February, 2004

Web Casts for Asia Pacific
From 16 March through 11 May 2004, InfoPath will be hosting 11 technical MSDN web casts specifically designed for partners, customers, and developers in Asia Pacific.

To register, click here. Sign up today, and receive premiums worth up to USD$10,000.

An 8-Part MSDN Web Cast Series




Session 1 of 8:	InfoPath Architecture and Form Design	March 16	Level 300, Experienced
Session 2 of 8:	Integrating InfoPath with SharePoint™ and Merging Forms	March 19
Session 3 of 8:	Reporting with Excel through XML	March 23
Session 4 of 8:	Business Workflow and BizTalk	March 26
Session 5 of 8:	Creating the Enterprise InfoPath Solution	April 1
Session 6 of 8:	WordML and XSLT	April 6
Session 7 of 8:	Creating the Contract (Smart Document) from the InfoPath Form	April 13
Session 8 of 8:	Finishing the Enterprise Solution-Security, Deployment, Offline Caching	April 16




Session 1:	Business Process Automation Solutions Using Microsoft Office InfoPath, Microsoft BizTalk® 2004, and Web Services	April 27	Level 300, Experienced
Session 2:	Best Practices for Developing and Deploying InfoPath Solutions: A Technical Drilldown	April 29	Level 350, Experienced
Session 3:	Using InfoPath in Enterprise Scenarios: Integrating InfoPath with Line of Business Applications	May 11	Level 300, Experienced

An 8-Part MSDN Web Cast Series
The goal of these eight Web casts is to learn the key elements of building and deploying XML-based business process solutions using InfoPath and other Office 2003 applications. Using an enterprise scenario-the Sales Call Report and Contract Generation process- these Web casts will walk you through the elements involved in building an end-to-end enterprise solution. Together, these Web casts will show you how to use the InfoPath design environment and platform to create solutions that leverage Web services to interoperate with back end databases including BizTalk and SQL Server. We'll cover the InfoPath form architecture, deployment model, object model and programmability in these detailed Web casts. We will also cover how to develop and deploy Office 2003 XML-based solutions including Word 2003, Excel 2003, and smart document solutions.

Session 1 of 8: InfoPath Architecture and Form Design
Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Content Level: Level 300, Experienced
Speaker: John Peltonen, Partner and Cofounder, 3Sharp LLC
Abstract:
In Session 1, we will first get acquainted with the architecture of InfoPath. We'll make a few simple changes to the form while in InfoPath and look at what happens to the XML. After this introduction, we will build a departmental solution for processing sales orders. We'll take a base InfoPath form and add some advanced functionality, like configuring a drop-down list to be populated with a secondary data source, building a task pane, configuring some conditional formatting, validating against a database, creating a cascading drop-down list. We'll test the form to make sure it all works.

Session 2 of 8: Integrating InfoPath with SharePoint™ and Merging Forms
Date: Friday, March 19, 2004
Content Level: Level 300, Experienced
Speaker: John Peltonen, Partner and Cofounder, 3Sharp LLC
Abstract:
In the first part of Session 2, we will learn about Microsoft SharePoint form libraries. We will publish the form we built in Session 1 and specify a SharePoint site. During the publish process, we'll also do InfoPath property promotion, a process by which we can specify fields within our form to become column headings in SharePoint. In the second part of Session 2, we'll look at how form merging works, both in the default, and by creating a custom XSLT.

Session 3 of 8: Reporting with Excel through XML
Date: Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Content Level: Level 300, Experienced
Speaker: John Peltonen, Partner and Cofounder, 3Sharp LLC
Abstract:
In Session 3, we'll use Microsoft Excel to do some really impressive mapping and analysis of XML data. The possibilities range from the simple one-click Export to Excel, to programmatically inferring and mapping an XML schema to a blank spreadsheet and loading multiple form documents, combining the data, and analyzing it.

Session 4 of 8: Business Workflow and BizTalk
Date: Friday, March 26, 2004
Content Level: Level 300, Experienced
Speaker: John Peltonen, Partner and Cofounder, 3Sharp LLC
Abstract:
In Session 4, we will begin to create an enterprise-class solution that builds on the departmental solution we created in Sessions 1, 2, and 3. We will talk about business processes in general and how InfoPath fits in. We'll explore some of the different approaches to using BizTalk for workflow orchestration, and we'll look at some of the differences between BizTalk 2002 and BizTalk 2004. We'll look at best practices for schema design, paying particular attention to using an existing form's schema in BizTalk 2004. Along the way, we will create part of the workflow logic that the solution will use in BizTalk 2004.

Session 5 of 8: Creating the Enterprise InfoPath Solution
Date: Thursday, April 1, 2004
Content Level: Level 300, Experienced
Speaker: John Peltonen, Partner and Cofounder, 3Sharp LLC
Abstract:
In Session 5, we do the real work of integrating the InfoPath form into the business process. As we convert our departmental solution into an enterprise solution, we'll add a lot of functionality to the form. We'll also work with Web services-for example, there is a Web service that submits the form to BizTalk. We'll integrate with Active Directory in order to determine who is logged in and grant them appropriate access to the form.

