The Outlook 2007 Best Practices document, written by the Microsoft Office Outlook Product Group is now available to download.
Brief Description
This article is intended to provide users of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 guidance on how to best use the product.
Overview
The purpose of this paper is to provide customers of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 guidance on how to best use the product. Created by the product team who created Outlook 2007, this guide represents our advice on how to get the most out of Outlook 2007. By no means comprehensive, it covers just a few core scenarios.
Why an Outlook "best practices" document?
We wrote this paper for the best possible reason: Our customers asked. We designed Outlook 2007 to be used by a wide audience with many work needs and styles. Although there's no one "right way," there are a few ways of working in the program that we know to be easier than others. We hope that by being aware of the best practices, you will have the best experience possible using Outlook.
These are just a couple of upcoming webcasts about Exchange Server 2010 that you might find interesting to attend:
Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for Exchange Server (Level 300)
Wednesday, November 04, 2009 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Event Overview: Virtualizing business critical applications delivers significant benefits, including cost savings, enhanced business continuity, and an agile and efficient management solution. In this webcast, we focus on virtualizing Microsoft Exchange Server using Microsoft solutions, we discuss the benefits of using Microsoft virtualization technologies instead of technologies from key competitors such as VMware, and we provide technical guidance and best practices for virtualizing Exchange Server in various production scenarios. We also discuss results from lab deployment tests.
Presenters: Arno Mihm, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation and Rob Simpson, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
The U.S. Public Sector Virtual Launch: The New Efficiency (Windows® 7, Windows Server® 2008 R2, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010)
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Description: Join Microsoft’s Public Sector Vice President Curt Kolcun and top technology leaders at “The New Efficiency” virtual launch event for government, education, and health. Learn how cost savings and productivity come together with a new wave of Microsoft® products. Be one of the first to evaluate exciting innovations in Windows® 7, Windows Server® 2008 R2, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.
Microsoft Secure Messaging Solution (Level 200)
Thursday, November 05, 2009 1:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Event Overview: Join us for this webcast as we walk you through the best practices and technologies available to secure e-mail in your organization. After this webcast, you should know how to protect your Microsoft Exchange Server from malware and inappropriate content, how to protect your data from leaking into the wrong hands, and how to easily and securely publish your Exchange Server for access.
Presenter: Cristian Mora, Solution Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
“Exchange 2010 - A Practical Approach" is a free eBook, authored by Exchange MVP Jaap Wesselius, that you can download from the Red Gate Software site.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction to Exchange Server 2010
1.1 Getting Started
1.2 What’s been removed from Exchange Server 2010?
1.3 What’s new in Exchange Server 2010?
1.4 Exchange Server 2010 and Active Directory
1.5 Exchange Server coexistence
1.6 Exchange Server 2010 Server roles
1.7 Summary
Chapter 2: Installing Exchange Server 2010
Chapter 3: Exchange Server 2010 Coexistence
3.1 Coexistence with Exchange Server 2003
3.2 Installing Exchange Server 2010 in an Exchange Server 2003 environment
3.3 Coexistence with Exchange Server 2007
3.4 Installing Exchange Server 2010 into an Existing Exchange Server 2007 Environment
3.5 Summary
Chapter 4: Managing Exchange Server 2010
4.1 The Exchange Management Shell
4.2 The Exchange Management Console
4.3 The Exchange Control Panel (ECP)
4.4 Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
4.5 Archiving and Compliancy
4.6 Summary
Chapter 5: High Availability in Exchange Server 2010
5.1 High Availability in Exchange Server 2010
5.2 Exchange Server Database technologies
5.3 High Availability in Exchange Server
5.4 High Availability on other Server Roles
5.5 Summary
Summarizing Exchange Server 2010 – A Practical Approach
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 v6.0.6702.0, with key bug fixes, is now available to download.
Brief Description
This Management Pack includes an extensive set of monitoring including synthetic transactions to effectively monitor Exchange 2007 and report on performance, availability, and reliability of its server roles.
Overview
The Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack is designed to monitor Exchange 2007 key health indicators, collect Exchange component-specific performance counters in one central location, and raise alerts for operator intervention as necessary. By detecting, sending alerts, and automatically responding to critical events, this Management Pack helps indicate, correct, and prevent possible service outages or configuration problems, allowing you to proactively manage Exchange servers and identify issues before they become critical. The Management Pack monitors and provides alerts for automatic notification of events indicating service outages, performance degradation, health monitoring, and centralized management.
Note: This Management Pack requires Operations Manager 2007 R2.
Feature Summary
- A number of synthetic transactions ensure the Exchange servers are available and responding in a timely manner. The synthetic transactions are maintenance-mode aware, so that if the target of a transaction is in maintenance mode, the source will not run the transaction, and not alert unnecessarily.
- This Management Pack includes a Management Pack template that provides a wizard-like interface for configuring synthetic transactions against Outlook Web Access (OWA), Exchange ActiveSync, Web Services, POP3, and IMAP.
- This Management Pack includes a Management Pack template that provides a wizard-like interface for configuring mail flow synthetic transactions between agent-managed Exchange 2007 Mailbox servers.
- This Management Pack provides 30+ reports specific to Exchange 2007 that track availability and performance compared to service level objectives. For the list of reports and for more information about the reports, see the Management Pack Guide.
