Exchange 2007 = new features enabled in Outlook 2007

Having completed my migration from Exchange 2003 to 2007 whilst I was tucked up in bed (thank you Microsoft IT), I now have access to lots of new cool features in Outlook 2007.

The first thing I rushed to check was the out-of-office assistant which has been updated so that you can enter rich text and make your auto-responders look nice, rather than the bland, plain text ones in Exchange 2007.  So I went and created a new out of office message which looks like this on the right ->

Another benefit is a much easier way to book meetings with colleagues.  I wanted to discuss some highly confidential Vista secrets with my colleague Matt so I created a meeting request as I was accustomed to in Outlook and lo-and-behold I was presented with a much nicer way of finding times where we were both free.

I added Matt and myself as attendees of the meeting and I noticed that Outlook started suggesting times that were good to meet (i.e. when we were both free).  I also had a monthly calendar view where I could see at a glance days where we were both free to meet - nice touch!

Furthermore, I could add meeting rooms to the meeting request, and Outlook figured out when both of us were available and suggested multiple (if available) rooms where we could meet to meet.  All in all a very nice experience indeed.

The room feature was a very nice one and made me think back to the problems it would solve.  The company I worked at prior to Microsoft had a clunky web application which was responsible for booking rooms, so not only did you have to find a time that suits everyone in your meeting but then you had to open up IE and check if any rooms were free at that time.  Normally there was a clash and you'd have to find another time to suit attendees and then go back to the browser once more.  It was a real pain.  The new features in Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2007 are a god-send for this kind of scenario!

Of course I haven't mentioned my Voicemail being sent to my Inbox! Well, I've yet to configure this - I'll probably wait until I'm back in the UK but I'll share with you my experience.

 

 

Technorati tags: Exchange 2007, Outlook 2007, Out of Office Settings

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  I've been talking about it recently , and we're running it happily at Microsoft so why not give it a