Today at Microsoft Italy was the "OBA day": we spent an entire day with Chad Z. Hower a.k.a. "Kudzu" talking about Office Business Applications, in my opinion an hot topic for the next generation of applications in the enterprise.
With the 2007 Office System, Microsoft Office has evolved beyond a productivity suite into a unified solutions platform that makes enterprise data and processes more accessible and relevant to users. Composed of clients, servers, services, and tools, it provides a single infrastructure for communication and collaboration, business intelligence, and content management solutions.
With "Kudzu" we've talked about the architectural elements of the Office Technical Platform and we've examined real world cases of end-to-end vertical solutions.
If you're interested on OBA architectures, you've to know that Microsoft has 5 Reference Architecture Packs (RAP) available for testing (and for learning too). They're real world vertical industry scenarios (with VPC) that shows how you can solve business requirements with a complete Office Business Application (that integrates Sharepoint, the ERP, Infopath, Exchange, BI etc.).
This is the list:
1. OBA RAP for Financial Service Loan Origination: it provides a reference architecture for Loan Origination Services in Financial Services Industry. It consists of a lender portal built on MOSS for brokers and underwriters to register, lock and underwrite loans. A loan registration form implemented using InfoPath allows brokers to register a loan, the forms can be designed with a InfoPath forms designer which allows access to MISMO XML schema and are rendered on the SharePoint site in a XmlFormView Web part to provide contextual editing. A BDC Web part enables searching and filtering of the loan pipeline. The Master Loan Workflow, which is the backbone of the lending process is modeled as a WF state machine and is associated with the forms library that holds the loan registration and approval forms. Another products and pricing sequential workflow provides dynamic rates information for loan pricing. The RAP uses BizTalk to interact with various third party services for flood information, credit reports etc. Finally, the RAP provides various reports using SQL Reporting Services Web part. In addition to whitepapers, webcasts, click through demos, the code bill of materials for the LOS RAP includes 7000 lines of code, 1 SharePoint portal, 2 Web parts, 1 BDC entity, 2 Workflows, 4 Web services, 1 business rule, 1 report, 3 InfoPath forms and 1 Excel doc.
2. OBA RAP for Manufacturing Plant Floor Operations: it illustrates how to build an Analytics OBA using Office 2007, SQL Server 2005, and PerformancePoint Server 2007. The scenario is based on manufacturing plant floor operations in a fictitious Oil & Gas company and provides analysis and decision making for strategic, tactical and operational levels. Silverlight components provide real time plant floor views on role based SharePoint sites, plant floor managers monitor operational KPIs and take actions when exceptions happen. The code bill of materials for the PF RAP includes 2 SQL Server Databases (PEM DB, Plant Floor Data Mart), 1 SSAS Database (1 Holistic plant floor cube with a perspective for analyzing safety incidents, 1 SSIS package to load data from the data mart to the cube (no code)), 1 PPS Monitoring Model with around 30 KPIs (operational, tactical and strategic) sourced from the SSAS cube and the PEM DB, 1 MOSS site with 3 Role Portals (Shift foreman, Plant Manager, VP Operations) and 16 web parts across all 3 portals (3 scorecards, 6 Excel Web Access Parts, 2 Page Viewer Parts to render the SilverLight XAMLs, 4 lists (3 for contacts and 1 for safety incidents), 1 Quick Links part), 1 Web Service for operational plant monitoring, 7 Excel Report Books that source data from the SSAS cube, 1 InfoPath Form (designed to render in both the InfoPath client and in the browser) to report safety incidents, 2 custom SilverLight 1.1 XAMLs integrated into the role portals (for rendering the operational PF map and the strategic 360 Regional view), 1 Plant Operations Simulator Console Application.
3. OBA RAP for Public Sector E-Forms processing: it addresses common patterns in data collection and processing using InfoPath 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, InfoPath Forms Services, Outlook, and WF. While the scenario is based on the application form and process to obtain a hunting and fishing license from a state agency, the underlying solution framework is generic and can be readily adapted to enable end-to-end processing of similar forms. The code bill of materials for this RAP are: 1400 lines of code, 3 SharePoint portals, 1 Workflow, 2 Web service, 1 InfoPath form
4. OBA RAP for Health Plans: it shows how to build architectures that unify people, process and technology through familiar Office 2007 user interfaces using Windows Live platform for member and coach identification, Windows Live Service Agents as automated bots and SharePoint Server 2007 for coach and member collaboration. The code bill of materials for this RAP are: 1800 lines of code, 1 SharePoint portal, 5 Web parts, 2 BDC entities, 2 Workflows, 1 Web service, 3 InfoPath forms
5. OBA RAP for Price Management: it provides an architecture framework for Price Management with an OBA based on SharePoint, BizTalk and Office Clients. The RAP allows for sales reps to create price quotes in Excel using pricing rules cached on the reps machine, supporting both online and offline modes. The RAP integrates with SAP using BizTalk to synchronize the cache and automates several workflows to begin production, escalation and exception handling. SharePoint enables rich collaboration between sales and service organization, reduces errors and improves visibility into the decision making process.