• First Look: Outlook 11
• Outlook 11: Mail productivity
• Outlook 11: Composing mail
• Outlook 11: Anti-spam and anti-virus
• Outlook 11: Calendar
• Outlook 11: SharePoint Team Services integration
• Outlook 11: Cached Exchange mode
• Outlook 11: What's missing

First Look: Outlook 11

After sitting through six demos of Outlook 11 at last week's MEC conference, I guess I'm as close to an expert as you'll find before Beta 1 ships (which should be soon). Microsoft's vision for Outlook 11 is to redefine the email experience and to rethink Outlook's infrastructure. They succeed on many counts with new and improved features that will appeal to both users and administrators, although you can also expect some nagging deficiencies to remain with us. Over the next couple of EMO issues, I want to share some of the highlights of what I saw at MEC. You'll find more, including a screen shot, at http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol11.htm.

Outlook 11: Mail productivity

The new user interface in Outlook 11 is designed to help you spend less time processing mail messages. You almost have to see it to believe it. A "Reading Pane" replaces the preview pane and shows up to 40% more text on the screen.

"Search folders," similar to the results from an Advanced Find search, are part of the user interface. They stay updated all the time to give you a direct way, for example, to find all unread messages across all folders.

It takes just one click or keystroke to mark a message for later follow-up. If you can spare two clicks, then you can choose from among six flag colors. A "For Follow Up" search folder shows you all messages that need further action.

A "conversations" search folder -- provided as one of 12 search folder templates in Outlook 11 -- shows you all mail messages sent to or from specific people you select. I expect this to eliminate the need to use the Activities tab on a contact to find all related messages. Since the search folder stays updated all the time, it will be much faster than Activities, too.

In table views, an intelligent grouping feature called "arrangements" groups messages by day received, similar to the groupings (today, yesterday, last week, etc.) in Internet Explorer's history list. Another arrangement makes it easy to distinguish very large messages when you need to clean out your mailbox.

Outlook 11: Composing mail

WordMail remains the default editor in Outlook 11, but the toolbars and menus have been simplified to make it less confusing to the user. The address autocomplete feature introduced in Outlook 2002 has been updated to display a selection of names after the user types one character, not three, and to list names in order of frequency of use, not alphabetically.

Distribution lists become more flexible in Outlook 11. You will be able to expand a distribution list before you send a message, so that you can delete a few names.

Outlook 11: Anti-spam and anti-virus

While Outlook lead program manager Jensen Harris said that Microsoft had nothing specific to announce on anti-spam features related to Beta 1 of Office 11, Outlook 11 does contain several features aimed at reducing the risk of mail-borne viruses and maintaining your email privacy. The "read as plain text" setting introduced in Office XP Service Pack 1 will be available as a visible user option, not just through the registry.

For users who choose to keep getting HTML-format mail, Outlook 11 imposes a "block external content" setting, which is on by default for the Internet zone. (Content from sites in the Intranet or Trusted Sites zones is not blocked.) This means that Outlook 11 will not load pictures or web pages that point back to an Internet URL, effectively preventing any "web bug" from confirming to the sender that you viewed the message.

Outlook 11: Calendar

Although better mail productivity is one of Microsoft's key goals for Outlook 11, it was the calendar that drew the first applause during last week's MEC keynote address. The hot new feature: Being able to see other people's calendars side-by-side with your own, just by clicking check boxes for those other calendars in the navigation pane. Those calendars can include not just other Exchange mailboxes, but also Exchange public folder calendars and, for read-only access, calendars from SharePoint Team Services (STS) webs.

Outlook 11: SharePoint Team Services integration

The STS integration doesn't stop with calendar viewing. When you invite people to a meeting, you can check a box to tell Outlook to create a new STS meeting space for posting documents, preparing for, and following up on the meeting. These meeting spaces are a new feature in SharePoint Team Services 2.0, which should be out in the same time frame as Office 11.

Outlook 11 users also get read-only access to STS contact lists, which opens the possibility of using STS as a shared contacts list in non-Exchange environments. SharePoint Team Services is definitely a product to keep an eye on if you want to know where Microsoft's ideas on collaboration are headed.

Outlook 11: Cached Exchange mode

A new connection + storage method for Exchange users called "cached Exchange" combines the best of the "local information store" envisioned for Outlook 2002 but later cut and the Calendar folder cache in earlier versions.

As Microsoft's Marc Olsen said during his session on Outlook 11 mobility improvements, "Whenever we get a connection, we can bring information down. We do it, and then we never have to ask the server for it again." Outlook 11 senses the type of connection and either brings down just headers or headers plus complete messages depending on whether the connection is fast or slow. The data is stored in an offline folders .ost file, but unlike today's Outlook versions, Outlook 11 using the cached Exchange mode will always go to the local data file first, not to the server, even when online.

Once Outlook 11 is in place opposite an Exchange Titanium server (also due in mid-2003), network traffic should be reduced by as much as 50%, with a combination of more intelligent synchronization, compression, and better packing of the RPC buffers that transmit the data.

Outlook 11: What's missing