How to create a custom Business Application

Workers in any kind of organization can work collaboratively in Microsoft Office Live Business Applications to save time, work, and a lot of memorization. The applications and lists are essentially different ways of associating necessary business information. For example, if you need to check on the progress of a project, you can view a column in a projects list.

The possibilities for creating and customizing lists and applications are almost limitless. Microsoft Office Live can help meet your need for effective business applications, regardless of your business or organization type.

Because there are so many possibilities for modifying existing applications and creating new ones, this article focuses on a particular business need in a fictitious business, and how that need was met by customizing a list. Although this list has to do with real estate, with a few modifications it could be used for any organization.

---

• Seeing a business need

• The solution

• Creating the House owner name column

• Creating the Address column

• Creating the Selling price column

• Creating the Listing agent column

• Creating the Selling agent column

• Adding data to the new list

---

Seeing a business need

The following is a fictitious business scenario. Although you may not work in a real estate office or know much about real estate business processes, it is recommended that you create this custom list by following the procedures so that you will understand the process when you create a custom list that applies to your organization.

Ellen Adams is the owner of Contoso Real Estate. She has just subscribed to Microsoft Office Live Premium with plans to use it for her company. In addition to a public Web site, Microsoft Office Live provides better business applications than her employees currently use, and the applications have the added benefit that they can be accessed anywhere over the Internet.

In real estate, each house that is sold has a listing agent who is integral in putting the house on the market for the seller. Each house also has a selling agent, the person who acts as an intermediary between seller and buyer in closing the deal. Additionally, there is other vital information about each house like the address and the selling price.

This information about the houses that are sold is obtainable through a common multiple listing system that is available to real estate companies. However, Ellen’s employees have complained that it is cumbersome to look up information about sold houses in which Contoso’s agents have participated as the listing or selling agent. The employees would also like to see house locations and selling prices associated with each sold house so that they can track trends in prices by area.

 Top of Page

The solution

Ellen plans to create a list that consolidates this information. She does so by following these steps.

1. Ellen signs in to Microsoft Office Live, and on the left navigation bar clicks Business Applications.
2. On the left navigation bar, she clicks Company Administration, and then Employee Directory.
3. On the right side of the page, she clicks Common Tasks, and then clicks Create new in the drop-down list.

    Note   Ellen starts to create the new list from the Employee Directory for two reasons. First, she must go to a list like Employee Directory before clicking Create new in the Common Tasks menu because the Create new command uses as its template the type of page that the user is currently using. Because of this, Ellen cannot create a list by clicking Create new on the Business Applications, Business Contact Manger, or Company Administration pages because those are application pages, not list pages. Secondly, creating the list from the Employee Directory page enables her to use the existing Employee list for a column or columns in her new list.

4. On the Employee Directory – Create page under Custom Lists, she clicks Custom List.
5. On the New page, she types Agents - Houses Sold in the Name box, and then types a short description in the Description box.
6. She selects Yes to display the list on the application tab, and then clicks Create, as shown in the following figure.

   

   Microsoft Office Live creates the new list and the Agents - Houses Sold page appears, which is on the Agents - Houses Sold tab of the Employee Directory Dashboard. The new list has one column named Title, and contains no data.

 Top of Page

Creating the House owner name column

When you create a new list, at least one column in the list must have data for each row, or record, in the column. Because some houses may not have a Contoso Real Estate listing or selling agent, those columns may not have data in one or more rows. Ellen must select a different column in the list that will contain data in each row.

Ellen can choose either the previous owner’s name column or the house address column as the column that will contain data for each item in the list. Both of these columns can have data in each row.

Ellen’s first task is changing the Title column name to something more meaningful. This will also be the first column in the list. She doesn’t want to use the street address as the first column, so she renames the Title column to House Owner Name. This column will show the previous owner’s last name.

1. On the Agents – Houses Sold page, Ellen clicks Settings, and then clicksList Settings.
2. On the next page, under Columns, she clicks Title to edit the Title column name, as shown in the following figure.

