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 OfficeWriter Home > Customers Home > Scot Hillier Article |
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OfficeWriter is a set of .NET libraries
that can create, edit, and read Excel and Word binary file formats. This
makes OfficeWriter an elegantly-simple solution for integrating Excel and
Word documents with portals like Microsoft SharePoint. Using OfficeWriter,
you can create solutions that convert SharePoint data into richly formatted,
full-featured Excel reports and Word documents. Because OfficeWriter is
a server-based solution, it is highly scalable and performs well. In fact,
Microsoft has endorsed OfficeWriter as a replacement for the direct automation
of Office products (http://officewriter.softartisans.com/officewriter-86.aspx),
and documents created with OfficeWriter can be viewed in Office 97-2007
products. In this article, we’ll present a sample using the OfficeWriter
to create Word documents based on line-of-business (LOB) data imported into
SharePoint.
One of the key technical challenges faced by every organization involves
the integration of data from multiple LOB systems to form a comprehensive
view. Most organizations, as we know, have several LOB systems including
an ERP system, CRM system, HR system and several custom applications. Because
these systems were built by different vendors, they contain repeated information
and cannot share this information between systems. As a result, information
workers must often log into several different systems throughout the day.
Furthermore, as they create documents, they must copy and paste information
from these various systems into Microsoft Office.
In response to the challenges faced by information workers, Microsoft created
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) as an “information worker platform”
designed to provide all of the tools and collaborative elements that information
workers need throughout the day.
In response to the particular problem of integrating back-end LOB data,
Microsoft created the Business Data Catalog (BDC) as part of the enterprise
version of SharePoint, known as the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS).
The BDC uses web services and ADO.NET technology to communicate with multiple
back-end LOB systems. Once a connection with the BDC is made, the information
from LOB systems may be used in several interesting ways. First, BDC data
may be displayed in SharePoint pages using out-of-the-box web parts that
ship with MOSS. Second, BDC data may be used as the data source for list
columns. Third, BDC data may be used to enhance user profile information.
Fourth, the BDC supports indexing LOB systems so they can be searched directly
from MOSS.
While the BDC provides a strong data integration within SharePoint, it lacks
the capability to integrate directly with Microsoft Office documents. Information
workers spend a significant amount of their day creating and reviewing documents.
Most of the time, these documents are created in Microsoft Office. Additionally,
much of the data used in these documents comes from LOB systems. Consider,
for example, the creation of an invoice. The invoice might be created in
Microsoft Word, but it requires the customer contact information from a
CRM system, and the status of the account from an ERP system. Ideally, the
BDC would provide direct integration of these systems with Microsoft Office,
but it does not.
The gap between the BDC and Microsoft Office is an ideal place to take advantage
of OfficeWriter. By creating a custom OfficeWriter solution, we can utilize
the data contained in the BDC to create Office documents. The OfficeWriter
solution is possible because the BDC supports a programming interface that
exposes BDC data in code. OfficeWriter can use the BDC programming interface
to retrieve data while taking advantage of its own native capability to
place that data in document fields.
The demonstration
code shows an example of integrating the BDC with OfficeWriter. The
solution creates a SharePoint feature that appears in the Share Services
Provider of MOSS and allows documents to be created from BDC data. Using
this sample, you could move to more sophisticated solutions that automatically
create specific documents such as invoices.
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