Individually, Office Business Applications (OBA) and Unified Communications (UC) give developers robust new architectures in which to take collaborative apps to the next level. But together, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Combining OBA with UC (or vice versa) enables integration of federated data and line-of-business apps with human workflows using communications including contextual collaboration (human to human communications), anywhere information access (human to machine communications) and business process communications (machine to human communications) across any modality including IM, voice, video (both 1:1 and conferencing). >>

With the latest releases of the 2007 Microsoft® Office system, Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, and a host of other products, Microsoft has enabled a new type of application, known as Office Business Applications. But OBA is a big, somewhat abstract concept, with lots of pieces. As a developer, it helps to know exactly what to install and where to plug in your brain. This overview gives you a starting point for understanding OBA and figuring out where to go from here. >>

2007 Microsoft® Office system introduces a new XML-based file format called Office Open XML as its default file type. An open, royalty-free standard, Open XML gives developers a wide range of new opportunities, primarily the ability to create and manipulate Office files without using Office. We'll answer the basic questions, and then dive into what Open XML looks like, how it works, and how you can code against it. >>

Office 2007 not only redefines how your users work with their documents, it redefines the role of Office itself within their organizations. But with big changes come big opportunities. The new Ribbon API lets you create your own UI for Office 2007 apps. Learn a slew of customization techniques, then download the code. >>

Isn't it ironic? In a world threatening to drown knowledge workers with an overabundance of information, the software suite used by millions evolves into a business application development platform so vast it's practically sentient. If you're eager to know what's revolutionary about Microsoft's latest release, fear not: We've read thousands of words so you don't have to. >>

Office 2007 features a new default XML file format that opens a new world of development scenarios to .NET developers. This article explains the developer benefits provided by the new Office Open XML File formats that will be released as part of the 2007 Microsoft Office System. After reading this article you will understand the architecture of the new file formats as well as understand how the new formats enhance Office development scenarios. In addition, the article discusses a sample application that illustrates how the new file formats enable Office document generation on the server. >>

Learn what Office 12 will mean for developers, particularly those who are creating commercial and enterprise applications. >>

Learn how to consolidate task data residing in various Office file types into a Microsoft Outlook add-in. This article shows how you can begin to incorporate snippets of data included in Microsoft Office files into a meaningful solution. >>

Learn how to build an Outlook add-in that makes creating and distributing a status report as easy as clicking a button. In this article, Scott Hillier explains how to build a report with Outlook Tasks using SpreadsheetML and Visual Studio Tools for Office. >>

Microsoft has opened up the file formats of Excel and Word through the Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. These schemas free developers from using the Excel and Word Object Models of Excel to create documents on the fly and provide anyone with knowledge of XML a powerful method for building beautiful reports and delivering them to people inside the apps they already know and love. In this article, Ty shows how to retrieve data from a SharePoint list to build a nicely formatted report using Excel's XML Schema. >>

Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 introduces some big concepts, with big implications, like the separation of code from view. It also gives Office application developers some new features and tools to work with, including improved Smart Tags, easy-to-make Actions Panes, and the new Object Test Bench. Learn more by using these code samples to build the ultimate killer app. >>

These popular office system applications reduce the pain of recording and reporting your time, with very little code required. >>

Learn to use an InfoPath form and Windows SharePoint Services to capture new product ideas, route them for review, and then assign a team to get to work. >>

Does your organization rely on Excel to create reports that are used by customer, clients, and managers? Creating these reports by hand is a lot of work, and often results in errors. Scot shows you how, using the XML Spreadsheet format and some managed code, these reports can easily be automated. >>

Most organizations use a combination of Microsoft Office documents and e-mail to create informal document tracking processes that require manual updating. Scot Hillier shows you how to automate this process. >>

Learn to build your own custom form for Outlook appointment items. >>

Learn to build custom controls for your Office development projects using this example. >>

With the new Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) extensions, building an Outlook add-in with managed code will be a straight-forward exercise in coding productivity. Ty builds an example. >>

The ease with which SmartTags, ActionPanes, and XML are programmed using Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 allowed me to write a literate programming tool for .NET that is easy to use, supports both C# and VB.NET, and uses the full formatting power of Word. >>

Want to see how it works? Let's build an Office-based solution that uses XML. I call this app the Super Simple Sales Dashboard. You'll see why. >>

To demonstrate some of the new features of VSTO, let's build a sample time reporting application in Excel, to serve as the user interface for a time-reporting system. >>

Larry gives an example of moving data between two Office applications using XML—and a glimpse of the potential behind all that soaring rhetoric. >>

VBA for Office has been a productivity plus for developers, but it has its limits. Now with VSTO, you get the full power of Visual Studio .NET for building apps for Word or Excel—and Visual Studio coders get the full benefits of the rich apps infrastructure and familiar interfaces behind Office. >>

More than any previous release of Microsoft productivity suite, Office 2003 gives developers tools to design sophisticated applications, using Office as a development and deployment platform for creating new, slick, customer-facing applications that leverage the tools, the new languages, and the open document formats. Here is where to get the tools and help you need to ramp up. >>

Microsoft's newest programming tools for Office enable you to develop advanced applications that leverage Word 2003 and Excel 2003. >>