SharePoint Portal Design and ASP.NET applications

Question

Hi,

We have a requirement to develop a sharepoint intranet portal with functionality like employee leave application, employee expenses application, employee dossier, employee travel info, employee attendance and all other applications that an company needs to manage its day to day activities. Along with we will be using MOSS OOTB features to implement other functionalities.

Sharepoint(MOSS) does not have any OOTB features to implement these type of functionalities like(leave, employee expenses etc). So we have two options here implement this:

Option 1: Implement all these application using the web parts in MOSS. This could be more complex as each application feature will involved implementation of multiple web parts and deployed in different web pages
Option 2: Implement these application in ASP.NET with similar look & feel as MOSS portal site  and give hyper link from the sharepoint portal or deploy them in _layouts folder.

Can somebody suggest which option would be better and why?

Thanks in advance,
Lilupat

Answer 1

Hello,
Have you checked Sharepoint templates?
Most of the functuality you are seeking is already there. It wil also give you idea on how to approach your project.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb407286.aspx

Regards

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Ivan Bondy - MCPD, MCDBA, MCSA, MCTS - Sharepoint consultant

Answer 2

Hi LiluPat,

Just a small info, if you're developing web part on a different box that doesn't have SharePoint inside, debugging what's wrong with your web part might be a pain in the butt.
On the other hand, developing ASP.Net apps will be much easier to debug but might need extra effort to conform with SharePoint configuration (web.config) if you're using code behind and stuff, not to mention if you're using SharePoint specific features/objects but you don't not have SharePoint on your dev box.

I can't say which one is better since both has its own ups & downs.
If you're planning to develop something, make sure you're doing it in a box that has SharePoint inside (Win server environment) it will make things a lot easier...

Cheers,

Charles A.

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The only completely consistent person are the dead ~Aldous Huxley~

Answer 3

Hi Ivan,

Thanks for replying.

We are planning to store all the Employee's application specific information into Sharepoint database. It will be stored in custom database.

I'm not sure how these templates will help me doing these types of application?

Please provide more information on this,

Thanks,
LiluPat

Answer 4

What sort of application you are looking for?

Should it be scalable, what are the performance requirements?

Sharepoint would help you in a lot of things, in my previous job we did all of these apps on MOSS which made it very easy for us.

It depends on you a lot and do remember MOSS has issues as well, but what you want it is actually could be done very easily using InfoPath 2007, SharePoint Designer 2007, Access 2007, Excel 2007 all with MOSS 2007 Enterprise Edition. At the end we started using SQL Server 2005 Reporting and Analysis Services with it as well.

But it depends on you a lot because at my previous job addition to my day job I was building this with the CTO of the company so you can understand how much of a geek we were.

If you need more info, let me know.

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M. Hassan Raza http://mhrhap.spaces.live.com

Answer 5

Hello,
What you do you install these templates on your Sharepoint server and use them to create new Sharepoint site.
For employee attendance create site based on Timecard Management template.
For employee leave create site based on Absence Request and Vacation template.

You can modify and customize these sites to your specific needs.

Regards

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Ivan Bondy - MCPD, MCDBA, MCSA, MCTS - Sharepoint consultant

Answer 6

Hi Hassan and Ivan,

Thanks for your response !!!

Hassan,

As I have mentioned in my first post, we need a Intranet Portal with most of the OOTB features and along with that we need applications that a applications that an company needs to manage its day to day activities( like leave application, employee expenses application, employee dossier, employee travel info, employee attendance application).

I know all these applications can be done in SharePoint using Web Parts, but if you take each application it could be multi-page application so we need to develops more than one web parts for each application, and it seems to be bit complex. Also if the portal is not available for some reason then non of these applications will be available for end users 

But if we develop these applications in ASP.NET with same look & feel and give hyper link from portal site, I feel it would be less complex and also these applications can be available to end-users in case there is problem accessing the portal site. But I'm not sure if there is any demerits or security issues with this approach?

Ivan,

If I use the available WSS templates then I will be using the SharePoint content database to store all the applications specific data. But what if I want to store all my application specific data to a custom database. In this will this templates will have any help for me?


Thanks,
LiluPat

Answer 7

Hello LiluPat,
You are correct in your assumption with the templates. Data would be stored in the Sharepoint DB.
Unless you have specific needs I would recommend using Sharepoint content database for your data. One of the great features of the Sharepoint is the integration of data with other application and sites. Also you will be able to use SharePoint SDK to access your data.
It will be lot easier for you and your users to maintain and modify your application in the future. For example if your user need different view for data in SharePoint he/she can create its own view in 1 minute, if you place data into separate SQL DB user will need to ask developer / DB admin to create new SQL view and then create page to display this view.

My experience is SIMPLIFY where you can, and enpower users where you can.


Hope this helps 

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Ivan Bondy - MCPD, MCDBA, MCSA, MCTS - Sharepoint consultant

Answer 8

Hi Ivan,

Thanks for this clarification ..

I agree with some of your points. But


1. There are only limited number of templates and not all application types can be developed with these templates? So anyway we may have to develop some of the applications outside of SharePoint

2. What if in future some other applications(out side SharePoint) want to access the employee data, in this case it would be extra load on my SharePoint servers( both WFS & database server), also sharing SharePoint content database with other outside applications, will that be a good practice?

3. Also in future if you go another CMS system, then we may have to involve in a complex data migration from SharePoint to new CMS system. This problem won't be there if I go for a central database...

Do you agree with above points?

Regards,
LiluPat

Answer 9

LiluPat,
1. I disagree with you on this part. yes, there is a limited number of templates but you can modify them or create your own. Pretty much anything you can develop as aspx application can run on the SharePoint platform. You are not limited just to available templates.

2: Sharepoint got complete API which your other applications can use to access Sharepoint data. Yes, there will be additional load on SharePoint servers but you can extend your Sharepoint architecture up or out. Sharepoint is designed as scalable platform. You need more WFE? Just plug them in. You need more DB power? Just plug new server in. This is what the power of SharePoint is.

3: You can not look at Sharepoint as just a CMS. CMS is just small part of SharePoint capabilities. You need to look at SharePoint as platform with lots of features on which you build your applications.

Hope this helps.

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Ivan Bondy - MCPD, MCDBA, MCSA, MCTS - Sharepoint consultant