Access external data sources directly from SharePoint, visualize and interact with them via Web Parts or custom applications.

Why Are We Building It?

We built MashPoint in order to provide our Web Parts with a single unified data access platform that can be used to gather data living both inside and outside of SharePoint. This platform is intended to allow users to define and utilize the same data sources across all of the products in our Web Part product line.  This includes the Bamboo Data-Viewer Web Part, Chart Plus Web Part, Calendar Plus Web Part, Virtual Map View Web Part, Tree View Web Part, and Mini-Calendar Web Part.  In addition, developers can use the MashPoint APIs to author their own .NET applications to link to proprietary data stores.

What Does It Do?

With MashPoint, you can:

• Retrieve data from a legacy system and then populate and display the data in a SharePoint List via the Bamboo Business Custom Column. For example, Company A has a legacy system that contains the information of the desktop equipment that the company purchased for the employees. This information can be displayed in SharePoint with the quantities of each type of equipment, e.g. 50 IBM laptops.
• Retrieve data such as web content, articles, resource information from an ERP system and display the data in Bamboo Data-Viewer or Chart Plus. For example, display revenue numbers in a chart or table from an external Billing system.
• Use the Bamboo SSO provider to store login credentials to external applications - allowing users to have a seamless integration (i.e. Single Sign-On) to external data sources and applications.
• Write and update data in SharePoint and automatically have those changes reflected in the source data system. For example, user changes his/her phone number in a SharePoint Contacts List. The data will automatically get updated in People Soft.