Office Business Applications (OBA) is a

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

term for software applications that use the

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketi ...

system (such as Outlook, Word, or Excel) as the

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

for an application.

Background

Users perform significant additional work outside of the formal processes of a line of business (LOB) system as they collaborate with other people via phone and

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, obtain information from multiple sources in the form of documents and spreadsheets, and switch between online and offline modes for meetings and business trips. Applications and documents can be extended to add enterprise-specific features, and LOB systems can be integrated with Microsoft Office to make the LOB system more accessible. OBAs employ a composite application architecture and link the 2007 Microsoft Office System applications running on the desktop to custom and off-the-shelf Line of Business (LOB) applications running on remote servers. Typically this link happens via web services. For example, rather than using Outlook only for email and calendaring, an OBA might allow Outlook to also provide a view into an inventory system, a customer service system, or an HR system. An OBA can mean easier-to-use applications and faster adoption of enterprise systems because end users get the familiar Office-based experience while connecting to sometimes-unfriendly information systems or applications in the enterprise. Often the LOB services can be orchestrated by technology such as Microsoft Biztalk Server Julius.

Development

OBAs can be developed to meet a multitude of customer needs. For example, a company may want to: * Extend its LOB application to more users. * Implement an application that consolidates multiple user interfaces into a 2007 Office system document or SharePoint Server Web page. * Build a workflow application that helps users to regain control of critical documents. Companies can buy OBAs from their application vendors, or they can build their OBAs. ISVs and integrators can build applications consistent with the OBA paradigm, and leverage the existing IT investments of their customers to deliver more end-user productivity. Microsoft developed an OBA application, in cooperation with SAP, that is calle
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References

{{Reflist Microsoft Office

Background

Development

See also

References