Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Technologies

11.3 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 249

Chapter 11

to “28CFR Compliant,” then the approval status should be set to Approved.

The second condition states that if the document has been checked in and

the comment field is not set to “28CFR Compliant,” then the approval status

should be set to Rejected. The Shred Document step of the workflow has one

condition associated with it that basically checks the approval status; if the

approval status equals “Rejected,” it deletes the document. The SharePoint

Designer workflow editor is much more simplistic in nature than the work-

flow editor provided by the Visual Studio 2005 Designer for Windows

Workflow Foundation, and it is geared towards the rapid development of

workflows that do not require custom code or custom activities. We revisit

the topic of workflow towards the end of this book.

11.3 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005

SharePoint Designer 2007 is a great tool to have in the SharePoint devel-

oper’s toolkit and provides an excellent interface for customizing the look

and feel of your Web pages, building simple adhoc workflows, adding Web

Figure 11.6

SharePoint

Designer task

panes.

250 11.3 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005

Parts and updating the content of your site. However, when you need to

delve into the more complex aspects of customization and extensibility,

such as developing custom Web Parts, site definitions, Features, and server

controls, you will find yourself turning to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

Since Visual Studio 2005 is the primary development environment for

building ASP.NET applications, it only stands to reason that it is ideal for

developing SharePoint Server 2007 applications. Microsoft has provided a

number of extension packs that provide further integration when building

SharePoint solutions, such as the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Win-

dows SharePoint Services 3.0 and the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for

Windows Workflow Foundation. The WSS 3.0 extensions package includes

project templates, item templates and a solution generator. The Visual Stu-

dio project templates provide templates, for building Web Parts, team site

definitions, blank site definitions and list definitions. The Visual Studio

extensions provide item templates for adding items of a specific type to an

existing project. The item templates include templates for building Web

Parts, custom fields, content types, list definitions, and modules. Finally,

the SharePoint Solution Generator creates a site definition from an existing

SharePoint site. This is a great tool, as it allows you to perform as many of

Figure 11.7

Workflow designer.