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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 8, No. 12, 1 Oct 2003, of Exchange Messaging
Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and
Microsoft Outlook.
Today's highlights:
- Exchange 2003 client access licenses
- Download limits to combat Swen
- Outlook collaboration using Windows SharePoint Services 2.0
- Contacts and calendar sharing with SharePoint
- SharePoint meeting and document workspaces
- Customizing Outlook lists
Exchange 2003 client access licenses
A Microsoft TechNet chat on Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 last
week stirred up some confusion about client access licenses (CALs).
With Exchange 2000, each machine accessing a mailbox needed a
license -- whether a PC running Outlook or a PDA with a POP client
or a WAP phone. This "device CAL," as Microsoft now calls it, is no
longer the only way to license Exchange clients. Exchange 2003 also
offers the option of purchasing a "user CAL," which allows a single
user to use Outlook 2003 (or any previous version) or a mobile
device or Outlook Web Access or any standard Internet mail client on
any machine anywhere to access their mailbox. You do not need to buy
a separate license for the Outlook 2003 software (although you would
need a separate license if you wanted to install the entire
Microsoft Office 2003 suite).
To oversimplify the licensing picture, if you have a user who
accesses their Exchange mailbox through multiple devices, buy them a
user CAL. If you have a computer shared by multiple users, buy that
machine a device CAL. The two types of CALs cost the same, and you
can have both within your organization, although Microsoft suggests
that license tracking could be a headache if you do.
A third client licensing option, the External Connector (EC)
license, comes in addition to the regular device and user CALs and
provides access to external users. These might include retirees,
business partners, customers, school alumni, etc. -- but not
employees. One EC license for each Exchange 2003 server permits
unlimited usage by such external users.
Microsoft has answered most of the likely licensing questions on
the pages below, and you can always call their licensing specialists
to get answers as you plan an Exchange 2003 deployment.
How to Buy Exchange Server 2003
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/howtobuy/enterprise.asp
Exchange Server 2003 Licensing FAQ
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/howtobuy/LicensingFAQ.asp
Download limits to combat Swen
Everyone's mail has been groaning with the load of hundreds of
copies of the Swen virus. The best place to stop these is, of
course, at the server. But what if your Exchange administrator or
ISP doesn't have anti-virus software in place to do that? Outlook
has options that make it possible to stop downloading those messages
(and their 105kb file attachments).
The main concern for Exchange users is to avoid downloading Swen
messages while working offline. In Outlook 2000, while working
online, you can turn on a special "large messages" rule by choosing
Tools | Synchronize | Offline Folder Settings, then
Download Options. Check the Don't download messages larger
than xx kb box, and set the size to 105kb. Messages that exceed
that size will be moved to a Large Messages subfolder under your
Inbox; don't set that folder to synchronize. You can set exceptions
so that large messages from your boss or meeting certain other
conditions will bypass the large messages filter.
In Outlook 2002 and 2003, you can filter messages by size through
the Send/Receive Settings dialog. Select All Accounts or the
send/receive group you want to modify, and click Edit. Select
the Inbox folder for your mailbox, and then choose Limit Message
Size. (I haven't tried this yet in cached Exchange mode with
Outlook 2003.)
If you're downloading mail from a POP account, in Outlook 2002 or
2003, again edit the send/receive group choose Tools | Email
Accounts and select the Inbox folder for your POP account. Check
the box for Download only headers for items larger than and
set the size to 105kb. When you get a Swen item in your POP account,
Outlook will download only the message header. If you get a header
from someone you know that looks unlikely to be a virus
transmission, you can right-click it and mark it for download. When
you delete the header, Outlook deletes the message from the server
during your next send/receive session, at the same time as it
downloads messages you've marked for retrieval.
Outlook 2000 Internet Mail Only users have no options like these
for selective retrieval. Outlook 2000 in Corporate/Workgroup mode,
however, offers the Tools | Remote Mail command to download
and mark all headers; it's not as convenient as the send/receive
group filter in later versions.
Outlook collaboration using Windows
SharePoint Services 2.0
Microsoft this week released Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)
2.0, a free component for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 that
succeeds the earlier SharePoint Team Services (STS). In a sense, WSS
is the fulfillment of a long effort to provide a degree of
workgroup-level collaboration for Outlook users that doesn't depend
on Exchange Server. It's not a perfect solution, by any means, but
is worth a look if you're in the market for a new server or a new
server operating system (since WSS 2.0 requires Windows 2003).
