Out of Office
In both OWA and Outlook 2007 the Out of Office (OoO) wizard has
been redesigned. Users can now define when their out of office time starts and
stops. This should help eliminate those OoO messages where a user has been
back in the office for a few days already. HTML formatting can be used for OoO
messages and different messages can be defined for internal and external
messages. OoO messages to external users can further be limited to only users
that existing in a user's Contact list, in Outlook. These settings can be
overridden by Exchange Administrators.
Outlook Web Access
OWA will have a similar look and feel to OWA in Exchange
2003, so users will not have to learn a completely new client. The new version
of OWA will have auto-complete when sending messages, and better Global Address
List (GAL) lookup capabilities. The new GAL lookup control lets you browse and
search the GAL. It also shows the users contact details, free/busy, and
organization information when a user is selected from the GAL. OWA will now
include a search capability, which utilizes the new searching support in
Exchange 2007 to quickly find messages in a user's mailbox. Another new
feature is the Document Access ability that will allow users to access
documents in SharePoint and on UNCs, see Figure 2 - Document Access Settings.
This support is provided by the Exchange server which is actually proxying the
user s access to SharePoint and/or UNC locations. This will allow users to
open, in read-only format, items that would have required a VPN connection
before. Lastly, OWA will now render Microsoft Office, PDF, and other file
types within OWA. This eliminates the requirement of having to have Word, for
example, installed on the system the user is accessing OWA from. There are
various other UI improvements for e-mail, meetings, tasks, security, etc in OWA
2007.
Figure 2 - Document Access Settings
From an administrator s viewpoint,
OWA has many more options that can be controlled, see Figure 3 - OWA Settings.
Document Access can be prevented on public computers, for example, so users can
not access files in SharePoint or on file shares (UNC). That control can also
be setup on a per user basis. The ability to control what documents can be
viewed or downloaded in OWA has also been greatly simplified. For those
environments that require additional security, smart cards and other second
factor authentication methods can be required for all users or on a per user
basis.
Figure 3 - OWA Settings
Unified Messaging
This is a major new addition to Exchange. With a Unified
Messaging (UM) server and a VoIP system in place, users can start getting their
voice mails in their Inbox. Even without a VoIP system, users will be able to
call into the Exchange server to listen to messages, review or change meetings,
forward messages, and more. Incoming faxes will also be supported by the UM
server. Another feature provided by UM will be the Auto Attendant, which is used
to provide a telephone directory or Push 1 for Sales type response. Voice
mails can be listened in both Outlook and OWA 2007, they are included as WAV
attachments in older versions of Outlook. In addition, voice messages can be
forwarded to a phone. When a voice message is forward to a phone the Exchange
server will call the number provided by the user and play the message to them.
The list of supported PBX and VoIP gateways still hasn't been published at the
time of this writing. Finally, UM supports speech recognition so you can say
things like Postpone meeting 30 minutes.
Topology
In Exchange 2007, all messages MUST go though an Exchange
server with the Hub Transport role configured on it. Even messages between
users on the same server and same database are still sent though the Hub
Transport role. The main reasons for this is that the Hub Transport
role is responsible for running all transport agents that are used for message
filtering, archiving, ELC, etc.
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