Session tracks
As usual, we'll have a large number of sessions across a diverse range of products and technologies, and we are scheduling more and more each day, so keep checking back here for the sessions that interest you. This page contains the sessions we've scheduled so far.
We'll have multiple theatres running concurrently over the two days of the conference, so you'll have plenty to do and see.
Keynote
Title: The IT story for Office 2010
Speaker: Andrew Coates
and Alistair Speirs
In this session we will cover features that only the IT crowd can love and what
a plan for business productivity should like and what areas will need focus.
With Office 2010 and the introduction of increased support for things like application virtualisation, UI changes, enterprise development and more, having a proper strategy for delivering business productivity is more important than ever. Moreover, there will be entirely new areas of productivity to consider in deployment plans with the most notable being the web and mobile companions.
ICT Industry track
Title: Australian ICT Industry bodies and how
they benefit you
Speaker: Prof.
Michael Blumenstein
In this session, Prof. Blumenstein will speak about the activities of the
Australian Computer Society (ACS), as well as the initiatives of the State
Sponsored ICT Skills Formation Strategy Leaders Group (of which he is a
member) for promoting ICT Careers in Queensland.
Access track
Title:
Access 2010: Macros
Speaker:
Rob Cooper
There have been several changes to macros in Access 2010 to help create rich
applications for both Access and Access Services. Rob will show how to use the
new macro designer which adds support for improved programming constructs and
will discuss using data macros to add logic to the data layer.
Title:
Designing New User Experiences in Access 2010
Speaker: Rob Cooper
Moving Access applications to SharePoint and to the web provided an opportunity
to add new controls for Forms, and to improve the look of forms and reports.
During this session, you will dive into new features in Access 2010 that enhance
the design experience and the final product of an Access application running in
either Access or Access Services. The session will demonstrate the new web
browser and navigation controls, improvements made to Layout view, and how to
apply themes and styles to your applications.
Title:
Access 2010: Access Services
Speaker: Rob Cooper
We don't have Rob's session abstract yet, but we're expecting it
shortly. Stay tuned.
Title: Build Robust Applications by Avoiding
Hard-Coding
Speaker: Armen Stein
How do you make sure your application will work under the most circumstances,
even if it is moved to another network? How do you code business rules that will
tolerate flexible data? Armen will show how to use table structures and coding
techniques to make sure your applications will work properly in your
ever-changing business environment.
Title: Panels instead of Tabs
Speaker: Armen Stein
Access developers love tabs. They’re easy to implement and they get the job
done. But if you have too many of them, you will confuse your users and slow
down your application. Armen will show how J Street Technology uses “panels”
instead of tabs for a clean, easy to understand interface and high performance,
especially in client-server scenarios.
Title: Estimating Software Projects
Speaker: Armen Stein
As a database software developer, estimating a project can be one of the most
difficult tasks you will face. Armen will present techniques for estimating
projects, preparing for the unknown, and communicating with your customer.
Title: Prototyping Access Applications with
Microsoft Visio
Speaker: Armen Stein
Have you ever wanted to quickly design screens and reports to help users
understand what their new system could look like? Armen will show why and how to
use Visio to design your next Access application. You'll see how to use stencils
to quickly build design sketches that will match your application. You'll also
see how Visio layers can unleash the power of quickly showing or hiding
information, depending on whether you're talking to customers or developers.
Attendees will receive J Street's Visio templates and stencils!
Title: DVD Buttons on Access Forms
Speaker: Armen Stein
For best performance, we know that we should open detail forms to just one
record at a time. But then we lose an easy way for the user to quickly navigate
between records. In this presentation, Armen will show how J Street Technology
implements "DVD buttons" on detail forms. Once you understand how they work,
you'll be able to add them to your own forms. Attendees will receive example
code.
Title: Where Microsoft Access Fits in the
Overall Database Strategy of an Organization
Speaker: Luke Chung
This is not a technical discussion but has been very helpful to many Access
enthusiasts to better position Access in their firms. I’ve given this talk to
many groups, conferences, and meetings with CIO/CTOs.
