4-page Case Study - Posted 10/4/2006
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Government Office Expects New Technology to Boost Efficiency, Improve Mobile Messaging
The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General is the primary legal and law enforcement agency in the state of Pennsylvania. Currently, 800 lawyers, law enforcement agents, support staff, and managers work for the attorney general, operating from offices throughout the state. Office employees depend heavily on e-mail to do their work, with many employees using mobile devices for communication. The office’s Information Technology Section (ITS) had been searching for newer technology that would enable better productivity. In August 2006, ITS installed a prerelease version of Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007. As a result, ITS has experienced simpler administration and more efficient management. Following full deployment of the software, ITS predicts that the improved mobile access, calendaring, and information storage capabilities will increase employee productivity.
Situation
The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General is the main legal and law enforcement agency in Pennsylvania. Headquartered in the state capital of Harrisburg, the office is responsible for investigating and prosecuting serious crimes such as fraud, public corruption, elder abuse, drug trafficking, and offenses against children. The office consists of 800 full-time employees, including Attorney General Tom Corbett, a team of lawyers, law enforcement agents who work across the state, and support staff and managers.
The Information Technology Section (ITS), based in Harrisburg, manages the messaging and collaboration environment for all employ¬ees. This management includes administra¬tion of the office’s hosted e-mail services, which has been based on the Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 communication and collaboration server.
The office’s lawyers and agents are dispersed throughout the state, working in 24 offices. Agents often work remotely, investigating and gathering information from crime scenes. Many of them use mobile devices to send reports and other crime data by e-mail, and to generally stay connected with the home office in Harrisburg. “They really depend on e-mail to do their jobs,” says Paul Lubold, Infrastructure and Operations Manager, Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General. “Life seems to stop without it. It’s the most important thing in our office.”
This emphasis on e-mail means that the office’s workers are highly dependent on technology to aid them in their work. “They expect a secure, user-friendly, and reliable e mail system,” says Lubold.
Such expectations mean that Lubold and his fellow ITS staff members are constantly looking for better ways to ensure that employees are productive and efficient while using e mail. “We don’t want them to worry about spam, for example. That takes too much of their time,” he says.
For these reasons, Lubold and his staff regularly look at new technology, with the goal of providing the most updated software and services to employees. Additionally, Lubold had been searching for technology that would enable him to easily share more administrative tasks with other staff members, in light of the fact that his own workload is increasing. “I wanted to be able to assign tasks to other people,” he says, “especially ITS staff working in other locations.”
Solution
The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General is involved in the Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program, which gives organizations the opportunity to deploy beta versions of new software. Through that involvement, the office was recently able to install Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. “I had heard a lot about the new features of this version, and that was the driving force behind us testing it,” says Lubold. “Working with the product before it was released was very exciting to me, in light of our focus on new technology.”
In August 2006, the office installed the prerelease version of Exchange Server 2007. Lubold received installation assistance from Sol Keston, a Maryland-based Microsoft consultant. “He was my knowledge base, and he acted as the liaison between me and Microsoft,” says Lubold. “He was a great technical resource and helped deploy the software, handle migrations, and install Microsoft Office Professional 2007 so we could better view the automatic configuration of Office Outlook® 2007 profiles for Exchange Server 2007 users.”
The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General installed Exchange Server 2007 on two of its server computers, handling e-mail for 110 computer users and 5 mobile device users. “Once we are fully deployed, we will have six servers total, serving 1,200 mailboxes,” says Lubold.
Benefits
After its initial deployment of Exchange Server 2007, the Information Technology Section experienced simplified adminis¬tration, more efficient server management, and improved performance. As it rolls out Exchange Server 2007 to the remainder of its mailbox servers, the department anticipates that the improved mobile access and updated Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access features will greatly increase employee productivity.
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We have many agents who are always traveling. Giving them better mobile access with Exchange Server 2007 is really going to help them be more productive. |
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Paul Lubold
Infrastructure and Operations Manager,
Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General |
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Simplified Administration
Lubold reports that the initial installation of Exchange Server 2007 was very simple, owing to a more intuitive process than previous versions of the software. “This was very easy to deploy,” he says. “There used to be a drop-down menu component that made everything more time-consuming. We definitely saved time during installation because of the new process.”
Additionally, management actions are simplified through the new Exchange Management Console, which is built on the Exchange Management Shell. IT administrators can work in the graphical management console while also being able to view the same com¬mands in the management shell environment. This gives IT administrators the ability to facilitate quick management via a scriptable command line for automation, batching, and reporting.
