Capital Expenditure application in sharepoint

Question

Hi all, We got an requirement for implementing captial expenditure lotus notes application in sharepoint. Its having nearly 5 massive forms with all expense calculations and workflows. What is the suggested approach in sharepoint to implement this?

Answer 1

While you can do it in SharePoint, it will be painful. You may be better off implementing the application as a stock ASP.net/SQL DB application and embedding it into SharePoint with a Page Viewer Web Part.

You can also skin your custom application to look like SharePoint using one of the SharePoint master pages as a template and link to it from your portal.

For added SharePoint integration, you can use Data View Web Parts or the Business Data Catalog (MOSS only) to query your expenditure application database and embed small reports and key performance indicators throughout your portal.

Answer 2

I would agree that creating a custom ASP.net/SQL server web app would be the way to go if you have some ASP.net programmers available, though I'd recommend against embedding it via a Page Viewer Web Part. You can integrate ASP.net web apps directly in SharePoint, no embedding required.

If you don't have ASP.net programmers available, you can certainly do it in SharePoint and it may not be painful. The key issues are where you need to store your data and how relational the data needs to be. If the requirement is to store data in a relational DB, it becomes complicated to do it in SharePoint.

On the other hand, if you can imagine recreating your application's data as a collection of Excel spreadsheets, then it will be pretty straightforward to do it in SharePoint. In the simplest scenario, you could do all "development" using the SharePoint web interface. You would create a custom list in a SharePoint site for each expense form, then customize the site's default.aspx page to display a link the newform.aspx for each list. If the wokflows are basic notification/approval types, then you can also attach SharePoint built-in workflows to the lists via the web interface.

If you need custom form layouts, custom workflows and dynamic data filtering, then you could use SharePoint Designer to accomplish a great deal of design and development. Without more information about the existing application and workflows, it's impossible to say exactly how you should do it. But make sure you consider what parts of the existing application are requirements and what parts are just legacy functionality. If you can simplify the application, this is a great opportunity to do it.

Answer 3

Alternatively to a Custom web app:

Create custom web controls implementing the forms and kicking off the workflows with custom layout pages to host the controls?

A site definition (just feature to add the pages+layouts at a pinch) to host the created pages "just so" in order to rely on "form1.aspx" being available always.

I would not try to "push" OOTB SharePoint functionality envelope to avoid creating custom code. Easier by far to

Answer 4

If you are going to do extensive workflow work in SharePoint be sure to consider buying an add-on like Nintex workflow or Blackpoint. It is almost always worth the expense over creating workflows with Visual Studio or SharePoint designer.