BP309 – Extreme Integration - Techniques for Advanced Integration of Office and OpenOffice with IBM Lotus Notes and Domino

John Head – PSC Group, LLC

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Otherwise known as

The “Kumbaya” Session

or

“The only session where IBM and Microsoft are going to play nice and not beat each other up at Lotusphere”

Who is John Head?

Offering and Development Manager for our enTouch frameworks Technical and Sales role

Involved in Lotus technology since 1993

Speaker for 20 sessions at Lotusphere since 1996

Speaker at Advisor conferences

IBM Lotus Notes/Domino Certified

Author for Advisor Magazine and Group Computing on Office and SmartSuite integration with Notes

Blog and site with articles www.johndavidhead.com

Where do I work?

PSC Group, LLC (www.psclistens.com)

Midwest Mid-Market Professional Services Firm

IBM Premium Business Partner for 15 Years

Host of Ed Brill’s blog (www.edbrill.com)

Host of Alan Lepofsky’s Notes Tip’s blog (www.alanlepofsky.net)

Host of OpenNTF.org (www.openntf.org)

Winner of 2005 Lotus Award for Best Competitive Win!

What has John been doing since Lotusphere05?

What has John been doing since Lotusphere05?

John has been …

Working closer with Microsoft to make the new .NET technology be read for “prime time”

Building Web Services until his eyes fall out

Building OpenOffice samples

Losing sleep over the OpenOffice APIs

Shaking his head at the document standard war

And all of the above

Purpose

Present new ways to integrate

Utilize new features in Visual Studio.NET and Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005

Utilize new features in OpenOffice 2.0.1

Take advantage of Notes & Domino 7 functionality

Demonstrate some of the possibilities

Discuss the ‘XML format’ war started in 2005

but most importantly …

Push Microsoft Office and OpenOffice to the EXTREME

Expect lots of Code !!!

A little poll

Who is using … Office 97 and earlier

Office 2000

Office XP

Office 2003

OpenOffice / StarOffice

Office for the Mac

Microsoft Works

iWorks or Appleworks

SmartSuite

Other

Agenda

Getting Started

Word Solutions with COM

Word Solutions with Web Services

Dealing with Templates

XML in Office

Visual Studio.NET

Visual Studio Tools for Office

OpenOffice Mail Merge

Resources

Question and Answers

Getting Started

This session builds on top of JMP204 –The Hitchhikers Guide to Microsoft Office Integration with IBM Lotus Notes and Domino

Terms used in this presentation XML

Well Formed Schemas Transform

Web Services SOAP UDDI WDSL

Office 2003 wordprocessingML / spreadsheetML / etc SmartDocuments

Integration in 2006

Proprietary Technologies are being replaced Moving to standards-based

Office XML and OpenDocument formats

XML and Web Services

No Longer limited to OLE and COM

Integration without needing local data Notes Client not required

XML is the foundation

Integration in 2006 (cont)

New applications and tools

Difficulty scale increasing drastically

Limitations being removed Speed

Data Size

Presentation Options

Integration should always focus on the end user

The Starting Point – Word 2003

COM and OLE are not bad!

Builds on existing Domino skills LotusScript = VBA

Allows access to Domino data using familiar techniques

Can be initiated in multiple places Notes Client

Office Application

Internet Explorer (via VBScript and ActiveX)

Baby Steps

Focus on end user and the goalWhere will the file be stored?Is the file for printing/viewing/storageWhat does the end user community want?

Word 2003 Demo

Create a new documentPrompt User to select somethingPlace data into document

Let’s look see the demo

Limitations with the ‘traditional method’

Notes Client must be installedMust have understanding of

Notes Object Model Notes Storage Model

Can be slow with large amounts of data

Web Services

Self-contained application published and invoked from the Web

Based on XML

Uses WSDL and SOAP

Designed for machine-to-machine interaction over a network

Advantages Connects various applications running on different platforms

Use open standards and protocols

Use HTTP bypassing firewall and other security measures

Disadvantages Poor performance as opposed to DCOM

First things first

First, you need to build a Web Service

They can be written using LotusScript, Java or importing WSDL

They are very similar to an agent

To be able to write a web service, you must know how to write a Class

AD202 – Web Services and IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 7

AD230 – Tips and Topics for Developing Web Services in IBM Lotus Domino

Designer

Web Service Classes

Example of a simple class

Class GetPersonInfo

Sub New

End Sub

Public Function GetEmailAddress(personname As String) As String

End Function

Public Function GetPhoneNumber(personname As String) As String

End Function

End Class

Word 2003 Demo with Web Services

Same demo as the Word 2003 COM demo

Different Technology

Get to the same place with different technologies

Remember, it is not how you build it, but how the user experiences it

Word 2003 Demo – Web Services

Create a new documentPrompt User to select somethingPlace data into document

Let’s look see the demo

Office Templates

How did I get that template in my New dialog?

