I have created a .net Outlook addin that communicates with a WEB service.
As .net provides the environment to develop addins in visual studio it self
I was able to develop it without any trouble.
Now a requirement has come up to create an addin for Lotus Notes.
I need to create several UI's and integrate them with the web service
to transfer contacts, mails etc. to my SQL database.
Is there any SDK or IDE that i can use to develop this?
What should be my approach?
Thanks.
As your question is rather broad I can only provide you with a starting point.
Depending how you intend for this to work as well as the mix of Lotus Clients you must develop any solution for Lotus Notes web-services in java. If you're using Lotus Notes 8.5+ then you can design a side-bar widget for this. Unfortunately it's a very complex process if you want to create it, (typical of IBM).
If your users are on a mix of versions from 6.5+ you should consider writing the webservice in java via Eclipse as a Java agent. Domino's webservices can support providing/consuming of webservices in version 7. There is some support in 6.5 but I do not recommend it. Once you're in java and coding with Eclipse I find that dealing with Domino alot easier and robust. Also the java integration with Domino is be pretty good and actually very fast and efficient.
As mentioned before, depending on your environment I would look at implementing this as a java agent that can be called from any version of Lotus Notes from version 6.5+. As an agent you can easily run it from within Notes mail as a custom action button or from the "Actions" menu list. Check here for a guide to JDK compatibility.
But I think the best approach is to use Eclipse, as the Domino IDE is woefully inadequate for java development. A starting guide for Java agents, they can be found here, here, and here. There are some experts in the field of Java development and integration with Domino like Mikkel Heisterberg and Bob Balaban. Bob is the guru, and Mikkel is one of the best java guys for development and integration of java with the Notes side-bar widget. Reviewing those sites will provide you with more pointers at what you may need to do.
Finally search for "Redbooks" there are many that IBM produce for Domino and can be a good guide into Java development for Domino (including servlets). Here is one, although quite old is still relevant for today. Hope this helps...
It's hard to tell from your description how integrated the app needs to be. I don't believe Lotus Notes has API for integrating an add-in (I know it doesn't in versions before 8, but I'm not so familiar with the latest editions)
Still there is a decent API available for interacting with Lotus Notes databases, and you can call into that API from .NET. There's an example referenced on this SO question: Add a .net user control in lotus notes
Documentation for Lotus Notes can be found on IBM's site: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/
I would approach this as an application that runs separately from Lotus Notes but calls into the Notes API to get contacts, mail, etc and move them to SQL. The application could be launched from a toolbar icon in Notes, or from a Notes database using LotusScript, but I'd do all the heavy lifting work in .NET as you'll have much more flexibility.
Related
I'm new to CRM and yes, 4.0 is where I'm starting.
I am trying to find out if there is any way to have track and manage changes to CRM Customisations in TFS.
As things stand now I have 3 developers and if 2 devs work on different customisations in the dev crm, when one is ready to be imported into the test environment there is no easy way to separate the changes by different developers.
I can't be the first person to have thought about this but I'm not getting any answers when I google it... I may be wording my question incorrectly but I'm hoping the StackOverflow members can shed some light on this for me.
This may be of help to you regarding source control CRM artefacts:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj602974.aspx
I'm a developer who's about to begin building a relatively complex web application. I was going to build it in Rails or some other MVC framework for PHP such as Yii.
The VP of my organization had a conversation with someone from Salesforce.com/Database.com, and now he wants to build the site on their platform with APEX.
Here's my question:
If I'm already a developer, and I already know how to use an MVC development framework (such as Rails), what possible advantages could I get from building an application in APEX on the Salesforce.com/Database.com platform?
My initial impression was that this tool was mainly helpful for non-developers.
I think you are a bit off here, at least when it comes to salesforce.com. Although you can build public sites in salesforce using visualforce/apex it kind of seems like an overkill. SF is a primarily a prepackaged SaaS designed to help companies run parts of their operations in the cloud, with Apex being a developer extension and sites being an additional layer helping to build a public site on top of operational data. To best see for yourself register for developer account at http://developer.salesforce.com.
Bottom line, the answer mostly depends on whether or not your web application implements core operations.
