Hello World of Infor Smart Office SDK

Today I will write a post on how to start with the Infor Smart Office SDK as a continuation of Karin’s getting started post and Scott’s one to eight part series. We use the Smart Office SDK to develop applications in C#/WPF that run inside Smart Office with the benefits of look & feel, session, user information, M3 context, integration to M3 APIs and M3 Web Services, etc. I’m developing an application for a customer to integrate Cisco IP phones with Infor Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM). This is a great opportunity for me to share with you interesting bits and pieces as I progress, and it’s a way for me to anchor what I learn. I will put screenshots galore.

Here are the steps:

1. Download and install Microsoft Visual Studio for C# and WPF development. I opted for the free Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop:
   
   
2. Launch it from the Windows Start menu > All Programs > Visual Studio 2013 > VS Express 2013 for Desktop:
   
3. Download and install the Infor Smart Office SDK from Infor Xtreme > Downloads > Products > User Productivity Platform > Smart Office SDK – M3; choose the same version as the target Smart Office server you will develop for, version 10.1 in my case:
   
4. Unzip to a temporary folder in your computer and move the contents to the SDK root directory, for example C:\InforSmartOfficeSDK\ ; I moved to a folder with the full version number as I might have to switch back and forth between different versions for customer projects:
   
5. For more information , read the installation instructions in the Infor Smart Office Developers Guide at path Documentation\DevelopersGuide.pdf:
   
6. Set an environment variable LSOSDKBin in My Computer > Properties > Advanced system settings > Environment Variables, to the path of the Bin sub-folder, in my case it’s C:\InforSmartOfficeSDK_10.1.1.1_20130920\Bin :
   
7. Edit the contents of the file RegisterServer.reg in a text editor like Notepad, and change the value of Server to point to the scheme://domain:port of your Smart Office server URL. Then execute the file to merge the new MangoDev Key into your Windows Registry (C:\Windows\regedit.exe); in my case I later manually added String values for Username and Password so I don’t get authentication prompts anymore (beware of this security risk):
   
8. Open the Sample Solution Samples\Samples.sln in Visual Studio:
   
9. Select BUILD > Build Solution F7:
   
10. Select DEBUG > Start Debugging F5:
    
11. That will start Smart Office in Developer mode. Select Help (question mark icon at the top right) > About Infor Smart Office > View features, that will show you the Framework Examples and the Sample Feature:
    
12. Start the Hello World application in the Sample menu of the Navigator widget:
    
13. And try the other samples and widgets:
    

That’s it!

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