Microsoft recently announced good news for solution providers by tying in Office SharePoint Server 2007 with the Office 2007 platforrm.  Two new services from the SharePoint Enterprise 2007 edition, business intelligence and business forms will integrate with Office 2007 and help solution providers better use Office, most particularly Excel and InfoPath.

Users will now be able to publish spreadsheets with Excelll 2007 directly into SharePoint, so the new solution providers tool will be important when using business intelligence portals.  For example, users will be able to change views with Excel interactively by going from the portal page from Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.  Installation of Office will not be needed.  The only time local Excel installation is required is during the editing of spreadsheets.

The new integration for solution providers will use similar performance indicators as those used in BI solutoins, allowing for the changing of spreadsheet values.  Developers can build on top of Excel output by adding dashboards.  SharePoint 2007 offers optimized security features to help keep networks and files protected.

Solution providers feel that Microsoft has done well in simplifying the publishing process, adding new development capablities.  Solution providers can now add to many filter lists to automate typically mundane and time-consuming tasks. 

The new design is built on an ASP.Net 2.0 object model that allows SharePoint lists to be lengthened, almost to no limit.  Microsoft is calling this new extensions concept Features.

For more information on this new integration, please visit the article for solution providers.  Microsoft is offering a free book for those interested in these innovative new programs. 

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg