Siena is for Expert Apps
Project Siena enables business experts to capture their expertise and deliver apps that help colleagues and customers make great decisions and complete tasks.
Today, we are sharing three examples of such “expert apps” – ranging from the simple to very sophisticated.
Health Cost Calculator
Let’s start with a simple health insurance app for use by prospective customers. Customers see explanatory videos, and as they are watching, they can do what-ifs to understand the financial impact of various illnesses. There is custom logic behind the what-ifs to help them decide what coverage level to look for in a policy.
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Watch this video to see how this Health Cost Calculator app was built.
Site Survey
This app helps facilities personnel survey a site and estimate the work needed. An inspector can take photos of key spaces and assets and tag them to describe what needs to be done. Then, a cost estimation model based on best practices kicks in -- but the inspector can tweak any estimate based on local knowledge, e.g. if there is an obstruction making a space particularly hard to access.
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Watch this video to see this Site Survey app in action.
Bridge Tutor
Lastly, an app built by a Bridge expert to teach novices some bridge hand and contract evaluation techniques. Now, if you play bridge, you know this involves particularly intricate rules and calculations – but Siena is expressive enough for the author to capture even this rarified expertise. Caution: this is a large app, opening it can take 30 seconds or more (future releases of Project Siena will optimize this).
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Watch this video to see this Bridge Tutor app in action.
Your Own Expert Apps
These are just a few examples of Siena’s expressivity. All the rules, conditions, dependencies, formulas and calculations needed to make high value decisions and complete important tasks. All created without any coding. And delivered within a visual, media-rich experience designed for continuous response to continuous touch.
Now, imagine a whole spectrum of expert apps of your own!
Vijay Mital, General Manager, Project Siena
Comments
- Anonymous
January 01, 2003
StonyArc, good eye! I've updated the spreadsheet, thanks for the comment. - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Vijay, this is just fantastic app. The time it takes to build a simple REST client is non-existent and I was able to do it by myself, rather than giving it to tech department. One question though: how soon are you rolling out the "Dynamic calls to RESTful web services"? This is nessential to harvest full benefit from the interface I'm working with. - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Barb: Thanks. We are aiming to incrementally update Project Siena -- and will continue to flag upcoming functionality in the Looking Ahead section at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/dn495637. Please keep building apps, and keep feedback on your blog coming. - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I love Project Siena. My first attempt: http://digitalmediaphile.com/index.php/2014/01/09/using-ms-project-siena-for-rapid-app-development/ .. will you ever add support for the 2.0 environment to target 8.1? Really want webview and semantic zoom. - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Vijay, Built a GOES Satellite Imagery app with Project Siena, it's now in the store, http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/goes-satellite-imagery/bb222af7-bf12-45e6-97f3-d7787a72ca60 - I'll write something up on my blog as well. The GOES App pulls current images from NOAA, updates apprx every 30 minutes. (I've just submitted the Photography app I blogged about to the store as well.)When do you think u all will have an updated beta build ? - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
hi Vijay, your examples are great. it really helps me to develop educational training kit for school and now i am trying my best to share with those teachers to fully utilize windows 8.1 and project siena here in Malaysia. i would say that windows 8.1 is excelleny but the ay of promoting great value needs further effort. once again, thumbs up for you and your team. - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Barb: Saw your app-building walkthrough. Totally cool! We are adding functionality rapidly, and hear you on webview and semantic zoom. - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thank you for this Vijay. Please note that I believe that in the file ContosoSiteSurvey.xlsx the paths are not correct in the example. It referes to "Assets" and in the other (where) the images is missing. - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Anonymous: Great to hear. We are working away on the dynamic call functionality -- totally agree on its impact. - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The Project Siena Forum is now live at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?category=projectsiena. Please do join. - Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Very nice!!! Still to try this out (downloading sample apps right now) but I have a quick question, how does Siena build the charms? Thanks in advance!