Titanium, the new Outlook/Exchange client

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2002/jul02/07-15exchangeqa.asp">http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2002/jul02/07-15exchangeqa.asp</a><br /><br />Wondered what the next version of Outlook was going to look like? It seems that Microsoft is breaking away from their traditional user interface with this release - I wonder what will happen with the rest of Office? Click the thumbnail below for a larger version, and give the interview a read - it's interesting. I still wish Microsoft would pursue the SOHO market more with their Exchange offerings. It's still too expensive &amp; complex...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/features/2002/07-15exchangeqa_l.jpg"><img src="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/features/2002/07-15exchangeqa_s.jpg" /></a><br /><br />"With more than 109 million seats already licensed for Microsoft Exchange Server -- twice as many seats deployed as Lotus/Domino -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today announced at Fusion 2002 the company’s plans to release an upgrade to Exchange 2000 Server, code-named "Titanium," in 2003. Titanium will include a range of new benefits for end users, particularly information workers, as well as benefits targeted specifically to IT administrators and the corporate networks they manage.<br /><br />Titanium will be an easily deployed, incremental upgrade to Exchange 2000, analogous to the move from Exchange 5.0 to Exchange 5.5 in 1997. Ballmer noted that the release has been largely designed around partner and customer feedback. To learn more about Titanium and why customers will consider it a compelling upgrade, PressPass spoke with Malcolm Pearson, general manager of Microsoft's Exchange Server Business Unit. Pearson is responsible for the success of the Exchange Server business and product development including customer and partner contact. Pearson has worked in messaging at Microsoft for the past 10 years with an emphasis on product definition and development." Source: Foo Fighter

[lawnman]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Not much to see. Just a layout change mostly. Considering the buzz right now about M$ trying to steal the thunder from MacWorldNY, you have to wonder about the naming. . ."Titanium" :roll:

[Dave Conger]

Layout is definatly looks nice and looks like it would be nice and user friendly. Hopefully they built in a Spam filter.

[Master O'Mayhem]

Umm wouldnt a spam filter need to be on the exchange portion of the server rather than the client?

[JonnoB]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Not much to see. Just a layout change mostly. Considering the buzz right now about M$ trying to steal the thunder from MacWorldNY, you have to wonder about the naming. . ."Titanium" :roll:

The layout is an experiment in human factors... and I like the changes. Underneath, I am sure there are lots of changes... but how much more can you throw onto basic email, calendaring, task management, etc that the current OL doesn't have?

[Kre]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Not much to see. Just a layout change mostly. Considering the buzz right now about M$ trying to steal the thunder from MacWorldNY, you have to wonder about the naming. . ."Titanium" :roll:

The layout is an experiment in human factors... and I like the changes. Underneath, I am sure there are lots of changes... but how much more can you throw onto basic email, calendaring, task management, etc that the current OL doesn't have?

I have to agree with this, as well as pdadave. I really like the new layout. Its time they gave it a face lift at the very least. 8)

[vetteguy]

Crap. I'm implementing Exchange 2000 where I work right now..oh well, at least they claim it will be as "easy" as it was to move from 5.0 to 5.5. In my experience, NO upgrade involving Exchange is easy.

[draiken]

The changes are nice... and the feature "Active Folders" looks promising, maybe now I won't have to scroll up and down my folder list to check if I have pending e-mail on some obscure folder down the line.

Regarding the Spam Guard... I hope it's built on the client side, that way if you have POP3 accounts alongside your corporate Exchange, you get Spam Filtering for all of them.

[JonnoB]

Crap. I'm implementing Exchange 2000 where I work right now..oh well, at least they claim it will be as "easy" as it was to move from 5.0 to 5.5. In my experience, NO upgrade involving Exchange is easy.

Going from 5.x to 2k is NOT easy. You have to migrate your Exchange user data to Active Directory among many other changes. It is painful. As Titanium uses the same message store and network authentication, I am guessing that transition will be much easier.

