Microsoft and SAP join forces to integrate the creative world of the desktop and the standard processes of enterprise applications. On May 2, 2006, Microsoft and SAP announced Duet for Microsoft Office and SAP.

Duet is the result of a continuing collaboration between Microsoft and SAP started over fifteen years ago when SAP was ported to Windows. Since then, collaboration between the two companies has continued to foster interoperability between Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) and the Microsoft .NET Framework. Duet is just one more example of the openness and collaboration Microsoft has always enabled within business and between its partners.

Duet for Microsoft Office and SAP is the first joint offering from Microsoft and SAP focused around getting the two technologies to work together the best way possible. Initially, Duet provides support for Employee and Manager Self-Service applications built on extensible infrastructure connecting Microsoft Office Professional 2003 and mySAP ERP 2004 in the following areas:

Time management

Use Microsoft Outlook calendar for SAP time reporting to streamline time entry while ensuring time reporting compliance.

Budget monitoring

Receive SAP reports in your Outlook Inbox and work with them offline, allowing managers to effectively monitor the budget by being proactively alerted to time-critical information.

Leave management

Add leave requests as calendar items integrated with SAP approval guidelines and business defined processes.

Organization management

Get up-to-date information about employees, open positions, organizational structures integrated from SAP HR in Outlook contacts, and easily accessible in other Microsoft Office Professional 2003 documents.

Personnel change requests

Trigger changes to personnel in SAP HR using Microsoft Office InfoPath forms. Retrieve instant aggregated reports from SAP HR into Microsoft Excel or Outlook on specific personnel information as promotions, bonus assignments, new positions, reassignments, and others.