Collins Mayberry Shelve in Microsoft Office User level: Intermediate www.apress.com SOURCE CODE ONLINE RELATED BOOKS FOR PROFESSIONALS BY PROFESSIONALS ® Pro Office 365 Development Pro Office 365 Development is a practical, hands-on guide to building cloud-based solutions using the Office 365 platform. This book shows you how to use the Office 365 platform to easily build amazing custom applications, including coding for Excel Services, Microsoft Access, and SharePoint Online. Pro Office 365 Development offers you step-by-step instructions for providing custom features using the cloud-based services SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online. You’ll learn how to develop SharePoint solutions, including declar- ative workflows; you’ll see how to use Access and Excel Services to quickly build SharePoint sites; and you’ll discover how to build context-sensitive collaborative solu- tions with instant messaging and video conferencing. Packed with sample programs using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), JavaScript, and Silverlight, this book teaches you how to: • Configure and administer an enterprise Office 365 account • Implement declarative workflows using Visio and SharePoint Designer • Create web databases using Access and SharePoint • Write Silverlight and JavaScript applications hosted in SharePoint • Access data from external sources such as Azure using Business Connectivity Services (BCS) • Build WPF applications to expose Lync and Exchange services Whether you want to build desktop client applications or browser-only solutions with Microsoft’s new cloud-based productivity offering, you’ll find the knowledge you need to start developing your own custom solutions inside Pro Office 365 Development. www.it-ebooks.info For your convenience Apress has placed some of the front matter material after the index. Please use the Bookmarks and Contents at a Glance links to access them. www.it-ebooks.info iv Contents at a Glance  About the Authors xx  About the Technical Reviewer xxi  Acknowledgments xxii  Introduction xxiii  Part 1: Introducing Office 365 1  Chapter 1: Getting Started with Office 365 3  Chapter 2: Using Advanced Features 37  Chapter 3: Office 365 Overview 77  Part 2: Creating SharePoint Online Solutions 101  Chapter 4: Customizing SharePoint 103  Chapter 5: Creating Declarative Workflows 159  Chapter 6: Creating Sites with Access 2010 229  Chapter 7: Excel Services 253  Chapter 8: Accessing External Data 279  Part 3: Building SharePoint Solutions with Visual Studio 329  Chapter 9: SharePoint Content 331  Chapter 10: Developing SharePoint Applications 367  Chapter 11: Developing Silverlight and JavaScript Applications 397  Part 4: Developing Messaging Applications 419  Chapter 12: Developing Exchange Online Solutions 421  Chapter 13: Developing Lync Applications 443  Part 5: Creating a Custom Office 365 Solution 467  Chapter 14: Solution Overview 469 www.it-ebooks.info  CONTENTS v  Chapter 15: Creating a Web Database 481  Chapter 16: Integrating Office365 Technologies 543  Chapter 17: Creating a Public Web Site 599  Appendix A: SharePoint Primer 627  Appendix B: Additional Resources 641  Index 645 www.it-ebooks.info xxiii Introduction Office 365 takes productivity to the cloud. It offers all of the tools a business office needs without the hassle of supporting the necessary infrastructure. But what if you need customization? What can developers do to extend the tools of Office 365? Office 365 brings together a fully integrated suite of office automation tools, including the key server components: SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync. Volumes have been written on each of these products. In addition, there is an impressive list of client applications that can be leveraged, including • Access • Excel • Visio • InfoPath • SharePoint Designer • Visual Studio There is so much that you can do with this platform that it’s not possible to cover every aspect in a single book. However, we have tried to pack in as much as possible and to demonstrate the features that are the most useful. The topics span a broad range, including web databases, declarative workflows, custom Lync and Exchange applications, and public-facing web sites. Intended Audience Because of the variety of ways the Office 365 platform can be customized, the techniques described will appeal to a range of audiences. About half of the book demonstrates non-code solutions. If you’re an end user or power user, this book provides many useful tips that you can use to get the most out of Office 365. The second half of the book focuses on developing against the various technologies within Office 365. For developers, this book shows you how to build applications using Visual Studio to create custom solutions. Book Structure The first two sections of this book provide an overview of Office 365, instructions for configuring your account, and a host of non-code solutions. The next two sections demonstrate coded solutions using the Office 365 server components (SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync). The final section serves as a review by pulling together some key concepts presented earlier to build a fully integrated solution. www.it-ebooks.info  INTRODUCTION xxiv Each chapter invites you to work through the exercise yourself with step-by-step instructions. You can simply read the chapter and learn a great deal. But following along will be even more beneficial. During this process we explain some of the hows and whys. Prerequisites To work through the exercises in this book you need an Office 365 account. A few of the solutions require one of the Enterprise plans, but most can be implemented on any plan. Some of the chapters require additional Office products such as Access or Excel. These are included with some of the Office 365 plans and can be added to others for a monthly fee.  