• Lost Passwords in Outlook 2002
• The Other SharePoint
• Taking CRM Personally
• Office Developer Connections conference
• MEC registration open
• Outlook vs. Outlook Express

The Other SharePoint

I have spent some time recently working with SharePoint Team Services, which comes in the high-end packages of Microsoft Office XP. While it shares its name with SharePoint Portal Server, it's a completely different program in terms of scale and capabilities.

SPTS, as we'll call it, is a web-based workgroup collaboration solution that has evolved quite a bit from the Office Server Extensions in Office 2000. Once you install it, you have a ready-made place to share events, contacts, documents, and tasks; add comments to web pages and documents; and conduct discussions and surveys. It's rather slick and easy to manage from a web interface.

You'll find SPTS in only two of the various Office XP suites -- the Professional Special Edition upgrade package and Office XP Developer. Some ISPs that supports FrontPage Server Extensions are also providing SPTS support.

What's disappointing about SPTS is that it doesn't fill the collaboration gap for users with Outlook 2002 but not Exchange Server. Microsoft removed the Net Folders sharing feature from Outlook 2002, so there's no straightforward way for non-Exchange Outlook 2002 users to share information. You would have thought that SPTS might have enough Outlook integration to do such sharing, but it simply doesn't.

However, you wouldn't know that if you read Microsoft's buzz about SPTS. Here's a pretty typical statement from http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/sharepoint/fastfacts.htm:

"Office XP works seamlessly with SharePoint Team Services, so you can … copy calendars and contact lists directly from Microsoft Outlook version 2002 and paste them directly into your team’s Web site."

Copy and paste? Even if it were possible (which it's not -- read on), copy and paste would hardly qualify as seamless integration.

So far, this is the extent of the Outlook "integration" I've been able to find in SharePoint Team Services:

• You can export from Outlook to Excel, then import the Excel worksheet into SPTS to create a new list. However, I have found no way to import into an existing list.

• In a contacts list, you can click an email address to launch a new Outlook message with that address in the To box. There's no way to select multiple contacts to create a message to all of them.

• In a contacts list, you can click the Import Contacts button to pop up the Outlook Select Names dialog. But then you have to select each name that you want to import. You can't just select all, because that would produce duplicate entries where people have multiple e-mail addresses or e-mail + fax.

• While viewing an individual contact in SPTS, you can choose Export Contact to open the contact as a vCard file, then save it to Outlook.

• Similarly, when viewing an individual event in SPTS, you can choose Export Event to open it as an iCal file, then save it to Outlook.

I've heard that one of the synchronization tool vendors might be working on a product to sync Outlook with SPTS. If that happens, then SPTS could become a truly useful collaboration tool for small office contacts and calendar. I'd like to see Microsoft foot the bill for such a tool, making it available as a free download so that SharePoint Team Services and Outlook can achieve the "seamless integration" that they are already supposed to have. Stay tuned.

If you want to explore SPTS on your own, I've found some good resources to help, but beyond these support is a little on the thin side so far:

• http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sharepnt/default.asp
• http://www.sharepointtips.com/
• http://www.webrevel.com/portals/spts/index.asp
• news:microsoft.public.sharepoint.teamservices (also available via http://groups.google.com)

Taking CRM Personally

As part of our occasional series focusing on independent Outlook and Exchange software vendors, we're turning the spotlight on Tom Wikman at PersonalCRM, Inc. (http://www.personalcrm.com) Tom developed 24/7 PersonalCRM as a package to manage large volumes of e-mail correspondence, after he got frustrated managing sales teams without such a tool.

Recognizing the popularity of Outlook and ACT!, he's been porting the favorite features from PersonalCRM to those other PIM platforms. So far, he has three Outlook tools:

• eConvert -- to convert any mail message into an Outlook contact
• eReturn -- to analyze bounced messages and flag the Outlook contact with the bad address
• ACT-to-Outlook -- to convert any ACT! Database to Outlook

Tom says he is working on four more Outlook productivity tools for release in the next few weeks. And, yes, he's having a lot of fun.

Office Developer Connections conference

I will be presenting several sessions on Outlook development at the Office Developer Connections conference Oct. 4-5 in Scottsdale, Arizona -- covering Outlook security, Outlook reports, and what's new for developers in Outlook 2002. One of the sample applications that I'll be showing adds "merge to HTML e-mail" capability to Office XP, without raising the Outlook security prompts. You can register at this conference at http://www.msofficeconnections.com.

MEC registration open

Registration is open for MEC 2001 in Orlando, Florida, Sept. 30 - Oct. 4. Exhibits open Sept. 30, with conference sessions beginning Oct. 1. Microsoft is now billing MEC as the "premier Exchange, Windows, and .NET Enterprise Servers event." Register at http://www.microsoft.com/MSCorp/corpevents/mec2001/reg.asp by August 24 to get a discount.

MEC Europe will take place in Nice, France, Nov. 6-9. Register at http://www.microsoft.com/europe/mec/ on or before Oct. 8 for a discount.

MEC Japan will be in Tokyo, Oct. 29-30 (a change from the August date that Microsoft gave earlier). No registration site yet.

Outlook vs. Outlook Express

EMO reader John Hubbard wrote about the statement in EMO Vol. 6, No. 8, that "Outlook Express, of course, is required for Outlook 98 or later versions to run" and wondered what that meant.

Since Outlook 98, all versions of Outlook have shared some components with Outlook Express, mostly for HTML mail handling. If you remove Outlook Express, you either lose Outlook functionality or the necessary OE components reinstall themselves.