It took a while but Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Microsoft Exchange 2007 is finally here. For some of you this launch won’t change much but for those of us that use the OWA (Outlook Web Access - http://ex7.mail2web.com/) the impact is very significant. When Exchange 2007 launched last year there were a few key features from OWA 2003 that were omitted in the OWA for 2007. Early adopters of the new Exchange offering came to realize that there were some short comings with the new OWA. In my line of work the release of SP1 was a blessing. Personally, I was getting tired of having to explain that the missing functionality would be restored as soon as Microsoft launched the service pack. Well it’s finally here and now Exchange 2007 is a proper replacement for Exchange 2003.With the installation of SP1 on our Exchange 2007 servers our customers now have the use of the following features that were previously unavailable in the OWA.

* Personal Distribution Lists
* S/MIME (for email encryption)
* Rules Management
* Monthly Calendar View
* Deleted Items Recovery
* Public Folder Access

These features were still available in Outlook. Only those of us who used the OWA to view their mail were impacted by these missing components. Microsoft had its reasons for leaving these features out of the OWA but later announced that they would be returning with the launch of SP1. To say that we were anxious for SP1 to arrive was a bit of an understatement. As soon as we received the Service Pack from Microsoft we began planning the upgrade for our system. Our customers that had moved over to Exchange 2007 were looking for the return of the missing features and we wanted to restore them as soon as possible. Within a few days of receiving SP1 it was installed.

In addition to the return of the features mentioned above the OWA now has spell checking support for Arabic and Korean. For those of you that would like to take a read of Microsoft’s official write up of what’s new for Exchange 2007 with the release of SP1 move your mouse cursor over the following link and click away.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb676323(EXCHG.80).aspx

At the moment we are currently in the process of migrating our existing Exchange 2003 customers over to Exchange 2007. It’s nice to know that once we get everyone moved over that the features you were using on 2003 are now available in 2007. The move should be completed very shortly and if you haven’t received a notice from us about your account being migrated you will be very soon.  As an early “heads up” to those of you that use Outlook to check your mail you’ll need to edit your settings once you’ve been migrated over to Exchange 2007. If you’d like to get a head start you can make the changes now before the migration. Changing your settings early won’t cause any headaches as your account will continue to work as it always has and it will work after you’ve been migrated. The settings you’ll need can be found in your control panel (https://support.mail2web.com/)  or you can contact your friendly neighbourhood support team at support@mail2web.com and we’ll help you out.

Daryl Brown
Manager Customer Support
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Posted in mail2web.com ~ No Comments

Social Networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are getting a lot of attention lately. Depending on where you work, these kinds of sites might not have a place in your corporate world. However its easy social networking concept can be utilized in a company environment.

The concept of connecting people with similar interests in social networking sites allows friends to connect and interact together with various common web applications, such as photo albums, blogs and forums. The same concept can be extended to employees within a company or organization, allowing them to connect co-workers working on various projects or goals and interact with each other online. But the most popular social networks aren’t necessarily the most appropriate places to share confidential corporate information. Windows SharePoint Services has been around for years, and can offer a number of the features you’ll find in these social networking tools as well as offering a more appropriate location to store sensitive company information.

You can create password protected sites with accounts for each employee. The employees can then customize their personal profile, organize themselves into groups, departments, workgroups, or project teams and then begin sharing. They can share and contribute using document libraries, blogs, forums, calendars, contact lists and even photo libraries. You can create sub-sites for specialized departments or teams with private versions of each application, customized for that group. There are even applications that allow you to create wikis, surveys and tasks. User and Group level permissions allow you to prevent access on various levels, ensuring that confidential information in one area is visible only to those who “need-to-know”.

And what about extending it further to customizable applications? There are some templates that have been pre-written, such as bug database, event planning, knowledge base, employee activities, new store opening, request for proposal, and even sports league. These are just a few examples, and this can be customized even further by the savvy administrator by creating a custom templates designed for a specific purpose, or even even custom web-parts and workflow elements within the template. You can also use SharePoint Designer to ever greater advantage of this powerful platform.

All of this can be especially useful if you have remote workers who you still want to contribute to or access to any of this information. And with a free 30 trial, why not try it out? All you need to get started are users that are ready to contribute.

Tim Attwood
Product Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Posted in mail2web.com ~ No Comments