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.
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October 15, 2002—In this issue:
1. COMMENTARY
- Outlook 11 Improves Connectivity, Adds Features
2. ANNOUNCEMENT
- Planning on Getting Certified? Make Sure to Pick Up Our New eBook!
3. RESOURCE
- Tip: Updating Exchange 2000 Email Addresses
4. NEW AND IMPROVED
- Remote Users: Solve Exchange Usability
5. CONTACT US
- See this section for a list of ways to contact us.
1. COMMENTARY
(contributed by Sue Mosher, News Editor, [email protected])
Microsoft unveiled Outlook 11 at the annual MEC conference in Anaheim, California last week, calling it the most ambitious release of Outlook ever. Administrators reacted positively to the infrastructure improvements for Exchange Server users. However, the most obvious changes are in the interface, which Microsoft hopes will set a new standard for Outlook as a premium email client. Outlook 11 will ship in mid-2003, as part of Microsoft Office 11 and at about the same time as the next version of Exchange, code-named Titanium. The version of Outlook 11 shown at MEC was beta 1, which will be distributed to testers soon.
In an Exchange environment, Outlook 11 will address connectivity problems that plague users with relatively slow or unreliable connections or connections that exhibit high latency, such as satellite connections. The result will be a smoother user experience, with no need to restart Outlook to switch between online and offline sessions. Outlook 11 also will send less data over the wire, especially when running with Titanium. With Titanium, Outlook will compress the data and pack the remote procedure call (RPC) buffers used to transmit the data. Microsoft says this will result in 50 percent to 70 percent less data sent over the wire, depending on the type of data in the mailbox.
In addition to the purely online and purely offline connection modes supported in earlier versions, Outlook 11 will introduce a new "cached Exchange" mode. In this mode, Outlook will download a local copy of the user's mailbox to an offline folders (.ost) file and automatically keep it up-to-date. The user won't need to perform scheduled or manual synchronization and will always work with the local data store. The folder hierarchy and calendar changes will come down to the client from the server first, followed by new message headers and the first 256 characters of text for all new messages. If the user has a fast network link, Outlook next will get the message bodies. On a slow connection, however, Outlook will download the headers only, then wait for the user to mark the message bodies he or she wants to see. Advantages of the cached mode include better performance, the ability to keep working even when network problems occur, and no chance that a user who needs to travel will forget to synchronize a key folder. Other infrastructure changes in Outlook 11 and Titanium will support RPC over HTTP so that users can connect to Exchange over the Internet without the need for a VPN.
The new user interface will be more colorful and take advantage of extensive research into email usage and onscreen reading. A reading pane on the right side of the screen will replace the preview pane at the bottom of earlier versions and will display as much as 40 percent more text. New features called "arrangements" and "search folders" will organize mail in a logical fashion so that users can more easily find the most important messages. Flagging a message for later action will be a one-click or one-keystroke operation.
At MEC, Microsoft showed nothing new related to collaboration in Exchange public folders. However, Outlook 11 will integrate with SharePoint Team Services, Microsoft's Web-based workgroup collaboration environment. An Outlook 11 user will be able to open a SharePoint Team Services calendar or contacts list in Outlook. Outlook will copy the SharePoint Team Services data to a local Personal Folders (.pst) file. The transfer will be strictly one-way—Outlook won't have the ability to change or create individual SharePoint Team Services items. Outlook users will also be able to create "meeting spaces," a new feature coming in SharePoint Team Services 2.0. Meeting spaces will collect documents and other information associated with an upcoming meeting created in Outlook.
With a new user interface and infrastructure changes aimed at better performance on a variety of networks, Outlook 11 has a lot to offer both administrators and users. The new version of Outlook Web Access (OWA) coming in Titanium will use a similar interface, including the new "search folders," and will support tasks for the first time.
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2. ANNOUNCEMENT
(brought to you by Windows & .NET Magazine and its partners)
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3. RESOURCE
(contributed by Sue Mosher, [email protected])
Q: How do I perform a mass update of email addresses—giving them a new domain name—in Exchange 2000 Server?
A: First, modify the Default Recipient Policy to make any new recipients use the new domain name. Then, you can follow these steps in Exchange System Manager (ESM) to change existing recipients' addresses:
- Under Recipients, select the Recipient Policies container.
- Choose Action, New, Recipient Policy. Name the policy "Update SMTP address."
- Click Modify. In the Find Exchange Recipients dialog box, clear all the check boxes except the "Users with Exchange mailbox" check box. You can further restrict the update through the options on the Storage and Advanced tabs.
- Click OK twice to return to the new policy's Properties dialog box.
- Switch to the E-Mail Addresses tab. Because you already modified the Default Recipient Policy, the new domain name will be the default.
- Click New, and create a new SMTP address. For the address, enter an at symbol (@) plus the old domain name. Select the "This Exchange Organization is responsible for all mail delivery to this address" check box.
- Back on the E-Mail Addresses tab, select the check box next to the newly created address.
- Click OK, and answer Yes when Exchange asks whether you want to update all corresponding recipient email addresses.
You'll definitely want to plan carefully before undertaking this operation, especially in a large company. Replication must occur throughout the organization before Exchange 2000 can use the new addresses to route incoming mail properly to all mailboxes. For more information about Exchange 2000's integration with Active Directory (AD), see "Exchange 2000 Server and Active Directory," December 1999, and "MS Exchange 2000 Server Directory Access and Integration with MS Windows 2000,".
See the Exchange & Outlook Administrator Web site for more great tips from Sue Mosher.
http://www.exchangeadmin.com
4. NEW AND IMPROVED
(contributed by Carolyn Mader, [email protected])
Seaside Software announced HiPerExchange, client-side software that can help solve remote users' Exchange Server performance and usability problems. The software eliminates long multisecond or multiminute download times, repeated waits for server refresh on every access, and synchronization problems when connecting to the network. For pricing, contact Seaside Software at 650-851-3810 or [email protected].
http://www.seasidesw.com
5. CONTACT US
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