Siena says, "Make Merry with Metro App Building with this Metro App"

Microsoft's 'Project Siena': A Metro-Style app for creating Windows 8 apps

Codenamed "Project Siena,' the "Metro app that creates apps" (as the folks at Surfacegeeks.net dubbed it) is available in the Windows Store as a free download.

According to the description, Siena's main target audience is "business experts, business analysts, consultants and other app imagineers."

Examples of the kinds of Metro-Style/Windows Store/modern apps that can be built using Siena include apps for navigating "media-rich product catalogs," apps for resolving customer-service issues, and apps that make use of photos, videos, pen and voice notes, tied back in to an "asset database."

"Siena works well with corporate and web data and media content: SharePoint lists, Excel and Azure tables, RSS feeds and the gamut of RESTful services," Microsoft's app-description notes.

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Microsoft Project Siena (Beta)

Learn More

With Project Siena, you can create powerful, highly interactive, device-first, and cloud-connected apps in minutes or hours—as easily as editing a document.

Help Topics

New to Project Siena? No problem. Learn how to connect to your data, work with visuals, and author expressions.

Sample Apps

View and download sample apps, learn best practices, and see how other app builders are using Project Siena to build visually stunning interactive apps today.

Blog

Get the latest from the Project Siena team, including inside tips and tricks, sample patterns, and videos.

Microsoft "Project Siena" (Windows Store)

Description

Microsoft Project Siena (code name) is the beta release of a new technology for business experts, business analysts, consultants and other app imagineers. Now, without any programming, you can create powerful apps for the device-first and cloud-connected world, with the potential to transform today’s business processes.

Apps to explore media-rich product catalogs and create ensembles that together serve a customer’s needs

• Apps used on the spot to resolve customer service bottlenecks and logistics exceptions, with the custom intelligence to help the user make local trade-offs
• Apps for auditing and inspecting a manufacturing facility through photos, videos and pen and voice notes, all tied to an asset database

Siena apps are as easy as editing a document. You place some visuals on a canvas. You hook them up to your data. You customize how your app looks and works. Then, if you need special logic and intelligence, you write some Excel-like expressions. You can use your app immediately, or share it with colleagues or the world.

With Siena, you can conceptualize, validate and build your app ideas almost as fast as you can come up with them. And if your needs change tomorrow, updating your app is no problem. Open it. Change it. Share it again, and you’re off to do business.

Siena works well with corporate and web data and media content: SharePoint lists, Excel and Azure tables, RSS feeds and the gamut of RESTful services.

Siena apps are just HTML5 and JavaScript and are deployed and managed like any other Windows 8.x app. In fact, developers can open them up, see what’s there and, if needed, extend them in their favorite programming tools.

Install Siena, watch one of the how-to videos at http://aka.ms/ProjectSiena, and then build the app that you’ve been imagining... in under an hour.

Features

• Conceptualize, validate and build your app ideas as easily as editing a document
• Connect to corporate and web data
• Compose rich interactive visuals to create custom, unique apps
• Add business logic and intelligence using the power of Excel-like expressions
• Use the app yourself, share with colleagues or with the world

Looks like something fun to play with over the holiday's... I wonder if I can convince my wife to build an app? Now THAT would be a true test... (err... um... not of my patience... no... never that... ;)