Overview of the standard method

As web parts on a portal page, result viewers can communicate with other web parts by publishing and subscribing. Typically one result viewer will publish a set of values and other web parts will subscribe by listening for the published values. The result viewer that publishes the values is the publisher, and the web parts that listen for the published values are the subscribers.

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) handles the communication between web parts in Business Portal. Using WSS for web part communication is referred to as the standard method of publishing and subscribing. By using the standard method, you can connect a result viewer to another result viewer, or to an Office web part.

Result viewer communication

Result viewers can communicate with other result viewers. For example, consider the Contact History page, shown in the following illustration. When a user selects a customer from the Customer List result viewer, the Contact History and Customer Address result viewers display information about the selected customer.

Office web part communication

Business Portal result viewers can communicate with the web parts that are included in the Office 2003 Web Parts and Components package. The Office 2003 Web Parts and Components package can be installed during the Business Portal installation. Once you install this package, Office web parts will be available in the Virtual Server Gallery. You can drag these web parts on to your Business Portal pages.

For example, let’s say you have a page called “Customer Credit Limits,” as shown in the following illustration. On this page, the Customers result viewer publishes data to the Office PivotChart web part using the standard method of publishing.