Exchange and Outlook UPDATE, Outlook Edition—brought to you by Exchange & Outlook Administrator, the print newsletter with practical advice, how-to articles, tips, and techniques to help you do your job today.
http://www.exchangeadmin.com
THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY
Want to increase uptime? Try real time monitoring
http://www.tntsoftware.com/Exchange
Networking UPDATE Email Newsletter
http://www.winnetmag.com/email/networking
(below COMMENTARY)
SPONSOR: WANT TO INCREASE UPTIME? TRY REAL TIME MONITORING
Download the FREE White Paper, Real-Time Monitoring for Exchange 2000, and learn how proactive monitoring can increase uptime and availability for your Exchange 2000-based services. TNT Software's ELM Enterprise Manager 3.0 provides real-time monitoring for Exchange 2000, along with rich notification, corrective action, reports and more. EEM 3.0 will monitor SMTP and POP3 services, Outlook Web Access, and mail queues. Also included is end-to-end, MAPI-based monitoring of Exchange Server availability and Quality of Service. To see How The First-to-Know Stay Ahead(tm) download your FREE White Paper at
http://www.tntsoftware.com/Exchange
November 5, 2002—In this issue:
1. COMMENTARY
- Chandler
2. ANNOUNCEMENTS
- The Storage Solutions You've Been Searching for!
- Try a Sample Issue of Exchange & Outlook Administrator
3. HOT RELEASE (ADVERTISEMENT)
- FREE Exchange 2000 Deployment White Paper
4. RESOURCE
- Tip: Forcing a Rule to Operate Only on Certain Items
5. NEW AND IMPROVED
- Encrypt UniPress's FootPrints
6. CONTACT US
- See this section for a list of ways to contact us.
1. COMMENTARY
(contributed by Sue Mosher, News Editor, [email protected])
Can an open-source software effort fill the gap that Microsoft has left in the low-end collaboration product space? The Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) hopes to do just that with its plan to create an "interpersonal information manager" that not only manages email but also lets users share appointments, contacts, and tasks, without requiring a server.
OSAF is largely the brainchild of computer-industry entrepreneur Mitch Kapor, who founded Lotus, then helped design the Lotus Agenda personal information manager (PIM) in the late 1980s. Other heavy-hitters on the OSAF team include Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Macintosh designers, and Tim O'Reilly, founder and president of publisher O'Reilly & Associates.
The OSAF product, code-named Chandler, targets individual users and organizations with fewer than 100 people. Kapor's group had been working on Chandler for nearly a year before making a public announcement last month. The group is committed to Internet standards such as iCalendar and vCard, support for multiple platforms, and a product that users will be able to script and developers will be able to extend.
The Chandler feature summary ( http://www.osafoundation.org/feature_summary.htm )includes many basics familiar to Outlook users. The summary also contains several items that have been on Outlook users' wish lists for a long time: full-text indexing, automatic spam filtering, and full replication of data on home and work computers.
The OSAF Web site says that the nonprofit foundation has funding for a first release. The site provides design and development mailing lists to which you can subscribe to become involved with Chandler. Right now, OSAF is working out the mechanics of managing Chandler as an open-source development project with many contributors.
Under the hood, Chandler will use a variety of technologies, taking advantage of many programs already available in the open-source community. The wxWindows toolkit will let programmers create user interfaces for Windows, Mac, and Linux without writing a different application for each platform. Using the Zope Object Database (ZODB), Chandler will gain an object-oriented (OO) database that supports transaction processing, concurrent access to data, conflict resolution, and file and database back ends for data storage. Jabber will play a dual role as both an Instant Messaging (IM) platform and a way to share information through structured messages when both clients are online. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) will provide a standard way to describe the kind of data that users might exchange and which might not be structured the same for each user. The HTML layout engine and HTML text editor probably will come from the Mozilla cross-platform browser. Power users and developers will use the Python language to extend Chandler's basic features. Python will also be the tool for writing much of the actual Chandler code.
Outlook 2002 users are without a mechanism for peer-to-peer (P2P) data sharing. Microsoft Office XP lacks the Net Folders feature that lets Outlook 2000 and Outlook 98 users share data by stuffing it into special email messages. This development caught some small businesses by surprise when they bought new computers with Office XP pre-installed and found that Outlook 2002 users couldn't share with Outlook 2000 and Outlook 98 users. Although a variety of third-party tools add some level of sharing without a full-blown Exchange Server, none of them seems to have really caught on with Outlook users. No solution is easy enough, for example, for a family to use to share their individual calendars.
