Intuit Partner Platform team blog

Released: Windows Azure SDK 2.0 for Intuit Anywhere

Released: Windows Azure SDK 2.0 for Intuit Anywhere

The Windows Azure SDK 2.0 for Intuit Anywhere is a set of development tools that enable developers of SaaS apps developed on Windows Azure to publish those apps on Intuit App Center, where they are available to millions of Intuit customers. 

Developers who are not on the Azure platform will still benefit from the Intuit Partner Platform .Net DevKit 2.0 and Visual Studio add-in for Visual Studio 2010 as they integrate their applications to QuickBooks data via Intuit Anywhere and .Net. 

The SDK contains the following components:

Developer Tools

• Intuit Partner Platform .Net DevKit v2.0
• Intuit Anywhere Add-in for Visual Studio 2010
• Windows Azure Templates for Intuit Anywhere

Marketing Benefits

• The Windows Azure SDK Program for Intuit Anywhere includes great marketing benefits for your SaaS app, including:

Microsoft Front Runner Program for the Intuit Partner Platform - A collaborative effort between Microsoft and Intuit

Intuit Partner Platform .Net DevKit v2.0 [Link] 

The IPP .NET DevKit has set of .NET classes that make it easier to call Intuit Data Services QuickBooks for Windows and Online. This release has full support for Intuit Anywhere. Some of the features included in this DevKit are as follows:

• Methods to call Data Services APIs synchronously or asynchronously, enabling your apps to access QuickBooks entities such as accounts, customers, invoices, and so forth.
• Ability to perform single and batch processing of CRUD operations on all QuickBooks Desktop (Windows) and QuickBooks Online entities, both synchronously and asynchronously.
• OAuth and SAML support for Federated apps.
• Reporting Service APIs for accessing QuickBooks Desktop (Windows) reports.
• Retry policy constructors to help apps handle transient errors.
• Logging mechanisms for trace, request/response, and Azure logging.
• Sync APIs that assist with data synchronization between QuickBooks Desktop (Windows) and Intuit’s cloud.
• Query filters that enable your app to retrieve QuickBooks entities whose properties meet specified criteria.
• The IPP .NET DevKit provides three different ways to log messages:
  • Trace Log
  • Request and Response Log
  • Azure Log Interface

 Intuit Anywhere Add-in for Visual Studio 2010 [Link]

• Intuit Anywhere Azure ASP.NET Template extension  
• Intuit Anywhere Azure MVC 3 Template extension  
• Drag and Drop code snippets for Intuit Anywhere Oauth, OpenId and Blue Dot components. No coding, just provide your apptoken, consumer key and secret in the config file!!

Windows Azure Templates for Intuit Anywhere [Link]

• MVC 3 Template
• .Net ASP Template

DevKit Documentation [Link]

 

 Happy Coding.

-Jarred Keneally

 

 

 

 

Partnerships, IPP + Windows Azure

When we started the Intuit Partner Platform, we had a pretty simple vision: To delight Small Businesses with an ecosystem of applications that solve lots of needs and work extremely well together. We set out to build a platform that would enable us to work with our partners to build more and better offerings for the small business community. 

Although the vision hasn't changed, the path along our journey has certainly evolved. Three years ago, platforms-as-a-service were nascent. To help accelerate our partners getting to market, we created and offered an end-to-end platform. This helped a number of our partners get to market, but it wasn't a perfect offering. It was a stack that solved the needs of a small set developers, but couldn't scale in features to meet the needs of all our developers.

While we've continued to invest in our native platform, other platforms have moved at lightning speed. Many of these platforms focus on what I'll call the "lower" end of the stack. This is the stuff a developer needs to build and deploy a saas or mobile app (hardware, database, etc.). These platforms have evolved way past anything we could create and honestly provide a better development experience than we could.