   

3. On the Change Column page, the text Title is already selected in the Column name box, so Ellen just types House owner name to replace it.
4. In the Description box, Ellen types a short description for the column.
5. She leaves the other values as they are, and then clicks OK, as shown in the following figure.

   

    Note   Ellen can select Yes or No for the Require that this column contains information option.

   Microsoft Office Live changes the name of the Title column to House owner name, and then takes Ellen back to the Customize Agents - Houses Sold page.

 Top of Page

Creating the Address column

1. On the Customize Agents - Houses Sold page, under Columns, Ellen clicks Create column.
2. On the Create Column page, Ellen types Address in the Column name box. This column will contain the address of the house that was sold.
3. Under The type of information in this column is, she selects the Multiple lines of text option, and then types Address of sold house in the Description box.
4. She selects Yes under Require that this column contains information, types 3 in the Number of lines for editing box, selects Plain text, selects No under Append Changes to Existing Text, leaves Add to default view selected, and then clicks OK, as in the following figure.

   

   Microsoft Office Live creates the new column and then takes Ellen back to the Customize Agents - Houses Sold page.

 Top of Page

Creating the Selling price column

Ellen wants the Address column and Selling price columns next to each other so that her employees can see the relationship between address and price. She creates the Selling price column next.

1. On the Customize Agents - Houses Sold page under Columns, Ellen clicks Create column.
2. On the Create Column page, Ellen types Selling price in the Column name box. This column will contain the selling price in U.S. currency for the house that was sold.
3. Under The type of information in this column is, she selects the Currency option, and then types Selling price of the house in U.S. currency in the Description box.
4. She selects No under Require that this column contains information (she may not know the price of every sold house), selects Automatic in the Number of decimal places box, leaves the other values as they are, and then clicks OK, as in the following figure.

   

 Top of Page

Creating the Listing agent column

The Listing agent and Selling agent columns use data that already exists in Microsoft Office Live. Therefore, their column type is Lookup, which means that Microsoft Office Live looks up the data in a list, in this case, the Employee Directory list.

1. On the Customize Agents - Houses Sold page under Columns, Ellen clicks Create column.
2. On the Create Column page, Ellen types Listing agent in the Column name box.
3. She selects the Lookup option, and after the page reloads, she types This column contains the Contoso listing agent, if applicable in the Description box.

    Note   Microsoft Office Live will use employee information already contained in Business Applications to fill in this list. For this reason, it is a Lookup type column.

4. She selects No under Require that this column contains information, clicks Employee Directory, Employees, and Last Name respectively, and then clicks OK, as in the following figure.

   

 Top of Page

Creating the Selling agent column

Creating the Selling agent column is very similar to creating the Listing agent column because both columns use data from the existing Employee Directory list.

1. On the Customize Agents - Houses Sold page under Columns, Ellen clicks Create column.
2. On the Create Column page, Ellen types Selling agent in the Column name box.
3. She selects the Lookup option, and after the page reloads, she types This column contains the last name of the Contoso selling agent, if applicable in the Description box.
4. She selects No under Require that this column contains information, clicks Employee Directory, Employees, and Last Name respectively, and then clicks OK. Microsoft Office Live creates the new column and then takes Ellen back to the Customize Agents - Houses Sold page.
5. At the top of the page, Ellen clicks Agents – Houses Sold, which takes her back to the master view of the list on the Agents - Houses Sold tab of the Employee Directory Dashboard.

 Top of Page

Adding data to the new list

Ellen adds data to the list by following these steps.

1. On the Agents – Houses Sold page, she clicks New, and then clicks New Item.
2. Reading from her notes, on the New Item page, she types Johnson in the House owner name box, 2345 Elm Street, Seattle, WA, 98116 in the Address box, $212,905 in the Selling price box, leaves None in the Listing agent box, and selects Diaz in the Selling agent box. Then she clicks OK, as in the following figure.

   

   Microsoft Office Live creates the new item and takes Ellen back to the Agents – Houses Sold page.

 Top of Page