Office XP Developer Environment

You can use a number of methods to customize your digital dashboard from within the Office XP Developer environment. These methods include:

• Opening an existing digital dashboard project in the Microsoft Office XP Developer environment.
• Creating and adding Web Parts.
• Adding content and customizing Web Parts.
• Saving Office XP documents as Web Parts.
• Creating subdashboards.
• Exporting and importing Web Parts as .dwp files.
• Opening a SharePoint Portal Server dashboard site.

Before you can use the Office XP Developer environment to build Web Parts for an existing dashboard site of a SharePoint Portal Server workspace, you must open the workspace in Office XP Developer. Opening the workspace displays the contents of the workspace in the development environment and creates a project file (Portal.ddp) in the Portal folder of the workspace. The Solution Explorer displays the dashboard site, its Web Parts and any resources, and any subdashboards, hierarchically. The Properties Window displays all the properties for the workspace, Web Parts, and subdashboard.

To open the SharePoint Portal Server workspace for the first time and to create the project file:

1. On the Start menu, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Office XP Developer, and then click Microsoft Development Environment.
2. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Project.
3. The New Project dialog box appears. In the Project Types window select Office Developer Projects.
4. In the Templates window, select the Dashboard Project icon.
5. In the Location text box, enter http://server_name/workspace_name.
6. In the Name text box, enter Portal.

   All workspaces include a Portal folder that contains all the Web Parts, subdashboards, and the resources for that workspace. In order to open the workspace and to create the project file, you must name the project Portal. If you name the project anything else, it will not connect to the workspace.

7. Click OK.

The preceding procedure adds a project file, called Portal.ddp, to the Portal folder. In addition, it adds a solution file to your client computer in the following location: operating_system_drive\Documents and Settings\user_name\My Documents\Office Developer Projects\PortalX\Portal.sln.

The solution file contains references to the projects that are part of that solution. Double-clicking a solution file opens the Office XP Development Environment and loads the referenced projects.

After you create a project and solution file for your workspace, you can open it in the Office XP Developer environment as follows:

To open the SharePoint Portal Server project file in Office XP Developer:

1. On the Start menu, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Office XP Developer, and then click Microsoft Development Environment.
2. On the File menu, point to Open, and then click Project.
3. Select the Portal project you want to open from the Open Project dialog box (for example, Portal.sln).

The project opens in the Office Developer environment. If you do not have the solution file on your computer, you still follow the steps in the following procedure to open an existing dashboard project directly from the workspace:

To open an existing project from the workspace:

1. Create a Web folder to your workspace folder (for example, http://server_name/workspace_name/Portal).
2. Double-click the Portal.ddp file in the Portal folder.

The project opens in the Office Developer environment.