Automating Silverlight Web Part Deployment

Visual Studio 2010 provides the ability to create SharePoint Solution Packages and automate the deployment of Silverlight applications to SharePoint site collections. By using a SharePoint Solution Package you can deploy a Silverlight application and a web page containing a Silverlight Web Part pre-configured to display the Silverlight application. Taking this approach allows you to easily roll out new Silverlight applications to SharePoint sites without the need to create a page, add a Silverlight Web Part to the page, and configure the Silverlight Web Part to display the Silverlight application. This cuts down on the amount of documentation and time needed to deploy Silverlight applications to SharePoint sites. This lab will guide the reader through an exercise which uses the Visual Studio 2010 to create a SharePoint Solution Package that deploys a Silverlight application and a web page that includes a pre-configured Silverlight Web Part to display the Silverlight application.

Overview

Visual Studio 2010 provides the ability to create SharePoint Solution Packages and automate the deployment of Silverlight applications to SharePoint site collections. By using a SharePoint Solution Package you can deploy a Silverlight application and a web page containing a Silverlight Web Part pre-configured to display the Silverlight application. Taking this approach allows you to easily roll out new Silverlight applications to SharePoint sites without the need to create a page, add a Silverlight Web Part to the page, and configure the Silverlight Web Part to display the Silverlight application. This cuts down on the amount of documentation and time needed to deploy Silverlight applications to SharePoint sites. This lab will guide the reader through an exercise which uses the Visual Studio 2010 to create a SharePoint Solution Package that deploys a Silverlight application and a web page that includes a pre-configured Silverlight Web Part to display the Silverlight application.

The Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Silverlight Web Parts Extension provides two SharePoint Project Items (SPIs) that allow developers to deploy existing or new Silverlight applications in the same fashion as described above. This lab will guide the reader through an exercise that uses the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Silverlight Web Parts Extension to deploy an existing Silverlight application to a SharePoint site and deploy it on a web page with the Silverlight Web Part.

Objectives

This lab will demonstrate how you can use Visual Studio to automate the dpeloyment of a Silverlight application to a SharePoint site. To demonstrate this concept the reader will

• Use Visual Studio 2010 to create a SharePoint Solution Package that deploys a Silverlight application.
• Use Visual Studio 2010 to create a web page that includes a pre-configured Silverlight Web Part to display the Silverlight application.
• Use Visual Studio 2010 to create a SharePoint Solution Package that deploys the web page with the pre-configured Silverlight Web Part.

System Requirements

You must have the following items to complete this lab:

• 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

Setup

You must perform the following steps to prepare your computer for this lab...

1. Download the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine from and create the Hyper-V image.

Exercises

This Hands-On Lab comprises the following exercises:

1. Automating Silverlight application and Silverlight Web Part deployment
2. Automating Silverlight application and Silverlight Web Part deployment with the Visual Studio Silverlight SharePoint Web Parts Extension

Estimated time to complete this lab: 10 minutes.

Starting Materials

This Hands-On Lab includes the following starting materials.

• Visual Studio solutions. The lab provides the following Visual Studio solutions that you can use as starting point for the exercises.
  • <INSTALL>\Labs\AutomatingSilverlightWebPartDeployment\Source\begin\Sample.Silverlight.App.sln: A sample Silverlight application used to demonstrate how the Silverlight Web Part displays Silverlight applications on a SharePoint site.