What Administrators Will Want to Know about Exchange 2007 Features for Information Workers
By Kweku Ako-Adjei
Administrators aren't the only ones who benefit from deploying Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Some new and improved features also enhance the experience for your information workers. From the improvements to familiar features such as calendaring, resource management, Out of Office, Microsoft Outlook Web Access, and Microsoft Outlook Anywhere (formerly called RPC over HTTP), to the new messaging records management (MRM) functionality, your information workers will find it easier to increase their productivity. This article provides brief descriptions of these features and includes links to topics that provide more detail.
Calendaring
Improvements to the calendaring feature in Exchange 2007 help resolve reliability issues, enhance the scheduling process, and encourage more sharing of calendar information. Overall, these improvements make Exchange and Outlook calendaring a more reliable, powerful, and efficient tool for time management. For more information about these improvements, see the following topics:
Resource Management
Improvements to resource management help to provide a reliable resource management solution for your information workers and increase organizational productivity. For more information about resource management, see Managing Resource Scheduling.
Out of Office Feature
Improvements to the Out of Office feature let your information workers respond to important communications when they are out of the office. In Exchange 2007, information workers can now send separate out-of-office messages to internal and external senders. Information workers can now also specify whether external out-of-office messages are sent to all external senders or only to contacts. Additionally, the Out of Office feature lets information workers schedule Out of Office start and end times.
For more information about the Out of Office feature, see the following topics:
Outlook Web Access
New features are available in Outlook Web Access that create a new look, add new features, and improve usability. There are now two versions of Outlook Web Access: Outlook Web Access Light and Outlook Web Access Premium. Outlook Web Access Light supports accessibility features for users who are blind or have low vision. It provides a simplified user interface and reduced feature set compared with Outlook Web Access Premium. Outlook Web Access Premium requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP, or Internet Explorer 6 and provides features that are currently not available in the Light version, such as Unified Messaging and the ability to check spelling.
For more information about how to use the features in Outlook Web Access Premium and Light, see Outlook Web Access Help. For more information about how to manage Outlook Web Access, see the following topics:
Outlook Anywhere
The Outlook Anywhere feature for Exchange 2007 lets your Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003 clients connect to their Exchange servers over the Internet by using the RPC over HTTP Windows networking component. For more information about Outlook Anywhere, see the following topics:
Messaging Records Management
To comply with legal, regulatory, or business process requirements, many organizations must process, filter, modify, and archive e-mail messages that are transferred to and from their organization and the Internet and between people in the organization. Administrators can use the new messaging records management (MRM) feature in Exchange 2007 to help users and the organization keep the messages they need for business or legal reasons and to remove those they do not need. For more information about MRM, see the following topics:
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Kweku Ako-Adjei - Technical Writer, Microsoft Exchange Server