Exchange Messaging Outlook Volume6, Number 25

• XML Web Services kit for Exchange
• Adding a pop-up message for Exchange DLs
• Shared address book with Active Directory
• Mark your calendar for MEC

XML Web Services kit for Exchange

Microsoft kicked off its annual Tech*Ed conference today with a push for Exchange-based XML Web services working with .NET applications. In his keynote, Eric Rudder, senior vice president of Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism Group, announcing immediate availability of a 3-CD toolkit to make it easy to connect to Exchange 2000 data from .NET applications. The kit includes:

• the latest Exchange 2000 SDK (which you can also download -- see Other New Resources below)
• white papers and other documentation
• sample XML Web services for scheduling, contacts, and workflow
• a self-paced training course on .NET development, with a special module on Exchange XML Web services
• developer session videos from last year's MEC conference

You can order the Exchange 2000 XML Web Services Toolkit from http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/techinfo/development/2000/enablekit.asp -- $7.95 for U.S. customers, $9.90 for everyone else, plus a little extra if you want express delivery. The kit will not be distributed as part of MSDN subscriptions, except for the Exchange SDK.

Adding a pop-up message for Exchange DLs

I was asked a few months ago whether it's possible to prompt users whenever they send a message to an Exchange distribution list. I've posted an Outlook VBA code snippet at http://www.slipstick.com/dev/code/promptdl.htm that demonstrates how to do this with the Redemption library (http://www.dimastr.com/redemption/) to avoid Outlook automation security prompts.

Would it be possible to do the same thing, but for an Outlook distribution list, not an Exchange DL? No, because Outlook automatically expands the DL when you send the item. By the time it gets to the ItemSend event, there's no trace in the message that it was ever addressed to an Outlook DL. Instead, however, you could check the number of recipients and cancel the send if the item is addressed to too many people.

Shared address book with Active Directory

Another question that's come up lately is how to use the Active Directory (AD) in Windows 2000 Server as a shared address book for Outlook, even if you don't have Exchange Server. While implementing AD in a large organization is something you wouldn't want to undertake without weeks of planning, in a single small office with only Windows 2000 Server, it's not that big a chore. Microsoft has published a wealth of documentation at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/technologies/directory/ad/default.asp. 

You can't create or modify items in AD with Outlook, but you could create a web page to manage the directory on the company intranet using the ADSI programming interface. The article "Learning ADSI - Part 1: Adding Users To W2K" at http://www.15seconds.com/issue/011005.htm is a good introduction; it assumes you already know how to build .asp pages on your web server.

Another reason to implement AD is that it allows you to apply group policies to Outlook and other Office applications, for example, to turn particular features off.

Once you have AD up and running and populated with the contacts you want to share, the Microsoft Knowledgebase has a good article, "How to Configure the Address Book to Query Users Contained in Active Directory" at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=238007 on how to connect a client. The article is written mainly for Outlook Express, but Outlook 2000 and 2002 also support LDAP. As the instructions for "down-level" clients indicate, you may have to enter domainname\username for the account name. Instead of port 389 normally used by LDAP, use port 3268 for the server's Global Catalog.

Note that if the number of users entered in AD is large, users won't be able to browse the entire list. Instead, they'll have to search using the Find button in Outlook's address book.

Mark your calendar for MEC