Last week I covered some of the new features in Outlook 2013, this week I'll look at some of the new features in Exchange 2013.
Remember a few years ago when Microsoft said they were going to remove public folders? The public folder database is gone but public folders survive as "Public Folder Mailboxes". This means Public folders now reside in the regular mailbox database and can benefit from database availability groups (DAG).
Also new are Site Mailboxes. These allow you to store SharePoint items and access them directly from Outlook or OWA. To use Site Mailboxes, you need to deploy Exchange 2013, SharePoint 2013, and Outlook 2013.
OWA supports many features also in Outlook. Multiple contacts for the same person can be linked and you can connect LinkedIn Contacts. The People module includes contacts from all sources: local contacts folder and GAL.
Multiple calendars in OWA are merged (overlay) rather than displayed side by side, with appointments from each calendar highlighted in a different color. OWA's calendar includes an agenda view with a list of the day's events (the Calendar peek has this list in Outlook 2013.) Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and of course, Internet Explorer are supported, with all features supported when using the newest browser versions.
My favorite OWA 2013 feature? Sometimes the little things are the best: in OWA 2013 the months are linked at the top of the OWA calendar, making it easy to view the calendar for a different month. I also like the navigation pane calendars: you can slide the divider up and down to show or hide navigation calendars.
On the admin side, there are only two server roles this time around: client access and mailbox.
A frequent request is the ability to see who logged into a mailbox and when. Presently, the admin can only see the last log in. Exchange 2013 includes an audit log and report functionality. There is also an administrator audit log that records all actions taken by the administrator, which will be very useful for troubleshooting.
Traci Smith says
I liked different color for the appointment on the outlook calendar. This way certain appointment stand out. I also like if you sent a sticky note to desktop it change into an envelope.
Diane Poremsky says
Assign color categories to appointments to make the appointment stand out.