Congratulations to the 2011 Add-on of the Year Award Winners! The Add-on of the Year Awards recognize top 3rd-party add-ons and apps based on LabVIEW. They have demonstrated high quality, excellent integration, and filling a key business need.

These awards were presented during the Add-on Developer Luncheon at NI Week 2011. It featured a recognition speech from Ray Almgren, VP of Marketing, Award Hand-off by NI Fellow and co-founder Jeff Kodosky, and the opportunity to network with various members of NI R&D and Marketing.

Please join us in congratulating these Product Partners for creating such top-notch products!

I've introduced a new section in the ADC Technical Guides for Product Documentation and put together several tools for you to use when creating documentation for your add-ons.  I encourage you to review the new document and tools!

Product Documentation - Identifies what to include in your product documentation and links to several examples of how to meet he needs and expectations of your customers.

Template for Readme Document - Provides you with a template for creating a product readme document

VI Properties Editor - A utility for editing the VI Properties for a directory of VIs from a single window

VI to XML Documentation Tool - A utility used to generate HTML documents to later be converted to CHM from VI documentation (the VI description and descriptions for controls & indicators).

*NEW*: EasyGIO Tools: http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/209024

*NEW*: VIHelpeks: http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/211048

*NEW*: HELPer: http://vigods.com/toolkits/HELPer/helper.html

In addition to testing your product in the new LabVIEW 2011 Beta, this post will identify any changes required by partners in order to support the new version.

Changes to the Locations LabVIEW Searches for NI Example Finder Data Files

LabVIEW 2011 searches for NI Example Finder data files (.bin3) in fewer locations than previous versions of LabVIEW.  To ensure LabVIEW finds example VIs you create for the NI Example Finder, you must place the .bin3 files in one of the following directories:

• labview\examples\exbins — Previous versions of LabVIEW allowed you to place the .bin3 files anywhere within the examples directory.
• labview\instr.lib
• labview\user.lib

Yep, that's it for preparing your Add-ons to support LabVIEW 2011!

-Bob

Alliance Day is a fantastic chance to network with the NI community and expand your business portfolio. It's also a time to participate in candid, advanced discussions about the challenges of being a software and hardware integrator in the real world. Over the last two years, the NI Systems Engineering group has been working hard to offer technical sessions that match the quality of the Alliance Day business sessions. In our third year as participants, we're proud to offer 12 new sessions that focus on solutions we've found for working more intelligently and efficiently with NI products. Here's a sample of what's available this year:

Advanced Error Handling in LabVIEW

Ryan King, Senior Systems Engineer, CLA

This session examines the challenges of implementing a full-featured error handling strategy in LabVIEW and introduces tools to overcome some of the most common error handling needs. We'll be tailoring the session to attendees familiar with LabVIEW who need to discuss software architectures from an advanced perspective.

Managing the Deployment of Your Real-Time Applications

Burt Snover, Real-Time Systems Engineer

Replicating a LabVIEW Real-Time controller’s personality onto new targets can be an intricate process. In this session, we'll demonstrate a useful (and free!) utility that manages replication of deployments, including the deployment's LabVIEW FPGA components.

Guidelines for Developing LabVIEW FPGA Projects

Kalyanramu Vemishetty, Staff FPGA Systems Engineer

Developing on an FPGA requires a different approach to project planning than on microprocessor targets. In this session, we will share some insights and guidelines that will help you estimate the tasks involved and finish your project on time.

Click here for more information about Alliance Day.

David Staab

Staff Systems Engineer, CLA

The are many successful companies that provide free software. Could this work for you as an LabVIEW add-on developer? Absolutely - in my experience working with partner companies, I have personally seen this model work quite well. As an example, there are quite a few free products on the LabVIEW Tools Network.

Let me offer some quick advice. If you are considering developing a free LabVIEW add-on, here are three questions to ask yourself ...

