Microsoft Office 2010 Beta - Available!

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Public beta releases have appeared for versions of Office, SharePoint, Project, and Visio that are planned for the first half of 2010. The Nov. 2009 betas are feature-complete, meaning that they are close to what Microsoft plans for production versions. Consequently, these releases offer an early opportunity for organizations to evaluate the upcoming versions in depth and make decisions on their deployment.

Feature-complete previews of the following products are now available:

• Office 2010. The next version of the Office suite for word processing, spreadsheet, e-mail, database, and presentation applications will deliver many improvements to specific components. For example, Outlook will add features to reduce e-mail overload, such as the ability to opt out of specific e-mail conversations, Excel will improve charting and data filtering, and PowerPoint and Word will include tools for editing embedded video. The Office 2010 user interface will enable more customization by users and includes a new Backstage mode for tasks that affect an entire document, such as editing document properties, saving, and printing. Unlike previous versions that were 32-bit only, Office 2010 will be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit (x64) versions. It will run on Windows XP SP2 or later.
• Project and Project Server 2010. Planned features for Microsoft's project management product line include adoption of the Fluent client interface (including the Ribbon) first introduced in some Office 2007 applications; a timeline view that summarizes upcoming project deadlines and status; user-controlled task scheduling that allows users to define task parameters, such as start date and time, or duration, and lock them even if other tasks are modified; and improved scheduling and reporting support in the Web interface. Project Professional 2010 will include a new Team Planner that lets users flexibly allocate resources and identify and resolve potential problems, such as unscheduled or unassigned tasks, which are highlighted in color. Changing task assignments or schedules can be performed simply by dragging the task to a new owner or to a new start date and time. Project Server 2010 will incorporate functions of Project Portfolio Server, enabling managers to analyze sets of planned or in-process projects on a variety of business criteria. Project Server 2010 will depend on SharePoint Server 2010 and require 64-bit (x64) editions of Windows Server (2008 or later).
• Visio 2010. The next version of the Visio diagramming program will adopt Office Fluent UI features such as the Ribbon to help users locate commonly used commands and options, make further improvements in automatic layout, enable workflow authoring for SharePoint sites, and add new business process documentation templates (such as templates for Business Process Modeling Notation). Developers will be able to run Visio 2010 inside the Visual Studio 2010 programming environment to debug customizations, as they can now with other Office applications.
• SharePoint 2010. The SharePoint Web site management products include SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services (which will be renamed SharePoint Foundation in the 2010 version). The 2010 versions will deliver many new capabilities for sharing Office documents, including the Office Web Apps server applications, which enable users to edit Office documents in a browser, and a coauthoring feature that enables multiple Office 2010 users to edit a document simultaneously. Other plans include social networking capabilities such as activity feeds (which enable workers to track the recent activities of their colleagues), substantially improved search, and enhanced enforcement of data retention policies. Backup, monitoring, and other administrative tools will receive many improvements, and new PowerShell interfaces will help automate and standardize administrative procedures. The many new developer APIs and tools include Business Connectivity Services for access to application databases, and services for hosting applications built with Visio 2010 and Access 2010. The SharePoint 2010 products require 64-bit (x64) editions of Windows Server (2008 or later) and will not support Internet Explorer 6.

Availability and Resources

Beta downloads and further information are available at www.microsoft.com/Office/2010 and www.microsoft.com/SharePoint/2010.