Why Extend Enterprise Applications to Desktop Users?
While your ERP, CRM, SCM, and portal applications provide valuable information for your enterprise, many of your business users do not benefit from it - for the simple reason that they find it difficult to access enterprise data.  Users, for instance, must:

• Switch from their current Word/e-mail/Excel screen to log in to the application
• Cut-copy-paste data from enterprise applications to Excel
• Work with the application semantics and search hard to get the information they need

What if users could easily access the ERP/CRM data from within Microsoft® Word, browser, and e-mail on demand?  What if they could avoid dealing with the special semantics of the application?   What if they could unlock information from the application screens and have it available on their touch points, such as word/e-mail screens and portal pages?  What if users can get easy-to-consume on-demand interfaces that they can learn very quickly, and can use it in their daily work?

Extensio Extender for Desktop
The Extensio Extender for Desktop allows the user to get a context-sensitive floating 'eWindow' on top of the users' application screen containing data extracted from underlying data sources.  For example, if the user needs information about his customer "Super Shaving Blades" listed in a Word document, the user first specifies the needed data service from the desktop toolbar, and then ALT+Clicks on the key-word(s) to get the 'eWindow' with related information as shown below.

The same query operation could be invoked from any desktop application running on Microsoft® Windows 98 and later.

The Extensio Extender for Desktop implements the Extensio eToolbar -- a toolbar that resides on the user's desktop and displays a hierarchical menu of authorized information services (shown at the top of the eWindow above).  The user typically selects an information service from the eToolbar, selects a set of words from the existing application, and ALT-clicks on that selection.  

The Extensio Extender sends a query to the Extensio Information Server along with the selected service and the associated user text.  The Extensio Information Server connects to the various back-end applications and databases, filters the data, unifies it with other business data, and returns the final result to the Extensio Extender on the desktop.

Enterprise Data Delivery within Extensio eWindow

Who Benefits from the Extensio Extender for Desktop?
With the Extensio Extender for Desktop, users directly get back-end application data from any desktop application.  Typical users include:

• Production or Logistics Managers who want to access data from back-end systems
• Business users who do not want to learn the ERP application
• Executives who want to quickly monitor the key performance indicators

Key Features of Extensio Extender for Desktop

• Supports all desktop applications including browser, email, Excel, and PDF files on Windows 98 and later
• Allows access as well as updates to the data in the back-end repositories
• Permits the user to invoke related information services from the Extensio eWindow
• Floating toolbar that hosts the list of authorized services for the user
• Fully customizable including the logo, color, and language

Deploying Extensio Extender for Desktop
Customer's IT department uses the SOA-based Extensio Information Server and its browser-based Extensio Studio to build information services that connect the target applications to the enterprise data-sources, extract appropriate data, assemble them using transform, filter or other custom operations and deliver them on user desktops as per the user requirements. 

The Extensio User Manager is used to manage the user profile information including the authorization rights of the user.  The users download the Extensio Extender for Desktop from the Extensio Information Server hosted by the IT, and then start invoking queries to get on-demand results from any application.