1. Does your company provide LabVIEW consulting or system integration services? This is the most common and successful business model when distributing free LabVIEW add-ons. It seems to be one of the best ways to recoup investment in the add-on.
2. Will the add-on promote your company? Customers using your product should think of your company as LabVIEW experts that they could hire if needed.
3. Does your add-on already exist (at least partially)? If you already use your add-on internally in your company, you have a better chance of being able to devote time to maintaining it when releasing it publicly.

...Because I will!  And I'll be presenting on Licensing in LabVIEW to the Orange County LabVIEW User Group .  Even better, we'll showcase some new never-before-seen features of the LabVIEW Third Party Licensing & Activation Toolkit 2011.  Everyone is welcome.  Come by to learn more about licensing and creating evaluation versions of your product.  Details on the meeting are below, and feel free to visit the Orange Country LabVIEW Community for information on future events.

See you there!

- David

Orange County LabVIEW User Group Meeting

Agenda:

6:15 - 6:30 p.m.

Complimentary Pizza

6:30 - 7:15 p.m.

TBD

7:15 - 8:00 p.m.

Creating a Software Evaluation for your Product in 10 minutes - David Ladolcetta, LabVIEW Partner Program Engineer, National Instruments

Quickly and efficiently implement licensing using LabVIEW Third Party Licensing and Activation Toolkit. Learn how to easily create an evaluation period for your LabVIEW Add-on or LabVIEW-build executable in order to protect your IP.

This year the product partner team has some great sessions that you won't want to miss at Alliance Day and NI Week 2011. Take a look:

Alliance Day

The Addressable Market for LabVIEW Add-Ons

Jeff Meisel - LabVIEW Partner Program, Program Manager

Learn about the market characteristics for LabVIEW Add-ons and how you can most effectively reach that market with yours.

Creating a Software Evaluation for Your Product in 10 Minutes

David Ladolcetta - Partner Program Engineer

Quickly and efficiently implement licensing using LabVIEW. Learn how to create an activation trial period for your product built with LabVIEW.

Professionalize your Add-on or App with Icons & Documentation Best Practices
Laura Hayden - Staff Graphic Designer

Steven Moser - Staff Technical Writer

Transform your code into a professional product using these best practices for icon creation and writing documentation.

For more information on Alliance Day, click here.

NI Week 2011

Product Partner Appreciation Luncheon

Jeff Kodosky - NI Cofounder & NI Fellow
Ray Almgren - Vice President, Marketing

Product Partner Team

Please join us for a delicious lunch with your fellow partners and take the opportunity to speak with Jeff Kodosky and Ray Almgren.  Add-on of the
Year Awards will be announced as well.

Creating a Software Evaluation for Your Product in 10 Minutes

David Ladolcetta - Partner Program Engineer, CLD

Quickly and efficiently implement licensing using LabVIEW. Learn how to create an activation trial period for your product built with LabVIEW.

LabVIEW Add-on of the Year Awards

Partner Program Team

Add-on of the Year Winners

Come support your fellow partners who won the 2011 Add-on of the Year Awards. (Winners to be decided)

Apply now for the LabVIEW Add-on of the Year Awards

Hands-On: Manage Reusable Code and Build Commercial Software with VI Package Manager

Chris Bolin - Partner Program Engineer, CLA

Do you need to package your LabVIEW code in reusable components that are easy to track and share with other users? Easily install VIs on multiple
computers and versions of LabVIEW? License your LabVIEW packages to quickly turn your code into a commercial product? Join us for this hands-on
session with VI Package Manager, where you will learn how to set up the most efficient processes for your team to build and distribute VIs and utilities - for free.

Introduction to VI Scripting in LabVIEW

Trevor Christman - Staff Software Engineer

Gain an introduction to programmatically creating, modifying, and inspecting G code. Familiarity with VI Server is recommended but not required.

For more information on NI Week, click here.

We're excited to announce this year's "LabVIEW Add-on of the Year" awards.    Apply Now

Eligibility:

1.  A LabVIEW Add-on is a software product that is complementary to the LabVIEW platform and may be any of the following:  Driver, Toolkit, Utility, Software Bridge interfacing LabVIEW to another Software tool, Set of UI controls, reuse library, code reference architecture/template, or FPGA IP.

