Now - All Courses are Online! - January 15, 2008

As of January 15, 2008, all of courses are now offered entirely online. We will no longer offer the CD/ROM and FTP delivery options.

The advantages of online videos are:

1. Instant access!
   
2. No long FTP download required, no corporate firewall problems.
   
3. Each video will have a separate discussion topic so you can ask questions.
   
4. Interact and learn with other students, i.e. BizTalk meets Web 2.0.
   
5. In the future, we will consider adding online quizes, labs, assignments and other more interactive learning tools.
   
6. New videos can be added, and existing videos can be improved.
   

New - BizTalk 2006/R2 Courses!

If that is not exciting enough, we have two entirely new video series that are also launching this week:

1. BizTalk 2006 R2 Intro course - Almost double the content of the BizTalk 2004 classes.
   
2. BizTalk 2006 R2 BAM - More info on BAM than anywhere else! Complete working demos.
   

Beyond that, we are also offering monthly teleconference calls as part of the platinum subscriptions. Via these calls, we will have more special topics, demos, and you will be able to interact and ask questions on a "live" basis.

Questions

I'm already a customer, will I be able to upgrade?
Yes! We will be sending out emails this week with a generous upgrade coupon. Since the BT2006/R2 course contains almost double the material, there will be an upgrade cost.

Will you be upgrading the BizTalk 2004 Intermediate Class (SQL/WS/FTP/HTTP)?
I don't have any immediate plans to update this course. It will be available online now in it's original format.

What courses do you offer online?

1. BizTalk 2006/R2 Introduction - 116 videos, 16 hours
   
2. BizTalk 2006/R2 BAM - 44 Videos, 8 hours
   
3. BizTalk 2004 Introduction - 41 Videos, 6 hours
   
4. BizTalk 2004 Intermediate (SQL/WS/FTP/HTTP) - 49 videos, 9 hours
   
5. BizTalk 2006 New Features (for those upgrading from 2004) - 15 videos, 3 hours
   

How will the online courses work?
You will purchase a subscription for the desired access period. The courses are presented via Moodle®, the most popular and successful open source learning management system. When you purchase via our shopping cart, the last page will allow you to set up your Moodle student account and options. You can then logon and begin your learning immediately. At the bottom of each video, we have now created a link to a discussion forum thread. There is one thread or topic for each video. So if there's something you didn't understand in the video, the instructor or one of the other students may be able to answer your question.


Our SharePoint 2007 end-user course should also be online by Jan 21st.
See http://SharePoint-Training.com

The video below shows how the Learning Management System works

Now - "Biztalk Training" teaches Biztalk 2006 as well. Learn Biztalk 2006 new features. As of January 15, 2007 I just completed 17 additional videos to get you up to speed on Biztalk 2006 and its most important new features.

At this time, I do not have immediate plans to re-record the prior tutorials, but will package the Biztalk 2006 videos on a separate CD (or FTP download) and include in the bundle deal. The Biztalk 2006 videos will also be available as a separate purchase for those who already know Biztalk 2004 and want to upgrade their skill set.

I think it's a wise idea to know both Biztalk 2004 and Biztalk 2006. As a consultant or an employee in today's Biztalk job market, you will likely need to know both worlds (2004 and 2006). I'm currently working on a project where we are updating a Biztalk 2002 system (yikes).

Product and pricing should be available here on Biztalk-Training.com by January 15th.

Biztalk 2006 topics include:
1) Visual Studio 2005 (the new interface to Biztalk tools)
2) Running Biztalk 2006 Orchestrations
3) Handling Failed Messages
4) The New Biztalk Administrative Console - it's great!
5) Recoverable Interchange Processing
6) Flat File Wizard
7) Other features such as the new GUID for SSO (Single Sign-On) and the Biztalk Configuration Utility.

Biztalk (a trademarked Microsoft product) is Microsoft's offering in the world of Business Process Management (BPM). Biztalk is great for "orchestrating" your business processes, which often includes calls via SOA web services to various disparate systems.

Neal Walters was one of 15 trainers that attended a the Biztalk "Trainer-the-Trainer" at Microsoft in Redmond. Since then he has taught the one week Biztalk developer course numerous times, and also taught the two day Biztalk Administrator course. So Neal knows what kind of questions students want answered and created his own training videos.

For a year, Neal worked with Biztalk 2004 at a Florida dot-com retailer of luxury goods, watches, diamonds, jewelry). Neal helped them put their products on Amazon and to process orders and various messages to and from Amazon. The second project was to handle orders form Altura (also known as Shop.com and CatalogCity.com). Currently Odimo is implementing a project with a third party vendor to improve international shipping. This last project taught us a lot about dealing with and integrating other vendors (things like scheduling, changing documentation, etc...)

Neal's second big Biztalk project was with Compassion.com, a non-profit in Colorado Springs that ties donor to sponsored children overseas. Compassion had developed a great SOA architecture, and uses Biztalk 2004 as the "command central" to call various web services to process requests from its website.

Neal's third Biztalk project is a HIPAA/Medicaid health care system with the State of New Mexico. In a six weeks (long hours) crash project, a Biztalk team of two rewrote the entire Biztalk 2002 system in Biztalk 2004. We are currently doing remediation for National Provider ID (NPI), which includes a trading partner management system. The state also uses Itemfield's ContentMaster to perform interesting translations, for example, from XML to COBOL/EBCDIC, so files can be transferred to the IBM mainframe.

I know that California based Unitek is offering several instructor-lead Biztalk training courses. Please ask for Melinda Lee, and tell her that Neal Walters sent you. 510-249-1060.

Neal also maintains a Biztalk Blog (see links on left Navigation menu).

If you need to get up to speed on Biztalk Development, then we have three CD/ROMS with over 12 hours of "screen videos". What is a "screen video"? In our videos, our instructor uses Biztalk and carefully explains what he is doing and why he is doing it.

Many people hate to read books, and love learning via demonstrations and videos.
There are currently few good Biztalk books available.



Click here to view sample Biztalk videos.

Hint - In Internet Explorer, Press F11 to toggle to full screen mode.

Have you had trouble finding a course that is designed for the "end-users", i.e. office works? So many SharePoint courses are designed for programmers and administrators. But when your company is implementing SharePoint, you may have dozens or hundreds of information workers that need a brief introduction to the most common functions of SharePoint.

We have designed a course to meet that need. You can provide your own instructor(s), or SharePoint-Training.com in conjunction with Best Alternative Technical Solutions (866-697-5844) can provide an experienced instructor at your site.

http://SharePoint-Training.com

Many sites use the Biztalk/SharePoint Adapter, and often use InfoPath as a front-end for updating and posting XML files to SharePoint. Biztalk can then consume the XML messages from via Biztalk's SharePoint Adapter (in Biztalk 2004 available from GotDotNet, but in Biztalk2006 is included with the install).