Basically something that handles the low-level "plumbing" code for a subscription-based service. I see a lot of things dealing with basic membership, but nothing that handles the subscription aspect (recurring billing, automated jobs for setting up billing, notification for billing, etc). This might be the one thing that keeps me from using ASP.NET MVC for my SaaS idea, since it would take a fair amount of development time to write my own; if I go with my other option, Ruby on Rails, I can buy a kit that does all of this for $250. I haven't found anything even remotely close to this for .NET - all of the SaaS sample apps I've seen are more like StackOverflow et all where you have one site that multiple people log on to, not the web application model where you have subscribers who are billed monthly, each of whom has users and other entities (e.g. Customers, Tasks, etc) for their own site.
Is there anything similar for ASP.NET, or some kind of guidelines for writing my own if I have to, so I don't waste too much time? As a startup that means that I'm doing all the coding myself.
I've found this, but it seems to only be for billing and didn't seem to have much (any?) documentation on exactly how to set it up.
Website Spark (Microsoft partner program) just put out Freemium 1.0 which might be a good starting point. I haven't yet played with it, just saw the ad in my inbox today.
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WATFreemium
Paul
BrainTree supports recurring billing and offers a (documented) client library for .NET.
Also, they're being used by some big names such as 37signals, github and animoto.
I'm not sure this is entirely helful, but .NET has the built in membership provider that you can ovverride to customize it. If you start with that, it wouldn't be that hard to build in some simple subscription code to handle the authorization. Then you could probably buy a e-commerce library to handle the acual billing code to integrate with a payment gateway and other payment services like paypal.
Personally I would recommend ASP.NET MVC because version 2.0 just came out! Plus your skillset would be much more portable with Win Forms and WPF, and even Mono and the iPhone with Mono Touch! How much of a market is there for ruby right now in your area?
We would like to give our customers access to report bugs and to look at existing bugs and work items, through Team Foundation Server.
For that, we will need a web frontend, which is customer-friendly. It should be easy to use and with a nice UI. I am aware of Web Access, but think it is too developer-oriented for our customers to use.
Is there any good open source or commercial products out there for doing this? It is important that we will be able to customize the products for our needs.
There is WIWA, but it's quite similar to the regular web access tool. It exists more as a licensing aid (helping TFS admins ensure they don't overstep the CAL requirements) than as a fresh new UI aimed at non-developers.
Note: get it from the latest download package for TSWA SP1, not the CTP linked in the blog post
I don't know of any other solutions that are as customizable as you're hoping. I've seen (and contributed to) one-off solutions that were tailored for a specific work item type. At the broadest level, you could say that the bug pages # connect.microsoft.com and # Codeplex fall into that category as well. But none of them is publicly available, nor would they be helpful even if published.
You'll probably need to do a one-off of your own using the Work Item Tracking API. Luckily, this is far easier than writing a generalized workflow engine / forms designer that knows how to parse WIT XML.
A bit of a shameless plug as I'm the project owner: Spruce is an ASP.NET MVC2/jQuery driven front end for TFS 2010 aimed at replicating the user-friendly approach you find in products such as Fogbugz, Unfuddle and online sites such as Github, Bitbucket.
A few screenshots:
I'll be adding the list of features found on the blog at the start of the year.
Hopefully this will not spark a religious war...
We have a web based app in RoR based on an earlier version we build in .net 2.0. So we currently have both .net and RoR skills in house.
We want to add a RIA app that interfaces with the rails web app. This should be capable of running offine, with some (perhaps relational) persistence. Considering our inhouse experience we leaning toward leveraging the sliverlight framework over the likes of Flex etc.
Would appreciate any thoughts you might have.
Thanks
Dominic
If you need the application to run offline you will want to use a pure client technology. So instead of Silverlight vs Flex you are looking at WPF vs AIR.
Silverlight and Flex are thin client technologies so neither would fit into RoR very well, unless you used RoR to build web services.
A choice between Flex/Silverlight should depend on your skills and what you want the RIA to do.
There's a fair comparison here: http://extremeblue.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/flex-vs-silverlight-my-views/
But I think you should also look at "pure" javascript solutions like ExtJS or JQuery. We've had good experiences with both those libraries + RoR. JS is hot right now. Javascript engines are getting seriously quick and it's a lovely language (in some ways). Offline persistance can be implemented through Google Gears or Adobe Air.
Go with SilverLight. It's way cool. ;)