Summary

Information empowers employees to work effectively at their jobs, make accurate decisions, and complete their tasks on time. In most organizations, information is often stored in multiple locations and in separate applications. While a goal of an information manager is to consolidate information and make SharePoint a central access point for key business information, sometimes, you have applications that are very tightly integrated with business operations and processes. Therefore, it is not always realistic or advantageous to store this information in SharePoint. Instead, SharePoint can serve as a window into that information, while the original application remains the place where users make all updates and changes to content. In this chapter, you learned the following:

• With the Business Data Catalog, business users can use SharePoint to connect to and view information from external business applications. Users can see detailed reports containing data from line-of-business applications or search for information in these external systems.

• Throughout this chapter, you learned what some of the key business data Web Parts are and how you can use them independently or together to display important sets of business information to users.

• You also learned how to integrate business data with SharePoint lists and libraries. In addition, you learn how to use business data to compliment information stored in SharePoint, such as user profiles as a secondary data source.

• You also discovered the key roles that often use the BDC, including the application definition author, business analyst, system administrator, and developer. Each of these user types can play a significant role in ensuring that the right business information is accessible and secured within your SharePoint sites and custom applications.