Before attending this course, you should

• have good working knowledge of SAS Enterprise Guide
• be familiar with SAS programming at the level taught in the SAS Programming 1: Essentials course or have equivalent work experience
• some familiarity with object-oriented concepts.

This course addresses SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office, Base SAS, SAS Enterprise Guide software.
It is recommended that you have experience with an object-oriented programming language such as C#, Visual Basic, or Java. You should have experience with an application development environment such as Microsoft Visual Studio or Eclipse.
In this course, Microsoft Visual Studio is used as a development environment for creating tasks. In addition to the SAS language, the course uses C# as the main programming language. Some Visual Basic examples can also be provided as needed.

Who should attend

SAS consultants, IT professionals who support SAS users, any SAS professional who wants to extend the SAS Enterprise Guide platform

• find and install existing custom tasks to make your users more productive
• simplify a complex process by wrapping it in a custom task
• design easy-to-use interfaces for end users to help them accomplish their work
• make your custom tasks easier to learn by having them look and behave the same as the built-in tasks
• design your tasks to be easy to debug and maintain
• create 'mash-ups' of other services and your SAS processes by connecting them with custom tasks
• add your custom tasks for use in the SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office.

Introduction

Designing a New Custom Task

• identifying the scope
• designing the desired result
• creating a prototype of the flow
• designing the perfect user interface

Tools of the Trade

• introduction to Microsoft Visual Studio
• Visual Basic versus C#: how to choose
• understanding versions: Microsoft .NET and SAS
• creating a custom task project
• additional development tools

Introduction to the SAS Custom Tasks APIs

• what is in the SAS.Shared.AddIns APIs
• what is in the SAS Tasks Toolkit
• which APIs are important for what type of tasks
• Looking inside a custom task

Creating a Simple Task

• using templates to start quickly
• creating a simple task model
• teaching your task to generate a program
• creating a user interface
• saving task settings and preferences

The Custom Task Lifecycle

• the different phases of the task lifecycle
• what happens during task registration mode?
• what happens during task design mode?
• what happens during task run mode?
• considerations for best performance in each mode

Debugging Techniques

• using the Microsoft Visual Studio debugger
• creating built-in diagnostics for your task
• designing a task that is easy to test
• maintaining your task over time

Accessing Data in Your Task

• how SAS Enterprise Guide provides data
• using data providers in Microsoft .NET
• using SasData classes from the task toolkit
• considerations for data performance

Running SAS Programs in Your Task

• about the SAS workspace and language service
• using the SasSubmitter class
• synchronous versus asynchronous processing
• retrieving and interpreting program results
• being a good citizen with the SAS workspace

Adding SAS Features to Your Task

• understanding task class attributes
• naming and categorizing tasks
• using SAS controls: SAS variable selector
• using SAS controls: SAS data selector
• using SAS controls: SAS Program Editor
• supporting task templates

Administration of Your Task

• distributing and installing your tasks
• controlling access to tasks with metadata
• best practices for updating your tasks