In parallel however, we've focused on our core assets and differentiators, and evolved the "upper" end of the stack. This includes access to QuickBooks data and key "go-to-market" services that make app integrations possible and delight small businesses. As you can see with our Beta release of Intuit Anywhere, we're continuing to push the envelope on providing ubiquitous data integrations and tightly integrated apps to our customers. That's what we're good at, and it's where we will focus now and in the future.

That brings me to a couple of announcements we shared at IPP CloudJam: First, we will no longer offer our "native development" stack for developers to build on. We are going to focus our resources on the top of the stack and make data and services for our developers the top priority.

So what should our developers who are looking for a PaaS offering do?

While we have always been and will always be an open platform, and we will always embrace applications built on any platform, we think it's important to help guide our developers who are looking for a PaaS option to what we believe is the best option on the market. So I'm pleased to announce that we will continue the journey we started with Microsoft last year and double down on our investment to tightly integrate the Windows Azure platform with IPP. The feedback from current developers using Azure and live on Intuit App Center has been extremely positive and we believe with additional investment in our Windows Azure SDK for IPP, we can make developing an app on Azure, leveraging Quickbooks data and IPP's go-to-market services, and getting into the Intuit App Center Channel, DROP DEAD EASY.

We've been extremely impressed with the dedication and quality of Microsoft's platform, their willingness to work closely with our existing partners, and their dedication to making developers successful. Microsoft has built a huge business behind their partner community – they just "get" how important partners are and how to treat them – and with our "native" IPP development option now gone, we think this is the best platform for our developers.

Read up Liz Ngo, Microsoft's business development manager on why we're doubling down on this partnership. 

Here is some more information on how developers can take advantage of our partnership, sign up for Front Runner for IPP. 

Look for new releases of Window Azure SDK for IPP in the coming months and if you have requests, feedback, or interest in learning more about Azure, please let us know!

Alex Chriss
Director, Intuit Partner Platfomr

Announcing IPP v2.9

We’re excited to announce that IPP v2.9 is now live and available for IPP partners. This release is another in a series focused on extending developer tools and data services, as well as improving the shopping, buying, and user experience of end customers.

IPP v2.9 CONTENTS

• Kingussie Flex framework improvements
• New and improved developer tools
• Intuit App Center end-user enhancements
• Software updates/fixes 

1. KINGUSSIE FLEX FRAMEWORK IMPROVEMENTS

Intuit’s Kingussie framework for Adobe Flex allows developers to quickly develop and publish applications on IPP’s native development platform. Kingussie improvements for v2.9 also include greatly improved startup times. As a result of reducing server roundtrips and optimized server-side APIs, performance is now three times faster for Kingussie-based applicaitons at both initial launch and subsequent start-up.

For more information on these and other new Kingussie Flex Framework capabilities, take a look at the IPP Development Tools Release Notes.

2. NEW AND IMPROVED DEVELOPER TOOLS
The IPP V2.9 release includes the following enhancements to developer tools for IPP Federated apps:

• Expanded Azure SDK
  The expanded Azure SDK includes additional sample applications using data services and the alpha version of the Visual Studio plug in.  
• Updated .NET and Java developer toolkits
  We’ve updates toolkits to align to latest releases and enhanced for bug fixes.

For more information on these and other new IPP developer toolkit information, follow these specific links:

• IPP Developer Toolkits project on code.intuit.com
• Windows Azure SDK for IPP
• Azure Toolkit Project on code.intuit.com
• Java IPP Devkit Wiki
• .NET IPP DevKit Wiki

3. INTUIT APP CENTER END-USER ENHANCEMENTS

Recent enhancements we’ve made to Intuit App Center improve the review process for applications and notify users of upcoming changes in Internet Explorer 6 support.

• Improved application review interface
  

  We’ve simplified the interface for submitting applications reviews, making it easier for customers to submit a review. Customers now only need to submit five pieces of information (instead of 12) to complete an application review.    

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 customer notification
  

  Starting with this release, we’ll show a message to Internet Explorer 6 users notifying them that we’ll discontinue IE 6 support in September 2010. The message will include links to the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.

4. SOFTWARE UPDATES / FIXES

For a complete list of software updates / fixes included in IPP v2.9, please review the release notes here.

Thanks,
—The Intuit Partner Platform Team

Windows Azure SDK 1.0 for Intuit Partner Platform Now Available!

As part of recent joint announcement by Intuit and Microsoft, we released a beta version of the Windows Azure SDK 1.0 for Intuit Partner Platform - a set of tools, code samples and services designed to make it easy for developers of SaaS applications developed on Windows Azure to federate those SaaS apps on to IPP and sell them to millions of Intuit customers in the Intuit Workplace App Center.

So What's New?

I'm pleased to announce that version 1.0 is now available for download (if you are already a project member you can get the source code directly at code.intuit.com). So, what's new in 1.0? The main change is the support for Intuit Data Services (IDS) that makes it easy for developers to program against customers' QuickBooks within their applications. We've also included an IDS-integrated sample app to help you along.

Get Started with the Windows Azure SDK for IPP
Here developers will find documentation with the steps to host an application on Windows Azure and federate it in to the Intuit Partner Platform. The document provides step by step instructions to get the requisite accounts, create the project for the hosted service, program against IDS, and finally, to federate the web application in to Intuit Workplace. Additionally, the document also provides the steps to configure the SAML Gateway’s endpoints for SSL.

View the Azure Documentation.

Happy Coding

-Jarred

Are you near Boston and into Windows Azure?

Are you near Boston and into Windows Azure? Then you should know about the Boston Azure User Group - food, drink and lots of Azure provided! 

Tomorrow night (3/5) 3/25 I'll be joined by Jarred Keneally to discuss the Windows Azure SDK for IPP and how easy it is for developers to:

• federate Azure-hosted SaaS apps into IPP
• integrate those apps with QuickBooks data using IPP's Intuit Data Services API
• and sell those apps to millions of Intuit customers on Intuit Workplace App Center.

Hope to see you there!

Intuit Partner Platform + Windows Azure = Win for Small Businesses

When we started the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) last year, we envisioned a destination where Small Businesses could pick from a variety of quality applications to solve their critical business pain points – and we wanted those apps to work together!  A big ecosystem of Apps – from a variety of developers and pre-integrated – solving for the needs of Small Businesses.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce an alliance between Intuit and Microsoft, that brings IPP a giant step closer to our ecosystem vision. Starting today, SaaS developers can access the beta of the Windows Azure SDK for IPP - a set of tools, code samples, and services, designed to make it easy for developers of SaaS applications developed on Windows Azure to federate those SaaS apps on to IPP and sell them to millions of Small Businesses in the Intuit Workplace App Center.

Today’s news about Intuit and Microsoft’s relationship has two converging themes:

1) More developers + great tools = more great apps for small businesses

• The Windows Azure SDK for IPP (when fully delivered) will enable developers to build a great application on the Windows Azure platform while leveraging the go-to-market services (i.e. single sign-on, billing and data web API’s, user management, etc.) of IPP and publish their app to an existing marketplace in the Intuit App Center.
• In addition to the third-party developer apps, Microsoft will also be working closely with us to offer their Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) via the Intuit Workplace App Center.  While it will take a little while to get the integration just right, we think the addition of BPOS, to the Intuit Apps, and third party apps, creates a strong suite of apps for Small Businesses to choose from.

2) Broader channels = more customers for developers

• By reaching out to our respective Channel partners (VAR’s, Solution Providers, etc.) and introducing them to the Intuit App Center, we further expand the ecosystem of Small Businesses that developers can target. Through our product channels (via QuickBooks) and our partner channels, we have an opportunity to build a large customer base using connected applications.

The reason we’re so excited about this alliance is very simple: More Quality Apps + More Targeted Customers = Vibrant Ecosystem (and a strong network effect)!  By joining the development and channel forces of two of the leaders in the Small Business Market, I think we have a great opportunity to delight SMB’s, Developers, and VAR’s. Win-Win-Win!

Alex Chriss
Director, Intuit Partner Platform