- All the synthetic transactions in this Management Pack use an Operations Manager 2007 R2 hosting feature for Windows PowerShell technology that provides a performance improvement when running synthetic transactions.
- A significant number of rules and monitors that are not actionable or may be noisy are disabled. Note that many of these rules are still in the Management Pack so that you can enable them if necessary.
- Support for monitoring any number of Exchange organizations using a single Operations Manager 2007 management group.
- Full support for Microsoft clustered configurations. For more details, see the Management Pack Guide.
- Discovery of Exchange 2007 server roles is disabled by default, and no Exchange 2007 monitoring is applied by default. This allows you to discover and monitor your servers gradually, as well as tune the Management Pack as you bring more agent-managed Exchange 2007 servers into the Operations Manager environment.
Microsoft has recently updated the Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007.
Brief Description
The Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack monitors Exchange 2003 deployments and monitors Exchange Server Back-end and Exchange Server Front-End systems.
Overview
The Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack monitors the performance and availability of Exchange Server 2003 systems. It can also issue alerts for possible configuration problems Availability and performance monitoring is done using synthetic transactions. In addition, the Management Pack collects Event Log alerts and provides associated knowledge articles with additional user details, possible causes, and suggested resolutions. The Management Pack discovers and monitors the individual server components and functional areas on an Exchange Server 2003 server.
Feature Bullet Summary:
This management pack monitors Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and includes monitors and rules to track performance, availability, and reliability of Exchange core components and functionality.
- MAPI, OWA, OMA, EAS synthetic logon transactions
- Mail flow synthetic transaction
- Monitoring using Self-Tuning Thresholds
- Comprehensive performance metric collection
- 1000+ Event rules with associated knowledge
- Database status
- Database size
- Mailbox statistics
- Public folder statistics
- Message tracking log statistics
- Exchange and related OS Service monitoring
- Configuration monitoring
- Topology discovery of Exchange deployment
Release History: - 3/23/2007 - Original release, version 6.0.5000.0
- 6/25/2007 - Updated version, version 6.0.5000.11. The library MP is unchanged from the initial release.
- 1/15/2008 - Updated MP Guide – same version
- 2/25/2008 - Updated MP Guide and Management Pack, version 6.0.6278.0.
- 3/17/2008 - Updated MP Guide and Management Pack, version 6.0.6278.2.
- 4/1/2008 - Updated MP Guide and Management Pack, version 6.0.6278.5.
- 8/21/2008 - Updated MP Guide and Management Pack, version 6.0.6387.0. Please refer to the MP Guide for details.
- 10/12/2009 - Updated release, version 6.0.6702.0, with key bug fixes. Please refer to the MP Guide for details.
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The October edition of TechNet Magazine is now available online or, if you prefer, you can download as an HTML Help .chm file for offline reading.
Can you see that big “7” on the cover? That’s right, this subject is all about the new OS from Microsoft: Windows 7.
I must say that, although there are great columns in this issue, like the Windows PowerShell: Planning to Break, my favorite article is 77 Windows 7 Tips.
Check out these cool TechNet Edge Videos about Exchange Server 2010:
- Rights Management Services Infrastructure in Exchange Server 2010
Ed Banti, a Microsoft Program Manager, presents an overview of new features with Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 and Rights Management Services integration. In this video he presents "The Infrastructure of Rights Management Services in Exchange Server 2010." - FPE vs FOPE and Exchange 2010 – Secure messaging with Forefront
Mike Chan, PM for the Forefront team, breaks down the differences between security protection for Forefront Protection for Exchange (FPE), Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE), and the built-in protection which exists in Exchange 2010. We start out with a brief history of the messaging products and then dig into the details of differences between FPE, FOPE, and Exchange 2010 on the whiteboard at [4:22]. Should you run FPE alone or FPE and FOPE? Watch and decide. - Exchange 2010 Management Remote PowerShell Demo
Astrid McClean, Senior Exchange Technical Product Manager, walks through a demo of the new Exchange 2010 Management Console. - Exchange 2010 Mobility Demo: Free Busy
Adam Glick, Senior Technical Product Manager, demos how Exchange ActiveSync now enables users to look at a contact's calendar availability. Right from a user's contact information, a free/busy timeline show users when their contacts are available for a call or meeting.
Quick Start Guide for Outlook Voice Access 2010 contains a quick reference sheet that can be used when navigating the menu system found in Outlook Voice Access.
Overview
Outlook Voice Access lets UM-enabled users to access their Exchange 2010 mailbox using analog, digital, or cellular telephones. By using the menu system found in Outlook Voice Access, UM-enabled users can read e-mail, listen to voice messages, and interact with their Outlook calendar. This quick reference sheet shows the navigational tree and the options that are available to UM-enabled users when they are using Outlook Voice Access.
OWA Tray Monitor is a free Outlook Web Access new mail notification tool, developed by “The Drunken Bakery”.
OWA will flag new mail when you are actually working with it, however as Internet Explorer doesn't allow notifications to be executed outwith the security cordon of the browser, this feature is unfortunately lacking.
Features
- Works with Exchange 2007 & 2010
- No need for Outlook to be installed
- Clean install and remove
- No dependencies other than .NET
- Choice of notification methods
- Growl & Snarl Integration with zero configuration
- Configurable update frequency
- Tiny footprint
- Free!