2.  The product must meet Compatible with LabVIEW guidelines (Standard, Silver, or Gold level) as specified at the Add-on Dev Center (www.ni.com/addondevcenter).

Process and Timeline:

1.  NI accepts nominations submitted on behalf of the company directly, with the deadline for entry July 1st 2011.

2.  The LabVIEW Add-on of the Year award finalists will be selected based on the merit of the product and entry submission, with the winner chosen by a leadership panel at NI.

3.  NI will present the award at NIWeek 2011.

2010 Winners:

• Graphical System Design: DENSO Robotics Library, from ImagingLab
• Virtual Instrumentation: LabVIEW Localization Toolkit, from S.E.A.
• Platform Extension: SimulationX, from ITI
• Community: OpenG Libraries
• Overall: CalVIEW, from Drivven

We look forward to your submissions!

Apply Now

We have upgraded the testing requirements for the Compatible with LabVIEW Program to ensure each product level requires testing and review by an NI engineer.  With this change we hope to improve the level of quality across the board for Partner Products participating in this program.  I've outlined the core changes to the product testing requirements below:

Compatible with LabVIEW Standard

• Introducing testing targeting the 'Out of the Box' experience, consists of tests for the following categories:
  • Installation
  • Activation
  • Out of the Box Evaluation
  • Palette
  • Icons
  • Documentation
  • User Experience
• Detailed requirements: Compatible with LabVIEW: Standard Level Requirements

Compatible with LabVIEW Silver

• Introducing more detailed testing for products with a solid architecture that are also field proven, consists of tests for the following categories:
  • 2 Customer References
  • Installation
  • Purchasing
  • Technical Support Policy
  • Website
  • Updates & Upgrades
  • Operating System Compatibility
  • Palette Structure and Appearance
  • VI Connector Panes
  • Icons
  • Examples
    • Front Panel
    • Block Diagram
  • File Structure
  • Documentation
  • Deployment
  • VI Server and Communication
  • User Interface
• Detailed requirements: Compatible with LabVIEW: Silver Level Requirements

Compatible with LabVIEW Gold

• Introducing testing targeting very refined and field proven products with buy-in from NI business owners and with a clear marketing strategy, consists of tests for the following categories:
  • 5 Customer References
  • Technical Support Policy - 2-day Response Time
  • Real-Time Compatibility
  • Custom Probes and Template VIs
  • Error Codes
  • Icons
  • VI Server and Communication
  • Professional User Interface
  • NI Business Owner
  • Marketing Plan
• Detailed requirements: Compatible with LabVIEW: Gold Level Requirements

Whats Next?

These changes will go into affect for all new product submissions immediately.  For existing products and recent submissions, these changes will go into affect following NIWeek 2011; all products submitted for 2011 Re-Certification prior to NIWeek will be reviewed under the old requirements.

Please review this documentation and feel free to ask questions and leave comments for us!  This program is intended to support partner products and we strongly feel the introduction of free product testing for every level and documenting the requirements on the Add-On Developer Center will contribute to the success of our partnership.

Questions

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns by emailing us at labviewpartnerprogram@ni.com

If you are creating a LabVIEW Add-on and are planning to sell it, you will want to protect your IP from getting used without permission.  With the LabVIEW Third Party Licensing & Activation Toolkit, you can easily add licensing to your code to prevent anyone from using your add-on without permission.  You can also use the Licensing & Activation Toolkit to create evaluations of your product so that your customers can test your product for a limited time or with limited functionality before purchasing. 

With the LabVIEW Third Party Licensing & Activation Toolkit, there are two ways you can license a LabVIEW add-on.  For LabVIEW toolkits, you can use edit-time licensing to bind licensing to a project library.  When LabVIEW loads any VI from this library, it will first check if the license is valid. If the license is invalid or expired, the VI will be broken and the code will not be able to run.

