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I have an Excel spreadsheet and I've been tasked with displaying the data in an interesting way and adding some interactivity. I am trying to choose between creating an App for Office or using VBA macros to enhance the spreadsheet. What technology makes the most sense for my situation?
I am using Excel 2013 and Windows 7 (All users of the spreadsheet have the same environment).
I am not a software engineer, though I have some programming experience.
I do not need to access any external services (database, web API, etc.).
I do not need to access any Office documents besides the spreadsheet.
I need the code to be easily distributed along with the document.
The code needs to be available offline
I do not have Visual Studio
Primary concerns:
Ease and enjoyment of development
Ease of manipulating the spreadsheet (I am concerned that I won't have as much control over the document with the Apps for Office Javascript API)
Ease of distribution (I will not be able to setup an app store within my organization)
Attractiveness and usability of the end product
Availability of resources and documentation
Ease and enjoyment of development
this will initially depend on what you are used to: if you are familiar with the OO environment, then stick with VBA. likewise, a Java/web background will see you settle into the Apps environment more quickly
Ease of manipulating the spreadsheet
I can't speak with experience of using Apps for Office, but I can theorise that MS Office will prove to be a far more feature-rich, stable and integrated development environment for some time, if only because it's already been around for 20 years.
Ease of distribution
MS Office add-ins can be fiddley to manage if users are not based on a single network, but this has long been the case and there's plenty of solutions/work-arounds published on the web
Attractiveness and usability of the end product
unless you are going to start retailing the product, I think MS Office is more than viable here
Availability of resources and documentation
again, there's 20 years-worth of forum discussions, blogs and expert solutions for MSO at your fingertips, for free
Also, I believe the MSO software license is a one-off overhead, whereas Office 365 etc is subscription.
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I would like to know how back-end automation is possible through RPA.
I'd be interested in solving this scenario relative to an Incident Management Application, in which authentication is required. The app provide:
An option useful to download/export the report to a csv file
Sort the csv as per the requirement
Send an email with the updated csv to the team
Please let me know how this possible through RPA and what are those tools
available in RPA to automate this kind of scenario?
RPA tools are designed to automate mainly front-end activities by mimicing human actions. It can be done easily using any RPA tool.
However, if you are interested in back-end automation the first question would be, if specific application has an option to interact in the way you want through the back-end/API?
If yes, in theory you could develop RPA robot to run pre-developed back-end script. However, if all you need would be to run this script, creating robot for this case may be redundant.
There are several ways to do it. It is especially useful when your backed are 3rd party applications where you do not have lot of control. Many RPA products like Softomotive WinAutomation, Automation Anywhere, UiPath etc. provide file utilities, excel utilities, db utilities, ability to call apis, OCR capabilities etc., which you can use for backed automation.
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I've worked with colleagues on an excel add-in we would like to sell to our customers. It is linked to a cloud database. A licensing system is currently coded in VBA, but that's pretty weak and potential hackers getting around the VBA protection would be able to disable the licence checking (code protection is not such a problem as such).
We have been thinking of developing a .dll file to check licences, but lack of expertise in the field.
Do you have suggestions?
Others can post about .NET licencing solutions....
From years back Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) does have a licence system. One writes the code in C++ and clients use COM to instantiate your component. The COM licence mechanism is to implement the IClassFactory2 instead of IClassFactory Here is a link https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms680095(v=vs.85).aspx
Now you may say "but my code is in VBA!?". Well, VBA is not secure, workbooks can be broken into. The problem is that the source is shipped inside.
Compiling a .NET solution is better but the executable is Intermediate Language (IL) which can be reverse engineered back to the source. Same problem with Java, 'byte code' can also be reverse engineered.
For the most robust code security you need to compile to C++. Even with C++ some people say it can still be reverse engineered.
The ultimate in paranoia is to place your valued code behind a web service so it is never on the user's computer.
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I'm a .NET developer working in Australia. I'm planning to switch my career from .NET to Sharepoint or CRM. Any suggestion please which application has better market and what is more suitable for a .NET/web developer.
Thanks
First i would say that the market for SharePoint is bigger than the market for Microsoft CRM. Nearly every Enterprise Company has SP implemented, some smaller other larger. This is my opinion.
Good CRM developers and consultants are hard to find. Therefore you would have a good daily rate when you work as a freelancer. I dont know the learning curve for CRM development.
