Microsoft Australia

The Microsoft Office “12” system is a breakthrough solution platform that includes clients, servers, services, and tools. Built on XML and a set of new extensibility technologies, it gives you the solution building blocks you need to help to meet today's business demands more quickly than building from scratch. This session will walk through some of the new features for developers such as the XML file formats, Visual Studio Tools for Office v3 and the new user experience technologies such as Adaptive UI, Galleries and Ribbons.

Speaker: Charles Sterling

In this session, we will cover a number of topics related to deploying Microsoft Windows Vista. We’ll look at the advantages of using a managed deployment process and how automating your Windows deployment can increase the reliability and manageability of your digital infrastructure while lowering costs. We will examine the new imaging format and the new image management tools developed for Windows Vista to simplify your deployment process. We’ll also cover the Windows Pre-installation Environment, which is the platform for installing Windows Vista. In this session, we will cover a few of the more important tools, like the Application Compatibility Toolkit, which helps to ensure that your legacy applications continue to function correctly with Windows Vista. Finally, we will go over some of the deployment management systems that can help administrators in Enterprise environments to automate the deployment of Windows Vista.

Speaker: John Pritchard

Windows Vista (formerly Windows code name "Longhorn") is a substantial advance in Windows, with significant innovations in the developer platform. Windows Vista makes it easier than ever before to build applications that are more secure, reliable, and manageable. The session will walk through “why” developers will consider to upgrade their application and the next two sessions will provide an overview of how to upgrade your applications to take advantage of these new features. Part one of this series will focus on fundamentals, Sidebar Gadgets, UAC and other security enhancements including infocard.

Speaker: Darren Neimke

A technical overview of work that builds on the new Windows SharePoint Services. This spans collaboration, content management, search, forms (including Microsoft Office Infopath) and BI (including Excel)

Speaker: Angus Logan

Part II in the Windows Vista II series will focus on upgrading the application user experience. The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly code named "Avalon") provides the foundation for building applications and high fidelity experiences in Windows Vista, blending together application UI, documents, and media content, while exploiting the full power of your computer. The functionality extends to the support for Tablet and other forms of input, a more modern imaging and printing pipeline, accessibility and UI automation infrastructure, data driven UI and visualisation, as well as the integration points for weaving the application experience into the Windows shell.

Speaker: Charles Sterling

In this session we will look at how to capture a Windows Vista image, how to view these image files, and edit these files and the configuration settings within the image files themselves. The updated Windows Pre-installation, or WinPE, provides a platform for the imaging features. We will discuss how the image capture occurs with the use of XImage, which is a command line tool. An important component of the new imaging capabilities provided with Windows Vista is the Windows Imaging, or WIM, file format. We will discuss how this new file-based image format provides advantages and capabilities beyond typical sector based imaging solution. Finally, we will look at options for deploying the WIM file. The WIM file is installed differently than previous images and there are new options for deployment within an organisation. We’re not going into detail of the deployment process, but will give an overview of how it works and its role in the imaging process.

Speaker: John Pritchard/Jeff Alexander

Part III of the Windows Vista developer Series will focus on creating the next generation Web 2.0 connected applications. Windows Communication Foundation (formerly code-named "Indigo") is a set of .NET technologies for building and running connected systems. It is a new breed of communications infrastructure built around the Web services architecture. Advanced Web services support in Windows Communication Foundation provides secure, reliable, and transacted messaging along with interoperability. The service-oriented programming model of Windows Communication Foundation is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and simplifies development of connected systems. Windows Workflow Foundation is the programming model, engine and tools for quickly building workflow enabled applications on Windows. It consists of a WinFX namespace, an in-process workflow engine, and designers for Visual Studio 2005.

Speaker: Darren Neimke

This session will cover technical fundamentals of WSS 3.0. It will reveal what’s new, what’s changed, the architecture, and describe the basis for the Office Platform. Offline offerings and scenarios will also be covered.

Speaker: Angus Logan

Part III of the Office “12” System for the developer; Using the Open XML Formats, the Office “12” System will offer a new a set of servers and services to extend beyond the desktop and deliver productivity applications in a rich web based experience. This session will walk through some of these servers, such as Sharepoint Server 2007, Groove and Forms Server. It will discuss how to approach commonly requested tasks such as leveraging Sharepoint Server 2007 to access Office client applications like Excel through HTML. Demos will include:

Speaker: John Hodgson

In this session, we will discuss many of the innovative design philosophies and development strategies involved in making Windows Vista the most secure Windows operating system to date. We will also look at the Reliability features in Windows Vista, we will start with how end users define reliability and how system downtime affects them. We will examine the different attributes of reliability and examine the goals for Windows Vista. Finally, we’ll cover in detail several new reliability and performance feature and improvements in Windows Vista such as the improved responsiveness of Windows Vista, new automatic recovery and the built-in diagnostics.

Speaker: Jeff Alexander