The other option for licensing is run-time licensing for executables.  With run-time licensing,you add licensing VIs to the source code of your application.  These VIs check licensing when the application is running.  If the license is invalid or expired, you can disable functionality of the application, or close it entirely.

For more information on the LabVIEW Third Party Licensing & Activation Toolkit, view our community portal or contact the LabVIEW Partner Program team at labviewpartnerprogram@ni.com.

Bonus!!  Members of the LabVIEW 2011 Beta program can try out some new upcoming features of the Third Party Licensing & Activation Toolkit 2011, available on the LabVIEW 2011 Beta Forum.  If you are not signed up for the Beta Program, see this post for more details on how to get involved.

After reviewing the VI Description or Context Help for a VI, my next stop for documentation is often a detailed help document linked to from the LabVIEW > Help menu.  I've found this is an often overlooked feature for LabVIEW Add-ons, and with this post I hope to clear up a few misconceptions and unknowns about integrating into the Help menu.

To start out, let me first point out there is an article describing how to integrate into the LabVIEW menus on the ADC here: Integrating into the LabVIEW Menus

Supported Filetypes

There are a few natively supported filetypes for the LabVIEW Help menu, meaning LabVIEW will auto-populate the Help menu with these items if they're located in LabVIEW\Help:

• .chm - Microsoft Compiled HTML Help
• .hlp - Windows Help File (Windows 7 no longer ships with the program to open these files, WinHlp32.exe, but it can be obtained from Microsoft here)
• .vi - a LabVIEW VI!

**Note: Inserting an underscore in front of a filename will result in LabVIEW ignoring the file (ex: _filename.chm).

If you follow the rules above, adding a file to LabVIEW\help folder and restarting LabVIEW will result in a new Help menu entry:

Now for a few tips on naming:

• For any menu item, you can create a .txt file with a name identical to one of the files in LabVIEW\help and in the first line of the .txt enter whatever menu entry text you want to display in the LabVIEW > Help menu followed by the file extension of the help document you wish to rename.  For example, for ProductName.vi if I were to create a ProductName.txt and for the first line in the .txt file enter 'This is text.vi', I would see this upon restarting LabVIEW:
  
• If you're adding a LabVIEW VI as a menu entry, the Window Title is displayed in the Help menu unless you choose to rename the entry using a .txt file as discussed above.

Why Would I Add a VI to the Help Menu?

VIs can be used to load filetypes other than .hlp and .chm from the LabVIEW > Help menu.  There is an LLB located in the vi.lib\platform\browser.llb folder containing utility VIs for loading PDF, HTML, and other files on disk; you can find the LLB under vi.lib\platform\browser.llb.  I've attached an example below to demonstrate how to open a PDF document from the Help menu.

How Do I Create a Sub-Menu?

The Integrating into the LabVIEW Menus document discusses how to add sub-menus and organize their contents.  This can be useful in the Help menu when you have a handful of help documents and would like to group them in a sub-menu for your Company or Product.

I've had a few partners who are applying for Compatible with LabVIEW ask me various questions about "supporting" their add-on and what that means for them...

"My product is free. Do I have to provide support to users?"

Silver Compatible with LabVIEW products must have a "documented support policy." This means that you should set the correct expectations with your users. Let the user know how to get support for the product, whether it is through email, phone, or online forums (see next question). If your add-on is not supported by you or anyone else, mention that; however, I would strongly encourage you to provide some contact information for your users.

Gold products must have an "available 2-day response time." This support and response time can be an extra paid service, but it must be available. Add-on products can be used in system critical applications, and users expect the same response for a Gold LabVIEW add-on as they do for LabVIEW itself.

"I don't have a website, but I'd like to provide a forum for support questions. Is there any way I can do this?"

Definitely. Just sign into the NI Community, and create a new group. A few add-on developers have already done this for their products, for example AddQ, SAPHIR, and JKI.

"I've tested my add-on on LabVIEW 8.2 and 2010. How do I test on other LabVIEW versions I don't own?"

