Now Vision is available in cloud and provides APIs. I have a requirement where the visio should be used inside a webpage and then the data has to be saved to the visio cloud. I should be able to edit the visio online and save to visio cloud the edited file. Is the visio APIs support online. Is there any help documents available?
I think you might be misunderstanding the situation, i.e. what is actually meant under "Visio is available in the cloud".
One thing is, Visio is now available by subscription (Office 365); but for Visio this merely means that you can use desktop Visio and pay for usage monthly for example.
Another thing is, you can use SharePoint Visio Services (incl. SharePoint online) which have a lot of nice features, like rendering of Visio files for the web, using linked live data sources to update shape graphics on rendering. These Visio services provide you also with API (most probably this is the one you've heard about) which you could use to interact with the rendered drawing client-side. BUT. First, these Visio services are part of SharePoint (Enterprise edition), which means, you can't use them outside of the SharePoint. And second, they still do not allow you to modify/save diagrams, only to render them.
Means, currently (as of Visio 2013) there is no support from Microsoft for editing Visio drawings in web; there is no Visio "Web App" (like Word/Excel Web App). If you need such an app, I'm afraid you'll have to write one yourself.
Related
My question is related to the recommended way (going forward) to talk to on-premises Exchange mail box and perform operations on it from an external application programmatically?
EWS APIs and the corresponding SDKs look promising based on a few articles such as this :
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/webdav_101/2018/06/19/about-using-ews-and-powershell/
but there is bit of confusion on whether it will continue to be supported in the future based on this:
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2018/07/03/upcoming-changes-to-exchange-web-services-ews-api-for-office-365/
Although the above talks of just o365, the fact that EWS will no longer be invested in, raises the question if new applications for on-premises exchange should continue to use it.
PowerShell, remote PowerShell etc. also might work but it seems less suited for use/integration within an external application and more so for automating operations.
Could someone please throw some light on what is recommended way going forward to work with on-prem Exchange?
Try the Microsoft GraphAPI. Details https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/graph-explorer here. Sign in. Try the https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/messages sample. See more examples by clicking "Show More samples" on the left column after you login.
Is it The Way (tm)? I don't know but is very cool. I have some sample code I'm working with, nothing in a format to share, but look like the API covers a lot of territory. Some client-only rules look like they need some work to expose, maybe they'll get beefed up in later releases.
Depends on the type of Application you are trying to write, EWS is going to be around in Exchange 2019 so it will work just fine talking to say 2013, 16 and 19 OnPrem. There are advantages and disadvantages to using EWS vs. the new REST API's but it is application specific and changing fast. But again it depends entirely on the type of Application you are trying to write and what version of Exchange you need to support. And typically newer features that will appear in new OnPrem versions aren't back-ported into older versions. So a great new feature that will work in Office365 and Exchange 2019 may not work in 2016 and you may need to use some of the older legacy API's to achieve the same thing. Bottom line as of today if you are an ISV and need broad coverage support for versions of OnPrem Exchange expect to need to use both EWS and REST. If you are just creating apps for one organization that's going to be migrating to 2019 in the future you'll probably get away with just REST.
A client I'm working with has a large CMS installed (Kentico) that they use for various sites. For their intranet they want to downsize to a simpler web system.
The site involves authentication (Active Directory), groups, and potentially some server-side code.
The client's on-staff web designer, who's in charge, really wants to be able to use DreamWeaver to manage/design the intranet. This is almost non-negotiable, and could be considered a requirement.
I'm not really sure what DreamWeaver allows. Being ignorant to DreamWeaver, I always saw it as a web-designer platform for static websites, or in use with php.
How feasible is it to use DreamWeaver to manage an intranet site that requires authentication, groups, etc., along with server-side code? Also, are there any CMS's that easily integrate DreamWeaver? Anything in .NET?
Dreamweaver is mostly a front-end tool that was made for coding HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and being able to preview the design as you wrote your code. As an Adobe product, the real emphasis there is on design: it's made to make visualizing the front-end of a website easy. It's a good starting point for a lot graphic designers to step into web development (it's where I started a few years ago), but you'll rarely find a veteran web designer that still uses it. You'll certainly not find any .NET devs using it who know better.
Now, there's nothing wrong if that's this person's favorite tool. However, Dreamweaver is NOT the right tool for working with .NET applications like Kentico. This would be akin to someone wanting to build a house using nothing but bricks and mortar. Sure, you'll be able make the outside look nice, but there's a lot more to a house than just the siding.
If your client has their heart set on Kentico, then they should look into working with Visual Studio. The community edition is free to use, even for commercial applications. I believe the difference between community and pro editions is that pro editions allow you install plugins and extensions and integrate with other tools whereas community edition is just the vanilla IDE.