[vetteguy]

Believe me, I know. Thankfully, the site I'm installing now is not an existing Exhange organization, so I can bring up a clean 2000 install without dragging any 5.5 crap behind.

[Ed Hansberry]

Going from 5.x to 2k is NOT easy. You have to migrate your Exchange user data to Active Directory among many other changes. It is painful.
MASSIVE understatement. :shocked!: We had a configuration that prohibited the AD Connector from working. So we did a huge Ex-merge. Ugly. Worked 4pm-9am on that one.

[jdhill]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Not much to see. Just a layout change mostly. Considering the buzz right now about M$ trying to steal the thunder from MacWorldNY, you have to wonder about the naming. . ."Titanium" :roll:
Exchange 2000 was code-named Platinum. It would appear that the Exchange developers like metals for code names.

I've been doing Exchange since before it was even Exchange (anyone remember Microsoft Mail and Schedule+ ???) I tend to agree with some of the posts. The screen shot of Outlook 11 implies that Outlook has reached the same stage as Windows XP where the most visible changes are mostly 'eye candy'. And Microsoft wonders why users are starting to skip every other software upgrade !!!

[tonymus]

If I can interpret that screen shot, it looks as if Outlook is migrating a bit towards Act! in the sense that the appointment contact is listed (and indeed, bolded) with the appointment. This is big news for people who want to use Outlook as a contact manager...

[Jason Dunn]

Not much to see. Just a layout change mostly

Considering that the article only mentioned new features in a very cursory manner, how can you possibly know what's new? :?

[ThomasC22]

Not much to see. Just a layout change mostly

Considering that the article only mentioned new features in a very cursory manner, how can you possibly know what's new? :?

Not only that it scares me that some of you think there isn't much that can be improved in Outlook. I mean, COME ON!

If I'm not dealing with users losing their menu bar I'm dealing with contacts problems, shared calendar problems, etc... Outlook, for the non-technical, is not easy to use.

OH, and btw, I like the interface too!

[ThomasC22]

Considering that the article only mentioned new features in a very cursory manner, how can you possibly know what's new? :?

Not only that it scares me that some of you think there isn't much that can be improved in Outlook. I mean, COME ON!

If I'm not dealing with users losing their menu bar I'm dealing with contacts problems, shared calendar problems, etc... Outlook, for the non-technical, is not easy to use.

OH, and btw, I like the interface too![/quote]

On a completely unrelated note, I just posted the last message in this thread, it was the last message I posted on the board, and no "DELETE THIS POST" option. Go figure :2gunfire:

I like the gunfire emotion ;)

[GadgetDave]

The layout is an experiment in human factors... and I like the changes. Underneath, I am sure there are lots of changes... but how much more can you throw onto basic email, calendaring, task management, etc that the current OL doesn't have?

A lot - more/better collaborative tools (i.e. Sharepoint Team Services) is the start - and while this picture doesn't show specifics about that, I'm sure that's a part of it. The "human factors" comment is true - the folks at MS Research spend an amazing amount of money on that kind of stuff.

[nwarren]

I like the new layout - it probably is mostly superficial, but the favourite folders and active folders look very productive, the grouping of today's emails and the clearer flagging look useful too.

I'm also pleased to hear about the backend integration of mobile services in to Exchange - this is so obvious, but currently needs a separately managed installation of MIS (if I'm reading the article right that is!!!) to allow remote syncing of Pocket PCs and smartphones (are Sendo still on for an August release date in the UK?).

The article also mentions the benefits of the Outlook Security Patch, and that one advantage is it stopping other programs from using Outlook without explicit interactive permission. What it doesn't mention is that it also prevents you from writing your own macros to do such things as send emails. I'm sure they could use digital signatures to allow some macros and not others? If anyone's got a workaround....please?

[dochall]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Not much to see. Just a layout change mostly. Considering the buzz right now about M$ trying to steal the thunder from MacWorldNY, you have to wonder about the naming. . ."Titanium" :roll:

The layout is an experiment in human factors... and I like the changes. Underneath, I am sure there are lots of changes... but how much more can you throw onto basic email, calendaring, task management, etc that the current OL doesn't have?