Enlist your users! Some of them may even be able to help you test on other operating systems, like Mac OS or Linux. Also, if you are an Alliance Member, you may already have rights to previous versions of LabVIEW. If you're not sure, just ask us.

Do you have any other questions on supporting your product? Let us know.

Is your product on the LabVIEW Tools Network? Then last Friday you probably saw a new email in your inbox: the March 2011 LabVIEW Tools Network Report. This is a new report that allows you to track your product's performance over time.

Currently, it includes:

• Past month's model page views
• Past month's downloads
• 6-month download history
• 6-month view history

What to Take Away From This Report

This report should give you some insight into the effect of your (and our) marketing efforts, as well as the general performance of your product. There are many factors that cause visits and downloads to change, so it is important to pay attention to the overall trends in your product performance as opposed to one specific data point. Many marketing efforts take effect over time - approximately 1-2 months.

Questions and Answers

How often will I get a report for my product?

You will receive a new report each month.

How do I request additional metrics?

Just reply to the report email with any additional metrics requests. We can't guarantee that your requested metric is available at this time, but we are planning on continuing to improve these reports. We want your feedback.

Can the same report be sent to multiple contacts?

Absolutely. Just reply to the report email with any additional contacts and we can add them to the contact list for your product.

My product is on the LabVIEW Tools Network, but I didn't receive a report. Why is that?

If your product was added to the Tools Network towards the end of the month of March, a report was not sent to you. You will receive a report at the end of April. Otherwise, just contact me at will.schoettler@ni.com and I will be happy to add you to the contact list of your product.

In case you haven't noticed, partners are a big deal at NI.  Our Alliance Program is 600+ companies strong.  Our annual Certified Architect Summit (held this past March) had great representation from our partners.  And the LabVIEW Partner Team is all about Extending LabVIEW and supporting our partners that are innovating on the platform. 

Over the past number of years (and at the request of our partners), the LabVIEW Partner Team has delivered key infrastructure such as:

• Scripting and other APIs to better plug-in to LabVIEW
• Compatible with LabVIEW certification program
• Licensing/Activation to create commercial products with evals and automated fulfillment
• New Marketplace - www.ni.com/labviewtools
• Developer Luncheon and Add-on of the Year Awards at NIWeek
• And much, much more

A new initiative from the LabVIEW Partner Team in 2011 is called "IP Spark", and the idea is NI wants to help accelerate the development of cool LabVIEW add-ons/technologies.  We've modeled it (and gotten inspiration for the name) from Microsoft's BizSpark.   Here's a few tips on how you can engage:

Tip #1:  Want to build something?

IPSpark is a great opportunity to get a technology to market quickly for hosting on the LabVIEW Tools Network.  You can check out the an overview of the IP Spark attached to the blog post below. 

Tip #2:  Have ideas for someone else to build?

If you have an idea for an add-on, but would like NI or someone else to build it, you can always post ideas to the Idea Exchange:  www.ni.com/ideas

Have questions?

Feel free to ping me directly at jeff.meisel(at)ni.com. Thanks partners for all you and keep #winning.

One of the most important steps in developing a LabVIEW add-on is creating an effective way to distribute and install the add-on.  However this is also one of the most overlooked steps in the process. Fortunately, distributing your add-on is extremely easy with the free VI Package Manager (VIPM) by JKI.

A VI Package is the file format (.vip) used for add-ons built by VIPM.  You can think of a package as a smart zip file: the package contains all the VIs and resources for a specific LabVIEW add-on, as well as instructions that enable VIPM to install, remove, and manage the add-on. Here are some more of the benefits of using VIPM as a distribution method:

Single File Installation

When you create a VI Package, all parts of your add-on are bundled into a single file (known as a package) including VIs, examples, documentation, palettes, etc.  This allows you to easily distribute your code to users without the chance of forgetting files.  Also, if your add-on is part of the LabVIEW Tools Network and you use VIPM for packaging, the add-on will automatically be included in the LabVIEW Tools Network VIPM repository. This means that customers will not even need a file to install your add-on.  All they need to do is open VIPM and browse to the add-on, or navigate to an install link that will automatically open VIPM and start the installation.

