Outlook is the primary client for accessing Exchange server mailboxes. Outlook uses a Microsoft's proprietary MAPI protocol. Outlook apart from providing access to mailbox, leverages the collaboration experience by providing various features like:
- Calendaring.
- Global Address list(a.k.a GAL)
- Public folder access
- Contacts management.
- Personal Storage Folders(a.k.a PST)
- Cached Mode (For working offline)
- Reminders and
- Rules(Both Client and Server side)
Let's look in to each of these features in brief, but first the Mailbox access. When the outlook is setup for the first time outlook offers a option to setup exchange in Cached Exchange Mode. So what exactly cached exchange is? Let's consider it analogous to folder synchronisation. Outlook uses the logged in user's credentials and authenticates with the Exchange server and accesses the user's mailbox, creates a Outlook storage file (a.k.a OST) and starts synchronising the Mailbox with this folder.
Once the Sync. is complete, the outllook performs something called send/receive to send all pending itmes in the outbox and receive new items received in the user's mailbox at a set interval(typically 3 minutes). The advantage of this mode is that it allows the users to work offline(typically for laptop users).
If you do not select this mode, there actually will not be much of a difference in user's experience, Outlook directly accesses the mails from the server each time you open any item that's stored in the mailbox.
One of the collaboration features of Exchange server is Calendaring. It allows user's to store their free/busy information which is accessible to everyone in the organisation. This free/busy information is one among various data stored in Public folders for organisation wide access. The other things stored in public folders are:
- Offline address list (Offline version of Enterprise GAL)
- Eforms registry (Email templates to be simple)
- OWA scratch pads (Temporary storage location for data accessed by OWA users)
That brings us to the topic what are Public Folders?. Public Folders(PF) are publicly accessible storage location where mails, notes and calendars are stored and accessed based on permissions(Just like a Windows folder share). User's with permissions can access the PFs and post mail messages or notes or calendar items depending upon the type of the PF. No need to mention they can create subfolders if they have permissions.
Our next topic Global Address Lists(GAL). These are analoguous to telephone directory, contains information about other telephone users, similarly GAL presents with data about other Exchange users be it any type of user (Contacts or mail-enabled or mailbox enabled). Each Exchange server generates a Offline address list, which are downloaded by the outlook clients configured with cached mode for offline use.
Offline address lists are similar to GAL, except that they do not provide certain details like Organisation information, Group membership etc of a Exchange user, which are actually accesses from a Global catalog server (a type of Active directory server).
Let's have a quick look at other feature of Outlook, PST. A PST folder is a simple outlook folder to store mail messages, so that they can be accessed later, mail archiving being the major usage of PST folders.
The reminder feature alerts users about a approaching followup set either by the user themselves on a mail or by a mail set sent by sender. Reminder to a mail can be set by right-clicking on a mail and selectin followup, which gives you options for the remider.
Another important feature of Outlook is Rules feature. The rules and alerts can be set/accessed by going to Tools-->Rules and alerts. You can set either client side rules, which run only your outlook is open of server side rules which run independant of Outlook. Playing a sound or displaying alert window on arrival of a mail will be client side rule for the obvious reason. Moving a specific type of mail from inbox to user created folder in mailbox will be server side rule, because the rule dose not reaquire Outlook.
There is a lot to outlook than it might seem to be in a weeks usage. Will try to put as much basic stuff as possible.