Title: Data Analysis Tips and Techniques in
Microsoft Access
Speaker: Luke Chung
Takes basic query techniques to advanced queries and code.
Title: Taking over an Existing Access
Application
Speaker: Luke Chung
How to deal with legacy systems and the approaches and tools we use at FMS. With
all the existing Access applications and employee turnover, this is a major
challenge for most organizations and Access developers. We have ways to help
people stabilize existing systems, establish a foundation for making and
deploying enhancements, getting some quick wins, and implementing improvements
and processes over time. It’s all about establishing trust and having a game
plan.
Title: Error Handling Tips and Techniques in VBA
Speaker: Luke Chung
How to create a robust error handling system to trap, diagnose and quickly
respond to problems users encounter. A paper I wrote on this topic was published
on MSDN in August (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee358847.aspx)
Title: Reporting Tips and Techniques in VBA
Speaker: Luke Chung
Creating complex reports with little or no code, to creating output in
sophisticated HTML pages with VBA.
Title: Favorite Features in Access 2007 that
Didn’t Exist Before
Speaker: Luke Chung
For people still migrating to Access 2007 or questioning why, this presentation
covers the many things that are helpful for Access applications that didn’t
exist before or were impossible or difficult to implement.
Title: How FMS products help you create, enhance
and maintain Microsoft Access databases
Speaker: Luke Chung
Given our 12 products for the Microsoft Access user, developer, and DBA/system
administrator communities, this presentation is an overview of why we created
our products and how they can help people maximize their investment in Access.
This discussion is more informational than commercial.
Title:
Transitioning to Access 2010 64-bit
Speaker:
Graham R Seach
In this session, Graham will examine the issues involved with creating an Access
2010 x64 application from scratch, and converting an existing x86 application to
x64.
Title: Meeting the Reporting and Data Entry
needs of An Excel-Centric Client
Speaker:
Garry Robinson
Fifty percent of our Access database clients are from a engineering background
and they love to use Excel. This means they can have very fixed ideas as to how
things should be displayed in reports and how data entry can be setup. So as a
developer, I find it is often necessary to produce reports where rows are
columns and columns are rows. Whilst crosstab queries will go part of the way to
resolving this issue, its better to build queries with iif functions for this
role. Another tricky situation arises when data entry forms need to be setup
like grids for no other reason than that is what the client is used to in Excel.
Anyway this talk will discuss these situations and offer up general solutions to
keep your users happy. If time permits, other tricky query solutions will be
advanced.
Title:
Access 2010 and Hybrid Desktop/Web
Applications
Speaker:
Steve Schapel
As we move towards the world of Access 2010, we see that that our favourite
database program is extending and changing.
You will see a demonstration, focusing on of some of the new functionality and
direction. The emphasis will be on the concept of the hybrid desktop/web
database application, and how Access 2010 can help us here.
In so doing, you will hear the claim that Access is courageously setting itself
apart as the superlative tool of choice for an increasing range of data
management scenarios.
Excel track
Title: Using Excel as the presentation layer for
balanced scorecard
Speaker:
Ed Ferrero
This is a quick
run-through of a professionally designed Excel application. Balanced scorecards
provide a methodology for analysing business performance that is focused on
customer, business process, and business learning and growth as well as the
traditional finance perspective. This session demonstrates how to use Excel as
the presentation layer for a balanced scorecard.
During the session we will cover:
- Handling shapes in Excel to build a strategy map
- Building traffic lights and linking to data
- KPI management – handling different types of KPIs, including ‘soft’ data
- Linking Excel data to back-end databases
Word track
Title: Beyond the Ribbon: Creating a user
interface that users love to use
Speaker: Shauna Kelly
Developers communicate with users, and users communicate with an application,
through the user interface. Users often judge the quality of an application by
its user interface. This session will consider how to create a user interface
that will delight users. Tips for designing effective Ribbon controls. How
Developers can use the Backstage area of Office 2010. How to provide users with
information and help. How to encourage users to explore your application. Ways
to provide warnings to match the level of risk. What kinds of mistakes users
make, and how to rescue them from their mistakes. This session applies to
developers working in all Office products that use the Fluent Interface and the
Ribbon, with a special emphasis on Word and Excel.
