Mobility, Spam Blocking, and Calendaring Enhancements

In addition to unified messaging, Exchange 2007 and its Outlook 2007 client contain many other new features that directly benefit end users, such as better mobile access, spam blocking, and calendaring. Unlike UM, which costs extra, the other new features come standard and should help increase end-user support for upgrading from earlier versions of Exchange.

Improvements to Mobility Features

Like its predecessor Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 is designed to work well for remote users connecting from the Internet. Client-side message storage and the Messaging Application Program Interface (MAPI) Remote Procedure Call (RPC)-over-Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) feature introduced in Outlook 2003 (now called Outlook Anywhere in Outlook 2007) replicate items between Exchange and Outlook securely over the Internet, thereby allowing Outlook to connect to Exchange without a virtual private network (VPN) connection, and users can work offline when an Internet connection is unavailable. New to Outlook 2007, the offline store can keep local replicas of files checked out from a SharePoint 2007 document library, making it easier to work on these documents while offline. (See “Document Management with SharePoint Server 2007” on page 12 of the Feb. 2007 Update.)