U2U organizes lots of events for Independent Software Vendors (ISV) that want to implement the latest Microsoft technologies into their applications. In 2004 we organized several business case driven trainings on ASP.NET, XML Web Services, Office 2003 Smart Client technologies, Microsoft Portal technologies, Business Intelligence technologies...

IBF & Office 2003 Coaching Program

This coaching program will help you as ISV to integrate Office Smart Client and Information Bridge technologies: ISV developers can create solutions that connect Microsoft Office System programs to line-of-business systems in an intuitive, cost-effective way. These solutions extend the value of the Microsoft Office System by providing the ability for information workers to consume line-of-business data that is, to view, retrieve, and act on critical business information within the Microsoft Office applications. Kick of training on 29 & 30 November. More info on CoursePage.aspx?CODE=BUSIW1

Pictures from the IBF Office 2003 Coaching Program for ISV by U2U @ Microsoft Brussels

Microsoft EMEA Bootcamps on Microsoft Integrated Portal Technologies

in Lisbon (Portugal), Cairo (Egypt) and Brussels (Belgium).

The first three MIPT bootcamp were conducted by Patrick Tisseghem in Lisbon and Brussels. The MIPT bootcamp covers technologies and products such as Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Windows SharePoint Services, Content Management Server 2002, the Microsoft Solutions for Internet Business and the related products as the connector between CMS and SPS, the accelerators and the WSS adapter of BizTalk Server 2004. Four days emerged into all of this from an IT, developer and business perspective.

The next bootcamp will be organized from 10-13 January 2005 at U2U in Brussels.

Registration is limited to 15 participants and can be done by registering online (click here). First come first served. The price for the bootcamp is € 1.280 for the 4 days. Read more on the bootcamp program...

Pictures from MIPT Bootcamp in by U2U onsite in Cairo Egpyt (Nov 2004)

ISV Community Days

The "ISV Community Days" is organized by HP And Microsoft on 14 December 2004 in Brussels with U2U speakers delivering the following sessions:

 Developing Identity & Access-aware Applications (Securing your Application with Windows Server 2003 and the Roadmap to Federated Identity)

by Peter Himschoot U2U.

Today customers are looking for guidance on how to avoid introducing new directories and authentication schemes that increase complexity and undermine the goals of a successful identity and access management strategy. This presentation provides guidelines for developing applications that use the active directory and security services of the Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003.

 Developing your software for collaboration

by Patrick Tisseghem U2U.

Information access and collaborative document sharing are becoming key aspects of today’s applications. Today with Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 you can build rich collaboration interfaces into your applications to provide consolidated views of information through Windows SharePoint Server technologies, provide rich workflow scenarios between different applications and extend the presence information brought to the client to provide rich interaction and collaboration between users which was never thought possible.

ISV CIO Day at Developer & IT Pro Days 2005

The ISV CIO Day is organized as a dedicated exclusive side track at the Developer & IT Pro Days 2005, 1 Feb 2005. The CIO/CTO's of the BeLux ISV community will be able to attend a special program about the new productivity features that are available in Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. Microsoft together with U2U speakers will show the ISVs the new powerfull capabilities.

U2U articles for the ISV Community

The Articles on Office 2003 Smart Client Technologies and SharePoint 2003

1. Processing InfoPath Data in SharePoint Libraries
   This article provides an overview of how to process incoming InfoPath XML Data in SharePoint Libraries . In addition, it shows you how you can avoid complex XPath statements within your .NET code by generating an object model out of your InfoPath form and de-serialize the incoming XML to an object created from the root class. Read the article
    
2. Building Web Parts for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies
   Part 1 - Basic Steps
   This article is part one of a series of articles demonstrating in a hands-on manner the different techniques of building, packaging, deploying and using Web Parts in both Windows SharePoint Services sites and SharePoint Portal pages. The focus of this first article is on the basics. You will learn how to create a Web Part in Visual Studio .NET 2003, package and deploy it, and some of the debugging techniques. The Web Part built will allow a user to enter the name of an author in a text box and access the Amazon Web Service to retrieve all the books written by this author. Read the article
    
