Anywhere Access with Exchange Server 2007

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	Outlook
	Outlook Web Access
	Exchange ActiveSync
	Outlook Voice Access

Outlook

For many people, Microsoft Office Outlook remains the hub of their working life. As messages arrive, they manage, organize, and process them from the Outlook client on their desktop. From a single application, they have the data and context to manage their calendar, contacts, and tasks.

Exchange Server 2007 and Outlook 2007 together make numerous improvements to make desktop collaboration more effective than ever. Combined, they offer a new Scheduling Assistant that lets users more easily and quickly schedule meetings with their colleagues. No longer do users need to scroll through days of meeting information to find a time. The system suggests the best days and times to them.

Similarly, Exchange and Outlook help users get easy access to the messages they need. They offer rich support for Unified Messaging, making it easier to identify and manage different message types, including voice mail and fax. They also offer a much faster search capability to help users find and make sense of the abundance of e-mail in their inbox.

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Outlook Web Access

While on the go, however, a desktop client is not always the most convenient tool for accessing messages. Installing a rich desktop client on a kiosk, for example, is often neither possible nor desirable. Sometimes a Web mail client is required. Exchange Server 2007 includes Outlook Web Access, the most comprehensive Web mail client available. Completely redesigned in Exchange Server 2007, Outlook Web Access is designed to offer a rich Outlook experience in a Web browser.

Like Outlook 2007, Outlook Web Access offers powerful new collaboration capabilities. Outlook Web Access also includes the Scheduling Assistant, support for rich Unified Messaging controls, vastly improved search, and new security and compliance capabilities, just like Outlook. Outlook Web Access in Exchange 2007 also includes WebReady Document Viewing, which converts documents into HTML. This allows attachments to be viewed even from kiosks that lack viewers, and ensures that copies of documents are not left on these unsecured machines. Outlook Web Access ensures that, even when away from their desks, employees have access to the tools to help make them productive.

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Exchange ActiveSync

In recent years, more powerful mobile devices have appeared. These devices allow access to messages, not just from desktop computers and Web kiosks but also while walking down the street or from the back seat of a taxi. Exchange ActiveSync, the built-in, highly scalable mobile solution in Exchange Server 2007, has helped make mobile messaging available to an ever-growing portion of the workforce. This in turn has changed increasing amounts of lost time into productive time.

Exchange ActiveSync pushes e-mail, voice mail, fax, calendar, contacts, and tasks to a mobile device as soon as they arrive at the server. This means that, even while traveling, employees are never out of touch. Exchange Server 2007 builds upon the solid foundation of Exchange ActiveSync to deliver even more powerful mobile messaging. It includes support for tasks like flagging messages so they can be quickly triaged and HTML mail to allow for the viewing of more complex information in e-mail. It also offers innovative new capabilities such as allowing users to search the entirety of their mailbox over the air from the mobile device, including messages not currently synced to the device. This helps overcome the limited resources of a mobile device, giving employees access to the entirety of their inbox, not just the portion that fits in the device memory.

Exchange ActiveSync is supported on a wide variety of mobile devices. This includes devices that run the Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system, as well as devices and software from DataViz, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Palm, Motorola, and Symbian.

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Outlook Voice Access

One area of mobile messaging that is largely unaddressed is access from a regular telephone. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American spends over 100 hours each way commuting to work every year. While it is not possible to use a laptop or mobile phone client while driving, a hands-free way of accessing messages would allow this lost time to be regained. Exchange Server 2007 offers access to messages over the telephone using either speech recognition (English-only) or touchtone commands (support for numerous languages). Outlook Voice Access² is a new capability of Exchange Server 2007 that revolutionizes the voice mail call-in experience.

While traditional voice mail systems only allow access to voice mail messages, Outlook Voice Access provides access not only to voice mail messages but also to e-mail, calendar, personal contacts, and the entire company directory. E-mail messages can be played using text-to-speech, automatically detecting the language in which the message was sent and playing the audio version of the message in the corresponding language. Meetings can be accepted, declined, postponed, or cancelled over the phone. People can manage their personal and business contacts from any phone. Outlook Voice Access offers convenient access to all varieties of business communications from a regular telephone.

Whether from a rich desktop client, Web client, mobile client, or even a plain old telephone, Exchange Server 2007 gives you access to all your vital business communications from virtually anywhere, helping make you and your people more productive.

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