Last year at the Microsoft BPI Conference in Seattle over a few beers Scott Alan (a Microsoft integration technology specialist) shared with me his idea about using ASP.net 2.0 Web Parts to present BAM data. The idea was to give managers a more precise, flexible and easy to use interface into their business processes, they could essentially go to one dashboard and get a historical and current view of how various areas of their business unit or organisation were doing.
I’ve searched the blogosphere half a year later and I’m surprised no one has written about this it’s so simple to build.
The only gripe I have is that ASP.net 2.0 Web Parts cannot be deployed to SharePoint Services 2003 you’ll have to wait until the next version out later this year. You can however get to grips with how build Web Parts to show BAM data on an ASP.net 2.0 page now. (you can use Son of SmartPart see feedback below)
This post isn’t going to cover how to enable BAM it also isn’t about how to build Web Parts the basics of which are covered in these 3 tutorials:
Here is a simple BAM dashboard (ok I’m not a graphic designer). From the right hand side of the page the manager selects what data in which format they want to view and where on the page it should sit. Once the web part is on the page they can drag it to where ever they want or get rid of it and display another one.
All the Web Parts
How to plug into BAM
I know of three ways to access BAM data the first is obvious just grab it from the Views in the BAMPrimaryImport database, the second is by accessing the cubes in SQL Server Anaylsis Services the third is by calling the Web Services which the BAM Portal uses to access BAM data (these are installed with BAM):
http://[server]/BAM/BAMQueryService/BamQueryService.asmx
http://[server]/BAM/BAMManagementService/BamManagementService.asmx
I developed 3 simple Web User Controls to display BAM Data, as a best practice I think it’s a good idea if you develop all your web parts as Web User Controls (these will be later wrapped up as Web Parts).
Web Part | Usage | Access method |