Capturing Silverlight application usage data

Understanding how end users interact with Silverlight applications is just as important as understanding metrics about web pages on web sites. The SharePoint Client Object Model makes it easy to track usage data for Silverlight applications and store the data in SharePoint lists.

Overview

Understanding how end users interact with Silverlight applications is just as important as understanding metrics about web pages on web sites. The SharePoint Client Object Model makes it easy to track usage data for Silverlight applications and store the data in SharePoint lists.

Objectives

This lab will demonstrate how you can capture usage data from a self service Silverlight application which displays rotating banner ads in a SharePoint web site. To demonstrate these concepts the reader will

• Create a SharePoint list to store usage data.
• Add usage-tracking capabilities to a Silverlight application.

System Requirements

You must have the following items to complete this lab:

• 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine
• 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 and create the Hyper-V image.
2. Perform the steps in Lab 2, Exercises 1 and 3.

Exercises

This Hands-On Lab comprises the following exercises:

1. Create the Ad Tracking list to hold usage data
2. Add usage-tracking capabilities to the Silverlight application

Estimated time to complete this lab: 20 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\CapturingSilverlightApplicationUsageData\Source\Begin\SL.Banner.Rotator.WP.sln: A visual Studio 2010 Solution containing the starter code for the Silverlight application that displays rotating banner ads, a web project to test the Silverlight application, and a SharePoint project to deploy the Silverlight application to a test page in SharePoint.
    Note:

    This lab uses the SharePoint Client Object Model to store usage data in a SharePoint list. There are also other ways to track and store usage data for Silverlight applications.

    The Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework (https://msaf.codeplex.com) allows you to use external web site analytics services to store usage data for Silverlight applications. The Microsoft Silverlight Analyitcs Framework also works with the Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework (https://smf.codeplex.com).

    The Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework enables developers to quickly deploy a robust, scalable, customizable media player for IIS Smooth Streaming delivery. The SMF builds on the core functionality of the Smooth Streaming Client (formerly known as the "Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit") and adds a large number of additional features, including an extensibility API that allows developers to create plugins for the framework.