presentation on visual studio tools for office (vsto) at hyderabadtechies

Pranav AinavoluVSTO Developer, Conrep Solutions | Email: pranav@conrep.com

VSTO

VSTO : Visual Studio Tools for Office

• Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office system can help you extend applications in Microsoft Office 2003 and the 2007 by using Visual Basic and Visual C#..

• Latest version is VSTO 3.0 available as part of VS – 2008.

• Microsoft Office offers a platform that provides many possibilities for application development using managed code. Visual Studio and the Microsoft .NET Framework provide Rapid Application Development (RAD) programming capabilities that make it easy to begin creating Microsoft Office-based solutions to suit a variety of business needs.

What we can do with VSTO ?

• Customize Microsoft Office Applications by Creating Add-Ins.

• Latest version is VSTO 3.0 available as part of VS – 2008.

• Microsoft Office offers a platform that provides many possibilities for application development using managed code. Visual Studio and the Microsoft .NET Framework provide Rapid Application Development (RAD) programming capabilities that make it easy to begin creating Microsoft Office-based solutions to suit a variety of business needs.

Microsoft’s strategic tool for developing Office solutions in

Microsoft Excel 2003/2007Microsoft Word 2003/2007Microsoft Power Point 2003/2007Microsoft InfoPath 2003/2007Microsoft Outlook 2003 /2007 (Add-in Support)

Roadmap

2005 Custom Document ActionsPane Host Controls on document surface Cached data in the document Server-side data processing Application-level add-ins for Outlook

2005 SE2007

2003

App-level add-ins for most popular Office appsRuntime support for key Office 2007 UI elements (Custom Taskpane, Ribbon, Outlook form regions)Runtime support enabling Office 2003 doc-level customizations to run in Office 2007

v3.0 (in VS2008)2007

2003

Workflow & Microsoft SharePoint supportOffice 2007 system-specific features, file format, UIApp-level add-ins for more client applicationsDeeper server-side programmingVSTO fully integrated into Visual Studio 2008

Outlook Add-ins

Outlook Add-ins

The VSTO runtime supports Outlook add-ins

• Provides VSTO runtime loader• More reliable add-in/host interaction • Improved security and deployment model

Design-time support in Visual Studio• Outlook add-ins Project template• Visual Studio Setup project for Outlook

add-ins• Improved debugging experience

Scenarios for Code

Line of Business Applications Integration of Outlook Data into back end

systemsCalendar Integration Solutions

Time trackingCollaboration Solutions

RSS Aggregators, Integrated SharePoint Solutions

Outlook Extension Solutions Search tools, personal organizational tools

(thread compressor, attachment management)Personal Productivity Solutions

Conf room finder, travel booking tools, customer survey tools

Writing Managed CodeBehind Outlook

Deployment & Security

VSTO Deployment Basics• Document and code (assembly) are separate• VSTO has a manifest-based deployment

model Application Manifest

Embedded in the document and describes the solution (startup assembly, dependencies, deployment manifest)

Deployment Manifest Points to the Application Manifest and handles

Application Manifest version resolution

• Solution can intelligently update

VSTO Deployment Basics

Three basic deployment models• Local/Local – both document and assembly reside on local machine

• Local/Network – document resides on local machine, assembly resides on network

• Network/Network – both document and assembly reside on the network

• This is especially useful for Template projects

Note:InfoPath deployment is slightly different

Assemblies and manifest reside in an XSN XML files point to XSN

VSTO Client Requirements

Office 2003 Professional Edition SP1 Or Excel/Word/Outlook standalone editions.

.NET Framework 2.0

VSTO 2005 Runtime

Office Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs)

Appropriate security policies

Security Model

VSTO uses .NET Code Access Security Evidence

Location based for documents Any type of evidence for the assemblies

Permissions Document location and code must be fully trusted

Levels Enterprise, Machine, User, Application A given permission is granted only if all policy

levels agree to grant it Default CLR Security policy is not enough

Security Model

Note: InfoPath security is slightly different

• InfoPath assemblies support partial trust for Domain XSNs

• Doesn’t need to use .NET Code Access Security because assemblies can be fully trusted when they are signed the XSN is installed

Thank you

Questions?