Title: Bringing VBA user forms into the 21st
century
Speaker: Shauna Kelly
VBA’s user forms (that is, dialog boxes) haven’t changed since last century.
They can look very tired working in Office 2010 and Windows 7. This session
looks at advanced methods to give users the functionality they have come to
expect. How to give VBA user forms the look and feel of Office 2010 and Windows
7. How to let the user re-size a user form. How to store and reinstate the
user’s preferred size and position of a user forms. How to build user forms that
respond to the user’s screen resolution, so they work for very small screens
(like netbooks) but also take advantage of available space for users with very
large wide screens. This session applies to all Office products that use VBA,
with a special emphasis on Word and Excel.
Title: Building and deploying Word templates in
Word 2010
Speaker: Shauna Kelly
Your old Word templates from Word 2003 or before will probably “just work” in
Word 2010, but they might not be very effective. This session will look at new
features available to template builders. How to consolidate many existing
templates into one template. Using Content Controls, Building Blocks and Table
Styles. How Document Defaults, Styles and Themes work together. How to control
the styles that show in the Styles Gallery and Styles panes. Issues in deploying
Word templates in large businesses. This session is for Word developers and
advanced users of Word.
Office System track
Title: Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office
Development.
Speaker: Andrew Coates
Most of your users spend some, if not most of their day in one Office
application or another yet we insist on delivering information to them through
various bespoke applications and portals which, in turn, forces them to perform
expensive context switches. Now in its fourth incarnation, Visual Studio Tools
2010 for Office Development allow you to surface relevant information without
forcing your users to switch context. Learn how to develop, deploy and update
applications that your users will thank you for every day.
Title: Where’s my runtime? A tale of a mobile
database engine.
Speaker: Nick Randolph
One of the challenges of building rich client applications is often storing
data. Whether this be caching data to improve look up performance or data
entered by the user that needs to be persisted until a data connection is
available, the dilemma is always what technology should you use? With only a
small amount of data the answer is often a simple XML file but as the quantity
of data, or in fact the complexity of the data, grows it becomes inevitable that
you will want some sort of database in which to store your data.
In this session you’ll learn all about SQL Server Compact Edition (CE), a client side database technology that you can ship alongside your application. Unlike other database technologies SQL Server Compact doesn’t need to be installed and thus doesn’t require elevated privileges, making it ideal for both Office and ClickOnce applications. The session will give a brief overview of the technology, before diving into how you can use, configure, deploy and manage your databases.
Title: Document creation in the cloud with
Windows Azure and the OpenXML SDK.
Speaker: Nick Randolph
Since the release of Office 2007 there has been considerable work put into the
Open XML SDK. Unlike previous versions of Word that relied on interop assemblies
to do automation, with the new XML-based file formats you can automate document
creation as and when you need to. In fact, with the Open XML SDK there is no
reliance on Word, Excel or any other Office component. This makes it
particularly useful for building services on the Windows Azure platform. This
session will provide an overview of Windows Azure and the Open XML SDK, as well
as showing how you can easily combine the two to build high volume, scalable
document automation services hosted in the cloud.
PowerPoint track
Title:
PowerPoint 2007 and 2010- build it faster
and better
Speaker:
Glen Millar
In
this session, we will build a presentation in PowerPoint 2007, highlighting the
ways power-users can quickly build more effective presentations. We then
conclude with a look at PowerPoint 2010 and whether 2010’s new features will
help you solve real-world problems.
SharePoint, Groove & InfoPath track
Title: SharePoint WCM - Getting it done Right!