Session 6 of 8: WordML and XSLT
Date: Tuesday, April 6, 2004
Content Level: Level 300, Experienced
Speaker: John Peltonen, Partner and Cofounder, 3Sharp LLC
Abstract:
In Session 6, we'll look at how Microsoft Word can play a major role in our solution. We'll need to understand WordML before going on, so we'll look very closely at that, and, just to show how powerful it is and that it's as easy as you want to make it, we'll even build a Word document from scratch. We'll use that exercise to generate a Word receipt based on the XML data from the InfoPath purchase order. We'll also build the XSLT from the WordML to display the receipt.

Session 7 of 8: Creating the Contract (Smart Document) from the InfoPath Form
Date: Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Content Level: Level 300, Experienced
Speaker: John Peltonen, Partner and Cofounder, 3Sharp LLC
Abstract:
In Session 7, we will build on an enduring theme throughout the sessions: the fact that XML data captured in InfoPath can be reused in other applications. In our enterprise solution, we'll look at how the submitted and approved form is consumed by Word 2003 to generate a contract document without having to reenter customer information. Since the contract document is a smart document, we'll look at how we used Visual Studio .NET 2003 to associate actions with XML tagging within the document to make it easy to create and fill in the contract document.

Session 8 of 8: Finishing the Enterprise Solution-Security, Deployment, Offline Caching
Date: Friday, April 16, 2004
Content Level: Level 300, Experienced
Speaker: John Peltonen, Partner and Cofounder, 3Sharp LLC
Abstract:
In Session 8, we will look at a few different elements of using an enterprise solution that haven't been covered in previous sessions. We'll look at form security, offline caching, and, finally, deployment. Once we've addressed these aspects of the solutions, we will actually run the entire solution from beginning to end.

Session 1: Business Process Automation Solutions Using Microsoft Office InfoPath, Microsoft BizTalk® 2004, and Web Services
Date: Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Content Level: Level 300, Experienced
Speaker: David Solomon, Microsoft Premier Services Consultant
Abstract:
Learn how to develop business process automation solutions using Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003, BizTalk and Web Services. InfoPath is a new program in Office that makes it easy to create rich, dynamic XML-based forms and to streamline the process of gathering and reusing information throughout an organization. This detailed technical Web cast shows you how to develop InfoPath line of business solutions that leverage Web services to interop with back end databases and servers including BizTalk and SQL Server. As part of this Web cast we will show you InfoPath solutions for specific verticals including Financial Services, Healthcare, and Government.

Session 2: Best Practices for Developing and Deploying InfoPath Solutions: A Technical Drilldown
Date: Thursday, April 29, 2004
Content Level: Level 350, Experienced
Speaker: David Solomon, Microsoft Premier Services Consultant
Abstract:
Learn the best practices for developing and deploying Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 solutions. InfoPath is a new program in the Microsoft Office System that makes it easy to create rich, dynamic XML-based forms and to streamline the process of gathering and reusing information throughout an organization. This detailed technical session shows you the best practices for developing InfoPath solutions and shows you how to deploy and upgrade InfoPath solutions within organizations. The Web cast will cover the programmability infrastructure available in InfoPath, how data validation events can be hooked into your business logic, the InfoPath solution file format, advanced programming features including customizable task panes, Debugging, and CLR Support, Deployment and Security Model of InfoPath solutions.

Session 3: Using InfoPath in Enterprise Scenarios: Integrating InfoPath with Line of Business Applications
Date: Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Content Level: Level 300, Experienced
Speaker: David Solomon, Microsoft Premier Services Consultant
Abstract:
By now, you've learned how easy it is to build simple InfoPath forms and hook them to databases. Now you want to truly integrate the forms into business processes to build end-to-end solutions- for which you need to "round-trip" data from line-of-business applications such as Siebel, SAP, etc. In this Web cast you will learn how you can use InfoPath as the front-end to architect compelling end-to-end enterprise solutions that involve line-of-business applications. This is an in-depth Web cast that will start with an overview of the key design principles and detail the guidelines and best practices for integrating InfoPath with Siebel and SAP. We'll show you how to create a front-end Web Service to connect to Siebel or SAP with InfoPath. We'll show you how we created Visual C#™ classes to represent Siebel data; create Visual C# classes to connect to Siebel; and then create an InfoPath Form based on these Web Services.

Premiums:

Participate in the first session on March 16 and receive a free copy of the Microsoft® Office InfoPath™ 2003 Developer Resources Kit including shipping and handling (USD $32.68 value) that contains:

60-day evaluation copy of InfoPath™ 2003
Product Guide
Product Demonstration Video
Software Development Kit
Hands On Training Course
Technical White Papers

Participate in all 8 sessions in the 8-part series, Developing and Deploying XML-based Business Productivity Solutions Featuring InfoPath and the Microsoft Office System, and receive:

64 MB USB Flash Drive* (USD $38.59 value)
Eligibility for participation in the InfoPath Partner Driven Proof of Concept Program (USD $10,000 value) - Microsoft Certified Partners only; see your partner manager for more details.

*While stocks last

City	Date
Brisbane	1 March 2004
Sydney	3 March 2004
Canberra	5 March, 2004
Hobart	9 March 2004
Melbourne	11 March, 2004
Darwin	12 March, 2004
Adelaide	16 March, 2004
Perth	18 March, 2004

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