• Sidebar: WSS and Exchange Public Folders
• Illustration: WSS Lists in Outlook 2007

Outlook 2007 allows users read-write access to group calendars, task lists, contacts, and other information stored on a Windows SharePoint Services (WSS 3.0) team site. This improved integration does not provide a complete substitute for similar functions in Exchange, but will help small teams coordinate information stored in WSS with parallel organization-wide information stored in Exchange Server. The move could foretell a long-term transition in which some collaboration and data-sharing features in Exchange, particularly Public Folders, will be eliminated, with SharePoint products emerging as their replacement.

The features discussed here also work with SharePoint Server 2007—the latest version of Microsoft's Web-based portal, document management, and search product, which is based on WSS 3.0.

Outlook Access to WSS Lists

Introduced in 2001 as SharePoint Team Services, WSS provides members of small teams of browser users access to information in structured tables known as lists. Some WSS lists store data similar to that stored in Exchange, such as calendars, contacts, and tasks. By gradually improving integration between Outlook and WSS, Microsoft has made it easier to use these WSS features.

When used with WSS 3.0, Outlook 2007 gives users read-write access to four types of WSS lists: calendars, tasks, contacts, and discussions. To enable integration between Outlook 2007 and WSS 3.0, users must manually connect Outlook to the appropriate WSS list by navigating to the WSS team site using a Web browser, then selecting a "Connect to Outlook" command on the page. Once they are connected, all changes to WSS data will automatically be synchronized between a folder in Outlook 2007 and the corresponding list on the WSS server. In particular, users can go offline and make changes to WSS items, and those changes will be automatically synchronized back to WSS when connectivity is restored. (Offline changes made by users at the same time are combined where possible, or posted as duplicate items if not possible to combine them.)

This feature is a notable improvement over the integration offered by earlier versions: although users could export single items (such as contacts or events) from WSS to Outlook 2003 and view WSS pages (such as calendars) from within Outlook 2003, they could not write directly to WSS from Outlook.

However, integration between WSS lists and similar items stored in Exchange is still somewhat limited. For example, when users connect their WSS tasks to Outlook, they will see two icons in Outlook's Tasks pane: one for tasks stored in Exchange and another for those stored in WSS. The lists cannot be combined, although users can drag or copy items between them. (See the illustration "WSS Lists in Outlook 2007".)

Calendars

Outlook 2007 gives users with the proper privileges (which must be granted by the WSS administrator) complete read-write access to any group calendar stored on WSS 3.0. Once a user has connected a WSS calendar to Outlook 2007, that calendar appears as a new icon in the Calendars tab of the Outlook navigation pane—it is separate from the Exchange-based calendar that is commonly used to store personal schedule information and remind the user of upcoming appointments. However, users can view the two types of calendars in the same window, or overlaid on top of one another, making it easy to see scheduling conflicts.

WSS-Outlook calendar integration will be most useful for users to post static information, such as planned absences. However, users can schedule meetings through a WSS group calendar in one of two ways.

Include the WSS calendar as a recipient. A user can include a WSS calendar as a meeting attendee when sending an Outlook meeting request and update. Administrators can configure WSS calendars with their own e-mail addresses; meetings and meeting updates sent to a WSS calendar address will automatically update the calendar.

Send meetings to WSS groups. A user can organize meetings with a WSS user group by sending meeting requests and updates to an e-mail alias for the group. Administrators can set up such an alias and a group calendar for each WSS group; the group's calendar will automatically be updated with meetings sent to the alias, and meeting messages will also be forwarded to all group members and will update their personal Outlook calendars.

Because WSS meeting scheduling works differently than with Exchange, and because it requires some administrative work, Outlook 2007 users might prefer the Meeting Workspace feature (introduced in Outlook 2003 and WSS 2.0). A Meeting Workspace is a special WSS site designed to coordinate participants in meetings. Outlook users with appropriate permissions can create Meeting Workspaces automatically when sending meeting requests. Once the Workspace has been established, the organizer and any attendees can access the Meeting Workspace from the calendar view of Outlook 2003 or 2007 and use the workspace to track attendee responses, post additional information about meetings (such as location changes), and create and track follow-up items, such as tasks for meeting attendees and decisions reached during the meeting.

