Bye Bye WebDAV

Entourage has long been critized with it's access to exchange. I remember getting questions about RPC over HTTPS and whether or not Entourage uses MAPI. Well it didn't and still doesn't. It did however utilize WebDAV to provide a connection to Exchange. The Exchange team has de-emphasized WebDAV in Exchange 2007 and reduced it's footprint. Now we are removing another barrier and moving our Apple users from WebDAV to Exchange Web Services (EWS).

EWS provides the Entourage users with increased functionality including:

• Tasks, Notes, and Categories now sync with the Exchange Server     
• Resolving names against the Global Address List now works via EWS/HTTP. This means you no longer need to be connected to your corporate network via VPN to resolve names when addressing an e-mail or meeting invitation     
• Improved Autodiscover. In Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta, the Autodiscover service keeps user account settings up-to-date after the account setup. 
      • It runs in the background every time that you start Entourage. 
      • It also runs at a server-defined interval, typically every hour, to make sure that the Exchange Server settings are always kept up-to-date.

For more info on the Exchange services beta and to apply for the beta: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/itpros/entourage-ews.mspx