On Tuesday, 27th March, I delivered the EVO (Exchange, Vista and Office) Launch event at the Microsoft Offices in Edinburgh for VBUG Scotland. In this packed session I attempted to cover as many of the new features for Developers to be aware of in the new products Vista and Office 2007. Unfortunately the session overran and thanks to those who stayed that extra bit longer to hear some more. The slides are linked below, if you wish to take a look at them and if you have any questions please email me using the contact form and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

I enjoyed coming up to Scotland and enjoyed delivering the event, gained more experience and had some interesting conversations with delegates, listening to opinions on the new software and their experiences with Vista and Office. Questions were plentiful and interesting and a couple which I had to do some further research on are detailed below.

• Network Access Protection - How is it configured and how is it managed in infrastructure - is it a Vista only feature?
• Manifest files in UAC aware applications, are the elevation rights defined for application or process?

To tackle Network Access Protection, this is a feature which enforces policies on networks as to requirements for clients to connect to the network, this is achieved by checking computers against a defined security policy. The infrastructure involved primarily includes servers running Windows Server "Longhorn" and a Network Policy Server (NPS) which enables centralised policy configurationa and evaluation of the client health state. There is also a Network Access Protection Client currently in beta testing for Windows XP Clients. For more information see the Technet Network Access Protection pages.

Manifest files in UAC aware applications are used in applications to inform the Operating System of what the application needs, this will become a mandatory requirement for applications as Operating Systems evolve even further. The manifest schema is used to allow developers to set attributes to detail the requested execution level - for more information see the "Developer Best Practives and Guidelines for Applications in a Least Privileged Environment Documents on MSDN.

Resources, Slides and Code Samples from the session

Daniel Moth's Blog - A great source for lots of Vista examples, Daniel covers UAC, Sidebar, Sideshow. Indeed the samples I used were created with the help of his MSDN Nuggets

Check out Channel9's coverage of Windows Vista, plenty of Videos and Screencasts to take a look at

Windows Vista Developer Centre on MSDN and go and download the Windows SDK (warning this is a very big file!).

For more resources see the slides from the session. The slides are available in both Office 2007 - pptx format and Office 97-2003 ppt format:

• Office 2007 Format PPTX (5MB)
• Office 97-2003 Format PPT (8MB)

Hello World SideBar Gadget Sample

A lot of the community groups are holding EVO Launch events at the moment and NxtGenUG recently held their event in Coventry and from the article on their site it looked to be a complete hoot! Of particular interest is Dave McMahon's show stealing ReadyBoost song, check out the article and watch the video, hosted on Soapbox, of Dave's ReadyBoost Song.

On Tuesday evening, John Price and I delivered the VBUG North East EVO (Exchange, Vista and Office) Launch Event. Big thanks go to John Price for presenting with me, sharing the work, providing great support, delivering a great presentation and travelling from the East Midlands, it was very much appreciated John, Thank You! Thanks must also go to John Timney for arranging the venue and to BT for providing the venue.

We had a good turnout and the topics we covered were well received. Plenty of swag was distributed. We covered Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System.

Admittedly there was an awful lot of content and there was possibly too much to cover in one session. I will bear this in mind for any future launch events and indeed, in my own presentations. Thanks go to those who attended, I hope you all enjoyed the event and if you have any questions about the EVO Launch, previous or upcoming events, or questions about VBUG please email me on northeast@vbug.com.

The slides are available in both pptx (Office 2007) and ppt (Office 2003-97) formats:

• Office 2007 Format (5MB)
• Office 2003-97 Format (8MB)

I look forward to seeing you at the next event in late March, early April, further details to follow soon.

On Tuesday 30th January 2007 VBUG are holding our very EVO Launch event in Newcastle. Here are the details:

January 2007 sees the consumer launch of the latest version of Microsoft?s flagship product ? Microsoft Windows Vista. Along with Vista, the eagerly anticipated Office 2007 &Exchange 2007 are also released. Join us as we take a tour round the new features of Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 & Exchange 2007. Learn about the new features that can be developed against. We will also explore the recently released .Net Framework 3.0 and look ahead to the coming year.

Venue: Innovation Place Metro Riverside Park, Delta Bank Road, Newcastle upon Tyne. Newcastle upon Tyne. NE11 9DJ. Conference Room 3

Time: 18:30 - 21:00 (19:00 Start)

To register mail emma@vbug.com or call 01753 649680

I look forward to seeing you there!

Great News! The next VBUG Meeting in the North East will be the VBUG EVO Launch event. This will be on a much smaller scale than the Microsoft Event being held in TVP on 19th & 20th January 2007. In approximately two hours, myself and Gary Rowntree, Leeds VBUG Regional Coordinator, will be giving all attendees an insight into the EVO products, primarily Vista, Office and .Net 3.0.

We'll try to cover as much as we can but obviously won't be able to cover everything, but hopefully it'll be a fun and informative evening for all. So for more information see the VBUG website for more information and details of how to register for the event. Currently the details of the Venue is to be confirmed. Keep an eye on the VBUG website and this blog as confirmed details will be posted as soon as they're confirmed!

There is to be a two day Vista and Office 2007 Developer Launch event at the Microsoft UK Campus in Thames Valley Park, Reading on Friday 19th January 2007 and Saturday 20th January 2007. The two days enable developers to see the new features in the Vista and Office and on the Saturday, there will be an opportunity to gain some hands on experience developing applications for both.

Day One (Friday) will include sessions detailing various new features of each platform and how to take advantage of the new products, and the keynote will be delivered by Sanjay Parthasarathy, Vice President of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft. Day Two (Saturday) is a day in which delegates will have an opportunity to write some practical code against the products, Vista in the morning, and Office 2007 in the afternoon.

For more information and to register see the following link - http://www.microsoft.com/uk/launch2007/dev/default.mspx

For those who cannot make it to Reading for the in person launch there is also going to be a very extensive online launch. You do not need to register for the online event just go to the above URL and you will be able to view the sessions online.