Multiple Version Support

If you need to distribute your toolkit for multiple versions of LabVIEW, you only need to develop it in one. During installation, VIPM will detect what versions of LabVIEW are installed and automatically compile the toolkit for that version of LabVIEW.  This means only one version of the installer is needed for all versions of LabVIEW.

File destinations

When VIPM installs an add-on, it places all of the different files into exactly the correct location that they need to be installed in.  This way your entire toolkit will plug into LabVIEW with the same user experience on every computer.  VIs, Examples, help documents and more will all seamlessly plug into LabVIEW without the customer having to know the details of where they should go.  Plus, the VI Package Manager will detect where LabVIEW is installed in case customers have LabVIEW installed in a non-default location.

Palettes

If your add-on has VIs or custom controls that need to be added to the functions or controls palette, you can use VIPM to automatically create custom palettes for your add-on. These palettes will then show up in the main functions/controls palette so the user can easily access and search all of the VIs in your add-on. 

Dependencies

If your add-on depends on other VIs or controls that are available on the LabVIEW Tools Network, you can use VIPM to automatically install required dependencies when your add-on is installed.  This way you do not have to explicitly include the necessary files that are already available on VIPM such as OpenG Libraries or the UI Control Suite.

Licensing

If you use the Third Party Licensing and Activation Toolkit for creating licensing and evaluation versions of your add-on, you can use VIPM to automatically license your library at build time and place the library and license file in the correct location at installation.  Note: build-time licensing requires the VIPM Professional Edition. 

Getting Started is Simple

Building your toolkit into a package using VIPM is easy.  For a step by step tutorial on how to build your first package, see the following video on the VIPM community portal:

Video Tutorial: How to Build Your First LabVIEW Add-on / VI Package

Useful Links

Download VI Package Manager

LabVIEW Add-on Dev Center

LabVIEW Tools Network

Contribute an Add-On to the Tools Network

JKI - VI Package Manager Community

Teach Customers with Examples

I cannot stress enough how important it is to provide examples for your customers!  As an engineer, I’ve taught myself dozens of concepts by first working through examples and then applying what I learned through practice.  Taking this approach to other challenges, I’m sure all of you will agree instructions are always important when you purchase a new desk, printer, automobile, or some other product which requires a bit of a learning curve on your end before you’re successful with it.  Think of example code, walk-throughs, and getting started guides as instructions for using your software products.  Let’s take a look at how this applies to a LabVIEW toolkit…

Getting Started

When I install a new LabVIEW toolkit, the first thing I’lldo is look for a “Getting Started” guide or some documentation catered towards a new user of the product.  This guide should begin by providing me with general setup or installation steps – even if I ignore the guide until after installation, I’ll often review the installation steps to see if I’ve overlooked anything important.

Product Overview

Next, I expect to see an overview of the product – for LabVIEW toolkits this could include an overview of where the palette is located and how it is organized, whether or not context help is available for the toolkit, how to find a more detailed help document, the location of example VIs, etc.

Context Help

Then, as a user, my next steps would be to explore the palette, open the help document, and eventually open and run example code.  How can you ensure I am successful once I go off on my own?  Direct me to your detailed help document for your VI’s context help and perhaps documentation to accompany your LabVIEW example VIs. 

Example VIs

What should you include in your example VIs themselves?  Examples should demonstrate how to use your toolkit in typical use cases – take NI’s DAQmx driver for example, there are a seemingly endless number of examples in the NI Example finder for a wide variety of data acquisition tasks.  While you probably won’t need as many examples as DAQmx provides, at least provide examples for common use cases for your customers.  These examples should demonstrate how you believe your toolkit should be used in a clean and easy to follow programming style, and with detailed supporting documentation (use free labels!).  Customers will then review this code and reuse the concepts they’ve learned in their own applications.  Good example code can help the success of your product by increasing the confidence of customers in your products, reducing the amount of support you must provide for new users (wouldn’t it be nice to just point someone to an example and have them off and running?), and reducing the amount of support for advanced users as they quickly become experts on using your product!

