Playing Further Outside Your Sandbox ADVANCED CONCEPTS IN SHAREPOINT BUSINESS CONNECTIVITY SERVICES

Transcription

1 Playing Further Outside Your Sandbox ADVANCED CONCEPTS IN SHAREPOINT BUSINESS CONNECTIVITY SERVICES

2 Who is Dave? Solvera Solutions SharePoint Services Lead Microsoft Office Servers and Services MVP SharePoint JoAT (Jack of All Trades) Leadership team member Saskatchewan SharePoint Office365 User Group ( Contact Details: davidmdrever@outlook.com Twitter Website:

3 Agenda Review of BCS basics BCS in SharePoint Online BCS and SharePoint Search Associations BCS Development

4 Agenda Review of BCS basics BCS in SharePoint Online BCS and SharePoint Search Associations BCS Development

5 Agenda Review of BCS basics BCS in SharePoint Online BCS and SharePoint Search Associations BCS Development

6 Agenda Review of BCS basics BCS in SharePoint Online BCS and SharePoint Search Associations BCS Development

7 Agenda Review of BCS basics BCS in SharePoint Online BCS and SharePoint Search Associations BCS Development

8 Important Concepts in BCS Presents data in a SharePoint list that allows for easy usage. BCS seamlessly connects to external data sources Web Application\Site Line of Business System Allows for rich client apps to integrate with external data BCS User

9 Web Application\Site Line of Business System BCS User

10 External Content Types The foundation of any BCS solution within SharePoint Can be used for entire list of data or single column in a list. Allow for the customization of the external data presentation Highly configurable without writing a single line of code.

11 BCS in SharePoint Online Implementation is very similar to SharePoint on-premises SharePoint Online can only connect to Azure Databases Create Picker Columns Create External Lists Create External Lists But with a little help.

12 Demo: Create SharePoint Online ECT To configure Azure DB for BCS connectivity please see:

13

14 SharePoint Online to On-Premises Data It is possible to connect SPO to onpremises data Requires a hybrid environment Still requires SharePoint on-prem Requires and uses oauth for authentication

15

16 SharePoint Online to On-prem Data - Alternative Methods Data Management Gateway with PowerBI Creates an OData connection that BCS can integrate with. Sync Azure DB with on prem DB Requires Microsoft SQL Azure Data Sync Client

17 Search and BCS Utilizes external content types to find and surface data to users through SharePoint search Requires a BCS profile page to surface data Search indexes the external data the same as it would in SharePoint When clicking on an item found in search, the ID of that item is passed to the profile page and used by the web parts to surface the data.

18 BCS Profile Page Used by SharePoint to surface data related to an ECT Default page contains BCS web parts By default shows all the data of a single row as defined by ECT

19 Demo: Setting up the profile page

20 Demo: Configure Search with BCS

21 Associations Think: Relationships in SQL Server Combine multiple external sources together (Table 1 info with Table 2) Displays the relationships between 2 or more sources Important for displaying related data

22 Association Categories Foreign Key Associations Connecting an ECT to the identifier of another ECT

23 Association Categories Foreign Keyless Associations Requires custom logic to connect an ECT to another.

24 Foreign Key Associations One-to-One Foreign Key Associations Two different ECTs Maps one item in ECT #1 to one item in ECT #2 ECT #1 has a primary key that can reference a foreign key in ECT #2 Asset Asset Type

25 Foreign Key Associations One-To-Many Foreign Key Associations Two different ECTs Maps one item in ECT #1 to many items in ECT #2 ECT #1 has a primary key that can reference a foreign key in ECT #2 Asset Type Asset Asset Asset Asset

26 Foreign Key Associations Self-Referential Foreign Key Associations One ECT Shows relationship to other items within the ECT

27 Demo: Creating a One-To-Many Association

28 Demo: Display Data via Association Goal: Display all the assets we have that correspond to a particular category.

29 Foreign Keyless Associations Like Foreign Key Associations, keyless associations have one-to-one, oneto-many and many-to-many associations Do not connect directly to association over a foreign key. Multiple External Content Type Associations Connects to more than one field across more than one ECT.

30 Foreign Keyless Associations Non-Integer Primary Keys Are connected to other ECTs using primary key that is a non-integer identifier Use custom logic to link to other sources of data. Use ECTs within the same BDC Model

31 Demo: Custom Edit ECT Goal: Illustrate how to edit an ECT outside of Designer.

32 Coding Against External Lists Similar, but some differences to Internal lists No Internal ID field Require Scope to be defined Insertions similar, but all others require looping

33 Coding Against External Lists Multiple methods Available Server Object Model Client Object Model REST

34 Thank You!! davidmdrever@outlook.com Twitter Blog:

35 Feedback is most appreciated!!