App Portal Developer's Journey

A Bloomberg Professional Services Offering

App PortalContent & Data Solutions

App Portal

Developer’s Journey

Overview

The App Portal helps industry-leading application developers connect to Bloomberg Terminal

users by developing apps that integrate seamlessly with the Bloomberg Terminal and enhance

users’ workﬂows.

Third-party developers can beneﬁt from working with Bloomberg to develop, test and market

their app to the more than 350,000 Bloomberg users worldwide. Bloomberg Terminal users

can search through a wide range of application-based solutions, powered by Bloomberg data

and analytics, that can help give the edge needed to stay ahead of the competition.

Technology Supported

There are two technologies supported for App Portal, a .NET Desktop application built

using Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), or an HTML5-compliant

web-based application.

To start you would download the appropriate SDK for the technology that you are looking

to build your application in. The App Portal SDKs are available from either the Bloomberg

Terminal via SDK <GO> or via Bloomberg’s Customer Service portal via the Terminal by

running CSC <GO>, or by navigating to https://service.blpprofessional.com in your browser.

Figure 1 — App Portal SDK <GO>

App Portal Developer’s Journey

For CSC, simply navigate to the Download menu option and scroll down to the App Portal section.

.NET Desktop application

As noted above, if you wish to leverage Microsoft’s .NET technology to build your application and

publish to the App Portal Platform, you will build your application using Microsoft’s Visual Studio

(VS). First, install the desired version of the App Portal .NET SDK as noted in section 3.0 above. This

will install a Bloomberg toolbar into the selected version of Visual Studio and create a folder on your

local machine that will include sample code, the various Bloomberg libraries for App Portal, and

help documentation. The folder this is created in is typically “C:\Program Files (x86)\Bloomberg\

App Portal SDK.” Review the various help and API documents under the help subfolder of the SDK

installation directory.

Also, as part of the SDK install are the various Bloomberg templates for Visual Studio to assist in

starting your project. In Visual Studio, when creating a new Project, you can select the Bloomberg

template by typing Bloomberg into the ﬁlter and selecting the desired template, and begin building

your App Portal application. You can leverage the Bloomberg toolbar installed into Visual Studio to

Run, Debug and eventually publish your application into the App Portal Platform.

Figure 2 — Bloomberg’s Customer Service Center, CSC <GO>

Select the SDK for the technology you will utilize to build your app.

Figure 3 — Bloomberg Toolbar in Visual Studio

HTML5 Web applications

If you will be developing a web application for the Bloomberg App Portal, select the App Portal SDK

for Web found in either location, SDK or CSC, as noted in section 3.0 above. The installer will create a

folder on your local machine containing the API documentation, the JavaScript (JS) and Typescript (TS)

libraries to use in your web application. The install directory is normally C:\blp\AppPortalWebSDK,

where C:\blp is the installation directory of the Bloomberg Terminal software.

When running an App Portal Web application, your application will be launched in an extended

chromium web browser, WebView, which is what provides the hooks for the App Portal Web APIs.

For development, running, testing and eventual publishing of your application to the App Portal

you will use the Bloomberg App Portal Web Application Manager, APPS WEBAPPMGR <GO>.

Figure 4 — APPS Web Application Manager

You will need a Bloomberg Terminal and user ID to run this tool as well as to run and test your

application. This is for several reasons, the most important of which is that your application is

hosted within Bloomberg’s WebView component, which is a separate process that runs with the

Terminal. Closing or logging o of the Bloomberg Terminal would close all instances of these

child WebView components.

Lastly, please be aware that Bloomberg App Portal Web API are client-side APIs; these JS and

TS libraries will not work from the server side.

Developer Workﬂow

App Portal Web Development

Development

Terminals Issued

1-3 days – Developers

receive Terminals to

start app building

Technical Deep Dive Review

1 day 2 hour session – App

Portal Technology review

with development team

Single Sign On

Integration

1-2 weeks – Setup

Bloomberg Single Sign

so users can be auto

3 Terminal Data

Integration

1 week – Co-mingle

Terminal data with your

own content to create

unique experience

5 Publish your

ﬁrst Application

3-4 days – Publish to in-house

set of users for feedback,

submit for QA review and

release to production

Terminal Workﬂow Integration

(Terminal Connect)

2 days – Create workﬂow

with functions and your app

4 Setup of Storefront

1 day – Storefront that

hosts your application

on the Terminal

Launch

to clients

App Portal Developer’s Journey

Take the next step.

For additional information,

press the <HELP> key twice

on the Bloomberg Terminal

Beijing

+86 10 6649 7500

Dubai

+971 4 364 1000

Frankfurt

+49 69 9204 1210

Hong Kong

+852 2977 6000

London

+44 20 7330 7500

Mumbai

+91 22 6120 3600

New York

+1 212 318 2000

San Francisco

+1 415 912 2960

São Paulo

+55 11 2395 9000

Singapore

+65 6212 1000

Sydney

+61 2 9777 8600

Tokyo

+81 3 4565 8900

bloomberg.com/professional

The only dierence in the workﬂow between a .NET Desktop application and a PWA is the need to

install the Bloomberg Command Line Interface (CLI) or Create a GitHub project in steps 3 and 4.

Neither is required to build and publish your .NET Desktop application for App Portal.

Reference Links and Documents

Name/Link Description

APPS <GO> Bloomberg’s App Portal

APPS WEBAPPMGR <GO> Bloomberg’s Web Application Manager

BDEV <GO> Bloomberg’s Development Portal. Terminal Connect API

documentation is found here

https://service.blpprofessional.com Customer Service Center - App Portal SDK – Web Based

CSC <GO> Customer Service Center - App Portal SDK – Terminal Based

SDK <GO> App Portal Software Developer Kit (SDK) – Terminal Based

App Portal Desktop and Packaged Web (PWA) Application Development

Development

Terminals Issued

1-3 days – Developers

receive Terminals to

start app building

Technical Deep

Dive Review

2-3 hour session –

Terminal Connect

Training and App

Portal framework

and APIs

Develop

web app

Client/vendor

developers

3 Terminal Workﬂow/

Data Integration

Create workﬂow with

functions and co-mingle

terminal data to create a

unique experience

5 Setup of Storefront

in APPM

1 day – In APPM conﬁgure

the users who have access

to the Application

Install BBG PWA

Command Line

Interface (cli)

4 Create Github Project

Using cli and git commands

create and check in your

changes to BBG’s private

Github repository

6 Release the Application

for review and promotion

to Production

Using BBG’s PWA cli, package

and publish the app to APPS

Complete

App Portal Developer’s Journey