Tip You can get a free 30-day trial subscription for either the Small Business or Enterprise plan. If you need more time, you can generally get a 30-day extension. Also, the Small Business plan is a monthly subscription, and you can cancel it at any time. You also need Visual Studio 2010 to work through the coded solutions. To develop coded SharePoint solutions, you must have a local (on-premise) installation of SharePoint server. Some of the exercises require other free products and these are explained in the appropriate chapters. www.it-ebooks.info P A R T 1 Introducing Office 365 This section is a high-level overview of the Office 365 platform, which provides a great deal of functionality out of the box. This is intended for readers who are relatively new to Office 365. Before building custom applications it’s a good idea to understand the initial feature set so you can envision how the new solutions fit into the big picture. Many of the Office 365 features are exposed to custom applications through custom controls, web services, or managed APIs. These building blocks simplify the building of some great custom applications. The functionality of each of the server components (SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync) is impressive on its own. But combining them in a fully integrated environment makes these tools even more fun to develop with. Chapter 1 provides a high-level walkthrough of a basic Office 365 platform. This will give you a good idea of how each of the components contributes to the overall platform. Chapter 2 demonstrates some of the advanced configuration options, such as using a custom domain name. Chapter 3 explains how each server component works in terms, primarily, of how it can be used by a developer. I’ll begin to show how the existing functionality can be leveraged in custom applications. www.it-ebooks.info C H A P T E R 1 3 Getting Started with Office 365 Throughout this book I will be showing you how to create custom applications that take advantage of the features provided in Office 365 platform. In this chapter I want to first give you a quick, high-level overview of the capabilities of Office 365 right out of the box. Before you begin developing, it’s helpful to know what you’re starting with so you can better envision how your custom applications will fit into the overall solution. If you’ve used the Office platform in an on-premise solution, Office 365 won’t be too surprising; it’s essentially the same feature set as a traditional on-premise solution. The same basic capabilities of Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync (the successor of Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007), are packaged into a cloud-based solution. What is revolutionary about Office 365 is that a fully integrated Office solution is now available to anyone in a matter of minutes. Office 365 comes in two varieties, Small Business and Enterprise, which are the same basic offering but packaged differently in terms of licensing and configurability. The Small Business solution is targeted toward small teams with little or no IT staff, while the Enterprise plans provide more advanced features for integrating into the existing on-premise network solution. In this chapter I will set up a Small Business account and show you the basic features that are provided with both plans. I’ll explain some of the more advanced features in the next chapter, most of which are unique to the Enterprise plans.  Note The Small Business and Enterprise solutions are often referred to as P plans and E plans, respectively. These letter designations are used when purchasing Office 365 subscriptions. There are several E plans and each user can be licensed for a different E plan based on their needs. There are also K plans, which are kiosk plans that have limited ability at a much reduced cost. Throughout this book, I will use the terms Small Business and Enterprise to differentiate between the two basic offerings. For a concise comparison of these solutions, see the article at http://blogs.technet.com/b/lystavlen/archive/2011/09/23/office-365-comparing-p-and-e- plans.aspx . Administering an Office 365 Account Once you have created an Office 365 account, you are taken to the main portal page, shown in Figure 1-1. www.it-ebooks.info CHAPTER 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 4 Figure 1-1. The initial Office 365 portal page The initial user created when the account was set up is configured as an administrator. This gives them the ability to set up and manage additional user accounts as well as general account configuration. Notice that there is an Admin link as the top of the portal page. You use this link to go to the Admin page shown in Figure 1-2. www.it-ebooks.info CHAPTER 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 5 Figure 1-2. The Office 365 Admin page The Admin page provides links for managing licenses and general system configuration. You can check on planned maintenance, enter a service request, and verify billing information. Adding a User The first thing you’ll want to do is set up the additional users. You add a user by filling in a series of forms. In the first form, shown in Figure 1-3, you’ll enter the basic information such as the first name, last name, and user name that is used for their login. www.it-ebooks.info [...]... GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 Figure 1-3 Step 1 of creating a new user When setting up an Office 365 account, you specify a domain name, which is actually a subdomain under onmicrosoft.com For my account I chose apress365 This means that all of the logins (and e-mail addresses) will be someone@apress365.onmicrosoft.com  Tip If you already have a domain name, you can configure Office 365 to use it instead... GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 and forwarded the login information to the user so they could access their account This is demonstrated in Figure 1-13 Figure 1-13 Forwarding user account information 12 www.it-ebooks.info CHAPTER 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365  Note I sent this to Jonathan’s new Office 365 e-mail address He won’t be able to read it until he has logged in to Office 365 In a live scenario,... this process to set up all user accounts 7 www.it-ebooks.info CHAPTER 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 Using the Bulk Add Feature If you have a lot of users to create, setting them up one at a time can be tedious Office 365 provides a feature for loading them all at once To do that, you’ll use the Bulk Add page shown in Figure 1-8 Figure 1-8 Using the Bulk Add feature The user details are provided... 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 Figure 1-27 Viewing frequent contacts  Tip You can load a photo or other image that others will see from their Lync client Upload an image file from your profile page on Office 365 or from the Lync client You can change your status using the Lync client, as shown in Figure 1-28 25 www.it-ebooks.info CHAPTER 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 Figure 1-28 Changing... this is not already installed, you will be prompted to install it, as shown in Figure 1-25 22 www.it-ebooks.info CHAPTER 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 Figure 1-25 Installing the Online Service Sign-In Assistant Click the “Download and install now?” link After this is installed, the Lync 2010 client will prompt you for your credentials Enter your Office 365 login for both the Sign-In address and... Office Communications Server 2007 It provides peer-topeer instant messaging, audio and video conversations, screen sharing, and more The Office 365 version of this server is called Lync Online and, just like the other Online servers, provides essentially the same feature set in a cloud-based solution 19 www.it-ebooks.info CHAPTER 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 Launching Lync from Outlook Web App... included (in this order) are:  User name  First name  Last name  Display name  Job title  Department  Office number  Office phone  Mobile phone  Fax  Address  City  State or province  ZIP or postal code  Country or region 8 www.it-ebooks.info CHAPTER 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 The only columns that you must supply data for are the User name, which is the actual login and includes... will need to install the Lync 2010 client application From the Home page on Office 365, you can use Downloads link in the Resources section This will display the Downloads page shown in Figure 1-24 21 www.it-ebooks.info CHAPTER 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 Figure 1-24 Instaling the Lync 2010 client application Select the appropriate language, choose either the 32-bit or 64-bit version, and click... STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 Figure 1-17 Creating a new document library Using Shared Documents To add a document to the library you can either upload a file from your local PC or you can create a new document using the Office Web Apps The initial document library has links on the page for creating a new document, as shown in Figure 1-18 16 www.it-ebooks.info CHAPTER 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 Figure... www.it-ebooks.info CHAPTER 1  GETTING STARTED WITH OFFICE 365 Figure 1-18 The initial document library  Caution If you have client versions of these Office applications installed locally, these links will probably not work correctly When opening an Office document in Office 365, the client applications will be used if available The links specify a template file that is likely not available to the client applications . Collins Mayberry Shelve in Microsoft Office User level: Intermediate www.apress.com SOURCE CODE ONLINE RELATED BOOKS FOR PROFESSIONALS BY PROFESSIONALS ® Pro Office 365 Development Pro Office 365 Development is a. Introduction xxiii  Part 1: Introducing Office 365 1  Chapter 1: Getting Started with Office 365 3  Chapter 2: Using Advanced Features 37  Chapter 3: Office 365 Overview 77  Part 2: Creating. other free products and these are explained in the appropriate chapters. www.it-ebooks.info P A R T 1 Introducing Office 365 This section is a high-level overview of the Office 365 platform,