Review: SharePoint Gets Even Closer With Office

The Redmond, Wash., software giant this week released to manufacturing Office SharePoint Server 2007, which features streamlined services via deep integration with the Office 2007 platform. In particular, two new services from the SharePoint Enterprise 2007 edition -- business intelligence and business forms -- integrate tightly with Office 2007's Excel and InfoPath applications.

Users can now publish interactive spreadsheets with Excel 2007 right into SharePoint, so the tool plays a key role in the creation of business intelligence portals. For instance, users can change views with Excel output by drilling down right from a portal page by using Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. No local installation of Office is necessary. Local Excel installation is only required when editing spreadsheets.

Like key performance indicators used in BI solutions, users can change values on spreadsheets. For example, different colors can be associated with cells to indicate changes in values. In addition, developers can build on top of Excel output by adding dashboards. SharePoint 2007, too, provides highly optimized security features to control views and editing capabilities on spreadsheets and all other objects.

Microsoft has done a great job simplifying the publishing process and added many new development capabilities. Solution providers, for instance, can now build on top of a large number of filter lists. Filters are Web Parts that automate mundane tasks.

The new architecture is based on an ASP.Net 2.0 object model that extends SharePoint Lists extensively. In fact, there are practically no limits to building extensions. Microsoft is calling the new customized extensions Features. Essentially, any ISV that builds Features can offer them to customers as applications. Since Features combine Lists and Web Parts into a package, they are reusable and can be combined with other Web Parts to form new applications.

PowerPoint integrates closely with SharePoint 2007 as well. Users can run presentations from a portal page and perform simple actions on slides. With InfoPath 2007, users can build business forms and publish them directly to SharePoint without connecting directly. InfoPath can now connect remotely to SharePoint site via LDAP.

Developers can now build Master pages using ASP.Net 2.0. Master pages are templates that can carry over entire sites. The template pages simplify the process of maintaining corporate wide design standards.

Microsoft's SharePoint Server 2007 team has made huge strides in explaining the product's many new features and providing development details on its development center site. Yet the CRN Test Center still recommends buying books on the new SharePoint 2007 and ASP.Net 2.0 because the documentation on MSDN isn't the most organized and easy to follow.

Microsoft is offering a free book online at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/office2007/developer/default.mspx called "7 Development Projects For Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services Version 3.0". The Test Center urges solution providers to read it.

The new extended capabilities of Web Parts will allow developers to build more composite and resuable applications than ever before. If that trend continues, SharePoint may one day become the center framework for Office platform development.