Dreamweaver can still be used as their HTML, CSS and JS editor. It may have added support for other languages, but that's irrelevant when we're talking about .NET applications. Visual Studio is Microsoft's IDE built specifically for working with .NET apps, and there's really nothing better (especially if you have a pro license and install Resharper from JetBrains). Many other devs will agree with me on this point.
EDIT: I forgot to address the other part of your question about Dreamweaver and other CMSs.
This series of video tutorials about working with Dreamweaver and WordPress should give you a good idea of what Dreamweaver is capable of. Notice when the narrator is actually using Dreamweaver and what he's using it for.
Jerreck's comments are great, and I'll just add a slightly different spin on them:
NET and Visual Studio live in the realm of developers. We use both for our core, cloud-based application, which is deployed in Microsoft Azure. Think: LEFT brain. I've worked with development teams for a long time. It is a rare developer who is also a strong designer. That's not a complaint; just an observation.
Dreamweaver lives in the realm of the web designer, who needs to manipulate HTML and CSS to achieve the effect they wish. Many of these designers ALSO start their designs in PhotoShop before moving them over to HTML and CSS. Think: RIGHT brain. I've worked with designers of all stripes for a long time as well. It is a rare designer who is also a strong developer. That's not a complaint; just another observation.
The ideal workflow starts with the designer (like the one at your client who needs to use Dreamweaver), who then passes his or her work (along with the HTML and CSS) to the developer, who in our case implements it in .NET -- so this is where Jerreck's comments miss the mark a bit.
While I know nothing of the designer at your client, I can tell you based on my experience very FEW designers ever make the leap to Visual Studio, nor should they. Most will know HTML reasonably well. Some will know CSS -- though too many of them still depend on outdated tables to create their designs. A few can code with JavaScript or PHP -- though many will cut and paste code that will work for them without actually understanding HOW it works.
Now add to this content management. This isn't really for the designer OR the developer; it's for the people who have to maintain the site (who might otherwise design like welders and write code like plumbers; because that is sometimes what they actually do).
The best content management systems are WYSIWYG, and allow the author or editor to easily add or edit content. Most CMS users do not user Dreamweaver OR Visual Studio, and many of them use free (or purchased) templates for their pages (or have a designer and developer build templates).
If your client needs CMS and it must be in .NET, you might check out DNN (formerly known as DotNetNuke). Most CMS also offer a wide range of plugins that can enhance function (such as assuring responsive design, tying in to a shopping cart or providing authentication for users).
I'd say your work ahead is going to be spending some serious time defining requirements.
I am looking for a web based way of showing users tiff, pdf, doc(x), and xls(x) files. This is being required from a business standpoint and I don't have a whole lot of weight/control into the decision being made. The web application will be used by both internal and external customers, not publically available though.
Pricing is not such a big deal right now, the active stakeholders know this is extremely valuable and important. So to a point, pricing does not matter.
I was hoping somebody else's google-fu was better than mine, or knows of a good solution/product that doesn't necessarily have good search engine ranking.
Little more info
I do believe all we will need is a way to view the images. We will not be performing any redaction or annotations. It would be nice to have a thumbnail control to facilitate flipping through many pages (upwards around 100), but this is not required. There will be other controls on the page, so I'm looking for a minimalistic viewer. Being able to customize the navigation buttons/controls would be an added bonus as well. Also this will be developed/deployed using ASP.NET MVC2 on an IIS7 x64 platform.
A silverlight/flash control/solution would also be acceptable.
Current Findings
Previewing TIF documents on the Web (.Net C#) - Only directed at TIF images
http://www.accusoft.com/prizmviewerfeatures.htm - uses a browser plugin. This is not ideal, but a possibility.
http://www.atalasoft.com/products/dotimage - Does not seem to support MSFT Office formats, no mention of MVC support.
http://www.snowbound.com/viewer_inaction/viewerdemos.html - So far this one is coming out ahead, it supports many formats (pay for the formats you need/want). But again, no mention of MVC.
Google Docs API - From what I can tell in order to use Google's conversion, you need to put the documents on their server. This will not work for us because of sensitive information the documents have.
There's a partial solution for this that involves converting the various documents into HTML for display (or any other web-capable format) in a web browser. It doesn't satisfy all your requirements but may lead to something useful eventually.
JODConverter offers a server-side java-based solution that leverages OpenOffice.org's powerful converter to convert from any supported format to any other supported format.
From the website:
JODConverter, the Java OpenDocument
Converter, converts documents between
different office formats. It leverages
OpenOffice.org, which provides
arguably the best import/export
filters for OpenDocument and Microsoft
Office formats available today
I've used it successfully to convert documents from MSWord to HTML for display in the browser. Any format that OpenOffice supports is supported by JODConverter. So PDF, MS formats, TIFF and others are supported.
