As we reported in the last issue of EMO, Exchange 2003 has been released to manufacturing. Just as additional functionality for Outlook Web Access was one of the major features in Exchange 2000, it looks like another major leap for OWA in Exchange 2003 could provide a strong reason to consider upgrading. (According to the Radicati Group, about 22 percent of Exchange users already access their mailboxes using OWA.) Microsoft has done a lot of work to make the OWA experience (especially the "rich" client in Internet Explorer 5.5 or later) as much as possible like the Outlook desktop experience. Additions in OWA 2003 include support for more types of Outlook items and commonly used email features that were previously available only with third-party add-ins. You can try the new OWA for yourself free for seven days with a trial account from http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/ti/trial/OWA.asp.

The "rich" browser display mimics the layout of Outlook 2003 with the new navigation bar on the left, a two-line display of email messages in the center, and the reading pane on the right. Users even get an option of five different color schemes, although oddly, the selected scheme applies only to mailbox folders, not to public folders. The right-click context menu displays Outlook commands like reply and forward, instead of Internet Explorer commands.

Clicking the drop-down arrow adjacent to the New button reveals that you can now create distribution lists and tasks in OWA 2003. Both have some limitations, compared with the Outlook desktop functionality, but most OWA users probably won't notice. For distribution lists, you can choose from recipients in either the Global Address List or your own default Contacts folder, but you cannot add one-time recipients that exist only in the distribution list. And, while you can create tasks and even set reminders for them, you cannot make a task assignment to someone else from OWA. The latest version of OWA still has no support for journal items.

On a new message, the toolbar sports new Insert Signature and Spelling buttons. You can set up your signature and set spell check options by clicking the Options button on the left-side navigation bar. Other new options include the number of items to display on each folder page and settings related to privacy: As with Outlook 2003, you can block the downloading of images and other external content in HTML mail messages. You can also now control whether reading a message in OWA generates a read receipt.

The ability to manage junk mail and rules from within OWA gives users who use OWA mostly for mail even less of a reason to go back to the Outlook desktop program. You can manage your safe senders, safe recipients, and blocked senders lists from within OWA. Also included is an option to treat all entries in your Contacts folders as safe senders whose mail should never be blocked.

You can manage rules from the Options window in OWA 2003 or create a rule from an existing message by right-clicking the message, then choosing Create Rule from the pop-up menu. The available rules conditions and actions are fairly simple, since the rules must be able to run on the server, but you get the basics needed to sort mailing list messages and mail from different senders into their own folders, so your Inbox stays tidy. You can also set up rules to automatically forward mail to another address.

Given the amount of mail we received, we generated quite a stir with our announcment about the Exchange conference slated for Orlando, Nov. 2-6. No, it's not MEC, as we said in EMO last month, but a separate conference organized concurrently with the Windows Connections conference at the same location. (One registration = two conferences) I'll be speaking on Outlook deployment, client anti-spam strategies, and what to look for in Outlook mobility solutions. Other speakers include Tony Redmond, Paul Robichaux, Jim McBee, Kieran McCorry, Donald Livengood, Ethan Wilansky, Chris Wolf, and Alan Sugano. Information about the Exchange Connections Conference is now available at http://www.devconnections.com/exc/default.asp.

Microsoft has issued a hotfix for the Outlook 2002 Connector component for access to an IBM Lotus Domino R5 server (version 5.0.1, 5.0.6, 5.0.8, 5.0.9, 5.0.10 or 5.0.11) for email, scheduling, address book, and task items. The Microsoft Knowledgebase article, "OL2002: Slow Performance After You Connect to Lotus Notes" at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=818203 describes the fix, which is available in any of the post-Service Pack 2 hotfix "rollups" from June 18 or later, the latest being the July 1 rollup discussed at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=822614.

Microsoft is now releasing not individual hotfixes, but hotfix "rollup" packages for both Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2000, perhaps because they have amassed so many fixes since the last service pack.

Another recent hotfix apparently solves the interoperability problem that has prevented Outlook 2000 users from being able to open some meeting requests and appointments sent in the iCalendar format by Outlook 2002 users. The previous workaround was for the Outlook 2002 user to remove any reminder before sending the iCal item. The Outlook 2000 Post-Service Pack 3 Hotfix Rollup Package July 3, 2003 (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=823324) includes this fix, as well as others.

While I'm glad to see this fix, given the important role iCal plays in allowing Outlook users in different companies to schedule meetings together, I can't pass up an opportunity to mention once again how lukewarm Microsoft's support for the iCalendar and vCard interchange standards seems to be. Outlook can import a bulk iCal file, but it cannot import a vCard file with multiple entries, nor can it generate iCal or vCard files with multiple entries. Such bulk files would provide another way to share Outlook data between users or between computers.

Fortunately, Apple has driven up interest in vCard interoperability with its iPod device, and that interest has generated a couple of tools -- Outpod (http://outpod.stoer.de/) and Outlook2Mac (http://www.littlemachines.com/) that can export multiple calendar or contact items from Outlook to a single file.

Did you know that the iCal standard, RFC 2445 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt) embraces not just appointments (VEVENT), but tasks (VTODO) and journal items (VJOURNAL), too? Outlook, however, has no support for iCal for tasks and journal entries.

As more organizations look for ways to avoid Outlook security prompts in applications they develop for internal use, they often look to the Redemption COM library, wrapping Extended MAPI, as a possible solution. Inevitably, someone asks (with good reason) whether Redemption itself imposes a security risk. For my purposes and those of my clients, I've determined that it is not a security risk, because of the security features in Redemption itself that would make it difficult to hijack. However, you can make up your own mind by reading the response that Redemption's author, Outlook MVP Dmitry Streblechenko, gave recently in the outlook-dev discussion list to the topic "In My World Redemption Is A Security Risk" at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/outlook-dev/message/20538.

The French Culture Ministry has decreed that "email" is out and "courriel" -- a contraction of the term "courrier electronique" -- is in, as terminology fit for use in official documents. However, it's not France, but Canada that can claim credit for originating the term, which apparently first appeared in a 1986 book, "La Planete cyber" (The Cyber Planet) by University of Montreal comparative literature professor Jean-Claude Guedon. According to a Canadian Press news report, people in Quebec started using "courriel" on their business cards in the 1990s, and the authoritative Le Petite Larousse dictionary picked it up in 2000.