New Platform for Office Smart Clients

The Office Information Bridge Framework (IBF), due in July 2004, helps developers create “smart client” solutions for Office users to access data via Web services. Solutions created with the IBF could benefit employees who need to occasionally view and selectively update data from corporate applications such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, but don’t need all the capabilities of those applications. For developers, the IBF requires less coding than existing Office smart client technologies. However it isn’t a total replacement for previous technologies, and the first version lacks some key capabilities, such as offline data access.

Quicker Data Access for Office Users

The IBF is a development platform for solutions that enable a Word, Excel, and Outlook client to access data in Web services, which would typically connect to systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), CRM, or line-of-business applications. The goal is similar to that of corporate portals: give occasional users quick access to data that they need without requiring them to use specialized client software. For example, a typical scenario for accessing a CRM system with an IBF solution might run as follows: