What's New in Business Applications
Several changes and enhancements have been made to Business Applications in the latest release of Microsoft Office Live Small Business.
These changes can be categorized as follows:
Changes to the availability of individual business applications in a new account
A new solution packaging feature
Enhancements to form and list design capabilities
New ways to access and display business application data on a public-facing Web site
Business Applications Not Added to Every Account
The Business Applications platform, based on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, is included with each Microsoft Office Live Small Business account. Customers who have an existing Office Live Small Business account continue to have all of their existing business applications. For new Office Live Small Business accounts, the Business Applications platform is only enabled for the account when it is accessed from the left navigation pane. When the platform is enabled, a smaller set of business applications are enabled by default. The other Business Applications are still available, but require additional steps to be added to the account. For details about which applications fall into each category, see Introduction to Business Applications.
If you include a business application in a solution using the new solution packaging feature, the appropriate applications are automatically added to the account when the solution is added. If you deliver partial solutions, such as a new Web part Web page for Project Manager without using the packaging feature, you may need to add the underlying business application to the account before you deploy your feature.
New Solution Packaging
You can create customized solutions and distribute them to Microsoft Office Live Small Business account owners using the new solution packaging feature in Office Live Small Business. Using this feature, you can select business application and Web Site components from your Office Live Small Business account and package them into a Microsoft Office Live solution file (.olp). For more information about creating a solution, see Package a Solution.
The solution files that you create can be easily added to an Office Live Small Business account. For more information about adding a solution, see Add a Solution to an Office Live Small Business Account.
Enhanced Form and List Design
You can use a List Publisher module to dynamically display the data from a list in one of the business applications on the related public Web site. Now you can customize the HTML layout and cascading style sheet (CSS), and even add scripting to add behaviors such as mashups to your published lists. For more information, see List Publisher Advanced Design Features.
You can use a Form Designer module to add a form to collect data for a list in one of the business applications on your public Web site. You also have advanced design features available for this module. For more information, see Form Designer Advanced Design Features.
Access Office Live Small Business Data from Outside Web Sites
When you add a List Publisher module to display business application data on your Web site, an RSS feed of this data is created by default. This RSS feed can be used to read and re-display your business application data anywhere outside of Office Live Small Business, such as on another Web site, a mobile device, or any other tool that can consume RSS feeds. The data in the RSS feed has been specially tagged to make it easy for you to locate. For more information, see Access Application Data from an Outside Web Site.
See also
Introduction to Business Applications
Solutions
Share Business Application Data with a Web Site
Advanced Design Features for Business Applications