Developer Map for the 2007 Microsoft Office System - Image Map (draft)

  • Article

We have been saying everywhere that "the Microsoft Office System is a complete set of client applications, servers, and services that provide organizations with the means to create, manage, and enhance business solutions." We have also published a full load of content for every product since Beta 2. Yet, we realize that as a developer, sometimes it's hard to understand the big picture and how all the little pieces (features and product specifics) can work together to help you build a real-world solution.

Office is a huge family of products and technologies and we have been working with all product teams to create an overall map that helps developers to visually understand how all the pieces of the puzzle relate to each other, but more important, provide information of where on MSDN you can find technical documentation related to specific features. We want to go deep to namespaces, class members, and schemas for each product to list them all together on a single place.

As you can imagine, space is a huge limitation. While trying to put all this together, I happen to agree with the "Microsoft 2007 Office system – It's more than you think" slogan. Office is HUGE and there's limited space to place all PIA objects, namespaces, web services, product features, schemas, names, descriptions and relationships for more than 25 products and technologies. However, we have found a great way to summarize the most relevant ideas and make it fit all together.

I can share with you that I have found the exercise to be fascinating. Just imagine how much fun we've had having on a single meeting room PMs for all product teams + Developer Platform Evangelism + Marketing + Office Developer Documentation group and work together as a team to build the treasure map.

We are about to conclude this project, but in the meantime, I just couldn't wait to share with you a small version of our treasure map. I built this conceptual diagram using PowerPoint 2007 and then generated an image map that provides links to places on MSDN and Microsoft.com. You can hover the map and drill-down to find detailed information for each product and technology. Of course, this is a petite version, but soon, you'll get the complete treasure map.

So here goes...

 

Enjoy!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2006
    Erika Ehrli recently blogged about how Office products and technologies relate to each other, and how

  • Anonymous
    October 12, 2006
    Hey Erika! This treasure map is awesome, thanks for posting it ! Actually I'm doing some Office System 2007 training stuff for a developers in Mexico and this map will help a lot the attendees to see the big picture as you said.  I can't wait for the final version. Cheers! Roky.

  • Anonymous
    October 13, 2006
    Hi Roky! Glad you liked it, we are getting ready to finish the treasure map. Tell me more about your training, I am from Mexico and I am interested in learning what kind of training you are doing.

  • Anonymous
    October 15, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 16, 2006
    Rodrigo Suerte con tu curso!

  • Anonymous
    October 17, 2006
    Awesome.  Thanks for sharing this Erika.  

  • Anonymous
    October 17, 2006
    Another great post from Erika. Definitely keep an eye on her blog . She's posted this image map for developers.

  • Anonymous
    October 17, 2006
    Don Campbell beat me to it, but this is so good I want to mention it too: MSDN's Erika Ehrli has posted

  • Anonymous
    October 23, 2006
    Como parte de este programa de capacitación para Office System 2007 Beta 2, los cuales se han impartido...

  • Anonymous
    October 31, 2006
    The Developer Map for the 2007 Microsoft Office system provides an overview of all the Office system programs, servers, services, and tools that will help developers to build solutions. Download the poster today and dive into the whole galaxy of Office

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 22, 2007
    <a href=http://lz7iqjnx.tripod.com/columbia-jacket/columbia-winter-jacket-c.html>columbia winter jacket c</a> <a href=http://lz7iqjnx.tripod.com/columbia-jacket/c3016-columbia-roc-jacke.html>c3016 columbia roc jacke</a>

  • Anonymous
    May 30, 2007
    You never know what surprises each day will bring to you. Two days ago I didn't know today was the day

  • Anonymous
    April 05, 2009
    <a href= http://index1.baba-h.ru >������� �����</a> <a href= http://index2.baba-h.ru >������� ����������</a> <a href= http://index3.baba-h.ru >������������ ����� ������� ���������</a> <a href= http://index4.baba-h.ru >������� ���� ����� ��������</a> <a href= http://index5.baba-h.ru >����� ���� ������������� �����</a>