First Pluralsight Course Published!

In case anyone is wondering why I’ve been out of the blogging and social media scene for the past few months, it’s because I’ve had my head down trying to complete the authoring of my first Pluralsight course!

Well, I’m pleased to say that the course is now live!! It’s been a long journey and resulted in three scope changes, but is finally published. Also feel very privileged to have joined the ranks of the Pluralsight author team, comprised of so many exceptional people whose wisdom I’ve been following throughout my career.

The course is entitled Using Functoids in BizTalk Server 2013, and it features a deep-dive exploration of the eighty built-in functoids within the BizTalk Mapper toolbox, as well a brief look at creating custom functoids and hosting custom XSLT files. Despite the title, it is equally relevant to BizTalk Server 2010 users as the Mapper has not changed much between those two versions. (Come to think of it, the functoids themselves haven’t changed all that much since BTS 2006, even though the user interface was overhauled to great improvement in 2010.)

Here’s a preview of the course syllabus:

Module 1: Fundamentals
•    Introduction
•    Mapper Basics
•    Configuring Functoids
•    Overview of the Mapper Toolbox

Module 2: Text, Dates & Booleans
•    String Functoids
•    Date & Time Functoids
•    Logical Functoids

Module 3: Computations & Conversions
•    Cumulative Functoids
•    Mathematical Functoids
•    Scientific Functoids
•    Conversion Functoids

Module 4: Database Lookups & Cross-Referencing
•    Database Functoids

Module 5: Advanced Functoids
•    Looping
•    Value Mapping
•    Iteration
•    Index
•    Record Count
•    Nil Value
•    Table Looping
•    Table Extractor
•    Assert
•    Mass Copy

Module 6: Arbitrary Scripting
•    Scripting Functoid using:
•    Inline .NET Code
•    Inline XSLT
•    XSLT Template
•    External Assembly

Module 7: Extending the Mapper
•    Custom Functoids
•    Custom XSLT

 

The course features lots of demos, especially concentrating on the lesser known functoids such as the Database Functoids (have you ever actually used these?) and others that are often tricky to configure like the Table Looping & Extract functoids. By the end of this course you should feel comfortable wielding the entire toolkit.

My original intent was the focus the course on the Mapper as a whole, but with 4 1/2 hours of content on the functoids alone, I thought it was best to narrow the scope! There will be another course later in the year that will cover the Mapper in general, including some advanced topics such as automated testing, setting hidden properties, looking at various mapping patterns like Muenchian Grouping, and discussing some best practices.

But first… I’m going to go to sleep for about 4 months!