designer

222 Chapter 7 Using Business Connectivity Services
Save
25. On the Quick Access Toolbar, click Save.
A dialog box is displayed briefly, stating that SharePoint is storing the ECT to the
BDC Metadata Store.
Troubleshooting If an error dialog box is displayed stating that saving the ECT failed,
you are probably saving an ECT without connecting it to an external content source and
have not defined at least one operation on that content source. Complete the previous
two exercises, and then return to this step.
The label name changes to SPD SBS Orders, and the asterisk disappears.
CLEAN UP Leave SharePoint Designer open if you are continuing to the next
exercise.
Creating Office Application External Content Types
Microsoft made it possible to display external data in Office applications. You can also
take the external data offline by using Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft SharePoint
Workspace. A user can connect external lists with these two Office applications. Behind
the scenes, a BDC model is packaged and deployed to the user’s computer. Microsoft
categorizes this type of a solution, in which a user clicks a button to deploy the BDC
model, as a BCS simple solution. To assist in tight integration, especially with Microsoft
Outlook and external lists, before you define the operations of an ECT, you must specify
whether a user is allowed to take the data presented in an external list offline. You also
need to configure the Office item type, of which there are four:
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Appointment
Contact
Task
Post
When you define the data source operations, you map data source elements to Office
properties. You can modify the Office Property mappings for an existing ECT by modifying
the Item operation. Also, you can only choose to map those elements that have a
compatible Office properties data type.