Office 2010 Developer Training Course

Version: 2.0

Office 2010 is a broadly extensible platform for building Information Worker productivity solutions and developing for Office with Visual Studio 2010 makes this easy. The Office 2010 Developer Training Course includes videos, presentations, hands-on labs and source code. This content is designed to help you get started developing solutions, from Add-ins to full featured Office Business Applications (OBAs), using Visual Studio 2010 with Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 as the core platform.

Target Audience

Basic understanding of Microsoft Office, SharePoint and using Microsoft Visual Studio.

Units

Office 2010 Developer Roadmap

Developers can build applications and solutions for Office 2010 using a number of tools including Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010, InfoPath 2010 and Access 2010. With many new features, these tools help developers be more productive by providing greater flexibility in how they approach developing and deploying their solutions. This unit is a tour around the tools and services available to developers for building on the Office platform.

Office UI Customization

Developing for Office with Visual Studio is a deeply integrated experience. Project templates abound for almost every Office client application making it easy to quickly build Add-ins, Outlook Form Regions, extend the Ribbon and Backstage View and create Context Menus. All 2007 supported scenarios persist forward in Office 2010 as well. This unit provides an overview on what is available in Visual Studio 2010 for customizing Office.

Office Client Workflow

This unit provides an introduction to workflows, the processes that help solve business problems. Workflows can help manage interactions between information workers, automate tasks that were previously done manually and provide consistency for business processes. Here you will learn about workflows and the tools used to build them, Visio 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio.

Security and Deployment

Once you build your solution, you will want to deploy it appropriately. This unit introduces you to how to deploy your Office Add-ins and SharePoint applications and the roles that the end user and administrator play in each. Topics covered are security, SharePoint Solution (WSP) files, ClickOnce, Add-ins and Document Templates.

Business Connectivity Services

In SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services (BCS) enables integration with back end systems. Business Connectivity Services includes a set of presentation features, a connectivity framework and tooling within SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio that enable developers and ITPros to connect to external data and services and to surface this data in SharePoint and Office 2010. This unit provides an overview of the BCS capabilities and usage in Office 2010.

Developing BI Applications

Business Intelligence (BI) applications help enterprise users make business decisions. This unit focuses on the SharePoint BI tools available for bringing information together for analysis, examination and collaboration with others to gain the decision making knowledge needed. The BI development tools available in SharePoint include status indicators, chart web parts, PerformancePoint Services, Excel Services, BI Search and Visio Services.

Open XML

The Open XML SDK is a powerful tool for processing Office documents. This unit provides an overview of the benefits and architecture of Open XML and the APIs and tools (on many different platforms) that a developer can use to build document-based solutions using this format. The Open XML SDK which is provided by Microsoft and other community-based developer resources are highlighted.

Office 2010 Services

The power of Word, Excel, Access and Visio Services come to light in this unit. A number of tasks can now be pushed to these server-side services for processing. For instance, you can convert your documents at scale into other formats, whether fixed (XPS, PDF) or fluid (RTF), using Word Services. And Access Web databases can be published to SharePoint via Access Services where Access tables become Lists, forms become ASPX pages, macros become workflows, etc.

InfoPath 2010 and Forms Services

InfoPath 2010 is a way for Information Workers, IT or Developers to create robust user interfaces for Office Business Applications. InfoPath provides a rich form design experience and InfoPath Forms Services can render these forms in the browser. This unit covers development of custom SharePoint List Forms and workflows, publishing InfoPath Forms and connecting external data to InfoPath Forms.

Application Compatibility

The Application Compatibility tools, the Office Environment Assessment Tool (OEAT) and Compatibility Inspector tool, available for Office 2010 help you to analyze your enviroment for installed add-ins and identify potential migration issues. Using this assessment information the migration process from earlier versions of Office to Office 2010 can be better planned. In the event migration of custom Add-ins or VBA is needed, the Compatibility Inspector tools can perform an analysis of the code and suggest potential issues. This video introduces these tools and how to use them to assess your environment and code.

Access 2010

For years, Microsoft Access has enabled developers to create database applications that address a specific business need, task, or process. In Access 2010, applications are now modern-looking right out of the box – no customization necessary. Access, through Access Services in SharePoint 2010, is now on the web – developers can create and share databases online. The web is also integrated within Access with mashup-type web functionality within Access applications. To use this new functionality, developers need to be aware of the differences among web databases, client-only databases, and hybrid databases. This unit introduces the developer to these concepts and to the new Access 2010 and Access Services through SharePoint 2010 functionality.

Core Office Development

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and the Visual Basic Editor (VBE) have provided the programmability environment for power users and developers alike in the Office applications for many years. VBA remains a constant in Office 2010 and this module will help you get started with these tools if you have never used them before. And may give some new ideas to others for how to work with data, extend the UI or automate processes using these core Office assets.

OSC Provider Development

The Outlook Social Connector (OSC) is a set of new features that help you keep track of friends and colleagues while enabling you to grow your professional network. The OSC brings social views of your networks right to your inbox in a region known as the People Pane. As your read your email, you can view information in the People Pane such as the picture, name, and title of the sender along with a rich aggregated collection of status updates and activities related to the sender. This module provides the basics on developing a custom Social Connector Provider.

Office and Azure

The Windows Azure platform is a group of cloud technologies providing a specific set of services to application developers. There is Windows Azure, which provides an environment for running applications and storing data in the cloud, SQL Azure for providing relational data services in the cloud based on SQL Server, and the Windows Azure AppFabric that provides services for connecting applications running in the cloud or on premises. This module helps you learn how to use Azure services in Office.