Most user interaction with SharePoint takes place in the browser.
The Outlook integration in this version is for Outlook 2003 only and
consists of four features -- shared contacts, shared calendar,
meeting workspaces, and document workspaces.
These sites can help you download the new component and find out
more about WSS 2.0:
Main page at Microsoft (including download link)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/sharepoint/
WSS FAQ
http://wss.collutions.com/default.aspx
Windows SharePoint Services Administrator's Guide
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a637eff6-8224-4b19-a6a4-3e33fa13d230
Contacts and calendar sharing with SharePoint
The contacts and calendar sharing between Windows SharePoint
Services 2.0 and Outlook 2003 is one-way: When you click the Link to
Outlook button on a SharePoint contacts or events list, Outlook 2003
adds a Personal Folders .pst file named SharePoint Folders to your
profile and creates a folder that links to the data on the
SharePoint site. A note in the status bar tells you when the data
was last updated and when the next update will take place. You can
also right-click the folder and choose Refresh to update the folder
on demand.
The data in Outlook is read-only. You cannot create new
SharePoint contacts or appointments in the Outlook folders, nor can
you use Outlook to modify the SharePoint data.
You can, however, create and edit new SharePoint contacts and
events with your browser, so a possible workaround is to set the
folder home page for the top level of the SharePoint Folders .pst
file to the SharePoint site's home page. Right-click the top-level
folder, and choose Properties. Then switch to the Home Page
tab, type in the URL for the SharePoint site, and check the box for
Show home page by default for this folder.
It's easy to "seed" a new SharePoint contacts folder with
addresses that already exist in Outlook. On the SharePoint contacts
list's page, click Import Contacts, and then select the
addresses you want to import from the Outlook Address Book. Click
Yes when you see the Outlook security prompt. You may have to
wait a few minutes, during which time Outlook may appear hung, but
eventually the contacts should be available on the SharePoint site.
You can repeat the process any time you add new contacts to
Outlook that you want to share: Use Import Contacts on the
SharePoint page to select those contacts in your address book and
import them to the SharePoint contacts list.
Note that users who don't have Outlook 2003 can still use the
SharePoint contacts list as a workgroup address book. Instead of
viewing it in Outlook, they can view it in their browser and click
on any email address to create a new Outlook message to that
contact.
SharePoint meeting and document workspaces
The meeting workspace feature in WSS 2.0 attempts to address what
happens both before and after a meeting. When you use Outlook 2003
to create a meeting request, you'll see a Meeting Workspace button.
Clicking that button opens the Meeting Workspace task pane on the
right-hand side of the meeting request. Click the Create button to
create a new workspace on the SharePoint site with lists for your
agenda and meeting-related tasks, a document library, and depending
on the workspace template you choose, possibly other lists. Outlook
automatically updates the meeting request to add a link to the
meeting workplace site.
Document workspaces work in a similar fashion to provide a
collaboration space for working on a document. When you attach a
file to an Outlook 2003 message, you can click the Attachment
Options button on the message and send the document as a shared
attachment. This creates a new document workspace on the SharePoint
site where any user with access to the workspace can work on the
document or related information. Users with Office 2003 can edit the
copy of an Office document attached to the message and have those
edits post automatically to the document workspace site. Other users
can make their changes through the document workspace site itself.
Customizing Outlook lists
A frequently asked question from Outlook programmers is whether
they can add values or otherwise alter the various drop-down lists
in Outlook. These include the phone and e-mail selectors on a
contact form, the values for the status of an appointment, and the
texts available for a message flag. With two exceptions -- the
category list and the entry types for a journal item -- these lists
cannot be customized to add new values or change existing values. In
some cases, the limitation is at the object level. For example, the
AppointmentItem.Status property supports only four values, and those
are the four found on the drop-down list. In other cases, the
limitation is in the user interface: Microsoft simply provides no
way to make changes.
The category list is a somewhat trivial exception, because
Outlook includes a handy user interface for managing the categories
in the Master Category List.
To customize the journal entry type list, you can add new keys to
the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Outlook\Journaling registry
key. Ben Schorr, an Outlook MVP, explained the details in an article
at
http://www.inquiry.com/techtips/exo_pro/10min/10min0999.asp. |
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