. The application demo and code discussion was the
center-piece of the session. We focused on Excel Services 2007, Microsoft Office
Excel user-defined functions, Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 forms, Enterprise
Search and Office SharePoint Designer workflows. Several sections of this
whitepaper summarize discussions from the conference.
•this whitepaper (April ’08): as large as they can get, live presentations only
address a small fraction of the developers out there with an interest in
SharePoint Products and Technologies. We had to have in-depth written material
that people could go back to as a reference.
Last Edited: 5/31/08
? 2008 RBA Consulting
2.4Solution Roles & Use Cases
2.4.1Roles
Ultimately company executives are the primary beneficiaries of the consultant tracking solution, as it provides them with deeper business insights. However stakeholders in various roles throughout our company will interact with the target solution. The following organizational roles were identified as relevant for the design of the solution:
•Account Executive. The A.E. has sales responsibilities. After a client opportunity
has been identified, the A.E. must submit a resource request to the organization
to identify a qualified resource for the job.
•Resource Manager. The Resource Manager must match client opportunities as
identified by the Account Executive and qualified consultants who can deliver the
job.
•Executive. The C-level executive is usually not involved in running day-to-day
operations, but needs to know how well the business is performing against
business goals.
•Consultant. Consultants are assigned to client opportunities based on their skills
and experience. Consultants interact with the solution primarily through
submitting leave requests. These leave requests, if approved, impact the
consultant’s availability for future client projects.
2.4.2Use Cases
Employees throughout the firm use the solution in various ways based on who they are. Here are just a few sample usage scenarios implemented by the solution. The organizational roles that take part in the scenario are also identified.
•Review business performance through report [Executive]
•Request a project resource [Account Executive, Resource Manager]
•Submit a leave request [Consultant, Resource Manager]
Last Edited: 5/31/08
? 2008 RBA Consulting
Developing Custom Applications with SharePoint Server 2007Page 7
2.5Business Requirements
This section discusses at a high level the business requirements that the solution had to meet:
•Roles. Different users need access to different information based on who they
are. They will also participate in different steps of business processes based on
their role within the firm.
•Portal. The solution need to make available information extracted from various
sources. Users must see only information relevant to their level of responsibility.
•Reporting. The solution must provide high-level reports and Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) to provide executives an instant snapshot of business
performance.
•Forms. Several electronic forms are needed to upload and maintain information
within the solution.
•Business Processes, Workflows. Users will need to participate in various
business processes through the solution. Workflow capabilities are used to route
workflow items to the right people at the right time. These processes were
documented in a requirements gathering phase using Microsoft Visio.
•Information Storage. To deliver on other requirements, the solution needs to
keep track of information related to day-to-day business of our consulting firm.
•Search. All information stored by the solution needs to be searchable securely.
•Look & feel. The solution must be branded with an RBA Consulting-specific look
& feel.
2.6Technical Requirements
While business requirements were the critical success factors to building the new solution, a number of technical requirements also had to be taken into account:
•Minimize custom code and maintenance costs. We needed a solution that
was easy to maintain. As a secondary goal, it meant we had to keep custom
code to a minimum. While many MOSS 2007 deployments will require some Last Edited: 5/31/08
? 2008 RBA Consulting
level of custom coding, there is great value for IT in limiting the footprint of that
code.
•Flexibility to support business changes. It is not uncommon for companies to
alter how they do business. As an example our management may decide in a few
weeks or months that the process to identify project resources needs to change.
We had to build a solution that could adapt easily to most change requests.
2.73-Tier architecture
The following diagram illustrates how the application was designed using a 3-tier model:•Presentation/User interface
oOffice InfoPath is used to author and submit forms
oExcel Services renders web-based reports, including charts
oInternet Explorer is used for all other end user interactions as well as
administration
•Business logic
oSeveral technologies are leveraged to implement the business logic. The
key take away here is that different tools should be used based on the
requirements. The best example is using an Excel Services-renders
spreadsheet that contains financial calculations. It would not make sense
to embed these calculations in .NET code as SMEs on the calculations
(Financial analysts) do not have the skills to update or validate the code.
Instead they should deliver to IT an Excel Services-ready spreadsheet that
contains the calculations
•Data storage and retrieval
oSharePoint lists and document libraries are used throughout the solution
for data storage. Pure Microsoft SQL Server databases may have been
used for some of the functionalities. But leveraging SharePoint lists gave
use access to high-level APIs to manipulate the data (e.g. search) as well
as the ability to trigger workflows when the data is modified.
Last Edited: 5/31/08
? 2008 RBA Consulting
Developing Custom Applications with SharePoint Server 2007Page 92.8SharePoint Development Toolset
Numerous tools are available to develop solutions on the SharePoint platform. Below is a list of the tools and products we used, along with information as to how they were used:
•SharePoint Environment
oLists and document libraries. They are the vehicle of choice to store
data. Information stored in lists or libraries can easily be integrated with
workflows or InfoPath forms.
oAlerts. They were used to implement a simple notification mechanism.
oWeb parts. We used web parts to provide custom search capabilities.
Because our search requirements are highly specialized, it made sense to
use custom web parts.
•InfoPath
oForms. They are used throughout the solution for data entry. Because our
forms have complex business logic (data source integration, control
formatting, input validation), it would not have been cost effective to use
pure ASP.NET forms. Essentially our InfoPath forms provide the user
interface for all business processes supported by the solution.•SharePoint Designer
oLook & Feel. We had very specific requirements on branding to match our
corporate identity. Through master pages, layouts and .CSS stylesheets,
SharePoint Designer made it straightforward to create and deploy a
custom theme.
oCustom Workflows. The out-of-the-box workflows that ship with
SharePoint Server did not meet our requirements. At the same time
SharePoint Designer gave us enough flexibility to meet our workflow
requirements without introducing undue complexity. Because some steps
of the workflows had to be custom coded, we created them in Microsoft
Visual Studio and imported them in SharePoint Designer. SharePoint
Designer helped putting the big picture together, delivering most steps of
the workflows through a wizard-based editor. Plus since the tool is
targeted at business users and power users, it makes it easy to discuss
workflows with business. We were able to sit down with some of our
business stakeholders and validate workflows with them.
•Visual Studio 2005/2008
oCustom Web Parts. As mentioned previously, we had to create a few
custom web parts for advanced search functionalities.
oUser-defined functions. To provide custom reporting capabilities in Excel
Services, we created a .NET user-defined function that extracts data from
SharePoint lists to populate the Excel Services spreadsheet.Last Edited: 5/31/08
? 2008 RBA Consulting
Last Edited: 5/31/08
? 2008 RBA Consulting