In addition, the Exchange Server 2007 environment is better integrated with the Active Directory® service. Previously, users were managed through the Active Directory administrative application, while servers were managed separately. With Exchange Server 2007, administrators can manage both users and servers from the Exchange Management Console. According to Lubold, this has greatly simplified administration tasks such as handling custom attributes. “We administer everything based around our Active Directory and use all the custom attributes, and the ability to see all of them in one display is wonderful,” he says. “That’s a huge advantage for me. The custom attributes field in Exchange Server 2007 is much simpler to use.”
Lubold also has noticed that Exchange Server 2007 improves his ability to automate tasks based on data in a spreadsheet. “The ability to automate tasks means I can create multiple users and mailboxes all at once,” he says. “This really makes administration easier and more flexible than ever before.”
More Efficient Management
Lubold is making use of the more efficient management capabilities in Exchange Server 2007. For example, a new flexible permission model enables a set of predefined administrator roles, giving administrators the ability to delegate more control to other ITS staff members. “That’s very important because our workload is tremendous,” Lubold says. “Now I’ll be able to use the advanced settings of the console to give other people some of my work.”
Lubold also plans to use Continuous Cluster Replication in Exchange Server 2007. This feature, which can be deployed within a single data center or between two data centers, keeps a replica of a mailbox database synchronized and ready to start immediately if something should happen to the primary copy. Database backups can also be done from the replica instead of the primary copy, thus eliminating the performance degradation caused by performing backups on the primary server.
“This will really help improve management in general,” says Lubold. “Having an exact replica of my Exchange Server environment, including databases, on another server will be very helpful. It will almost be a mirror server for us, and that will help us save time because we won’t have to do backup on the primary server.”
Improved Performance
The fact that Exchange Server 2007 performs faster and better has impressed Lubold. The software, which takes full advantage of 64-bit computing, features much faster processing speeds and better use of memory. “Performance is noticeably faster,” Lubold says. “We used to wait 10 to 15 minutes for policies to update, for example. That has gone down to 2 to 3 minutes.”
Also, Exchange Server 2007 no longer uses the Recipient Update Service for user provi¬sioning. Instead, the software fully provisions a user at the moment the administrator ena¬bles that user’s mailbox. “I don’t have to wait as long for Exchange Server data to show up,” says Lubold. “Those performance improvements will make me and our department more productive and efficient.”
Improved Mobile Messaging
Because the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General has so many remote employees, Lubold says improved mobile messaging capabilities will be particularly beneficial. “We have many agents who are always traveling,” he says. “Giving them better mobile access with Exchange Server 2007 is really going to help them be more productive.”
Remote users can quickly find information from their mobile device using the search capabilities of Exchange ActiveSync® technology. When searching from their mobile devices, law enforcement agents can query both the local device store and the Exchange Server mailbox. This allows mobile workers to access e-mail messages and information sent or received days or even months before. Search results found through the remote search of an Exchange Server mailbox are quickly retrieved to the mobile device.
“Our lawyers have a lot of data in their Inbox, and not all of it can be stored on their mobile devices,” says Lubold. “These search capabilities will enable them to quickly find the information they need, even from their mobile devices on their way to the courthouse or office.”
Exchange Server 2007 features an expanded version of Outlook Web Access, which has been enhanced to match the user interface design of the Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 messaging and collaboration client. New functionality includes improved calendaring and information storage capabilities. In addition, out-of-office messages now can be scheduled to start and finish on specific times or dates, and can be set or cleared from a user’s mobile device.
That’s an important feature at the attorney general’s office, where previously users would forget to set their e-mail status to “out of office.” E-mail would pile up, and coworkers would call to find out why their messages weren’t being answered. Now the notification can be prescheduled or set remotely if necessary. “Having the schedulable out-of-office messages is a big plus,” says Lubold.
Users also will benefit from a new Exchange Server 2007 feature that enables them to access file shares remotely without using a virtual private network (VPN). “I have many remote users that rely heavily on Outlook Web Access and need access to files and documentation outside regular business hours,” says Lubold. “The fact that they’ll be able to do that without having to configure a VPN is a major advantage for all of us. It will definitely save us time and money, in terms of deployment and maintenance.”
Next Steps
The attorney general’s office will finish deploying Exchange Server 2007 by the end of 2006. “We want to be the first government agency in Pennsylvania to do that,” Lubold says. “We also want to integrate the software with Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, so we can collaborate better as a whole, with messaging and document sharing. This is only the beginning for us.”
For More Information
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For more information about the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, visit the Web site at:
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/
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© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Active Directory, ActiveSync, Outlook, and SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
