Tools for Office Updated

Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is aimed at helping developers build applications that are based on components of the Office System. But developers seeking to build applications based on Office have faced a confusing roadmap and overlapping products promoted as environments for creating Office-based applications. With Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft is finally signaling that VSTO is the winner. The latest version improves support for Office 2007 and for Office-based front ends to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and other mission-critical applications. However, IT managers will need to weigh the benefits of VSTO-based clients against the costs of deployment, software licenses, and development expenses they impose.

The Winning Platform for OBA Clients

VSTO is a development environment for Office Business Applications (OBAs)—applications that use parts of the Office System (which includes the Office suite as well as server products such as SharePoint Server) as the UI for access to business data. For example, an Outlook add-in for an OBA might enable consultants to enter and review billable hours in an ERP system from their Outlook calendars.