You are designing a SharePoint 2010 application. You need to design a list that displays only data from contacts
stored in Microsoft Office Outlook 2010.
Which approach should you recommend?
A.
Create a list with an external data column. Set the External Content Type of this column.
B.
Create an external list. Create an external content type based on the external list and set the Office Item Type.
C.
Create an external content type and set the Office Item Type. Create an external list from the external content type.
D.
Export the contact list in Outlook 2010. Create a new external list based on the exported data file.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556391(v=office.14).aspx
A core concept of Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is the external content type. Used throughout the functionality and services offered by Business Connectivity Services, external content types are reusable metadata descriptions of connectivity information and data definitions plus the behaviors you want to apply to a certain category of external data. External content types enable you to manage and reuse the metadata and behaviors of a business entity such as Customer or Order from a central location, and enable users to interact with that external data and processes in a more meaningful way.
For example, consider a business entity such as Customer. You might want to interact with items of type Customer inside a SharePoint list or work on them offline in Microsoft Outlook. Or, you might want to enable the user to pick a customer from a list of customers in an Orders contract document inside Microsoft Word. You can create an external content type once and then reuse it anywhere you need it.
External content types offer the following benefits:
– Enable reusability
– Encapsulate complexities of external systems
– Provide built-in Office and SharePoint behavior:
External content types provide Office item-type behaviors (such as contacts, tasks, calendars in Microsoft Outlook, documents in Microsoft Word, and lists in Microsoft SharePoint Workspace); SharePoint behaviors (such as lists, Web Parts, and profile pages); and capabilities (such as the ability to search or work offline) to external data and services, so users can work in their familiar work environments without having to hunt for data or learn and interact with different (and proprietary) user interfaces.
– Ensure secure access
– Simplify maintenance
– Enable external data search
– Enable working offline