More Information

Please refer to the following document on the LabVIEW Add-on Dev Center for more information about creating examples: http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-13544

NIWeek 2011

This NIWeek marks the 20^th anniversary of the NI Alliance Program and we’re planning to make this year special for our partners!  We encourage you to join us!

LabVIEW 2011 Beta Program

To begin preparing for NIWeek 2011, you will want to register for the LabVIEW 2011 Platform Beta program and begin testing your products in the new version in order to prepare for Compatible with LabVIEW 2011 Re-Certification.  The beta application process is simple; go to www.ni.com/beta.

Third Party Licensing and Activation Toolkit 2011 Beta

If your product uses the Third Party Licensing & Activation Toolkit, you will also want to test out it's new features in the 2011 Beta.  After you join the LabVIEW Beta following the above intructions, check out the detailed download information for this toolkit.

Compatible with LabVIEW 2011 Re-Certification Process

Partners are required to re-certify their Gold and Silver Compatible with LabVIEW products for the Compatible with LabVIEW Program each year in order to maintain compatibility with the latest LabVIEW version.  We are accepting re-certification applications now and have the following deadlines:

• July 16, 2011 – Deadline for re-certification prior to NIWeek
  - You will need to submit prior to this date in order to launch with us at NIWeek 2011.
• December 31, 2011 – Deadline for re-certification
  - You will need to submit prior to this date in order to maintain your Compatible with LabVIEW status and listing on the LabVIEW Tools Network

In order to re-certify your product, complete the Compatible with LabVIEW Re-Certification Checklist using LabVIEW 2011 Beta 2: https://www.jotform.com/form/10721003790 

The following two additional items can be submitted through the form linked to above, or you can email them separately:

• A list of new features or a ‘Change List’ to describe changes and updates to your product
• Submit a new version of your installer or VIPM package for testing by Partner Program team

If you’re not already participating in the Compatible with LabVIEW Program, be sure to submit your product as soon as possible to allow our engineers time to perform testing and create a listing on the LabVIEW Tools Network.  Details for applying for the Compatible with LabVIEW Program can be found on the Add-on Developer Center here: https://forums.ni.com/t5/Developer-Center-Resources/NI-Tools-Network-Software-Requirements/ta-p/3521...

Get the Most out of NIWeek

We will send out further details regarding the Add-on of the Year Awards and other NIWeek events for Partners.  Continue to look for our updates through email and on the Add-on Developer Center in order to get the most out of NIWeek 2011!

The LabVIEW Partner team has interacted with a wide variety of developers building add-ons for LabVIEW. We've learned a lot along the way, so I thought I would pass on some of the most important lessons. Here are 6 tips to help ensure your product development is successful:

1. Identify your primary goals for creating the product. For some companies, the main goal is simply to sell the product and turn a profit. For others, the product advertises the company's consulting expertise. Some companies even use LabVIEW add-ons to drive the sales of another product. Identifying your goals is an important step, because many other decisions depend on it.
2. Create a realistic sales goal. What demand have you seen for this product? Is it direct evidence, or simply anecdotal? Talk with our team if you need help creating an attainable goal. Even if your product is free, you may still want to create a goal to gauge your success.
3. Plan your product marketing. Will you advertise on your website? Will you list the product on the LabVIEW Tools Network? How about creating sales brochures and PDFs?
4. Use an experienced LabVIEW developer. This may be the most important piece of advice. Creating a polished, professional product for LabVIEW requires expertise beyond simple development. If no one at your company is qualified, consider hiring a Certified LabVIEW professional (see lists of certified Developers and Architects in your area).
5. Develop a small prototype before committing to the project. Create a small, fully-functional prototype for a subset of the total features. This will help your company judge the difficulty of the problem and your developer’s ability to tackle it. It is also a chance to see if your plans meet customer expectations, which is vital for a successful product. Which brings me to the final tip ...
6. Identify and involve lead users. Lead users can help provide feedback on customer needs and expectations. Make sure you test the product in real-life scenarios with the customer. You should definitely engage lead users before the beta stage of your development; ideally you would interview them during the planning phase.

