Chapter 11
Developing Integrated Apps for Office and SharePoint Solutions
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:
- Creating integrated Office 2013 solutions using the new app model
- Understanding the new app model concepts and JavaScript object model (JSOM) for Office
- Learning when and how to use the common patterns for developing and deploying Apps for Office 2013
WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER
The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-1118495845.html on the Download Code tab. The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:
- CompositeOSPAutoHosted.zip
- ExploreMailApp.zip
- ExploreOfficeAPI.zip
- FirstApp.zip
The Microsoft Office desktop applications are used by millions of individuals worldwide. Whether it’s a teenager putting his first PowerPoint presentation together for a class project, a doctoral candidate writing her thesis in Word, or a Wall Street financial analyst performing Monte Carlo simulations within Excel, the Office desktop applications are a valued tool in the hands of their user. Through their use, people express their ideas, document their theories and discoveries, and make decisions based on analyzed results. Because of this widespread popularity, it is a good idea to land SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 integrated solutions within the context of the user’s productivity tools. This is where you want to integrate the reach of the Web with the rich collaboration features of SharePoint in a way never before possible.
This chapter shows you how solutions built using the new app model for Office 2013 can be combined with SharePoint 2013 to bring a host of new business solution opportunities to end users. Although you can still build integrated solutions that use Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) or Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) for that matter, the new Office app model provides a way to bring the power of the Web into Office. Think of this as a modern browser being hosted inside of Office 2013 (Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, and Project) that fully supports HTML5 and JavaScript. The new app model also includes a unified JavaScript object model (JSOM) that is shared across the aforementioned Office 2013 applications that enables the hosted web page and document, or e-mail in the case of Outlook, to interact! With this new app model you can build an app for Office or couple it with an app for SharePoint for an integrated solution. The app can either be standalone (as in the case of an app for Office) or deployed as part of an app for SharePoint 2013, but in either case it can be distributed to potentially millions of users via the Office Store on Office.com or directly to enterprises via an established sales relationship. Building integrated apps for Office and SharePoint is truly worth your consideration since the market for these app business solutions encompasses on-premises installations of SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 tenancies as well.