Lamont Harrington's Blog

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I'd been working on the Office Business Application (OBA) Reference Architecture Pack for Public Sector, which focuses on providing prescriptive architecture guidance for building e-Forms solutions within Public Sector.  I've gotten numerous inquiries since that post as to when the bits would be available for download.  Well, I'm happy to announce that they are now available on our Connect website.  If you are new to Microsoft Connect, read the Microsoft Connect Introduction to learn how Microsoft Connect works and how to enroll.  Included in the download are hands-on-labs and a fully functional Virtual Machine that has all the necessary bits to run the solution.  Because the RAP is being bundled as a Virtual Machine image you will need either Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005, which are both free, to run the solution.

Also be forewarned that the Virtual Machine is fairly large in size (weighing in at a ~31 GB), so please plan accordingly when you decide to download as it'll take a minute

I welcome you to download the solution and give us some feedback on what you think.  This release marks the first phase of many exciting things that will come out of this RAP.  To get more information on what's going in Public Sector, you can visit the Public Sector Industry Center on MSDN.

We've made some updates to the BizTalk Server Roadmap that will hopefully shed some light on what the plans are for the product with the pending R2 release as well as future versions of the product.  BizTalk Server 2006 R2 will feature a number of updates over the initial 2006 release including rich integration with Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation through the WCF Adapter SDK and new Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) interceptors for WCF and WF which will enable you to leverage BAM functionality in non-BizTalk applications, updated support for the 2007 Office System (which includes an update adapter for SharePoint Server), and comprehensive RFID support.

In addition to all the new capabilities introduced in BizTalk Server 2006 R2, the roadmap also provides a "sneak peak" in to the future strategy of BizTalk Server and the investments that are being made.  Head on over to the roadmap and check it out.

As mentioned in my last post, in addition to the website redesign and replatform to MOSS, I also oversaw a project that involved taking one of the customer's primary "eye candy" applications, an HTML/JavaScript-based carbon calculator, and ported it to Microsoft Silverlight v1.1 Alpha.  We solicited the services of a couple of talented developers, Pete Brown and Steve Suing, both of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Applied Information Sciences to construct a compelling user experience geared as showcasing how you can leverage Silverlight to build Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).  And what more compelling a business scenario than to build a solution geared at drawing attention to our carbon consumption with hopes at making us all take a more proactive stance and preserving the earth's natural heritage by conserving on our energy consumption!

Below are some screenshots of the application, that you can access here, and while you're there, make a contribution to a worthy cause!  Pete also has written a blog post that breaks down how the application was built.  Head on over to his blog and check out the post.

 In the spirit of talking about the cool projects I've been working on as mentioned in a previous post I want to bring your attention to two new MOSS-powered websites that just launched, right at the eve of this year's Live Earth event (that's currently happening as I write this).  The customer's name is Conservation International and they've just re-launched their public internet web properties on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.  Today, marks the official day of Live Earth, a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis. Live Earth will reach this worldwide audience through an unprecedented global media architecture covering all media platforms - TV, radio, Internet and wireless channels.

MSN is one of the sponsors of Live Earth and has launched an official website in support of the event.  Conservation International serves as one of the major content providers for MSN's Live Earth website.  I've been working with this customer in migrating their existing web infrastructure, which was previously powered by two 3rd party content management solutions to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.  Working under a tight deadlines, we were able to successfully migrate their existing sites over to the SharePoint platform and this is a true testament of the power and flexibity SharePoint Server 2007 provides for establishing a robust internet web presence.  Also in the wake of the migration to SharePoint, we also found time to build a "real world" application, a web-based carbon calculator, using Microsoft Silverlight v1.1 and Microsoft Virtual Earth which is a true demonstration of the power and flexibility of the Silverlight platform in delivering compelling Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). 

In future posts, I'll go into more detail into how we built these websites, but in the mean time, hop on over to http://www.conservation.org/ and http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/ and check out MOSS in action!  If you want to see the really slick Silverlight carbon calculator, hop on over to here

As I mentioned in my last post, I've had the opportunity to work on a number cool solutions in recent months.  One solution that I've been privileged to work on and help deliver is the Office Business Application Reference Architecture Pack for Public Sector (wow, say that 5 times fast!) and it has just been released to MSDN.  This reference architecture provides prescriptive architecture and guidance for addressing a major business problem within today's Public Sector organizations, that being the processing of electronic forms. It illustrates how an OBA (Office Business Application) can be built to automate and optimize forms processing.  The reference solution framework showcased in the RAP is generic and can be adapted to enable end-to-end processing of a number of electronic forms in the Public Sector.

This OBA solution was built using a number of technologies from the 2007 Office System and .NET 3.0 platforms.  Among those technologies include:

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Microsoft Office InfoPath Forms Services
• Windows Workflow Foundation
• Windows Communication Foundation
• Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

Also included as a part of the RAP are a number of supplementary materials including a click through demo, videos, technical and business presentations, and architecture whitepapers.  The RAP is being bundled as a Virtual Machine image, which will include the working application and source code and will be made available from our Microsoft Connect website.  You will be able to download the Virtual Machine image from there and can use either Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005, which are both free, to run the solution.

This version of the RAP only marks phase I of a multi-phased approach for delivering OBA capabilities to address E-forms processing.  In future releases we'll be introducing more advanced capabilities, including:

• Personalized citizen portals
• Live Collaboration and Communication (Citizen to Organization, Organization to Citizen)
• E-Forms analytics and activity monitoring
• Advanced Office client integration for information workers
• Rich Internet Application (RIA) capabilities via Silverlight
• Integration of information cards using Windows CardSpace

So keep your browsers tuned into the many exciting things that'll be coming out of Public Sector.

Wow, October 18, 2005?  That was the date of my last post!  Well certainly a lot has happened since then!  I've had brief "blog post cameos" on my team's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector, but I think it's about time I get back to my roots and start posting.  For those of you who've followed my blog, even back when I was on DotnetJunkies.com, you know that I joined Microsoft back in 2005 as a Technology Architect at the Microsoft Technology Center.  During my time there, I've had the opportunity to architect some of the coolest solutions on our platform.  The desire to further evangelize our platform in delivering robust solutions has landed me as an Architect Evangelist within our Public Sector Developer & Platform Evangelism team where I now work with customers to help them realize the potential of our platform in delivering compelling solutions that tackle many of the business problems that plague organizations today.  Still staying true to my SharePoint roots, I've been doing a lot of work helping customers architect Office Business Applications in efforts to exploit the power and flexibility of the 2007 Office System platform for delivering compelling business solutions.  In addition, I've also been focusing on helping customer deliver solutions using our take on SaaS (Software as a Service) methodologies with our S+S (Software+Services) initiatives, improving the web user experience with technologies our recently introduced Silverlight platform, as well as continuing to build robust, SOA-enabled enterprise applications using .NET 3.0.

I've had the opportunity to do a number of cool things that I'll be blogging about and I promise to not go on such long "blog sabbaticals" again