SharePoint applications

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is a Windows Server technology, offering an integrated portfolio of collaboration and communication services. It is also a platform for developing Web-based applications business. Leveraging this capability, Microsoft has developed forty Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provide out of the box solutions to meet the needs of specific business processes such as coordinating a Help Desk or tracking campaigns marketing,
Microsoft has developed these applications can be downloaded free templates to be usable immediately after deployment. However, customers and partners can also use these application templates as a starting point for more customized solutions, or can use them as teaching examples as they build their own sophisticated Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 applications using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007.
The purpose of this paper is to describe how Microsoft developed the Application Templates, identifying best practices working with the basic capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Designer 2007, with the goal of empowering customers and partners to create their own applications. The article is not a substitute for the Windows SharePoint Services SDK 3.0, nor is mainly a resource for developers. Developers should use the SDK to the general understanding of how to extend Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
This article is intended as a resource for a new breed of site designers. Because Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Designer 2007 makes it possible to build both application functionality through the user interface, enhanced skills development are not required to create rich applications. Without doubt, this article describes some custom code implementations of design patterns especially difficult, but the overall methodology should be accessible to developers and are not presented with that audience in mind. Developers may want to quickly read through the early sections on tools and methodology and pay more attention to the description of design patterns and the specific examples of how to apply design patterns.
Regarding the structure of the article, the first section, tools and technologies used, provides an overview of the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Designer 2007, which are used in construction applications. The next section, the application architecture and development methodology, describes, in general, the methodology that Microsoft uses across all application templates. The methodology is a common sense approach that leads to a genuine examination of the effects of the solution, how is it used and by whom, and what pieces of technology to get the farthest without writing custom code. You end up with a process to identify areas where the custom code or custom work will require others.
The next section of the article, implementation of common design patterns, focusing on how to use the strengths of both Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to meet the common needs of design applications, such as how to create custom actions in a list. This is the core of the article, and describes approaches to design patterns that recur in all the templates for the application (and, indeed, all applications that can reach). This section provides examples for each of five design patterns, including prescriptive guidance to work with the user interface of Windows SharePoint Services or Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and custom code.
The last section of the article, construction of templates, describes how to actually create a template file with Office SharePoint Designer 2007. It also covers other issues such as location.
When you finish this article, you must have a good understanding of how design and architecture of an application, how to start building a site directly in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, including the creation of linked lists, custom columns, the libraries, workflows, and so on, how then open the site in Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to make additional customizations, create custom forms, add custom code to change certain behaviors, create custom workflows, and so on, and finally, how to create the application template and deploy for their own use.