3. Building Web Parts for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies
   Part 2 - Web Parts and User Controls
   Several people mentioned the possible usage of user controls in the development process of Web Parts for SharePoint pages in the newsgroups available on the Web. This article summarizes all these ideas and describes a framework for building Web Parts making use of ASP.NET user controls. Read the article
    
4. Building Web Parts for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies
   Part 3 - Connectable Web Parts 
   Part 3of the SharePoint series discusses the basic steps of creating connectable Web Parts. We are going through the basic steps of creating two Web parts that are able to interchange data with each other. Developers of Web parts can implement standard WSS interfaces (provider and/or consumer) that are recognized by the WSS Web part framework and as a result allow users of the Web parts to make a connection between the two.
     Read the article
      
5. Smart Tag Development for Microsoft Office 2003
   In Office XP, the recognition of smart tag types is supported in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. From Office 2003 this has been extended to PowerPoint 2003 and Access 2003 as well. As a user enters pieces of information in either Word or Excel, strings of certain types are automatically smart-tagged at document creation time. Support has also been added for exposing smart tag actions within Internet Explorer, so that documents created with these Office applications will retain their smart tags when viewed as a Web page. This sample module that is extracted from U2U courseware "Developing Microsoft Office 2003 Solutions”, explains how to develop smart tags.
     Download the sample module "Smart Tag Development for MS Office 2003 (1.4 Mb in PDF format).
      
6. The Information Bridge Framework 1.0
   The Bridge between MS Office 2003 and Line-Of-Business (LOB) applications.
   Traditional Line-Of-Business (LOB) systems that process operational data are completely different from desktop systems used by information workers who are using Microsoft Office. Both environments have a common goal: support business processes, but they have a different line of approach. The Information Bridge Framework (IBF) allows us to bridge the gap between these two worlds. IBF is a new framework, particularly designed for the information worker that uses more than one Line-Of-Business application, but who also wants to work with Microsoft Office 2003 simultaneously. In particular IBF is exceptionally useful in organizations where there is a need to open business applications and processes to information workers, from within Microsoft Office smart clients.
     Download the U2U article on IBF 1.0
      
7. Het Information Bridge Framework 1.0
   De brug van MS Office 2003 naar Line-Of-Business (LOB) toepasssingen - Nederlandstalige versie  
   Traditioneel is er een diepe kloof tussen de Line-Of-Business (LOB) systemen waarin operationele gegevens worden beheerd en de desktopomgeving met Microsoft Office die gebruikt wordt door de informatiewerkers. Beide omgevingen hebben een gezamelijk doel, met name het ondersteunen van de bedrijfsprocessen, maar hun invalshoek is verschillend. Het Microsoft Information Bridge Framework (IBF) laat ons toe om beide werelden te verbinden. IBF is een nieuw framework speciaal ontwikkeld voor de informatiewerker die gebruik maakt van een of meerdere Line-Of-Business-toepassingen maar gelijktijdig met Microsoft Office 2003 wil werken. IBF is vooral inzetbaar bij organisaties waar er een nood is om informatiewerkers meer productief te maken, door bedrijfstoepassingen en -processen toegankelijk te maken vanuit Microsoft Office smart-clients. 
     Download dit articel van U2U over IBF 1.0
      
8. Information Bridge Framework 1.0 in 5 steps
   Your first Information Bridge Framework tutor
   The objective of this tutor is to show how enterprise data can be consumed from within an Office application by means of the Information Bridge Framework technology. As example of a business case we consider an information worker using Microsoft Word 2003 and being confronted with a customer code in the Word document. By means of smart tags and web services developed according to Information Bridge guidelines, the customer code is looked up and the corresponding business data about the customer is shown in the Information Bridge Framework task pane.  
     Download the tutor on IBF 1.0