Template Installation Tool Each template is a document

Supports all Office 2000, XP (2002), and 2003 applications

Can also be used as a programmatic template tool

Will be submitted to OpenNTF.org this week

Let’s see the demo

Office 2003 and XML

XML is everywhere!Many documents can be stored as XML

Options to save only data

Import data from XML fileSpecific/Import XML SchemaTransform XML with XML Style Sheets

XML

The Extensible Markup LanguageCan describe different types of dataHuman and machine readable formatSelf-documenting

XML Sample

<?xml version=“1.0”?><LOTUSPHERE>

<SESSION>BP309</SESSION><PRESENTER>John Head</SESSION><ROOM>SW 10</ROOM><DATE>1.25.2006</DATE><STARTTIME>1330</STARTTIME><DURATION>60</DURATION>

</LOTUSPHERE>

Well Formed Data

XML file that conforms to strict rules

Most programs require well formed data to open/read the file

Applications that support Well Formed XML OpenOffice 1.X and 2.X

Access

Excel

InfoPath

Word

Schemas

XML file definition

<xsd:element name=“LOTUSPHERE”><xsd:complexType>

<xsd:sequence>

<xsd:element name=“SESSION” type=“xsd:string”/>

<xsd:element name=“PRESENTOR” type=“xsd:string”/>

<xsd:element name=“ROOM” type=“xsd:string”/>

<xsd:element name=“DATE” type=“xsd:date”/>

<xsd:element name=“STARTTIME” type=“xsd:time”/>

<xsd:element name=“DURATION” type=“xsd:integer”/>

</xsd:sequence>

</xsd:complexType>

</xsd:element>

Transforms

Allows for reuse of a single data file with multiple presentation formats

In Office, defined for each application

True power of XML in Office

Sample Transform File

<?xml version=“1.0”?>

<xsl:stylesheet version=“1.0”>

<TABLE><TR>

<TH>SESSION</TH><TH>PRESENTOR</TH><TH>ROOM</TH><TH>DATE</TH><TH>STARTIME</TH><TH>ENDTIME</TH>

</TR>

<xsl:for-each select=“LOTUSPHERE”><TR ALIGN=“LEFT” VALIGN=“TOP”>

<TD><xsl:value-of select=“SESSION”/>

</TD>

</TR>

</xsl:for-each>

</TABLE>

Using XML with Excel

Read XML from a Notes Database

XML generated via Agent in Notes Database

Chart the data using Excel charting tools

Works with Domino 5.X, 6.X, 6.5.X

Visual Studio.NET

Microsoft Development Environment

Supports Multiple Languages VB.NET

C#

Etc

Support for WinForms

Uses .NET Security

Visual Studio.NET WinForms Demo

Same data as the Excel Database

Uses a Web Service

Stand-alone applications

Let’s look at the demo and code

Smart Documents

New class of Office application development

Built with Visual Studio Tools for Office

Inherits Visual Studio.NET security model “Managed Code”

VS.NET can build installers for VSTO applications

Visual Studio Tools for Office

Addin for Visual Studio.NETAdds support for

Word Excel InfoPath Outlook

Can develop in Visual Basic C#

Building a VSTO application

Incorporate Web Services and VSTO

Session Selection in Task Pane

Let’s see the demo

What?

OpenOffice

New version release in 2005 2.0

2.0.1 just released

Many people use OpenOffice in place of Office

Introduction samples in Jumpstart

Let’s look at Mail Merge with OpenOffice

OpenOffice Integration

With Notes, we use the COM object

Set objServiceManager = CreateObject("com.sun.star.ServiceManager")

Set objCoreReflection= objServiceManager.createInstance("com.sun.star.reflection.CoreReflection")

Set objDesktop = objServiceManager.createInstance("com.sun.star.frame.Desktop")

Set objDocument = objDesktop.loadComponentFromURL("private:factory/swriter", "_blank", 0, args)

OOo Mail Merge

Same concepts as Word Mail Merge1. User selects data

2. Generate data file

3. Detach template

4. Launch Writer

5. Execute Mail Merge

6. Produce End Document

Two steps today

Let’s see the demo

The Future

ND7 will help bring web services into our world

The standard battle will be hardest on the developer Office 12 XML formats

OpenDocument

Office “12” will be very different New User Interface

New File Formats

Lots of new options and customization vehicles How much of what works today will work in 12?

OpenOffice 2 is a great alternative

Wrap-up

Reviewed how to architect integration projects

Got an understanding of the technologies used

Walked thru lots of examples

Introduction to new Notes & Domino 7 functionality

Showed OpenOffice.org is an alternative

ResourcesLDD Discussions (Notes.Net)

http://www-130.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus

Advisor Magazine

http://www.advisor.com

MSDN

http://msdn.microsoft.com

OpenOffice

http://www.openoffice.org

Domino and .NET Samples

http://www.msdomino.net

John Head’s blog

http://www.johndavidhead.com

Slides and content available from

http://www.johndavidhead.com

http://www.psclistens.com on the Events menu

Questions & Answers

Thank You!

Please turn in your evaluations or fill them out online!

jhead@psclistens.com www.johndavidhead.com www.psclistens.com