It's java so it's platform independent - I've used it on a Windows, Mac and Linux server.
There are a couple of other ones I have found:
http://www.eviewer.net : An HTML5 based viewer that has both .NET and Java backend.
http://www.ms-technology.com/viewing-solutions : They have Java Applet, Silverlight, Flash viewers that would fulfill your needs as well.
I hope this helps.
I need to set up a CMS for our marketing dept. Basically they need a system that they can
sharing documents with multiple users
editing documents with multiple users
tracking changes
tracking/keeping multiple versions
storing and organizing files
The types of documents are : Illustrator, Photoshop, Pdf, MS word and Excel.
I am in the process of evaluating different CMS to use. Since we are a .Net shop so the first requirement is Windows based. I know we can use Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or DotNetNuke.
Could anyone give me some suggestion? Thanks a lot!
I don't think you're looking for a CMS so much as a DMS (Document Management System). CMS are usually used for managing web-based content as opposed to documents, or if they do document management they usually do a poor job at it.
For basic management of Illustrator, Photoshop, Pdf, MS word and Excel documents I would look to something along the lines of SharePoint - it will suit your needs well for the PDF / Office documents, though I'm not sure how well it does with Illustration / Photoshop files - I'm sure it will store them but you might not have the full advantage of indexing provided by Sharepoint.
SiteCore is a tad bit on the expensive side, but for what it does it's well worth the investment. I've had a demo of the application and was very impressed with what SiteCore offers for end users. The application is developed in .net so any asp.net developers will be able to add, adjust and modify different items for you.
You've spoke about digital assest management, well here is Razuna, it's an open source digital assest management system that has several kinds of downloads to play with, one even being a pre-setup Virtual Image which can get you started right away. Take a look at it and see what you think.
Good luck on your search, and hope this helped some.
I'd consider Google Docs to begin with.
Otherwise, SharePoint can handle the office documents fairly well. If it's just for the marketing team, the 'free' Windows Sharepoint Services should suffice.
You may then want to look into Adobe Version Cue to handle the Adobe based art files.
An alternative thought would be to consider Version Control, so for example Subversion could work for storing changes, keeping track of changes, etc.
Percussion CMS is a GREAT marketing tool, someone recommended Document Management System for your applications you want to integrate and use with your CMS however; the key word is marketing tool. Percussion CMS is a great investment tool to help establish your online presence! With solutions like community marketing, personalization and web analytics these solutions are geared to generate a response from site users. Community marketing helps to engage socially with your visitors in facebook, twitter and community forums. Personalization helps with brand identity, features including product promotion and help your site's represent your company the way you want to be perceived. Lastly web analytics track users and report data back to marketers including information on bounce rates and geo-tracking. Reports showing whose visiting your site and their behaviors. Most importantly the Web CMS is fool proof. It is not code based or needs a webmaster to publish the content for your website. It's extremely user friendly.
There is a pretty strong need for us to design some workflows around various processes. The problem is none of us actually know any workflow technology yet, and finding good data to compare the available options has been tedious and not entirely fruitful.
So I figured I'd ask you guys.
The main technologies we are looking at are Windows Workflow Foundation and eDocs Workflow. What other options are there? Sharepoint 2007 has workflow functionality too, right? Is that just based on WF?
What are the pros and cons of the various technologies? How do they compare?
EDIT: Also, one feature the administrative types like with eDocs Workflow is that it provides a method for them to edit it themselves. I believe Sharepoint '07 does as well. Is there some other way to allow that with a straight WWF implementation?
Sharepoint and WF more like complementary technologies, designed as two different workflow authoring tools in the same ecosystem. There's a Sharepoint workflow designer, and a WF (Windows Workflow Foundation) workflow designer.
The Sharepoint designer is meant to be an Office-like workflow editing experience, easier to get started with, geared for non-technical types, and generates all the web forms automatically.
The 'WF' workflow designer on the other hand is actually a component of Visual Studio (by default - as Bernie says you can rehost it), and designed to allow programmers to be able to fully customize workflow, and integrate it with any other code/systems desired. Building and deploying sharepoint sites this way is still possible, through the use of 'Sharepoint Activities', but more complex.
If you take the former route, you can hopefully let the administrative types do their own basic customizations (up to the limits of that environment) without causing total chaos.
It is possible to 'rehost' the WF designer (the one from Visual Studio) in your own application, so that users can author workflows. There are a number of code examples on the web, the most important one from MS itself: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480213.aspx).
At some point, when evaluating WF, I implemented a demo application that did this and added some features and found that although it works, not everybody can understand and use the more difficult activities (like the policy activity) that require understanding of how the rules engine works.