Tasks

Outlook 2003 gave users read-only access to tasks lists stored on WSS. With Outlook 2007 and WSS 3.0, users get complete read-write access to WSS tasks from Outlook, and they can perform functions on those tasks (e.g., marking percentage completion) exactly as they do with Exchange-based tasks.

However, WSS tasks are not as smoothly integrated into Outlook 2007 as WSS calendars. Users cannot view WSS and Exchange tasks side by side, but instead they must open both sets of tasks by navigating to their respective icons under the Tasks tab in the Outlook navigation pane. Once multiple task lists are opened, users can drag or copy individual tasks from one list to the other.

Outlook 2007 also works with WSS's Project Tasks—a type of WSS task that shows the user's task items for a particular project as a set of bars in a graphical display known as a Gantt view. (For more information on Project Tasks, see "Project Desktop Editions Updated".)

Contacts

Outlook 2003 gave users read-only access to contacts stored on WSS. Users could also populate WSS contacts by importing data from their Outlook address books, but they had to initiate this process from WSS (not from within Outlook), and the process was somewhat awkward—for example, it required an Outlook Address Book Control component that, by default, was not installed during Outlook setup. Moreover, transfer was only one way—there was no easy way to get WSS contact data into the Outlook address book.

With Outlook 2007 and WSS 3.0, Outlook users have complete read-write access to contact lists stored on WSS. As with tasks, WSS contacts appear in a different folder than users' Exchange-based contacts, and users can drag or copy individual contacts between the two sets, greatly easing the process of populating both sets of contacts.

Connecting WSS contacts to Outlook 2007 has an additional benefit: it adds fields to the WSS contacts list that were previously exclusive to Outlook. For example, users will be able to store multiple phone numbers, up to three e-mail addresses, contact photos, and electronic business cards in WSS's contacts list.

Discussions

Discussions are a WSS feature that allows members of a team to post messages in a threaded fashion similar to a newsgroup or blog.

Like other types of WSS lists, WSS discussion boards can be connected to Outlook 2007; the discussion board is added to a SharePoint Lists folder, which appears under the Mail tab of the Outlook navigation pane. Once connected in this fashion, users can participate in discussions by using the Post in This Folder or Post Reply commands in Outlook. Among other things, this enables users to employ Outlook's formatting, spell check, and grammar checking for discussion board posts.

Alternately, if an administrator has configured both WSS and the discussion board to receive e-mail, users can contribute to discussions by sending e-mail messages to the discussion's address. If users are part of a WSS group that also contains an e-mail-accessible discussion board, then all e-mails sent from a member to the entire group are automatically archived as a new discussion.

Used in Conjunction with Exchange

WSS lacks some important features of Exchange. For example: if users want to change a detail about a WSS meeting, such as its location, they can change the WSS calendar through Outlook or a browser, but that change will not be automatically mailed to all meeting attendees.

Consequently, the integration of Outlook and WSS will be useful only as an addition to, not a replacement for, the scheduling features of Exchange. Because there's no direct integration between Exchange and WSS, in most cases users will see two separate sets of information (e.g., Exchange tasks and WSS tasks) side by side within Outlook, although they can drag and drop or copy data between the two items.

Eventually, instead of using Outlook as the bridge between Exchange and WSS, Microsoft might enable the two servers to synchronize information directly. This would be more effective in convincing organizations to migrate scheduling and other information from Exchange to WSS.

In addition, while Microsoft is positioning WSS as a long-term replacement for Exchange Public Folders (used to store data such as offline address books and calendar free/busy information), technical and business barriers will prevent organizations from making this transition immediately. (For a comparison of these features, see the sidebar "WSS and Exchange Public Folders".)

Even so, SharePoint is emerging as an alternate to Exchange for storing some data that is used by collaborative teams of workers, including schedules and contacts. Outlook 2007's improved integration with WSS gives organizations a new opportunity to begin exploring these WSS features.

Resources

A good starting point for more information on Outlook 2007-WSS integration is office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/CH101032731033.aspx.

An introduction to setting up WSS to receive e-mail is at office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA100823061033.aspx . Configuring a specific WSS list or library to receive e-mail is discussed at office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA100823071033.aspx?pid=CH101237651033.

Outlook 2003 integration with WSS is described in www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/sharepoint/V2/reskit/c4061881x.mspx.