Speaker:
Chakkaradeep Chandran
People usually first think of Microsoft SharePoint Server is an Intranet Portal
platform, but it is also an enterprise Web Content Management (WCM) platform. So
what is special about WCM on SharePoint? Why shouldn't we use web parts, how do
we leverage site definitions, when do we build custom editing controls. Come and
get some insight into how to plan, architect, deploy and test WCM sites with as
much detail as we can squeeze in to 60 minutes.
Title:
Blooming SharePoint REV 2 - SharePoint
Server 2010 focus on design!
Speaker: Kathy Hughes
This session will focus on branding a SharePoint Server 2010 site. We'll dive
into manipulating and developing design artifacts and show how both designers
and developers can bake up a terrific SharePoint design to the tune of
SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010, and show you how to implement a
design from start to finish.
Title:
Working Offline with SharePoint 2010 and
SharePoint Team Workspaces
Speaker:
Joshua Haebets
Groove gave us the ability to take SharePoint 2007 content offline, SharePoint
Team Workspaces takes that to the next level. This session will dive into some
offline scenarios of SharePoint 2010 including working with 3rd party database
content and InfoPath forms.
Title:
Building an eForms Solution in SharePoint
2010
Speaker:
Mick Badran
This session will show you how to apply a multi-department Travel Business
Process to SharePoint, using InfoPath and Workflow.
Once travel is approved, we will aggregate the results and view them from within
a consolidated calendar...imagine being able to go to a central location and see
all people's travel.
In this session we will take a real world problem and solve it using the power
of SharePoint 2010 and Office.
This session will show you how to harness the functionality of SharePoint and
importantly show you how to apply this solution to many other 'eForm' scenario.
Join me and you'll be amazed at what can be built in such a short timeframe!!
Title:
Multi-Lingual 2010 Technology
Speaker:
Adam Clark and
Ben Williams
Knowing how to ensure that your content is translated from English to French,
German or any number of languages can be a tricky thing when using SharePoint
technology. In this session we’ll be looking at how to use SharePoint 2010
technology to achieve synchronisation of your multi-lingual content on your
SharePoint 2010 platform. Get to know how the multi-lingual process works, tips
and tricks on deployment and ensure that users can find the right information in
any language!.
Title:
Meta Data Management in SharePoint 2010
Speaker:
James Milne
Enterprises are faced with the challenge of managing metadata across multiple
business groups. In this session we will discuss some of the enhancements which
will help simplify the management of metadata within a large enterprise and
explore some of the new enhancements that SharePoint 2010 provides to help
categorise and organize your content.
Title:
Creating Feature Rich Electronic
Dashboards
Speaker:
James Milne
During this session we will create a rich Electronic Dashboard that allows you
to display KPIs from a variety of data sources. This solution will be created
with “No Code” to demonstrate how easy it can be to create a fully functioning
dashboard with ease. Through using the DataView Web Part any organization can
quickly and easily unlock essential corporate data and create rich meaningful
dashboards that can enable business users to make critical business decisions
with the latest information at hand.
Title: SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services
integration with Microsoft SharePoint Server
Speaker:
Mark Morton
This session aims to introduce the management, development and presentation of
SQL Server Reporting Services content
within an integrated SharePoint environment. We will see how content can be
developed using both the Business Intelligence Studio as well as the new Report
Builder environments and then published to a SharePoint document library. The
session will also demonstrate how this content can be displayed and consumed
within the SharePoint portal.
Title:
After deployment: Getting productive (and
getting a return) with SharePoint and Office
Speaker:
Paul Woods
So, you might have mastered deploying Office System technologies... but do your
end users have the skills, knowledge, and most importantly confidence to get the
most out of your significant investment?
In this session we look at the softer side of an Office 2007/2010 or SharePoint
deployment, and discuss strategies that can be used to drive user adoption,
productivity, and ultimately return on your enterprise investment in
collaboration tools.
Important Notice