On the SharePoint side its the same. Here you will have many developers out there but only a few which are available. We are currently seeking for about 1 year for good SharePoint developers, but could only find 1 good Junior level consultant. Currently it hard to find good experienced SharePoint developers.
But the SharePoint world is currently changing from OnPremise to Online. Many customers are thinking about Hybrid Scenarious. You would have to learn both worlds. Cause the things which are available in one world are not automatically available in the other world.
If you are a good developer with Web Development experience, then i would prefer to learn SharePoint, but its a wide system from SQL Server over IIS, SharePoint internal functionality like Services, OOTB Functionality, Server Side API, Client Side API, different Solution Types (App Model, Farm Solutions, etc.), huge differences in the versions, Workflows, Search, and many many more ...
Its nothing what you could learn in the next 6 month. If you prefer only to configure these systems, using OOTB functionaly to customize those solutions, than you will be one of many and the changes to get a good job or project will be smaller.
I think its a good chance for a .NET developer to learn additionally CRM or SharePoint. That would increase your knowledge, quality and market price. Its always good to have a look outside the box. Its a good combination. The one does not exclude the other.
Its hard to answer your question in some words. I hope, that i could give you a some idea about that. That all my personal experience and opinion.
I found a good article by Mark Rackley called How do I become a SharePoint Developer?. An incomplete list of SharePoint Ressources you can find at BOGAZCI | Sharepoint Resources.
Good starting points are always MSDN pages like
SharePoint 2013 development overview
Getting Started (SharePoint Development in Visual Studio)
and SharePoint general development
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I'm looking to set up a small site for a friend that has some widgets they want to sell online. I don't think I will have much time for maintenance once it goes live (for that matter, I don't expect I'll have much time for initial setup and configuration), and I am looking for something that is dead-simple for a non-technical user to maintain (financial/payment info, add/remove/change products).
The second most important part would be good integration with a payment provider. I'm not too fussy what language it's in if it meets my other criteria (if I don't know the language I will learn enough to get the site running).
Also important is that I'd prefer to stick to open-source products, mostly because I don't think this project will have much of a budget for high-end commercial products (at least not until it makes some sales).
The last time I did this sort of stuff we were building custom sites from scratch for clients with very specific needs. I do not have recent experience with the current generation of blogging tools (Wordpress, Joomla, etc...) and I don't really know which off-the-shelf combo of platforms and plugins are best to get something up and running in as little time as possible.
Hosting your own online store is a full-time occupation, no different from running your own brick-and-mortar store. Anything that accepts online payments will be targeted by criminals for online fraud.
If your business is selling widgets and not running online stores, I strongly, strongly suggest using a hosted service with its own web integration and payment handling. I know people who have used both Weebly and Etsy and who are happy with them.
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In your experience how does SharePoint as a back-end Document Management Solution (archiving included) stands compared to other proprietary document management systems.
Is it any comparison analysis out there?
One of Sharepoints main features is document management.
In my opinion, its Document Management features and its lackings:
Great metadata, integration only with msft tools, no built in functionality to capture paper docs, strong indexing, uses SQLServer as storage platform but lacks on serious document archiving, not great search and filtering, item level security, decent work flow capabilities, strong on versioning and collaboration.
SharePoint 2007 excels at being a document management solution because of it's tight integration with Office 2007. From inside of Word/PPT/Excel you can save, check out, check in, add custom fields to your SharePoint list, etc. Your non-technical users will get it pretty quickly. It can also be very nice for letting your super users create and manage their own department portals.
Things it doesn't excel at: Being an application platform.
I agree that it is a poor application platform. The database contains tables that are basically textfield1, textfield2, numericfield1, numericfield2, numericfield3...Blecch. The API is opaque. The web-facing server product is expensive. At my current employer, we considered Sharepoint, but dropped it in favor of an ASP.NET solution, since we only needed rudimentary document management capabilities.
One of the major benefits, if it is an internal application, and you can mange with Windows Sharepoint Services, is it's "free".
As an application platform Sharepoint development can be less productive than ASP.net, depending upon what you are doing.
You can however combined the two. Build your UI in ASP.Net, then call Sharepoint functionality via web services when you need it.
Here I found two very interesting case studies.
Real life document management
A Microsoft case study