Have you developed a product? What advice do you have for other developers?

If you did not catch this session during NIWeek, Simon Hogg created roughly 2 hours of videos including his tips & tricks to UI development over on the UI Interest Group Community:

I recommend reviewing his content -- many of the cool custom controls and indicators used in demos during NIWeek were created by Simon and in these videos he shows how easy it can be to add great UI features to your applications!

-Bob

The attached zip file contains the source files for the 'Build a LabVIEW Add-on with VIPM' hands-on session held during NIWeek 2010!

Please download and unzip these files to a location on your computer and use the included MS Word document to guide you through the exercises.

If you have any questions or comments -- please fire away!

Robert Des Rosier

Partner Program Engineer

This NIWeek is going to be the best ever for Add-on Developers!  We've put together a cheat sheet that explains all the places to be for each day.

Here's a run-down:

1. Must-see sessions

• Monday, Alliance Day:  10:00-10:50 Effective Techniques for Building and Selling Custom Hardware and IP
• Monday, Alliance Day:  1:00-1:50 From Certification to Selling:  Go-to Market with LabVIEW Add-ons
• Monday, Alliance Day:  3:30-4:20 Grow your product business through Licensing and Activation technology
• Tuesday:  2:15-3:15 LabVIEW Graphical Scripting
• Tuesday:  3:30-5:30 Build an Add-on Hands-On featuring VI Package Manager
• Wednesday:  1:00-2:00 LabVIEW Add-on of the Year Product Gallery
• Thursday:  10:30-11:30 Building Commercial Software and Add-ons through Licensing and Activation

2. LabVIEW Add-on of the Year Award. This will be presented by Dr. Truchard, NI CEO on Monday during the conference kick-off.  (moved from Tuesday)

3. Add-on Developer Luncheon: NI partners are invited to a special invite-only luncheon.  Look for an invite coming (if we have your email) or email the LabVIEW Partner Team (labviewpartnerprogram@ni.com) to reserve your spot today.

Screenshot of the Cheat Sheet (just download the PDF attachment and print prior to your trip to Austin):

Something else you'd like to see?  Let us know and if we can't make it happen this year, we'll put it on the wish list for next year.

Calling all Add-on Developers!

We're excited to introduce a new award this year at NIWeek, the "LabVIEW Add-on of the Year".  Along with the award itself, finalists get the opportunity to present a brief product demo during an NIWeek session.  Here's all the details, and the official application is attached to this blog post as a Word document:

Eligibility:

1.  A LabVIEW Add-on is a software product that is complementary to the LabVIEW platform and may be any of the following:  Driver, Toolkit, Utility, Software Bridge interfacing LabVIEW to another Software tool, Set of UI controls, reuse library, code reference architecture/template, or FPGA IP.

2.  The product must meet Compatible with LabVIEW guidelines (Standard, Silver, or Gold level) as specified at the Add-on Dev Center (www.ni.com/addondevcenter).

Process and Timeline:

1.  NI accepts nominations submitted on behalf of the company directly, with the deadline for entry July 9th 2010. (see attachment below)

2.  The LabVIEW Add-on of the Year award finalists will be selected based on the merit of the product and entry submission, with the winner chosen by a leadership panel at NI.

3.  NI will present the award on Tuesday evening August 3rd as part of NIWeek 2010, and the finalists will have an opportunity to present their technology the following day Wednesday August 4th during the Community Track at NIWeek.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Here's a brief overview of the Compatible with LabVIEW program and how to get involved as part of the LabVIEW 2010 launch.

Click here to view the screencast (includes audio):