Well for the calendar side take a stroll through Pocket Informant and see.

[JonnoB]

Well for the calendar side take a stroll through Pocket Informant and see.

??? How will Pocket Informant let me see how Outlook 11 is changed in the calendar?

[[Cruzer]]

I wonder if MS will put out a demo for us IT guys to try out in our environment.... :roll:

[ThomasC22]

]I wonder if MS will put out a demo for us IT guys to try out in our environment.... :roll:

Well, it should be released in both a TechNET and a MSDN Subscription and I would figure any IT guy should have one or the other (if not both).

[karen]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Not much to see. Just a layout change mostly. Considering the buzz right now about M$ trying to steal the thunder from MacWorldNY, you have to wonder about the naming. . ."Titanium" :roll:

The layout is an experiment in human factors... and I like the changes. Underneath, I am sure there are lots of changes... but how much more can you throw onto basic email, calendaring, task management, etc that the current OL doesn't have?

Effective use of colour, I hope. Even though 2002 uses some conditional colouring, it conflicts with other conditional colour. There are tonnes more usable features in Lotus Organizer than in Outlook. In a recent review I wrote on Amazon.com, I mention that Outlook hasn't had any decent feature enhancements in years. It is also one of the few packages I use that doesn't make any effective use of colour.

Karen

[JonnoB]

Effective use of colour, I hope. Even though 2002 uses some conditional colouring, it conflicts with other conditional colour. There are tonnes more usable features in Lotus Organizer than in Outlook. In a recent review I wrote on Amazon.com, I mention that Outlook hasn't had any decent feature enhancements in years. It is also one of the few packages I use that doesn't make any effective use of colour.

Karen

You know of course, you can skin a WinXP desktop to have different colors, gradient patterns, buttons, etc. I can acheive the same color scheme just through themes. The component layout itself is what is changed. Although visually OutlookXP is similar to Outlook 2k, they are VERY different underneath. The MAPI spooler and OMI modes have gone the way of the Dodo and there is a new transport mechanism integrated into the Outlook process. I am sure that this layout change is only a part of the change.... there are likely massive changes underneath the covers.

[dochall]

Well for the calendar side take a stroll through Pocket Informant and see.

??? How will Pocket Informant let me see how Outlook 11 is changed in the calendar?

I should have cut down your original post. I was referring to your comment about how much more functionality you could provide with Outlook. I costantly find OL comes up short in terms of contact management and calendaring, areas where PI far outshines OL (in fact Organiser did from launch as well).

How about linked items? Proper management of company adresses? etc. etc. OL could do with some real beefing up as a personal productivity tool.

[JonnoB]

How about linked items? Proper management of company adresses? etc. etc. OL could do with some real beefing up as a personal productivity tool.

Out of the box, yes... OL does fall short in those areas of crm... but as OL is highly customizable and configurable, you can accomplish all of these things with some custom forms, event triggers, and simple COM add-ins. Now that MS has committed to the CRM space, I am sure you will see large strides made in this area.

[dochall]

How about linked items? Proper management of company adresses? etc. etc. OL could do with some real beefing up as a personal productivity tool.

Out of the box, yes... OL does fall short in those areas of crm... but as OL is highly customizable and configurable, you can accomplish all of these things with some custom forms, event triggers, and simple COM add-ins. Now that MS has committed to the CRM space, I am sure you will see large strides made in this area.

I have been operating in the CRM space for the last 12 years (yeah I know before anybody was using CRM). The things I am talking about have nothing to do with CRM. Threadz managed to do this with Organiser from the original release in 1990 (without the user having to do anything).

Take a very simple user. They have a couple in their contacts. Each has a different entry with different cell phone, email, etc. They move. Right now I have to update two seperate addresses. This is not a sophiticated requirement. So the answer is to have a reasonable amount of sophisticiation you have to do custom views, add triggers and add some COM add ins. Doesn't cut it as functional system.