As I reported in "Outlook 11 Improves Connectivity, Adds Features," October 15, 2002, the next version of Outlook won't really change that situation. The only new collaboration features planned for Outlook 11 all depend on SharePoint Team Services, a browser-based application that in turn depends on a Web server and central database. From what Microsoft has shown so far, collaboration using Outlook 11 and SharePoint Team Services will be more complex and less functional than the P2P solution that OSAF hopes to deliver with Chandler.
Kapor, in his Weblog on the OSAF Web site, denies that OSAF is trying to beat Microsoft with an "Outlook killer" (in the words of a Slashdot article about Chandler). However, Outlook's lack of P2P sharing clearly opens the door to some other email or information manager to deliver a collaboration product to small businesses and individual users.
SPONSOR: NETWORKING UPDATE EMAIL NEWSLETTER
NEW! NEWS, TIPS, AND MORE TO KEEP YOUR NETWORK HUMMING
Networking UPDATE brings you the how-to tips and news you need to implement and maintain a rock-solid networking infrastructure. We'll explore interoperability solutions, hardware (including servers, routers, and switches), network architecture, network management, network security, installation technology, network training, and WAN disaster recovery. Subscribe (at no cost!) at:
http://www.winnetmag.com/email/networking
2. ANNOUNCEMENTS
(brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine and its partners)
Our popular IT Buyers' Directories (ITBDs) are online catalogs of the hottest vendor solutions around. Our latest ITBD highlights the solutions and services that will help you effectively manage your enterprises' storage. Download your copy today!
http://www.itbuynet.com/pdf/1102-itbd-storage.pdf
If you haven't seen Exchange & Outlook Administrator, you're missing out on key information that will go a long way toward preventing serious problems and downtime for your enterprise. Get a free sample issue today, and discover tools you won't find anywhere else to help you migrate, optimize, administer, and secure Exchange and Outlook. Subscribe now!
http://www.exchangeadmin.com/sub.cfm?code=efei232jup
3. HOT RELEASE (ADVERTISEMENT)
One of the most strategic deployment decisions you can make is whether to upgrade or migrate. Read: Exchange 2000 Upgrade Options vs. Migrate from Aelita Software. Download your FREE White Paper today.
http://www.aelita.com/updateUOM110502
4. RESOURCE
(contributed by Sue Mosher, [email protected])
Q: A user has set up a rule in Outlook so that all messages immediately move to a personal file folder (PST). This rule causes Outlook to process meeting request acceptances incorrectly. How can I exempt meeting requests from the user's rule?
A: The user needs to add a "Uses the form name form" condition to the rule so that it operates only on items that use the Message form from the Application Forms library (called the Standard Forms library in Outlook 98). After the user modifies the rule, special items such as meeting requests and acceptances from other users will stay in the Inbox so that Outlook can process them properly.
See the Exchange & Outlook Administrator Web site for more great tips from Sue Mosher.
http://www.exchangeadmin.com
5. NEW AND IMPROVED
(contributed by Carolyn Mader, [email protected])
UniPress Software released FootPrints Email Encryption, a middleware tool for Exchange Server 5.5 users who have installed UniPress's FootPrints and FootPrints for Exchange, Web-based Help desk and customer problem-management software products. FootPrints Email Encryption provides security for incoming and outgoing email. The tool protects internal and external email users' messages (including proprietary, sensitive, or private messages) by encrypting the transmission. For pricing, contact UniPress Software at 732-287-2100.
http://www.unipress.com
6. CONTACT US
Here's how to reach us with your comments and questions:
- ABOUT THE COMMENTARY — [email protected]
- ABOUT THE NEWSLETTER IN GENERAL — [email protected]
(please mention the newsletter name in the subject line)
- TECHNICAL QUESTIONS — http://www.winnetmag.net/forums
- PRODUCT NEWS — [email protected]
- QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR EXCHANGE AND OUTLOOK UPDATE SUBSCRIPTION?
Customer Support — [email protected]
- WANT TO SPONSOR EXCHANGE AND OUTLOOK UPDATE?
[email protected]
This email newsletter is brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine, the leading publication for Windows profession
http://www.winnetmag.com/sub.cfm?code=wswi201x1z
Receive the latest information about the Windows and .NET topics of your choice. Subscribe to our other FREE email newsletters.
http://www.winnetmag.net/email
Thank you for reading Exchange and Outlook UPDATE.
