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Project Siena Beta 3: Enabling business users to create custom apps to transform business processes

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I am excited to announce the availability of the Beta3 release of Project Siena. This new release makes it even easier for business experts, business analysts and other app imagineers to create powerful custom mobile apps that are connected to enterprise services, major SaaS, and popular web and social services.

Since we released Project Siena to the public, we have seen an immense level of excitement and usage from our enterprise customers and solution partners. We have seen business people create powerful, custom mobile-first apps, often in hours, without any programming needed at all. We have also seen mobile apps that transform business processes by extending back-end services and SaaS with signal-rich and media-rich experiences that simply couldn’t have been imagined before mobile devices.

But, most important of all, we have seen the beginning of a change in how people think about turning ideas into apps.

Transforming business processes

A perfect example comes from Toro, a leading provider of innovative turf, landscape, rental and construction equipment. A marketing manager and a web content manager saw Project Siena just four weeks before a major marketing event, a NASCAR race at the Talladega Speedway. Within days, they were able to conceive and create an impactful app that allowed attendees to explore and understand the Toro product catalog, with content and behavior crafted specifically for the race event.

Another example is Persistent Systems, a global company specializing in software product and technology services. Their business analysts and business architects use Project Siena to change the “app discovery” conversation with customers: now, they convert ideas into highly-functional prototypes right during the conversation, so the validation and refinement of the ideas happens on the spot.

Aditi Technologies is a global technology solutions partner focusing on cloud services, IT outsourcing and digital marketing. They have inserted Project Siena in their pre-sales efforts: the ability to create apps in near-real time gives Aditi an advantage by making on-the-spot changes, shortening their sales cycle and building stronger strategic relationships with their clients, particularly business decision makers and process owners.

Siena Beta 3

The Beta3 release is a major addition to Project Siena’s empowerment of business experts and analysts. Key new functionality includes:

  • One-click read/write connection to Yammer, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Coursera, Bing Search, and Bing Translate.
  • Connections to more types of RESTful services with OAuth 1 and OAuth 2 support.
  • A WADL accelerator for the ecosystem to rapidly create connections to RESTful services – this will be released over the next four weeks.
  • Write back to SharePoint lists.
  • Data visualization through interactive charts.
  • International languages support throughout the UI and in formulas and functions – this will be released over the next four weeks.
  • Across the board improvements, including more control over interactivity and design.

 In Beta2, we introduced the concept, illustrated below, that non-programmers could consume services as easily as using an Excel function. And composing multiple services was just like linking two Excel functions.

Beta3 takes the ability to work with services to another level, where getting started with key services is now as easy as adding a PowerPoint slide layout to a deck.  

Summary

Project Siena Beta3 is a major step in our mission to empower the most creative business minds to truly unlock the power of mobile and cloud. 

Please install the latest release of Project Siena from the Windows Store, check out https://microsoft.com/ProjectSiena , watch a tutorial video, download a sample app for inspiration, and then bring your own ideas to life in a Siena app.

Namaste!

S. Somasegar, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft