After some ten months of work, my Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Inside Out book was submitted to Microsoft Press last Wednesday.  The hard work now begins to edit, format, and complete the content in a form that is suitable for publication. At the same time, I’ll be tracking developments in the SP1 software. Microsoft will release a public beta of SP1 at TechEd North America in New Orleans next week and while I don’t expect major changes between now and the eventual release of the software, you can never tell. A feature might prove to be too buggy or unreliable to be released or some new code may be slipped in at the last moment to satisfy a request from a major customer. Software evolves and you have to keep your eyes skinned to make sure that you pick up the changes.

One such example occurred soon after the book had been submitted when Microsoft sent out a note to say that they had introduced a set of new cmdlets and had changed the way a major piece of functionality introduced in Exchange 2010 SP1 worked (no more detail is possible in a public forum due to NDA restrictions). Mild panic on my part duly ensued as I analyzed the changes, figured out how they actually worked in practice, and determined the effect on the book content. I also had to check in with the development team to understand why the change had been made just before the public beta was built. In the end, the changes resulted in two new pages of content that need to be inserted into the formatted copy of the chapters when they come back from the editors.

So I shall be monitoring software changes from here on in conjunction with the editing process with the aim of providing the most current, accurate, and up-to-date content about Exchange 2010 SP1 when the book finally appears in printed form, probably in late October or early November 2010 given the current schedule. All part of the joy of writing about evolving technology…

– Tony