My First Book: Programming Microsoft® Office Business Applications

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I think it's quite interesting how knowledge is shared nowadays. With so many blogs, online articles, how do I videos, and e-mail newsletters out there, writing/reading books seems to be just poetic. I still believe good tech books are your best friends when you are trying to get more in depth knowledge about a new technology.

I would be lost today without my red C# bible: Professional C#

This book has been my best friend and has helped me through many battles. I got mine almost five years ago and so far, I can tell it's my favorite dev book. It really helped me understand the .NET world.  

Back in my fun times at MCS, one of my peers took pictures of all consultants working on a project and created a cool cover using our pictures.It was a fun joke, and of course at the time I never imagined one day I would write a book for real!

 

The real thing: my first book

I was humbled when I was asked to write an Office development book with talented authors and Microsoft employees such as Steve Fox, Joanna Bichsel, Paul Stubbs, and Rob Barker. I was very excited to work with them on this book project. Especially since it was a book about programming Office Business Applications, one of my favorite topics. This book covers eight areas of Office development:

  1. Introducing Office Business Applications
  2. Creating a Smart Client for Your Office Business Applications by Using VSTO
  3. Building Business Intelligence for Your Office Business Applications
  4. Integrating Web Services into Your Office Business Applications
  5. Building Social Networking into Your Office Business Application
  6. SharePoint and Developing Office Business Applications
  7. Managing Complex Business Processes with Custom SharePoint Workflow
  8. Deploying Your Office Business Application in the Enterprise

I had the opportunity to author Chapter 7 and I can tell you I had lots of fun playing with workflow in SharePoint and Visual Studio 2008.

Steve Fox is the lead author and he did an amazing job putting this book together.

Here's the book info:

Programming Microsoft® Office Business Applications

Get practical guidance for creating custom applications by using the capabilities of the Microsoft Office platform. This hands-on reference illustrates how to use Microsoft Visual Studio® Tools for Office and the Microsoft Office system to create Office Business Applications—an emerging breed of application that bridges the gap between line of business (LOB) systems and end-user productivity tools. OBAs allow users to increase productivity by providing a seamless and integrated end-to-end user experience from their desktop to data in enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and other business systems. Experts on the Microsoft Office, Visual Studio Tools for Office, and OBA teams at Microsoft adeptly illustrate how to develop smart clients and Web services in the Microsoft Office environment. You’ll also get guidance on custom development for the Microsoft Office Fluent™ user interface and Windows® SharePoint® Services, application deployment, and managing workflow. Complete with code samples on the Web, this book delivers the pragmatic information enterprise developers need to know to create and deploy custom business applications to the organization.

You can also find a couple sample chapters online:

I have to mention that I am forever thankful to Joanna Bichsel for inviting me to contribute to this book.

Finally, not that this is my book too, but honestly, if you want to learn about OBA development, this is a great book to get started.

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